A Warehouse Management System (WMS) is a designed software and solution with processes that allow organizations to manage and administer all warehouse operations from the entry of goods or materials until the time they move out.
With the evolution in technology, eCommerce and the introduction of WMS, the warehousing industry has been innovating towards improvement by shifting from manual involvement to automation to reduce human made errors and create more seamless and smart transactions.
The advanced software support of WMS has efficiently streamlined the assets, managed the human resources and the business operations.With the booming of eCommerce industry, eCommerce Warehouse Management System (eWMS) is now a new technology that offers much more premium services to the traditional warehouse platforms to maintain its predominance in providing exceptional services.
What can a Warehouse Management System Do?
Inventory Control and Management
Your warehouse is an important part of your customers’ buying experience. Making sure products ordered are in stock and customers get what they purchased is crucial to providing good customer service. WMS improves picking accuracy so orders are correct the first time. WMS also makes organizing flow of inventory and order easier through automation. Worker assignments, putaways are all easily managed and tracked. This warehouse automation, up-to-date information and real-time tracking all leads to better accuracy and happier customers.
Company Productivity
Your warehouse plays a key part in ensuring that your company meets its productivity goals. A Warehouse Management System enables organizations to maximize their manpower and labor, space utilization and equipment investments by coordinating and optimizing resource usage and material flows.
Customer Service and Tracking
A Warehouse Management System enhances inventory management by decreasing inventory levels, improving order fulfillment, and reducing order cycle time. Designed to control all of your warehouse’s activities, WMS allows you to track every unit down to the lowest level of detail for improved order fulfillment and inventory accuracy.
Many others functions including inventory tracking, picking, distributing, receiving and putaway can be done effectively and efficiently to move goods and materials through the warehouse.
Who Needs WMS
The short answer is everyone with inventory that is moving through a warehouse needs WMS to effectively track where inventory is and be sure information is up to date and accurate at all times.
WMS can help you handle larger volumes of shipments as your business grows. A Warehouse Management System allows you to manage inventories effectively to handle increasing volumes of shipments so your inventory is not sitting still. You are able to move inventory and handle volume as business increases without getting pulled back by operation breakdown or staff turnover.
DO receiving is an easy place to start. You can get inventory in the door, instantly received against a DO and print your own barcode at the same time. Once inventory is in the system, you know exactly how much you have and where to find it for use later in order picking, production and shipping.
Types of warehouse management systems
Warehouse management software varies widely in complexity - types and implementation methods that cater to different sizes, types of goods they sell and the nature of the organization.
They can either be standalone systems or modules in a larger ERP (Entreprise resource planning) system or supply chain execution suite. And with the recent years where internet and digital technology transformed how customers make purchases, it is the disrupting supply markets, changing customer buying patterns, and adding complexity to the supply chain (in areas of fulfillment operations to meet the changes with a digitally connected solution of their own.) So to stay on top of all of your incoming and outgoing product operations, there are four types of warehouse management system software to use:
1. Integrated WMS
2. Standalone WMS
3. On-Premises WMS
4. Cloud-based WMS
1. Integrated WMS
An integrated WMS is an add-on to your existing Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system provider that manages invoicing, accounting and tracking inventory. When everything is integrated into one system, it is easier to keep track of which orders are best to invest money in as the WMS takes the orders and directs the order picking process, inventory and receiving and shipping of products.
With an integrated warehouse management system, you can keep an eye on the financial analytics to be more well-informed and make strategic decisions when restocking products.
2. Standalone WMS
A standalone warehouse management system is primarily tailored to serve the function of warehouse management. Therefore this type of WMS has advanced reporting features that will help you level up your warehouse. However, it might have limited functionality for other aspects of your business, such as inventory or accounting.
At the end of the day, it depends on which one is the priority of your warehouse to select the most suited ones for your organization.
3. On-Premises WMS
On-premises WMS is one which you have full control over the uptime and security, and full responsible for hosting and maintaining both the hardware and software associated with your system.
This comes with a large upfront cost because you are responsible to ensure all the components of the WMS is regularly maintained. While very small businesses is comfortable using on-premises WMS, however it can be quite hectic to manage everything by yourself.
4. Cloud-Based WMS
Alternatively, cloud-based WMS systems are hosted on a remote server and typically charged on a subscription basis. When signed up, the vendors will handle everything from bug fixes to software updates with guaranteed level of service uptime.
If your online retail business grows, there’s more reason to assess the most effective way to manage all of the products in your business.
That is mainly because customers have high expectations when it comes to shipping and order packaging, so it’s important to ensure accuracy and liminate confusion in the warehouse.
With an on-premises WMS, it is a good way to save all the time and resources.
Shoko e-commerce Warehousing Management System (eWMS) set out with a goal in mind to solve the issues that are usually faced when it comes to warehouse operations and the problems that sellers go through.
The team at Shoko consists of warehouse operators and sellers that come from a retail and e-commerce background. This system is highly sought after by warehouse operators due to the fact that when numerous different warehouse management systems and inventory management systems were deployed, it does not seem to completely fill up the market gap of meeting the sellers’ requirements (to fully utilise all marketing tools in Shopee and Lazada /web stores) as well as achieving real efficiencies in the warehouse.
Why Shoko eWMS?
Shoko, an e-commerce warehouse management system (eWMS), is a software that embeds functions of a traditional WMS, with features of OMS. Instead of deploying individual WMS and OMS separately, that are both great software, having Shoko itself helps you to
- Keep track of all inventories in your warehouse IN ONE DASHBOARD
- Suggest locations by inventory batches or expiry dates
- Manage inventory levels and orders on all sales channel
Summary
One thing we know for sure is that a warehouse is the essential link between business and customers. And implementing a good WMS can help an organization: reduce labor costs improve inventory accuracy, flexibility and responsiveness decrease errors in picking and shipping goods improve customer service
Especially today with the modern warehouse management systems that operate with real-time data, organizations can effectively manage the most current information on day-to-day activities like orders, shipments, receipts and any movement of goods.