Running inventory-based management required proper evaluation and monitoring of the business. Whether the inventory of the business is managed properly or not can be checked by shooting questions like whether the product was available or not when it was required, the business loss that occurred because the items ran out of stock or the loss that occurred because of excess stock and so on and so forth. Inventory management is required for the smooth running of any business and it helps the business owners to have the right products at the right time and that too in the right quantity. Proper inventory management ensures that there is no excess inventory or stock outs status. Here is how an inventory-based business can be managed. 

1. Do proper forecasting 

Proper forecasting is important for ensuring that the projected sales are as close to the actual sales as possible. Proper forecasting will help you to ensure that the inventory available is enough to meet the requirement of the sales with very little to no out of stock items or extra items. Proper forecasting will enable the business owners to ship out the product quickly by using logistic services of companies like XpressBees. There are many software available out there that on the basis of the historical sales figures, the future projection can be predicted and this will make it easier to manage the inventory. 

2. The products that are first in should be first out

Depending upon the demand of the products, items are most of the time purchased in chronological order. The items that are first purchased should generally be the first that should go out of inventory. This rule is generally true for perishable commodities where the items if not moved out of the inventory to the customers can actually become perished and result in business loss. One way of implementing this principle is that the new inventory should be added from the back and the old stock should be placed at the front to ensure that the old products are moved out first when one needs to ship out products quickly with the help of services of Pakistan Post and other logistic services. 

3. Figure out how to sell the low-turn stock present in the inventory 

On the basis of the demand for the product, you will be able to identify both high-turn and low-turn stock present in the inventory. One should smartly deal with the low-turn stock. Firstly, they should stop stocking the low-turn stock items because the previous stock has not been sold yet. One can also run special promotions or discounts for these products to ensure that there is a flow of such stock. 

4. Use real-time inventory management 

Real-time inventory management helps the business to provide the business owner with the information required about the inventory to manage it well. For instance, much real-time inventory management software provides the users with daily notifications about the items that are running low in stock or are already out of stock. Also, it makes it easier to identify the expensive stock that needs to be sold for a business profit. 

5. Ensure that the quality of the stock is maintained 

It is important to ensure that the quality of the product that is present in the inventory is maintained. It is crucial that the products of the inventory look great even if they have been present in the inventory for a long time. For doing so, one will require a time-to-time examination of the stock present in the inventory. Signs of damages need to be fixed as soon as possible. 

6. Keep a track of the product information

All the products which are present on the inventory should be properly tracked. Information that should be contained in the system should include barcode data, SKUs, lot numbers and suppliers. This information will be helpful in knowing how scarcity and seasonality will affect the business. 

7. Update the inventory totals on a daily basis

The sales that occur each and every day should be monitored to know which products were sold and the inventory totals should be updated daily. This data will be helpful in knowing which items are selling faster and which items are selling at a slow rate. Further, it will help one to identify patterns if any. For instance, one can check if any products are sold together most of the time.

By following these tips, one can ensure the smooth functioning of an inventory-based business. 

Depending upon the target audience, marketing tactics have changed from time to time. In the current century, graphic designers play a key role in marketing especially in creating infographics, logos and other designs to match the vibe of the brand. It is a known fact that graphic designing is important for marketing. Another fact is that even graphic designers should know about marketing too. It works both ways. 

Why Graphic Designing Is Important In Marketing?

According to research, the brain is great at taking visual information. A picture is worth a thousand words and this is true for the marketing world. The maximum amount of information that you absorb is through your eyes and therefore graphic designing plays a key role in marketing. With the right combination of diagrams, colours and photographs, it becomes easier for any brand to communicate its brand value to the customer in an easy graspable manner. 

A well-crafted graphical image can interest the targeted audience and further, research says that people remember an image much longer than text. Also, in the current time, the attention span of the people is little and therefore, it becomes important to communicate the information as quickly as possible and a graphical image does the same. A well-crafted design has the power to communicate the information to the audience in just a glance. With the right combination of the graphical elements, it is possible to capture the attention of the audience instantly and that too for a long duration. 

It is believed that graphic design works as a red carpet outfit of the brand and therefore, having good designs is of utmost importance to showcase the brand value to the customer. Graphic designers can be useful in creating WhatsApp DP for the WhatsApp business account and developing Cool Photos to communicate brand value. In addition to that, the skills of a graphic designer can also be used for creating LinkedIn posts, Instagram stories and posts, theme boards on Pinterest and Twitter fleets. A graphic designer can give a professional touch to any brand and this is especially helpful for any brand to look professional and sophisticated. 

In the modern age, graphic designs play a critical role in the business world. For impressive marketing, it is important to create good graphics for the business. 

Why Is It Important For Graphic Designers To Know About Marketing 

Marketing people need graphic designers and this is one of the most important reasons why graphic designers should know about marketing. Marketing skills can prove to be very handy for any graphic designer as it will help them to understand the graphic designer the marketing assignment at hand properly. Also, knowing about marketing will help the graphic designer to understand which colours to use for gaining the maximum attention of the viewers. 

In addition to that, graphic designers should also know about marketing skills to showcase their talent to the world. Marketing skills can help graphic designers to showcase their talent and further pick more assignments in the future. 

Apart from having great visual appeals, a graphic designer for gaining more assignments should also have good soft skills. It is important because it will help the graphic designer to communicate better with the clients. 

If you are planning to start your journey as a graphic designer, it is crucial that you keep both your graphic designing skills and marketing skills handy to get hired. Of course, the courses that you are taking to become a graphic designer will help you to improve your designing skills but in addition to that, it is also important that you develop the soft skills and empower yourself with marketing skills to climb up the ladder. 

At some point, a graphic designer will have to work with a marketing team for developing designs. The right combination of designing and marketing skills is important to improve brand loyalty and customer experience. Even though the perspective of a graphic designer and marketing person may be different, in the end, they share the same goals. Therefore having additional information about marketing will only help in reaching the end goal in a much smoother way. The combination of marketing and graphic designing is required for creating beautiful results. 

Different businesses and companies in the world have made the switch over to a completely paperless office. As easy as it may sound, it is very difficult to achieve this. Although the benefits of going paperless are numerous, there are many difficulties and challenges involved in the way. Let’s have a look at some of the major challenges in going paperless for businesses:

The Cost Of Hardware & Software

The first challenge involved in making a transition towards paperless offices for most businesses is the cost of hardware and software. To make sure that you are at par with the global level and your files are secure, you will need to constantly update your hardware and software. 

Although, the cost of digital document software and other tools required such as Converters that includes tools like PPT to PDF that convert different PPTs into PDFs and PDF to PNG that converts PDF to transparent PNGs, etc are usually cheap but the other things such as cloud storage can be expensive.

Along with this, there is also the cost of keeping an IT department that manages all the digital operations and keeps all of your data secure. These costs can be a lot, especially if a startup or business is in its initial phases.

Educating The Employees

There is also a big challenge of educating the employees because there are chances that employees may not be familiar with how digital documents work. You cannot make the transition to a paperless office overnight and expect employees to be compliant with that. 

All of the employees would have to be trained accordingly and there would be some employees that will learn about digitalization easily but there will be some that will take some time and eventually, it takes a lot of time to make sure that everyone is on the same page. 

Human Errors

Electronic record systems are always prone to human error and it can happen with anyone, no matter how much of an expert he is. It can range anywhere from wrong names on the files to incomplete scanning of the documents. Along with this, there is a chance that any important file or document can be deleted accidentally.

Training employees can help reduce these errors but even the most trained employees can make errors because no one is perfect and errors will occur, sooner or later. 

Hardware Failure

Hardware failure is another problem that stands in the way of businesses making the transition towards paperless offices. Hardware failure can occur without anyone foreseeing it. It can result in loss of data and if there is no physical copy of the documents made then those documents will be forever gone.

No digital solution is perfect and accidents happen all the time. Backing up data is a very useful thing since it can restore data at any time in case something goes wrong. Cloud storage solutions are also useful and these can prevent the loss of data even if a major hardware malfunction occurs.

Additionally, implementing hardware RAID systems can further safeguard data by ensuring redundancy and reliability. Businesses can significantly reduce the risk of data loss through hardware RAID, which distributes data across multiple disks and provides fault tolerance.

Security Breaches

Physical documents are stored in specific files and cabinets & there is a separate room where all of the documents are stored, however, digital documents are always prone to security failure. For any business looking to make the transition towards a digital office, protection from hackers is a top priority but still, even with the securest of the protocols in place, a security failure can occur and the whole data of a company can be compromised.

Any business looking to make a switch towards paperless offices should focus on security failure and employees should also be trained accordingly to prevent any mishap from happening. Security measures such as antivirus software, firewalls will be in place but still, you never know and it is evident that even the most major tech companies such as Facebook, Yahoo have suffered major data breaches in the past.

Along with all of this, it takes a lot of time and labor to scan all of the documents and turn them into digital form to achieve a paperless office. You can vectorize images and get your images to the quality and format you want. Indeed, if a company/business is able to overcome the aforementioned problems then it wouldn’t be an issue to make the switch, however, most businesses are not yet ready for making the switch to paperless offices and digital operations.

E-Commerce in Africa has been underway for the past couple of years and this industry is growing with every passing year. In different African countries, there are hundreds of different e-commerce startups that are operating and working well. All of these startups have produced thousands of new jobs and have the potential to create even more as the industry will grow. All of the jobs created by online startups are related to online marketplaces, supporting services, logistics, etc. 

The African e-commerce industry has a lot of potential to grow but as compared to other continents, we have not seen much growth of the African e-commerce industry. There stand many hurdles in the way of growth including poor consumer trust, poor infrastructure, and poor logistics services, just to name a few of the major hurdles in the way of the growth of this industry. Today, we will be having a look at some of the ways how African E-Commerce Industry can grow in upcoming years: 

Nations Need To Update Their Policies

The first thing that the governments and countries need to do in order to make their e-commerce industry flourish is to update their policies. The policies in Africa regarding online businesses and the e-commerce industry aren’t satisfying. Because of poor policies, Africa is behind all the other continents in the world. 

Africa is one of the largest continents in the world, consisting of a total of 54 nations, however, only a few nations have regulations in place for online consumer protection. This leads to poor consumer trust, which is one of the leading hurdles in the growth of the e-commerce industry. If all the countries in the continent shape their regulations that will support online businesses and the e-commerce industry then there is no reason why this industry won’t grow.

Internet Accessibility

Internet Accessibility still remains a huge hurdle in the way of digitalization and the growth of online businesses in the continent. Africa is one of the most populous continents in the world, however, only a little more than a quarter of the population regularly uses the Internet. This can be owed to the fact that internet accessibility in Africa is minimal and the costs of the Internet in Africa are much higher than in other parts of the world.

For e-commerce and digital businesses to grow in the continent, the governments need to provide affordable internet access to the people of their nations because in this age everything is digital and the internet has become a basic necessity of life. The Internet can not only make people more aware of what’s going on around the world and follow the latest trends but it also allows them to improve their lifestyle.

Improve Logistics Services

As mentioned earlier, poor logistics are another huge challenge that blocks the growth of the e-commerce industry. In Africa, the courier and logistics services are poor as compared to other parts of the world and the nations need to realize that if they want their local businesses to grow and flourish then they should work together and improve the logistics in their countries, otherwise, they will lag behind the rest of the world.

The governments can reduce the custom costs involved in overseas trading by the implementation of the Trade Facilitation Agreement but this alone won’t improve the courier and logistics services. The governments need to do much more in order to help their e-commerce industry grow. 

Startups And Small Businesses Need To Be Coached

The majority of the startups in Africa need to be coached about digitalization and how they can improve their services accordingly in order to increase their profits. Most businesses and startups lack proper knowledge about the internet and e-commerce industry. In other parts of the world, online websites that are even providing services like letting the people play games like Solitaire and its more than 500 different variants such as Spider Solitaire, Freecell, etc for free are flourishing.

The main point here is that small businesses and startups need to be coached about digitalization and how they can use it in their favor and make for themselves a profitable future.

Need For More Payment Options

?Since the e-commerce industry operates digitally, there is a dire need for more e-payment options for the industry to grow. In Africa, the most popular and common method of payment is Cash-on-delivery. While COD is a good method for local markets, for cross-border markets, it is not an option that a foreign vendor can rely on. Therefore, along with all the other things, there is also a need for more e-payment options and wallets in order for the e-commerce industry to grow and reach new heights.