One common mistake that small businesses often make is to concentrate efforts on sales management while forgetting to implement a purchasing and vendor management program. A great purchase order management system will help contain costs and make an organization more profitable.
For example we recently worked with a company that created an unbelievable web presence allowing 97% of its customer accounts to place web orders. Orders were tightly integrated with their accounting system allowing invoices to be quickly printed and mailed. Sounds good right? From a sales stand point this does sound great. However this company sourced its products from multiple suppliers. Depending on how inventory is allocated to an order, profit may not be maximized. Inventory should be allocated to orders to ensure maximum profitability. Simply picking orders without consideration of the purchase cost is very risky. Worse, how does this business know they're paying exactly the cost agreed and getting the quantity it actually ordered when receiving inventory from its suppliers? Money simply disappears if a business does not receive inventory against an approved purchase.
Zenventory provides extensive purchasing and vendor management. Zenventory can manage costs and lead times for each item against multiple vendors. When items are received, they are checked off against the purchase order so that vendor bills can be verified against what was actually received. In addition, Zenventory can assure the most profitable product is allocated to a customer's order. Since lead times are better managed, minimal inventory can be maintained in the warehouse limiting the amount of capital tied up in the warehouse.
