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Case Study – Healthcare – Skyway Behavioral Health
Start Up Requiring Robust Infrastructure – From Planning to Implementation
The 7 Irresistible Qualities of Cloud ERP
Learn why ERP tools are an critical component for many businesses.
Why a Business Continuity Plan is Essential
Learn why your company needs a business continuity plan.
Ransomware 101
If you’re looking for ways to stop ransomware dead in its tracks, the experts at CCS Technology are here to help.
How managed services make the difference
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Cloud Services and the SMB Revolution
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Office 365 Migration Made Easy
Migrating over to Office 365 has never been easier with CCS Technology.
The Advantages of Working with I.T. Pros
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Closing Common Cybersecurity Holes
Learn several critical cybersecurity tips and tricks any SMB can use.
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Measuring Warehouse Productivity: Top 5 Metrics to Consider
/in Blog, Distribution Industry /by Chris HigginsWarehouse management has a lot to do with balancing two competing needs: speed and accuracy. If you manage a warehouse, you typically want your people to work as quickly as possible without injuring themselves or causing damage to products. At the same time, if you achieve speed at the cost of accuracy, your business will experience customer complaints and costly restocking and re-delivery procedures.
Warehouse productivity is a measurement of how well you manage this conflict, together with factors like on-time delivery and warehouse utilization. The industry’s professional association, The Warehousing Education and Research Council (WERC) studies this issue, among many others, that affect distribution companies.
Their DC Measures 2019 annual benchmarking study highlights the importance of warehouse productivity. Here are the top five metrics from the report:
1. Order Picking Accuracy (percent by order)
This metric shows how accurately warehouse employees pick products for orders. Order picking accuracy can drop with multi-part orders, where the employee has to pick products from multiple bins. The metric is also a measure of the quality of order picking instructions. For example, if the order says “Product X,” but the employee finds two bins, each with Product X in a different color, this creates a problem. He or she can take a guess at what color is needed, and then have the company suffer the consequences of a return. Or, the employee can send the order back for confirmation, which creates churn and delay.
2. Average Warehouse Capacity Used
A warehouse is a financial asset. As a result, its rate of capacity utilization is an important number for senior management. If a company is only using 10% of its warehouse capacity, that’s a problem. It means they’re paying for the rent and upkeep of unproductive space. This may seem like an easy-to-spot problem, but with multiple sites and changing seasonal inventories, it can be difficult to measure accurately without the right software and procedures.
3. Peak Warehouse Capacity Used
It’s also helpful to know your peak warehouse capacity utilization. The number itself can be revealing, like if it’s too low. But, unless its 100%, then there’s room for improvement. Peak warehouse capacity used is a target, a basis for doing better. If the number was 70% last year, then maybe this year, it could be 75%.
4. On-time Shipments
Shipments reaching customers on-time is a critical success metric for warehouses. It’s important on its own, because it reflects if the warehouse doing its job right. However, late shipments also create hidden costs and difficulties elsewhere in the business. They cause customer service calls and complaints. They cause package tracking and other wastes of time. Ultimately, late shipments can damage your brand and cause customers to defect.
5. Inventory Count Accuracy by Location
Are the inventory counts accurate in each location? This is another stealth issue that is more important than it looks. If there are fewer items in a bin than the system says there should be, that might indicate theft or unreported damage. The results of miscounted inventory include unforeseen stockouts and fulfillment problems that negatively customer attitudes.
Strong warehouse productivity metrics arise out of good management overall, but also by means of software. This is especially true for business with extensive product catalogs and high rates of inventory turnover. Software and related technologies, like barcode scanners and RFID readers contribute to tight measurement and control of warehouse operations.
We work with many distribution businesses on the implementation of Acumatica Cloud ERP for distribution and warehouse management. This software solution enables you to measure the five key warehouse productivity metrics described above, along with many others. If you want to learn more about how Acumatica can help your distribution business function better, let’s talk.
Additional Distribution Resources
Recommendations for Selecting a Distribution ERP Solution
Looking at 2020 Distribution Industry Trends with ERP in Mind
Benefits of ERP Software for Distribution Business Management
Everyone Is a Participant in Information Security
/in Blog, Security /by Chris HigginsThe information security team may have security in their name, but that doesn’t mean they own it. Security requires the active participation of everyone in the company, from management to facilities staff, in order to prevent and respond to incidents.
Preventing Security Incidents
Everybody has a role in preventing a security incident:
Management: Management sets the standard of behavior for everyone else in the business. If managers are seen treating security casually, no one else will take it seriously, either. This means managers, including senior executives, need to participate in the security training that’s mandated for everyone else; they need to demonstrate safe computing practices, like not writing down passwords and sharing them with their admins; and treating compliance audits as beneficial, rather than a necessary evil.
Finance: The financial team needs to understand the value of spending on security and authorize the appropriate expenses. In addition, the financial team needs to understand the sensitivity of the data they work with and take steps to avoid falling for targeted spearphishing attacks that seek to steal account numbers or trigger funds transfers inappropriately.
Human resources: The HR team, through its training programs, is responsible for ensuring everyone receives the necessary information security training. In addition, the HR team has the responsibility for ensuring the hiring process employees appropriate background checks and handling disgruntled employees to minimize insider risks.
Facilities: Physical security of your premises is an important component of information security.
Information security: Of course, the information security team has a major role in preventing breaches through developing security strategies and implementing tools to protect valuable corporate data.
Everyone else: All employees are responsible for using safe computing practices, including creating strong passwords and not sharing them. Employees are responsible for paying attention to the mandated information security training and taking those lessons back to their workspaces.
Responding to Security Incidents
If you unfortunately experience a security breach, you need a solid incident response plan. Multiple teams will have roles in the response, including:
Management: Management is responsible for ensuring that the incident response plan is executed, as well as overseeing related activities.
Marketing and communications: One of the biggest challenges in responding to a breach is communicating the event and how you are responding to it. In addition, your teams may need to ramp up marketing to mitigate reputation damage and minimize lost business.
Legal and compliance: A data breach isn’t just an internal matter; depending on your industry and location, you may have to satisfy legal and regulatory mandates regarding notifications, compensation, and other breach-related events. Your legal and compliance teams will make sure you follow the letter of the law on these actions.
Information security: Your technology team needs to complete several different activities. First, they need to identify the impact of the breach and determine the extent of the data loss. Second, they need to discover the root cause that allowed the breach to occur, and implement a strategy to prevent that type of attack from recurring. In addition, they should conduct a thorough review to identify other vulnerabilities and take steps to reduce the risk you’ll be victimized through a different form of attack.
Learn more about creating a disaster recovery plan.
Contact CCS Technology to start developing a comprehensive information security strategy, or browse the additional resources below for more information on getting started.
Additional Information Security Resources
Create An Information Security Culture to Protect Your Data
Don’t Overlook These Information Security Basics
7 Common Mistakes That Place Your Data in Danger
Cloud Resolutions for the New Year
/in Blog, Cloud /by Chris HigginsThe new year is a great time to review the technology you’re using and make changes, either introducing new technology or improving how you use your existing technology. Here are four things to look at to help you get more out of your cloud technology:
1. Get cloud spending under control
One of the biggest advantages of cloud is its cost savings, but you need to take steps to make sure spending doesn’t exceed expectations. Because cloud is self-service, it’s easy for users to initiate services without much review. Free trials are tempting, but when they aren’t canceled, they turn into ongoing expenses. Buying excess capacity is a good practice when you house resources in your data center, but it’s unnecessary and a hard habit to break when it comes to cloud, where capacity is available on demand. Choosing a more expensive data tier is another source of unnecessary expenses. Finally, remember cloud is pay-per-use, so make sure resources are shut down when not needed. This includes permanently shutting down development and test environments after the project is complete, as well as turning off applications that aren’t needed overnight. Learn more about controlling your cloud costs.
2. Consider going native
Probably most organizations take the “lift and shift” approach to transitioning to cloud. In this approach, you don’t rearchitect applications; you transition them as-is. The approach has the advantages of being simple. It’s also relatively fast and relatively low-risk. However, most existing applications aren’t designed to take advantage of all the cloud’s features. In particular, they don’t usually have a services-oriented architecture and aren’t able to take advantage of automatic scalability in the cloud. If you’ve already migrated applications to the cloud and things are running smoothly, take time this year to review the applications and identify where going cloud-native will offer advantages. Learn more about approaches to moving to the cloud.
3. Improve your security
Cloud security remains a top concern for many businesses, and there’s a good reason: cloud means shared resources and more points of access, meaning potentially greater risk. While your cloud provider takes many steps to protect the cloud, protecting your applications and your data remains your responsibility. Spend time reviewing your security posture, checking the tools and configurations you already have in place, and consider adding new cloud-centric controls such as a cloud access security broker. Learn more about ways to keep your cloud secure or information security basics.
4. Design your hybrid cloud
Almost no one, except for brand-new start-ups, has a pure cloud environment. Everyone else is working with a mix of cloud and legacy infrastructure, resulting in a confusing, difficult-to-manage hybrid architecture. Stop the chaos by taking a step back to evaluate the mixed infrastructure and plan how it can smartly evolve to let all the different elements work together in support of your business. Learn more about the flexibility of a hybrid cloud.
CCS Technology Can Help You Achieve Your 2020 Cloud Resolutions
If you’re ready to tackle any or all of these cloud resolutions in the new year, contact CCS Technology Group. Our cloud solutions help you design, implement, and manage the cloud you need in 2020 and beyond.
Additional Cloud Resources
New Year, New Cloud Choices and Challenges
Don’t Overlook These Aspects When You Plan Your Cloud Migration
Calculating the ROI of Moving to the Cloud