Tips on Easing the Pain of Stock Counts with Cloud WMS

Every business we know is always looking for new tips on easing the pain of stock counts. Now with Cloud Coders Cloud WMS, here are a few tips that can help you improve your ability to complete these more regularly, with improved accuracy when completed.

Communication

The first one of these tips is communication. Communication is extremely important for two factors. Firstly, ensuring that the people within the business know when these stocktakes or stock counts are happening so they can close orders off, prepare for the stocktakes and have, devices charged up and ready to go.

Secondly, communication is important on how the stocktake will be facilitated t.e. whether that is working from one side of the warehouse to the other, front to back, specific products first, depending on size or depending on location. So there are many different factors to go into how that stocktake will take place and it’s important to communicate these to the relevant team members.

Thirdly, the next important factor, to be communicated is when the stock count or stocktake will take place. Usually, it is best to do this outside of business hours but there are some examples where a business will run 24 hours. In these scenarios, it will take specific planning with more specific times around when the warehouse would be slowest in order to complete this process.

Preparing The Area

The next tip, is ensuring that the space in which the stocktake will be taking place is clean, ready to go and has been de-cluttered. This is extremely important for two reasons. Firstly, and possibly the biggest here in Australia, is OH&S i.e. making sure that as people are moving around counting items, that there is not a lot of clutter in their way that they could potentially harm themselves on. Secondly, this also improves the overall speed of completing this type of process in stock counting or performing a stocktake.

Stock Counts with Cloud WMS

The final tip to ease the pain of stock counts is to invest in a warehouse management solution and in todays mobile world … a mobile based warehouse management solution. With our cloud WMS solution, the speed in which you can complete your stocktake is much faster than is possible through paper-based or even browser-based solutions, purely from the ability to scan items extremely quickly and be able to ensure the accuracy of that stock.

With our solution we have visual and audio cues to ensure that team members are selecting the right item and then, if they are scanning every item, it is the correct number of items. This ensures throughout this process, you have increased speed as well as increased accuracy which leads to a faster and more efficient stock count. These types of stock count processes can be improved throughout the business and throughout multiple different warehouses giving your staff more time to complete other tasks within the business, having completed stock count a lot faster.

An added positive impact on the business is in terms of stock integrity, making sure the stock is correct within the business and within the warehouse itself. The final bonus we have found with our customers is the ability in which staff members almost enjoy doing stocktakes. Often stock counts are seen as a necessary evil but with our solution and the speed in which they can be completed they are no longer seen as a difficult task that is very time-consuming. This means stock counts can be done more regularly, more frequently leading to better stock accuracy overall and then more engagement from staff members around taking part in this process.

So if you’d like to learn more about how Cloud Coders can improve your stocktake processes then please get in touch. We’d be happy to take you through the solution itself where you can see how it will benefit your business and get a great return on investment for the implementation of a warehouse management solution.