How to approach inventory management in 2024 | KEYper
Is your car dealership swimming in keys?
When you have hundreds of cars on sale, it can be overwhelming when a customer comes to you with specific requirements for their new set of wheels.
Inventory management can help set you down the right road. But what is it?
It’s a way to identify products by providing real-time access to information, which can help prevent shortages. It’s also a way to avoid splashing the cash on expensive vehicles that are not selling well.
It’s not just about sales, though. It’s also about security and safety.
If you have limited visibility over your stock, then it can lead to several serious issues including increased vulnerability to theft and vandalism, difficulty in managing recalls or defective parts, and challenges in maintaining product quality and safety. Without clear, real-time insight into your inventory, you may not notice when items go missing, are tampered with, or have been compromised in some way.
5 questions to ask when revamping your inventory management protocols
1. Do you have too many cars?
If the answer is yes, you may find many of them becoming harder and harder to sell the longer they’re sitting in your dealership, losing you huge sums of money. What’s more, if a car is left unused for an extended period, several problems can occur. The battery can lose its charge, tires can develop flat spots, brakes can rust and pests might infest the vehicle. This is bound to affect the car’s value.
2. Do you have enough cars?
It is essential for car dealerships to have accurate stock details, otherwise, it will be incredibly difficult to know which models or features are selling well and when to order more in. Chances are, customers will do business with your competition if you can’t keep up with market trends.
3. Do you know what cars you have?
If you know exactly what vehicles you have on your lot, and can identify them quickly, you can keep customers happy and stop them from shopping elsewhere. Remember, happy customers are loyal customers. Some manual processes of identifying your stocks can lead to errors and slow down day-to-day tasks and sales.
4. Do you know where they are located?
As above, you can help keep customers satisfied if you can identify and locate a specific vehicle and take them out for a test drive straight-away. But if you have no idea where each vehicle is parked, customers can become frustrated, taking their business somewhere else. Strong inventory management can tell you exactly where to find a car in your dealership so there is no waiting around for shoppers.
5. Are you wasting too much money?
One of the biggest aims of managing inventory is saving money. You can make the most of the stock you have when you understand market trends, how many particular types of vehicles you have, and where they are. You can then make more informed decisions about which vehicles to have on show.
The importance of inventory management for dealerships
Thefts and vandalism have always been major concerns to dealerships.
And a lack of visibility over your vehicles – what you have and where they are located – can make day-to-day operations confusing, slower, error-prone and overwhelming.
But it can also make it harder to spot weaknesses in your security system, meaning that criminals can find ways to attack your business and make off with a new pair of wheels without too much effort. Inaccurate records are easy for thieves to take advantage of, and in 2024, with the evolution of hacking, a cyberattacker can easily fudge the numbers, causing chaos to hide any thefts.
Crime aside, dealerships rely on its stock for an income, and ultimately for survival. A depleted inventory is not the only problem. If you order surplus cars and fail to sell them, you can be out of pocket by tens, even hundreds of thousands.
Our team can help
We will set you off down the right road when it comes to assessing your current inventory management system.
We’ll be there with you on every leg of the journey, starting by helping you to understand your business’ needs, then showing you how our electronic key cabinets and cutting-edge software can help increase visibility over your vehicles and keep employees and customers safe.
Our software’s detailed data reports can help deter staff members from driving irresponsibly during test drives by encouraging accountability and highlighting areas for further security training.
KEYper’s dedicated team can also help design, implement, and test your new tools. On top of that, we will work with all your employees by providing a tailored package of training to help them learn how to use and optimize your new safety system.
And with our continued customer support and maintenance contracts, you’ll be cruising to superior security in the workplace in no time.