For a logistics company, warehouse management is one of the most daunting tasks as it involves handling big SKUs (Stock Keeping Units) for individual clients, real-time monitoring, data ownership and visibility across the location, and so on. No matter whether you are a startup or well-established Supply Chain Company, having an effective cloud-based WMS (Warehouse Management System) has become inevitable as it simplifies the complex process and allows you to provide high-end logistics solutions.
Companies like Primaseler, Brigtperl, Vinculum and others offer cloud-based WMS to help organizations manage their warehouse effortlessly.
This post further contains how Vinculum’s cloud-based WMS helped ColdEX automating their operations.
ColdEX: At A Glance
One of India’s leading cold chain companies, ColdEX offers one-stop solutions to fulfill temperature controlled supply chain requirements across the nation. Founded in 2007, the company has proven its competence in tackling temperature sensitive products between +25°C to -18°C.
Banking on the strength of 1,500 employees, 850+ refrigerated trucks, 55 branches, and five warehouse locations, ColdEX handles critical operations effortlessly. For their phenomenal work, they have successfully earned the trust of various reputed brands in the confectionary, meat, poultry, food processing, pharmaceutical, and fruit and vegetable industries.
The Journey of a Cold Chain Company
In India, temperature controlled logistics is a booming industry and is currently estimated to be worth Rs.12,000-15,000 crore with a predicted growth of 20 percent. The factor responsible for such growth is a steep upsurge in the demand for perishable and temperature-sensitive items.
ColdEX is a pioneer organization in the realm of temperature controlled logistics industry, and recently raised a fund of over 250 crores from Asia Climate Partners, a Hong Kong-based company.
Vinculum accepted the challenges faced by ColdEX and assisted them to transform their business by automating their crucial operations that further helped them fulfill B2B orders.
The Challenges
ColdEX, a cold chain company that won ‘India’s Best Cold Chain Logistics Service Provider’ award in 2015 by Frost and Sullivan, initially faced several challenges.
The company was looking for a solution that not only enabled them to perform hassle free operations but also allowed them to manage, assign, track orders and see their inventory in real-time across the locations. Their challenges were:
- Manual processes
- Caused delayed shipments, poor efficiencies, and a serious concern with managing big stocks of perishable goods.
- Improper management of orders
- Earlier, they had an issue with assigning location-wise orders to warehouses that led to higher delivery times.
- Absence of effective inventory management processes
- For a logistics company, segregation of inventory as per clients is pretty crucial and ColdEX faced issues without an effective inventory management solution.
- Location-wise inventory visibility and management was a big challenge.
- Real-time monitoring of inventory across different locations was difficult.
- Incompetence to track inventory location-wise led to higher turnaround times.
How Cloud WMS Assisted ColdEx
Cloud-based WMS solution offered by Vinculum helped ColdEX ease their business operations. Vin eRetail WMS from Vinculum helped ColdEX mitigate the challenges rising due to warehouse management. The WMS solution suggests put away for various inventories as per different temperature zones.
- The solution helped ColdEX to not only manage batches of inventory but also allowed them to segregate inventory as per clients that include reputed names like Burger King, Wendy’s, Carl’s Jr, and others. Vinculum helped ColdEX manage orders across multiple warehouses while assigning by removing redundancies in their systems.
- The Cloud-based WMS allowed them to see inventory in real-time across any location that enabled them to fulfill orders in a committed time-frame.
- Vin eRetail WMS helped ColdEX manage their crucial information like tax requirements and handle complicated tax structures around the nation including Octroi.
Future Scope
By 2017, India’s cold chain may reach a market size of US $13 bn and ColdEX is all set to ride this wave. In the coming years, plans in the offing comprise the addition of 80,000 pallets to its cold storage capacity that includes 12 new distribution centers to cover 90 percent of the urban population.
It seems that ColdEX will continue to leverage cloud-based WMS solution to grow their business and face upcoming challenges. Cloud-based WMS Solutions allows easy integration and helps 3PLs achieve their desired goals and expansion plans.
