By: Kalpesh Darji, Associate Director - Cloud Services and Software

Supply chain management (SCM) encompasses the seamless handling of goods and services right from acquiring raw materials to delivering the final products to customers. It involves coordinating all the activities along the supply chain, including planning, sourcing, manufacturing, inventory management, transportation, and logistics.

The supply chain management process across various industries has undergone a major shift, especially with the rapid digital transformation powered by technology. Warehouses play a critical role in the complete supply chain cycle. Most of the business inefficiency problems start from warehouses. Unnecessary running around, maintaining inventory manually, and a lot of pencil pushing, are some of the major pain points of most modern-day enterprises. These in turn lead to incidents like order and stock mismatch, gaps in procurement, and shipping delays. All these eventually lead to customer dissatisfaction, creating a negative impact on businesses.

With digital technologies, enterprises have started rethinking their processes and strategies, leading to the advent of a warehouse management system, or WMS as it is popularly known.

A recent report by Grand View Research mentions, “The global warehouse management systems market size is anticipated to reach USD 13.34 billion by 2030, advancing at a CAGR of 19.0% from 2023 to 2030.”

Warehouse management systems are powerful, smarter, and flexible infrastructure systems that help enterprises manage their supply chain processes. A WMS is equipped with innovative capabilities, is dynamic, and easy to configure for rapid implementation that evolves with the business. It is a software solution that provides comprehensive visibility of the inventory. The system manages supply chain fulfillment operations, originating from the distribution center and leading to the store.

A traditional WMS warehouse management system is an on-premise software that is installed on local servers and requires dedicated resources for management and maintenance. Such a setup is more appropriate for larger companies with extensive IT resources. Cloud WMS, on the other hand, is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) model where the WMS is hosted on remote servers and accessed via the Internet. These systems work best as scalable solutions that need to be remotely accessible.

The cloud WMS is cost-effective as opposed to a traditional one. The setup requires infrastructure that is easily scalable and upgradable, offers quick support and on-time access to data, and can be integrated and secured.

Let’s look at the various benefits of a cloud WMS system in detail:

• Scalability: A cloud WMS system can be scaled up and upgraded to accommodate the growing needs of businesses of any size.
• Cost savings: The upfront investment required for a cloud-based WMS is significantly lesser than that for on-premises solutions. Additionally, businesses can avoid costs associated with maintaining and upgrading hardware and software.
• Flexibility: Cloud-based WMS solutions can be customized to meet the specific needs of a business or adapted as per the changing needs.
• Accessibility: A cloud-based WMS warehouse management system only requires an internet connection for access, providing warehouse managers with real-time visibility into inventory levels, order processing, and other critical data from almost anywhere.
• Ease of integration: A warehouse management system based on the cloud can be easily integrated with other cloud-based solutions, such as transportation management systems, allowing for better supply chain visibility and coordination.
• Data security: Cloud-based WMS solutions typically provide high levels of data security, including encryption and redundancy, reducing the risk of data loss or theft.

Use case:

Here is an example of how a cloud warehouse management system helped a leading bathroom and lighting solution company digitize its processes. The well-known bath and light brand utilized a bespoke system for warehouse management. Their system, however, was not scalable and could not adapt to the growing business needs. They followed a paper-based, manual maintenance system, which was causing delays in the processes, impacting the overall business.

The company implementation of a custom warehouse management system, powered by Oracle Supply Chain management solutions. It helped them standardize the policies and processes, scale systems for new warehouses, and eliminate paper-based processes. Operating on the custom WMS improved the overall operational efficiency.

Read the complete story here.

Why LTIMindtree:

Enterprises continue facing numerous operational challenges. Adopting the latest technology solutions will help them increase their efficiency and performance while staying ahead of the competition. However, finding the best technology for your business is critical and complex.

It is important that businesses find a skilled technology partner for their transformation journey. LTIMindtree has a plethora of services powered by various Oracle systems that together work to improve your overall business processes.

Reference:

Source: https://www.grandviewresearch.com/press-release/global-warehouse-management-system-wms-market