Your after-sales inventory is causing you headaches. What’s the best way to get it under control?

1 Assess your current situation

The first step to improve your after-sales inventory management is to evaluate your current performance and identify your pain points. You need to know how much inventory you have, where it is, how fast it moves, and how much it costs you. You also need to measure your service levels, such as your response time, first-time fix rate, and customer feedback. You can use key performance indicators (KPIs) such as inventory turnover, fill rate, carrying cost, and service level agreement (SLA) compliance to benchmark your results and set your goals.

2 Segment your inventory

Not all after-sales inventory items are equal. Some are more critical, expensive, or frequently used than others. That's why you need to segment your inventory based on different criteria, such as demand, value, lead time, or lifecycle. You can use techniques such as ABC analysis, FSN analysis, or VED analysis to categorize your inventory and prioritize your actions. For example, you can allocate more resources and space to high-value or high-demand items, and reduce or eliminate low-value or low-demand items.

3 Forecast your demand

One of the main causes of after-sales inventory headaches is uncertainty. You don't know when or how much your customers will need your products or services, so you end up either overstocking or understocking. To avoid this, you need to forecast your demand based on historical data, market trends, seasonality, and customer behavior. You can use methods such as moving average, exponential smoothing, or regression analysis to estimate your future demand and plan your replenishment accordingly.

4 Automate your processes

Manual after-sales inventory management can be time-consuming, error-prone, and inefficient. You have to deal with multiple spreadsheets, documents, and systems, and coordinate with different departments and stakeholders. To streamline your processes and save time and money, you need to automate your after-sales inventory management with a software solution that integrates with your existing systems and platforms. You can use inventory management software to track your inventory levels, locations, and movements, generate reports and alerts, optimize your ordering and replenishment, and improve your visibility and control.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?