Leveraging SAP Business One For Inventory Management

Supply chain challenges have created many changes throughout every aspect of inventory management. To date, small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) have to be able to compete with giants like Amazon and Wayfair, which means that to remain competitive, SMBs are adopting processes that rival those enterprises. Fortunately, there is technology out there to help, such as EDI and Warehouse Management Systems (WMS), as well as an ERP for inventory management like SAP Business One inventory management. The Business One ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) enables SMBs to optimize the 3 Vs: validation, visibility, and velocity.

“The 3 Vs” are a sequence that will help your organization achieve higher productivity and efficiency—regardless of the size of your business. Let’s discuss how you can use an ERP and the 3 Vs to benefit your SMB.

Using SAP Business One Inventory Management to Get The Results You Want

One of the main challenges that SMBs face is receiving actionable data. Without reliable, real-time data to utilize, you end up with issues in your business. For example, if you are waiting on employees to enter data into the system, there is a knowledge gap. This can cause backorders, out-of-stock situations, and even incorrect shipments, leading to customer dissatisfaction, chargebacks, returns, and a poor reputation.

This is why you must start using an ERP like SAP Business One. With that in mind, SAP Business One can only do so much alone, and this is why Third Wave helps you realize the 4Cs for SAP Business One. When you extend the Core of SAP Business One through connections, you can get accurate data in real time. What you realize is a tightly integrated and fully flexible solution, warehouse management system (WMS), Versago Web Apps, and other similar solutions that allow you to capture data at the source.

Extending your Core through connections allows your SMB to catalog incoming and outgoing shipments, view real-time and reliable data, and streamline every process from start to finish.

What Are The 3 Vs?

The 3 Vs are Validation, Visibility, and Velocity, and they are part of a progression that involves implementing solutions like SAP Business One inventory management, WMS, automated data capture, and real-time transactions and reporting. You can eliminate redundant actions and touchpoints by streamlining the flow of data throughout your business and warehouse. In turn, productivity, stakeholder satisfaction, and efficiency skyrocket.

Here is how each of the 3Vs improves your SMB:

Validation

How are you collecting and reporting data within your business? Are your employees manually entering data into a disjointed system? Not only does this slow down your business, but it is also tedious and increases the chance of mistakes. As labor shortages continue and people switch to working from home, more advanced data capture technology becomes essential.

In some regulated industries, you don’t have a choice about how you validate items. The manufacturing processes within the food, beverage, and pharmaceutical industries are under pressure from the government to collect data throughout the entire process, up to end-user consumption. Failure to validate this data could be catastrophic for your business.

How Does Third Wave Help With Validation?

Item validation is simplified when you choose a WMS for your SMB. Upon integration, you can use tablets, handheld scanners, and sometimes even phones to scan the barcodes or RFID tags on shipments to automatically validate the existing data within an ERP like SAP Business One. The warehouse workers can then check serial numbers and locations, including lots and bins. Furthermore, when it comes time to pull items for an order, the workers can use the WMS to see if they are choosing the correct item.

A WMS ensures that all data you are viewing is updated in real-time; there is no question that the inventory levels match what you see. Therefore, you get a clean snapshot of how inventory movements affect your business.

With ever-increasing connection and data processing needs, growing businesses turn to Bizweaver as their hub for synchronizing SAP Business One with transactions across the enterprise:

• eCommerce
• CRM
• EDI
• 3PLs
• Shipping & Logistics
• Travel and Expense Management

Integration tools like Bizweaver allow companies to take data from external sources and read, validate and get the data into the systems that need accurate data. Connect SAP Business One to platforms and partners.

Web Apps are built using Versago, a role-based web platform that enables users to access, submit/approve, update, and gain insight into any data on SAP Business One and other databases. Reduce your business’s reliance on paper, email, spreadsheets, standalone portals, and apps, and consolidate process and communication channels with Versago. Using Versago’s simple web user interface, employees, customers, and vendors can process important information on any device while connected to SAP Business One. Versago provides everything needed to configure intelligent, simple solutions that support unique and industry-specific use cases.

Visibility

Validation influences visibility. By understanding where your products are located and how much stock is in your warehouse, you can use that data to make better business decisions. Since products like Versago and WMS automates inventory tracking, you have certainty about where items are located.

Why is visibility important? Take, for instance, the representative who is working from home and speaking with a customer about a product. Long ago, that representative may have been able to walk into the warehouse to see the stock levels physically. When you have a WMS to scan incoming and outgoing shipments and an ERP to report those changes accurately, your staff can see in real-time whether or not a product is available without needing to leave their computer.

Visibility means you can forecast. It also means that your business can maintain transparency, increasing customer, vendor, and employee experiences.

Velocity

You need to increase your velocity if you want to grow your SMB and match the output of much larger companies. Here’s the good news: the 3Vs naturally progress towards optimized operations and output.

With increased accuracy from streamlined item validation practices and more visibility, your employees will be able to work swiftly and with fewer mistakes. Additionally, the data synced between computers, tablets, and scanners diminishes the time spent searching for products, assists with pick-and-pack, helps you plan inventory movement based on FIFO, FEFO, and LIFO practices, and more. You can even integrate your ERP with a transportation management system (TMS).

Realize The 3Vs With Third Wave

Owning and operating a business or warehouse is challenging in today’s fast-paced economy and tight supply chain. Flexible solutions like SAP Business One inventory management from Third Wave can help you automate data collection and validation. From there, the workings of your business become more visible, and you can make decisions that increase your overall velocity.

To gain more insight into inventory management and implementing an ERP solution, check out our blog posts here.