The Ultimate Guide to Salesforce Inventory Management System

Whether you are a manufacturer with raw materials as your goods or a retailer with off-the-shelf stock, inventory management is crucial for tracking and controlling buying, selling, and storing goods.

Per the records, most businesses struggle with delayed shipments and unavailable products. Also, some have unlocked growth potential by opting for inventory management optimization. The needs and strategies for managing inventory may vary for different companies. Still, the object is the same: the correct quality at the right time, diminishing excess stockouts or inventory.

So, following the best practices will save money and time for your organization. Marking this issue and in a hunt to emerge with something useful, Salesforce has stepped in with an inventory management capability that boosts productivity and business sales.

This post will discuss how the Salesforce inventory management system can be valuable for your business and lead to improved customer experience, business relationships, and enhanced data security.

Why Is Salesforce Inventory Management Important?

First, let’s discuss why an enterprise should opt for Salesforce inventory management.

When we buy less, we risk the piling of outdated stock; choosing to buy less may also lead to stockout products that will leave your customers happy.

So, the key to success is to know the right quantity to order at the right time. With real-time inventory data, you can automate inventory management systems and predict analytics before saving money and avoiding waste. For this, you must conduct inventory visibility, the best inventory management practice, which helps view the goods’ quality and flow in real time. This way, brands can quickly track and store huge data volume, meet the supply with demands, and reduce the risk of overselling and underselling.

How to Follow Salesforce Inventory Management Best Practices?

To reap the advantages of Salesforce inventory management best practices, you should know how much you should order, the time it takes to exhaust your supply, how much to reserve goods, and when to reorder.

The standard principles will stay the same in whichever industry your business belongs. However, inventory management best practices are different, relying on unique business needs (as it can vary with the type of industry).

Let’s consider examples of a few industries:

Salesforce Inventory Management for Manufacturing

Sometimes, manufacturers suffer from finding their raw materials getting stuck while in transit. They go through delivery delays and shortages.

Here, following inventory management best practices help them with the following:

• On-time production & delivery assurance,
• Diminished carrying costs,
• No out-of-stock materials,
• Overproduction.

Salesforce Inventory Management for Healthcare

In the healthcare sector, visibility holds extra importance when essential supplies are found expired, missing, out of stock, or back-ordered. Simultaneously, providers are found under pressure in waste management and avoiding abuse or theft.

Companies can get complete visibility into distribution, location, and usage using a well-connected and digitized inventory management system with a supply chain.

This help with:

• Safeguards patients,
• Controls spending, and
• Ensures caring-focused employees.

Salesforce Inventory Management for Food Industry

Manual inventory tracking can be daunting for a food company, here, an effective inventory management system can be a huge help in running the food business profitably.

The salesforce inventory management system, when integrated with the food business, can help:

• Track stock levels,
• Diminish waste, and
• Ensure safe and fresh product consumption.

Salesforce Inventory Management for Nonprofits

The use of Salesforce inventory management in Nonprofits is also rising, helping scale their needs and attain the expected performance.

Other benefits of inventory management for NPOs:

• Donated inventory items management with minimum user interaction,
• View, add, and remove items easily,
• Ease user access management and
• Organize donation items per location.

Salesforce Inventory Management for Retail and Ecommerce

Retailers usually get into trouble witnessing high-in-demand products going out of stock. Following inventory management best practices, they can get high ROI on investment from the purchased stock.

A visible inventory management system helps in knowing the real-time status of the stocks-in-hand, and retailers know which finished goods are profitable, from best sellers or the worst ones.

• Comprehensive visibility lets retailers:
• Connect and view sales, warehouse, distribution data, and location,
• Streamline customer touchpoints and
• Boost ROI.

Best Approaches to Leverage Inventory Management System Using Salesforce

Now, the next question would be how to get the most out of inventory management utilizing Salesforce. Here, we have described varied approaches that you can opt for.

1. Custom Development

With unique inventory management requirements for your business, you can create a custom inventory management solution using the Salesforce platform. With its robust customization and development power, you can build custom workflows, objects, and reports for inventory tracking and management within Salesforce.

2. Custom Objects and Fields

You can build custom objects and fields on the Salesforce platform to track inventory-relevant data management. If you need to build custom objects for warehouses, products, and inventory transactions, you can do that.

3. Integration with an External Inventory Management System

By integrating Salesforce with an external inventory management system, best at inventory tracking, order fulfillment, and stock management, you can sync inventory data between two systems, confirming the availability of information and accurate inventory levels within Salesforce.

4. Reporting and Dashboards

With Salesforce’s reporting and dashboard potency, you can get inventory-relevant metrics. Also, you can create reports and dashboards offering insights into order fulfillment, sales performance, replenishment, and inventory level needs. This assists in making sound inventory management decisions.

5. AppExchange Apps

The marketplace for third-party apps and integrations, Salesforce AppExchange, is best for finding the best inventory management apps that you can integrate with your CRM platform and extend its inventory management capabilities. Such apps arrive with features like stock replenishment, warehouse management, order management, and inventory tracking. You need to discover and pick the best app for your inventory management needs.

How Implementing a Real-time Inventory Management System Can Help?

Implementing real-time inventory management with an enterprise leads to improved visibility gains.

• Greater visibility assists in bulk purchasing with diminished storage costs.
• Embedded analytics product demand accurately and make timely purchases.
• Automated reporting and reordering lower high-valued risks, like overstocks, out-of-stocks, mis-shipments, and mis-picks.

Resultantly, your shelves can stay stocked, deliver goods correctly and quickly, build customer satisfaction, and attract repeat business.

Holding Field Service package, a part of Salesforce’s Service Cloud module, Salesforce CRM assists in tracking and updating inventory consumption, shipments, transfers, and returns. This ensures the field service representatives get the right tools whenever needed and keep customers updated.

Top Features Of Salesforce Inventory Management

Salesforce has become a powerful platform for managing inventory along with customer relationships. Here are some top features one might expect when using Salesforce for inventory management:

1. Track Items Across Varied Locations

The users can set up locations and create records of their products to get updates on quantities of items at a specific spot. The business staff can scan the equipment and parts barcodes for real-time inventory updates using the barcode scanner. The owner can review the modifications via the Product Item Transactions list.

2. Track Returns and Transfers

Using Salesforce inventory management systems, you can track goods transfers between warehouses and other storage at different locations or from a 3rd-party vendor to an inventory spot.

You can create a product transfer to move the items, specifying the source location, destination location, source product item, and quantity.

Besides, you can track the shipping details for transfer, create a shipment, and specify it as “received” on the arrival of items.

You can track any returned inventory items and create return orders listing the relevant case, product, or order.

3. Set Up Reorders

Soon-to-end stock demands the creation of a new product request and connects it with associated orders, locations, line items, and accounts. Set up a product request line item for every product requested.

4. Scheduling

A smart scheduling tool of Salesforce is best at optimizing your mobile workforce allocation by automatically allocating appointments and jobs based on skills, time, and location. Various tools are also there to track trucks, equipment, and crews to confirm the availability of the right parts and resources.

5. AppExchange

You can try Salesforce.com’s app marketplace, AppExchange, and download and install it to enhance the platform’s functionality.

6. Mobile App

The Salesforce mobile app holds the same caliber as its desktop version, allowing users to access inventory details, a knowledge base, and schedules. The Einstein Vision feature is best for mobile employees; it lets them use image recognition to identify assets apart from photos.

7. Analytics

The analytics feature provides real-time insights into employees and their overall performance. You can reap its benefits by integrating customer data from varied systems and using it to figure out solutions, plan your operations in advance, and identify issues.

How Can Emizentech Help You?

With limited inventory solutions, you may find it challenging to expand your business. You need to hold complete control over your inventory to run your business operations seamlessly. Besides, with a single platform, you can run all your retail operations smartly.

Emizentech understands how inventory management suits the entire supply chain, and it is important to sync it with relevant processes. We hold a team of experts who are best at combining Salesforce inventory management capability with order and warehouse management, financial capabilities, fulfillment and shipping, and business intelligence. Besides, the team ensures every system and tool performs at its best.

Get assistance from a Salesforce Consulting Company for expert guidance on Salesforce inventory management for your business today!

Final Verdict

You can exploit the power of Salesforce for inventory-relevant processes by assessing your business needs and determining the best approach for efficient inventory management.

For that, you can integrate your business with the most suitable inventory management systems or use custom development to get inventory management caliber within the Salesforce environment.