4 clues to tell when it’s time for your warehouse to change. What are you waiting for?

January 11, 2022 by Chloe Liau

How does a warehouse see the signs for change?

Automation. Cloud supply chain. Paperless. You keep seeing and hearing these terms and you are considering to join the digital revolution. We’ll help you decide right here.

How do you currently manage your inventory?

It’s a constant juggling act when it comes to managing your inventory levels. Now that consumer buying habits have become so hard to predict, especially with the growth of ecommerce.

• Will your current system scale to support future growth
• Do you wish it does better
• Does it give customers real-time visibility to inventory and stock status 

If you found it hard to answer the questions in the affirmative, then you need to consider automation.

Shipping & receiving

In this area, there is direct linkage to the customer and their continued satisfaction. Successfully shipped orders means gratification for the buyer. Botched or missed orders will be detrimental for the shipper.

• How many orders do you ship monthly? How much do you expect that number to grow?
• How do you receive those orders? (e.g., EDI, API, Shopping Carts, etc.)
• What types of fulfilment do you offer? Will this change in the future?
• How do you get notified of incoming inventory from your customers?
• How many inbound deliveries (receipts) do you receive each month?
• Do you use mobile barcode scanning? Or will you need to implement it?

The above are very relevant issues that helps in keeping your operations working in the most efficient and customer-centric way.

By Improving Billing You can gain additional Profit

Some warehouses still using old systems constantly whine about loss money, escalating costs. The truth is that they are losing track of the bills and can’t see where the money goes.

• How are you tracking billable activities today? Do you ever miss billable activities?
• How long does it take to create an invoice?
• How are you capturing charges and creating invoice for customers?
• Are there areas you wish to charge for today that you are unable to? (e.g., recurring storage charges)
• WMS can clearly help you achieve your profitability goals

Loss of money can literally be the one straw that will break the camel’s back – in this case, the company’s back. Automating your billing will get your operations back on track and eventually help you make more money in the long run.

Where do you want to go from here?

Automation technology is not as expensive as most people thought it to be. No doubt, groundwork leading to full deployment takes some effort. But the benefits of a cloud supply chain platform far outweighs its inconveniences.

• Do you plan to diversify fulfilment types? (e.g., B2B, ecommerce, omnichannel, etc.)
• Will you need to connect your WMS to other technologies? (e.g., TMS, OMS, shopping carts, etc.)
• What other areas would further optimize your warehouse? (e.g., dock scheduling, rate shopping, mobile barcode scanning, etc.)
• What additional services do you need to provide based on your industry or customer profiles? (e.g., kitting and assembly)

If the above are issues that you need to tackle immediately, you need to digitalize your operations now.