Category: Warehouse Management

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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.

Read: Perfect Warehousing Solution for Higher Efficiency and Inventory Management

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. 

Read: How to choose a warehouse management system?

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. 

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Technology Warehouse Management

Top 5 Challenges Within the Warehouse and How to Solve Them

As retail and e-commerce turn into highly competitive spaces warehouse management is also becoming more and more challenging. Customers these days expect lightning-fast deliveries, convenient shopping experiences, and easy returns. This requires greater flexibility, proactive handling, and a technology-driven warehouse management system backing the sales channels. 

With new trends such as omnichannel taking full effect, the challenges are further complicated as warehousing now requires a highly customer-centric approach. Competition is getting increasingly intense as smaller brands operating neck to neck with established giants, seek to carve out their place in the market. This often results in dropping margins and demands greater efficiency to stay afloat. 

As such, accurate inventory management, optimum picking and packing, transparency, and traceability of items are some of the must-have features of warehouse management systems, to ensure the highest levels of customer satisfaction and brand loyalty. 

Let’s take a look at the top 5 challenges in a warehouse today, and ways to tackle them effectively.

  1. Inventory tracking during BAU (Business as usual) and during peak sales period

As businesses expand, tracking the inventory manually can be extremely tardy and hectic. Inventory digitization and serialization ensure seamless inventory tracking within and outside the warehouse. This is all the more crucial during peak sales periods like the end-of-season sales or festive sales since only an automated system can ensure continuous, real-time tracking when the stakes are the highest. Barcoding and serialization help cut down human errors and inaccuracies. This enables warehouse personnel to log the inventory correctly and locate it easily as and when they wish to move it. 

Read: Choosing the Right WMS to Manage the Holiday Season Rush

2. Efficient Picking and Packing to Meet SLA Requirements

Undue delays and inexplicable inaccuracies can turn out to be the most difficult challenges in meeting SLAs. This, in the long run, can result in an increase in the rate of returns, higher customer churn, and loss of revenue. These issues can be tackled with efficient picking and packing so that only the right products in the right quantities are shipped. 

Increff WMS express picking enables auto picklist-based SLA and channel priority to ensure express delivery orders are dispatched on priority. Pick efficiency is enhanced using the wave-wise picking technique. This way the picker doesn’t have to go to the same aisle multiple times to pick. With its image-assisted picking and packing, Increff ensures 100% order picking accuracy.

3. Minimizing Wastage and Obsolescence

Poor stock management is one of the leading reasons for wastage and obsolescence. Perishable products can especially be sensitive to expiry dates and highly prone to wastage. With automated solutions like Increff WMS, retailers can put in place an alert notification for batches approaching their expiry or sell-by date. Commonly known as the FEFO (First Expiry First Out) technique, this significantly avoids wastage and obsolescence in warehouses, especially for brands dealing in Pharma, Cosmetics, and Consumables. 

4. Maximizing Resource Efficiency and Productivity

As more and more players emerge and compete in the market, there’s growing pressure on each brand —both big and small—to improve their bottom line, maintain healthy margins, and boost productivity. By offering a simple UI, Increff enables brands to maximize the efficiency of their warehouse staff with the training of no more than 10-15 minutes. This is especially crucial during peak sales when brands have to hire additional personnel or conduct cross-functional training from within their staff. 

The system generates auto-alerts at every step and will not allow the warehousing staff to move ahead without resolving the previous error. This ensures every step is captured in the system and the errors get corrected at each step and are not amplified. By capturing the picker ID in the system, there is greater traceability and accountability for errors. 

Combining and executing multiple steps in the process also ensures high performance. Increff enables picking and auditing simultaneously, thus cutting down on any potential downtime. 

5. Faster re-commerce and returns management

In the year 2020, Americans returned goods worth a whopping $428 billion which made for a return rate of 10.6%. Quite clearly, managing returns is a serious challenge that brands must overcome proactively to ensure optimum profitability. Time-consuming returns may lead to loss of sales as products may not be visible on the sales channels immediately. 

To reduce the chances of loss of sales, WMS solutions enable brands to conduct a quality check of the returned goods, and sort them as resaleable, refurbishable, and rejected. In case the goods are rejected, capturing the exact reason for rejection can help in the correction of future errors, conduct vendor analysis, and staff training. With the right labels, tags, and barcoding, there are zero chances of mixing the returned goods, keeping the whole returns process streamlined. 

Having the right warehouse management system in place can help deal with all the above challenges with greater ease and agility. In fact, a cutting-edge WMS ensures brands stay ahead of the competition and ensure the highest levels of customer satisfaction and brand loyalty. 

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Business Warehouse Management

How Technology is Propelling the Growth of D2C Brands

Brands that have a well-established presence among their customers can benefit significantly by opting for the D2C route of marketing. In the US alone, D2C sales are expected to reach $175 billion by 2023.  Even new and emerging brands find tremendous merit in D2C marketing as they wish to gain better control over their brand, eliminate the intermediary and acquire complete ownership of the customer’s journey. Technology has helped build a strong foundation for D2C brands to promote business growth:

– Emergence of easy SaaS-based website development platforms like Shopify, Magento, etc. have made it easy for merchandisers to open their own stores. 

– Quick preintegration with marketplaces have made it easy to expand the network and reach. 

– Smooth integration of SaaS-based, cloud-hosted Tech solutions help analyze demand and inventory levels.

Benefits of D2C

  • D2C enables brands to gain complete ownership of the value chain as well as the customer experience. They can create on-brand experiences throughout the customer journey and build rapport without having to rely on intermediaries. 
  • In a business world dominated by data, D2C gives brands a unique opportunity to capture comprehensive information about their target customer groups, thus enabling them to craft the right products, services, and communications.
  • Logistically, D2C makes a lot more sense as brands can directly reach out to their customers if they have a healthy online presence. It may even result in lower costs and better margins for the brands.
  • D2C is in line with the emerging trend of omnichannel commerce which allows customers to interact with the brands through multiple touch-points. Intermediary platforms like Amazon can hardly be expected to provide omnichannel services for each individual brand.

Read: If you are going D2C with Shopify, Scale Faster with Increff

Challenges in going D2C and how technology is helping brands solve them

While D2C enables brands to retain and consolidate their identity and reach out to their customers directly, it also comes with its fair share of challenges. 

One such challenge is the direct confrontation with retailers who invariably have well-established marketing and communication channels. Brands pitting themselves against these intermediaries could get bogged down, as they will have to invest heavily in the marketing efforts that would otherwise have been borne by the intermediary.

But many of the challenges that D2C brings forth can be tackled with the help of technology-driven solutions. 

  • Maximizing the reach: Exposing 100% inventory and maximizing reach through a brand’s own website and multiple marketplaces through a single tech platform.
  • Real-time inventory-order sync: To ensure 100% of orders are captured and there are no cancellations due to overbooking.
  • Cloud warehousing: Possibility to outsource warehousing, without CapEx, to Industry experts and 3PL providers. This allows brands to build a strong warehousing network to capture customers at every point of sales.
  • Efficient and error-free fulfillment: Efficient warehousing is ensured with the use of technology and automation. Automation of processes helps minimize human decision-making errors and delays in order fulfillment. Digitization of inventory ensures 100% traceability and prevents wastage or loss of products in the warehouse. 
  • Simple UX/UI and easy accessibility: Ready dashboards to view brand, SKU & style performance at individual stakeholder levels from warehousing manager to Brand CEO. 
  • Reports of actionable insights: Easy to generate reports for analysis. Understanding channel performance and brand performance so that quick revisions can be done. 
  • Returns management: Easy returns analysis to capture the actual pain points and address them to minimize future returns. Rapid recommence to ensure maximum sales.

Read: How to Choose the Best WMS for your E-commerce Business to Maximize Revenue

The emergence of D2C aggregators (Thrasio-style business model) in pushing the growth of D2C brands

A new trend on the D2C horizon is the emergence of Thrasio-style D2C aggregators that acquire new promising brands and help them expand. These brands often lack the support and technical know-how which is provided by the acquiring company. The companies also offer a common base of infrastructure that helps them support multiple brands. Besides, smaller brands also get ready access to technology upgrades which is essential to survive in the highly competitive marketplace of today. 

Companies like Perch, Moonshot, GlobalBees, Mensa Brands, G.O.A.T Brand Labs, etc. are following the footsteps of Thrasio to power the growth of D2C brands. Thrasio-style aggregators identify brands that are doing well on marketplaces and acquire them to provide expertise in marketing, brand development, and supply chain management, thus pushing for exponential growth. Having a coherent customer base, quality niche products, and a Thrasio-style backer now seems to be the perfect recipe for creating a successful D2C brand.

D2C is one of the fastest emerging trends on the e-commerce horizon. All that brands need is the ability to scale faster with the help of best-in-class technology as well as some Thrasio-style financial backing. While the challenges are many, D2C as a trend is coping well to create a level playing field for smaller and newer brands.

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Warehouse Management

The FEFO Method for Expiry Date Inventory Management Guidelines

Industries that deal in perishable or low shelf-life products such as baby care, cosmetics, personal care, etc. can incur significant losses due to obsolescence or expiry of stock. It is, therefore, crucial for them to assign expiry dates for each batch, and push the near-expiry stock to the stores first. Automated WMS solutions now enable brands to pick as per expiry dates, and set accurate timelines and notifications, alerting them when a particular batch is about to get expired.

What is FEFO?

First Expiry First Out (FEFO) is a variant of the well-known First-In-First-Out (FIFO) method of stock rotation, but with a focus on a product’s expiry date, as opposed to its manufacturing date or date on which it was shelved in the warehouse. Under this technique, the product or batch with the earliest expiration date is pushed to the stores first, to avoid its obsolescence.

FEFO inventory management ensures that each product that is being sold is well within the expiry date, is fresh, and fit for consumption. FEFO also avoids the labour costs and efforts associated with inspection and checking of expiry dates, which could be quite tedious and time-consuming. With WMS tools like Increff WMS, brands can have complete visibility of their stock, and get help in expiry date management without being overwhelmed by any manual effort.

How can barcoding (inventory serialization) improve the supply chain

Barcoding or inventory serialization makes it highly convenient to manage inventory, and track products in the warehouse and throughout the supply chain. By storing the complete information of a product, a barcode avoids errors and inaccuracies, which could bleed across functions and snowball along the supply chain.

With barcoding, brands can benefit from automatic product identification, recognition, and data implementation. This means hours’ worth of effort is accomplished in a few minutes, significantly boosting the overall productivity and reducing labour costs.

One of the major benefits of barcoding is quality control and avoiding the obsolescence of products. A barcode stores batch numbers and product expiry information, which can be accessed by WMS tools to pick and ship the near-expiry batches first.

FEFO helps reduce inventory wastage

FEFO inventory rotation can improve your profitability and reduce wastage of inventory. By automating the entire process of exposing and shipping out the near-expiry batches first, retailers no longer have to be constantly worried about wastage due to inventory expiry. In the case of industries like food processing or fast-food chains, this method allows using up all the ingredients while they’re still fresh to consume, avoiding wastage and spoilage.

Benefits of FEFO warehouse and inventory software

Businesses get a number of benefits with a simple switch to a FEFO warehouse and inventory software. These have a significant impact on not just the backed processes but also their product marketability and brand reputation.

  1. Increased buyer confidence: Most customers check the product expiry dates while making a purchase at a store. Some customers who perceive a product to be too close to the expiration date can drop the idea of purchasing altogether. Product freshness is an important determinant of consumer interest across industries, especially in the case of products with low shelf life.

    With FEFO, you can get items off the shelves with the longest possible lead time on the expiration date. Distributors and stores receive the products well in advance of expiration. This gives the end customers a sense of confidence and establishes their faith in the brand, for always offering fresh products.
  1. Reduce the number of expired goods: Every retailer wants to ensure they eliminate or minimize the number of unsellable and expired goods on their shelves. With FEFO, they can ensure that their inventory management software picks and ships goods according to the approaching expiry dates. This reduces the risk of having unsellable goods on the shelves and also the piling inventory storage costs. FEFO enables retailers to avoid deadstock, and therefore also the cost of stock expiring on their shelves. 
  2. Manage physical layout of warehouses: With inventory management focussed on the expiry dates of a package, the warehouse follows a layout that enables faster and more convenient picking of items that are approaching their expiry date, thus streamlining the warehouse inventory management.
  3. Streamline the flow of items: It is very important for the warehouse staff to know the expiry dates of products and have an estimate of how long all the processes take on the floor. This ensures the items flow in a smooth way and the best results are guaranteed.

FEFO warehouse and inventory software automate your picking, packing, and shipping by keeping the expiry date at the very center of inventory management. This offers significant benefits in terms of streamlining your backend processes, enhancing your brand value, and boosting customer satisfaction.

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Warehouse Management

6 Critical Reasons to Outsource Your Warehousing Operations

When deciding whether to outsource warehousing and distribution, it is essential to consider if your business is experiencing rapid growth, struggling with inefficiencies, or spending too much money on warehousing and distribution. When faced with supply chain difficulties, you have a choice to make; you can keep trying to manage logistics internally or outsource your logistics to a warehousing and fulfillment partner. A warehousing provider can help you optimize your supply chain and improve business operations.

If you are unsure which option is best suited for your company, look for indications that might help you decide. The following are the most critical indicators that it may be the right time to outsource your logistics to a warehousing specialist:

  1. Need to scale your business faster

When a company proliferates, it often does not have the time or resources to manage its logistics. Outsourcing warehousing and distribution to a third-party provider can help businesses scale more quickly and efficiently. A warehousing partner can help you manage your inventory, shipping, and delivery processes, allowing you to focus on expanding your core business. The management need not worry about hiring and training new staff, high seasonal demand, quick order fulfillment, and so on. This gives managers the bandwidth required to take up more critical tasks that can help scale businesses faster by better allocating resources.

  1. Struggling with inefficiencies in your supply chain

If you are experiencing:

  1. Slower order fulfillment time leading to higher customer cancelations and lower sales 
  2. Mismanagement or loss of inventory inside the warehouse
  3. Inability to capture 100% orders from multiple sales channels
  4. Higher dependency on manpower within the warehouse and across the supply chain
  5. Delays and inaccuracies in order processing due to human decision-making errors

Outsourcing warehousing and distribution may be a good solution. A warehousing provider can help you optimize your supply chain and improve delivery time. Businesses need a WMS to report order statuses in real-time to succeed with omnichannel fulfillment. With advanced tech features provided by the service provider, retailers have greater flexibility in decision-making. Also, your company may choose which site, and how much space is best suited to fulfill a consumer order in the fastest time frame.

  1. Experiencing high costs associated with warehousing and distribution

If you spend a lot of money on warehousing and distribution, it may be time to outsource these operations to a warehousing partner. You can save money on labor, real estate, and other expenses by outsourcing. One of the biggest expenses associated with operating an internal warehouse is the capital investment required to set it up. By outsourcing this function, you can switch from a CapEx to an OpEx model, thereby freeing up locked cash flow. There will also be a significant cost reduction in updating the rapidly changing technology, warehouse management software (WMS), in the retail space.

Specialized warehousing partners focus on improving their services by updating to the latest technology. The cost reduction here is not just in terms of adopting new technology but also the efforts that will be spent on training the staff. One of the other advantages of outsourcing warehousing operations is the reduction in shipping costs. By working with a warehouse partner that has widespread centers, across the country, the shipping cost incurred to deliver the products to customers or other locations can be reduced. 

  1. Declining Customer Satisfaction

Late deliveries, mistakes and inaccuracies in order processing, and damaged products are all reasons for customer dissatisfaction. It is a priority to take action before your company’s reputation is harmed. This procedure begins by identifying supply chain problems and implementing modifications to your systems to address them. A more accessible and practical option is outsourcing your order fulfillment and shipments. With a warehousing partner handling these aspects of your company, you may observe how digitization, industrial kitting, and stringent quality control methods can improve consumer happiness. 

  1. Addressing fluctuating demand patterns

A demand surge is generally the consequence of many consumers rushing to buy supplies or goods simultaneously. Natural calamities, cultural events, such as the recent COVID-19 epidemic, and spontaneous changes in demand may result in supply chain disruptions and fluctuations in the market. By expanding or contracting warehouse operations as needed, a warehousing partner can assist businesses in attaining the desired scalability. These fluctuations often make it challenging to manage warehousing operations in-house resulting in loss of sales to more easily available competitor products. 

  1. Handling messy reverse logistics

A tried-and-true reverse logistics procedure is an excellent method to speed up return pick-up and processing, to minimize time and costs associated with returns management. With retail going omnichannel, it is essential to streamline returns processing for better sales. Distributed warehousing, and making return pick-ups geographically streamlined, by returning to the closest warehouse, will enable rapid re-commerce for the next purchase.

While the precise omnichannel order fulfillment strategy will vary from firm to firm, one thing is sure: companies are aware they must aggressively embrace Omnichannel selling and fulfill those purchases as quickly as possible. It is, therefore, a priority to understand the current stage of your company’s warehouse management system wms and order fulfillment process to decide if it may be time already to outsource your fulfillment solutions.

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Warehouse Management

How Brands Can Benefit From Outsourcing Warehouse Operations

Traditional warehousing may not cut it anymore to meet customer expectations of speedy order fulfilment. To support multi-channel sales – warehouse space, capacity, and operations should be optimised and aligned with the consumer demand. The main goal behind warehouse operations is to effectively store and distribute the product you sell at the shortest lead time and minimal cost. 

In the fast-paced digital age, one of the most crucial decisions businesses must make is the decision of warehousing. Retail brands may not always be experts in warehousing logistics, and companies must seek domain expertise to make operations more efficient and customer-centric. 

Here is a list of benefits that companies can derive by outsourcing warehousing and fulfilment solutions to a Warehousing provider

  1. Enhanced focus on core business operations: Warehousing is not the core business for any brand but a requirement. The case for outsourcing ‘non-core’ business operations is vital, especially if those operations are not direct revenue earners. Brands can focus on their areas of expertise and outsource warehouse operations to a company that specialises in them. This will free up time and resources for the business, which can be used for strategising and expanding the core business. 
  2. Multi-location presence: Many businesses have several warehouses to assist them to be successful in the competitive retail market. A competent outsourced order fulfilment service may help you determine your company’s best fulfilment centre locations based on your customer demographics.
  3. Domain Expertise: When your company contracts with a suitable outsourcing partner, excellent service backed by a comprehensive agreement are provided by people who are experts in the domain. A 3PL service provider has expertise and experience in transport documentation, import and export, worldwide compliance, and economic rules. Businesses considering expanding into foreign markets can benefit from the logistics assistance and knowledge that the outsourced partner can provide, reducing costly delays and cycle time and making entering a new area simpler.
  4. Reduced Costs: Warehousing and fulfilment are resource-intensive activities. By outsourcing warehousing to a third-party logistics provider, retailers can negotiate better warehouse space, labour, and transportation rates. This is because the 3PL already has the necessary infrastructure and can offer more significant economies of scale – infrastructure, operations or maintenance. Outsourcing warehousing operations can help you cut costs on employing warehouse staff, technology, infrastructure, security, insurance, etc.  
  5. Reduced CAPEX: With no in-house warehouses, your company is free from the associated property leases, warehouse workforce and equipment costs. Setting up a dedicated warehouse space and fulfilment centre requires substantial capital investments. The need for capital only increases as the sales volumes grow, tying up a lot of cash flow. Outsourcing warehouse and fulfilment solutions free up cash, allowing for better resource allocation.
  1. Trained Workforce: Training is essential. Strategic and competitive advantage can be gained by a skilled, well-trained, well-motivated supply chain team that is enthusiastic and confident. You will need an appropriately trained and motivated workforce to run a successful logistics operation. Warehouse outsourcing provides the necessary workforce trained in the latest operating methods. 
  2. Latest in Technology: When outsourcing warehouse operations, technology maintenance and upgrades are automatic, including costs in the negotiated contracted price. A warehouse fulfilment centre has complex processes – from material handling and storage to order picking-packing and shipping. It requires the latest warehouse technology, systems, and software to run smoothly. Also, warehouse processes are constantly evolving with the latest trends in fulfilment. A warehouse partner that is up-to-date on the latest warehouse technology and practices can bring immense value to your business.
  3. Enhanced Customer Satisfaction: Outsourcing your warehousing ensures that your business is partnering with professionals with a proven track record for success. A 3PL can help improve warehouse efficiency by streamlining processes and implementing best practices. This leads to increased order throughput and decreased order cycle times, which improves customer satisfaction. In addition, a 3PL is constantly innovating and implementing new technologies and solutions to improve warehouse efficiency. This helps businesses stay ahead of the curve and maintain a competitive edge.
  4. Easy Scalability: A 3PL can provide the necessary warehouse space and capacity to accommodate any business growth. In addition, a 3PL can quickly ramp up operations to meet seasonal demand or unexpected surges in demand. A 3PL can help companies achieve the desired scalability by expanding or contracting warehouse operations as needed. This allows companies to grow at an exponential rate without worrying about additional warehouse infrastructure and staff.
  5. Better Returns Management: 3PLs have experience managing both incoming and outgoing shipments. This knowledge allows logistics firms to handle almost any returns inexpensively without investing in technology or training. A well-managed return process is beneficial to your brand since it enhances brand loyalty and reflects positively.

Retail brands must seriously consider letting domain experts manage logistical aspects of the business. The right synergies with warehousing partners are more cost-effective and make for a streamlined order fulfilment process. The 3PL will take care of all the logistics for you, allowing you to focus on your core business activities.

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Smart Merchandising Technology Warehouse Management

How D2C Brands Scale Exponentially with New-Age Inventory Management & WMS Solution

D2C e-commerce is growing faster with increasing penetration of mobile and internet services, and the mushrooming growth of 3PL companies, especially in the urban areas. It offers benefits like cost-cutting, greater control of the supply chain, better quality management, and more efficient returns management. 

All this requires automated support in terms of inventory storage, order management, packaging, and logistics. This is where a new-age Warehouse Management Solution (WMS) plays a crucial role in inventory management for D2C businesses.

Inventory management and merchandise planning for e-commerce

As soon as brands take charge of their supply chain, a number of technical areas demand attention. Foremost is optimizing warehouse space to expedite order picking and smoothen overall order processing. Synchronizing incoming orders and inventory, establishing the best possible floor plans, and picking rules, are some of the prime functions of a new-age WMS. 

Maintaining inventory accuracy with unique piece barcoding assigned to each incoming piece in the warehouse is critical. Hand-held devices used for order picking, synchronize with the WMS and display complete product information on scanning the barcodes. The barcodes capture individual product details to help detect their exact location within the warehouse. It increases accountability by recording details of every action performed on the item within the warehouse, and also ensures order picking efficiency, enhances accuracy, and prevents errors. 

Assortment planning, space management, and in-season planning are some aspects of inventory management orchestrated by an automated inventory management solution. These solutions make use of analytics and algorithms to ensure inventory planning is aligned with the long-term strategy of a brand for a given customer segment.

Managing returns and rapid re-commerce

Returns management is a serious concern for growing brands. To keep returns under check and the cost of re-commerce under control, D2C returns management requires an automated solution.

An automated WMS helps brands accept incoming orders, sync with the inventory, and ship them as soon as possible. It helps trace returns, avoids delays, streamlines return management, and reduces the cost of return logistics. Products spending too much time on their way back to the warehouse are at a greater risk of getting damaged. Returns management solution finds the shortest route back, enabling brands to expose the stock for resale as soon as possible. It sorts products into categories such as refurbished, resalable, and unsaleable, based on which it disperses them in the value chain. As D2C brands seek to gain complete control of their supply chain, a comprehensive returns management policy is necessary and must be centered on automated returns management software.

Read : The Fair, Flawed, and Fouled E-commerce Returns

Markdown optimization for D2C brands

Setting the right price could be a daunting task for brands. Going too low could affect their relationship with retailers and confuse customers about the authenticity or quality of the products. Dynamic pricing, based on data-driven algorithms, takes into account a diverse set of factors like competitors’ prices, demand-and-supply dynamics, and levels of inventory. Dynamic pricing in e-commerce helps brands keep their pricing aligned with their channel strategy in a given marketplace.

Demand-based inventory distribution

For brands expanding over larger geographies, distributing inventory to multiple warehouses, so that the products are located closest to the customers, is the best way to reduce costs and ensure quick fulfillment. As brands expand their businesses, it becomes more expensive to ship products from a single warehouse as compared to renting out space at multiple locations. Tools such as Increff Regional Utilization ensures brands and retailers have the right levels of inventory as close to their customers as possible. The tool is completely web-based and performs millions of computations within minutes to find the right level and style of stock for each fulfillment center. 

D2C poses a number of challenges for brands but automation offsets these by providing sharp insights, precise allocation, and efficient handling. This makes brands highly competitive by keeping a check on delays, costs, labor overheads, and space or stock wastage.

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Technology Warehouse Management

How To Choose The Best WMS For Your E-Commerce Business To Maximize Revenue?

With the increasing digitization of inventory records, product codes, and warehouse registers, human intervention in warehouse management has decreased drastically. To ensure seamless inventory management, a cutting-edge e-commerce Warehouse Management System (WMS) is essential.

Formidable challenges like planning and tracking inventory, minimizing delays in fulfillment, and holding minimum possible inventory can be effectively tackled by having only the best e-commerce WMS in place. Having a water-tight strategy for e-commerce order fulfillment and warehouse management can significantly boost your customer experience and loyalty, which will subsequently translate into improved revenues and profitability in the long run.

How to choose the right WMS

There are a number of factors to consider while choosing the right WMS. Here are the main ones:

  • Accuracy: An inaccurate or misplaced entry can create huge, unnecessary complexities across business functions. Precision is one of the most essential features of a WMS to avoid inexplicable losses and complications.
  • Scalability: As the e-commerce business grows and expands, the WMS must also be able to catch up. New-age This requires a predetermined understanding with the supplier in terms of integrations and technology upgrades.
  • ROI: It is important to consider all the costs that come with a WMS, including the hidden costs of training, integrations and upgrades. A seemingly cheaper WMS can often carry higher hidden costs. A comprehensive cost-benefit analysis, keeping your requirements in mind, is essential.
  • Integrations: Rather than spending extra on writing integrations, it is better to have a WMS that has a catalogue of existing off-the-shelf integrations. Integrations make your WMS more flexible by allowing it to interface with other ERP solutions seamlessly.
  • Cloud vs. On-site: Having a cloud-based WMS is often cost-effective in terms of upgrades and maintenance since the vendor is responsible for both. Cloud-based solutions also allow you to avoid any equipment-based expenditure.
  • Ease-of-use and training: Having an intuitive and user-friendly WMS allows your employees to adopt it without any training overheads and errors. This is especially important when you hire an ad hoc workforce in times of peak demand.

What to expect from an ideal WMS for online commerce? 

E-commerce Warehouse Management Systems (WMS) can help streamline processes by tracking the inventory within the warehouse and improving e-commerce warehousing significantly. Let’s look at some benefits that an ideal e-commerce WMS software provides:

  • An efficient inventory management system streamlined through automation
  • Optimal inventory visibility and tracking of diverse styles and quantities through a fully digitized process
  • Reduced inventory holding by selling more stock through 100% inventory exposure
  • Reduced operational costs due to minimal manual work required
  • System of automated alerts for soon-to-expire items ahead of time
  • Minimized delay and loss because of computerized inventory with no room for human error
  • Increased scalability and flexibility for your business with no audit delays
  • Faster e-commerce order processing and online order fulfilment 
  • Maximum sales captured with no minimum holding required 
  • Increased revenue for your business through more efficient business processes

How can efficient warehousing help e-commerce brands capture maximum sales and increase revenues?

E-commerce WMS helps enhance customer experience, retention, and loyalty by providing the following benefits:

  • User-friendly and intuitive WMS is great for online retail warehouse staff. The WMS comes with a simple-to-use dashboard customized as per the stakeholder’s level and requirement. With Increff WMS, inter-warehouse transfer of stock is also possible.
  • An ideal e-commerce WMS solution simplifies order picking and packing and ensures accuracy through serialization. It greatly improves inventory visibility and helps ensure correct shipment, complete and accurate order fulfilment, and a shorter cycle time overall. It also reduces the inventory holding period and makes upscaling your e-commerce business more feasible. Being completely automated, the entire process is paperless, uses little manpower, and eliminates the chance of human error.
  • A WMS provides a single view of inventory across the marketplace and a seamless order-inventory sync in less than 30 seconds. You can switch to such a system in as little as under 7 days without overhauling your entire warehousing system. The process of transition itself is also hassle-free. For instance, the time taken to train new users to switch to Increff’s Assure WMS solution is only 5 minutes. Besides, no data is lost in transition or system downtime. 
  • Best warehouse management systems for online retailers can guarantee 100% e-commerce order fulfilment. It ensures minimized lead time and logistical costs due to optimal inventory management. This contributes substantially to higher sales and revenue, thus positioning your e-commerce business as a strong contender amidst competing brands.

A great WMS solution thus lies at the very heart of modern e-commerce warehouses, enabling brands to reach out to their customers more efficiently and helping them excel in an increasingly competitive marketplace.

Categories
Regional Utilization Technology Warehouse Management

How Demand-Based Inventory Distribution Helps Future-Proof Your E-Commerce Business

As competition intensifies across the e-commerce space, brands must offer faster deliveries and efficient order fulfillment to stay competitive. Being able to project demand accurately and maintain inventory levels according to customer expectations is crucial.

A major factor influencing customers’ perception of a brand is the time taken by a retailer to deliver an item to their doorstep. Efficient and accurate order fulfillment has become key to building a strong e-commerce customer base, and it is equally critical for small and large businesses. While global brands/large businesses need to maintain their brand reputation and customer base, smaller brands need to build their customer base with perfect order fulfillment.

These trends are closely linked to demand-based inventory distribution and help brands create more efficient supply chains, ensuring better customer retention, brand loyalty, and soaring revenues.

The need for optimized demand-based inventory distribution

Optimized, demand-based inventory distribution allows brands to not just save on unnecessary logistical costs, but also avoid frustrating delays. It has helped brands save 10-12% on logistics and enhance overall margins by 30%. There are four main ways in which maximum regional utilization supports demand-based distribution:

  1. Faster deliveries: E-commerce customers these days expect same-day deliveries from brands. Storing items in the warehouse closest to the customers enables brands to fulfill orders quickly and maintain faster delivery cycles.
  2. Low rate of returns: Fulfilment delays are one of the major factors behind order returns. Demand-based inventory distribution ensures delivery of items within SLAs and reduces the rate of returns significantly.
  3. Splitting inventory smartly: Regional utilization allows brands to split inventory amongst warehouses in such a way that demand is always fulfilled from the nearest warehouses. Demand analysis is conducted at the pin code level and helps reduce order transit time, mishandling or damage in transit, and lower shipping costs.
  4. Cutting down on logistics costs: SKUs suggested by smart RU solutions are based on the best possible Pincode level warehouse-products mapping. The algorithm runs by processing data such as regional demand, warehouse capacity, and seasonality.

Tools to optimize regional utilization

Increff Distributed Inventory Optimization tool helps distribute inventory in a smart way to enable faster shipments at lower shipping costs. It enables brands and retailers to optimize Regional Utilization (RU) at the pin-code level in a hassle-free way. Since inventory placement services can be quite complex for brands with a high number of SKUs and low depth, constant demand analysis, and in-depth logistics planning are required. With this module, brands can leverage smart inventory allocation across multiple warehouses, and achieve higher regional utilization by warehouse fulfillment outsourcing locally. 

The role of distributed warehousing in demand-based inventory distribution

Distributed warehousing also known as cloud warehousing, allows brands to partner with third-party logistics (3PL) service providers, and rent warehouse space in different locations to stock inventory based on local demand. This provides several advantages to e-commerce brands including increased efficiency, reduced long-term rent, storage costs, shipping costs, and faster order fulfillment.

  • Distributed warehousing helps brands minimize risks in case of local emergencies such as fire or natural catastrophe. Having products located at various locations helps insure against such risks.
  • Distributed warehousing also allows you to enter new markets rather than be restricted to one region. As your capacity for fulfillment increases in a new market, all that is required is a marketing effort to establish a new customer base.
  • When a product is located closest to the customer, it is very likely that it appears with the highest ranking on a marketplace. This is because the speed of delivery is one of the heaviest weighted parameters for product ranking.
  • As you expand and start selling higher volumes across regions, the shipping costs from a single warehouse will exceed the cost of an additional e-commerce warehouse. Expansion across regions, therefore, necessitates distributed warehousing.

How cloud warehousing helps e-commerce businesses?

It helps brands avail outsourced warehouse distribution across geographies and benefit from higher visibility on the marketplace. Increff’s Cloud Warehousing service, for example, is an outsourced warehouse distribution service. This lies at the heart of smart inventory placement services through which brands can distribute stock to multiple 3PL warehouses across the country for better delivery to the end-consumer. 

Warehouse outsourcing benefits brands in ways beyond just reducing logistical costs and minimizing delays. It offers the flexibility to switch from CapEx to OpEx model of operations and ensures efficient management of warehousing without additional operational bandwidth. It can be implemented within 7 days, and a pay-per-use model, resulting in immediately reduced lead time, inventory holding, logistics, and overall costs, leading to increased customer satisfaction, sales, and profitability margins.

As competition intensifies in the e-commerce space, brands are expected to be more responsive and proactive towards their markets. With the help of demand-based inventory distribution, you can future-proof your e-commerce business against fluctuating demand, stay competitive, and grow steadily. 

Categories
Technology Warehouse Management

How to Choose a Warehouse Management System

A warehouse management software is vital to the successful management of the warehouse. Research shows that it can improve warehouse efficiency by 27% by facilitating timely order fulfillment, packing, and picking. Owing to that it is essential to know how to choose a warehouse management system from the different types of WMS available.

When used correctly, WMS can propel your warehouse to unprecedented levels of success. Some benefits of using a WMS system include:

  • Efficient labor management
  • Accurate inventory and management
  • Reduced paperwork
    So, what factors must you consider when choosing a warehouse management system? Here is your complete guide on how to choose a warehouse management system.

Analyze Your Need for a WMS

One cannot emphasize just how big a commitment getting a WMS is. Not only do you have to spend money on the technology, but you also need to train your employees to use it and acquire the hardware and infrastructure you need to make it functional.

Therefore, it is critical that you thoroughly analyze your need for the system. Otherwise, a lot of time, effort, and resources will go down the drain unnecessarily.

Size is one of the biggest influencers in installing a WMS. If you have a big warehouse with multiple floors and endless storage units, it goes without saying that managing it can be quite a challenge. In such a scenario, a WMS will prove invaluable. But this is not to say that smaller warehouses cannot benefit from WMS. If your warehouse’s storage and removal processes are complex, you also stand to gain a lot from WMS.
For instance, if you store products for an e-commerce store, you may find that packaging requires more attention to detail. This is because you have to pack each customer’s order individually, ensuring that you do not mix up their purchases.
By contrast, if you deal with a business that generally requires items in bulk, packaging and shipping are relatively straightforward. Therefore, with the e-commerce store, investing in a WMS makes good economic sense.
Additionally, if products require specific conditions for shipping, this can add a layer of complexity to the packing process. For instance, if some goods require refrigeration during shipping, while others need to be frozen, you need to take extra care to ensure that they reach the destination in good condition. For this, a WMS can come in real handy.

Budget For Warehouse Management System

Another critical consideration when choosing a WMS is your budget. You don’t want to invest in an expensive system only for you to discover one year later that it does little to boost your business efficiency.
Warehouse management systems typically come in three tiers. The cheapest tier, usually known as a Tier 3 WMS, performs the most basic warehouse management functions. These include confirming and tracking inventory and stock.
A Tier 2 WMS performs more complex functions, including:

  • Managing customer portals
  • Reporting
  • Providing restocking, receiving, and storage guidelines

The most expensive systems (Tier 1 WMS) can perform more complicated tasks like assigning work to employees, guiding them to the correct location of the goods they want, forecasting, and improving response times.

Another way to gauge the cost of a WMS is by listing down the price of each item. For instance, you need to consider the licensing, training, development and upgrading, and support costs. For this, you should have a candid conversation with your provider to get an accurate figure on the cost of the system.

While discussing the costs with your provider, beware of hidden charges. These may include seemingly small expenses like travel costs that accumulate to outrageous sums over time. Additionally, comparing WMS costs can help you negotiate the pricing better.

When creating a budget for your WMS, the final tip is to consider the 5-year cost of using the system, inclusive of the hardware and infrastructure costs. If the figure makes business sense and you will get worthwhile returns, acquire the system by all means.

Ensure Seamless Integration with Existing Systems

Supply chains stretch beyond the confines of a business and encompass 3rd party services. While an ERP might be able to unify the internal business, the logistics aspects of a business need to be handled efficiently with a specialized WMS. The relationship that your business has with your ERP vendor will impact the success of a WMS. You need to communicate and have a good working relationship from the start. The integration needs to allow for seamless data communication between both systems.

This is critical when the information is used for internal work and communicated with internal or external partners. Both systems can speak the same language, so new data does not have to be re-entered daily. This causes errors and isn’t good for business.

Request for Information on How to Choose a Warehouse Management System

You have already settled on whether you need a WMS system and how much you can spend on it by this point in your decision-making journey. Now it is time to contact vendors for offers.
The best way to do this is to create a Request for Information or RFI form. This form is a questionnaire to help you obtain the requisite information.
Start by describing your business, what it does, your vision for it, and how the WMS fits into your business. You should also discuss your warehouse at length, providing pertinent details such as:

  • The number of loading bays
  • Picking and packing locations
  • The average number of transactions in a day
  • The primary users of the system, like pickers, packers, forklift users, or management
     

Then, create a list of questions you wish your provider to answer. For instance, you may request information about:

  • Their area of specialization and expertise
  • Owner of the system’s source code
  • WMS features
  • Average size of their clients
  • Number of clients and sites using their product
  • Ease with which you can connect multiple warehouses
  • Ease of integrating the WMS to your ERP,
  • Availability of pre-built marketplace integrations
  • Level of support you can expect from them
  • Estimated cost of using their product
     

When creating your RFI, it is best to refrain from describing how you intend the product to work. This is because you may cloud the ingenuity of your provider, thus blocking out more efficient and possibly cheaper options that would be the best fit for your business.

The Provider’s Commitment

The final consideration for choosing a WMS is the provider’s commitment to your company. The relationship you develop with your provider can be critical to the success or failure of your business.
You can gauge a provider’s commitment to your business on their enthusiasm and response to your concerns regarding the systems. A committed warehouse management system provider will always look for the most efficient solution to your issues and point out a cause of action that best serves your needs.

The Final Word on How to Choose a Warehouse Management System

No doubt choosing the perfect warehouse management system from the different types of WMS available can be complicated. However, there are numerous factors to consider settling for a well-serving warehouse management system as mentioned above.
If you are looking for a reliable WMS provider, look no further from our company. We will guide you extensively on how to choose a warehouse management system that best fits your needs. So, contact us today to start the conversation on the best options of WMS for your business.