How Viraj Enterprises Upscaled Warehouse Operations with WMS App and HHT

About

‍Viraj Enterprises is a footwear aggregator that sees a daily outflow of 20K+ shoes and accessories. An offshoot of ITL Group of Companies spearheaded by the dynamic Kaushal Jajodia, Viraj enterprises works with a posse of flagship footwear brands that include Sparx, Crocs and Action. 

What differentiates the company from its peers is that it is one of the leading names in the footwear space to completely and predominantly embrace the online eCommerce revolution.

Inefficient Warehouse Management- The Challenge

In 2008-09, the vagaries of the footwear space and eCommerce meant that there was considerable confusion on selling a pair of footwear on eCommerce channels. Viraj Enterprises made it its mission to increase its rate of selling and create a profit margin while retaining and delighting its customer base with timely and accurate fulfillment. This was easier said than done due to several challenges. First, the footwear market is traditionally unorganized and teeming with several small, medium and large-sized sellers and retailers vying for the same audience. And second, the technology adoption rate was low despite eCommerce holding great promise, and there were several knowledge gaps and insufficient resources in terms of personnel who were deemed competent enough to actualize the goodness of infrastructure. These gaps led to

1. Unserialized inventory for high-end products which impeded inventory tracking at the bin-level.
2. SLA breaches arising from the Inability to match and verify physical counts.
3. The inability to audit inbound and outbound movements and reconcile payments, taxes, returns, refunds and deductions across marketplaces.
4. Increased dependence on manual intervention at the warehouses, which correspondingly increased picking errors.
5. Business losses due to the inability to confirm the rate of selling against the gross merchandise value (GMV) and average order volume (AOV).

In the interest of curbing losses, taking back control, maximizing profitability and upscaling operational efficiency at the warehouse level,  Viraj Enterprises made a decision, one that would change the way they sell forever. In consultation with Vikas Bagga, a renowned strategic consultant with 25+ years of industry insider knowledge, Viraj set up the right infrastructure and technology to kill two birds with one stone;

1. Improve Speed, Efficiency and Accuracy.
2. Recruit and train the right people to bring down attrition

The business entity decided to go onboard the EasyEcom solution, a full stack eCommerce SaaS solution to democratize the eCommerce journey and actualize its goal of fully utilizing the capabilities of multiple marketplaces. 

‍The Solution: How EasyEcom Enabled Viraj Enterprises To Streamline Inventory and Warehouse Operations

Viraj Enterprises was aware that the problems would multiply as operations upscaled. EasyEcom ticked the right boxes of offering

1. Value-based pricing.
2. Minimum disruption to BAU
3. A seamless transition with continuous end-to-end hand holding and support.
4. Consistency in service quality..

Having fulfilled the criteria, deploying the EasyEcom solution resulted in multiple warehouse and fulfillment centers getting fully automated. Within 90 to 180 days, Viraj enterprises has tasted success in

1. Serializing high-worth inventory to achieve a 99.3% bin-level accuracy.
2.  Upping the accuracy quotient of inventory cycle counts by a whopping 98% in 30 days through SKU scans done through the WMS app and handheld terminals.
3. Streamlining inwarding to prevent duplicacy and maintaining SKU uniqueness to reduce SLA breach by a whopping 90%.
4. Reducing manpower efforts by 30% by dedicating purely two warehouse members to perform daily audits that complement quarterly and bi-yearly physical audits. 
5. Tracking sales, inventory aging and order aging to measure and maintain an uptick in WoW rate of sale for flagship brands.
6. Maintaining stock adequacy and inventory sufficiency ahead of bookings received 6 to 9 months in advance.
7. Generating labels in real-time during inwarding processes to quicken and increase seasonal high-traffic conversions.
8. Reducing overhead by ~95.5% by going entirely paperless.
9. Accommodating more brands, expanding storage and adding more racks.
10. Embracing omnichannel selling to account for and amplify BOPIS, click-and-collect shopping convenience-driven experiences.

In the words of its Assistant Warehouse Manager,

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