Optimizing warehouse storage with Inventory Planner

In today’s fast-paced retail and e-commerce markets, inventory management is one of the most important aspects of any successful business. It is essential for maximizing revenue, reducing costs, and ensuring customer satisfaction. One of the most significant challenges within inventory management is how to use warehouse storage space efficiently.

Booming e-commerce and international retailing have created warehouse shortages, leading to higher warehouse storage fees. This cost increase has made it more important than ever to optimize your warehouse storage by stocking the right inventory and removing any unpopular or dead inventory quickly. 

The best way to ensure you have the right inventory to meet customer demand without occupying your valuable warehouse space with unprofitable items is to use a dedicated inventory planning software like Inventory Planner. 

What is warehouse inventory management?

Warehouse management and storage practices play a big part in a business’s supply chain efficiency and overhead costs. This involves everything from planning and purchasing inventory, receiving, storing, organizing, and tracking all products, to managing warehouse staff. How you approach these processes can impact many facets of your business, including fulfillment, shipping, customer service, and cash flow.

Proper warehouse management can help you increase fulfillment accuracy, maximize productivity, lower costs, and improve customer experience. On the other hand, poor warehouse management can lead to stockouts, overstocking, delays, lost revenue, and even theft.

Optimizing your warehouse storage

Having an efficient warehouse storage system means ensuring that you are using your available space as effectively as possible, your stock levels are optimal, and your inventory is organized to maximize operational efficiency. When executed properly, well-organized warehouse storage practices can vastly improve how your business functions, saving you money, improving safety, and allowing your business to scale smoothly. Here are a few warehouse storage strategies you should consider:

• Applying efficient inventory planning is the most fundamental step, as it will help you only stock the inventory that your customers want to buy. Going with an automated inventory planning software program can be a great option, especially if you have multiple inventory locations and need complex demand forecasting and inventory planning for each location.
• Perform regular cycle counts to remove any obsolete inventory.
• Maximize your space by storing items according to size. Storing like-sized items together will also make product movement easier.
• Organize items based on movement and relevance. This will allow your warehouse team to move more efficiently when picking and packing orders.
• Transfer inventory between warehouses to optimize storage. If you’re using different warehouses to fulfill different orders, it’s important to have a clear view of how much inventory is needed for each location, so you can know if any inventory can be moved from one location the another to better meet demand and optimize storage space.
• Invest in warehouse storage optimization software that can help find other ways to improve space utilization. These programs can provide recommendations regarding what to install in your warehouse to get the most out of your space, including things like pallet racks, multi-tier racks, static shelving, mobile shelving, and mezzanine flooring.

How Inventory Planner can help optimize warehouse storage

While there are a variety of methods you can use to improve your warehouse storage practices, knowing how much inventory to buy and when to buy is the first place to start. Efficient inventory planning helps avoid excess inventory piling up in your warehouses. This is where Inventory Planner can help. 

A dedicated inventory planning software like Inventory Planner provides extensive inventory purchasing recommendations and in-depth reporting that provide you with a clear picture of how your inventory is performing in each warehouse. This allows you to reduce inventory that is not selling well release space and only stock the inventory that your customers want to buy. Here are some of the specific ways Inventory Planner can help you improve your warehouse storage practices:

• Demand forecasting. Inventory Planner uses historical sales data and factors in variants like seasonality, periodic sales trends, and marketing campaigns to forecast future demand for products. This helps warehouse managers allocate the necessary storage space for different products.
• Multi-location inventory planning. Inventory Planner helps keep the right inventory levels in each of your storage locations by recommending how much inventory is needed and when to place a purchase order for each product. This ensures that the each of your warehouses has enough stock to meet demand without overstocking, which can lead to clutter and other storage issues.
• Maximize your storage space. You can pre-set items’ QB metrics in inventory Planner, so it will factor the information in when offering replenishment recommendations for each location. 
• Multi-warehouse inventory transfer recommendations. Inventory Planner tells you if any inventory can be moved from one location to another to better meet customer demand without ordering new stock. This will prevent your warehouses from becoming cluttered with new excess inventory.
• Inventory prioritization. Inventory Planner can help classify products based on your core business metrics such as profit, turnover, and revenue, which helps prioritize storage space allocation. High-priority products are given more space and easier access, while low-priority products are given less.
• SKU rationalization. Inventory Planner helps identify slow-moving or obsolete products, which can be removed from inventory to free up space for more in-demand products.

Don’t waste time and effort manually crunching the numbers from your warehouse to determine the right amount of inventory to order and when. Instead, let Inventory Planner use the data you collect regarding stock levels, lead times, and more to provide reliable ordering recommendations and accurate demand forecasting. The software seamlessly integrates with your warehouse management tools and systems, making it convenient and intuitive to improve your inventory forecasting accuracy.

Inventory Planner automatically updates your demand forecasts and offers inventory purchasing recommendations accordingly to ensure you’re ordering the right amount of stock to meet customer demand, maximize your storage budget, avoid excess stock, and keep your stock levels optimal and your warehouse storage efficient. Get the most out of your inventory storage budget with Inventory Planner.