Stocking Up Some Knowledge About Warehousing

Sales are looking good, and customers just kept on popping from here and there. You’re now generating buttloads of cash in your startup. Next thing you know, a sudden urge of what feels right is that you came up with the decision that it’s time to expand the business.

But don’t go ahead ordering tons of supplies for stocks to ensure customer satisfaction and demand, as well as to assure that there is enough materials or merchandise for manufacture or delivery if you don’t have a place for its inventory, or basically for storage. You need to know an important element in supply chain management to keep your business in tip-top shape, as well as bring ease to your ever-growing business or company, and that is the practice of warehousing.

Normally about startups, business owners tend to take no notice of the advantages of having a warehouse in the first place. Most of the time, it’s even the last thing on their minds since they always think that warehousing just eats a portion of the revenue due to the cost of rent or allocating a huge amount to buy a lot of space. Also, other expenses of having a warehouse include hand trucks, cranes, forklifts, operating supplies, maintenance, and down to trash disposal—overall, additional responsibilities and expenditure.

But if you’re a company eyeing to expand and grow your business, warehousing would actually save you money more than you thought.

Warehousing is the act of allotting a storage place for your materials, goods, products, or merchandise. It also allows optimized distribution of your materials or products while having the benefit of minimizing error and damage in the fulfillment process or orders.

Other than that, warehousing also increases the labor force and productivity. You don’t even have to worry as you can store your materials or goods in a location that offers safety and security, thus, preventing them from being lost, and worse, stolen during dropping and handling. Hence, there is more than what meets the warehouse definition.

While warehousing can seem to be a hefty job, small-scale business owners do not need to feel like they’re too small and incapable to buy or rent an ecommerce warehouse. Actually, there is an option for them where they can resort to third-party warehousing service, might as well say those big retailers are not the only ones that can take advantage of the benefits that warehousing can give to their businesses.

Key Benefits of Warehousing

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With tons of benefits that you can get in warehousing your stocks alone, this is a list of the key benefits of why it would make your life easier as a business owner when you invest in warehousing.

Accurate Inventories

Warehousing goods prevent you from overbuying stocks that might end up not getting bought, as well as avoiding “out-of-stock” situations. It also gives you an idea of how stocks are doing, from what needs constant replenishing every week to stocks that do not need replenishing at all. Furthermore, you have a precise calculation with regard to the materials or products that a business must keep and must let go of at all times.

Easier tracking

With warehousing, stocks can be properly monitored and easily tracked. Starting from the place of order, what comes in, and what comes out of your warehouse, to have the product delivered at a customer’s doorstep. This is a great move if you want to improve your company’s efficiency in terms of order fulfillment since you’ll definitely know where to track stolen or missing purchases.

Transactions do not end when the buyer receives the parcel or package. You need to have a warehouse process where it can cater to your needs as a business owner and customer satisfaction at the same time.

Accessible Location and Smooth Flow

Finding a warehouse that can store your goods in a central location is a major key in improving order fulfillment. For example, if you’re office or headquarters is located in a remote area, shipping and delivering goods stored near you would be a hassle. But when the warehouse is placed in a central location near highways, rail lines, or airports, it would save you money regarding transportation and handling of the said product.

Product warehouses must offer accessibility—a competent business strategy that surely brings your company to your A-game. After all, aside from money, there’s nothing more valuable other than time in a business that makes money every second. So, time is indeed money.

Better Organization and Storing Adequacy

Some goods require temperatures that your basic storage room cannot offer. Some warehouses have a built-in climate control system for your goods that require refrigeration. Frozen meat or pharmaceutical products tend to spoil faster when not placed in an appropriate environment. Hence, practicing good ecommerce warehouse management starts by investing in a warehouse that would

Ability to Focus on Other Matters

When you manage your business your inventory at the same time, things can get out of hand. Since juggling two different aspects of a business that require much attention and critical thinking can be a handful, having an ecommerce warehouse can allow you to focus more on improving managerial and marketing aspects of your company or business. That said, you will have more time to spend on things that matter internally and let the team handling your warehouse manage the facility and operation.

Is a Warehouse and a Distribution Center the Same Thing?

While an ecommerce warehouse and a distribution center both store your goods, their operations are different. In a warehouse, you only store the product for accessibility and organized inventory. On the other hand, a distribution center also stores your products but at the same time takes orders all done in the same place.

To boot, a distribution center is laborious than an ecommerce warehouse since you deal with value-added services and packaging, or in other words, you serve external customers on the spot. So, it’s best to think beforehand about what kind of depot you want to invest in.

What is 3PL and What It Can Offer You?

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For business owners who want others to take care of their ecommerce warehouse management, outsourcing is the best option for you. Plus, outsourcing is actually cheaper than you expect.

With that in mind, the best thing to do is to partner with a third-party logistics (3PL) provider. This makes a business owner’s job a lot easier since you can outsource operational logistics in terms of inventory, distribution, warehousing and order fulfillment, and more.

Amazon, eBay, Walmart, FedEx Logistics are some examples of 3PL providers with Amazon being the largest 3PL provider in the world. If you sell at 3PL providers, rest assured that your sales and inventory will be automatically synced. Your product’s status before and after delivery will all be noted all through one provider and their used software.

Other than that, this is also a major asset when it comes to ecommerce warehouse management since you will also be given a list of supplies that will be considered as demand in the future due to their advanced analytics that monitor trends and patterns to what customer’s like and eventually buy.

From another perspective, warehousing has everything to do with logistics management. Logistics is the overall procedure starting from when and how the resources are acquired, stored, and transported to their designated areas. Through supply chain management, company goals can be met through proper organization and utilization of such areas that possess complex operations.

Things To Consider When Opening a Warehouse

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With warehousing fluid to every kind of business, big or small, there are things that make a warehousing operation seamless and efficient.

If you’re really planning on warehousing your goods this day, here are tips that can answer your question, “what to consider if opening a new warehouse”:

1. Rent and Taxes

A large ecommerce warehouse for your valuable goods may result to high rent costs and taxes. The best thing to do is to plan ahead of time. Do some research and find the best spot for your desired warehousing—an accessible place, yet the amount you would pay for rent should be reasonable. Allocating a sum of money for warehousing should also be done through marketing strategies that can increase sales so you can carry out the said cost for warehousing.

Aside from these costs, one must also take note of local governmental regulations, tax structures, and incentives. Failure to do so, you can spend a ton of money on rent, utility costs, and equipment but ending up closing your ecommerce warehouse due to violations and other legal matters.

2. Accessibility

As mentioned earlier, you invest in a warehouse so that your products can get to customers or retail stores as fast as possible since businesses value the time and patience of their customers. Customer satisfaction can be met as long as the ecommerce warehouse is placed in a central location where trucks loaded with your products can hit the road in no time. With this, goods or products are faster in terms of shipment and order fulfillment since the warehouse process runs at full speed.

3. Utility Costs

Utility costs are impossible to predict, so it’s always a great idea to be ready for certain costs that affect an ecommerce warehouse that’s working at full capacity. Electricity, telecommunication services, garbage, and recycling collection, sewerage are some of the essential utilities to focus on when you start owning a warehouse.

These should also be maintained and fixed if problems do arrive. If not, product warehouses mishaps may cause an abrupt pause in all transactions, which shouldn’t be the case if you’re in the retail industry.

4. Workforce

A warehouse may simply handle its own if it’s just for storing goods and products, but in order to make use and utilize an ecommerce warehouse in full efficiency and capacity, the labor force is required to make it happen and to keep the business moving.

Various people are needed for the job to maintain and assure that every operation is managed and accomplished. Computers may do the work for you, but transportation, machinery, and others are some of the areas that require human skill and intelligence.

Ecommerce in a Nutshell

In running a business, one must be ready to adapt to ever-changing circumstances. To keep up with the progressive state of ecommerce, and make it easier for anyone who wants to earn money even if they’re at home, Strikingly is your best companion.

Strikingly is the best website builder since it allows the user to create a mobile-optimized website within minutes, with or without experience in site-building. In Strikingly, you can manage orders on its free iOS and Android App.

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