Struggling to track and trace your inventories whether in the warehouse, supply chain, or during the after-service process?
This is a sign that your system lacks serial number tracking - a must-have feature of an ERP system. Whether you are a startup or mid-sized business, later or sooner, you come up with product or inventory tracking needs.
According to MarketsAndMarkets, the global track and trace market was valued at $5.5 billion in 2023, which is further expected to reach $9.8 billion by 2028 at a CAGR of 12.2% during the period.
With the help of serial number management in ERP, you can easily track the entire product life cycle from warehousing movement to supply chain to post customer delivery. If you deal in the global market, the ERP system’s serial tracking also helps you ensure global regulations and compliance.
Thus, serial numbers management capability in ERP for small businesses is crucial and offers vast benefits. This can help them enhance their efficiency, optimize growth, and reduce operational costs associated with manual inventory tracking.
To have a brief understanding, here is a complete guide on serial number tracking in ERP for small business owners.
A Guidance of Serial Number Tracking in ERP for Small Business Owners
To ensure satisfactory customer service and gain efficiency across your product cycle, serial number management plays an imperative role. So, it’s time to have a brief overview of serial number tracking best practices.
What is a Serial Number?
A Serial number is a code generated in series, a combination of a string of letters and numbers assigned to electronic items, appliances, devices, etc. It can be easily seen on a product or item. Each product is assigned a unique serial number to be identified effectively.
It can help you keep track of individual units in the warehouses. Further, these serial numbers are associated with Lot no. which helps identify what all individual units are associated with specific Lot no.
What is serial number tracking?
Serial Number Tracking is all about tracking the inventory or product cycle for customer service and quality control purposes. It can help in providing an extra layer of visibility.
This visibility ensures where your product came from, how it is being processed during the supply chain, and how it can be traced to ensure efficient after-sales services.
However, when it comes to tracking the group of products, Lot number comes into the picture. Often, these two tracking factors work parallel. Here, LionO360 ERP – an ERP for Inventory Control simplifies tracing both the Lot and Serial Number tracing.
Now, you might be thinking about the need for serial number management in your business. So, here we are going to elaborate on helping you understand the need for serial number tracking in the ERP system.
Reasons for having Serial Number Tracking System
Inventory Control
Serial number tracking can help manage and control stock levels across warehouses. It can also help you eliminate potential discrepancies, ensuring faster and accurate order fulfillment to the customer.
With the help of the ‘Serial Details’ functional capability of LionO360 Inventory Management ERP, you can even manage overstocking or stockout conditions and prevent losing potential sales.
Product Recall Purpose
Assigning serial numbers to the products or components can simplify and streamline the product recall process. Here, the inclusion of the use case can help you better understand this.
Suppose you get returned a few products with the same faulty reason. Now, you need to investigate from which supplier you received those products. Here, serial number tracking can instantly let you know whom you received the faulty product line.
With the help of a serial number management system, you can easily identify the rest of the customers who received the product from the same product line. This can help you improve your customer service level.
After-Sales Service
After-sales service can be simplified through serial number tracking. It also allows managing product warranties for your customer purchases. In case your customer receives a product in damaged condition and asks for a return, it can be seamlessly managed through serial number tracking.
Since every serial number is associated with a Lot number, it enables you to easily identify the specific product line. Further, it can strengthen you to provide a faster and smoother after-sales service to your customers.
Compliances & Regulations
If your business is continuously growing, sooner, you will come up to align with global compliance and regulations. This in turn helps and protects you from legal issues/penalties. It can also support quality control standards.
If you want to streamline your global compliances and industry regulations, LionO360 inventory management ERP can help.
How to Get Started? How does Serial Number Tracking work with LionO360 Inventory Management?
LionO360 ERP comes with comprehensive serial number management capabilities. It allows you to track the product - where it was received in your warehouse from, while being in the warehousing process, and during the supply chain.
You can even trace the product after the final customer delivery. This can help you ensure seamless product recall and after-sales service.
Whether you are a seller of electronic items, appliances, or digital devices, using LionO360 ERP for inventory control, you can easily track the end-to-end product cycle. This can help you increase your overall efficiency from warehousing practices to supply chain to after-sales service.
If you are looking for an ERP for small businesses, LionO360 ERP could be a fruitful deal for your business. Our ERP system’s serial tracking enables you to automatically assign serial numbers to each product associated with a specific Lot number.
Using Serial Number Tracking, you can speed up your pick-pack-ship process. This can also help you streamline your order fulfillment. If your customer raises any issue or concern, you can easily trace the product and can ensure after-sales service or seamless product return.
Liono360 ERP can be leveraged by almost all industries to track their product cycle and ensure efficient customer service. This can be better understood through a use case – considering for Wireless & Telecommunication industry.
Suppose you are dealing with SIM cards and mobile devices and seeking a solution to track and manage each product’s life cycle. Here, LionO360 Inventory management ERP facilitated with Serial Number Management capability can help you track and trace the product effectively.
To ensure so, you can automatically assign serial numbers while receiving products in your warehouse or generating invoices. A specific Lot number can also be assigned to a specific product line. In our system, you can include the associated details along with a Serial Number for your product range.
Depending on your product range and business needs, you can include more columns in Serial Details to ensure more product information.
Such details include revision number, plan details acquired by your customer, IMEI number, plan expiration date, and commission generated by your sales representatives for each SIM card/device activation or successful customer onboarding.
Now, all these details can be tracked or traced using Serial Number tracking in the ERP system. You can easily get the product information whenever required.
Serial Details in our system can also help you forecast sales and demand, enabling you to plan accordingly. This data can be filtered or grouped for your customized access.
You can even import the serial number details in the LionO360 system provided by your vendor.
When Serial number tracking is combined with Barcode Scanner functionality, it can help you simplify and faster the tracking at various tracking processes. In turn, it can help you faster the warehousing process i.e. pick-pack-ship and enhance operational efficiency.
If you are willing to enable serial number tracking capability in your system, connect with LionOBytes. To understand the in-depth functionality of LionO360 Serial Number Tracking, schedule a Demo today.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Serial Number Tracking?
Serial number tracking in ERP is a powerful solution to manage your inventory levels. It allows you to track which item is available in the warehouse, which inventory item is sold to whom, and even which inventory Lot is received from which vendor.
To know how LionO360 can help you track your product range with its Serial Number Management functional capability, connect and talk with our expert today.
Why Serial Number Tracking is important for my business?
Serial number tracking in an ERP system can help you maintain the right inventory levels across your inventory flow. It facilitates you with efficient product traceability, seamless product recalls, and compliance with regulation requirements.
It also allows you to manage product warranties and service agreements. You can also manage smoother customer returns.
How does Serial Number tracking support after-sales service?
Using serial numbers, the detailed associated information can be retrieved easily. Such information includes product buying details, warranty coverage, and more. This information can be used to ensure efficient after-sales service enabling smoother and accurate service management effectively.
To implement serial number tracking best practices, LionOBytes can help with LionO360 ERP equipped with Serial Number Tracking capability.
