Digital transformation and growing employment opportunities have taken the warehousing sector to another level. The evolution across various scenarios related to Warehousing services and the growing high-efficiency supply chain management adds strength and nourishment to the business across every level. Especially the e-commerce sector and companies that require a large inventory and changing requirements should invest in advanced warehousing for their business growth. If you are looking for ways to improve your business productivity, read this article, as we have shared the recent trends followed by “smart warehousing”, which you must know!

How Are Warehousing Services Cost-Efficient?

 

• Growth Potential:

In a metro city like Kolkata, business needs are more significant. They can flourish and might need more warehousing space for better continuity. Thus, warehousing services always ensure a buffer space for businesses if they need additional storage space due to their growth potential. This buffer space enables enterprises to reduce their additional storage costs and continue without hassle or shifting.  

• Connectivity:

Proper connectivity, optimization of routes, and truck and container utilization can reduce the number of shipments and reduce transportation costs. Do you know that transportation carries the highest cost factor in warehousing, as about 58% of the total cost belongs to transporting the goods?

Consolidating the goods reduces the number of trips to the different clients that belong to the same location. A renowned warehousing provider thinks of new strategies to stay on top of their business. Therefore they utilize hybrid freight negotiation strategies that help reduce transportation costs.  

Some of the renowned Warehouses In Kolkata have a ready-to-pick-up strategy and seasonal strategies to implement during market volatility or change in requirements. Therefore the location of the warehouse holds higher significance for efficient functioning. The warehouse must have proper connectivity to roadways, shipping ports, railways, and transportation options.

• Support To Any Size and Requirement:

Not sure about your business requirement just yet? It could be a problem when you have signed the documents with volatile requirement changes. You should consider the scalability of the warehousing service to ensure that you are in safer hands. Otherwise, you face the risk of bombarding massive utility costs for extending the warehouse spaces. It also affects your business productivity.

If you are unsure of your business requirement, inquire about their scalability in the first place. They should demonstrate strategies with flexibilities that run parallel to your business paradigms. 

• Professional and Digital Aids:

Professional handling and technological aids, including warehouse management software, are crucial aspects of the efficient functioning of the warehouse. Staff handling your inventory must be professional, so they are not overwhelmed when the volume increases in seasonal times. To offer better services, a renowned warehousing service ensures a larger warehousing size and employee ratio for better security and handling purposes.  

Other aspects, such as sterile storage facilities, medical equipment and baby care products, require temperature-controlled facilities and humidity-controlled storage options. The advanced warehousing solutions are backed with technologies and are called smart warehouses! They use artificial intelligence and the Internet of Service for most storage and fulfilment processes. Additionally, they are leveraged with technologies to automate repetitive processes and reduce man-errors. 

The automated processes cut down men’s wages and eliminate manual errors that could happen during packing and storage. It also cuts down the costs incurred for businesses due to inventory mistakes. Therefore some of the efficient Warehouses In Kolkata are backed with automation. On the other hand, the reputation of your business is also enhanced as you make little or no mistakes in delivering goods to your potential customers. Customers evaluate your service on how well you pack the goods and whether you make errors in providing the correct goods for them. Your business integrity is tied to you delivering the correct goods on time every time.

To accentuate the storage quality and cut costs, warehousing service providers often possess standard business recovery plans. Hence, they are capable of helping businesses during any potential disruptive event and handling unplanned expenses.

Wanting To Boost Productivity? Trends Of an Efficient Warehousing Service:

 

Some of the critical features of an efficient warehousing service are the reasons behind optimized business operations. Have you ever thought of the benefits an efficient warehousing service could bring to your business? Is warehousing an investment or expenditure? Well, it depends on its features! Consider the following factors to boost your business productivity before signing up for a warehousing service. 

• Real-Time Planning and Control of Inventory:

Practical and shared warehousing services increase the productivity of your business. Effective warehousing management would give you the following advantages and not limited to these: 

• Avoid stock outs
• Enhance customer experience
• Manage inventory levels
• Meet delivery schedules effortlessly
• Decisive
• Optimized workflow
• Optimize storage

 

• Avoid Stock Outs:

Eliminating low stocks or stock outs during sales and when your product is exhibiting higher trends in the market could transform your business growth to the next level. However, there could be no other worst-case scenario when your potential customer needs your product, and you have to turn them down due to stock outs! It can severely harm your reputation and turn them into your competitors! 

Keeping inventory management software in place helps eliminate these scenarios. The advanced warehouse management software identifies the low-tock areas and responds to such alerts immediately. It also identifies the trends based on the sale practices and ensures the stock is always full for such categories. How does it help you in cutting down costs? By improving sales. 

When you provide your customers with the goods they want without having them to wait, you win their hearts, and they become loyal customers to you. More loyal customers bring you more sales, and you also get more cash flow. Likewise, with the ability of the software that tracks down the trends, you can customize the inventory based on the trends so that you pay for the stock that sells.

• Enhance Customer Experience: 

In the digital world, word of mouth has become extremely important. One bad experience for a customer can lead to a great disaster; they share their qualms on social media about your product! However, if you keep inventory management in place, you can keep mishaps during order processing and delivery at bay and thus keep your potential customers happy all the time. 

Happy customers share their experiences through reviews on social media channels, and you get more satisfied customers. 

• Manage Inventory Levels:

Efficient management of stocks and real-time data helps businesses transform into better places. Having a summary of your inventory time in your hand helps in making critical business decisions. It provides full access to inventory costs, sales potential, ageing products, etc. Having all the details all the time enables you to plan your future, improve business operations and focus on critical areas of your business. 

For instance, when you have accurate stock details, you don’t have to worry about refilling the supplies that are in trend. You can also understand customers’ preferences and adjust the production line according to your customers’ needs. Customers enjoy the luxury of getting the best products in a world where you can get what you need. Therefore the requirement of the customers also keeps changing. Thus the system that helps track trends is an excellent asset for your company. 

Also, if you have an automated operation, you don’t have to worry about manual errors or keeping up the pace when the demand increases. Therefore you can excel in processing the orders. What is more cost-effective than using your inventory space efficiently? When your products are placed in proper order and easily accessible, inventory staff can quickly locate them without wasting on finding your orders. Overall, mastering inventory management helps in various aspects and benefits you and the inventory service provider.

• Meet Delivery Schedules Effortlessly:

Some inventories act as “anticipation inventories”. Retailers and manufacturers use them to keep the stock ready for specific seasons. Retailers and manufacturers might not want to expose the goods until it’s time for sale. For instance, these anticipation inventories handle goods related to seasons and celebrations. One common challenge in this type of goods is that the manufacturers prepare the stock based on the requirement of retailers. Thus, they must be meticulous about the available supply and have relatively limited shelf value for these products. 

However, for any business requirement, the delivery schedules are essential to keep the customers happy. Every customer would want their deliveries to be intact and on time. Therefore warehousing services adopt real-time management to ensure the goods are delivered to the clients on time.

• Decisive:

Effective inventory management helps in carrying out critical business decisions. Warehousing service providers understand businesses are dealing with a lot of pressure in keeping up the production and understanding the trends. Therefore they take an extra step in providing insight into the stocks, profit margins, and detailed reports on higher and lower sellers. 

Inventories are not just inventories anymore; they come ahead to help the business grow in productivity and reputation among its customers. Wouldn’t it be so helpful when you have a reliable assistant to guide you in your business? Yes! When you invest in efficient warehousing with warehouse management software up to date, you get more benefits than you could ever imagine!

• Optimized Workflow:

Can you point out the best feature of an intelligent warehousing system? We answer for you! They can predict the potential bottlenecks! Yes, we suffer a severe loss in business when we fail to predict the pitfalls. On the other hand, this factor helps inventories step ahead in the competitive market. Especially if your delivery locations are all across the nation, you need to monitor and access data at every site. It also helps in managing finances and tweaking sales requirements as well. 

Warehouse service providers are not relying on workers anymore as they are not ready to risk errors or delays during order processing. They understand intensive manual operations can lead to mishaps, and they don’t want the businesses to suffer losses because of them. Therefore they invest in advanced warehouse management software to standardize the workflow and capture real-time data. It also enables them to create an optimized path for the staff working in the inventory and allows them to complete the order in the quickest time possible. Would you be a happy customer when you receive the entire package of your order on the next day or the same day? Yes indeed! That’s the goal the inventories are working on and have achieved already!

The digital transformation of warehouses is making them innovative and bolstering businesses towards their goals! Hence it’s a win-win situation!

• Optimized Storage at Your Inventory:

Disorganized shelves, cluttered workshops and improper usage of vertical spaces and aisles can add more time for order completion, and you wouldn’t want your customers to wait for their orders too! Thus warehouse service providers come up with solutions like smart labelling like QR codes, segregation of inventories based on varied parameters, taller storage options to store vertically, standardized bins and color-coding patterns. Some of the advanced solutions offer great help for businesses and make them continue businesses hassle-free. If you are also worried about expanding your business, you should look for a warehouse with advanced solutions to these challenges. 

It also shouldn’t cost you more than required. For instance, if your inventory requires expansion five years down the line, you would not want to go through a separate documentation process and additional admin pieces of stuff for every update in your business. As discussed earlier, several warehouses provide scalability, considering your future growth.

What Should You Look for In a Warehouse?

 

Choosing an inventory for your business is a big decision, hence look for the following factors: 

 

• What Is Their Labor Productivity Rate?

Every inventory is automated, and all have adopted the technology. However, nothing is comparable with manpower. What is their manpower ratio for the volume they handle? This could be the prime factor in measuring their efficiency in managing your inventory volume. Are they making efforts to train their staff to become professionals? Does the company follow any training methods and standards to introduce the new joiners? Staff training is essential to increase their competency and manage when the workforce is reduced. Some efficient warehouse providers take input from their workers to increase productivity and reduce operational costs. They provide a safer environment for their workers by taking information to reduce their workload and become constructive as a team.

• Do They Have a Standard Workflow?

Any organization would have a standard workflow to meet the requirements. Otherwise, the staffs work at their own pace, which could lead to reduced productivity in the warehouse. It becomes difficult to evaluate their performance if there is a different pace and significant gaps in the warehouse’s processes. Hence setting benchmarks and standard workflow enables them to keep all the staff in line with the expectation.

It benefits the warehouse provider to optimize their productivity and decide their wages. The guidelines should be transparent to every staff across warehouse operations, such as package moment, order fulfilment, and other processes. These are some of the factors that put the warehouse service ahead in their field. Analyzing these factors before committing the business with them ensures you are in safer hands.

• Consider Their Floor Plan/ Layout:

Have a look in person, and check their websites and past performances to make a decision. An efficient warehouse starts with an efficient layout, they don’t waste space, and their operations are streamlined. Investigating their processes, shipping and storage can be helpful for you to decide. Do they have tools and technologies for faster access? The floor space shouldn’t be cluttered, and aisles should be clear for better access. When an inventory has a better floor plan that fits your business now and 5 or 10 years down the line? You can certainly grow in the ten years and require additional space for your inventory; you wouldn’t want to make a decision every time you upgrade your business requirements.

Conclusion:

Changing demands and seasonal demands are some of the challenging periods for retailers, distributors and virtual store managers. They manage logistic operations effectively with the help of automated warehousing. You might have heard about or experienced loss and the challenges that you can’t control market fluctuations when loads are massive. However, to satisfy your customer needs and stay on top of your market, you must manufacture or deal with seasonal assortments! Above all, you should have the potential to forecast sales demand and track down the stocks you have. These challenges can be managed well if you hire a reputed warehousing service provider!