Monday, August 27. 2012
There seems to be two schools of thoughts when it comes to receiving goods into and organization against purchase orders. On one hand, warehouse personnel want their receiving software to be fast and efficient by allowing them to quickly agree to the items received. For example, perhaps the quantity received field is pre-populated with the amount expected based on open purchase order quantities. If a quantity received actually matches the operator simply acknowledges the items perhaps by as a little as a mouse click. In some cases warehouse personnel even want a single button that states that all items on the open PO were received so that they don't have to physically acknowledge each line item. Of course this is dangerous since less attentive operators may simply acknowledge purchase order receipts without spending time matching item counts. The other school of thought is to not pre-populate item quantities and to have the operator physically enter the quantities received against each purchase order line item. There are no shortcuts to receiving goods in such as a single button to receive all goods in. This is the most financially accurate method, but does slow the receiving process down. It's challenging for software developers to find a happy medium between these two methods.What are your thoughts?
Monday, January 23. 2012
We're frequently approached by small
and mid-sized businesses who find themselves facing an unusual but
positive challenge – trying to keep up with their own growth.
Several things tend to occur in a growing business: inventory levels
rise, shipping activity increases, increasingly complex transactions
involve more people, and the need for inventory management software
becomes obvious. The problem is, many shipping businesses think they
have to chose between good software and affordable software, since
they must be two different things.
I'm often surprised to find out how
long a company has held off acquiring inventory control software. By
the time they talk to me there is usually a noticeable weak point in
their operation because they have little or no inventory controls,
slowing them down greatly. That's hardly a good thing for a small
business whose main advantage is to be faster than their larger
competitors. It's easy to recognize a business stuck in this
stage....a receiving desk surrounded by file cabinets, sticky notes
everywhere, lots of double-checking, UPS drivers waiting around for
someone to hand log all the packages they just delivered. Frantic
rush orders are placed with a supplier because an employee went to
ship an item and discovered it was out of stock.
Can you imagine running your bank
account this way? You wouldn't know you were low on funds until
checks started bouncing! Yet, many companies manage their own
inventories in this haphazard fashion. More efficient inventory
control practices, such as JIT (just in time) ordering are out of the
question for these companies, since that requires precise, up to date control of your supply/demand chain. Without a system to monitor
inventory closely enough to do this, companies have to resort to the
opposite: what I call JIC – just in case - ordering. They have to
overstock and pay for inventory NOW, just in case an order comes
through tomorrow. If there's no order, they end up paying for stuff
they don't need, and may lose track of in a couple of weeks!
Until recently, adapting a
full-blown bar coded inventory system was a huge step, requiring a
lot of capital and several days of interrupted work flow to install.
In addition, companies hope and plan for growth, and they know their
needs will change. Companies at that exciting boom stage need a fast,
inexpensive, computerized inventory system - but they also need a
system that can expand as business grows. After all, it's hard to
justify paying for 10 years on software that will be obsolete in 4 or
5.
Cloud computing is the answer. Like
most technology, software tends to get better and cheaper with
time. That's why cloud computing offers such an advantage over PC
based software. Instead of purchasing the software, users typically
pay a monthly access fee. The software requires no installation,
eliminating work flow stoppages when implementing the system..
Keeping cloud based software updated is a natural process that
happens behind the scenes with no stoppage of work flow and no
additional expense. Self hosted software
ages; web based software evolves.
Zenventory is a prime example of the
advantages of a web based inventory management system. The safety,
affordability, and flexibility are what it was built on. More
information on our web based products are available at
www.ubiquia.com.
Monday, January 16. 2012
It's a the dirty little secret that UPS and FedEx don't want you to know about.....or is it? Did you know that you can achieve next day delivery by using UPS or FedEx Ground? Yup that's right! In many cases a ground package will get to its destination in one day GUARANTEED. In fact by using the ground delivery map you'll notice that ground packages can get to their destination for the most part between 1 and 5 days. This is very useful knowledge whan comparing next day air, second day air, and three day shipments to ground shipping. By doing so you can save several dollars on overnight and second day air packages. 
Typically warehouses are in the know about this. But you shouldn't leave this to the warehouse to make the decision. These rules should be built into your busines systems. For example, our solutions automatically rate shop and provide a list of carrier services that will meet a specified delivery date.
Perhaps the biggest offender of overspending on shipping is the office worker unfamilar with delivery comparison. Giving office workers the capability to prepare shipments from their desktop is a license to spend money. So if you're going to do this, ensure that business rules are enforced through your business systems. Most carrier provided systems don't offer this level of control. Ensure your range of shippers from office staff to warehouse operators use systems with business controls built in.
Get you ground delivery maps here:
http://www.fedex.com/grd/maps/ShowMapEntry.do
http://www.ups.com/maps
Tuesday, January 10. 2012
If you're the type of company that ships mostly the same type of item or perhaps you have batches of shipment that are similar, a batch shipping module in your order fulfillment process might just be the ticket. Our objective is to process shipping labels for multiple, nay, hundreds of packages with a few clicks, than collect the labels from our printer and apply them to the packages. To determine routing and shipping rates, carriers are primarily concerned with four main factors ; delivery location, dimension, weight, and contents. So for batch shipment processing we need to ensure that the packaging and weight are all the same. The contents may be different as long as no special services need to applied to any particular package i.e declared value. It's ok to apply a special service to a batch process. Just remember that in the batch we assume all packages will get the same special service. For example, it's ok to ship 100 smart phones to 100 different customers and to add declared value (insurance) to each one for $200.00. That means that each package in this shipment have the same packaging, same weight, and same value. Some may have different versions of phones but it doesn't change the weight or value (for shipping purposes). Some systems can print separate packing slips and shipping labels. In many cases it's even more clever to have the packing slip and shipping label combined in one document. So a batch shipping process might flow like this in Zenventory: 100 customers order Samsung Galaxy S2 Cell Phones 1. Group the cell phone orders for picking and packing in Zenventory. 2. Print the picking slips. 3. Pick the phones into the boxes. 4. Pack verify the orders in Zenventory. 5. Group the packed orders for shipment processing in Zenventory. 6. Acknowledge the weight and special services. 7. Press ship and collect your combination packing slips/shipping labels. 8 Distribute them throughout the packages.
Monday, January 25. 2010
At Ubiquia our goal is to produce solutions that are fast and user friendly. We have accomplished that in our web based inventory management system call Zenventory. This solution will provide your organization with global visibility across all of your warehouses via the Internet. Whether you require a small business solution or you have warehouses all over the country, ZenVentory, inventory tracking solution will work for you. Your organization can combine the use of mobile computers with the intelligence of ZenVentory to streamline the most complex of tasks that you may have. Cycle counting, order processing, pick verification, pack verification, put away tickets, and storage locations are just some of the features that our software can provide. Inventory management solutions do not have to be functions of the large companies. If you are in the market for a small business inventory management software system look no further. See for yourself why many of the most prestigious organizations in the U.S. choose to use Ubiquia products. Contact us today for a live demonstration of the POWER OF UBIQUIA.
Thursday, June 4. 2009
We expect to release our newest packing process in Zenventory inventory tracking system in July 2009. This revolutionary approach to completing picking and pack verification through to containerization is sure to delight those using legacy inventory management systems. Zenventory will offer a simple and intuitive packing screen that allows packing orders into multiple containers, then allowing these multiple containers to be packed into one or more master containers. Packing lists can be printed for each individual container. There will also be support for container license plating. While this sounds like standard functionality we can't wait to unveil the interface. We are so sure of the uniqueness of our system that we are considering a patent. To see a demo please call us at (800) 268-6296.
Friday, December 5. 2008
Press Release
In January 2009 Zenventory web-based inventory management system will support 3PL functionality. Third party logistics companies typically warehouse, handle, and ship products for their clients. For ZenVentory to provide inventory management for 3PL's the following functionality will be provided:
Client Administration- Client Details
- Billing Details (Produce Billing Advice Or Download Details For Accounting)
- Handling In-Out Charges
- Freight Handling Charges
- Warehouse Usage Charges (Fixed or By Position)
Inventory Management- View entire warehouse inventory or specific client's
- Manage receipt, movement, and counting of client inventory
- Provide Internet accessible visibility to the client for their inventory
Purchase Order Management
- Client can set up their own vendors in ZenVentory
- Client can use ZenVentory purchase order modules
- Client can upload purchase orders to ZenVentory as expected receipts
Sales Order Management
- Client can use ZenVentory sales order modules
- Client can upload sales orders to ZenVentory for fulfillment
In addition to this functionality ZenVentory supports distributors and manufacturing warehouses. ZenVentory also supports Windows Mobile 5 and Windows Mobile 6 mobile devices for cycle counting and pack verification to ship. Call 800-268-6296 to schedule a demo or test drive.
Tuesday, October 21. 2008
In previous blogs we have spelled out simple steps to put ZenVentory.com to work for you in regards to optimizing your inventory. Here at Ubiquia we always like to take it to the next level considering the entire supply chain. Whether it be creating a sales order, managing materials, to delivering the final product to your customer; we've got it covered. Take a look at your supply chain. What is one of the major contributing factors to a customer's disappointment? Is it inventory dwell or managing stock levels? Probably not. From my experience, it is late deliveries that drive customer service levels. Consider this; if you were able to buy a product at a deep discount but that product showed up two weeks late and you as the customer were no able to call the seller and get a good ETA, would you reorder? Again, probably not. My point is this: not only does ZenVentory.com deliver a powerful tool to manage your entire order life cycle but it has the capability to put the critical visibility on each shipment that your customer expects and deserves. Through the fulfillment module you are able to allocate inventory, choose a carrier, choose a method of payment or account number, and track the shipment to delivery. Through this, you are not only providing proactive management of the customer order but you can also evaluate the carriers by measuring on time performance. We all know that this is a critical rating in the transportation world. As a matter of fact most of the common carriers sell based on this rating. Being able to quantify and measure the carrier performance in real time has many financial benefits. Air services are guaranteed and if the carrier misses the delivery time, you are owed a credit. Additionally, if the carriers are missing the mark with on time delivery, this provides a great negotiation tool when the dreaded rate increases come around every year. All of this is easily indentified with the tools we have developed. To sum this up, transportation management is a critical part of supply chain management as well as customer and supplier relationship management. ZenVentory.com developed these tools to keep your company in touch and proactive in managing not only your inventory but your supply chain - order to delivery. Use the tools; trust the tools and put your mind at ease - ZenVentory.com
Monday, October 13. 2008
Zenventory Offers Ways To Recession Proof Inventory Management
- Cash Is King – When times are hard, expenses are inevitable, and money is tight; it is time to develop a strategic plan to reduce expenses and keep the cash flowing. Below are three examples of how Zenventory.com will assist in cash flow management.
- Annual Consumption Value – Aging inventory can cause one of the biggest hurdles in cash flow. By performing a simple ABC analysis, you can quickly determine the annual consumption value of each product.
- Focus Marketing – through anABC analysis, the marketing team can focus the sales efforts on products that are profitable and quick movers.
- Distribution Optimization – Create a distribution network that is diverse and synergized with vendors. The shipping world of today is purely volume based and partnering with a trusted business is not a bad idea. Additionally, consider your shipping modes and packaging material by working with shipping cost specialist who drive results and costs saving. Global Parcel Service is an excellent choice and will provide personalize solutions for your supply chain the make “cents.”
- Inventory Management – The first step is to liquidate the stock with the lowest value and restrict purchasing abilities through Zenventory.com’s administrative tools. However, use caution not to disrupt the consumer buying habits: If a popular low profit item is generally orders in conjunction with another product, be sure to provide a equal alternative that provides the customer satisfaction and makes you profits.
- Vendor analysis – One of the many tools Zenventory.com provides is a vendor management tools which display economical order quantities for each vendor that may supply a particular SKU. Choose the vendor that provides the best price at the lowest quantity. When analyzing your vendors, don’t be afraid to think outside of the comfort zone and search and negotiate a lower cost.
- Focus on core competencies – Avoid processes that cause you to loose focus of your mission and value proposition to the customer. Creating spreadsheets with conditional formatting is a waste of your time and hiring someone to do it will only increase your labor costs. Zenventory.com makes inventory management easy and seamless. No more late hours mapping data to spreadsheet fields and adding conditional colors to analyze the health of your organization. Zenventory.com does all of this for you. It is a quick and simple step during the setup process. Remember, Zenventory is software as a service: Not a solution that requires a robust IT staff and 24/7 monitoring…again, we do all this for you.
Keep it simple, effortless, lean, and profitable. In other words, keep it ZEN.
Friday, October 3. 2008
ABC analysis is a business technique that can be applied to any business unit whether it is inventory, suppliers, or even employees. In regards to inventory, it is used as a supply chain technique that is the building block of efficient inventory control. A categorization system is used much like the 80/20 rule of Pareto's Law (or analysis). The typical model of categorization or "banding" is annual consumption. The analytical goal is to identify the SKU's that will have a significant impact on overall inventory costs as well as identifying the SKU's that will require different controls and management style. A look at the basic “rules:” Annual Consumption Value = (Qty Consumed x Cost of Item)
Classify the results into three bands (A, B, or C)
- “A” Band = inventory that accounts for 80% of total value
- “B” Band = inventory that accounts for 15% of total value
- “C” Band = inventory that accounts for 5% of total value
It is important to remember that even though the “A” band accounts for 80% of the total value, it may be the smallest portion of the total volume. Typical Results/Action Items as a result of the analysis: - “A” class items are an important part of the product line. Due to the high value it will be identified that these items require close monitoring and tight management controls. Frequent cycle counts, security, low reorder levels, short lead time supplier, and Just In Time (JIT) replenishment are a few good actions to take for “A” items.
- “B” class items have a lower need to tight controls and generally only require standard inventory management practices. Standard action to be taken is monthly or quarterly cycle counts combined with an annual inventory count.
- “C” class items require the least amount of controls and in some situations are the promotional “freebees” that are accompanied by the high two bands.
Sounds easy right?? This can tend to be a loaded question. The ABC analysis is a basic practice of inventory and supply management BUT, it requires an efficient software package that produces data with integrity and quality. For example, Zenventory is an inventory management software solution that does a nice job of managing inventory using hybrids of the ABC analysis approach. Without easy to use software providing good data quality, the basic ABC analysis quickly becomes convoluted and diluted with unnecessary data elements. 10 ways Zenventory.com can help? - Notify buyer of optimal reorder quantities for price breaks to keep overall inventory costs low
- Set, evaluate and adjust reorder levels based on turnover reporting tools
- Live, up to the minute stock level report on dashboard
- Color coded inventory screens to quickly identify stock level
- Avoidance of costly stock outs as well as the need to carry excess safety stock
- Identify item specific leakage risks based on ABC banding
- Set up warehouse bin locations based on item dwell and management controls needed.
- Set and evaluate supplier velocity and efficiency
- Reduce errors by seamlessly moving through the entire order cycle: Purchasing through Order Fulfillment
- Fully integrate with current Financial Management Software to perform live detailed financial analysis on inventory costs.
Put the ZEN in your inventory management practices by using an easy to integrate, user friendly, mobile, solution that provides optimization tools developed from industry needs rather than the out of touch models of yesterday – Zenventory.com
Wednesday, September 24. 2008
Cycle Counting is arguably the most important part of inventory management. We've aimed to provide the simplest yet most powerful cycle counting system available. Zenventory's cycle counting system can be as simple or as sophisticated as you like. Zenventory provides system wide counting frequencies, individual item frequencies, the assignment of leakage risks and a host of powerful banding solutions to apply to every item. At it's most basic level, simply determine how often you would like to count inventory and Zenventory maintains when items were last counted. This provides easy visibility of warehouse locations and inventory that need to be counted based on last count date. However, Zenventory has powerful built in technology to recommend items that should be counted more frequently based on leakage risk, item value, volume, turnover, and accuracy. Certain inventory may be especially prone to breakage, pilferage, or spoilage. Defining these items as high risk items in Zenventory means that these items can be earmarked for more frequent counting. Additional power can be harnessed using Zenventory's powerful cycle counting banding system. Simply define system-wide global criteria for determing count frequency by allowing Zenventory to monitor item value, volume, turnover, and inventory accuracy. Zenventory uses this criteria to rank when items should be counted. Here are a few examples where Zenventory's Banding criteria may be useful: 1. Your warehouse is used to store very high value items. High value items are especially prone to pilferage and should be counted more frequently. Zenventory allows you to define cycle count bands based on item value, then automatically recommends when these items should be counted. 2. Inventory is picked in high volumes or frequently moved. Not counting these items frequently can cause inaccuracies in your stock reporting. By harnessing the volume bands in the system, Zenventory can help maintain accuracy by recommending that these titems be counted more frequently. 3. The turnover band in Zenventory analyzes a combination of volume and value to determine when stock should be counted. This band utilizes the total cost associated with item volume of shipments. 4. Finally, there is the cycle count accuracy band. This band checks the accuracy of previous cycle counts for an item. If this accuracy falls within the thresholds prescribed by your definition, then Zenventory can recommend that the cycle count frequency be changed. So if item counts are consistently inaccurate,
Zenventory can elevate the cycle counting frequency.
Setting up cycle counting in Zenventory is simple, yet powerful. Harnessing the true power of Zenventory's cycle counting logic will help you maintain a high level of accuracy in your warehouse.
Continue reading "Zenventory Cycle Counting Part 1"
Thursday, September 18. 2008
Inventory Optimization begins with quality expedited data flow to ensure up to the minute inventory visibility between business units. Managing inventory in the supply chain is vital to customer service, cash flow, and avoiding over stocks and stock outs. There are several basic inventory best practices to optimize and reduce the cost of inventory management. Optimization can be achieved through investing in a inventory management solutions designed to provide the right tools for the task at hand. The solution must be affordable and most importantly easy. Inventory Optimization products such as Zenventory.com can provide quick system integration and global visibility enabling the user to easily manage an order through the entire life cycle. When researching an inventory management solution there are several key factors that are essential: - Affordability -- The product cannot limit your organization to a certain amount of server space OR prevent additional users access due to high software license cost
- Integration -- Seamlessly integrate with your current and future financial software package (QuickBooks or a proprietary legacy system). Meaning, that as the company evolves, the solutions is to be scalable and integrate with basic financial software or a robust ERP. Don't choose a solution that will cost you more in the long run.
- Mobility -- The best solutions are going to enable your inventory operations to go mobile. This will reduce data delays due to manual entry at a desktop computer.
- Optimization --An inventory optimization product is to develop and drive continuous improvement in your overall inventory management operations. Purchasing, Receiving, Inventory Management, and Fulfillment can all be driven by superior tools that ensure these tasks are functionally and efficiently accomplished.
Zenventory.com provides an affordable solution with free system enhancement and limitless users and server space. This web based software is scalable to meet all of your needs and more. Choose software that was developed by industry experts who understand the demands of today rather than the out of touch software packages of yesterday.
Thursday, September 18. 2008
One common mistake that small businesses often make is to concentrate efforts on sales management while forgetting to implement a purchasing and vendor management program. A great purchase order management system will help contain costs and make an organization more profitable.
For example we recently worked with a company that created an unbelievable web presence allowing 97% of its customer accounts to place web orders. Orders were tightly integrated with their accounting system allowing invoices to be quickly printed and mailed. Sounds good right? From a sales stand point this does sound great. However this company sourced its products from multiple suppliers. Depending on how inventory is allocated to an order, profit may not be maximized. Inventory should be allocated to orders to ensure maximum profitability. Simply picking orders without consideration of the purchase cost is very risky. Worse, how does this business know they're paying exactly the cost agreed and getting the quantity it actually ordered when receiving inventory from its suppliers? Money simply disappears if a business does not receive inventory against an approved purchase. Zenventory provides extensive purchasing and vendor management. Zenventory can manage costs and lead times for each item against multiple vendors. When items are received, they are checked off against the purchase order so that vendor bills can be verified against what was actually received. In addition, Zenventory can assure the most profitable product is allocated to a customer's order. Since lead times are better managed, minimal inventory can be maintained in the warehouse limiting the amount of capital tied up in the warehouse.
Tuesday, September 16. 2008
We're pleased to announce the long awaited release of the Zenventory inventory management system. Zenventory is deployed as a web-based solution as software-as-a-service. This means that your investment in technology is minimized while retaining extensive functionality. Zenventory can handle multiple warehouses, thousands of SKUs, and includes purchase order management, order fulfillment, pack verification, cycle counting, and many more features commonly found in applications costing significantly more.
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