What Are the Warehouse Services That Help Manage Business Process?

Warehouse services entail all the activities that contribute to making a delightful experience for the customers. Right from storage to transporting of goods to fulfilling the orders, warehousing acti

Warehouse services entail all activities that are directly or indirectly contributing to creating a happy customer experience. With the help of these activities, businesses keep moving towards better performance by scaling up their operations. For the uninitiated, warehouse is a separate premise which can be within the manufacturing base or away from it, which the companies own or hire for managing the logistics of materials and finished goods.

To ensure the seamlessness of activities, the 3PL companies now use Warehouse Management System. It is a soft version of all the activities happening at the ground level and is saved and operated from computers, laptops, etc. These can be native, ERP model based or cloud based in nature. The system records, reports, and helps evaluate and assess the major warehouse activities such as:

a.      Receiving the shipment: The shipment is of finished goods. The moment it reaches the warehouse premise, its details received through email are verified and entered into the system. It can also be given a code that denotes the shelf number, expiry date, move out date,  etc.

b.      FIFO method: Physically, the goods in the materials are stored as to enable FIFO method of retrieving. This ensures that no material reaches its expiry date lying unused at the back of the shelf. The same method of recording is adopted in management system to replicate the process.

c.       Inventory management: Manager and production specialists of the company must know the latest status of the inventory. The management needs scale up in case of things which are used seasonally or during any promotional campaign. Inventory management, therefore, is an important responsibility of 3PL companies in India.

d.      Customer service: Warehouses, these days, are used as fulfillment centers by the online and offline sellers too. The businesses are outsourcing the order management to the warehousing companies. The companies doing warehouse management receive the order request and maintain the turnaround time to achieve ultimate customer satisfaction. Replacement, re-orders, bulk orders and all types of customer service activities are handled by the warehousing departments.

e.      Fleet management: Apart from storage and distribution, the warehousing companies can offer transportation support too. they may own the fleet of trucks and containers and move the goods as per the requirements. Integrated services of fleet management and warehousing make the 3PL companies a one stop shop for production support and thus, coordination becomes easier. Warehousing specialists can tie up with the fleet and logistics companies by contracting out the job of moving goods to and from companies to the customers and vice versa (in case of returns).

The process of buying has changed with the introduction of online means. Accordingly, the businesses need to have an element of immediacy in their services. Warehousing companies, with the help of their logistics services, make it possible to reach to the customers, the way they want at the time of their preference. Thus, fleet management support makes it easy for the businesses to become customer-centric in their approach.

f.        Space management: Any space can become profitable only when its every inch is used constructively. The warehouse companies do asses their premise on a regular basis and take steps to find how they can maximize the space to meet the varying demands of the businesses. They reinvent themselves time and again with more effective storage solutions, tiered storage and movable containers options, etc. and try to accommodate the products and include more companies in their client base.

Thus, warehousing activities are the crux of any business process. While production and marketing are doing their bit in attracting more customers, the warehousing companies offer the support to make the expansion possible.

Author's Note

Movement and management of materials and goods are the core of any business. All businesses have a lot of activities happening at the backend. Warehouse Services help manage those activities efficiently.