The key driver in ecommerce fulfilment is efficiency: the speed with which you can convert your customer’s order from wish to reality. Receiving a customer order is only the start of the process, and there are many aspects to the way you store, pick and despatch goods that can improve your fulfilment process. Most of these can be managed and improved by using a warehouse management system such as ProSKU.

Controlling raw material or finished goods stock efficiently is vital for your business. Ensuring production continuity or holding inventory to meet demand involves regular expenditure on buildings, labour and equipment, as well as tying up capital in stock. You must manage your storage function effectively, utilising resources to the full to deliver efficiency and control costs. Only a true warehouse management system like ProSKU can help you do this properly.

Your customers entrust you with their goods, and the responsibility of fulfilling their customer promise. To handle stock and fulfil orders for multiple client accounts you need a system that offers more than simple stock control. As well as managing all warehouse activity you need to be able to apply automatic charges for services, generate invoices and give your clients instant access to stock data. ProSKU incorporates a range of features essential to successful third party fulfilment.

Managing a large range of case or item-based products presents many challenges. One of these is storing them efficiently. The need to optimise space, often by mixing products must be balanced with the need to find and pick stock efficiently, correctly identifying and rotating as needed. These are things a warehouse management system can help deal with, providing features like automated putaway, directed picking and barcode identification.

Storing palletised products should be simple and efficient and it can be if you use clear, methodical procedures. A WMS will help you do this, making your operation faster and reducing errors. System-directed processes help you receive and store pallets accurately, based on definable storage rules. And with accurate location data in the system, retrieving pallets for customer orders is easy.

But this is just a basic expectation for managing a palletised store. Depending on your operation a WMS could enhance efficiency in many other areas, like facilitating pallet builds, automating replenishment, managing VNA racking and improving data capture with SSCC label scanning.

Managing a large range of case or item-based products presents many challenges. One of these is storing them efficiently. The need to optimise space, often by mixing products must be balanced with the need to find and pick stock efficiently, correctly identifying and rotating as needed. These are things a warehouse management system can help deal with, providing features like automated putaway, directed picking and barcode identification.

Storing palletised products should be simple and efficient and it can be if you use clear, methodical procedures. A WMS will help you do this, making your operation faster and reducing errors. System-directed processes help you receive and store pallets accurately, based on definable storage rules. And with accurate location data in the system, retrieving pallets for customer orders is easy.

But this is just a basic expectation for managing a palletised store. Depending on your operation a WMS could enhance efficiency in many other areas, like facilitating pallet builds, automating replenishment, managing VNA racking and improving data capture with SSCC label scanning.

An accounts or order processing system is primarily concerned with accounts and managing orders, which are both important aspects of your business. But from a stock management point of view, such systems are not designed to control a ‘live’ stock situation. Stock control systems are usually ‘retrospective’ rather than real time. For that reason they are often inaccurate, especially where subject to frequent adjustment and instances of ‘negative inventory.’

For a young business, accounts and order processing systems soon become a necessity. If this includes a stock control module, for a time this will help to maintain a level of control over inventory. But for a growing business looking for absolute inventory accuracy, and data that its customers and partners can rely on, it will not be good enough. If you also want organized, disciplined control of your storage facility, a stock control system will not come up to the mark.

Advice?
ProSKU is a genuinely cost effective WMS option, which can integrate with most accounts and order systems. This can give you a complete solution to manage your accounts, orders and stock, but one that will feed 100% accurate, real time data to the front end of your business, where you need it.

Systems like this, designed to improve picking efficiency are definitely a step in the right direction. Usually linked to order or stock control systems, they can provide immediate confirmation of completed orders and stock updates, though not always both. They may also offer barcode recognition of products to reduce picking errors, and potentially deliver data on picking efficiency.

For some businesses this is a way to semi-automate a warehouse or storage operation to create improvement over simple paper controlled picking. But for an operation that needs organized, disciplined control it is at best a half way house. Achieving warehouse efficiency is about more than just picking, especially if the options available in terms of pick methodology are limited, effectively capping any improvement at a certain level.

Advice?
If you are using this kind of solution you obviously understand the benefits that IT solutions can bring. But you really need to be looking at a solution like ProSKU which covers all of your processes from receiving to shipping. This will give your operation the efficiency, accuracy and discipline that a class leading operation needs to support expansion and business success.

We all agree that a spreadsheet has its uses and if you currently use one to control and record stock transactions, congratulate your spreadsheet expert for taking you this far! But we also know there are limits to the capability of spreadsheets. Realistically, the time and effort involved in trying to make them something they’re not probably isn’t worth it.

ProSKU is an intelligent WMS solution, designed with many years’ knowledge and experience of storage and logistics operations. The range and capability of its functions are way beyond what could ever be achieved with a spreadsheet. The reduction in time and effort alone (over maintaining a spreadsheet) would easily justify its costs, before you even start to consider the broader benefits.

Advice?
Your spreadsheet expert could probably be utilised in better ways to benefit your business. If it’s a senior member of staff then even more so!

It would be wrong to suggest that accuracy and efficiency can never be achieved by using a disciplined manual system based on paper. We have in fact often seen this. But if it can be achieved without a proper IT control system, then how good could it be with one? The unique advantage you have at this level is that you can make a decision on your future direction without having to take into account any ‘legacy’ IT issues.

If your operation is at a size where you need firm disciplined control of everything you do – how you receive, store, pick and despatch your products – then we believe the choice is a simple one. Rather than look at a halfway house (“let’s just improve the picking”) you have the opportunity, with a cost-effective product like ProSKU to transform everything in your operation with a single solution.

You don’t even have to abandon paper completely. ProSKU does have a real-time mobile app but it can also generate paper instructions for activities like putaway and picking. So you can use the system with familiar paper instructions, perhaps before embracing a full technology solution.

Advice?
Before looking at any half way methods of computerizing your operation, take a look at what a comprehensive WMS solution like ProSKU can do. Not only can it justify its cost very quickly with improved efficiency, it can also integrate easily with other solutions you may select as you develop your full IT infrastructure.

Not capturing and retaining data effectively can happen due to poor procedure, or because you’re using a system that’s not designed to capture all the data you need. Recording and retaining key data at the point of receipt (and later, at picking and despatch) is essential to efficient operation, accuracy and maintaining full records of your stock transactions.

Failure to maximise the use of available storage space in your operation means you are paying for space that you don’t use. This can mean expanding your premises or taking on additional space prematurely, costing you even more. A WMS system is designed to optimise space automatically. It does this by always knowing what you have in store, where it is and where you have spare capacity.

Problems finding stock may point to different issues. If you have some kind of system it could be that it doesn’t impose enough discipline to tightly control how product is stored or moved; it could just be that your staff don’t follow that discipline, or simply, that you don’t have a procedure they can follow! A WMS will provide a process to control how goods are located and moved, ensuring time and money are not wasted looking for products you know are there, but can’t be found!

Correct stock rotation should be simple: the rotation detail of a product is recorded at intake, and the exact location it’s stored in is then recorded on a system. When the product is picked a WMS specifies the right location to find it, and if needed, its rotation detail can be verified, for example by barcode scan. If things don’t work like this in your operation, you probably need a WMS.

The key to error reduction here, as in many cases, is having the correct data in your system. If you know that goods are in the right place when you need to pick them, then you will pick the right goods. However a good WMS won’t leave things to chance, because pickers are only human, after all. It will give you the means to verify that the product and quantity are correct at the point of picking, and at despatch. One or both of these methods can be used, to suit your operation.

Low productivity occurs for various reasons, and though not all activities need optimum efficiency, for others it is critical. With any warehouse task there is a trade off between speed and accuracy – is it more important to do it quickly, or correctly? The crux of this is the process you use, which should be as ‘lean’ as possible, while meeting the need for accuracy, data capture etc. Good WMS system processes promote productivity, with options to deploy the best technology to assist that.

Poor operational discipline is the cause of so many issues in a warehouse. Quite simply, if your operatives do not conform to agreed procedures, you will create and perpetuate problems that are largely avoidable. But first, they must have a system to follow. Without a WMS, that needs to be very clear, logical and well enforced to work effectively. It is true that a WMS initially appears to impose more discipline on how tasks are performed. But in time this becomes the norm, when the benefits of doing so become apparent.

Accurate stock data is vital for you to be able to advise availability, assess purchasing needs and share with business partners who rely on it. If you hold physical stock, you must be able to deliver accurate data. If you can’t, who can? This comes down to obvious things: stock data must be recorded accurately, stock must be located correctly and any adjustments must also be recorded. A good WMS provides the secure processes to make this happen, with additional features like automated regular stocktakes to provide ongoing confirmation of stock accuracy.

The ability to share data with other applications, whether customer or partner facing is an essential feature of today’s interconnected economy. You may be involved in e-retailing and need to share stock data with online merchandising sites, or a key partner in the food and drink supply chain, supplying just-in-time to the grocery retail sector. The modern WMS system offers the best route to maximum visibility whether via API for web applications or file sharing with leading ERP solutions.

In many physical stock operations processes have evolved over time. Sometimes they involve what can be complex and time consuming manual methods of data capture and recording, use of multiple systems and sharing of tasks that more recent technology can eliminate. This is what a good WMS system will do. It will bring the capture and recording of data as close to their related physical activities as possible, and, with the right technology in place, eliminate unnecessary paperwork.