Supply Chain Roadblocks & Solutions for SMBs

Small and Medium-Sized Businesses (SMBs) play a vital role in the global economy, contributing significantly to innovation, job creation, and economic growth. However, they often encounter unique challenges, such as limited resources, smaller footprint, scalability considerations, a smaller workforce, and budget constraints. The good news - there are numerous ways for SMBs to optimize their operations using today's technology, particularly in their supply chain. 

What is an SMB?

SMBs are businesses operating at a smaller scale than larger enterprises, typically with less than 500 employees. However, this doesn't mean SMBs aren't profitable. Some intentionally operate at a smaller size for their market niche, while others are rapidly scaling. 

Common Challenges for SMBS

SMBs often encounter unique challenges that can impede their progress and hinder their ability to reach their full potential, including:

• Limited Resources: SMBs often have fewer resources compared to larger enterprises, which can hinder their ability to invest in new technologies or expand their operations.
• Smaller Footprint: Due to their size, SMBs may have a limited physical presence, making it challenging to reach a wider customer base or establish a strong brand presence.
• Scalability Considerations: As SMBs grow, they need to ensure that their systems and processes can scale efficiently to accommodate increased demand without sacrificing quality or incurring excessive costs.
• Smaller Workforce: With a smaller workforce, SMBs may face challenges in managing multiple tasks simultaneously, leading to potential bottlenecks and inefficiencies in their operations.
• Budget Constraints: SMBs often operate with tighter budgets, making it essential to optimize resources and make strategic investments to maximize returns and support sustainable growth.
  
  The warehouse is an excellent starting point for SMBs to overcome these challenges and improve efficiency, which in turn benefits the entire organization.

ERP: Every Warehouse Should Start Here

Before implementing best practices in your supply chain operations, evaluate your current systems and unify them into one technology platform. An Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system connects essential business functions like accounting, procurement, inventory management, and order fulfillment into one single system of truth. With the right ERP in place, companies of any size gain full visibility and control over their supply chain, enabling them to streamline operations and make well-informed decisions. 

Many SMBs choose NetSuite as their ERP due to its cost-effectiveness, centralized management, and scalability. NetSuite is a cloud-based solution that includes accounting, procurement, customer relationship management (CRM), warehousing, and inventory management.  

Supply Chain Best Practices for SMBs 

Once your ERP is in place, it is time to look at ways to simplify and improve your supply chain processes. Streamlining inventory and warehouse management is essential to coordinate and optimize the day-to-day activities in a warehouse to ensure efficient storage, movement, and fulfillment of inventory. 

• Receiving & Putaway: Inefficient receiving and putaway processes lead to bottlenecks down-stream, causing slowdowns in distribution and an increase in labor costs. We most commonly see RF-SMART customers receiving directly to the mobile handheld or creating a receiving station that has a computer (usually on a cart that can be moved around) and a wedge scanner. Protect your productivity by ensuring item putaways and bin replenishments are done promptly and accurately.
  
  
• Picking: Having a picking strategy in place is key to improving speed, increasing accuracy, and reducing order fulfillment times.  Automating picking processes and using mobile barcode scanners will help make sure you have the right item in the correct warehouse bin. Optimizing your warehouse layout so that pickers can travel the shortest possible distance is another smart way to gain efficiency.
  
  
• Counting: Maintaining accurate inventory through regular counts is mission-critical for today’s modern supply chain. Accurate inventory counts are the basis for all other inventory processes, such as picking, packing, and shipping. Eliminating manual counting through mobile barcoding can lead to increased accuracy, efficiency, and customer service.
  
  
• Shipping: A robust, easy-to-use shipping solution is crucial to guarantee that the final stage of your outbound processes runs smoothly and efficiently. Warehouse managers need to be able to get accurate shipments out the door as fast as possible without complicated processes that rely on experienced shippers. RF-SMART Shipping takes decision-making out of your shippers hands, reduces shipping costs and speeds up training - all with the best shipping rates. 
  
  
• Hardware: Choosing the correct hardware for your warehouse is important. It is critical to find the right hardware partner that can assist you with choosing, managing, and troubleshooting your devices.  RF-SMART offers top-shelf brands of handheld barcode scanners and rugged mobile or mountable tablets that are tested and validated with our product.
  

Scaling into the Future

Once these best practices are implemented, the next step is to consider automation solutions to boost productivity and keep up with demand. Automation solutions, such as Automation for Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMRs), Automated Storage & Retrieval Systems (ASRS), and Mobile Dimensioners, are not here to replace your workforce but are a cost-effective solution to help your employees accomplish their day-to-day activities with speed, accuracy, and safety in mind.  

Mack’s Prairie Wings, an SMB eCommerce business, implemented an ASRS through RF-SMART's Material Handling Automation Connector to efficiently manage their growing order volume, reduce labor reliance, and expand capacity as needed in the future. This investment has enabled them to speed up replenishment, maintain accurate stock levels, and elevate customer satisfaction. Automation also allowed their team to keep all inventory secure while maximizing their use of available space, helping them avoid a costly warehouse expansion. 

Why the Right Software Matters

By taking a fragmented approach, SMBs can suffer significant growing pains. A disjointed, non-integrated solution is costly and can be difficult to implement, requiring manual workarounds and leading to limited visibility. To maximize the full potential of your warehouse, consider a software provider that can execute most, if not all, of the above solutions.

RF-SMART is a one-stop shop for mobile WMS, shipping, material handling automation software, label printing, and hardware - all built specifically for NetSuite.  With RF-SMART's mobile barcoding capabilities, NetSuite ERP users can significantly reduce (and even eliminate) their manual touchpoints. By using a handheld scanner to track your stock as it moves through the warehouse, each transaction will be validated and recorded in your ERP, meaning any errors will be flagged for immediate correction, protecting the integrity of your data. 

Curious about RF-SMART's solutions for SMB companies?