Smooth order fulfillment is what keeps your business moving forward as it grows. Managing inventory across different warehouses gives you the flexibility to split orders, shipping products from the best locations to meet customer demand.
It’s all about making sure that each order is fulfilled from the right place at the right time. With the right multi-warehouse management, you can handle purchase orders with ease, keep stock levels balanced, and avoid the hassle of running out of stock. No more bottlenecks, just a streamlined process that keeps things flowing efficiently from warehouse to customer.
Before we dive into the details, why not get a quick overview of what we're about to discuss?
You’re running a thriving online store, and orders are pouring in from all corners of the country. Exciting, right? But here’s the catch - your products are spread across warehouses in different cities. How do you ensure that each order is fulfilled from the right location, efficiently and cost-effectively? Enter multi-warehouse management.
Multi-warehouse management is the art and science of coordinating inventory, orders, and shipments across multiple storage locations. It’s like conducting an orchestra, where each warehouse is an instrument, and your goal is to create a harmonious symphony of order fulfillment. Just as institutional investors leverage strategic advantages to execute significant trades in smaller increments, multi-warehouse management allows businesses to:
✅ Reduce shipping times and costs by fulfilling orders from the nearest warehouse
✅ Balance inventory levels across locations
✅ Mitigate risks associated with natural disasters or local disruptions
✅ Scale operations to meet growing demand
One of the biggest challenges in managing multiple warehouses is ensuring that stock levels are balanced across all locations. This is where the ability to redirect purchase orders to the desired warehouse comes into play. With a warehouse management system, you can monitor stock levels in real-time and redirect purchase orders to warehouses with low stock.
This proactive approach helps prevent stockouts and overstocking, ensuring that your products are always available when and where your customers need them. By optimizing inventory levels, you can reduce the risk of lost sales due to out-of-stock items and minimize the costs associated with excess inventory. It’s a win-win situation that keeps your operations running smoothly and your customers satisfied.
Let’s face it - running a single warehouse is challenging enough. So why would anyone want to complicate things with multiple locations? The answer lies in the numerous benefits that come with a well-executed multi-warehouse strategy. Just as institutional investors pool resources from different investors to gain market advantages, managing inventory across multiple warehouses can provide significant operational benefits:
Faster Delivery Times: In the age of instant gratification, customers expect their orders to arrive yesterday. By strategically placing inventory closer to your customers, you can significantly cut down on shipping times. This not only makes your customers happy but also gives you a competitive edge.
Lower Shipping Costs: Shipping from a single central location to customers spread across the country can be expensive. Multiple warehouses allow you to optimize shipping routes, potentially saving you and your customers money on shipping fees.
Improved Inventory Management: With multiple warehouses, you can distribute your inventory more effectively. This means less chance of stockouts in high-demand areas and reduced risk of overstocking in others.
Increased Flexibility: Multiple warehouses give you the ability to adapt quickly to changes in demand or unexpected events. If one warehouse faces issues, you can easily reroute orders to another location.
Scalability: As your business grows, having multiple fulfillment centers allows you to expand into new markets more easily. You can test new locations without committing to a full-scale operation from the start.
Enhanced Customer Satisfaction: Faster deliveries, lower shipping costs, and better product availability all contribute to happier customers. And we all know that happy customers are more likely to become repeat buyers and brand advocates.
When running an eCommerce store with Shopify, handling orders from different warehouses or different fulfillment locations becomes an important aspect of your logistics. Shopify offers built-in functionality to manage this effectively, ensuring that your inventory is distributed across various locations and that orders are fulfilled from the most appropriate warehouse.
One of the key features in Shopify’s multi-warehouse system is order splitting. When a customer places an order that contains multiple products, Shopify automatically assesses which warehouse can fulfill each item. If one warehouse can’t handle the entire order, it will split the order and route each item to the appropriate fulfillment location.
Let’s break this down with an example:
Imagine you run an online store that sells two products: Product A and Product B. Product A is available in your warehouse in Dusseldorf, while Product B is only stocked in your warehouse in Hamburg. A customer places an order for both Product A and Product B. Shopify will recognize that no single location can fulfill the entire order. As a result, the order will be split.
Product A is routed to the warehouse in Dusseldorf for fulfillment.
Product B is routed to the warehouse in Hamburg for fulfillment.
Each location will independently handle its part of the order, meaning both warehouses will prepare and ship their respective items to the customer. This ensures that the order is fulfilled quickly, though it may result in multiple shipments to the customer.
The PULPO Shopify WMS App builds on Shopify’s multi-warehouse capabilities, adding enhanced functionality that simplifies the management of multiple fulfillment locations. While Shopify helps you split shipments, PULPO allows you to take control of these processes with greater flexibility and precision.
PULPO warehouse management software integrates directly with Shopify, allowing you to decide where each part of an order will be fulfilled. You can assign orders to specific warehouses with just a few clicks, optimizing your order routing and making multi-location inventory management far more efficient.
If a Shopify account is connected to multiple warehouses, PULPO WMS uses warehouse names to match locations in Shopify. Orders are directed only to the corresponding warehouse in PULPO WMS. For instance, if you have warehouses named Paris, Berlin, and Madrid in Shopify, PULPO WMS will only receive orders for the Berlin warehouse if it is named accordingly in PULPO.
This streamlines the process of order fulfillment. Orders that need to be split across multiple locations are imported into PULPO as multiple sub-orders. Each sub-order is designated to the appropriate warehouse for fulfillment. The system uses an intelligent order numbering mechanism to keep track of all sub-orders.
This order-splitting feature is crucial when managing a multi-location operation. PULPO ensures that each warehouse knows exactly what part of the order it’s responsible for, streamlining operations and avoiding fulfillment errors.
Implementing PULPO WMS for multi-warehouse management brings significant benefits to businesses managing inventory across different locations. Here’s how PULPO can transform your operation:
✅ Accurate Inventory Counts: PULPO’s real-time inventory management ensures that you always know how much stock you have at each location. This helps avoid stockouts and overstocking, optimizing your warehouse operations and reducing costs.
✅ Seamless Data Flow: PULPO integrates warehouse data with your Shopify store, ensuring that inventory records are updated in real-time. This ensures you never sell products you don’t have in stock and maintains accurate data across all locations.
✅ Improved Customer Satisfaction: By optimizing your fulfillment processes, PULPO helps ensure that customers receive their orders faster. Whether you're shipping from one or multiple locations, PULPO's ability to split orders and assign them to the right fulfillment center means customers get their products on time, improving overall satisfaction.
✅ Efficient Order Management: With PULPO, handling multiple warehouses is streamlined. The software automates the routing of orders to the correct fulfillment center based on real-time data, reducing the manual effort needed to process orders from various locations.
✅ Complete Flexibility Across Locations: PULPO gives you control over where each order is fulfilled. This is especially beneficial when you have warehouses spread across different locations, enabling you to optimize deliveries and reduce shipping times.
Efficient multi-warehouse management can be the difference between thriving and merely surviving. By leveraging Shopify's built-in capabilities and enhancing them with PULPO's advanced Shopify WMS, you're setting your business up for success.
Whether you're managing warehouses across different cities or even countries, PULPO gives you the tools to orchestrate your fulfillment operations with precision and ease. It's time to take your multi-warehouse management to the next level and watch your ecommerce business soar to new heights!