If you’re a business owner, everything you do every day is directed toward one goal…growth! But with growth in sales comes growth in inventory management. Maybe you’ve been keeping your product in your garage, your spare bedroom, or your basement. If you’ve been using any of these spaces, and are discovering that your spouse, or your children, are finding more and more excuses to avoid spending time at home, there’s a good chance that your inventory has over-stayed its welcome in your family’s space! Every successful business owner comes to a point that they must either rent storage space or contract warehouse management services. (WMS)
Companies for Warehousing in Maryland
The Yellow Pages lists almost 400 companies under warehousing in Maryland. Some of these are specialized facilities, such as “cold storage” units for perishable products, like food. A good number of the businesses listed under warehousing in Maryland are actually just “Self-Storage” units, which offer basically a small garage and no customer service.
The rest of these companies actually offer warehouse management services, or “WMS.”
Choosing Warehousing for Your Business
Price: You will have to pay for your warehousing management services, so what can you afford to pay for warehousing management services? If you made $100,000 last year, you cannot afford to spend $50,000 for WMS, of course. Experts across the Internet agree that 20% of your annual revenue – or less – is a good rule of thumb to spend for WMS.
Proximity: If you’re going to use a warehouse to store your inventory, you certainly cannot afford for it to be 20 miles away! You need to look at the location of the company you are considering. Run a Google Maps or a Mapquest direction search and find out how many miles away the potential WMS’s nearest warehouse location is to your business. Whether you will be depending the WMS company to transport your product or whether you plan to do it yourself, the distance your product will have to be transported will most definitely effect your overall costs; not to mention either the time you will have to take out of your day or the time it takes for your products to arrive.
Service Quality: In addition to friendly and fast service, a good WMS is going to offer a well-organized storage system, simple order forms, a professional shipping and receiving department and will conduct their own inventory audits as well as cooperate with those you request. Their company is going to work as if they are partners with your company.
A little bit of research reveals that warehousing offers some less than popular options, but there are a few companies that practice state-of-the-art inventory management.