Thinking About Warehouse Management System Software?

It may be time to consider deploying a warehouse management system if you find yourself drowning in paperwork, your legacy business processes can’t keep up with rising customer expectations, you suspect that your warehouse workers are inefficient, and you spend countless hours trying to track down missing inventory. If this describes your current situation, you’re not alone – but that’s where PathGuide’s Latitude WMS can help.

Consider This

You’ve probably thought about investing in some sort of inventory management software before now, but it might have seemed like it would require an overly complicated analysis due to the many questions that needed to be asked and answered before talking to any WMS vendors. Here are the top three questions that should be considered to best determine whether it’s time to invest in the warehouse management system software.

1) Is your warehouse costing you (and your company) money?

2) Do you control your inventory, or does your inventory control you?

3) What do your customers say about you?

Labor costs represent the largest expenditure in warehouse operations, and they are the most difficult to manage. At the top of the priority list of key performance indicators (KPI) should be productivity in terms of revenue per employee (RPE). A warehouse management system will track every single item to speed picking and reduce errors that occur with paper-based inventory programs. Product will never be lost again. Warehouse management system software will also save money by eliminating manual labor involved when tracking things like expiration dates or bin movements in a spreadsheet. Deploying a warehouse management system can help identify those areas in the warehouse impeding exceptional customer service and establish the controls necessary to turn that around.

Start With the Basics

Before talking to a warehouse management system software vendor, prepare for the project internally. Start by performing a simple assessment of your warehouse and define what you want to achieve with a WMS. This will help you select the most important areas to improve and decide which features your new WMS needs to have in order to help you run your business efficiently. Next, pick a “warehouse champion.”  A warehouse champion seems like a silly name, but is important to the implementation. Take a look around. Who is that certain someone within the organization who will drive the entire project and communicate what’s happening to all of the internal stakeholders? This can be the same person who took charge of the first step. Third, make sure that the executive team is completely on board with the project. This is a very critical part of the process and shouldn’t be taken lightly.

Get to Know One Another

If the WMS vendor hasn’t seen your facilities yet, your next move should be to schedule an on-site review of your operation. Some vendors may charge for this – but there is value here and often some (or all) of the fee will be refunded if you ultimately decide to purchase from the vendor. In all cases, this gives the WMS vendor an opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of your business objectives going forward and take a first-hand look at your current processes. A thorough warehouse review may take several hours, sometimes more. Afterwards, the WMS provider should send you a discovery report that details their findings. This ensures you are both on the same page. If the vendor’s feedback and suggestions do not match your needs, get back in touch with the provider to clarify. If there are too many red flags, continue your search for a different WMS provider.