Why You Need To Increase Your Monitoring Of Your Medical Section's Inventory
Convenience stores that sell medical items may want to increase their monitoring of the inventory, especially now that the coronavirus pandemic is turning a corner with more and more people getting vaccinated. While keeping track of inventory has been vital for a while, it wasn't so difficult when supplies were low as you could clearly see anything left on the shelves. Now, with supplies back up to a healthy level (no pun intended), shelves are once again crowded, often with different items mixed in together after customers have been through the aisles all day. Increasing your inventory monitoring will help you prevent more than a few troublesome situations.
Make Sure the Shelf Inventory Matches Your Website
Customers are returning to their old habits of picking things up and putting them down on different shelves as they decide they don't want the item. That can make it look like you're out of something when in reality there are two or three of the item on random shelves. If your convenience store has a website where people can check to see if something is in stock, that misplacement can be very frustrating for people who want to buy an item that the website says is present but that seems to have wandered off. As you go through your inventory, you can see which items may have been misplaced.
Catch Expired Products Before Customers Do
If something sits on the shelves for too long, you risk it expiring – and being found by a customer, which doesn't make your store look very good. Increasing your inventory monitoring lets you spot those products that are close to expiring and either get rid of them or place them in a sale section where people might be willing to buy them at a steep discount. While products don't suddenly turn bad at the stroke of midnight on their expiration date, they can start to lose quality. You want those items out of your store, either through fast sales or disposal.
Get a Better Idea of What's Really Selling
If items disappear off the shelves, it looks like they're selling. But if your register computers show those items aren't actually selling, then you know you shouldn't order more of them; instead, you need to find them. Checking inventory lets you find them (or find out that they've been pilfered, if not sold) and get them back on the shelves as you redo your list of what needs to be reordered.
Inventory monitoring can be fairly informal and done by staff, or you can arrange for an inventory company to do an official sweep of your store, or a service that provides Instant Inventory Services. Either way, you'll get a much better picture of what in the medical section is actually selling.
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