Supply Chain Visibility and Fulfillment Accuracy is a Priority for Unified Commerce

The current state of retail is in a constant change. With a rising demand for a unified experience across sales channels, brands and retailers are left with little choice but to leverage data better and improve customer fulfilment. In fact, according to a study by Gartner, 89% of companies today are competing primarily on the basis of customer experience, up from 36% in 2010. Customer experience has become the number one brand differentiator, outpacing product and price.

In this reality, organizations cannot afford to overlook any element of the enterprise Supply Chain Management (SCM) system, which is not only critical for a company’s financial health but also for improved customer engagement. For brands and retailers, this translates to a focus on how they manage their inventory, storage and warehousing. Optimizing these elements can have radical benefits. Here, the choice between implementing an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system or a Warehouse Management System (WMS) becomes critical.

Meet Omnichannel Demands with ERP and Warehouse Management

ERP systems are the foundation of a reliable and efficient business, as they help automate business processes and streamline information flow across the enterprise. Such transparent business processes allow greater visibility and control over all parts of the organization, resulting in the optimal utilization of warehouse space and improved productivity of employees. WMS on the other hand, is typically regarded as a more specialized and sophisticated tool that adds functionality to a business dealing with high-volume inventory and requires widespread automation. However, to truly drive omnichannel success, companies need a unified system that combines the best of both ERP and WMS solutions across a common platform.

Take for instance the distinct difference between online orders and wholesale requirements. For online orders, companies have to be able to pick, pack and ship items per unit, while in the case of wholesale requirements, they need to be able to process large crate orders. This not only requires a change in the physical layout of fulfillment centers but also in the overall process management of the warehouse. With online orders, the incident rate for returns is also much higher and requires brands and retailers to focus on returns management. For a truly unified omnichannel experience, organizations need to be prepared with a robust returns management or reverse logistics process as it can directly affect customer service and profitability. So while a typical ERP system might be appropriate in a wholesale setup, it falls short in the case of an online scenario.

It is also worth noting that success in wholesale distribution across industries is directly linked to the clarity and insights stakeholders have into their distribution channels and supply chain systems. Wholesale distributors operating on a tight margin lack complete visibility into the supply chain, as they have to deal with an inordinately large volume of goods in rapid fluctuation. This often leads to disjointed operations and lower visibility into the distribution networks resulting in bottlenecks across the supply chain. This is when WMS comes to the rescue. A robust WMS can manage and track inventory, receipts and storage and optimize several tasks while also detecting disruptions like bottlenecks in the supply chain for improved lead-time reliability.

However, in scenarios that require managing inventories across multiple levels of the warehouse, a standalone WMS application may struggle to collate all the information adequately. In such cases, a standalone WMS may require other modules such as CRM or accounting to be fully functional across business operations. To bridge this gap, organizations should consider automating warehouse management by integrating WMS and ERP into a single solution. This will not only bring down costs but also boost operational efficiency. All the while, the end goal remains constant – to meet consumer demand and win greater market share for both eCommerce and brick-and-mortar businesses. This is where a unified platform can make all the difference.

The Benefits of a Unified View of Your Supply Chain

Integrating WMS with an ERP system helps businesses address warehouse and supply chain challenges, handle large and varying volumes and achieve seamless operations while meeting end-consumer demand on a consistent basis. Businesses are typically apprehensive of this change, fearing it will be fraught with complications owing to the preliminary cost and disruption involved. However, the long-term benefits of an integrated solution often outweigh the initial cost, effort and disruption. More importantly, these “inconvenience costs” can be recovered rapidly as the workloads simplify and customer demands are addressed at a rapid pace.

If you are still wondering how the integrated solution is helpful, consider the commonplace situation when managers have to deal with the lack of data and transparency across the organization. This negatively affects various departments from manufacturing to sales, leading to wastages in capacity utilization, problems of overstocking and insufficient inventory tracking, all of which inhibit productivity and proves costly to the bottom line.

The integration of ERP and WMS unifies data across disparate systems enabling each department to track and view the shared information. It provides the necessary visibility, transparency and controls that organizations require to thrive. It also streamlines the data entry and reduces human processing errors. As a result, tedious manual effort is nearly eliminated and the data is accurate, up-to-date and instrumental to better decision-making. Enabling easy access to real-time data such as cycle counts, stock and sales orders simplifies the chain of operations and directly boosts productivity. Integration also reduces the time taken to process orders, which increases the potential for forward planning in production and manufacturing as well.

WMS & ERP for Omnichannel Success

As brands and retailers make a conscious shift from multichannel to omnichannel eCommerce, they need to disrupt and rethink their legacy systems, or risk obsolescence. For example, CGS’s BlueCherry® Enterprise Software provides the right platform for businesses to implement their warehousing and supply chain activities with their existing ERP components.

The CGS BlueCherry Advanced Warehouse System is fully integrated with BlueCherry ERP creating a unified solution that eliminates the hindrances most organizations face in developing and maintaining multiple interfaces between disparate WMS. Organizations can now deploy the complete BlueCherry suite as a single program across the entire company, or select particular tools from the suite to address their specific needs. Integrating WMS and ERP solutions through a single, unified platform is the most-effective way to ensure that your business is ready to ensure a positive customer experience, always.

Additional Resources:

• Case Study: BlueCherry Shop Floor Control Empowers “Made in America” strategy at Joseph Abboud
• Datasheet: Product Lifecycle Management Benefits
• Case Study: Frye BlueCherry Success Story