Welcome to the PVX Warehouse Management System (WMS). This article gives you a quick summary of why you might need a WMS for your business, what PVX can do to help improve your warehouse and order fulfilment processes and how it works.
Why use a warehouse management system?
Most e-commerce businesses start small. At this stage a set of dedicated software packages for each of your processes is probably neither necessary nor economical. Fledgling businesses can usually cope using a single e-commerce platform and a set of spreadsheets to manage inventory and track order fulfilment. However, as your business starts to grow, with increased levels of inventory, orders and staff, a more robust set of tools will be needed to keep pace with the increasing complexity of your operation. A critical aspect of this is ensuring that you have sufficient inventory to fulfil the orders you’ve received and that those orders are quickly and accurately prepared and despatched.
Why choose PVX?
Not all WMS platforms are the same, because not all warehouse operations are the same. Historically, warehouses usually existed to support shops and supermarkets; they would send large numbers of the same items to replenish the shelves from which those items were individually purchased by consumers. However, there is now an increasing number of companies who don’t sell much if any of their product through shops, but direct to consumers via a website instead. These companies need to handle orders that may be very small – perhaps only a single item – and often contain a mixture of different products from a range that is usually far larger than any shop can offer. These factors place a new and different set of demands on the organisation and management of the warehouse from which the orders are fulfilled. It is these operations that PVX is particularly designed to facilitate and support.
What PVX does
Put simply, PVX is a dedicated platform that:
Tracks warehouse inventory levels, updating them in real-time so that you always know how much is in your warehouse;
Controls the different steps in the order fulfilment process.
If you implement PVX when you are first setting up your warehouse, the application gives you the opportunity to arrange the layout and structure to maximise efficiency and plan for future expansion. However, the WMS can also be successfully implemented on to an existing operation.
What PVX does not do
PVX ‘does’ warehouse management and order fulfilment and does it well, but it needs to be linked to other specialist tools if you are to receive the full benefit of using it. We call these links ‘integrations’. They are essential for managing the overall warehouse process (see How the WMS works).
It's important to remember that PVX is not designed to be a product master that manages your catalogue. It is also not suited for tracking the inventory of shops supported from your warehouse, although it can be used to replenish those shops from the warehouse.
How the WMS works
PVX controls and tracks all warehouse operations by scanning barcodes, including:
The receiving of inventory and orders;
The storage of products in the warehouse;
The preparing and packing of orders;
The despatch of orders to the customer.
The heart of the system is the web-based application (the 'web app'), from where managers and supervisors can set up and administer all aspects of warehouse operations. The web app is used to create and assign actions; these are tasks within PVX for the operators to perform such as picking items for orders. It can also produce reports and dashboards that allow the performance of the system to be monitored and measured. Other users of the web app include buyers and customer service staff who can check the status of purchase and sales orders respectively. Following the initial configuration, the web app can also be used to adjust and expand the WMS as the business develops and changes.
PVX is integrated with your e-commerce platform. Sales orders are sent from the e-commerce platform to the WMS to be fulfilled. The latest inventory levels are then sent from the WMS to the e-commerce platform so that sufficient inventory is available to meet the requirements of every order received and acknowledged. There is also an integration with the software used by your carriers to despatch orders to customers. This enables the printing of shipping labels and the despatching of orders using the WMS, which ensures that tracking numbers are received from the carrier.
Other integrations are possible, depending on the structure of your existing business process. You can integrate PVX to your financial accounting software to provide inventory valuations and sales margin reporting. If there is an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system in place which controls the products themselves as well as all orders, PVX can be integrated to this instead of directly to the e-commerce platform. Some businesses integrate PVX to both the e-commerce platform and the ERP system. See this video for further information on factors to consider when deciding the best combination of packages for your business.
The final component of PVX is the mobile app. This is used by warehouse operators for ease and efficiency when performing tasks in the warehouse. An operator can log in, view the actions that have been created by the supervisor, select an action and then follow the step-by-step instructions displayed in the app to complete that action. Each action involves a sequence of barcode scans using either the camera on your mobile device or a purpose-built scanner linked to the app. This simple and efficient approach minimises the training required for new and temporary staff.
You can learn more about the web app, the mobile app, integrations and the warehouse functions supported by PVX from other articles.