Intelligent Stock-take – Every retailer’s dream

Category: Academics

Stock-take is a process where the physical count of items in any shop or warehouse is matched with its system stock quantity. There is quite often differences between them due to reasons attributable to a) wrong barcoding; b) pilferage; c) breakage etc., Most retailers are unable to perform stock-take during operating hours due to the use of an off-line POS system, which updates stock of inward and outward once in the night. Hence, at the time of stock-take, the system quantity is not live and real and hence can’t be matched instantly. Further, due to time lag between count and system stock updating, a lengthy reconciliation process is attempted before a stock-take result is finally closed and count variances are posted to inventory and financial general ledger. Given this lethargic process, often stock take is delayed or neglected, leading to poor inventory control and management Statistics indicate a 30% difference between physical and system stock in a retail environment, leading to poor customer satisfaction. Further, every stock-take count takes about two weeks to close after prolonged backward reconciliation process Intelligent stock take is a process where you use barcode equipped mobile phones to scan items and instantly match with system stock. Intelligent stock take can be performed at any point in time, including during operating hours of a store. Stock-take variances are reconciled instantly, and variances analyzed at the close of every stock-take count and disposed of with count adjustments or otherwise. Since it is online and real-time, intelligent stock take helps to identify actual stock items where there are variances, thereby reducing variance analysis time substantially. There is no need to do backward reconciliations and waste precious man-hours Of our experience with clients using our Retail ViVA ERP, Intelligent stock take improves efficiency over 300% while reducing cycle time by about 90%, compared to traditional stock-take methods Intelligent stock-take also helps to do risk analysis of items that are perpetually indifference and thus provides inputs for system and control improvisation Written by (Ragu)nathan Kannan