CKL DIGITALLY TRANSFORMED BUSINESS OPERATIONS WITH NEW STATE OF THE ART WAREHOUSE AUTOMATION SOLUTION USING NCAMEO NO CODE PLATFORM

Background

CKL International was facing challenges in managing customer interfaces manually, giving rise to delays in service. The need of the hour was to build a digitized Warehouse Management System (WMS), an application for providing a real-time product interface to customers and management of inventory. A WMS was developed for this purpose, enabling increased productivity, growth in profits, and enhanced customer relations.

The Challenge

CKL found itself in increasingly dynamic environments as remote events in the 2020 global supply chain impacted businesses.

Common problems they saw in 2020 were erratic demand, varied labor requirements and costs, and inaccurate inventory information, all requiring robust systemic solutions to keep managers on top of changes and aware of gaps that required attention. In addition, warehouse managers needed to juggle maximizing performance while balancing trade-offs under uncertain conditions.

CKL was still following the traditional form of manual warehouse operations. Their objective for longevity and sustainability when dealing with these challenges is to ensure they have flexible and scalable processes that abide by industry best practices.

Operations can be cumbersome if relying heavily on spreadsheets, documents, electronic messages, registers, and logbooks to corroborate and process data. These scattered data sources negatively impacted the decision-making process as they did not give accurate insights and impacts. Keeping track of customers’ needs and availability of products became an increasingly crucial factor for customer satisfaction, as inventory management was being done manually.

Major Challenges CKL was facing -

  • INVENTORY INACCURACY - LACK OF AUTOMATED SYSTEMS WHICH CAN OFFER REAL-TIME, ACCURATE INFORMATION ABOUT STOCK LEVELS AND COMPOSITION.
  • REDUNDANT PROCESSES - LEGACY / MANUAL PROCEDURES ARE TIME-CONSUMING AND WERE NOT ONLY INCREASING THE COST OF LABOUR, BUT WERE ALSO CREATING A HEALTH AND SAFETY RISK.
  • POOR WAREHOUSE LAYOUT - NON-OPTIMAL WAREHOUSE LAYOUT RESULTING IN INADEQUATE / INSUFFICIENT STORAGE AND AVAILABLE SPACES.
  • ERRATIC DEMANDS - IMPROPER MANAGEMENT OF TRANSPORTATION NETWORKS AND STRATEGIC SOURCING OF TRANSPORTATION SERVICES TO COMPLY WITH ERRATIC DEMANDS.
  • PICKING OPTIMISATION - LACK OF AUTOMATIC PICKING PROCESS RESULTING IN INEFFICIENCIES.

Without completely digitized and real-time connectivity and tracking, satisfying customers became very difficult. Systems, communications, connectivity, and tracking customers became tough to accomplish. Manual operations are possible for smaller businesses, but it becomes imperative to have a WMS to manage customer relations for larger customer bases in a warehouse. Furthermore, a lack of privacy while storing data would create data sharing and accessibility issues. There were anticipated chances of data loss or misplacement. It became an uphill task to access customers’ contacts to share new deals, benefits, or simply the availability of products. Since departments work in silos, getting updated information is quite challenging. This resulted in a time lag when submitting requests to collect information.

Why CKL choose to build a WMS?

It is imperative to give importance to digital systems in today's era of big data and technology modernization. Nowadays, it is hard to imagine running a business without access to real-time data. CKL realized that it was time to bring customer relationships under one roof. For CKL, a digital Warehouse Management System worked best to meet this requirement. Through WMS systems, they could collate, tabulate and organize data effectively. In addition, it would serve as an excellent user interface that saved time while managing customers' needs and other allied customer-based services.

Additionally, it would aid in marketing to potential leads that in turn helps business development. Transparent data systems create accurate reports on trends, statistics, and practices that help decision-making. Regardless of how extensive the inventory or customer database is, an efficient WMS can produce all information in a single click. It increases the productivity among employees. It links data, tasks, and projects to relevant records while providing an additional layer of transparency and accountability.

Our Offerings

Services and Solutions offered by NCAMEO

Inventory Management

Delivery of a web-based and mobile-based application with

  • Rapid application development platform
  • Accuracy in inventory management

NCAMEO delivered a well-designed WMS to CKL to solve all the warehouse management challenges at the lightning speed of 3 months. It came with a modern, user-friendly interface, customized to their needs. The dashboard lets CKL see the most relevant data required without sifting, sorting, or running a report.

Due to automation, the WMS systems makes customer outreach more personalized, quick, and relevant. Also, handling customer questions related to products, the status of an order placed, queries, and managing chats becomes easy, and response is quicker, appropriate, and need-based. Using the WMS, customers can view products and their availability in real-time, and they can place orders based on their availability. In cases of unavailability of products, the WMS offers customers the scope to reach manufacturers directly and place relevant orders for products they need. In addition, WMS allows the warehouse management to provide expectational services and responses to their customers. Customers can now track shipments using the WMS application and view the stage of transit that is regularly updated on an ongoing basis. Having all data stored in one system enables the warehouse to better serve their customers, leading to improved performance and acceptance in the marketplace.

The WMS is now functioning as a record of all interactions, needs, basic customer details, inventory and requests, this enables the company to look up records to determine facts and make decisions. The warehouse employees with access to the WMS can work together on shared data, records, and inventory at the same time with any updates being visible to all. This makes all departments work together seamlessly instead of relying on siloed information. The WMS is an asset to have for better data and program management.

It is imperative to make the right decisions that fuel growth and development in any company. For the same, it is important to have a common interface such as WMS to prioritize, bring out efficiency, transparency and productivity

Looking Forward

CKL is thoroughly impressed by the functions of the WMS and the warehouse's productivity increase. Therefore, the CKL management intends to implement WMS usage wholly and rigorously phase out manual operations. Furthermore, they believe that the WMS will also provide solutions in terms of sales trends, product demand trends, improving existing and potential client relations, and thereby accelerating the growth of the company's services and profits.