Why does ecommerce feel so much harder to manage now than it used to?

Ecommerce feels harder to manage because many growing businesses are no longer operating in one clean lane. Companies often sell across websites, marketplaces, wholesale channels, vendor networks, third-party logistics providers, and multiple warehouses. This added complexity makes inventory harder to track accurately with manual tools like spreadsheets.

How do I know when spreadsheets are holding my business back?

Spreadsheets may be holding your business back when your current process starts limiting growth opportunities. Common signs include avoiding new sales channels, delaying vendor relationships, relying on too much manual labor, or experiencing stockouts and listing problems because inventory updates are difficult to keep current.

Is the real problem just inventory accuracy, or is there a bigger business impact?

The bigger impact includes lost revenue, lower profitability, and reduced customer trust. Manual inventory and fulfillment processes can lead to lost sales, out-of-stock listings, marketplace penalties, lower customer satisfaction, high labor costs, and fragile accounting or enterprise resource planning processes.

What kind of technology do I need to move beyond spreadsheets?

The right technology depends on your current priorities, fulfillment model, and growth plans. Look for systems that can centralize inventory visibility, support smarter allocation, automate order routing, sync supplier data, and leave room for more complex fulfillment operations as the business grows.

Home 5 Inventory Management 5 Inventory Management Systems for Mobile Shops

Blog

Originally published on January 23, 2021

Inventory Management Systems for Mobile Shops

Q: What is the first thing I should fix if I want to scale operations?

The first thing to fix is inventory visibility. A unified view of inventory helps you understand what is available, where it is located, and what it costs to fulfill from each source, including warehouses, third-party logistics providers, marketplace fulfillment programs, and supplier locations.

Mobile shops are becoming more and more popular, and with an expanding client base comes a need for a more advanced inventory management system. Mobile inventory management software can be an ideal solution. Why mobile inventory management? This guide provides some tips and tricks for mobile marketing and inventory management, explains the benefits of mobile […]

Inventory Management Systems for Mobile Shops

Why mobile inventory management? This guide provides some tips and tricks for mobile marketing and inventory management, explains the benefits of mobile inventory management and discusses how to use mobile inventory management to streamline your business operations.

Effective Mobile Marketing Tips and Tools for Retailers

Retailers of all kinds need to maximize their use of effective marketing strategies to drive leads, boost revenues and maintain a loyal customer base. And mobile marketing tools are essential to have in your toolbox. More and more people depend on their phones throughout the day, doing everything from buying gifts to scheduling dentists’ appointments to finding the best place for dinner. The average American checks their phone once every 10 minutes. So you need proven, practical ways to reach out to potential clients where their attention is already focused.

Below are a few helpful mobile marketing tips and tools retailers can use to bring in more business:

Optimize your content for phones: Make sure your website’s content is easy for mobile phone users to read and navigate. Phone screens are much smaller than laptop screens, for instance, so you’ll want to make sure you use shorter headlines and text blocks. You should also use search engine optimization (SEO) techniques to make sure your pages rank high when mobile users search for relevant keywords.
Prioritize convenience for mobile devices: Optimizing your content for mobile phones is essential, and so is designing your entire site with mobile navigation in mind. Experiment with the menu layout to be sure it shows up well on a small screen, for instance, and be sure your call-to-action button and internal links are compatible with mobile devices. It’s often helpful to use specific themes or plugins to make these tweaks automatically.
Invest in mobile advertisements: Once your site is easy for mobile users to access, you’ll want to find ways to entice them there. One effective way is mobile advertising. Try running ads on social media platforms or in your app to get your message to the 5 billion mobile device users out there. Be sure to target your key demographics with tailored ads to make your marketing more effective.
Personalize your message: Humans are, above all, often looking for basic connections, even when they think they’re only shopping for new socks. Customizing your message, whether by using personal stories, photographs or a cute character on your site, goes a long way toward giving potential customers warm, positive feelings toward your business.

Managing a Mobile Store

Mobile stores have been exploding in popularity as people recognize the tremendous advantages of ordering products from the comfort of their homes. So running a mobile store can provide a huge payoff if you create a way to supply the reliable, quality products people need.

In managing an e-commerce store, you may also find yourself contending with a few common pain points:

Difficulties with on-site product searches
Out-of-stock inventory
Outdated software
Poor product tracking
Delayed order fulfillment
Incorrect orders

Fortunately, investing in the right management tools can help you address many of these pain points and make your company more successful.

Tips for Inventory Management for a Mobile Shop

Once you know some general tips for attracting more customers to a business through mobile marketing, you can learn how best to manage mobile inventory, as well as to increase customer satisfaction and sales:

1. Prioritize Fewer Interruptions and Higher Security

Limiting interruptions on your mobile shop site is essential. You don’t want your potential customers to abandon their full shopping carts because something interfered with their checkout experience. Consider how you can make the buying process as fast and streamlined as possible — allowing customers to check out without creating an account, for instance, or giving them payment options like PayPal or card autodetection that don’t require tedious credit card information entry. You can also provide automatic popups in the customer information fields so your visitors won’t have to spend time typing out their names, email addresses and phone numbers.

The security of your e-commerce site is also paramount. Especially on their mobile devices, customers want to know their personal data will be safe from fraud. Providing a secure connection, using a padlock icon to tell your customers about it, and displaying any security seals your site has obtained can help put clients’ minds at ease and convert critical leads. And choosing a secure cloud-based inventory management service gives you and your customers extra peace of mind about data safety.

2. Adopt a Text Marketing Platform

You’ll also want to develop a robust text marketing strategy. In one Pew Research Center study, which asked smartphone users twice a day whether they had texted in the past hour, the users said yes about half the time — so why not capitalize on all that text attention to turn your inventory stock into sales?

Text message marketing is useful for many reasons — it’s immediate, interactive and customizable, and you can track your results easily. Craft and implement a plan to gather phone numbers from your site visitors and then send them marketing texts from time to time. You can provide special discounts or notify them of limited offers they won’t want to miss. Be consistent with your promotions — you don’t want to bombard your potential customers, but keeping your brand name in the front of their minds can inspire them to come to you when they want to make a purchase. You can also use text services to confirm orders, provide delivery dates and offer customer service in a way many clients find more convenient than a phone call.

3. Tailor Your Strategies to Customer Locations

Customers in different geographical locations are often looking for different products on your site. If you can learn where your site visitors are by accessing their IP addresses or location data, you can use location-based marketing to target their likely preferences. Tailor your site messages and ads to cold-weather gear, for instance, or text a coupon for swim apparel to visitors’ phones if they provide a number.

This strategy, commonly known as geotargeting, is typically most effective if you can pair it with insights gleaned from customer purchase histories. For instance, if you still have a brick-and-mortar location or are transitioning from a physical business to an online store, you can use geotargeting to send enticing offers when location data tells you your customers are nearby. If your business sells flowers and you see that a particular repeat customer is in the area, send a quick text coupon for 15% off a flower purchase, inviting the person to get a floral home decoration or surprise a loved one. Or if your restaurant is moving to online ordering, send customers special offers when they’re in the neighborhood.

Using technological tools helps you get the most out of these marketing strategies. You’ll likely want to invest in software platforms to help you target location data and put it to good use. If you have a mobile app, you may also want to add features that enable routing, mapping and geocoding to make it easier for customers to find you. You may even be able to provide step-by-step navigation to add convenience and value to the customer’s experience.

4. Invest in Inventory Management Software

Consider investing in quality inventory management software to enable your inventory management workflow to keep pace with your sales. Inventory management software provides a more sophisticated way to know how much inventory you have, keep track of the goods coming in from your suppliers and maintain accurate stock counts for each of your storage locations, among many other benefits.

Some businesses get by using spreadsheets and physical inventory counts to keep track of their wares, or they may deduct receipts or rely on online shopping carts to keep accurate numbers. But when you have extensive or complex inventory, or if your customers expect rapid service, using the right inventory software can make a difference in the efficiency of your operations and the accuracy of your orders.

Mishandling your inventory management leads to adverse effects throughout your business. You may not have inventory on your site when your customers are looking for it. You may accidentally sell products you don’t have on hand to ship. Alternatively, you may keep too much of a certain product in stock, taking up valuable warehouse space and squeezing out more in-demand items. And even if your product counts are correct, the wrong management system can mean your management staff and employees spend valuable time on inefficient processes rather than focusing their energy on customer service and sales.

On the other hand, efficient inventory management has many benefits for your mobile business. Below are a few of those advantages:

Enhanced inventory accuracy: You never want to think you have 10 popular sweaters in stock but have only five, or think you have several cases of wine on hand for shipping while having only one. Cloud inventory management services, including inventory control, warehouse and multi-warehouse management, lot ID tracking, serial number tracking, inventory stock auditing and builds for light manufacturing, keep an accurate, automatic count of your stock. With inventory management software, you won’t have to worry about making manual arithmetic errors, mistyping a figure and seeing your numbers go out of balance or failing to account for your diminishing supply as customers make purchases.
Efficient automated management: Automation of your inventory control offers many benefits. Automated order management solutions, including options for purchasing and replenishment and leveraging order points, enable your employees to focus their efforts more effectively. Workers can prioritize more complex problem-solving work like customer service, marketing and personnel management rather than simple tasks like sorting items and checking receipts. They feel more fulfilled and invested, and your business benefits from boosting efficiency and dedicating more resources to higher-level challenges.
Comprehensive supply chain monitoring: Inventory management software helps you see the bigger picture of your inventory flow. Besides knowing what you have in the warehouse at any given moment, you’ll also be able to keep an eye on incoming inventory from your suppliers and the rate at which you’re shipping products in customer orders. Turnkey mobile barcode scanner features, including options for barcode label printing, receiving shipments, order picking, cycle counting and stock transfer, are often an effective solution for supply chain monitoring.

At Finale Inventory, our software allows you to store and track inventory for many marketplaces from a centralized location. It also helps you keep your online inventory accurate across various sites, alerts you when you need to reorder, gives you easy options for product bundling, speeds order fulfillment and is fully compatible with many types of accounting software, including QuickBooks and Excel. It is also optimized for e-commerce and adaptable enough to scale with your growing business, and you can use our convenient and secure mobile inventory app to manage your products.

5. Explore Finale Integration Opportunities

Your business may use different types of sales platforms, including your own site, multiple online marketplaces like Amazon and eBay and the shopping carts associated with each page. Inventory management software allows you to coordinate inventory across all platforms so your sales on one don’t disrupt inventory availability for another.

Mobile inventory solutions from Finale Inventory offer a range of opportunities for integration across online services like marketplaces, channels and carts. Our extensive list of integration options includes the following:

Marketplaces, including options for Amazon, eBay, Etsy and Wish
Shopping carts, including BigCommerce, Shopify and Squarespace
Point-of-sale (POS) systems, including Lightspeed, Shopify POS, Square and Vend
Channel management, including ChannelAdvisor, GeekSeller and Order Desk
Shipping, including Inventory Source, ShippingEasy, ShipRush and ShipStation
Accounting, including QuickBooks Desktop and QuickBooks Online
Exports, including Amazon S3, Google Drive and FTP

We also provide developer APIs so you can build custom integrations if you need more than what we offer off the shelf. Take a look at our ecommerce inventory management page to learn more about how our products can integrate with your specific business practices and tools.

Partner With Finale Inventory for Reliable Mobile Inventory Management Solutions

To streamline your mobile shop with efficient, dependable inventory management software, make Finale Inventory your trusted source. We provide mobile inventory management for restaurants, retail shops and various other e-commerce and storefront businesses.

Our level of genuine, personalized customer service and the convenience and low commitment of our plans make our software easy to work with. We offer free training and consulting during the trial period and as part of each paid plan. And every plan runs month to month, so you won’t feel stuck with our services if you no longer need them. We also don’t charge startup or setup costs — we just set you up right away with flexible, intuitive, automated software that can make your business more productive and profitable.

Schedule a demo to learn more about how our software works, or start your free trial today.

“The core of maturity, that I see, is starting with a unified view of inventory. I’ve got to be able to accurately represent what do I have, make sure that I know where it’s located so I can get it to my customers quickly.”

— Troy Graham, Descartes

What is the first thing I should fix if I want to scale operations?

Start with a unified view of inventory. The core of maturity starts with being able to accurately represent what you do have and make sure that you know where it’s located to get it to customers quickly. Without a unified view across your warehouses, 3PLs, and vendors, you cannot make the best decisions because you don’t have the best information at hand.

With Inventory Visibility, Businesses Can Make Smarter Allocation Decisions

Once inventory is centralized, businesses can move from reactive updates to intentional allocation. They can decide how much inventory to expose to each channel, when to use buffers, which marketplaces need extra protection, and how seasonality or campaign performance influence availability.

Once I know what inventory I have, how should I decide where to make it available?

Inventory allocation should reflect where orders are coming from, where marketing is working, and which channels carry the most risk. Once you know what you have and where it is located, you can think more strategically using centralized inventory to make prioritization happen automatically. One fertilizer company lost a little over 5,000 orders in one weekend because someone manually uploaded the wrong available inventory to Amazon.

Better Inventory Data Improves Planning, Purchasing, and Growth Bets

Better visibility turns inventory data into a planning tool. With insight into sales velocity, inventory levels, vendors, and channel performance, businesses can make more informed replenishment decisions, avoid overbuying, and test new product lines or vendor-supplied inventory without taking on unnecessary risk.

“You have to have unified inventory to know how to price your products just at that basic level. I can’t price my products if I don’t know the true cost to get it.”

— Mike Bernico, Flxpoint

How does better inventory data help me make smarter buying decisions?

It lets you measure whether your plan is working before you commit more capital. A key question becomes: “Did my plan work? Am I overleveraged in one place or another?” Centralized systems can also help businesses test new product lines or vendor relationships by looking at sales velocity by channel, allowing them to take risks in a calculated and measured way.

Intelligent Order Routing Turns Inventory Complexity Into Automation

Once inventory and supplier data are reliable, businesses can automate fulfillment decisions. Orders can be routed based on cost, speed, margin, location, warehouse priority, vendor fallback, split-shipment rules, or customer expectations. This helps hybrid fulfillment scale because every order does not need a manual review.

How do I decide the best way to fulfill each order?

There is no single answer, which is why order routing needs to account for the context of each order. Intelligent order routing is not just sending an order to someone who has stock; it is taking each and every order and treating it like its own unique use case. Depending on the order, the business may prioritize speed, margin, an internal warehouse, vendor fallback, or preventing split shipments.

Supplier Inventory Sync Extends Inventory Beyond the Four Walls

For hybrid fulfillment to work, supplier inventory needs to become part of the operating model. Supplier sync does not always require advanced technology; it can happen through automated files, FTP, email, APIs, EDI, or ecommerce storefront integrations. The key is replacing manual updates with automated, reliable supplier data.

Can supplier inventory really be treated like part of my own inventory?

Yes, but the goal is not necessarily to force every supplier into a complex integration. Real-time supplier sync can be defined as any way to get an automated update from a supplier, such as Google Sheets, email, FTP, API, EDI, or ecommerce storefront connections. The key is that accurate supplier stock is foundational. If you don’t have an accurate view of what is in stock with your suppliers, you cannot tell your sales channel accurately what’s available.

Exception-Based Workflows Keep Humans Focused Where They Matter

Automation does not remove people from the process. Mature operations let technology handle the routine majority while humans focus on exceptions, such as high-value orders, fraud risk, compliance requirements, restricted products, export rules, or unusual fulfillment scenarios.

If my business has special cases, can automation still work?

Yes. The point is not to automate every possible decision; it is to automate the routine work and surface the exceptions. Businesses should not have to look at every single order. Instead, technology can highlight high-value orders, risky locations, or compliance requirements. The goal is to take care of the 80% of workflows that are obvious while still allowing human review when specific exceptions arise.

The Right Inventory Technology Should Fit the Business, Not Overwhelm It

Software decisions should be based on business fit, not popularity, feature volume, or broad “all-in-one” promises. Growing ecommerce businesses should identify their highest-impact bottleneck, prioritize what matters now, and choose technology that is right-sized but flexible enough to support future phases of growth.

How should I choose software without overbuying or picking the wrong system?

Start with your priorities, not the biggest feature list. Avoid an all-in-one system that claims to “do everything under the sun” and look for a “best of breed approach” with systems that can scale as you add channels or vendors. The practical advice is to stack rank what matters now, make sure the system can support future phases, and choose technology that fits your business rather than overwhelming it.

How to Scale Ecommerce Operations Beyond Spreadsheets

For many growing ecommerce businesses, Finale and Flxpoint work together as a practical answer to these challenges. Finale helps centralize and manage internal inventory, purchasing, warehouse operations, and stock visibility, while Flxpoint helps connect vendor inventory, automate supplier sync, and route orders across hybrid fulfillment networks. Together, they give businesses a best-of-breed way to improve inventory accuracy, reduce spreadsheet work, and scale fulfillment without forcing every process into a one-size-fits-all system.

Ecommerce Fulfillment Operations FAQ

What Is Ecommerce Fulfillment Operations?

Ecommerce fulfillment operations are the processes that move an online order from purchase to delivery. This includes managing inventory, syncing product availability across channels, routing orders to the right warehouse, 3PL, supplier, or vendor, and making sure the customer receives the right product on time. As discussed in the webinar, fulfillment is no longer limited to “what’s in my warehouse these days”; growing businesses may rely on internal warehouses, 3PLs, marketplace fulfillment services, and supplier inventory at the same time.

What Are Ecommerce Fulfillment Operation Examples?

Examples of ecommerce fulfillment operations include updating inventory across Shopify, Amazon, Walmart, and other sales channels; allocating inventory to specific marketplaces; sending orders to an internal warehouse, 3PL, or vendor; syncing supplier inventory through files, APIs, EDI, email, or FTP; replenishing warehouse stock based on sales velocity; and flagging exceptions such as high-value orders, compliance requirements, or restricted products. In the webinar, the speakers also discussed hybrid fulfillment examples where a business may fulfill some products from its own warehouse and use vendors as a fallback or extension of available inventory.

How Can I Track My Inventory at an Ecommerce Fulfillment Center?

The best way to track inventory at an ecommerce fulfillment center is to create a unified inventory view that shows what is available, where it is located, and how that inventory connects to each sales channel. That means tracking inventory across internal warehouses, fulfillment centers, 3PLs, marketplace fulfillment programs, and supplier locations instead of relying on disconnected spreadsheets. The webinar emphasized that businesses need to “accurately represent” what they have and know where it is located so they can get products to customers quickly.

How Can I Connect My Inventory to My Supplier?

You can connect supplier inventory through several methods, depending on what the supplier supports. The webinar discussed low-tech and advanced options, including automated Excel or CSV files, Google Sheets, email updates, FTP servers, APIs, EDI, and direct connections to ecommerce storefronts such as Shopify, BigCommerce, or Magento. The key is to ask suppliers how they share inventory today, then use a system that can automate that data flow instead of manually copying supplier inventory into spreadsheets.

What Is Ecommerce Order Routing?

Ecommerce order routing is the process of deciding where an order is fulfilled from after a customer buys. In a simple operation, every order may go to one warehouse. In a more complex or hybrid fulfillment model, the best fulfillment source may depend on inventory availability, shipping speed, cost, margin, customer location, warehouse priority, vendor fallback rules, or whether the order should be split. The webinar described intelligent order routing as treating each order like its own use case, so businesses can automate the best fulfillment decision without manually reviewing every order.

← Previous Next →

Ready to Take Control of Your Inventory?

Improve inventory, warehouse, and ecommerce operations today.

Request a Demo

Keep Up With the Latest From Finale

All the inventory tips, trends, best practices, news, and insights you need, delivered straight to your inbox.

Categories

Recent Posts