Top five things to know when implementing a warehouse management system

Joseph Palisano of Lincoln Distribution covers the key steps to follow when getting a warehouse management system set up in this guest post

If you’re in the distribution or manufacturing business, you know proper inventory management is vital to guarantee an effective operation and the success of your company. Tracking your products is vital to understand how your business is evolving and which steps you need to take in order to grow.

By doing so, you will be able to forecast your sales and consequently, your needs in terms of procurement. You can also replenish your inventory faster to keep your customers satisfied and re-order before you run out of products, which can lead you to lose important business deals. The most efficient way to do all this is by tracking, analyzing, predicting and reordering by using warehouse and inventory management systems.

A warehouse management system will allow you to manage your products in a smarter and more efficient way by keeping you up to date with what’s selling and what’s not.

Here are the top five things to know when implementing a warehouse management system:

1.     How to track price updates

Updates to pricing are essential to moving products efficiently. Understanding how your system will keep your price lists up to date crucial to success. Wither it be through SKU’s or barcodes or both, knowing how to compile reports on the current prices of products is a must

2.    How to identify trends

Demand forecasts, supplier analysis and reorder points are some of the insights our inventory management system has to offer to optimise your inventory and consequently increase your business’ efficiency. With these you can understand how to properly stock and not leave products sitting in your warehouse distribution centre.

3.    How to access inventory and when

Understanding how and what the access is to your inventory are mandatory to ensuring success: Can you submit an order anytime? How and where do you log in? Who is your point of contact? Having answers to these questions are key to ensuring success.

4.    How will my products be labeled?

Labeling is essential to identifying products in order to designate their origins, contents, uses and destinations. Knowing how products will be tracked will ensure you can always have visibility throughout the cycle. Product labels are vital to identifying how to use, carry, recycle or dispose of a package. Some sort of information is required by governments relating to particular industries and their products, such as medical, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, food, and chemical products. For marketing purposes, a label can deliver a consistent and reliable branding message so clients can instantaneously recognise the origin of an article. They assist in reducing safety risks during shipping. Labels might use security printing to help designate that the package and contents are not fake. Lots of symbols for package labeling are standardised so that they can be acknowledged nationally and internationally. Nation of origin labeling is frequently used. So, often a modest label is a perfect solution for giving necessary detail on your master shipping cases or for adding art and information to your retail product. For industrial and shipping purposes, stock labels and custom printed labels for special promotions on your retail products.

5. In-house or third party?

One of the biggest questions is to handle warehouse distribution services in house or to work with a third party. Considering the amount of staff and technology needed to ensure proper steps are taken, working with a third party may be more effective. Carefully way your options and consider working with a company that has all procedures in place.

About Lincoln Distribution

Develop in 1914; Lincoln Distribution has evolved into 400,000 sq. ft. of storage space spread across our warehouses’ facilities located in Buffalo and Syracuse, New York, and Tampa, Florida to cover all your warehousing needs and expectations. Offering a state-of-the-art inventory management system that will help you succeed in your sales efforts, our software, we will take care of your orders at all times, allowing you to have more time to focus on making your business grow. We guarantee you that our inventory management system will serve as a cornerstone for your business success by reducing your operational and logistics burden to let you concentrate on expanding and reaching more and more customers each day. Lincoln Distribution’s inventory management system provides you with access to your inventory 24/7. Thanks to our cutting-edge technology, you will be able to check your inventory and submit orders at any time. All of our clients get a personal user ID and password combination that allows them to access their account. Through our system, you and your designated staff will have easy access to the entire inventory’s information and to the comprehensive reports provided by the system to get insights into the evolution of your stock. We guarantee you that our inventory management system will serve as a cornerstone for your business success by reducing your operational and logistics burden to let you concentrate on expanding and reaching more and more customers each day.

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