📌 At a glance: One of the largest e-commerce brands in the Middle East replaced its homegrown WMS with Increff's inventory management system for warehouse operations — achieving a 138% increase in rate of sales within 7 months, 94% overall picking accuracy (up from 66%), and a 61% improvement in picking efficiency per person per hour.
What Is This Case Study About?
Scaling e-commerce in the Middle East comes with a specific set of operational demands — high order volumes, tight SLAs, multi-channel complexity, and customers who expect express delivery as the default. When your warehouse management infrastructure is homegrown and starting to buckle under that pressure, the cost shows up everywhere: delayed dispatches, inventory inaccuracies, order cancellations, and a rate of sale that flatlines despite growing demand. This case study is about how Increff's WMS gave one of the region's largest e-commerce players the operational backbone to grow without those constraints.
Client Overview
- Type: Large-scale e-commerce marketplace
- Region: Middle East
- Previous System: Homegrown ERP and internally developed WMS
- Complexity: Multi-variety inventory environment across multiple sales channels, including B2C with express delivery requirements
- Solution: Increff Warehouse Management System (WMS) — with inventory serialization, express picking (CPT & priority configuration), pigeonhole picking, and Cubiscan integration
- Objective: Replace legacy warehouse infrastructure with an inventory management system for warehouse operations capable of handling scale, speed, and accuracy across all fulfilment channels
Challenges Faced: Why a Homegrown WMS Stops Working at Scale
Building your own WMS makes sense early on. You control it, you can customize it, and it costs less than an enterprise solution. But homegrown systems have a ceiling — and this brand had hit it.
1. Inwards and order dispatches not completing on time
The existing system couldn't keep pace with the volume and variety of incoming and outgoing inventory. Goods receipt note (GRN) processing was slow, dispatch queues were backing up, and SLA commitments were increasingly difficult to honour — particularly for express orders.
2. Inventory inaccuracies causing order fulfillment failures
Without proper serialization or bin-level tracking, inventory positions were unreliable. Faster syncing was needed to prevent the mismatch between what the system showed and what was actually available — a gap that was directly causing fulfillment failures and cancellations from excess booking.
3. No visibility into inventory aging and shelf life
The brand needed to track how long inventory had been sitting and where — both for stock management and to prioritize older stock in fulfilment. Without that visibility, slower-moving stock wasn't being rotated correctly, and the risk of write-offs was growing.
4. No mechanism to prioritize express orders
Express delivery is table stakes in Middle East e-commerce. The homegrown WMS treated all orders the same — no priority queue, no CPT (Courier Pickup Time) logic, no way to ensure express orders jumped ahead of standard fulfilment. The result: express orders that were supposed to ship in 1–2 days were getting processed like everything else.
5. Manual order allocation to pickers creating bottlenecks
Human intervention in order-to-picker assignment introduced delays and inefficiency. At the volumes this brand was operating, manual allocation was a throughput constraint that no amount of additional headcount could sustainably fix.
Increff's Solution: A Single Integrated Inventory Management System for Warehouse Operations
Increff replaced the multiple legacy systems with one integrated WMS platform — built for the complexity, speed, and multi-channel demands of large-scale Middle East e-commerce.
Explore Increff’s Warehouse Management System (WMS) coupled with its powerful Order Management System (OMS)
Inventory Serialization for 100% Bin-Level Accuracy
Every unit was serialized within the WMS — enabling 100% inventory traceability at the bin level. Orders could now be processed without loss of items or wasted resource time tracking misplaced stock. The gap between what the order management system software showed and what was actually in the warehouse closed completely.
Express Picking with CPT and Priority Configuration
Increff's WMS introduced a dedicated express order fulfilment workflow. Courier Pickup Time (CPT) configuration narrows the picklist to show only urgent and express orders for a given channel — allowing the brand to prioritize by SLA and channel simultaneously. Priority flags on orders ensure that 1–2 day delivery commitments are met by pulling those orders to the front of the queue, running in parallel with standard wave picking rather than competing with it. Configurable Wave Size and Wave Frequency gave the operations team precise control over pick throughput at any given time.
Express Order Pigeonhole Picking
A dedicated pigeonhole picking system for express orders eliminated the need for human intervention in order-to-picker allocation. Automated assignment meant faster processing, fewer errors, and consistent throughput regardless of order volume peaks — which in Middle East e-commerce, around sale events and peak seasons, can be significant.
Cubiscan Integration for Accurate Order Dimensions
Increff WMS integrated with the brand's Cubiscan system — a dimensioning tool that captures the volumetric and real weight of packages at the packing stage. Accurate dimensional data at packing directly improves carrier cost management and reduces disputes with logistics partners over package weight and size.
Inventory Aging and Shelf Life Tracking
Real-time visibility into how long inventory had been held at each bin location enabled smarter FIFO fulfilment and proactive stock rotation. Older inventory moved first. Write-off risk reduced. And the operations team had the data to act before aging stock became a cost problem.
Results: Measurable Impact Delivered by Increff
"138% increase in rate of sales within 7 months — not from more inventory or more marketing, but from a warehouse management system that could finally keep up with the business."
Key Outcomes Summary
- ~138% increase in rate of sales within 7 months of onboarding Increff WMS — the headline result, driven by better inventory availability and faster fulfilment
- Picking accuracy improved from 66% to 94% — a 28-point gain that directly reduced mispicks, returns, and customer complaints
- 61% improvement in picking efficiency per person per hour, meaning the same team processed significantly more orders without additional headcount
- 86% increase in B2C item counts per person per hour — the clearest indicator of throughput improvement at the operational level
- Express order fulfilment prioritized and automated through CPT configuration and pigeonhole picking — SLA compliance for 1–2 day delivery significantly improved
- 100% bin-level inventory traceability through serialization — order cancellations from excess booking and inventory mismatches effectively eliminated
Frequently Asked Questions
What is an inventory management system for warehouse operations, and how is it different from a homegrown WMS?
An inventory management system for warehouse operations is a purpose-built platform that manages the full lifecycle of inventory within a warehouse — from goods receipt and putaway through picking, packing, dispatch, and returns — with real-time accuracy at the bin and unit level. Homegrown WMS solutions are typically built to solve yesterday's problems at yesterday's scale. They lack the advanced features — serialization, CPT-based express picking, automated order allocation, aging tracking — that high-volume e-commerce operations need. The gap between what a homegrown system can do and what the business needs tends to widen as the business grows.
How does inventory serialization improve order fulfillment accuracy in e-commerce warehouses?
Serialization assigns a unique identifier to each individual unit of inventory — rather than tracking stock as interchangeable units of the same SKU. This means the WMS knows exactly where every item is, what condition it's in, and how long it's been there. In a high-volume e-commerce warehouse, this eliminates the "item not found" failures that cause order cancellations and mispicks. Picking accuracy in this case went from 66% to 94% after serialization was implemented — a direct result of the system knowing precisely where every unit was located.
What is CPT (Courier Pickup Time) picking and how does it help Middle East e-commerce brands meet express delivery SLAs?
CPT picking is a configuration within Increff's WMS that filters the picklist to show only orders that need to be fulfilled before the next courier pickup for a given channel. Combined with priority flags for express orders, this means the warehouse always knows which orders to pick first — not based on when they were placed, but based on when they need to leave the building. In the Middle East, where same-day and next-day delivery expectations are standard among e-commerce consumers, CPT picking is what makes those SLAs operationally achievable at scale.
How does an order management system software handle multi-channel fulfilment for large e-commerce operations?
Multi-channel fulfilment requires the order management system software to treat each sales channel's SLA and fulfilment rules independently — while drawing from a shared inventory pool. Increff's WMS does this through channel-specific picking configurations: express channels get CPT and priority picking; standard channels process through normal wave picking. Both run in parallel without competing for the same picker resources. The result is that a brand can serve B2C express customers, standard marketplace orders, and wholesale channels simultaneously — each getting the speed and priority it requires.
Why did this brand see such a significant improvement in rate of sales after implementing Increff WMS?
Rate of sales improves when inventory is available, findable, and fulfillable — quickly. Before Increff, the homegrown WMS was creating friction at every stage: slow GRN processing meant new inventory took longer to become available to sell; poor bin-level accuracy meant orders were being cancelled from excess booking; no express picking priority meant fast-delivery commitments weren't being met. Fixing all of those simultaneously — through serialization, CPT picking, pigeonhole automation, and accurate inventory tracking — removed the operational ceiling that was capping sales growth.
What should Middle East e-commerce brands look for when evaluating warehouse management systems?
The most important capabilities for Middle East e-commerce specifically: express order prioritization (CPT and SLA-based picking), bin-level serialization for inventory accuracy, multi-channel order management with channel-specific SLA rules, and rapid integration with existing ERP and carrier systems. Scalability matters too — the Middle East e-commerce market is growing fast, and a WMS that handles today's volume needs to handle next year's without a full re-implementation. Increff's WMS is designed with that scalability built in, not added as an afterthought.
Why Increff for Middle East E-Commerce Warehouse Management?
Middle East e-commerce has specific demands that generic WMS platforms aren't always built for — express delivery as a baseline expectation, multi-channel complexity, and rapid growth that requires a system to scale without breaking. Increff handles all of it:
- Inventory serialization for 100% bin-level traceability — zero tolerance for the inaccuracies that cause cancellations
- CPT and priority picking built for express delivery SLA management across multiple channels simultaneously
- Automated pigeonhole picking that eliminates manual order-to-picker allocation at any volume
- Cubiscan integration for accurate dimensional data at packing — reducing carrier cost disputes
- Inventory aging and shelf life tracking for proactive stock rotation and write-off prevention
- Proven Middle East results — 138% ROS increase, 94% picking accuracy, 61% efficiency gain in 7 months of live production
Ready to Replace Your Legacy WMS?
If your warehouse is running on a homegrown system that's starting to limit your growth — slower dispatches, inventory inaccuracies, express SLAs you can't consistently meet — Increff can close that gap faster than you'd expect.
Book a demo with Increff today