The Top 6 Features to Look for in a Mobile Inventory App
Selecting a mobile inventory app involves plenty of forward-thinking, research, and juggling pros and cons. There are various options on the market and which one you use depends on what type of inventory you need to manage and what inventory process you’d like to use.
Ensure that you are investing in the best possible option for your organization’s inventory management practices by selecting a mobile inventory app that matches your needs in the following areas:
Table of Contents:
- Manages the Type of Inventory You Have
- Completes Multiple Inventory Management Processes
- Grows With You
- Offers True Ease-of-Use
- Leverages AI Technologies
- Offers Convenient Scanning & IoT Sensors
1. Manages The Type of Inventory You Have
There are three main types of inventory:
- Retail - inventory that a business sells, including through e-commerce
- Direct - inventory that a business uses to manufacture something
- Indirect- inventory a business relies on to complete daily tasks and maintain a high level of service.
Before adopting a mobile inventory app, ensure that the app is designed for the inventory you need to manage.
For indirect and direct inventory, it is vital that the mobile inventory app be able to help fine tune replenishment to prevent stockouts and drive down inventory carrying costs. With these types of inventory, it is important that the app can trigger replenishment orders repeatedly and reliably from a set of chosen suppliers.
One inventory app designed to optimize levels of indirect inventory from any supplier is eTurns TrackStock.
2. Completes Multiple Inventory Management Processes
It is the worst situation ever to have your supplier tell you they have a great mobile inventory app for you to use for replenishment orders… but ‘surprise’... it only replenishes material from them, not from any other supplier.
Having to switch back and forth between multiple inventory management apps can result in a pileup of work and frustration instead of providing help or time savings.
Investigate the exact capabilities of a mobile inventory solution to make sure you can use a singular app to perform the following tasks:
- Place reorders to any supplier
- Cycle count
- Track usage and inventory pulls
- Auto-replenish inventory based on min/max levels
- Optimize inventory levels
If a mobile inventory app can only streamline one or two of these tasks, is it really going to make your inventory management processes more efficient overall?
eTurns provides solutions for all of the above tasks and more, with in-depth analytics, customizable reports, and automation that takes the guesswork and time constraints off of your team’s plate.
First off, eTurns works. A simple app with a lot of capability. Second, the team is wonderful to work with. Responsive and able. Any issues, needs, or questions were quickly dealt with. eTurns fulfilled a need that few others can do.
3. Grows With You
Over time, business needs change. Ideally, your business will grow from year to year, and that shouldn’t require switching to a new mobile inventory management solution every time you level up.
For example, you may want to start with a simple “scanning-to-order” capability. eTurns allows companies to start there, and add additional features as business requirements change.
Perhaps you’ll want to start with simple automated ordering that replaces paper-based POs. Over time, you can easily move up by adding additional features that let you track usage, dynamically set optimized min/max levels, create quick lists that let you order your favorites easily, access customized reports, and have email alerts sent to you when something is out of stock.
With eTurns, you can even create scheduled reports to be sent to certain people weekly and manage approval workflows for ordering or requisitions. Add in technology like SensorBins that convert item weights into quantities for automatic order placement, or eLabels that let you send a replenishment order with the push of a button, even in small storage spaces.
No matter which direction your company and your inventory needs grow in, eTurns has an inventory tracking solution ready to grow with you.
4. Offers True Ease-of-use
Far too many mobile inventory app features are impossibly clunky and technical, requiring too many ‘taps’ to send an order and slowing down operations day to day. Businesses need an app that offers true ease-of-use in a wide range of settings and applications.
Ease-of-use is about ensuring that all users can access capabilities, no matter where their roles bring them. For example, perhaps your operations bring your team to remote warehouses or unpopulated fields where you need to count wind farm components.
That’s why TrackStock is purposely designed with offline capabilities and reliable syncing when you return to better cell coverage.
Other details to pay attention to include how many taps it takes to send an order, how simple it is to scan an item for counting, and how many steps are required to perform high-volume functions.
These details may appear small at first glance, but repetitive tasks like these can quickly build upon one another and drastically impact your overall efficiency and productivity.
5. Leverages AI Technologies
The best mobile inventory management solutions use AI to help optimize inventory levels. Without thorough analysis and a robust collection of data, it’s very difficult to accurately forecast demand and order the appropriate amount of inventory.
As a result, many companies end up with overstock that depreciates or becomes obsolete, incurring significant carrying costs and draining company resources. Others fail to order enough inventory or allow for sufficient lead times, leading to stockouts that critically harm workflows, service levels, and productivity.
Striking this delicate balance is far more doable when your mobile inventory app uses AI for inventory management.
The TrackStock Min/Max AI Dashboard makes the process of optimizing your inventory levels easy. TrackStock records your point-of-use inventory usage data and the Min/Max AI Dashboard calculates what your optimum minimum and maximum settings for each item should be. Then the Dashboard displays how much you can save in inventory and carrying costs by moving to optimized inventory levels. View trial scenarios in seconds with this responsive and intelligent display.
"We onboarded just under 1000 items and are adding more daily. eTurns customer service has gone above and beyond. TrackStock has decreased from 1 week to 1 day the time it takes us to do monthly physical inventory counts."
6. Offers Convenient Scanning & IoT Sensors
Mobile inventory management applications do not exist in a vacuum. They need to be able to integrate and communicate with other IoT devices in order to provide a fully automated and streamlined process.
The eTurns mobile inventory management app integrates with helpful technology like SensorBins inventory weight sensors, electronic shelf labels, RFID digital kanban, secure Boxlock tools and more. This way, not only do you get to leave manual counts and bulky access control items in the past, you can also rely on each of these technologies communicating with one another for a faster, more seamless experience.
By ensuring that your mobile inventory app has what you need with regard to these six features, you can cut back on future stresses and save your team immeasurable time and resources. Cut back on the time needed for inventory management tasks and reap the benefits of a more automated inventory management system with less room for human error when you choose an integrated mobile inventory app like eTurns.
