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After you’ve pitched a stellar idea to investors, founded your company, and opened doors to the public, you might see something incredible happen: Customers keep coming, you turn a profit instead of breaking even, and your business grows. This is a cause for celebration, and if you keep up with proper inventory management and shift scheduling, you should be able to sustain your business’s growth.
1. Improve Organization of Inventory
If you’re selling more goods, you’ll want to keep more in stock, because stock-outs cause customers to shop elsewhere. However, overstocking could result in wasted money and overcrowded storage.
As activity increases, make sure your inventory management system meets these common needs:
- Tracking sales: A basic function of inventory management is to track exactly what you sell and how much. When your business is growing, this information can tell you when to order a larger quantity of certain things and which items have stagnant popularity levels.
- Counting products: You don’t want to start the week thinking you have 500 filters on hand, only to run out after selling 50. To make sure you order enough that you can give all your customers what they want, keep careful count of what you already have, whether it’s grocery goods, inedible products, or raw materials for manufacturing.
- Keeping suppliers in check: If you’ve increased supply orders to meet demand but are still running out of things suddenly or finding discrepancies between your orders and your inventory, the problem may be that your supplier isn’t as organized as you.
2. Help Your Team Reach Its Full Potential With Scheduling
If your business is growing, it’s likely that your team is too — and the more employees you have, the more important it is to maintain a clear work schedule for them. Falling behind on this can result in high turnover among your staff and unimpressed clientele.
Software for shift scheduling can go a long way in streamlining this weekly task. The right system should organize employees’ shifts while accommodating your business’s structure, whether you’ve just onboarded multiple people, switched a part-time employee to full-time, or changed your business’s operating hours.
Other benefits of a good scheduling application include:
- Easily repeat weekly schedules
- Keep employees in the know when schedule adjustments are made
- Minimize overtime pay
- Manage different types of work schedules
Job scheduling software can benefit your employees as well. One study found that workplaces saw a 5% increase in labor productivity when the employees worked on a consistent schedule with more ability to communicate with each other. Look for something that makes record keeping simple and eases communication. If some of your employees work remotely, top time tracking apps can notify you when they clock in and out and provide GPS info for you to check their location.
Seeing your business flourish and grow is a hard-earned source of joy, but it doesn’t mean that your work is finished. In fact, it’s often a sign that there’s more to be done. Equipping your company and workers with the right tools can help you expand your team, perfect your organization, and continue enjoying success.