How to use stock take data to drive smarter business decisions

Key insights from stock take data and how to use them to make better business decisions

Stock take data provides valuable insights that can greatly improve your business decisions. By regularly conducting stock takes, you can achieve accurate inventory records, which reveal discrepancies between physical and captured inventory levels. These insights help to identify problems such as theft, loss, or administrative errors, enabling you to implement targeted solutions like enhanced security, improved training, or streamlined inventory procedures.

Analyzing stock take data also reveals which products are slow-moving or fast-selling. This helps you better align purchasing decisions and marketing strategies, minimize overstocking, and optimize warehouse space utilization. Furthermore, recognizing seasonal demand patterns and consumer trends through accurate stock data allows for more precise demand forecasting, reducing the risk of shortages or surplus inventory and improving overall resource allocation.

Additionally, stock take insights provide valuable information on products nearing their expiry dates. With this data, you can proactively manage stock rotation, plan strategic promotions, or ensure timely clearance, significantly reducing waste and financial losses.

Finally, precise inventory records obtained through regular stock takes ensure compliance with regulatory standards, particularly in highly regulated industries such as pharmaceuticals. Reliable traceability data helps meet audit requirements and maintain accurate financial reporting, thereby safeguarding your company against legal and financial risks.

How can COSYS help you?

With COSYS, you’ll have the perfect solution for your business operation: our smart stock taking software! The two components – the intuitive stock taking app and the COSYS backend – help you achieve precise inventory control and empower you to make smarter business decisions. COSYS’s stock taking app ensures fast and accurate stock data capture via barcode scanning. It is compatible with a lot of hardware devices whether it be modern mobile computers or smartphones. The COSYS stock taking app offers a variety of features that make your stock take as efficient as possible. For example, you can capture different types of barcodes (GS1-128, GS1-128 Data Matrix Codes…) as well as configurate counts according to your requirements (automated count, capture of serial and batch numbers, first- and second counts). You can import stock master data from your ERP system into the app and export your stock take data when finished with counting.

When it comes to making the right business decisions based on stock taking data, the COSYS backend stands out as a central business intelligence platform. Once the data from a completed stock take is imported into the backend, the COSYS WebDesk provides a clear and structured overview, enabling informed decision-making and efficient inventory management. Different visualization options help analyze stock data according to predefined measurements and categories. For example, you can evaluate the overall stock taking process by analyzing the duration, the amount of data captured per employee or branch. Not only after completion but throughout the process, you can maintain a structured overview by tracking overall progress, monitoring stock taking tasks, and identifying counting places that are still open or yet to be counted. This information provides valuable insights into optimizing your stock taking process for both speed and accuracy. Moreover, you will be able to dissect the stock take data into different categories such as total monetary value per product category or positions per branch.  Thus, you can identify which product categories contribute most to overall stock value and adjust purchasing strategies accordingly. Also, you can gain a clearer understanding of stock value distribution for better budgeting and cost management as well as compare stock levels across different locations to identify over- or understocked branches.

Conclusion

Leveraging stock taking data effectively is key to making smarter business decisions, improving inventory accuracy, and ensuring regulatory compliance. A well-structured stock take provides valuable insights into stock performance, demand trends, and operational efficiency, helping businesses optimize purchasing, reduce waste, and enhance financial planning. With the right tools, such as COSYS’s stock taking app and backend, businesses can streamline their inventory management processes with real-time tracking, automated data capture, and advanced analytics. By integrating COSYS into your operations, you gain full visibility and control over your stock, enabling proactive decision-making and improved efficiency. Don’t leave your stock management to chance—take advantage of digital solutions and turn your inventory data into a strategic asset for long-term business success.