Are you curious about artificial intelligence? AI has revolutionized the business world in many different ways. Some of the notable examples are how it has transformed the eCommerce, logistics, and supply chain industry. Apart from that, it has several other applications in other industries such as healthcare, cybersecurity, chatbots, human resource management, etc.
In this article, we will discuss how AI can optimize materials management and why entrepreneurs should consider it as their top priority. This post includes how AI can improve forecasting, provide a better customer experience, enable automatic material procurement, and more.
Benefits of AI in Inventory Management
Artificial intelligence has several benefits in inventory control. Although it has several advantages, here are the top five ways AI can help in optimizing stock management.
AI Can Improve Forecasting Market Demand
The traditional forecasting methods are getting outdated because of the large amount of historical data. It’s quite complicated to forecast the future demand, and also, the forecasting methods don’t provide as accurate as advanced methods of machine learning.
Machine learning makes forecasting more accurate with real-time data for different demographics, social media, online reviews, etc. It also uses external and internal data sources to provide market insights that help businesses to manage their inventory properly.
Another great benefit of
AI-Enabled Chatbots Can Enable Better Customer Support
Another great benefit of AI in inventory management is AI-based chatbots. According to studies, AI-based chatbots can handle more than 80 percent of customer queries. So, these chatbots can help businesses in updating details about the inventory and customer orders.
Chatbots can improve the delivery service by real-time order management. It can process the order, handle the delivery request, provide receipt information quite efficiently. Customers can easily track their parcels and know general information regarding delivery from intelligent chatbots. Moreover, chatbots can also help businesses to collect feedback and reviews.
Automated Material Procurement
One of the best advantages of AI is it can reduce material procurement costs with less error than the conventional method. It can reduce material procurement errors by up to 50%, which will result in satisfied customers and reduce the cost. But, the adoption of artificial intelligence in material procurement has not become widespread.
However, being in the initial stages, AI has several applications such as collecting market data of suppliers, vendors, detecting anomalies (deviation from the normal order), etc. With more advancement, AI can fully automate the material procurement process.
AI Can Foster Greater Transparency
Transparency is also a big concern in inventory management. With the adoption of AI and Blockchain Technology, everyone can get real-time tracking of goods in the supply chain. Hence, business owners, partners, vendors, inventory managers, customers, literally everyone can trust each other.
Theft and fraud activities will significantly reduce due to greater transparency. So, it’s a great benefit for the supply chain industry because fraud activity causes financial loss and creates a bad reputation for the business. As you know bad reputation is detrimental to the long-term growth of a business, it’s important to address this issue and adopt an AI-integrated inventory system.
AI Can Boost Productivity and Overall Efficiency
Last but not least, AI-integrated inventory systems can improve productivity and overall efficiency. Since it reduces the cost, it ultimately adds value to the revenue. Again, the reduced error results in better accuracy, which increases productivity.
Moreover, greater transparency and real-time tracking data prevent fraud and theft activities. An AI-integrated stock management system provides several benefits such as better customer experience, increased revenue, and overall efficiency of the business.
Takeaways
From the above, we understand that AI-integrated inventory management can significantly improve productivity and overall efficiency. However, there are several challenges in implementing an AI system.
An AI-integrated system must adopt the changes according to changing patterns of the market and consumers. So, it’s crucial for business owners to keep this in mind before using an AI-based inventory control system.