While working as a freelancer, I get to develop a CMS (Content Management System) for the company, Appliances Connection. The primary function of the CMS is to see the status of the stocks via a UI (User Interface), and determine what the problems are. That way, the management team responsible would be able to find better solutions to quickly address the issues. As an added feature, the CMS also has the capability to send auto emails and reports.
I know for a fact that dealing with inventories can be a headache when you are running a retail store, most especially, when your company grows and starts to acquire more vendors. Having a 100% accurate stock report for all of the vendor stocks is close to impossible, perhaps, it is impossible. And if mismanaged, you get problems like getting orders for items that have been discontinued. This kind of problem will hurt your business. If an item is discontinued then there is no way to get it for the buyers, and because of that you will be forced to cancel an order, which may then infuriate your customers. The result… they might stop patronizing your business, moreover, you can get bad ratings and bad reviews that can spread like wildfire. When it reaches other people, that’s when you start losing public trust and future customers. Wrong stock info can also make you loss money if you accidentally advertised discontinued items. Your advertisements cost money, but your return investment is zero, and you realize that is not a pretty good picture. Another problem is with items that have long ETAs (Estimated Time of arrival). These items are not discontinued, but they can take time to arrive or deliver. Long ETAs means long waiting time for customers, and with long waiting time, customers will start to loss patience and may start throwing bricks at you. With this, buyers may start to think that you are a scam. The third problem, is wrong stock info… your stock report may say it’s out of stock or discontinued, but actually, they are active and have stock. This kind of problem may not anger your customers, but you can’t get buyers for these items. It’s still a loss considering you have to pay your employees and your bills.
Most retailers are plagued by these problems, but sometimes, your management isn’t the problem. Sometimes, its the vendors themselves. Some vendors can mislead you with wrong data, and some don’t provide data at all. While such problems can’t be totally eliminated, the CMS I created will at least, lessen the problem. It was meant to automate huge tasks so that the management team will have an easy time managing and will have time to focus and deal with bigger issues.
Features
Inventory Monitoring Functions
The primary purpose of the Inventory System CMS is to monitor the status of the inventory for each brand or vendor. It derives data from both the inventory file and the company’s database. The database holds the stock data for the system to use while the inventory file has the vendor’s stock data, these files usually came from the vendors unless they are fake stock. We feed the system with the inventory file’s data, this data will be stored in the company’s database and will be use by the company’s vendor management system. I designed my Inventory System CMS as an extension for the company’s inventory system, providing more data and expanding the system’s functionality. Among the things it does is retrieve the number of items from the inventory file that was accepted by the system and used to stamp the items in the system vs the total number of items in the system (System Total). This can be expanded to show how many items stamp vs total number of items for singles, partials, and kits (Item Types). It also shows how many items are hidden and how many are templates. Furthermore, it monitors how many items of the total number of items in the inventory file was entered into the system (Actual Total).
The CMS monitors not only the item counts, it also checks the file size of the inventory file as well as display the file path and the file being used by the system. The inventory file File Creation, and Last Modified date are being retrieved as well. The CMS will also show the date the inventory file was last fed into the system (System Last Update). Finally, it shows the number of items that wasn’t stamp in the system and the number of items that are in the system, but was not found in the inventory file.
Using the three factors — item count, file size, and update dates, the CMS will gauge how critical the inventory problem for each brand is. It has a scoring algorithm that is capable of measuring the severity of the problem and determines if it requires immediate attention (priority score), with the one having the highest priority score requiring the most attention.
Action Functions
The CMS not only monitors the inventory data, it can also automatically execute scripts such as automatically sending an email to a vendor.
An email template can be created and customized and use to request for inventory. This template will be sent to the vendor whenever an auto-request is called. The auto-email can be configured to auto-send every number of days, with a minimum of one day threshold.
Other Action options that can be be found in the Inventory CMS are the Open Map Tool, Open Folder, and Open Brandmatch. The following options will respectively open the Vendor Mapping Tool where inventory files can be mapped, open the folder where the inventory file is stored, and open the folder where the brandmatch is stored.
Finally, the last function is the auto-report. While it cannot be found among the action scripts, the auto-report runs in the background and can be configured in the settings page. What it does is that it generates a report of the problems and sends it automatically to the management team as a report file email attachment. With this function, the team will no longer need to spend time diagnosing the problem as the Inventory System had already diagnosed it for them.
Brand Profile
The Inventory System is just one piece (module) of the bigger system I am going to design in the future. The Inventory system bases its data from the data provided in the Brand Profile. The Brand Profile data is stored in an alternate database. The Brand Profile helps the inventory system to locate where the inventory files are stored, what type of inventory is it, what email templates to use for the auto-email, how frequent the request will be sent, determine the brands under that brand/vendor, and store some important comments/notes on the brand.
For review
The Inventory System CMS will be soon submitted for review. If the company manager founds it reliable and useful, it may get integrated into Appliances Connection’s system. It’s something I am going to be proud of considering the fact that others aside from me will be using it. Well, I don’t really expect my name to be engraved in a tablet, but being a developer, to have contributed something to the group (to a company) gives me a sense of purpose. It would be something I can be remembered of even after I’m gone. In short, it will be a part of my legacy.
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Very good work
Thanks Bro… 🙂