Increased eCommerce sales necessitate more accuracy, better speed, and greater throughput for more customer satisfaction and efficiency. This effectiveness can be achieved when the warehouse is able to track inventories and deliver orders faster. However, using paperwork and spreadsheets cannot help much and is not sustainable.
This is where an effective warehouse management solution comes in. It will optimize business operations, reduce costs, enhance inventory tracking, and improve delivery speed.
That said, how can a WMS like NetSuite give your business a competitive advantage?
1) Inventory Traceability and Visibility
Inaccurate inventory visibility complicates the supply chain, increases costs and order time, and affects customer satisfaction. With a WMS, you can use barcodes, serial, and lot tracking for inventory traceability as items move through the warehouses. This ensures improved inventory visibility, fulfillment, and order status all the time. It can also allow you to trace and automate the expiration dates of perishables to avoid losses or poor customer experience.
Another inventory advantage of a WMS is in scheduling regular cycle counting for checks and balances. You can schedule cycle counting of your inventory based on categories. For instance, you can have fewer cycle counting for low-value or slow-moving products and more cycle counting for fast-moving or high-value products.
You’ll then assign cycle counts to specific employees based on the warehouse location or staff function. This ensures cycle counting does not interrupt the daily business operations. In addition, with an automated WMS function, staff can be reminded of the counting day, the frequency, and what products to count.
The outcome is efficient order replenishment and fulfillment across all warehouse locations, motivated staff, and a smooth flow of operations as you enjoy lower operational costs.
2) Inbound Logistics
A WMS assists in the inventory receiving process. The receiving process can be faster and more accurate with predefined rules and automation. It can also recommend the best putaway rules and bin locations to better fulfill orders.
With this automated process, you can use mobile devices to assign serial numbers, inventory status, lot number, and bin location to all items as they are received.
The inventory will then be allotted to the outstanding open orders and taken to the packing location. This efficient process reduces the handling costs and fulfillment time of putting away inventories and collecting them to fill an order.
3) Mobile App and Scanning
Mobile apps are among the best ways of enhancing warehouse operations by increasing efficiency. For example, integrating barcode scanning and wireless mobile device automates processes such as picking and packing, putaway, receiving orders, and shipping.
The outcome is more efficiency as information is captured in real-time with the app. With this, you have an accurate view of the inventory, thus reducing supply chain disruptions and challenges.
Also, you can have pre-figured strategies on the app to ensure inventory allocation according to plan. Users can also be directed to perform particular tasks such as picking or putaways. In fact, with mobile, you can empower your sales team to complete orders on the road and customize the app as you desire to ensure it carries out the defined tasks.
Check out some of our mobile WMS demos to see this powerful feature in action:
- Picking Work Order & Assemblies with a Mobile Device
- Cycle Counting on a Mobile Device
- Mobile Receipt and Putaway
4) Outbound Logistics
When it comes to outbound logistics with WMS, pick and pack strategies and logic top the list. Here, staff are guided on the order fulfillment process, ensuring inventory is used how and when you want it. In addition, you can define a wave release strategy, set your wave status, and select multiple or single picking to control and customize order processing.
WMS will also help with inventory management in multiple warehouses by setting specific shipping rules and defining order fulfillment rules. Without it, it would be impossible to manually assign orders to the warehouse nearest to the destination or ship whole orders from a single location. Ultimately, there are reduced shipping costs and simple order processing and fulfillment.
Manage Warehouse Operations Better With NetSuite and MIBAR
With hundreds or even thousands of SKUs to handle, often across multiple locations, warehouse management can quickly become a manual, chaotic and inefficient process if you’re relying on spreadsheets — or worse, pen and paper. NetSuite WMS eliminates manual processes, allowing you to minimize handling costs, run your warehouses more efficiently and consistently meet customer expectations.
Contact one of our NetSuite experts today to learn more!
