Outsourced inventory management solutions have made quite a name for themselves today. In the post-pandemic era, one of the biggest shifts in mentality that we have observed is the increased trust in the remote work model, and subsequently, an astronomical rise in business functions being outsourced.
While there remains a staunch, small group of entrepreneurs who do not have faith in outsourcing, especially not in outsourced inventory management solutions, the vast majority of business leadership has accepted and adopted outsourcing as a general practice in business.
Gone are the days when businesses tried to hire everything in-house and refused any online assistance; with the advent of highly sophisticated communications and monitoring technology, as are the ERP systems of today. Now, it doesn’t matter where in the world you are. You can still contribute to the development and growth of a business a thousand miles across the ocean.
In this article, we will be breaking down what we mean by outsourced inventory management solutions, the benefits they bring and how they can bolster the business’ growth.
Outsourced Inventory Management Solutions
Inventory management entails taking responsibility for the business’ inventory. This includes inventory storage, logistics, procurement, distribution; the whole nine yards. All these processes today are manageable through remote means, which means they are viable for outsourcing.
Outsourced inventory management solutions are services provided by outsourcing service providers in the US specializing in inventory management and supply chain management. These solutions are basically offshore inventory management professionals, who bring with them a comparable skill set to their US equivalents, but bring with them a slew of benefits that make them a far more tempting inventory management solution than just hiring someone locally.
The Benefits of Outsourced Inventory Management Solutions
Cost Savings
The biggest benefit outsourced inventory management solutions bring and the primary reason why so many businesses opt for them is a simple fact that they are affordable.
We live in recessionary times, and prices are shooting through the roof. Looking at Glassdoor to see how much an inventory manager would lighten your wallet, the average cost comes out to $47,701 annually, with the bigger companies paying almost twice that amount.
These are not easy numbers to digest. While the price may seem trivial to a large corporation like Amazon, the fact is that most of US businesses, especially small retail businesses and e-commerce businesses simply cannot afford to hire an inventory manager, a professional they sorely need to drive growth in the business.
Outsourced inventory management solutions solve this problem by being affordable. While you miss out on having a person on the ground and in the store running things, you get a professional who costs up to 60% less, if not more, than the in-house equivalent. This massive price gap is why many businesses prefer outsourced inventory management solutions.
Error Mitigation and Accuracy Boost
Outsourced inventory management solutions can provide your business access to affordable and competent inventory management professionals, and introduce sophisticated inventory management strategies and cutting-edge technology into the mix. And these additional resources are integral to boosting your accuracy when it comes to inventory management.
It’s one thing to hire an inventory management professional, but a whole other to strategize how they will carry out their duties, as well as what technology will be used along the way. Looking at the stats compiled by Meteor Space, a whopping 43% of small businesses don’t even track their inventory, or do so manually. This number is ludicrous when you factor in the fact that the human error rate of an inventory management professional is a staggering 86%, as reported by Wasp Barcode Technologies. With this high of a human error rate, it’s downright crazy to leave things up to manual entry.
This simply will not work going forward. AI and automation technology has come incredibly far today, and small businesses cannot remain comfortable doing things by hand and not leaning into the technological future that is soon approaching.
Of course, there is the fact to consider that leveraging such high-level technology is itself a special skill, and paying for access to such resources is a whole other headache to consider. Outsourced inventory management solutions are the best way for entrepreneurs to sidestep these concerns. Outsourced inventory management solutions include highly qualified professionals who are trained to handle a vast number of sophisticated software, as well as in the management of automation and AI assistance. On top of this, such outsourcing services providers in the USA provide access to their own technological resources to the business, drastically improving the accuracy of their inventory tracking and management.
Increased Efficiency and Productivity
Outsourcing inventory management solutions also allow businesses to benefit from the expertise and experience of the third-party provider, who can offer valuable insights and best practices for optimizing inventory management. This can lead to further improvements in efficiency and productivity, and better decision-making when it comes to inventory planning and forecasting.
Driving Growth with Outsourced Inventory Management Solutions
Increased Profitability
Outsourced inventory management solutions substantially boost the business’ productivity if you play your cards right.
The cost of outsourcing your inventory management is well worth the returns. Your outsourced professional brings the combined resources and knowledge of a highly experienced organization. These people have been doing this work for decades and know everything there is to know about it. With the help of such formidable allies, you can greatly cut down your supply chain costs, and vastly improve your supply chain network.
These old hands in the industry whose expertise you have access to also bring with them connections in the business landscape. They know the best people in your locale for shipping, for example. They know the guy who can provide you with warehousing for cheap. They know the local rules and regulations and can help you stay compliant.
All of these process optimizations contribute towards boosting the business’ order fulfilment rate, which generates more revenue and boosts profits. And these profits can then be reinvested in the business to grow further
Freedom to Scale
With outsourced inventory management solutions, you do not need to worry about holding back on the scope of your operations. Growth often happens in sudden bursts, and entrepreneurs need to be ready to capitalize on the growth opportunities that come their way.
Say, for example, a new product goes viral, and everyone wants it. Suddenly you find that you’ve run out of stock. Well, it’s time to boost production!
With an outsourcing services provider in the US by your side, you can go all in on cashing in on this opportunity, and double or even triple your inventory. The management falls on the firm, and they are more than capable of handling it.
Having this freedom to scale at will makes it all the easier to lean into those short windows of organic growth and create a big splash in the market.
Enabling Focus Towards Driving Growth
Outsourced inventory management solutions drive growth by allowing the core team to focus on growth in the first place. Let me explain.
The idea is that when we look at a small or medium-sized business, many if not most of them are operating with a very small and tight-knit team. The core team is involved in almost every business operation and typically juggles multiple professional roles. There have been cases of CEOs managing the business’ inventory, finances, and marketing on top of their role as CEO. This leaves the core team with no time to spare for discussing growth.
With outsourcing services providers by your side, however, this issue is resolved. By handing these extra responsibilities over to third-party professionals, you open up your schedule to talk growth. Growth cannot happen if you never even have the chance to make it happen, so the time freed up by having more people in the team thanks to outsourcing is a formidable asset to have on your side.
Conclusion
To conclude, Outsourced inventory management solutions like Expertise Accelerated bring many benefits to US businesses, with no substantial downsides. They are amazing growth drivers and enable the business to flourish even in these tough times. Supply chains are one of the most sensitive and important functions of a business, and we have seen the havoc that comes with ill-managed supply chains during the pandemic.
Therefore, every entrepreneur reading this article should at least research the matter consult with their business’ community, and start investing in outsourcing. Outsourcing is the future of hiring, and the sooner you realize this, the better it will be for your business in the long run.