How to setup WMS, warehouse management system for your company?

There are various considerations that needs to be taken into account when setting up a new or migrating WMS for companies

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Know Yourself, and why you need WMS

It is very important to know what is the WMS is intended. What problems is the most important to solve at your warehouse? We have consulted various clients that has different objectives for the system

Product Quantity - Ensuring accuracy of the quantity on hand at any given time, in turn when Sales happens, you are always sure that only products on hand are ordered. Keeping a backlog and informing customers when stocks are available
Product Cost Pricing - Many trading companies purchase products at various phases of times, and pricing fluctuations happens due
Product Quality - This is especially true where contracts are involved, to supply the freshest LIFO products for a specific group of clients and while the rest is making sure that expired products are periodically cleared out from the Warehouse
Accurate Real Time Purchase Orders- Trading companies are always looking at the purchases, you may prioritize keeping the back orders on hand
What is the problem you wanted to solve with a new warehouse management system?

Know Your Company

Once you have established what is the main pain point to solve with WMS, you need to consider different aspects of implementation of an effective WMS. We have consulted various clients that has different requirements for the system

Existing Processes and workflows of the company - Having a system
ISO 9000 - Ensuring accuracy of the quantity on hand at any given time, in turn when Sales happens, you are always sure that only products on hand are ordered. Keeping a backlog and informing customers when stocks are available
Integration with Various Divisions - The softwares or systems used by Purchasing, Sales, Finance divisions of your company and the flow of data between these divisions
Will it be in-house or oursourced developement?
Will the system be online or only used within the company (Intranet). Keeping in mind that some operations may need to be run outside of office, we normally propose online solutions.

Find Out About the 10 Essential Warehouse Processes

These are the 10 important warehouse processes that warehouse managers or management needs to be aware of to run a warehouse efficiently. Having a common process helps employees understand effectively what they need to do to best serve your customers, in turn more profits for your company.

Find Out More

Outsource WMS or Build In-House

Some companies may have an existing IT team (Information Technology team) or the plan to extend the team for long term support to keep costs low. Some point of consideration may include:

When Outsourcing to Vendors to build WMS

Get to know when you want to outsource or build the system in-house here:

What are the functions existingly available with the software vendor?
How do you make sure that the data is safe? Should we have an NDA and agreement with the Vendor about data?
How much time does the Vendor take to complete, and costs?
How will maintenance and support be charged? Do we have a Service Level Agreement on the minimum response time?

When Using an In-House team to build WMS

Considerations when building a WMS in-house

is the in-house team familiar with the different frameworks that is utilized to keep the codes safe
are the in-house team familiar with workflows and building new SOP for the company
how much does it take to hire a team of minimally 3 programmers
the technology and know-how to maintain the codes