An accurate and efficient Warehouse Management System enhances all the chain’s operations and increases the efficiency of the working system.
Amidst the increasing mass adoption of eCommerce and online selling, even if your business ships products through some of the best-in-class courier partners, lack of proper inventory management may drag it down by quite a few notches. The Direct-to-Consumer (D2C) space is currently witnessing cut-throat competition and businesses cannot afford to pull out their couches, even if for a minute.
Efficiency is indispensable – right from the manufacturing process to building an inventory to providing safe doorstep deliveries to the customers. Therefore, it becomes even more important to store goods in an adequate warehouse where expert staff can help you with the end-to-end management and safekeeping of your goods. Warehousing infrastructure needs to be top-notch to ensure utmost efficiency when shipping goods to customers. The state of warehousing infrastructure can make or break your business. This is where Warehouse Management System comes into the picture.
What is a Warehouse Management System?
A Warehouse Management System is a set of management techniques and processes that control the warehouse operations starting from inventory control and leading up to packaging and delivering of goods to the desired destinations. An accurate and efficient Warehouse Management System enhances all the chain’s operations and increases the efficiency of the working system. That said, let’s take a look at how a robust Warehouse Management System infrastructure can solve the logistical pitfalls in businesses.
With an accurate and efficient system, the merchant’s venture can be benefited in numerous ways:
1. Inventory control and transparency
2. Effective synchronization between orders and delivery
3. Optimization of storage space.
4. Making proper and effective Inbound and Outbound processes.
Warehouse Management Strategies
For a competent Warehouse Management System, we need a well-organized set of instructions and strategies to carry out all the operations. Ineffective techniques and strategies lead to late delivery, improper management of the inventory, unproductive workers, losing credibility in the market, eventually leading to a loss of revenue. Therefore, Warehouse Management Strategies are required for an effective supply chain.
Key strategies involved are making critical decisions, formulating proper changes to the system, increasing, or optimizing the time and cost, and many more. To create and implement appropriate warehouse management techniques, we need to first look into our traditional management methods and analyze the flaws, how we can make improvise the problem areas, the inclusion of novel technologies, how to optimize time and cost, and more.
Secondly, define a dedicated storage space, what is happening and where, what you require to maintain the inventory, what can be improved in the infrastructure, how additional space can be utilized, etc., are necessary.
Thirdly, the business must know their pain points and address them promptly. They must try to work on their weaknesses and focus on which areas they can improve at the most. It would be best to adopt tech-driven methods to bridge the gaps and enhance your Warehouse Management System.
KPIs (Key Performance Indicators)
Your company will increase efficiency if there is a proper warehouse management system, proper strategies, and proper inventory control. Also, we need to define specific Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to meet the day-to-day increasing needs of the market. Proper use of technology, new trends in the market, etc. KPIs increase the customer’s satisfaction level and reduce operational costs. Important KPIs in the market are:
1. Average inventory
2. Cost of held inventory
3. Average days to sell inventory
4. Out of stock
5. Level of service provided
6. Accuracy of the WMS
7. Order rate (inbound and outbound)
Enhance Warehouse and Logistics Management
ECommerce has achieved exponential growth in recent times given the convenience and seamlessness factors, thereby resulting in a surge in demand for logistics. This brings us to an integral part of the business – inventory storage. Proper inventory storage would require efficient warehousing and for this, enhancing capacity and facilitating frictionless warehouse and logistics management is key.
Firstly, with evolving trends in technology like AI and Machine Learning, we need to automate the processes. Automation in inventory control will help you record real-time data of the profit, sales, cost, losses, and many other things.
Secondly, a seamless supply chain, clear communication, and the management of supply and delivery will eventually enhance the warehousing and logistics of the company. Developing proper data management software to look for the appropriate flow of goods in real-time.
Thirdly, Multi-carrier shipping, Multi-carrier shipping entails shipping the goods to customers with numerous delivery partners to ensure timely and seamless delivery. All the merchant needs to do is acquire a customer base; they can do so by giving them the best service and support.
Fourthly, try to increase the customer market and support. Giving them the variety of goods in your inventory, giving them the best price, and delivering the goods in the best possible time frame.
Final Word
Warehousing is the process of storing goods in an adequately managed establishment for inbound and outbound services. It is done by retailers, wholesalers, and even MNCs to store and make a proper inventory. Proper warehousing is of utmost importance; you need to have a structured inventory control plus the tracking of it. Well-managed warehousing provides you with multiple benefits as mentioned earlier and today, amidst the rising competition in the market, players must focus on augmenting their warehouse management as it is one of the key factors that play a role in customer satisfaction.
Source: Business World
