Ways Labels Organize Your Business

As an owner or manager of a small business, you may have considered purchasing a thermal label printer to help you organize your company’s assets and streamline its services. Perhaps you felt that it would be a wise investment as your business grows, but as it stands now, your operations are too small to justify the cost. The reality, however, is that even the tiniest of businesses can benefit from the organizational power provided by labels; you just have to know how to make the most of your printer. In this post, we’ll discuss how you can use a thermal label printer to make and apply industrial and inventory labels that can be used to organize both your products and your office.

Inventory Labels

Though inventory labels can be put to good use by companies of any size, the type of inventory label you choose to go with may be determined by the volume of your operations. A smaller company that still sorts its products by hand, for example, may be better served by using sequentially numbered labels that allow for easy visual identification of the location or category to which a product belongs. Poor organization can create an insurmountable drag on efficiency for owners who are just starting their company and who may not be aware of the importance of storing their stock in a way that allows for easy retrieval. The time that your employees waste searching for one particular item could instead be spent on tending to customers or on developing the next great innovation that’ll propel your company to the big leagues. Simple, sequentially numbered labels allow businesses to cut down on that lost time and on the frustration of fruitless searching, a small step that’ll lead to greater satisfaction for you, your employees, and your customers.

Barcode labels, on the other hand, are a must for any business owner whose products are part of a supply chain. That’s partly because it’s no longer just your concern whether an item gets to where it’s supposed to go - it’s also the concern of the distribution company and of the retailers that hope to put your product on their shelves. Without a barcode to scan, your products can disappear in the supply chain without any hint as to when they were lost - and you can bet your bottom dollar that neither the distributor nor the retailer is going to take responsibility for that loss. That translates to unhappy customers, the cost of lost product, and potential damage to the relationship between you and your partners. Avoid that hassle through the usage of standardized barcode labels to streamline and simplify every step of the delivery process. Though you may hesitate at the cost of the necessary printer and scanners, the money you spend now will be more than made up for by what you save through the maintained accurate delivery of your product.

Office Labels

The cost of a thermal label printer becomes much more reasonable when you realize that it can be used for more than just organizing your products. Chances are your office could use a little organizing, too. Are your employees always searching through poorly-arranged files for one piece of paper that may not even be where they’re looking? Does the person in charge of your company’s mailing spend hours of every day hand-addressing each envelope? If so, a label maker could be just what you need to get those wasted hours back. No matter what model you choose, the software that comes with it should allow you to easily upload custom images that can be transformed into labels specifically suited to fit your business’ needs. The cabinets that files always seem to disappear into will become a lot less mysterious once each of its drawers and folders are properly labeled; you can even order colored labels to create a color-coded filing system that allows for easy visual identification of exactly where a piece of paperwork is meant to go.

Mailing, likewise, becomes a lot simpler once you have a printer set up to create labels for every envelope or package your business sends. From an organizational standpoint, however, merely acquiring a label printer is not enough. It’s also important that those in your company who handle its mail have a designated space in which to work. This will not only help to keep those employees happy but also help to ensure that nothing gets lost in the shuffle. The last thing you want to do - especially when there are so many aspects of your business to keep track of - is explain to an angry client or partner that an important document they sent got lost in the shuffle. A dedicated and organized mailing department allows you to address the needs of this often-overlooked aspect of your business and potentially do so with a printer that you were already using to assist in the organization of your inventory.

Conclusion

Lack of organization is one of the most heartbreaking ways for your business to fail. Because it often feels like a small matter in the grand scheme of things, proper organization is often overlooked by inexperienced owners whose attention is monopolized by the “bigger” aspects of their business. The truth, however, is that no company with poor organization in any aspect of its operations will last long enough to make an impact on the marketplace - no matter how hard you work or how necessary your product or service. Interested in learning more about all the ways that industrial labels and a thermal label printer can help organize your business? One of our helpful customer service representatives will be more than happy to answer whatever questions you might have.