Effective warehouse management is considered the main factor to make your business successful in different departments. Managing it manually can be a real struggle for you. Therefore, almost every business owner is now opting for an effective warehouse management system to deal with all the hurdles they have when managing the warehouse.
Order fulfillment is another big thing that is required for the success and growth of your company. Many people hire third-party logistics to manage the order fulfillment process. Both WMS and 3pl fulfillment can integrate together to make the delivery of orders quick and easy. You must be thinking about how integrating the two can help you. Let’s try to figure this out by checking how WMS and 3PL fulfillment integration with each other works.
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Data Integration
During integration, both systems connect with each other through APIs or EDI. This connection helps in real-time data sharing between these two systems. The warehouse management system will definitely have useful insights into your warehouse and have important data to share with 3PL fulfillment providers.
Based on that data, 3PL providers understand the availability of products in your warehouse and estimate how much time will be taken to fulfill different orders. Apart from that this data integration allows a better connection development between the two main systems required to grow your business.
Inventory Visibility
WMS manages your inventory at the best possible level. It provides you with real-time inventory visibility. This visibility helps you accept orders wisely. For example, if you are selling different stationery items, you will have stocks of different products in your warehouse.
Inventory visibility reflects that the stock of pens has ended and needed to be refilled. In this case, you will never accept any order related to pens as you know you don’t have them in your warehouse.
This invisibility allows 3PL providers to fulfill orders more efficiently. They will have a clear idea about the different products present in your warehouse and can fulfill an order demanding those products in no time.
Flexible Fulfillment
When 3PL and warehouse management systems are integrated, they offer flexibility in order fulfillment. It is mostly observed during the peak season of a product. For example, when you have a high demand for one or more things, you will stock that product in excess. As a result, your inventory space may be filled and you have no space to keep further items.
In this case, WMS comes into play and it will automatically send the extra stocks to 3PL providers. The product is already in demand. Therefore, it will be easy for 3PL providers to quickly deliver those excess products to customers.
Order Management
3PL fulfillment is directly linked with order management as it does most part of an order management process. From processing orders to delivering them, everything is performed by 3PL providers. On the other hand, WMS is also linked with the order management system. It gives insights into the inventory, checks the availability of different products, and then helps in order processing.
Integration of these two systems can help in order management more efficiently. Both will work together by sharing data such as order details, customer requirements, availability of different products, and delivery details. As a result of this collaboration, it will be super easy for you to manage orders as most of the part of this process is already done by WMS and 3PL systems.
Data Analysis
Both these systems give useful insights into different types of data. The best part is that you can simply get reports based on that data. As a result, it will be easy for you to analyze the data. Data insights and analytics will help you in figuring out the departments in your business selling your attention. You will know the weak links and try to manage them ASAP.
In short, data analytics helps you in working on different neglected points that can be helpful in business growth.
Final Words
Integration of WMS and 3PL fulfillment systems can evolve the way you are managing different things. Inventory visibility, order management, fulfillment processes, and data handling can be taken to the next level by doing so.
