Resiliency is not a good enough promise from your warehouse managing system partner. Confidence is in; resiliency is out.
This is a year of uncertainty for customers and shippers alike. Conquering it will require a complete mind shift that uses flexible WMS (warehouse management system) integrations to replace reactions with anticipation, strategic risk mitigation, and continuous innovation.
WMS integrations: ready for whatever
Expect the labor crunch, inflation, political instability, and global conflicts to continue affecting supply chains. Those are all givens. What about the challenges you don’t know of yet?
Growth-minded companies put the future of their supply chains in a warehouse managing system that makes them ready for anything. Because, as we all know, supply chain surprises will always be TBD.
Warehouse managing system integrations create confidence
Most companies have a solid idea of what innovation they need to deploy next to hit their desired confidence levels. However, the inflexibility of their legacy warehouse managing systems and ERP bolt-ons have made innovation expensive, time-consuming, and often impossible.
Ready-made integrations connect your WMS to existing and future systems, like ERP, CRM, marketplaces, MHE, TMS, shipping carriers, and more. That means significantly lower costs, implementation time, and technical resources required to start seeing value from your investment.
Start with a warehouse managing system born in the cloud offering pre-built WMS software integrations. These should be continuously invested in, maintained, and expanded on every year. Otherwise, your company will end up right back in the rut.
One WMS platform, many integration types
What are the various types of integrations that you might need from your warehouse managing system? Explore the largest library of WMS software integrations now or check out a description of the different categories outlined below:
Ecommerce integrations
Out-of-the-box ecommerce integration capabilities of your WMS play a significant role in your operations. These ensure seamless, automated data exchange and alignment with crucial operational functions. A library of pre-built, tested ecommerce integrations ensures quick onboarding time for new systems.
If you’re selling in ecommerce environments like Amazon FBA and WooCommerce, integrations reliably sync product information, financial data and other ERP data, POs, vendor management, and more. System support is no longer a risk, but a competitive advantage and enabler of the business to pivot quickly.
Shipping integrations
Streamline logistics and fulfillment every step of the way. Connect important fulfillment operations to shipping carrier systems, allowing your business to deliver: accurate, real-time tracking updates. The WMS rate shopping feature allows users to auto-generate shipping labels, and compare shipping rates and carrier performance, in a single, easy-to-use platform.
One point of caution: many WMS providers only offer a few mainstream carriers in their integration library. Some will claim an integration, but then the price tag arises during scoping and implementation for a custom code project to make it happen. Cloud-built platforms like Deposco develop dozens every year (now over 150). These are fully implemented, managed, and supported with your warehouse managing system.
Marketplaces
The list of specific marketplace rules and regulations for labeling, packing, and shipping gets longer yearly. Non-compliance leads to stiff penalty fees and chargebacks after packages have left your warehouse. No two sets of policies are alike and imperfect knowledge between your warehouse teams quickly adds up financially in penalties.
Marketplace integrations help your business track and streamline processes to comply with these guidelines, saving time and money. The burden of knowing and applying each set of rules is shifted from the worker to the system ensuring consistent execution. These warehouse management integrations also help streamline the returns process, speeding up refunds for your customers while improving your marketplace seller standings.
Retailer/Electronic Data Interchange (EDI)
EDI integrations in a WMS are used to streamline operations, improve inventory management, and enhance order fulfillment in B2B. They automate data exchange, reducing manual errors and streamlining processes while providing real-time inventory updates to enable effective stock management.
Warehouse managing system integrations for EDI also ensure compliance with retailer-specific shipping and labeling requirements that are always changing. Ultimately, they lead to massive time and cost savings.
Materials Handling Equipment (MHE)
MHE integrations within a cloud WMS enhance efficiency, productivity, and orchestration between different equipment types. This is critical to improve your peak-season warehouse management health. Seamless communication between the WMS and warehouse equipment leads to better resource utilization and real-time tracking of goods.
Integrated WMS and MHE systems help your company monitor equipment usage, reduce manual labor, improve space utilization, and minimize equipment downtime significantly reducing costs. Advanced systems report on the status of machinery – from location to battery status – in real time and provide maintenance recommendations.
Cartonization
Cartonization is strategic to growing your business. Integrations for cartonization enable you to find hidden savings while improving responsibility for ESG and emissions. Quick to deploy via a modern warehouse managing system, these solutions provide integrated warehouse automation to identify things like:
- Which carton format is ideal?
- Are the SKUs going into the box fragile, nestable, or foldable?
- Does it meet carrier requirements?
- Can we easily relay dimensioning to a custom box builder?
Transportation Management System (TMS)
TMS integrations streamline the planning, execution, and optimization of outbound loads. They provide real-time visibility into transportation activities – including owned and contracted assets, enabling better shipment tracking and management.
TMS integrations drive significant cost savings by optimizing route planning and reducing manual tasks providing that information directly to the warehouse. Furthermore, real-time tracking information improves customer service, including highly accurate delivery estimates and timely updates.
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)
Related: NetSuite ERP is Not a Warehouse Management System
Reliable warehouse managing system integration with existing systems is critical to operational efficiency. Integrations for ERP provide enhanced visibility and cost-effectiveness by streamlining information flow between traditionally siloed systems and the WMS, reducing manual data entry and tasks.
They provide real-time updates on inventory, orders, and shipments, enabling better management and planning. Your warehouse managing teams use the system to make more accurate forecasts and decisions by synching real-time inventory data and trends.
Ultimately, these integrations reduce errors, improve inventory management, and optimize resource allocation for the company. The payoff is particularly big when using an ERP that has reached its limitations or is being stretched into purposes for which it was never intended. A purpose-built WMS uses integrations to take data from the ERP and perform the functions that were never possible in the ERP.
Is your warehouse managing system ready?
Deposco offers the industry’s largest library of pre-built warehouse management system integrations. Ask us to show how quickly we can help you scale your supply chain operations for growth.