There have been numerous challenges faced by retailers and wholesalers in recent years – from the fluctuating demands of bricks and mortar stores to supply chain disruption caused by economic, political and global factors. But there's been a saviour among this rapid evolution: digitisation. The growing adoption of solutions to help keep up with changing demands is helping wholesale organisations achieve efficiencies that enable them to better serve their customers, and exercise the agility needed to adapt in a fast-paced arena.
The array of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solutions designed to help businesses successfully address common pain points is wide, with cost, function and scalability of each varying. In-depth comparison research is crucial, but some features are an absolute must-have and should be at the top of the wish list of any firm that manages stock.
Inventory management is one of the biggest areas for change in a firm, opening the door to better productivity, process efficiencies and cash flow improvement. Having the right inventory levels to serve fluctuating customer needs is crucial, while having too much will simply tie up capital and precious space on the warehouse floor. Knowing how much stock there is, where it is located, what needs to be replenished and what has left the warehouse are all key aspects of inventory management.
Features to manage this are well catered for in many of the Warehouse Management Systems (WMS) available within ERP architecture, but automation and machine learning within inventory management free up the workforce to focus on other important tasks. A major pain point in any retail or wholesale distribution business will be the inventory count. As important as this process is, it is also incredibly labour intensive and time-consuming. If it is done physically and all at once, the process can take days and involves freezing all transactions during the counting process, which is hugely disruptive to operations. If counts are conducted after hours to negate this disruption, it can be expensive when covering staff overtime. Some businesses tackle the issue by counting small amounts of inventory more regularly – but it's still a dreaded, manual slog.
The emergence of automated inventory counts within warehouse management solutions negates this issue. This is done in real-time without having to freeze transactions for that location – which would otherwise be disruptive to operations as it involves pausing both order receiving and dispatching. With features such as alerts about any current transactional activity while a count is being performed, and the ability to take appropriate action as a result of that activity, the control is put into the hands of the administrator managing the count.
The capability to input a list of items to be counted, using predefined criteria, completely automates the reckoning process while providing enhanced visibility. Of course, with inventory counting, the data is only as useful as it is accurate, so it's wise to ensure your chosen WMS offers the functionality to trigger a recount automatically with a specified criteria. For example, if a bin falls below the reorder point, a recount will automatically be triggered to ensure the count is accurate before reordering takes place. This negates any unnecessary replenishment that can negatively impact cash flow and available warehouse space.
With cloud ERP solutions such as this deployable on mobile devices, counts can be done anywhere in the warehouse at any point. In a world where demand is harder to predict, having the flexibility to conduct regular, real-time, accurate counts – to keep inventory levels at their optimum – is a game-changer that can help head off competition.
Technology adoption is key to survival as well as growth; with it on side, companies can scale without increasing its headcount to the same degree. The flexibility provided by solutions that offer true visibility of stock, and intelligent inventory management, enables the rapid and informed decision making that is required in an industry where buying behaviour and economic factors are predictably unpredictable.
Ian Robertson is the Sales and Marketing Director of BrightBridge, a UK-based technology consultancy offering Oracle NetSuite and Microsoft Dynamics 365 solutions. Ian has over 30 years of experience in ERP and CRM implementations. Prior to forming BrightBridge, Ian worked for a major US IT corporation, where he acquired a depth of knowledge around time saving efficiencies through technological integration and automation.
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