Inventory management when selling on bol.com
by Sem Schukking
Posted on 15 August, 2020
Without a good inventory system, selling on bol.com becomes very difficult and you're probably leaving a lot of money on the table. In this article, we explain how you can make your inventory flows more efficient so you can achieve more sales, more profits and higher customer satisfaction.
Step 1 - Map your inventory
Let's start at the beginning. Do you know exactly how much stock you currently have by stock location? How much stock is in transit or in production? The exact date the stock is delivered? And when the stock will be ready for sale? If you answered ''no'' or ''not exactly'' to any of these questions, read on.
To make inventory management as easy as possible, you want one program or file that shows exactly where certain products are and when new stock arrives, because with separate files, inventory management becomes very cluttered.
In this file you capture all the important data about products, such as:
- EAN/BSKU product (specific code to identify product);
- Stock status by product (note by location and add it up);
- Inbound stock (incoming shipments);
- Sales (average number of sales per day);
- Lead-time (number of days before your new stock sales are ready).
With this basic data, you can see exactly how much stock you currently have and calculate when you need to buy new stock. It is advisable to include a safety margin of about 20% when you repurchase products. This way you avoid having to sell customers a "no". This way you increase customer satisfaction and in the eyes of bol.com you will be seen as a good seller on the platform.
2. Important KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) in inventory management
Steering by data is required for good inventory management, but what data will you be steering by? It is important that you have a clear picture of the following performance factors:
- Average sales per day
- Lead time
When you know exactly how much you sell and how long it takes to bring in new inventory, managing inventory becomes a lot easier. Say: It takes 30 days to manufacture a product and shipping to the sales location takes 35 days, then you know the lead time in this case is 65 days. If we assume average sales of 10 units per day and multiply this by the lead-time (10 sales per day * 65 days) we arrive at 650 units. Then you know that when you have 650 pieces in stock, you have to start repurchasing. Then when your current stock runs out, the new stock comes back in.
Tip: Add a safety margin of 10 to 20% to your order size and contact your supplier in good time. That way you avoid running out of stock. Do you ship via lvb? Keep in mind that it will take several days before they put your product in stock.
3. Back-up
You know what's worse than running out of stock? Losing your entire stock file because your computer breaks down. This happened to me when I didn't work in the cloud yet and because of this I had to manually re-count and process my stock, which cost me 2 working days.
Of course you want to avoid this and you can also avoid this by working in the cloud and working with automatic backups. This way it is almost impossible to lose your stock data and you avoid a lot of headaches.
So use one file/program that is automated, which contains all the important data and KPIs and use the cloud and/or backups. Applying this will make selling on bol.com a lot easier and give you a competitive advantage.
4. Automate
Want your inventory levels to automatically stay up-to-date with selling on multiple sales channels? Then use our partner for this: ChannelDock.
Do you have suggestions for new blog topics? Let us know in the comments or send an email to [email protected] and we will pick it up.
