Five Ways Better Warehouse Management Can Help Your Business

What is Warehouse Management

Warehouse management is the process of supervising your warehouse operations and handling from the moment that items come through the doors until they are consumed, sold, or moved. It involves receiving and shipping goods, as well as how goods are handled inside the warehouse. Warehouse management includes multiple operations and processes and should be tailored to fit the needs of your business. While inventory management is different from warehouse management, inventory management should be considered part of your overall warehouse management.

Why is Warehouse Management Important?

Good warehouse management can make a company, while bad warehouse management can break it. Bad warehouse management can cost your business time and money. It can delay sales or shipping and hinder productivity. You could even end up wasting valuable warehouse space by overstocking an unpopular product that sits in your warehouse for months while you don’t have enough room for the products that your customers want.

It doesn’t have to be that way. Warehouse management can help streamline your warehouse operations, ensuring that products move smoothly in and out of your warehouse. Good warehouse management means that your employees will know where products are at all times. They will also know roughly what quantities of inventory they have on hand. Good warehouse management doesn’t happen on its own. It takes planning and having the right tools and people in place to get the job done. Here’s how to get started.

What are the Functions of Warehouse Management?

1. Data – The first component of warehouse management is data. As the saying goes, “you can’t manage what you can’t measure.” Even if your warehouse seems to be running smoothly, how can you know if you don’t have the right metrics and tools in place? Having a data-driven warehouse management strategy means more than just collecting and reviewing data. Being data-driven means that you look at the data first and then reach a decision based on the data. Being data-driven will lead to higher productivity and profits because it ensures that you make the right decisions for your business.

2. Control – Good warehouse management means taking control over your warehouse operations. It involves giving your employees the tools they need to do their jobs. It also involves creating workflows, processes, and protocols for your team to follow as they move items in and out of your warehouse.

3. Flexible – While creating workflows and processes for warehouse operations, it’s important for companies to remain flexible. Circumstances change, and sometimes employees on the ground have access to information that management doesn’t. Any plan for good warehouse management must include flexibility so that businesses can retain their competitive edge.

4. Technology – All of this, including being data-driven and developing workflows for your employees, requires investing in the right technical solutions for your business. This could include hand-held scanners for processing inventory, enterprise resource planning software (ERP) like Sage ERP to connect your warehouse operations with other departments, and more.

5. Customer-Centric – The goal of warehouse management should be to keep your customers happy. Make sure that they receive exactly what they ordered exactly as planned. Keeping your customers happy is how you make sure that they keep coming back.

Inventory Management

Inventory management is a component of warehouse management. Good warehouse managers will know that they need to pay attention to their inventory, not just how that inventory is handled. Many factors go into proper inventory management. Inventory is always dynamic, with items constantly on the move. Good inventory management requires constantly evaluating internal and external factors to make sure that your business always has the inventory it needs.

What are the Methods of Inventory Management?

1. Selecting the Right Items – Purchasing the right items when you need them is a huge part of inventory management. If you end up purchasing items that don’t sell as quickly as you expected them to, these items could end up languishing in your warehouse, costing your business space and money. Or you could underestimate demand for a product and be unable to fill your customers’ orders as quickly as they would like, which might lead them to go elsewhere. Inventory forecasting or stock optimization tools can help businesses avoid these issues by helping them predict what items will be needed and in what quantities. Inventory Tracking – Inventory management requires some form of inventory tracking. Businesses should have tools that allow them to scan items when they enter and leave their warehouse. It’s also important for businesses to track items while inside the warehouse, including tracking their location.

2. Inventory Counting – Taking inventory is a critical part of any inventory process. Once again, companies can’t manage what they can’t track. For businesses with high-volume sales, it can be difficult to know what items are in your warehouse at any given time. Items get lost, misplaced, or stolen. Sometimes stock is logged improperly. Traditionally, companies have shut down production to conduct an annual inventory count. This can be costly and inaccurate, not to mention that it only provides companies with an inventory count once per year. Instead, companies can use cycle counting to count items year-round by counting a few items per day until their entire inventory has been counted. CertiPro offers an Automated Inventory Cycle Count (AICC) tool that automates the cycle counting process, saving businesses time and money while providing them with more accurate inventory counts.

With the right warehouse management and inventory management tools and processes in place, your warehouse can become a tool that fuels your business.

About Us

CertiPro is a technology solutions provider for businesses. We provide companies with enterprise resource planning (ERP) software and enhancements to help them manage their business operations and increase efficiency. We have worked with many businesses to improve their warehouse management using Sage ERP. We have also helped companies save time and money while improving the accuracy of their inventory counts using our Automated Inventory Cycle Count (AICC) tool. Identify problem areas in inventory faster with AICC. Contact us to schedule a demo or if you have any other questions about how you can improve warehouse management.