Make Work Better, Even During the Holidays, with These Warehouse Management Tips

December 26th 2018 16:00:00 PM

You’ve been struggling through the holiday rush for a while now. First you had those B2B orders, now you’re working through those D2C orders and, at this point, you and your workers are starting to feel exhausted. Soon, you’ll start wondering if Santa Claus and his elves feel this tired every holiday season—and you’ll also start begrudging Santa the nearly year-long vacation that helps him prepare for the next holiday season.

You probably won’t be able to convince your clients you need a year-long vacation, so instead you must turn to better warehouse management methodologies that can help you save as much time and energy as you can. That way, even if Santa’s on vacation, you can still return to work in January, excited for the new year.

Find out the top methods for warehouse management when you contact the warehouse experts at Scanco. Reach us online or call us at (330) 645-9959. Either way, we’d love to chat with you.

Here are some quick ways you can make work less stressful for you and your workers:

Get an Accurate Picture of Your Inventory

Stock-outs are one of the biggest causes of holiday stress for distributors because timelines are tight, suppliers are overwhelmed, and logistics is a nightmare. Therefore, clearly one of the best tips for warehouse management during the holidays is to avoid stock-outs.

Easier said than done … or is it?

In fact, you can keep an eye on your inventory with relative ease when you use a barcoding solution that helps you:

• Achieve faster counting
• Eliminate error-prone manual data entry
• Track bin locations and simplify transfers
• View up-to-date numbers with dashboards

When you finally have the power to ensure accurate, timely counts of your inventory, you’ll be able to let go of a lot of your holiday worry.

Speed the Picking Process

The second biggest distribution problem over the holidays is that of logistics. Simply put, there aren’t enough trucks to cover the myriad of D2C and B2B shipments, and transportation companies charge through the roof for last-minute deliveries. That is, if they even agree to ship those last-minute deliveries.

Weather creates another complication. (Sigh.)

Though you can’t control the weather and you can’t always keep your shipping rates in check, you can control how fast you pack boxes and get them out the door. The faster you go, the more money you save, especially during the holidays, so when you invest in barcode-based warehouse management tools that increase your speed, you’re likely to achieve your ROI in record time.

Choose barcode solutions that offer:

• Voice-directed picking
• Hands-free operation
• Real-time data integration
• Faster, paperless assignments

If your preferred solution also helps you process receiving and put-aways more quickly, you’ll save even more time as you increase efficiency. Efficient warehouses have happier, more satisfied customers as well as increased revenues, each of which reduce stress even more.

Give Yourself a Holiday Gift of Warehouse Management Solutions That Work Just as Hard as You

Thinking about it, we’re pretty sure Santa doesn’t use warehouse management solutions in his workshop because one thing we know about him is that he’s a fan of making a list and checking it twice. We’re also pretty sure he writes out that list by hand.

To us, that seems pretty labor intensive and like a waste of time, and perhaps the excess time that Santa spends on manual data entry is the reason why he needs to take that long vacation of his. (Seriously, what a great vacation package he has!)

Honestly, though every distributor is probably jealous of Santa’s incredible work benefits, your company can make Santa jealous as well. Or, even better, you can ask him for exactly what you need this year.

This holiday season, you deserve the gift of a flexible, robust, and easy-to-use warehouse management system, created by Scanco, the experts who have been helping distributors ease holiday operations since 1989.

With Scanco’s wide range of solutions seamlessly integrated with Sage ERP, your company is sure to find the perfect gift to help you grow your business even more next year. 

Ready to learn more about how you can get your business the perfect holiday gift? Contact Scanco online or at (330) 645-9959 and ask about our warehouse management solutions.