Are there costs involved with a Warehouse Management Solutions (WMS)? Or more importantly, the cost of not using a Warehouse Management Solution (WMS)?  Our Cloud Coders’ team is passionately digging deeper into Warehouse Management Solutions, platforms, integrating  NetSuite and their functions within various verticals for each individual customer. For each customer, we learn your pain points, whether they are specific to your niche vertical or whether they are across a broad spectrum and how that impacts your bottom line. In this blog, we are going to focus on the three key main costs of not using a warehouse management solution, how these would impact your bottom line, and the overall ability of your warehouse to function successfully.

With our years of experience in all aspects of integration, our Cloud Coders Warehouse Management Solutions will help you to:

• Improve efficiencies
• Reduce errors that exist within your business
• Improve your business’  functions from the warehouse to interactions with customers and consumers, and your
• Staff’s time frames, frustrations, and general ability to function in a daily role

With the current economic climate due to COVID 19 crisis, businesses are strained in implementing new software, new features, and new functions within the business. But the question remains… what is the cost of not looking at a WMS?

3 Key Costs of not looking at WMS

There are three key costs of not looking at a warehouse management solution.

1. Inventory costs.
2. ‘Return Rate Cost’ and
3. Staff costs

Inventory Costs

The first key cost is inventory costs. A Warehouse Management Solution gives you the ability to better understand a multitude of different functions of inventory cost and inventory control, so inventory management takes into account:

• stock takes,
• stock location throughout the warehouse
• bin locations, lot inventory and serialised inventory

All of these are extremely important in making sure you maintain the integrity of your inventory and understand where your products are located throughout your warehouse. This has a massive flow-on effect in a multitude of different parts of the business. Whether this is customer service, knowing that a product is in the warehouse and can be shipped to a customer, or simply staff not finding where an item is, or potentially picking an item that has a different use by date or a different serialised number. A WMS makes sure that these types of issues do not occur knowing there are large costs involved with not understanding the inventory levels within a business.

Return Rate Cost

The second cost is ‘Return Rate Cost’. Meaning, the cost your business incur because products need to be returned and in terms of returns, shipping has corresponding cost. There is the time cost of your staff, but there is also an intangible cost, and that is your customer’s willingness to buy again, and that lifetime value of each client. With our Cloud Coders  WMS solution, you will understand what stock is currently there,  where it is in the warehouse, and with scanning cues, your staff will always know they are selecting the correct item for picking, packing and shipping. This all leads to a massive reduction in return rate cost, and the intangible value to your customer.

Staff Costs 

This isn’t specifically staff as a figure or as a value, but more importantly, the cost of your staff being able to function within your business. Cloud Coders has a number of companies that staff churn is a factor, especially with a new solution and staff being set in old ways, which most of us are. However, we found out that staff love using our solution as it makes their job easier, makes them more efficient and their overall experience with the solution is fantastic. This means that people within the business are not frustrated with themselves or with each other and they are not mindlessly walking around the warehouse trying to find an item. Having pick routes on the device itself, they understand where they need to go, they know the item will be there and when they scan it, it’s correct.

In Conclusion

When it comes to real warehouse management issues such as return rate costs and inventory costs, the right WMS will allow your staff to know what specific tasks they’re achieving within the day. They are able to save and go back to tasks, if they mid-process so they don’t have to rush their work and then have to come back to start again. The jobs are all saved in the system so they’re able to switch between tasks quickly and efficiently. One of the key focuses of our Cloud Coders’ Warehouse Management Solution is to make it easier for staff to use, regardless of whether they are full-time, temporary, or people called in to the business from another department of the business to look through and use the solution. It’s intuitive and can be used and understood very quickly. This means you have the most efficient solution being used by your staff so they can be as efficient as possible within your business.

Here at Cloud Coders were are focused The Cost of NOT using a Warehouse Management Solution and how these ultimately impact your business. If you’d like to learn more about our Cloud WMS and how we help eliminate these costs to your business, please get in touch with us.