Every company must have within its objectives the growth, which is demonstrated in the fulfillment of goals and in the management indicators that the success of the strategies established in the different procedures. One of these indicators is the ROI or Return on investment, which is the representation of the economic gain generated by the implementation of different strategies. Now, if the company’s priority when implementing a technological solution is to achieve a higher ROI, which system should be chosen, a WMS or an ERP?
ERP vs WMS: how do they work?
While enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, automates activities in all departments of an organization, including accounting, customer relationship management and inventory management, for its part warehouse management systems o The Warehouse Management System (WMS) manages the resources involved in the TOTAL operation of a distribution center (CEDI) in real time, a detailed record of each product movement that occurs in the warehouse and optimizing operations of entry and exit of products.
Three ways to achieve a higher ROI with a WMS
- Increase productivity and reduce cycle time
In each of the processes present in the CeDis, advanced WMS improves productivity in comparison to the warehouse modules that an ERP has because it a) plans the needs thanks to the historical collection of times, users and movements, information that It is essential when making decisions; b) optimize the space automatically and recommend modifications according to the rotation of the product; and c) improves the flow of choice taking into account the route, location, characteristic of pollution, picking by wave, among others to optimize productivity.
2. Achieve mayor precision taking more detailed control
A WMS offers greater visibility and control over more details than an ERP warehouse module, as a result the management team can improve the accuracy and efficiency of orders, for example, by knowing the expiration dates; integrate teams that facilitate data capture and picking processes; reduce product identification errors, facilitate process changes such as cross-docking; recorder automatically the variable weight of units or pallets; bill services offered in case of being a 3PL; among others.
3. Improve visibility
Most of the ERP warehouse modules focus on quantitative control and inventory availability within the four walls of a CeDi, on the contrary the WMS provide a holistic view of the supply chain, this is done by example through proactive alerts, simultaneous consultation of the inventory status by managers, consultation of the status of an order by customers, viewing and downloading reports from different mobile devices, among others.
This vision on the advantages of a WMS over an ERP, as well as the idea of the benefit that a company can have when acquiring a specialized and robust solution that manages all the processes and resources of the distribution center, facilitates decision making at the moment of starting a project
Although each company according to its nature identifies identifications are its needs and therefore the indicators on which its ROI will measure, it should be remembered that part of the success is in identifying the actual starting values before having a WMS.
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