Warehouse in a Warehouse: The Quick Fix to Fulfill E-commerce Orders (When You Don’t Have the WMS to Do It)

The growth of e-commerce orders is creating a challenge for retailers, brands and distributors that operate legacy warehouse systems designed for a wholesale/distribution or replenishment model.

As customer expectations around fast and cheap delivery continue to grow, supply chain professionals need to quickly modernize their warehouses for e-commerce fulfillment, while at the same time ensuring that their wholesale distribution fulfillment continues to run smoothly.  An effective way to minimize disruption to core operations while rapidly implementing an optimized e-commerce fulfillment model is by deploying an e-commerce warehouse management system, with a warehouse-in-a-warehouse concept.

An e-commerce warehouse management system is a WMS designed for e-commerce fulfillment. It optimizes pieces picking, has advanced functionality (pick to light, pick to voice, etc.), it can run on almost any device (mobile, scanner, tablet, etc.), it is easy to learn, easy to use and built for any type of fulfillment — manual or automated (robots). It also easily integrates to existing systems and can be implemented within a few weeks, not months. 

A warehouse-in-a-warehouse concept is when one facility runs multiple distribution operations that are decoupled from each other. For example, a retailer fulfilling wholesale orders and e-commerce orders from the same location, each operation running on its own respective WMS, within the same building.

Warehouse-in-a-warehouse is effectively the best of both worlds scenario for supply chain professionals faced with a growing e-commerce business who neither have the time or resources for costly WMS upgrades or a rip and replace.