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Technology

How does Increff WMS simplify your complex warehousing needs?

Data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics suggests that the employee turnover rate in the warehousing sector has been as high as 49% annually. Due to this very high attrition rate, businesses often face severe fulfillment delays, low efficiency, and increasing costs.

So, why does this happen? Entry-level warehouse jobs are still considered to be manual, repetitive, and devoid of growth. To retain employees and reduce dependency on skilled labor, organizations must implement new technologies that keep their workers engaged.

However, it is not as easy as it sounds. With such a high attrition rate, employers cannot spend too much time on training. So, they need an effective, easy-to-use solution that gives them a good ROI. Here’s where Increff Warehouse Management System comes in.  

In this blog, we will showcase the top 5 reasons why Increff WMS is the ideal solution for managing your warehouse operations.

1) Quick deployment and easy maintenance

While legacy systems can take anywhere from 4 to 6 months to deploy, Increff WMS can be up in just 1 week. It can also integrate with your existing ERP system alongside any other e-commerce platform or logistics management system you are using. This allows for a seamless experience and easy management of all your functions from a single touchpoint.

Unlike traditional on-premise solutions, which require regular hardware maintenance and updates, Increff WMS is a cloud-hosted hardware agnostic solution requiring no additional upkeep. It can run on a smartphone and also has Chrome accessibility. The system will be auto-updated whenever a new feature, bug fix, or upgrade is released.

2) Effortless learning and operations

The most critical thing for a warehouse management solution is ease of use. At the end of 2022, there were almost 500,000 open warehouse jobs. It shows businesses are unable to retain employees, and the turnover rate is very high. So, companies cannot spend a ton of time and resources on training new employees.

Increff realizes this, and its Warehouse Management Solution is designed to have a very shallow learning curve. With our simple and intuitive user interface, your employees can be trained on Increff WMS’s individual activities in just 5 minutes, unlocking high productivity from day one. 

It also simplifies the entire operations process with a single channel for B2B and B2C order processing and easy error tracking. The system is manually operated and has automation capabilities using the available data and operating via conveyor belts. Even though the system is manually operated, it has a 100% foolproof mechanism where the user cannot proceed to the next step if an error is detected.

3) Unbelievable accuracy

Increff WMS ensures the highest level of inventory accuracy with a promise-to-ship agreement that guarantees 99.99% accuracy at the bin level. This means you can trust that your inventory is always up-to-date and you never oversell or undersell your products.  It also offers an extremely swift inventory-order sync time of 10-15 seconds to ensure you never take extra orders without having the units to fulfill them.

The solution also upgrades your inventory management by enabling serialization that prevents duplicate scanning of items and achieves 100% first-time-right operation. As for when products are to be collected for shipment, it optimizes the path around the warehouse for more picks with lesser distance traveled, saving a lot of time and effort.

4) Simplified decision-making

It is important for businesses to be able to analyze different KPIs associated with inventory, order management, and putaway to get an overall picture of the warehouse performance. 

With 80+ actionable reports from Increff WMS, businesses get access to important insights that allow for data-backed decision-making rather than simply following one’s gut or using traditional methods like spreadsheets. Our reports cater to different stakeholders, including warehouse managers, operations, finance, category, and supply chain teams, allowing for simplified decision-making at all levels of your organization. 

5) Scalability 

For any business, scalability is a very important factor when considering a new solution. You wouldn’t want to change your systems frequently while experiencing high growth, which could slow down processes and increase traction. 

So, even if you are a small company projecting a very high growth rate but with a low order volume currently, Increff WMS can meet your requirements. While for enterprises, it can scale as required and even process up to 100k+ dispatches per day per the warehouse. The solution also maximizes your warehouse space utilization saving storage and labor costs.

Apart from being simple and efficient, Increff WMS is also the best in the market, with 200+ brands believing in what we have to offer. Gartner has also recognized Increff as a notable vendor in its report “Asia/Pacific Context: Magic Quadrant for Warehouse Management Systems” for 3 consecutive years now.

Schedule a quick demo to learn more about our solution and explore how we can help your business.

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Technology

Upgrading delivery experience – Going beyond warehouses/ distribution centers

Until recently people hailed 5-day delivery as quick. Nowadays, consumers expect delivery to take no longer than 24 – 48 hours. With speed and agility spearheading order fulfillment, the time between booking an order and receiving it is decreasing. Retailers with digital presence have felt the need for a better supply chain to manage customer expectations. 

Going by the statistics, an incompetent order fulfillment strategy can lead to business loss. Thus, it’s imperative for retailers and brands to bring their A-game.

E-commerce order fulfillment process: Examining the current situation

E-commerce order fulfillment was mostly carried out by centrally located warehouses or distribution centers far from customer locations. Since inventory allocation was solely based on rough estimates determined by past years’ sales patterns. Depending on where the fulfillment center is, shipping costs and delivery times would vary.

Let’s expand on them in detail.  

Loopholes in this strategy

When fragmented data from multiple distribution centers and warehouses is combined, managing the high volume without an ideal omnichannel order management strategy becomes a mammoth task.

The current system has the following problems:


1. Inefficient warehouse management: Warehouses are intricate ecosystems where multiple processes work simultaneously. An improperly managed warehouse leads to inaccurate inventory information, inefficient space utilization, and mismanaged picking procedures, all impacting business productivity and employee efficiency at various levels.

2. Mismanagement of peak sales: Incorrectly assigned inventory is a surefire way to stockouts – every retailer’s nightmare. Its inefficient tracking and management lead to stockouts that not only impact profitability and sales but also cause customer dissatisfaction and reduce loyalty.

3. Delayed delivery: Longer delivery times have now become the quickest way to lose customer trust. Especially if they have paid extra for expedited shipping, they expect delivery within the promised timeframe. Delayed order fulfillment is often due to inefficient warehouse operations, inventory mismanagement, and inaccurate demand analysis.

4. High fulfillment costs: In order to meet the strict delivery timelines, brands opt for faster shipping options. Items when shipped from a centralized location far from customers, take longer to reach and cost more. High shipping and logistics cost reduces profit margins and overall brand revenue.

5. Lost sales opportunities: Inaccurate demand assessment leads to improper inventory distribution, overstocking, and stockout scenarios. Without timely replacement or replenishment, brands lose sales and revenue. If styles are available in stores but not exposed to online sales channels, their visibility reduces thus impacting total turnaround time and increasing chances of markdowns. 

Using an omnichannel approach to enable faster order fulfillment

Growth in e-commerce and the need for instant gratification have met with unexpected challenges. Such bottlenecks in the supply chain prevent brands from reaching their full growth potential hence it’s critical to address them.

Increff omnichannel order management and merchandising solutions are designed to extend efficiency and visibility across all retail sales channels. 
Let’s see how they can up your delivery game:

1. Boosting warehousing efficiency – Increff WMS is a web-based multi-channel order management system that provides a single view of inventory across all marketplaces with real-time order inventory sync. Inventory serialization enables digitization and automation to achieve 100% First-Time-Right operations. Order priority-wise picklist generation and optimized pick paths ensure ~99.9% order fulfillment within the promise-to-ship time. 

2. Managing peak sales- Robust tech stack and real-time inventory order sync ensure complete synergy between the marketplace and warehouse. It prevents chances of excess order cancellations which lead to customer distrust. The auto-replenishment feature sends prompts when a fast-selling stock is getting exhausted so it can be reordered on time to avoid stockouts.

3. Enabling 24-48 hrs delivery – By conducting pin code level demand analysis with Increff Merchandising Software regional utilization module, brands can distribute inventory according to existing demand. This brings inventory closer to the customer and ensures faster order fulfillment from the nearest location. 
4. Lower fulfillment costs – With Increff Cloud Warehousing service, brands can outsource inventory and order management to experts to reduce CapEx and improve operational efficiency.

5. Enable Omnichannel retailing– Increff O2O (Offline to Online) allows brands to expose store inventory to online sales channels for better visibility and faster order fulfillment from stores. 

Omnichannel order fulfillment for the win 
Undoubtedly, an omnichannel fulfillment system can augment and enhance your sales and revenue. In this day and age, where time equals money, businesses need to optimize their processes to enhance productivity. Intrigued to know how our suite of retail tech solutions can empower your business? Head to our website

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Technology

Why is Increff WMS the right choice for your warehouse operations

Are you managing warehouse operations with systems that make you raise questions like:

  • How is my inventory placed in the warehouse and is the bin space optimally utilized?
  • How often should I plan my audits so that I can plan the warehouse shutdown accordingly?
  • Will my existing manpower be able to manage the peak season rush or do I need more hands to support the order flow?  

These red flags indicate it’s high time to replace your existing system. Bring in Increff Warehouse Management System for efficient inventory and order management.

Here’s what makes Increff WMS, the world’s simplest and most efficient cloud-based warehouse management system, the right choice for your retail business compared to any other systems.

Contact us to know more (HERE)

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Smart Merchandising Technology

Unlock the power of analytics to win more online sales opportunities

As retail e-commerce sales worldwide are expected to grow by 56 percent over the next years, reaching about 8.1 trillion dollars by 2026, retailers cannot ignore the enormous potential of an online presence. But getting into each customer’s shoes to map their journey, understand their needs, and fulfill their demands can be quite challenging.

Arm your online sales data with analytics capabilities that can help you turn raw sales data into actionable insights to facilitate quick and informed decision-making, thus helping them offer the right products at the right time for sales maximization.

Here’s how Increff Online Analytics can make this happen

Connect with us now. Sign up for free HERE.

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Smart Merchandising Technology

Planning a sustainable future with Increff Merchandising Solution

Apparel companies, be they haute couture or mass-production chains, are at all times burdened with an inventory glut. This glut eventually results in deadstock that generates 53 million tonnes of litter for landfills each year in addition to the environmental consequences of the production of the garment itself. Approximately 30% of the clothing produced each season is never sold. As much alarming as these figures look, it is expected to further lift and increase to a blaring 150 million tons by the year 2030.

The crux of the matter is how we tackle this issue effectively and efficiently from the roots. It is at this stage that we shed light on the importance of accurate planning, and how an easy tool can help merchandisers optimize this process. Introducing Increff Merchandising Software

By analyzing and studying past sales, revenue, discounts, size cuts, and stock-outs, Increff Merchandising Software helps determine the ideal assortment mix at a granular level. It enables merchandisers to optimize the inventory at a store-style level and produce accurate data reports that act as a foundation to study sales trends from past seasons and focus on consumer trends and bestsellers. Clients can bet on their best performers and reduce overstocking substantially by redefining the sales pattern with better clarity.

Better planning and distribution have made a difference of up to 25% less inventory holding among users of Increff Merchandising Software.

Inter-store transfers also help to move the stock around and increase sell-through. Here the available stock among stores in a region is moved to a store where it has better performance potential. This will give the styles one last chance to perform before they go into discounting and sales. Increasing the visibility of styles also gives the last chance to rectify mistakes made in planning and selling the purchased stock.

The mammoth task of ensuring a sustainable future in its true essence only requires discipline and structure that we at Increff help merchandisers achieve via our Planning module. The industry has been guilt-ridden due to its major contribution to damaging the environment and we must approach the future cautiously. Let’s use intelligence in playing our part judiciously in this journey by using smart analytical tools to build a sustainable and resilient future.

Check how Increff smart technology solutions can help you walk on the path toward sustainable retailing. (LINK HERE).

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Smart Merchandising Technology

Dive into your sales data and interpret the right story

Retail is one of the most data-driven industries, from sales data to inventory details – every data point offers an opportunity to make your retail business more efficient and successful. The right data at the right time can help you understand customer behavior, estimate demand requirements, build forecasts, and make informed decisions.

Here’s how the Increff Business Intelligence module can help you turn raw sales data into actionable insights and facilitate quick and informed decision-making.

Connect with us for more details

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Business Technology

5 sure shot techniques to reduce costs in the retail supply chain

Creating a highly competitive retail supply chain depends on how well you’re able to control/reduce your costs. Incurring unnecessary costs can mean that your processes aren’t efficient enough, your funds are blocked in too many fixed assets, or your supply chain isn’t performing at an optimum level. These factors could pile up costs, impact margins, affect your competitiveness, and eventually make your business falter. 

Keeping costs under control is therefore one of the most essential aspects of supply chain management. Let’s look at 5 sure shot techniques that can help you reduce your costs:

  1. Localize fulfillment

Transportation accounts for about 40 to 50 percent of logistics costs, and 4 to 10 percent of the selling price of final products. Reducing the distance between your warehouse and customer clusters is, therefore, necessary to control overall costs. The closer your warehouse, or fulfillment center, is located to your customer cluster, the quicker fulfillment will be, which also means a significant reduction in fuel consumption. Regional Utilisation (RU), the idea of fulfilling maximum orders locally, is one of the topmost solutions for cost management in supply chains today. 

RU becomes even more effective when coupled with new-age merchandising solutions. Powered by data insights, this enables brands to conduct Pincode level analysis to place the right products at the right warehouse, or store, as per demand in a particular market. Shelving the right styles and size combinations can boost regional sales significantly while saving costs on logistics.

  1. Rethink warehousing!

As a brand expands, operating from a centralized warehouse can raise distribution costs and impact business quite significantly. In fact, as per Logistics Bureau, up to 12 percent of companies are unprofitable after distribution costs are taken into account.

This can be tackled with Distributed Warehousing which enables brands to expand into other regions, and support efforts toward regional fulfillment. Fulfillment of orders from various local and widely distributed warehouses is quick and cost-effective. 

Technology solutions like Increff Cloud warehousing allow brands to rent out spaces based on regional requirements. This means investment in warehouse infrastructure is not required and brands are able to convert CAPEX into OPEX thus controlling their overhead costs. In recent times, this has been further augmented with the rapid rise of 3PL players with whom brands can partner for renting warehousing spaces and adding value to the supply chain. 

  1.  Manage manpower costs

Costs incurred due to human labor is another significant portion of your expenditures. These include their wages, training and development costs, costs incurred in hiring additional/ad hoc labor during peak season sales, and adjusting manual errors committed by the workforce. 

With new-age WMS and merchandising solutions, brands can successfully avoid a lot of unnecessary labor costs and reduce errors in decision-making. Simple UX/ UI facilitates easy training which is extremely useful during crunch times when the technically skilled workforce is scarce or expensive. The ease of use increases the fungibility of staff and maximizes the use of the available workforce.

Automated solutions ensure continuous, seamless workflow with minimum decision-making errors. Digitizing inventory through serialization allows easy scanning of individual pieces of inventory for efficient tracking and reduces training time to 5-10 mins. This minimizes efforts and costs related to elaborate training and development of the human resource operating the system.

  1. Make data-backed decisions

Holding on to obsolete inventory can add up to 25 to 30 percent more to the unit cost of your products. Besides, the capital tied up with this inventory could account for about 15 percent of opportunity costs. Obsolete inventory is mostly a result of the inability to forecast demand accurately.

However, new-age merchandising solutions backed by relevant data enable brands to create product assortments with the right styles and sizes. This helps them meet the customer demand perfectly, without causing problems of overstocking or under-stocking, both of which impact costs, the former causing wastage and the latter calling for in-season redistribution. 

New-age solutions facilitate analysis of future demand over a time horizon of the next season or business year. Analyzing past sales data helps create a favorable estimate of the upcoming season stock requirements so the right quantity can be placed in the right location. Manufacturing the right quantity as per demand avoids overproduction, unnecessary expenditure, and resource wastage. 

  1. Use multiple channels for order fulfillment

Last mile connectivity is known to be the costliest part of the supply chain and accounts for about 53 percent of the total shipping costs. This calls for transforming order fulfillment through omnichannel retail, which is a fluid vision of fulfillment that allows customers to receive their orders in the faster possible time. 

Fulfillment options like Buy-Online-PickupIn-Store (BOPIC), store fulfillment, curbside pickup, home delivery, etc. are getting popular. Conversely, a customer visiting a store who is unable to find the desired product can make use of the ‘endless aisle’ online option to purchase it and get it delivered at home or the nearest store. This doesn’t just offer immense customer ease, but also allows brands to resort to the most cost-effective fulfillment option.

Cost control is the first step towards business process efficiency and with the above-given tips, brands can simply rule the roost among their competitors. Effective cost control has great benefits for not just the business stakeholders, but also the environment and society at large.

Categories
Technology

7 Biggest supply chain mistakes & how to solve them

You could be one of the most seasoned merchandisers and yet you could fall for some common supply chain mistakes. Often these result in inflated costs, poor workforce management, sub-optimal processes, delays in fulfillment, and lots of confusion and errors. It is necessary that these mistakes are brought under the scanner and fixed before they leave a severe dent on the business growth.

Below we discuss 7 common mistakes that need immediate attention. 

1. Choosing too many tech vendors

Mistake

It could be quite tempting to implement multiple tech solutions from different vendors, considered experts or specialists, at multiple stages of the supply chain. However, this can result in creation of silos, and a lack of coordination among different processes especially if there are separate screens to track the progress of each stage. Multiple dashboards require extensive coordination and great resource time in management, it affects inventory visibility and reduces clarity, leading to a fragmented workflow.  

Fix

Instead of installing separate tech solutions to monitor individual processes e.g. OMS, WMS, Returns Management, etc. within a warehouse, it is beneficial to find the right tech partner with a single comprehensive solution to ensure seamless workflow and inventory accuracy. A single view of inventory provides one source of truth and ensures transparency within the warehouse to boost efficiency by making coordination between different arms of retail operations easier. 

2. Inappropriate use of data

Mistake

Making the maximum use of data is crucial to take accurate supply chain decisions, cutting costs, and ensuring the right products reach the right customer clusters. Inaccurate analysis or working manually on tedious Excel worksheets can lead to incorrect interpretations and missed sales opportunities.

Fix

Install algorithm-based, intelligent merchandising solutions that automated decision-making to minimize human intervention, offer quick decisions, and ensure accurate merchandise planning, buying, and allocation. By drilling down analysis to the individual store level, decision-making becomes highly granular and accurate. This also enables brands to shelve the right stock at the right store in the right quantity, thus avoiding over or under-stocking and capturing sales effectively.

3. Ill inventory health in stores

Mistake

Fashion brands are especially sensitive to the health of the inventory in stores because the demand changes rapidly with seasons and trends. With expanding business requirements, brands could overlook the importance of keeping the right stock, in the right quantity, at the right location, and at the right time. This leads to problems like aging stock, leftover stock, and inadequate size and style. Stock brokenness can lead to the unavailability of popular styles and a significant loss of sales.

Fix

Ensure you conduct an accurate demand forecast for the upcoming season and regularly replenish the stores to meet in-season demand spikes. Pull back slow-moving inventory to make space for better-performing styles. By maintaining the health of the inventory, you also minimize the possibility of running out of popular styles. Investing in good inventory management software enables you to minimize human errors, streamline merchandising, and maintain a healthy inventory.

4. Poor cost management strategies

Mistake 

A number of poor management practices can lead to an unnecessary increase in costs. This starts with the overproduction of goods which overshoots the estimated market demand causing overstocking, obsolescence, and wastage. A mismatch in supply and market demand can cause wastage or shortage, and subsequently a rise in transportation costs due to in-season redistribution. As brands expand their territorial footprint, ordering from a faraway centralized warehouse can become costly. Likewise, investing in warehouse infrastructure where you hope the demand would increase, also means unnecessarily blocking precious resources.

Fix

Use data-backed solutions to accurately forecast demand for a particular customer cluster. Merchandising solutions can help you stock the right styles and sizes for each market, ensuring zero wastage. With distributed warehousing and collaboration with 3PL partners, you can avoid investing in warehousing infrastructure, and convert your CAPEX into OPEX. Likewise, with regional utilization brands can ensure that most of their orders are fulfilled locally, and transportation costs are reduced dramatically. 

New-age technology solutions like Increff Cloud Warehousing, enable automation and offer a simple UX/UI to avoid the need for costly and time-consuming training. This increases the fungibility of your manpower and reduces dependency on expensive skilled labor. 

5. Single delivery service

Mistake 

Brands that focus only on one sales channel (say a website or social media) and develop myopia for all the others are likely to face the heat of intense competition. This is because customers are increasingly looking for quick fulfillment and ease of delivery from multiple points of contact with the brand. Brands which are unable to rise up to this new trend are likely to become irrelevant as omnichannel begins to dominate order fulfillment.

Fix

Create a walled garden of brand touch-points and experiences around your customers. Adopting omnichannel fulfillment and the latest fulfillment practices such as BOPIS, curbside pickup, or in-store pickup, enhances customer convenience and satisfaction. Omnichannel is also a cost-effective practice as it enables the brands to choose the most economical option to deliver goods to the customer.

6. Inefficient returns management

Mistake 

Brands could commit the mistake of ignoring their returns management as an auxiliary function of their supply chain. This can cause delays in returns logistics, slowing down of resale, stockpiling and obsolescence, or in-transit damage. Lacking the data about the reasons for return or the most repeatedly returned items could lead to regular repetition of past mistakes.

Fix

Have an automation-based returns management solution in place that will streamline the entire returns process. It enables you to sort and grade the returned goods, resell the good stock, and redirect the refurbished stock to the secondary market. This minimizes waste and enables brands to earn maximum value from the returned goods. Serialization enables 100% tracking of inventory and capturing the exact reason for returns in the barcode. Repeatedly returned products can be easily quarantined, analyzed, and removed from circulation to prevent unnecessary expenditure.

7. Excess discounting to clear stock

Mistake

Discounting could seem like the easiest way out to clear the stock at the end of the season, or during periods of slow sales. However, excess and indiscriminate discounting don’t just impact your margins, it also affects your brand image. Excessive discounting dilute the reputation of your brand and your customers may find it hard to trust the pricing of your products in the future.

Fix

Increff Markdown optimization solution enables brands to offer the right percentage of discount, just tipping the balance towards conversions, and preventing an excess drop in margin. This depends upon the ongoing performance of an item and the status of its inventory.

The mistakes discussed above could cost your business dearly as the intensely competitive marketplace of today leaves very little room for inefficiencies. Brands, therefore, need to plug all the possible loopholes and ensure the highest possible efficiency in their supply chain processes.

Categories
Technology Warehouse Management

Who Says Automation is with Robots? Think Beyond!

While robotics has a significant role in automation, it is not the only way to achieve it. Robotics consists of robots/ machines substituting human labor, automation brings together machines, software, and upgraded technologies to perform tasks that are otherwise performed manually. In fact, investment in robots is a rather expensive affair! New-age warehouse management systems are smart and affordable to introduce automation in your warehouse.

Many fears of job losses are associated with the idea of automation. However, these fears are largely unfounded as automation merely seeks to supplement and empower human effort. By taking over critical decision-making and manual labor, automation boosts efficiency in processes and enhances accuracy many times over.   

In this blog, we bring forth the vast number of ways in which automation is reshaping the tasks and functions of supply chain management, and turning warehouses into incredible high-tech facilities!

Serialization of inventory: Serialization and barcoding allow effective tracking of inventory in the warehouse. It allows auto-mapping of inventory located at the time of picking, thus saving significant time and manual effort in searching for the same. Some activities are clubbed together and consolidated with serialization, thus making the process faster.

Much of our supply chain efforts revolve around seamless communication in mapping and locating the stock. Items can be easily scanned using wireless devices such as Bluetooth scanners, smartphones, handheld terminals, and barcode scanners. Wireless devices enable an easy workflow as the staff can conveniently carry them around to read barcodes and capture data in the central repository. 

Simple UX/UI: Solutions offered by Increff are easy-to-use and cost-effective owing to their user-friendly UX/UI which doesn’t require any specialized or prolonged training. Besides, in case of any errors by the staff, the system automatically blocks the user from advancing further, unless the wrong entry is resolved. This eliminates any chances of errors creeping into the system, which could snowball into costly mistakes right across the warehouse and beyond. 

Holidays and end-of-season could be strenuous for employees but a simple and user-friendly UX/UI can go a long way in reducing stress. An easy-to-use UX/UI permits collaboration and sharing of resources during peak hours to maximize manpower utilization. A user-friendly UX/UI ensures zero dependencies on skilled labor, so it’s easy to recruit extra hands in the time of need. The training time of 5 minutes, makes the system highly cost-effective and adaptable. 

Automated pick-list generation: Picklists can be generated basis channel and SLA priority. There’s no need to put the same styles or SKUs in the same bill. Serialization identifies barcodes and bins, to automatically generates picklists for wave-wise picking. The picker can then perform wave picking to save time and effort. Each item is picked and scanned. In case the picker chooses the wrong item, it will be automatically rejected by the system. This helps reduce errors in picking.

Put-to-light storage: To save time and boost efficiency while storing the products on the warehouse shelves, light devices are used to direct the operators. This semi-automatic technique enables the operator to ‘put’ the items in the right pigeon-hole where the light flashes. 

Infinite scalability: Serialization enables the warehouse staff to perform chaotic putaway. All the items are brought to the same sorting table. Barcodes are then scanned to read the order-related information after which the items are sent out on their respective routes. Chaotic putaway and storage allow maximum warehouse space utilization, and deal with remarkably huge volumes!

Seamless returns management: Barcoding captures all the information of the returned products, especially their order history and reason for return. The reason for returns can be analyzed to find the most regularly returned items (which also have a greater likelihood of being defective). Analyzing customer buying and returning patterns can provide insights to design future strategies to curb returns. Besides, visibility and traceability of returned items are essential to avoid losses and delays. This is again made possible by the serialization of each item.

Eliminating paper processes: Increff is an efficient multichannel, web-based WMS and order fulfillment system that offers a real-time (less than 15 seconds) order inventory sync feature. Serialization and barcode scanning eliminates paperwork within the warehouse and every step gets recorded in the system. Manual errors can be traced back to the warehouse worker and adequate corrections can be made to prevent such errors in the future. 

Automation is finding a tremendous application in the field of warehouse management. It has opened up new vistas for businesses, making them more proactive while handling their inventory and ensuring a high standard of service to customers. Despite all these outstanding features and futuristic benefits, automation-based solutions are highly cost-effective in terms of their upfront costs, training and development, integrations, and up-gradations.

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Technology Warehouse Management

5 Myths on Warehouse Inventory Management Busted

Warehouse automation is fast becoming one of the essentials of supply chain management. But there are some very common myths that have been making rounds in the industry and believe it or not, even the most seasoned professionals may fall for them. In this blog, we clear the air around some preconceived notions surrounding warehouse management systems. So let’s get started.

Myth 1: Automation is suitable only for large brands and retailers

Larger and well-established brands definitely require a robust automation infrastructure, as they simply cannot operate their mammoth business processes manually. But this doesn’t mean that the smaller brands can afford to do without automation. 

Strategic planning in today’s highly competitive business environment requires a highly data-driven approach right from the beginning. There’s very little margin for error, especially for brands just coming into the industry and up against formidable competitors, both new and old. 

Fast-changing business environment especially demands that brands receive a continuous stream of real-time inputs and leverage automation to make well-informed decisions. Automation also boosts the efficiency and accuracy of business processes like picking and packing, thus enabling the smaller brands to save on some precious resources.

Myth 2: Adopting advanced warehousing means we must completely change every process

A drastic change in technology can significantly hamper the ongoing warehouse processes. When migrating to an advanced WMS solution, many brands are in fact apprehensive of bringing their warehouse processes to a halt.

These fears are entirely unfounded. New age warehousing solutions are often on plug-and-play rather than the rip-and-replace model. This means there is no pressure on brands to suddenly upgrade to a new system and do away with the old processes. The migration with solutions like Increff WMS is smooth, gradual, and well-planned, causing absolutely no disruptions to the ongoing warehouse operations. 

Myth 3: Automation means robotics

The word ‘automation’ instantly conjures up images of a massive assembly line with robotic arms fixing parts into automobiles. But that’s a very narrow view of the idea of automation. In reality, a number of technologies — both physical and digital — come together to set up automation in a business process. 

Transformation in warehouse management is all about automating the movement of inventory within and out of the warehouse with minimal human assistance. It seeks to eliminate repetitive, labor-intensive, manual data entry, and analysis tasks, with automation-driven processes. Most often automation in warehouses simply refers to the use of software to replace manual tasks.

Automation begins with the serialization and barcoding of all items, which makes them traceable both within the warehouse and throughout the supply chain. These are scanned and tracked using Bluetooth scanners and handheld terminals (HHT). The use of digital solutions such as warehouse management systems, merchandising software, and returns management systems allows brands to manage their inventory, take assortment-related decisions, and handle returns with greater efficiency.

Myth 4: New WMS will require expensive, time-consuming training

Advanced technology may appear rather formidable and hard to handle. It may often lead to resistance amongst the staff due to fears of the unexpected. For business owners, it could mean added costs of elaborate training interventions. But a cursory look at some of the new-age software solutions is enough to bust this myth.

WMS solutions like Increff WMS offer an incredibly simple UX/UI and workers can get started on the system with just 5 minutes of training. This makes cross-functioning of your existing staff easy and precludes the need to hire any specialized workforce for operating the system. In times of labor shortage, this feature can especially come in handy and help brands save costs on skilled labor. Besides, the implementation and deployment of the solutions are very quick and effective.

Quite contrary to the prevailing notions, therefore, new WMS solutions facilitate and empower your workforce, rather than pose a threat to it. 

Myth 5: Warehouse operations must shut down during audits

Audits are a frequent feature of warehouse management and can be quite time-consuming. This doesn’t mean the normal warehouse operations must be suspended during audits. With new-age warehouse management solutions, audits can be performed with utmost accuracy, while operations in the warehouse go on as usual.

Contrary to the above myths, new-age warehouse management systems powered by automation, make warehousing highly efficient, easy, and cost-effective. As business competition intensifies, automation is fast becoming an essential prerequisite for brands, no matter how big or small.