To streamline your supply chains, warehouse management is one of the most important things that you need to do. You have to keep an account of everything present in your warehouse to manage it perfectly. However, manual management is pretty outdated now and you must implement an effective WMS system to manage the warehouse.
During manual warehouse management, you can observe some signs which indicate that now you should get WMS and implement it. Let's have a look at these signs so you don’t keep on sticking with manual methods despite your business demanding an advanced warehouse management system. These signs are:
1. Ton of Errors
Manual management always results in errors. It doesn’t matter how many hours you spend managing data or how many times you recheck it, some errors always remain there. These errors may be minor and neglectful in some cases. However, if you are observing a lot of errors in warehouse data, it can lead to major problems as well. You may suffer major losses due to these errors.
For example, according to the data you have, you think a specific product's stack is finished and you will not receive any orders for that product. But a few days later, you realized that the product was present but not entered in the data. So, to avoid these errors, you must opt for a WMS system to manage the warehouse of your company.
2. No Real Time Visibility
Real-time visibility of your inventory, stock levels, order status, etc. is required to keep your business running smoothly. However, the manual system doesn’t have much to offer in the name of visibility. If you feel that things are actually invisible instead of being visible, then you must get a WMS system and implement it for effective warehousing.
The WMS system provides you with real visibility. You will be able to keep an eye on what is happening in different departments of your warehouse. Furthermore, this visibility will allow you to manage things appropriately.
3. Stunt Scalability
You need to scale your warehouse and its management along with your business. However, when you are managing a warehouse manually it becomes hard to continuously scale your warehouse. It never means that manual warehouse management doesn’t offer scalability. It does, but only to a certain limit. After that, the scalability will be stunted.
If you observe that your warehouse is now not scaling along with your business, then you need to introduce the WMS system. WMS helps in scaling the warehouse even on a short-term basis as well. For example, you need to scale your warehouse during peak seasons and WMS does this job with perfection. Apart from that, it makes your warehouse scalable along with growth of your business to fulfill the requirements.
4. Time Consuming
A considerable amount of time is required to manage the warehouse manually. If you feel now it's taking a lot of time, then you need to get the WMS system and implement it. It will help you in saving a lot of your time as it automates most of the managing and data-handling tasks. You don’t have to spend hours monitoring the warehouse management.
5. Poor Order Management
Order management involves warehousing as well. If you fail to manage a warehouse, you cannot manage orders efficiently. Signs such as difficulty in picking, packing, shipping, tracking, and delivering orders also indicate that you need a WMS system.
The WMS system can integrate with the order management system and helps in managing and fulfilling orders effectively. WMS gives you information about the stocks of different products so you can accept orders accordingly. Apart from that, it streamlines the order processing as well.
6. Difficulty in Managing Different Locations
If you have more than one warehouse or distribution center, then managing them manually is only a dream. You have to spend hours getting data from all warehouses and then analyzing it. WMS is the best solution in such cases. It helps in managing multiple warehouses by connecting them to a centralized system.
Final Words
If you observe any of the aforementioned signs, it means your current warehouse management system is not working properly. You need to get an effective WMS system and implement it for efficient warehousing.