A warehouse management system, to begin with, is the backbone of any retail business. A business owner invests maximum in this segment and you’ll soon find out why. When your warehouse management is powerful, it shows significant progress in your business too.
‘A warehouse is a commercial place where one can store and manage their finished goods in bulk before they get delivered to the client.’ However, this isn’t as simple as it sounds. This storage place requires space, robotic instruments for handling products, systematic racks and human workforce to manage the incoming and outgoing goods. The storage facility is an integral part of the entire supply chain. Thus, carefully choosing the best warehouse management system and e-fulfillment provider is extremely important while handling a business.
Now that we know what’s a warehouse management system, let’s find out more about its features:
- Warehouse design – The design of the warehouse determines how the processes here will be. A warehouse must be designed to facilitate easier workflow and seamless inventory allocation.
- Inventory tracking – It is important to have a warehouse that is on par with recent technologies. Use of Automatic Identification & Data Capture (AIDC) technology such as barcodes or RFID helps track the location of goods faster.
- Picking and packing – A pre-defined picking and packing system guides warehouse workers to pick items and pack them in the most efficient way possible.
- Shipping – A warehouse generates bills of lading, packing lists and invoices for shipments with the facility to send advance shipment notifications.
- Labor management – To manage the inventory well, it is essential to track employee performance by using key performance indicators.
- Reporting tools – Warehouse operations are analyzed to track KPIs and determine the areas of improvement.
What are fulfillment services?
A fulfillment service is a third-party warehouse that prepares and ships your orders for you. It does this from its fulfillment center. In the age of e-commerce, the obvious benefit of using a third-party logistics (3PL) company to outsource your fulfillment services is that it saves you from doing the work yourself. But here are some non-obvious benefits of outsourcing your warehousing and e-fulfillment service:
It avoids long-term leases
Many logistic companies offer flexible pricing. This means that as you progress or undergo a low period, they’ll adapt to your needs and adjust costs accordingly. Renting your own warehouse space usually requires more commitment.
Rely on the experts
When you hire an outsourced e-fulfillment services provider, not only do you get warehouse space, you also have people responsible for running the fulfillment center. When you fulfill and ship your own orders, you’ll likely need to hire staff as you scale. Managing staff takes time. If your business is still in flux, you may be wary of promising someone a job. Instead, you can outsource the work to a logistics company and let them be responsible for finding and hiring good people.
While warehouse management and fulfillment seem like a simple system, it involves multiple branches we would want to burden you with. We are here to take care of this department while you focus on the growth of your actual business.
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