Apr 21, 2017
What a WMS is and Why You Should Invest in One
Few people are familiar with the concept of a WMS, or Warehouse Management System. While the title makes it obvious that it is a system that helps to manage the activities in your warehouse, it goes well beyond that. It is therefore necessary to know what a WMS is all about and how it works to improve your business functionality. It is essential to know that a warehouse management system is a lot more than just a means to manage inventory. It is a system that integrates various factors in the warehouse– it combines stock levels with people and computer systems, and it makes all these different factors work as one cohesive system.
Benefits of a Good WMS
• Fewer data errors: Human error always carries risk and therefore, a good WMS provides you with virtually error-free and functional data. When products are barcoded, they can be verified upon delivery and provide data on storage and expiry, location and length of storage, and the people who booked them in. This means that you will always have a handle on what goods you have, when they expire, and where they are stored in your warehouse.
• Better management of lead times: A critical factor of warehouse management is to minimise the storage time, in order to get goods to the customer as soon as possible. Typically, there are two kinds of lead times: Customer-oriented and warehouse-oriented. A good WMS helps you to coordinate them. It will help you predict customer needs and act on these proactively, taking into account the time it will take to get stock to your warehouse, and to the customer. This ensures that you do not over-order or under-order your stock, or have to deal with unnecessary storage costs, because your stock will flow in and out as needed, while you can deal with the needs of your clients in an effective way.
• Increased labour productivity: In all working environments, it is crucial to manage employees’ tasks to maximise productivity. A good WMS helps your staff prioritise the tasks and ensures that the most important things get taken care of first. The time it will take to process an order or to complete a task is calculated by the WMS, and this can help you to stay ahead of orders while completing the most critical tasks. It is also very useful for predicting required staff numbers, shifts, and the need for extra or fewer employees at specific times of the year or month.
• Optimise storage: Because storage costs so much, it is expensive to have stock sitting in the warehouse that you cannot shift within a short space of time. It is crucial to manage your stock levels to optimise the amount of storage you have, and to be able to shift stock in an effective way that will not require extra storage space or incur extra costs. A WMS can help you better utilise the space in you warehouse and save you a lot of money. Even the location of stock within a warehouse can increase productivity and storage space, and it can help your warehouse employees know exactly where to locate which product in short order. It is helpful to use locations in the storage space that will best suit the product, and for products that need particular conditions in order to remain intact for longer, your WMS can pinpoint the ideal locations within your warehouse for them.
• Increased flow: Because your WMS can predict the needs of customers and stock levels proactively, it can make the flow of products through your storage facility smoother and more effective. You should not spend money on stock that will not be used or that has to be stored for long periods, and getting a grip on what to order when, where to store it, and to move it out in a short space of time, is vital. A great WMS will help you to manage these processes and the flow of stock much more efficiently.
If you would like to find out more about a WMS for your warehouse, give our team at Lupus Consulting a call. We have all the skill and experience you need to manage your warehouse much better.
Apr 20, 2017
How Forward ERP can Propel Your Business into a New Realm
Information is valuable asset. This means that not only is the collection of information or data important to your business, but having the means to mix and interpret this data in a variety of arrangements is a real bonus to your organisation. It can help you to identify new markets, identify problems, and find solutions for them, and also to regulate and streamline the processes within the business to make them more effective. You simply must have the ability to track and predict trends within your business realm, analyse and improve your production processes, and reduce waste throughout the business.
Forward ERP is not a foreign concept. Over the last decade, it has become increasingly important for businesses to invest in it. ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) and Forward ERP incorporate innovative database designs and interpretation mechanisms. They provide your organisation with design that is virtually flawless and uses the latest technology to help ease the processes of production, design, and manufacturing. It is also highly effective at assisting service-oriented companies to serve their customers better.
Forward ERP allows you access to a solution that is fully integrated and provides you with unprecedented control over your organisational procedures, processes, and related activities. It gives you access to information that is vital for the running and bottom line of the organisation and allows you to interpret the collected volumes of data in a meaningful way. The generated reports can be customised to draw information from a variety of data sources and to interpret these in a way that is functional and understandable to the user. Access to meaningful data is no longer the domain of high-profile business managers; it also empowers your employees to gain access to information that will help them make better decisions on a daily basis.
Forward ERP caters for many business designs and provides a comprehensive and integrated solution. This gives you and your employees a high level of control over proactive strategy and how to change your business processes and activities to meet your needs. Customised reporting allows you to generate reports according to the needs of the individual or department to gauge progress and trends. Typical reports include irrelevant and incomprehensible data, but if you can only get the information you need, that makes a meaningful contribution to the way decisions are made, your company can be managed and operated better. This means that you need real-time access to the information that matters most at the time, and not be subject to drawing long reports with meaningless information. Data is the power behind the process, and as a business manager or owner, you have to learn how to manipulate and draw this information in a way that is easy to interpret and manage.
Forward ERP consists of many different components that include some standard applications that can be customised to meet the needs of one or two departments, or of a whole organisation, with different departments and application components. This provides business managers with a much better understanding and control of their business processes. This may include barcode creation, scanning, and printing. The first version of Forward ERP appeared in the early 2000s and it has developed to provide the business manager with valuable information based on real-time activities, data collection, and transactions. It can be scaled to fit small, medium, or large businesses in different industries. The number of customers who actively use Forward ERP has grown over the last decade, and nowadays it is almost unthinkable to run a business without some form of ERP.
As with all other technologies, mobile technology has grown in prominence, and if you use Forward ERP, you can tap into all the advantages that mobile information provides. Not only can you access crucial information from wherever you are, but business managers and employees can get real-time reports on sales, production, manufacturing, stock levels, and a whole host of other functions. This gives employees the opportunity to respond to difficult situations or to capitalise on new opportunities. If you would like to find out more about how Forward ERP operates and how it can help to improve your business, give our team at Lupus Consulting a call.
