Warehouse optimisation is the basis of a successful sales company. Order, rapid dispatch organisation, extensive cooperation with suppliers - seemingly a natural thing, but the challenges of growing e-commerce require new tasks from the warehouse software.
How to optimise it?
Without warehouse management software, no commercial company could sell. WMS (Warehouse Management Systems) are currently the basic and quite common tool for administering warehouse space.
Their task is to organise the work of the warehouse - streamlining the receipt of goods, then storing them, marking them to prepare them for dispatch and finally efficiently handling the dispatch itself.
They accompany each product from the moment it arrives at the warehouse until it is delivered into the hands of the customer, and comprehensively generate the necessary documents. They create product labels and print barcodes. This entire journey is monitored within a single system, and this is what facilitating the work of the warehouse with the help of technology is all about.
With the right software, the warehouse is tidy and orderly and communication between departments (receiving, loading, shipping) is more efficient. Technology makes stock levels continuously controlled. These are the basic expectations that warehouse owners place on software systems.
How does this currently look in practice? The old unified systems are no longer trendsetters. They can no longer meet all the challenges of today's sales and e-commerce developments. They tend to be archaic. The optimisation of warehouse management is currently one of the most important challenges facing every commercial company. An efficient and modern warehouse is the basis for successful sales and a steady increase in revenue.
With the right software, the warehouse is tidy and orderly and communication between departments (receiving, loading, shipping) is more efficient. Technology makes stock levels continuously controlled. These are the basic expectations that warehouse owners place on software systems.
How does this currently look in practice? The old unified systems are no longer trendsetters. They can no longer meet all the challenges of today's sales and e-commerce developments. They tend to be archaic. The optimisation of warehouse management is currently one of the most important challenges facing every commercial company. An efficient and modern warehouse is the basis for successful sales and a steady increase in revenue.
Changes follow changes
There is no sales activity without e-commerce, and in this area changes follow changes.
WMS can be more or less modern, cheaper or more expensive, but their common denominator is that they are designed for traditional businesses , says Krzysztof Sykuła, CEO and founder of Way2Send. - Their technology is quite static. They were intended to be deployed and to work in such a way that no changes need to be made. The times we live in, however, keep bringing new challenges.
Krzysztof Sykuła thinks that nowadays there is no sales activity without e-commerce, and in this area changes follow changes. Business models change, commodity suppliers change, technologies change, new players enter the market. The sheer complexity of evolving technology means that a WMS, even if it was expensive, needs upgrading.
Way2Send is in the business of adapting systems from the passing reality to the new times. It integrates them with modern technological solutions, responding to the constantly emerging new needs of customers.
– For example, it may be a question of data flow to the WMS – Krzysztof Sykuła explains. - We remember that the system is static and the data flows in from different places, it has to be modified so that it always arrives at this large system according to the same standard. The WMS now needs to have an interpreter that, no matter who is feeding this data, will translate and collect it according to one rule. Way2Send is just such a system.
Way2Send's new branding, for example, is MagPacker, which modifies and improves all the old solutions. They can still give some stability in the data flow, but need to expand with new activities. – We are a kind of overlay on these systems – Tomasz Cisek says, CRO in Way2Send. – Through our activities, the possibility of increasing the amount of integration is improved. We can integrate with anyone at any time.
The ever-increasing growth of online sales today requires warehouses to work with any number of courier companies.
Not only are there more and more of them, but they are changing their business models. The expectation that a parcel will reach the customer almost at the speed of light is the norm today; competition does not allow you to be left behind. In addition, we are sending more and more items through intermediaries, so new parcel sizes and ways of securing them are emerging. The e-commerce market has evolved and is still evolving. Therefore, the old systems started to lack a smooth connection with courier companies.
The Way2Send system integrates the WMS with the suppliers. - What makes us stand out is that we have grown with the market. When e-commerce was developing, we were as well – Tomasz Cisek says. - We are a reflection of what the market needs. We haven't come up with anything abstract because we are detached from our customers' needs.
Another challenge for systems that manage the warehouse are sales platforms such as Allegro, OLX, Amazon. More and more of these are being created and are increasingly modern. – Way2Send integrates with all these platforms – Krzysztof Sykuła says. - We are able to connect such a system to a warehouse within a day. We can personalise our integrations so that they are constantly up-to-date.
Working with Way2Send streamlines stock updates between any sales channels. – If, for example, we sell on Allegro, in our own online shop and on OLX, then when the goods are sold on Allegro, the stock in the other shops will decrease by 1 item. – Krzysztof Sykuła explains.
Way2Send offers customers technologies that efficiently automate operations, making people's jobs easier. With these solutions, it is possible, for example, to choose any packaging model for the products. The packaging process itself, i.e. preparation and picking, are much more efficient. The company offers as many as seven packaging options, selected individually according to customer needs. – Optimising warehouse processes today is about using technology as much as possible with less and less human intervention – Krzysztof Sykuła says. – The idea is to get the goods off the shelves as quickly as possible, pack them up and send them to the courier, while at the same time making the cost of this process as optimal as possible, i.e. at the lowest possible cost.
Way2Send innovations for optimising warehouse management
Way2Send's original innovation is the ability to split the sorsing of different goods from one order into separate warehouses.
Example: we have a web order with 3 products, each in a different warehouse. With Way2Send technology, we can forward a specific SKU (each good is a unique SKU) to the corresponding warehouse. We can also create any set from products that appear as separate SKUs and pack them in different packages. – We also have a production module that allows the finished product to be modified to suit the customer's purchase. It can be engraved, embroidered, personalised as desired – Krzysztof Sykuła says. – We also handle customised orders that are not in stock and need to be produced specifically for the order.
Way2Send customers also have the option to benefit from handling any dropshipping processes, i.e. sending parcels from the warehouse on behalf of the shop where the transaction was made. The proprietary solutions also address fullfilment, i.e. per-customer reporting per KPI of the customer served. Way2Send implements its new technology in place of the old one at lightning speed. – If a warehouse is migrating from any system to ours, we are able to do this migration within days or even hours, not weeks – Tomasz Cisek says. – We efficiently monitor key processes in the customer's warehouses and respond remotely and automatically. We offer the best possible financial model on the market, allowing clients to manage costs. With us, clients pay one rate only for the packed and dispatched parcel.
