E-commerce is the activity of electronically buying and selling goods and services and transferring funds and data to execute these transactions through the internet. To operate smoothly like any other business, it needs proper ecommerce inventory management system.
To know more about the advantages of barcode technology for an e-commerce business, let’s review a few points below:
1. Customer Satisfaction
Customer satisfaction is a critical factor that contributes to an e-commerce company’s profitability. An e-business must provide seamless customer service to retain consumers and attract new ones. And PIM (product information management) helps you offer high-quality service to enhance customer satisfaction. Incorrect product information or conveying the wrong package can ruin your company’s reputation. But the right technology lets you deliver the right product faster to the customer.
2. Diminished Costs
Technological advancements have modified inventory management. Now employees don’t have to go through tons of paperwork. Digital transactions and manual entry of items have made consumers’ online shopping experience much better. E-commerce companies can now manage the warehouse with more cost-effective methods. Incorporating barcode scanning has also lowered the expenses of goods storage, identification, and eventual transportation.
3. Time Management
Investing in barcode inventory management allows e-commerce companies to maintain their warehouse more effectively. Now a small number of employees can manage an inventory that previously took a dozen individuals to handle. So, barcodes make your staff more productive and time-efficient. If they took a minute to catalog an item, now they’ll require just a few seconds. Just hover the machine over that computer-generated code to scan the product.
4. Information Consistency
This technology also helps companies bring information consistency to their marketing procedures. Lack of an agreed-upon system to record data can result in more mistakes committed by nonchalant employees. E-commerce companies can now provide all their products with a universal numbering system. They can also hasten the learning process of their employees and improve their productivity. The adoption of barcodes prevents the occurrence of any discrepancy in information management.
5. Security
The implementation of technology isn’t risk-free. E-commerce companies require constant vigilance regarding any prospect of a security breach and data leakage. Adopting modern inventory management methods automate your security features and provide your customers trust in your confidentiality. Data encryption techniques protect your consumer data from falling into the right hands. And it also prevents manual loss or damage to your files by digitizing them.
6. Efficiency
An organization can implement simple e-commerce tactics to enhance its efficiency and profitability; that’s why they utilize digital order management as another distribution channel. This channel permits a company to reach the previously-unexplored market and expand its global following. Today’s e-commerce-driven world requires barcodes for effective labeling. Labels printed in human languages are gradually becoming outdated as computers are taking over. Now human recognition of these marks has become not only irrelevant but potentially harmful too. Technology now leads stock control systems for equipment labeling, which reduces the time to search for them manually.
7. Error Reduction
E-commerce companies can’t tolerate the onslaught of fulfillment errors in this rapidly-growing market. Identifying and resolving these errors is essential for the productivity of your warehouse operations. Otherwise, you may lose your customers and encounter a downgraded reputation. Barcodes have reduced this error rate by making a handheld immune to mistakes common for humans to make. You mark product storage locations with scannable marking and also implement barcode labeling & scanning in receiving. A mistyped product number will gradually become obsolete thanks to modern technology.
8. No Training Needed
Online shopping has overwhelmed the international market as around 2.05 billion people purchased goods digitally in 2020 and expecting over 2.14 billion people worldwide to buy goods and services online in 2021. Companies are observing an accelerated growth in the global e-commerce industry. That’s why they require employees who are fast-learners and easily-adjusted. They want their workers to start contributing to the company’s progress without much delay. Advanced technologies such as barcode scanning have become a dominant component of inventory management. Since it’s not difficult to learn, companies can easily introduce it to fresh employees. The commercial world can’t use people who function slowly or are resistant to the incorporation of technology.
9. Faster Decision-Making
The decision-making process plays a critical role in digital shopping. E-commerce companies require accurate information to make the most profitable marketing decisions. Corporations don’t rely on mere intuition; instead, they prefer data-driven decision-making. Policies crafted based on solid facts seldom fail to deliver. Barcoding technology makes an ocean of information available to companies and summarizes big data in an accessible format. The normalization of IoT has permitted synchronized data transactions via barcode scanners. The availability of accurate and real-time information is essential for your organization for dominating e-commerce in the 21s century.
Conclusion
Your company can’t afford to overlook the importance of barcode inventory management. Failure to manage your warehouse properly can make you lose revenue and upset your customers. Finding inaccurate product information can drive more than 80% of your shoppers away. A vast majority of retailers aren’t even confident about the accuracy of their product descriptions. That’s why you need to implement barcode technology to reduce errors and make your inventory more reliable. It’ll help you maintain a smart inventory by identifying excess products and keeping enough goods to sell. Invest in barcodes, and you’ll find your company dealing with customers more efficiently.