< Previous20 Business Link www.blmforum.net WAREHOUSING AND DISTRIBUTION W arehouses and distribution centres face many challenges in balance, but perhaps the most important of these is taking efficiency in hand when facing high consumer demand. There’s often an abundance of the latter thanks to e- commerce and its around-the-clock reliance on logistics. With limited warehouse space available, and more being built and snapped up before it’s even completed, business focus is more on optimising the space available than it is on expanding. Optimising layout to the best of your ability is usually the best place to start, potentially creating space while organising products in storage to show which items need to be shipped out soonest. A simple yet effective slotting system can be worked in to place fast-moving items closer to the shipping area for quicker access. Two rules of thumb to keep in mind are organising stock to make movement as smooth and speedy as possible for workers and equipment, and to utilise vertical space by installing taller racks and shelves to maximize storage capacity. As an extra bonus, you might also consider implementing a cross- docking strategy, reducing the time products spend in storage by transferring them directly from inbound to outbound shipments. Outside of your own team, it’s endlessly beneficial to call in support where you can. Work closely with your suppliers and logistics partners to make everyone aware of crucial details, including demand needs and required schedules for distributing stock. This will help streamline the entire supply chain and reduce those all-important lead times. Introducing new technology can be its own heavy expense and demand on personnel training. However, if you can Making the most of space In the current economic climate, purchasing new warehouses is an unhappy proposition. Is it possible to get more out of what already exists instead? 22 Áwww.blmforum.net Business Link 21 WAREHOUSING AND DISTRIBUTION © stock.adobe.com/panuwat22 Business Link www.blmforum.net WAREHOUSING AND DISTRIBUTION afford to automate some of your processes, it’s a handy boost to speed up supply, loading and inventory tracking without sacrificing accuracy. Conveyor systems, robotics, automated picking systems and RFID or barcode scanning can all help to prevent potentially costly mistakes, or reduce labour needs altogether. Investing in an advanced inventory management system helps improve flow by tracking stock levels in real-time, reducing overstocking and further ensuring accurate orders. For more detailed foresight however, there’s no replacing big data for analysing gradual shifts in choice and preference. Bringing in analytics software is a complex process of assessing your storage or distribution needs, selecting the right software for your metrics and performance indicators, and customising it for your objectives. But the work of identifying your goals and connecting your software with every necessary data source—including warehouse management systems, inventory databases and supply chain management tools—is the most labour-intensive part. After that, its just a matter of transferring data to a suitable format, inputting the values to track, and testing for accuracy before you let it run. With the tricky part out of the way, your new analytical software can begin to predict demand patterns, fine-tune and adjust inventory levels accordingly. It doesn’t end with external monitoring either, as improving demand forecasting accuracy ensures that you stock the right items in the right quantities, feeding back into storage space and efficient organisation year-round. Key performance indicators can also be www.blmforum.net Business Link 23 WAREHOUSING AND DISTRIBUTION © stock.adobe.com/Irina Sharnina identified and analysed through data, providing valuable insight on areas for improvement in product flow. To make sure your software is always examining these areas accurately, just remember to monitor the software’s performance and the quality of the data it produces. Continuously refine your analytics processes to extract more valuable insights and train your staff to use it so any appropriate personnel can access and interpret the data to make informed decisions. Advances in digitalisation and Artificial Intelligence (AI) are offering further methods of making logistics more efficient and sustainable. They allow mistakes to be eliminated and complete visibility of a journey to be provided. Routes and transit methods can be assessed to improve efficiency and carbon emissions, while the Internet of Things (IoT) and its sensors can be used to monitor and collect data on speed, tyre pressure, driver behaviour, et al., which all impact fuel consumption and emissions. All this tech together creates chances for enhanced planning and control, opens up optimisation potential, and is key to setting emission targets by allowing accurate current emissions to be calculated. Real time transport visibility platforms are already becoming standard in the industry and many of these can also be utilised to collect data for sustainability calculations. Opportunities from digitalisation apply throughout a journey, including truck dispatch at a facility - with digitalised processes and intelligent time slot management, truck congestion and waiting times can be reduced and significant CO2 savings made as a result. 24 Business Link www.blmforum.net SUPPORTING BUSINESS GROWTH T he reason why the term “supporting business growth” has meant finance for so long is because there were few problems that could not be solved with the application of enough money. Need skilled staff? Advertise to recruit and hire them. Need new facilities? Simply buy them. Need to expand into a new market? Buy out a company already in it and use their expertise. The problems may have been myriad, but the solution was simple – money. We live today in a different world. The stagnant economy that has seen limited wage rises for years or even decades; the soaring inflation after a pandemic, after a recession after a credit crunch, and more and more globalism adding new competition for jobs, customers and market share. All of these have led to harsher trading conditions and a wealth of competition. Now, a new government after sky-high inflation and a budget described as “painful” by its own creators. Furthermore, at a time when wages simply aren’t rising and where companies and people are struggling to earn enough to survive, the focus for employees is on getting the best deal possible. Before, the unemployed were desperate for work and there weren’t enough jobs going around, placing recruiting power in the hand of the employer. That simply isn’t the case today as labour and skills shortages are impacting many sectors, and local businesses are seeing the best and brightest poached by big city firms willing to offer unrivalled packages Paying for growth When the economy suffers, so too do companies looking to borrow money to grow. 26 Áwww.blmforum.net Business Link 25 SUPPORTING BUSINESS GROWTH © stock.adobe.com/adragan26 Business Link www.blmforum.net SUPPORTING BUSINESS GROWTH including not just money, but gym memberships, more breaks, flexible hours, working from home and more. Growing a business in today’s economy is not as simple a matter as borrowing money and expanding; now, thought has to be put into how to expand, where, how staff will be sourced, how expensive new property might be and – in sectors involving manufacturing or logistics – how few commercial properties are available on the market. There are undoubtedly many businesses in a position to expand who feel it isn’t feasible because recruiting staff would be too difficult, or because rental costs of a new office would be inhibitive, or simply because there’s too much uncertainty in the current economy, and sometimes – especially now – having a large cash flow to fall back on if yet another economic disaster should occur is perhaps a better idea than expanding. We know from conventional business wisdom that it is not. Money wasting time doing nothing is inefficient, and those who do not grow are swallowed up by others willing to take the risk and put in the effort. The stagnation felt by many is, perhaps, more a case of decision makers not moving with the times. Business growth is no longer just a financial matter and shouldn’t be looked at as such. All departments must be involved. When it comes to HR and recruitment, there is increased focus on expanding workforces via training up unskilled employees and apprentices now. It’s hard to compete with the biggest companies, and many local businesses can’t afford to offer working from home or reduced © stock.adobe.com/lweedezignwww.blmforum.net Business Link 27 SUPPORTING BUSINESS GROWTH hours as part of their package. In that case, it is better to let the skilled worker pool go rather than compete in an arm’s race with the giants. Instead, consider apprenticeships or even training courses for new employees who might not initially fit the bill. This isn’t a simple matter for accountants and solicitors who need to recruit from universities, but many other companies can involve trainers in bringing new staff up to standard. There are plenty of business schools, independent training groups and programmes available in the region to help with this, and many of them come with regional or Governmental support in terms of financial packages to incentivise their use. On issues of property, modular and virtual office space has grown in popularity in recent years for good reason. While it may not be as impressive from a branding angle to share a building with other companies, the financial savings are monumental and leaving all the issues of owning and maintaining the property in someone else’s hands can help limit the number of plates a business needs to juggle. Finance still is an important factor of business growth, and so the issue of how to raise it remains, but there is a wealth of alternative options to bank loans today, including angel investors, crowdfunding, and securing funding from online groups like Funding Circle or, for start-ups or new innovations, even consumer sites like Kickstarter. Many entrepreneurs have raised millions from these sources, all the while dodging the intense paperwork and oversight that most banks will demand. In a sense, business growth has not changed that much – the rules remain the same – but it’s the hoops that must be jumped through that have increased in complexity and number. Given the state of the economy after a painful election, many businesses are looking for exit strategies, making finance even harder to acquire. © stock.adobe.com/leungchopan28 Business Link www.blmforum.net LEGAL SERVICES Social media and a cultural shift have led to employees seeing their bosses as the enemy. It might be worth future- proofing employment material to be clearer on their rights. T he prevalence of YouTube videos and “expert advice” offered by people online has led to an increase in spurious and oftentimes doomed legal challenges by employees, but while these may not end in loss from a business perspective, they still have their cost. In our country, the law tends to err on the side of the employee, which can be frustrating but is better than the legal situation in the US where money tends to dictate the winner and people can get away with almost anything. The UK has typically been less litigious than the US as well, with steady but unremarkable rates of employment tribunals. This trend is changing, with more and more employees aware of their rights and, in some cases, believing they have more rights than they actually do. A lot of the fault for this has to be laid at the feet of big tech. Social media is a Preventing disaster www.blmforum.net Business Link 29 LEGAL SERVICES © stock.adobe.com/STOATPHOTO haven for people offering free legal and employment advice without having to provide credentials. The old joke from people on forums was that “everyone is a lawyer when they want to prove a point” but now on Facebook, TikTok, and X (formally Twitter) you have individuals trying to farm engagement and money by offering free advice and bringing people to their videos or feeds. The problem is that legal advice is specific by design, with what one person needs being different from another, so it ends up in a situation where a disgruntled employee watches a video about their rights without realising the video is based in America, or that those rights only apply if they have worked at a company for X number of years. The advice is flawed, and does not stand up in court, but that’s little comfort for a business which has been dragged to an employment tribunal, because that will still cost them dearly. Making matters worse is the cultural shift toward seeing business as evil that has happened of late in our country. To be fair, this has been caused by some truly awful decisions made by big businesses, including some incredibly poor optics wherein billionaires have 30 ÁNext >