Leverage IoT to increase your Warehouse Business Efficiency
Posted On: November 12, 2018
The Business Opportunity
Warehouse & Logistics are prospecting as biggest growth sectors in India, today. This is one reason warehouses are experiencing excessive space demand led by the emergence of e-commerce and organized retail business.
Recently, we read in the Economic Times that by ‘By 2020 Warehouse Industry in India is all set to see an Investment of Rs.45, 000 Crore’ and ‘Warehousing stock in 8 major cities of India is expected to grow at CAGR of 21% till 2021’
Although, this growth now is not limited to the major cities only and it’s spreading out in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities as well. Because of which the supply chain process is becoming more complex day by day, leading to new evolved business challenges. The companies are struggling big time to have complete visibility in the system to meet these challenges which seems to be addressed only with the help of IoT solution. Let’s look and talk about these business challenges in detail and discover how IoT is helping business owners to deal with them.
Business Challenges
1. Security
The warehouse & logistic businesses by its nature cater to vast market span and require widespread expansions across the country to accumulate & store a huge range of valuables. As far as the operational requirement is concerned, they preferably had to position themselves in remote locations near national highways or city outskirts. Due to the election of odd and distributed locations, security has always been at risk for the industry caused by both internal & external factors in the form of pilferage, theft, and shrinkages. According to a study, average worldwide shrinkage for warehouses comes out to be 2% of its turnover, which is a huge number. With this you can make a guess how much of revenue a warehouse business has to shred due to its shrinkage only, making it a big issue to deal with.
2. Business Efficiency
The expectation rise for consumer experience has given birth to new business challenges which are leading warehouse & logistic companies to experience a tough time together. As today’s consumer expects his order product to be delivered next or same day itself meeting all possible quality benchmarks along with real-time product tracking and so on. This challenge is not limited to this, but also with smaller and fragmented warehouse companies coming together to act as a centralized hub originates the new business competition. To survive and strive in the market, business owners have developed a key need to enhance their business efficiency and define productivity benchmarks which were once ignored.
3. Increasing Operational Expenditures
The growing demand for warehouse space did not leave companies with any other option but to either perform space expansion or start with 24*7 operations. Do not you agree that in either way companies are experiencing a big increase in their operational expenditures? They have to hire new staff as well as stand the additional cost of infrastructure maintenance and night guarding. As you can understand, starting night operation companies will notice a massive increase in power consumption leading to increased energy bills. It has become important for them to shift their focus and wisely act on budget control or you can say cost reduction at this stage apart from other aspects of a business. If the problem is not lived then it may definitely impact profit margins.
The Solution
In such circumstances, companies have always been rescued by the technology. IoT is coming out as most prominent and capable solution to deal with these challenges. At KocharTech, we leverage IoT to empower warehouse & logistic businesses backed by Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning using a unified IoT platform. The solution helps business to address their fundamental business challenges and create new opportunities for business optimization. Let’s understand how.
1. Enhanced Security
It acts as an integrated solution which enables business owners with a single dashboard to monitor, manage and protect their distributed sites efficiently. It provides real-time alerts and notification on their smartphones in case any suspicious activity gets noticed which adds an additional layer of security to the business. The platform allows them to proactively act and prevent unwanted incidents & possible loss adding to business profits. We must believe and agree that man guarding is an inefficient way to monitor and protect such widespread expansions, especially during night hours. This solution acts reliably to strengthen the warehouse security and enables companies to save 70% on their traditional night guarding cost.
2. Efficient People & Optimized Operations
The Platform enables centralized command center which controls all distributed sites and allows business owners to manage their complex warehouse operations competently. Unlike before, they can have 24*7 visibilities over operations and easily monitor staff productivity which indirectly led to managing the warehouse stock as well as space efficiently. A single dashboard only simplifies managing multiple locations at a time but also ease out defining productivity benchmarks and drive SOP adherence to fix process lags. This in return, improves people efficiency and optimizes operation leading to reduced stock turnaround time and happy customers.
3. OPEX Reduction
Without any doubt, all these activities are increasing business expenditures and reducing profits. And in this situation, getting hold of expenditures is necessary. With the help of IoT, business owners can schedule as well as control the warehouse electricals to ensure correct consumption of energy and prevent misuse. Thus, they can make substantial cost savings on energy bills. Likewise, increased staff efficiency led to increased overall operation productivity which means companies now does not require procuring cost of hiring additional staff anymore. The reactive surveillance already helps you to save 70% night guarding cost by reducing dependency on man guards.
The Outcome
With the pressing need of enhancing business efficiency in warehouses, IoT is all set to disrupt traditional business practices and transforming them into more efficient, secure and profitable ones. On getting the business benefits, many warehouse and logistics companies have started accepting IoT as most prominent solution existing today. You can conveniently figure out more and learn about how this technology sets well in your business space to deliver the desired outcome by getting your warehouse space analyzed by the experts for free, click here for the same.
