When it comes to inventory or logistics, even the smallest and startup businesses know how important and crucial warehousing is. Warehouse spaces themselves are part of managing the entire supply chain. Although seen as mere storage for goods, items, or products of a particular business, warehouses are actually economically significant and beneficial to both business owners and customers. Should you need warehouse spaces for your business–whether a startup or not–LSCR is the best commercial real estate company ever to exist, so you might want to check out their properties to help you out in your logistics, storage, or order fulfillment, just to name a few.
Value-added warehousing activities are relatively new and fresh concepts in the logistics industry. Before knowing why warehouses need to perform more value-added activities, it’s important that you first understand and grasp the whole meaning and concept of value-added warehousing activities.
What Are Value-Added Warehousing Activities?
Value-added activities are those that bridge the gap between the existing transportation and distribution process of deliveries and order-fulfillment. Basically, value-added warehousing activities complement, enhance, or improve freight services, overall warehouse operations, and logistics-based markets by assembling, managing, and controlling goods or products within a distribution center.
These activities guarantee reduced costs while also increasing profit over time. Value-added activities or services can come in different forms, and some are even suited ideally to certain types of products over the rest.
Now that we have identified what value-added activities are, it’s time to distinguish why most, if not all, warehouses need to perform more of these in their day-to-day business operations.
To Meet Increasing Demands
The e-commerce industry is one of the fastest-growing industries today. If anything, it continues to boom over time. Customer demands rise at such an exponential rate that businesses have no other choice but to expand, improve, and develop operations. At such a time like this, it’s crucial that companies know how and when to meet customer demands so as to also accelerate customer experience, which, in turn, can guarantee a higher return on investments.
Performing more value-added warehousing activities such as inventory management, inspection, testing, packing, or labeling–to name a few–can significantly help businesses fulfill orders more efficiently, with fewer damages, errors, and delays. As a result, customer demands are met way better than expected, which also helps convert first-time or one-time customers into repeat customers.
Expands Product Offers
Performing more value-added activities allows businesses to expand and propose more product offers than expected. From creating exclusive holiday gift ideas for products down to preparing a buy one take one goodie, value-added activities definitely help you gain more profit, while your customers have a more extensive selection of purchasing choices.
Products Are Shelf-Ready
Value-added activities such as price tagging, marking, display building, or packaging help streamline processes while products are getting ready to store on shelves and racks. This eliminates any delays or errors as well because tagging, marking, or labeling products reduce confusion. In turn, orders are delivered accurately to customers, improving customer experience, driving customer satisfaction.
Ensures Continuous Production and Improvement
Value-added activities, though overwhelming and intimidating, can actually ensure continuous warehouse production and improvement. More than anything, it helps meet customer demands even more, since delays, damages, and errors are also reduced. With value-added activities, businesses can easily determine which products need development or improvement. In turn, there is less downtime, helping you serve customers better.
Wrapping Up
Value-added warehousing activities are rapidly expanding concepts in today’s business world. As this concept or idea continues to evolve, the more likely businesses will have significant opportunities in expanding logistics and operation to serve better in the marketplace. As the supply chain and the e-commerce industry continues to grow and develop over time, that’s all the more reason for warehousing businesses to integrate value-added activities in order to efficiently meet customer demands and even go way beyond.