Issue Date: 17 August 2017
Ref: PSK17/02
Cloud-Based Warehouse Stock Control For Electrical Wholesalers
ProSKU is a new cloud-based warehouse stock management application that enables businesses such as electrical wholesalers and distributors to manage and track inventory in warehouses and store rooms efficiently to enhance customer service, reduce cost and minimise administrative input. The application can be used on its own to provide users with all essential warehouse stock management functions including receipt and putaway, picking and despatch, stock management, and reporting. Businesses with more advanced requirements can integrate the application quickly and easily with their existing websites, popular e-commerce platforms including eBay, Amazon, Woo Commerce, Magento and Shopify, and traditional CRM solutions such as Sage. ProSKU has been developed by Chess Logistics Technology which has successfully delivered enterprise warehouse management systems for nearly 30 years.
Electrical wholesalers and distributors are offering an increasingly wide range of products in a variety of options. To offer the flexibility to meet customer demand they need highly efficient supply chains to manage and track the flow of components. While some will manage this process from end-to-end, many more will interact with customers and suppliers on an ad-hoc basis with varying degrees of integration with other companies’ systems. There is often very little automation of stock control processes. Customer-facing and web-enabled applications to encourage more sales or support customer services are relatively rare.
Providing accurate and timely information on stock availability and delivery times is often critical to ensuring customers will place orders. Stock levels may be too high, leading to inefficient use of space and hidden cost, or too low, leading to missed opportunities. There is plenty of evidence that customers are increasingly fickle and will move on to another supplier if the items they want do not appear to be available, or will be delivered too slowly, even if that means paying slightly more. Ensuring stock availability and visibility is therefore a mission-critical priority for suppliers. Yet few appear to offer these facilities on their websites.
The challenge facing many electrical wholesalers is how to implement robust applications that support their business requirements without adding complexity and cost. Some businesses might only require back-office functionality while others will also want to support customer-facing and web-enabled processes. Although some e-commerce platforms offer limited stock management capabilities, few if any provide the features and flexibility to meet the long-term requirements of start-ups and growing businesses. Established enterprise warehouse management system applications are typically too complex or expensive. ProSKU bridges the gap by providing a well-featured and easily deployed solution designed to meet the current and future needs of smaller and growing businesses. Single and multi-site operations are supported.
During set-up, users follow simple and intuitive on-screen workflows to create their warehouse layout and enter stored product data which along with customer, supplier and live inventory data can be entered manually or imported in any common data format. The application also incorporates an API for rapid integration with other web applications.
ProSKU is hosted on extremely secure, backed-up servers. This ensures a robust and resilient stock management component to the integrated e-commerce solution with maximum possible service availability and almost no risk of data loss. The application can be accessed from any PC, laptop, tablet or smartphone using any modern browser.
Pricing is based on a simple monthly plan with a minimum commitment of one month and no hidden start-up costs. The system is accessible to the extent that set-up can be undertaken by more experienced users with minimal assistance from the vendor. Detailed operating guides and video tutorials are provided to assist but ProSKU also provides cost-effective support services for those customers who require more handholding during the key implementation phase. After commencing live operations, a range of support options is available to suit varying needs.
ProSKU incorporates all mission-critical stock control and warehouse management functions:
Receipts and putaway: simple and flexible management of incoming stock items. Users can process receipts rapidly while recording important data accurately. The system makes intelligent automatic decisions but also allows manual operations. It generates pallet labels and documentation for putaway execution, and allows rapid confirmation or amendment of successfully completed movements. Post confirmation, all receipt data is archived with full movement history.
Picking and despatch: these functions facilitate rapid conversion of orders to despatches. Automatically imported (API or CSV) or manually keyed orders can be viewed, selected and processed. Flexible picking strategy allows order selection by ability to fulfil with pre-process check to verify product quantities. Wave and cluster picking are available as an option.
Standard stock rotation is FIFO (first in, first out) or BBE (best-before-end), with specific criteria selection including date, batch and status also available. Standard task documents and on-screen confirmation are provided with an optional handheld scanning module to allow combined execution and confirmation. Handling of pick exceptions ensures full integrity at the confirmation stage.
The despatch function offers dual options to confirm onward consignments. A standard despatch process allows quick validation and despatch paperwork print, while a ‘scan and pack’ feature offers order scanning at product or item level to ensure despatch integrity.
Stock Management offers all essential stock management functions, providing users with the ability to control and deal with every stock-handling scenario. The stock check function allows verification by location, product or ownership, offering the flexibility for regular cyclic stock checking.
Reporting options are designed to offer stock and movement data in a highly accessible form while allowing considerable scope for formatting. Reports have pre-defined fields and allow additional user field definition. Sequence selection, filtering, sorting and totalling are also available where appropriate. All reports are selectable by key identities like depot and stock ownership.