Why serialization is important in the retail industry?

In the retail industry, we handle our inventory by giving diverse SKUs for several products to make it unique from other products in the warehouse. The exercise seems fine and works for many business owners, but there is a hook. Not only SKUs, but you also need something more than that to keep track of each of your products from a particular SKU.

Here in this article, we will look at why serialization is important in the retail industry.

Inventory Serialization

Many giant retail companies focus on serialization. As long as you know how much of the inventory of each product comes in through the back door and out through the opposite, the inventory requirement will be satisfied. Is it important to track distinct units separately? Most of the time, giving SKUs to inventory does not achieve the purpose of dealing with inventory. This is because a particular SKU given to an inventory can comprise multiple items of the same inventory.

Inventory Serialization comes into the show here as it contains tracking inventory on a granular level by giving each item an individual unique serial number.

When to use Serial Numbers

Employing product serialization could be a gigantic challenge in terms of both finances and management of the operation, dealing with serialized and non-serialized inventory. Product serialization is generally used when objects are more valued.

Advantages of Serialization

Theft protection

There is an impressive term known as inventory shrinkage. It indicates the difference between the inventories shown in records to the actual inventory at your warehouse. The magic behind this enigmatic inventory shrinkage is a disreputable humane crime known as stealing or theft. Granular level inventory serialization is the key to avoid inventory thefts. This is because separate serialized inventory gives you the full transparency of your items during its supply chain.

Product Life Cycle

No product’s lifespan is inestimable. After the initiation of the product, the life progression of the product starts. It involves four stages, Introduction, growth, maturity, and decline. Giving separate inventory serialization helps you to calculate its product life cycle. This helps in determining when to get rid of the product in its weakening stage before it goes unsellable or whether to increase its price because the product is in high demand in its growth stage.

Quality Control / Recall Management

Visualize the massive damage to your brand image when you found out that all of your XYZ products are imperfect. You know that when you ordered the products from your seller, they were at their best qualities. Therefore, it is obvious that your organization causes damage.

Without inventory serialization, there is no way of finding the offender. Because without inventory serialization, you will not know where the element is coming from. It could be from the company’s central warehouse or one of the several area warehouses across the country. Serialization comes in handy for quality control. Prevent such irrevocable terrible disasters.

Product Ownership

A client comes to your store and returns the product claiming it is not a value product. How can you confirm that the item customer brought to you has been purchased from you and not from somewhere else?

SKU is only the portion of the type of items and how many elements of that particular type you have in stock. It has nothing to do with “whether the item is authentic or a duplicate.” In order to protect yourself from such incidents, individual inventory serialization is the key.

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