When you are running a business, you want to be doing all that you can to ensure that all your stock is properly protected. This way, you are not going to be throwing money away down the drain, and your company is more likely to be in a strong financial situation. Stock loss can occur for various different reasons, and it is worth knowing as much as possible about what these happen to be. This way, you put yourself in the best possible position to avoid them all. So, in this post we will be looking closer at the issue of stock loss and what can be done to prevent it from happening in an effective manner.
Improve Your Security
One of the biggest causes of stock loss is simple theft, and the best way of preventing this happening is to bolster your current security situation. To begin with, if you are running a retail store, you should make sure that you have a shoplifting policy firmly in place, as well as doing all that you can to ensure that it is well advertised and that your staff is fully trained. At the same time, it may also be worth looking at your current CCTV situation. As well as helping you to monitor whether crimes are occurring in the first place or to gather evidence for prosecutions, it can also be useful by acting as a deterrent for potential criminals. They are likely to go and find easier pickings.
Review Your Inventory Management
There are a number of different ways in which inventory management can end up becoming a problem with regards to stock loss at your company. To begin with, it could be that you are not rotating your stock properly, which can result in goods expiring before they have a chance of getting sold. It may also be that there are some serious holes in your ordering system, which means that you are not replenishing certain stock when required, so having a safety stock formula can prove to be effective. At the other end of the scale, it could be that you are ordering too much of a certain item, which is why you need to be constantly reviewing your stock levels and maintenance all the time.
Ensure Staff Members Know the Importance of Stock Management
Another central part of it all is ensuring that staff members are all properly equipped with the knowledge that stock management is a central part of running your company, and it needs to be taken seriously. After all, without everyone doing their bit to ensure the stock is being properly protected and nothing is being wasted, you will not be using all the tools at your disposal. You will also ensure that finances remain strong and are not being wasted, which is bound to have an impact on each and every person working there.
Make Sure You Work with Reputable Delivery Partners
It is also the case that your delivery partners can have an impact on your overall system of stocking, so you need to make sure that you are working with partners that have excellent levels of reputability. You are also going to want to find out more about their individual policies if stock happens to get lost along the way, as well as any refunds that can be issued to compensate you in the event of missing items. While you are at it, you should also have a clear refund policy in place that encapsulates your business ethos without being more generous than you can afford to be. This needs to be clearly lain out on your website so that you have a document that you can refer back to which will help you to resolve any disputes along the way.
Seek to Monitor and Improve
The first step towards ensuring that nothing gets lost unnecessarily is the proper monitoring of your stock levels in the first place. As and when improvements can be made, it is always going to be worth taking the steps to ensure that they are done in the most effective manner possible. You should also be looking to take on board other suggestions from staff members that can help to ensure that you are staying on the right path.
All of these are amongst the different steps that are going to be worth taking to ensure that you are preventing stock loss from happening at your company in the first place and you remain in a stronger business position overall.
