Warehouse Management Systems
Increase Bottom Line Profitability

Your inventory accuracy, or lack thereof, can make or break your business. When your customer wants a product, your ability to get them that product on time and as promised is critical to their happiness and ongoing desire to remain loyal to your business.  With increasing competition, especially during the current market slowdown, it is imperative for you to service your customers accurately and efficiently. The changing dynamics of the building products industry with more special order products, SKU proliferation, and the demand for more value-added services, have made this task daunting -- if not impossible. Warehouse Management Systems (WMS) are specifically designed to systematically handle these issues to help you exceed your customers’ expectations and put your business in the forefront of the competition.

Today’s customers demand product be available on their schedule. Customer patience has been reduced to nearly zero, with an expectation of immediate, accurate, and direct feedback. After all, with the existence of email, cell phones, and PDAs, you can connect with anyone, anywhere, anytime. Instantly. Likewise, the same urgent responses are now expected in business. A customer can place an order online in minutes without ever visiting a storefront. Other advancements have sped up order placement and delivery capabilities, blurring the lines of competition. The consumer’s world is larger, easily accessible, and steadily increasing. As the population increases and technology continues to make the world smaller, there are more customers, with a wide range of tastes and high expectations.

Within warehouse management, similar changes have occurred in recent years. Customer requests of specialty order and in-stock items continue to grow rapidly, with increased product diversification reflected in both number of SKUs and product offerings. Vendor managed inventory and its complexities, as well as specialty, configuration, and pre-finishing of products are now key components to a successful warehouse operation. Other value added services such as door hanging, window mulling, steel cut downs, moulding cut downs, prefinish, I-beam/EWP cut downs, packaging, labeling, and job site deliveries have also been added. These changes have forced warehouse management operations to relearn and adapt to conduct business competitively in this fast-paced, ever-changing market landscape. Enter the value of Warehouse Management Systems.

The heart of real time WMS payback is perfect information about product quantity and location. Bar coded products and locations result in precise, system-directed receiving, picking, shipping, and delivery. Inventory and transaction handling accuracy translates into substantial office and warehouse efficiencies, and flawless product delivery. Information on exact product availability and real time order fulfillment status allows your customer service staff to provide information and make commitments with complete confidence. And when your business can be relied upon to follow through with its commitments based on real-time information, your customers will enjoy improved service and turn to you for more products - - forgetting your competition altogether.

If you haven’t invested in a Warehouse Management System, the time is now. The increased complexity of the building products industry demands accurate and efficient execution in the warehouse to effectively compete. Complete inventory confidence, elimination of lost item problems, improved efficiency in cycle counting, reduction of order mistakes, and ease of training new employees are just some of WMS’s benefits. These benefits are important regardless of the business climate, as the more efficiently you serve your customers the better off your company fares in comparison to the competition. Bottom line: satisfied customers equal more profitability.

WMS Benefits at a Glance

-Competitive advantage of improved customer service
-Complete inventory confidence based on accurate real-time information
-Improved cycle counting efficiencies
-Elimination of lost item problems and reduction of order mistakes
-Easy employee training

Jim Houser, WMS Product Manager, DMSi Software
Patrick Majure, President, Majure Data

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