Increased number of points of sale v. reduced inventory level. How to deal with these two current retail challenges by ensuring good profit margins? The key is to invest in logistics efficiency. The lower the costs of the logistics operation, the greater your gains will be, so it is essential to prioritize improvements in inventory, reverse logistics, traceability, compliance with Omnichannel demands, segregated and multivolume control. To achieve a high level of excellence in all these operations, you can rely on WMS Rx.
What WMS RX does for retail
How much do “inventory losses” represent in your company’s results?
Hard to answer, isn’t it? This is because differences in inventory have a great impact not only on its processes, but also – and especially – on the quality of customer service. If a product that the consumer wants is missing, the chances of them definitively disconnecting from his company and seeking out the competition are great. Hence the extent of the damage caused by a single gap in inventory management: inventory control.
In the case of retail network, which has several points of sale (stores), it is necessary to gather a large team of experts to monitor all products and identify failures, tasks that WMS Rx can do with the help of a powerful ally: Accuinventory, an inventory manager for companies with one or more business units, where the big difference is, in addition to the integrated control of the counts, the automation of analysis and decisions. With Accuinventory you have full tracking without stopping sales or the operation. Click here and find out more.
How to decrease reverse logistics costs?
Inverse logistic movements from stores to DCs are very common in retail networks. This is due to quality control, when products that are no longer in sales conditions (malfunctions or expired) are returned to the DC, and also due to sales actions where excess items in a given store are relocated to others in order to increase the chances of commercialization.
With WMS Rx, the cost with this operation is minimized through specific solutions that will optimize the replacement of products in the Picking area, or even relocate them in dynamic Picking area, thus avoiding the replacement effort. In addition to these advantages, WMS Rx has Cross-Docking, a process that makes the returned products available for Picking directly from the receiving dock, after the entire receiving inspection and verification, of course.
Traceability is vital for batch-controlled products.
As for batch control, serial number and IMEIs, with WMS Rx you can inspect and audit the movements and balances of products in stock any time. The system automatically records the entry and exit dates and is able to identify the destination of each batch or product. And don’t be concerned about FIFO or FEFO, in WMS Rx you define the prioritization of the output.
Do not lose a customer due to failures in the management of segregated products.
Dealing with a large number of SKUs, which enter and leave the DC and stores all the time and are usually handled by several people, requires more than organization. Strict quality control is required to prevent unsold products from reaching the customer’s hands. To reduce efforts in this inspection, rely on WMS Rx, which has tools for classification and blocking of segregated items, allowing the company to negotiate with suppliers or take the necessary and appropriate measures for disposal.
Distribution Centers are no longer the same
With the advancement of online sales, themes such as Omni-channel, Customer Experience, Last Mile and Same-Day Deliveries have taken the sleep of many managers in Distribution Centers everywhere. The way retail sells has changed and it is up to companies to prepare for this new challenge. With WMS Rx, it is possible to reconcile within the same operation both the supply to stores (large orders with many volumes) and e-commerce orders which, in most cases, have few items. However, we must not lose sight of inventory accuracy – vital for e-commerce – and productivity, because E-Commerce orders, because they are smaller, need specific tools not to cause bottlenecks in the DC. WMS Rx understands these changes and through order grouping strategies, queue prioritization, Put-To-Wall processes (hive) and others, we can reduce labor cost by up to 40%. Click here and see this Case study.
Divide and conquer: the secret of the multivolume solution.
Every day, the DCs in retail chains receive numerous orders with a large list of products that need to be dispatched. To separate the items, optimizing the time and reducing the movement in the warehouse, WMS RX has a solution that facilitates the whole process: the dismemberment of the order in multiple volumes according to multiple of the industry packaging or fractional. With this strategy, the items are separated in parallel, arriving faster for shipping.
It’s true: what can’t be measured, can’t be improved.
This is how WMS Rx was built and it’s always evolving. The manager needs to have the operation information literally in hand, such as KPIs and reports showing how things are going, and what needs to be improved. However, it is essential that the system also helps to avoid deviations that can be easily identified, such as possible delays and breaches in orders if there is no replenishment, among others. With WMS Rx, you will have a diversity of KPIs and reports, and not just that: rely on the system to warn you of risks through Notifications and Visual Management. Click here and find out more.
