Stock Management Software

One of the most important parts of a business is inventory management. This is fundamental for biotech companies and pharma, but if overlooked, this could lead to delays in key projects and have strong negative effect on productivity.

So start asking yourself the following questions:

• How has your business’s inventory been managed so far? Excel spreadsheet?
• Have you had the right products available when you needed them?
• Have you ordered something expensive but found out you already had one hidden in your store room?
• Did you miss deadlines because items were out of stock?
• Or are you losing money due to excess stock?

In this article, I will talk about Stock Boss, our inventory management solution, explain what to look for in our software when it comes to making the whole thing easier and go over some best practices keeping track of your stock.

What about simply using a Spreadsheet?

Spreadsheets are not an effective inventory management tool because they have to be updated manually, very rigid in their usage, and never done in real time which results in data being almost always out of date. In addition, spreadsheets can’t scale with your business, can’t communicate with your different point of use / stores / suppliers…etc , and most importantly do not track any transaction which will result in big issues every time you will notice discrepancies between what is in the spreadsheet and what is on the shelf.

What is inventory management?

In your lab or production factory, inventory management is the part of supply chain management that aims to always have the right products or parts in the right quantity, at the right time. In doing this effectively, businesses reduce the costs of carrying excess inventory (i.e. dead stock on the shelf) while maximising productivity. You can use inventory management solutions, such as Stock Boss, to help manage your inventory in real time to streamline this process.

By effectively managing your inventory, you can ensure that you have the right items available when you need them. It is also important to track batches and expiry dates, which can be achieved using stock boss, in order to prevent wasting money and using products effectively.

Stock Boss inventory management software will:

• Reduce costs, improve cash flow and boost your business’s bottom line
• Track your inventory in real time
• Create automatic replenishment, internally and externally
• Help you forecast usage
• Prevent item shortages
• Prevent excess stock
• Allow for easy inventory analysis through our web portal or using our IOS app.
• Be accessible right from your point of use area
• Optimise stores organisation and precious employee time
• Offer quick and painless bar code scanning to speed up intake and inventory checks
• Allow for multi-location management including point of use, stores, hubs, multiple locations, multiple sites
• Allow tracking of batch and expiry on product with a shelf life (such as reagents, solvents and chemicals)

Real-time Stock Visibility Gain complete visibility of your stock to provide greater accuracy and control.	Smart Automation Automated re-order points, replenishment levels and deliveries.	Quick to Deploy StockBOSS can be deployed by your business in a matter of days!

Inventory management techniques and best practices

Here are some of the techniques that many businesses use to manage inventory:

1. Forecasting: Accurate forecasting is vital to effective inventory management. Using historical usage data is key to optimise automatic replenishment. This is very easy to achieve in Stock Boss as all transactions are recorded and reports on stock movement can be generated.
2. Expiry date and batch monitoring: There is nothing worse than checking that a product is in stock, taking it and realise is expired a few days ago or when you need to evaluate a different batch of an item but have no way to check what is available. Stock Boss allows this information to be tracked and a specific report can be generated to check expiry dates of products, quickly highlighting goods which will expire in a few days, weeks or months.
3. Product inventory: Even with good usage of your inventory management solution, periodically you still need to count your inventory to make sure what you have in stock matches what you think you have, as discrepancy can result in project delay if some items are not available when required. Stock Boss is configurated to generate on-demand printable Stock Check, with reminders if some areas have not been checked for a certain period of time. The IOS app makes this task extremely easy and time efficient.
4. By using cloud-based inventory management software, you ensure that the information is available anywhere, anytime.
5. Real time stock levels: being cloud based, this allow full tracking your stock levels. This will save you time and money by doing much of the heavy lifting for you.
6. Off-line mode: While having a cloud-based system is critical for real-time information, it is not always possible to have connectivity. The IOS app has been specifically designed to operate in an offline mode, in areas where connectivity is either reduced or simply not allowed.

Stock Boss makes managing inventory simple

Stock Boss is specifically designed to take the burden of managing your inventory away. We assist our customer in tailoring Stock Boss to their needs, setting up point of use, storeroom, replenishment rules, suppliers, users, approval (if required) and items in the database.

The solution is extremely user friendly and benefits from a global presence for more than 10 years with an on-going plan of continuous improvement of the software.

Further information for businesses

Good inventory management is critical for any biotech and pharma businesses in order to operate smoothly and ensuring efficient control spent versus usage.

While it can be tempting to stockpile items in larger quantities to take advantage of vendor discounts and free shipping, having excess stock is not always good for the bottom line. Stock Boss ensures complete optimisation of goods on the shelf.

Excess stock is problematic for a few reasons.

First, you don’t want too large a portion of your business’s funds to be tied up in item, and you could risk losing money if you’re not able to use the products if a project gets dropped.

Additionally, there are costs associated with storing excess stock. This takes space in your store which could be used for other items and may result in unnecessary expansion of storeroom capacity.

On the other hand, having too little stock can lead to missing deadlines or having to use a more expensive item than required. For example, you might have different grade of the same item and if you run out of the lower grade item, you might have to use, unnecessarily, a higher grade, more expensive item that you have in stock while a less expensive item would have been perfectly fine.

Do I really need software to manage my inventory?

Inventory management solutions are key to effectively running biotech and pharma lab/production facilities. Stock Boss is easy to implement, easy to use and already selected by numerous companies globally, including blue-chip pharma businesses.

If you want to know more visit the Stock BOSS website. Request a Stock BOSS Demo. Or simply Contact Us directly to discuss your needs.

Stock BOSS handles over $100m in transactions every year

Run your business inventory with a single, cloud-based application. Stock reordering and replenishment are handled automatically so you know exactly what you need when you need it. Through our integrated app and desktop interface, all staff across your organisation can check and amend stock levels. Manage orders, deliveries, and the replenishment of stock with ease.

We have helped companies such as GSK and Thermo Fisher Scientific manage their stock flow.

Find out how Stock BOSS can help your lab >