One of the best problems to have as a business owner is needing to find better ways to manage your product stock. The good news is, of course, that your business is successful enough to have enough products to need management, but the bad news is that learning how to properly keep track inventory can be a little tricky. Field reporting, or sending out team members to specific areas and stores in order to report on sales figures and trends, is an essential part of this process. Keeping your finger on the pulse of your business is essential to success. Below are some ways that you can use the data you’ve collected through your field service management software in order to improve your overall business.
Keeping Inventory to Minimize Waste
Inventory can be a tricky thing to balance, doubly so when it comes to seasonal or perishable products like produce, flowers, food or other products with a specific use-by date. Therefore, if you have a strong grasp for about how much product will be sold at any given location at any given time, you’re going to have a bit of an advantage when it comes to knowing when to reorder and avoid surcharges for unneeded inventory. Granted, supply and demand will never strictly follow a specific trend, but having a good mobile data collection software for field data collection and calculation can help you better estimate what to restock and when.
Analyze Marketing Trends to Create Promotions and Displays
A good field service management software can help you not only keep careful tabs on inventory, but make it easier to see buying trends in order to time promotions and displays. A good display can sometimes help boost low sales, and by having a sense of how sales are performing in each specific location you can have a better idea on when and where might need a bit of help.
Create and Maintain Relationships Between Branches
When you make it easy for your field members to do their job, you make it easy for them to interact with branch managers and other individuals you may work alongside to sell your product. Having well trained team members, as well as a smoothly running mobile data collection software like this one, can make the inventory process run quickly and easily, therefore being less disruptive for overall business and allowing for a potentially better relationship with other staff. Remember that at time your field reporters can be your ambassadors, so it’s important to take advantage of the time they’ll spend interacting with the public to improve your image.
In conclusion, you can do a lot of multitasking with your field reporting if you know both how to utilize the data and collect it efficiently. A good field service management software can make a number crunching job into an enjoyable, informative experience that does much more than just help you keep track of sales. Visiting locations, running inventory and managing stock on a mobile device is an excellent way to do just that.