There are quite a few different ways to keep track of your inventory. You can either write everything down on paper, you can design a spreadsheet, or use excel, and create your own formulas. Or, you can create a lot of things easier by using an inventory management system to automate things for you.
Inventory management must be done correctly if warehouse operations, order fulfillment, receiving, and customer service is to be improved. However, other estimates claim that almost half of small and midsize enterprises either don’t maintain inventories at all or do so manually.
Barcoding
Barcoding inventory is the faster way to communicate inventory information across business operations. The time it takes to scan barcodes and retrieve data on a system when needed is shorter than manually typing and searching information.
Given the efficiency of barcoding in locating and managing inventory in general, it can boost inventory visibility. Managing inventory without real-time barcode scanning will only get more difficult as the business expands its number of products and warehouses.
You can achieve and experience the benefits of inventory visibility with barcoding.
Top 5 Benefits of Barcoding Inventory
Avoid unnecessary labor costs.
Manual labor requires more time and effort. Picking the correct product and quantity, auditing inventory, or simply locating products in the storage or warehouse is difficult when done manually. And, as the business demand goes higher, you can only hire more people to keep up with the volume.
With barcode scanners, there’s a lot of time and costs you can save when you can easily look up the information you need instead of typing and searching everything manually.
Avoid picking errors
Picking inventory is one of the important processes in business operations, especially in retail. Cost may be significantly greater in industries that handle expensive goods. Employees may unintentionally pick the incorrect item, pick the incorrect quantity, put inventory in the incorrect location, and make data entries or counting errors.
Most of these issues can be solved by barcode scanning and inventory tracking solutions which works side by side to get instant and accurate data in just a few seconds.
No more unnecessary buffer inventory
Without proper inventory data, most businesses increase their inventory to make up for their lack of visibility. This is an expensive investment because it leads to more wastage as well as pointless purchases and increased inventory costs. Increased write-offs and write-downs accompanying increased inventories can reduce profitability.
Avoid Data Entry Errors
Manual data entry errors are inevitable. Once those errors are present in your inventory system, they result in inventory issues and shipment errors that can be challenging to identify and fix. It can also affect your customers’ experience and may lead to losses.
There is no chance of error when keying products and quantities using barcode scanning because every data entry is automated.
Inventory Visibility
Multiple locations and increasing customer demand can have a big toll on the business process when locating and managing inventory manually. Without accurate and real-time inventory data, it is impossible to determine the issues you may have in your inventory processes. With barcoding, you can easily find and make note of the real-time inventory levels and locate them fast when needed, and make the necessary adjustments.
The information generated by barcode scanning is the key to having ideal inventory visibility. It can be used to locate the operational inefficiencies in your inventory management process, as well as to spot errors and gauge how well you’re meeting both internal and external goals and consumer expectations.
If you have not used barcode scanning to help you track and manage your inventory, you are probably paying extra costs and taking unnecessary risks due to wasted labor, excess inventory, and other errors that could ultimately cost you a lot and may lead to losing customers.
The Map Makers 
One thought on “Barcoding: Key to Inventory Visibility”