eCommerce Warehouse Management System

eCommerce Warehouse Management System 101 – Types to Strategies – Everything In-Depth

If you are an eCommerce business, mastering a warehouse inventory management system is intensely important for you.

 

Why?

 

Because over 70% of shoppers would search for an item somewhere else if your store is out of stock! No shopper will ever be going to wait for the stock to come back in your warehouse. Thus, you have to strategically implement your eCommerce warehouse management system. Otherwise, be ready to shut your online store soon.

 

What is WMS Warehouse Management System?

 

Warehouse management solution (WMS) is software that assists in controlling and managing daily warehouse operations. Retail warehouse management software focuses on inventory management, optimizing orders, maintaining inventory flow, and much more. In a nutshell, from eCommerce order management to omnichannel retail management can be handled with WMS solutions.

 

Earlier, warehouse management solutions only offer a simple feature of location information. But, lately, warehouse inventory management system has turned into a highly advanced business solution, and they can effortlessly manage basic “pick, pack, and ship” functionality to coordinating and interacting features. All thanks to the eCommerce wave as an estimated 12-24 million eCommerce websites are globally present in 2020.

 

To grow your eCommerce business in this tight competition, you need complete eCommerce development services – from POS software solutions to eCommerce warehouse management system. In short, you need someone like Arthonsys that can provide full eCommerce development support to you.
 
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Warehouse Inventory Management System Types

 

Primarily, WMS solutions are available in three different types for eCommerce platforms –

 

Standalone Systems – This system only has warehouse management features – nothing else. Standalone systems can be combined with your other systems but without supply chain functions. If you have a small eCommerce business and you required some basic functions like barcode scanning, slotting, picking, packing, and shipping – you should get it.

 

Supply Chain Modules – When you want to scale up your business, you should get a WMS system with supply chain management software (SCM). This software type has a broader scope – it manages everything from risk assessment to vendor management. You can fully automate inventory management with SCM software.

 

ERP Solutions – ERP is a dynamic software that contains the capabilities of many other systems. It is not compulsory to integrate your WMS system with ERP, but this integration can help you in smoothly process – customer relationships, supply chain planning, human resource management, and many more operations. This will be an excellent move for enterprises who want to expand their operations.

 

Features of an Ideal WMS System

 

If you can’t decide which retail warehouse management system is ideal for your online store, you should get a system possessing the following features –

 

Inventory Control and Managing – You need to direct your attention to how the system will help in controlling and managing inventory? Further, you have to consider many other things like software that can manage the multichannel business? Is the software capable of forecasting the change in demand? How purchase and analyze functions can be streamlined? Inventory is a vital part of the WMS system; thus, ensure that it can fully support inventory management.

 

Barcode Scanning – Barcode scanning function is highly important in WMS software so that manual workload can be reduced. When software can easily scan barcodes, all the small entry-level errors can be avoided.

 

Highly IntegratedeCommerce warehouse management system should process an easy integration feature so that you can manage all important functions from a single source such as ERP, inventory management, etc. Without the hassle of moving one software to another, you can run your eCommerce business smoothly.

 

Simple InterfaceWMS warehouse management system is developed to ease out stock management and logistics operations. But, when the software interface is too much chaotic, it can enhance the difficulty level instead of reducing it down. Thus, we always recommend eCommerce platforms to get a custom WMS system to simplify the software interface as per your needs.

 

Benefits Offered by Retail Warehouse Management System

 

It is a very unfortunate fact that 46% of SMBs don’t track inventory or use manual methods, and they are missing out on the following WMS solution benefits –

 

Effective Use of Space – WMS facilitates you to maintain stock rotation through different methods, including FIFO, LIFO, FEFO, etc. You can implement the right material rotation cycle and fully utilize your warehouse space.

 

Real-Time Information – Through a warehouse management system, you can obtain real-time inventory information. With real-time information, you can better estimate the supply chain and avoid delays in deliveries.

 

Labor Intensive – Based on the workers’ skill level, you can better assign a task to them. WMS can help you in finding a highly skilled worker to perform a certain task in the warehouse. This way, you can effectively optimize your labor and gain cost efficiency.

 

Traceable System – Using the lot, serial, or batch numbers, you can easily trace your inventories. The problem of missing inventory or theft can be fully avoided with the WMS system.

 

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Tips to Strategically Use WMS System

 

If you have a customized eCommerce warehouse management system, your work isn’t done here. No, you have to learn a way to strategically implement it in your business. Some of the innovative WMS strategies are –

 

Chaotic Warehouse – Do you want to grow like Amazon? Yes, you should embrace the chaotic storage strategy used by them. Amazon doesn’t follow any logical process to store their inventory; they simply put anything anywhere. But, they log the location of items into the WMS system, which makes them run their operations smoothly.

 

Minimal Touchpoints – Your WMS system should contain minimum touch points to complete an order. With minimal touchpoints, you can process bulk orders quickly and efficiently.

 

Integrate your WMS – Your warehouse is a mere part of the product cycle. The whole cycle includes a warehouse, procurement, and logistics. Thus, you should integrate your WMS solution with logistics and procurement solutions to maintain a smooth supply chain flow.

 

Wrap Up

 

Warehouse management solutions are very important for eCommerce businesses to maintain a smooth supply chain. Additionally, if you want to fully utilize your warehouse space and never run out of stock, you have to get a WMS solution. There are plenty of different tailor-made WMS systems are available in the market. But, you can’t gain full benefits from ready-made solutions as they aren’t designed to meet your business needs.

 

Thus, you need a custom warehouse management system, and Arthonsys can help you in developing one. Just give us a call once!