Stock Accuracy You Can Stop Checking
Locations, barcode operations, lot and serial traceability, replenishment rules and cycle counting, so the quantity on the screen is the quantity on the rack and sales can promise stock without walking to the warehouse.
There is a simple test for whether a warehouse system is working: can a salesperson promise a delivery date from the screen without telephoning the warehouse to check. In most Vietnamese companies the answer is no, and everybody has quietly built a workaround around that fact.
The workaround has a cost that never appears as a line item. Safety stock is inflated because nobody trusts the figure. Orders are promised late to be safe. A full physical count is run monthly because the perpetual balance cannot be relied upon, and the count itself stops the warehouse for a day. None of this is visible in a budget, and all of it is expensive.
iGlobal treats accuracy as the deliverable. Locations are defined so a worker is told where to go rather than asked to remember, movements are scanned rather than written down afterwards, and counting becomes a daily routine on a few items instead of an annual shutdown.
Where stock accuracy actually leaks
Almost every discrepancy traces back to a movement that happened physically before it happened in the system, or never happened in the system at all. Goods are taken for a sample, a production line borrows a component, a damaged carton is set aside. Each is a legitimate event handled by a reasonable person, and none of them generates a record.
The second leak is the absence of locations. A warehouse where stock is simply in the warehouse depends entirely on the memory of the people who work there. It functions, sometimes very well, until the person who knows where things are takes leave, and it makes a new employee unproductive for weeks.
The third is paperwork done at the end of the shift. When a picker writes quantities on a sheet and someone types them in at five o'clock, errors are introduced at two separate points and discovered at neither. Scanning at the moment of the movement is not a technology preference; it removes the window in which the error can occur.
- Sales telephoning the warehouse before promising a delivery
- A full physical count needed monthly because the balance is not trusted
- Safety stock inflated to cover uncertainty in the figure
- Picking that depends on which staff member is working today
What the warehouse system covers
Location structure and putaway rules
Zones, aisles, racks and bins defined to match the building, with rules that tell a worker where to put incoming goods instead of leaving it to judgement.
Barcode operations on a handheld
Receipt, putaway, picking, packing and transfer confirmed by scan at the moment the goods move. The device also prevents the wrong item being picked, which paper cannot.
Lot and serial traceability
Full forward and backward trace, expiry date handling and first expired first out picking, which matters for food, pharmaceutical and any regulated goods.
Replenishment that triggers itself
Minimum and maximum rules, lead time per supplier and demand-driven reordering, so a purchase requisition appears before a shortage rather than after a complaint.
Cycle counting instead of shutdowns
A short count of a few locations every day, scheduled by value and movement frequency, so accuracy is maintained continuously and the annual stocktake stops being an event.
Multi-warehouse and inter-branch transfers
Stock visible across every location, transfers with goods in transit properly accounted, and allocation rules that ship from the right warehouse automatically.
How we deliver it
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1
Warehouse survey and coding 1 to 3 weeks
We map the physical building, define the location scheme, and sort out item coding and barcodes. Where products have no barcode we agree a labelling approach before anything else starts.
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2
Configuration and device setup 2 to 4 weeks
Operation types, putaway and removal strategies, handheld terminals or phones configured, label printing and the warehouse network tested in the aisles rather than in the office.
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3
Opening count and go live 1 week
One full count establishes the opening position, usually over a weekend, and the system goes live immediately afterwards so the accurate figure is never allowed to drift again.
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4
Accuracy stabilisation 4 to 6 weeks
Daily cycle counts, discrepancy root cause review and coaching on the floor. Accuracy is a habit, and the first six weeks decide whether the habit forms.
Who this is for
- Distributors and wholesalers with thousands of SKUs
- Food and pharmaceutical businesses needing lot and expiry control
- Companies running several warehouses or branch stockrooms
- Operations still counting everything monthly to stay confident
Why iGlobal
Accuracy is the acceptance criterion
We do not consider a warehouse project finished when the software is configured. It is finished when cycle counts come back clean for several consecutive weeks, and we stay until they do.
Designed around the people doing the work
Screens for a handheld are built for one hand, a scanner and gloves. A beautifully designed warehouse interface that requires two hands will be bypassed by the second week.
Inventory value and stock are the same record
Because warehouse and accounting share one database, there is no monthly reconciliation between the two, because there are no two.
The best balance of cost, quality, and service
Ordinary Android phones work as scanners, so you can start without buying industrial terminals and upgrade only where the environment demands it.
Three ways to do this, compared
| What you are comparing | By hand, on spreadsheets | Off-the-shelf software | With iGlobal |
|---|---|---|---|
| Finding a particular pallet | Ask the person who put it there | A location field that nobody keeps updated | A scanned location, correct precisely because it was scanned |
| Taking stock | Two days with the warehouse shut | The same count, keyed into a screen instead of a sheet | Rolling counts zone by zone, with no shutdown at all |
| Picking the right item | A printed list and good eyesight | The same list on a screen, still read by eye | The scan confirms the item and refuses the wrong one |
| Cost across three years | Hidden inside salaries, so it never appears in a budget | A predictable licence per user, plus the work it cannot do | Quoted per phase and reviewed with you before each one starts |
| Who holds your data | Scattered across files, inboxes and personal phones | On the vendor platform, exported on the vendor's terms | Your own database, exportable in full whenever you ask |
| When something breaks | The person who built the file, if they still work here | A ticket queue, often in another language and time zone | A named engineer in Hanoi you can reach the same working day |
The two middle columns describe approaches that genuinely work for some companies. Where they win, they win, and we have tried to say so.
What changes after go live
The change people notice first is that the telephone between sales and the warehouse goes quiet. Once the on-hand figure is trusted, a salesperson commits from the screen, and the warehouse stops being interrupted twenty times a day to confirm something the system already knew.
The financial change comes from the stock level itself. Safety stock exists to cover uncertainty, and a large part of that uncertainty was uncertainty about the data rather than about demand. When accuracy rises, the same service level is achievable with meaningfully less working capital sitting on the racks.
The operational change that lasts is that the warehouse stops depending on specific individuals. With locations and guided picking, a new employee is productive in days rather than months, and the knowledge of where things are belongs to the company rather than to whoever has worked there longest.
- Sales committing stock from the screen without a phone call
- Monthly full counts replaced by a few minutes of daily counting
- Working capital released as safety stock comes down
- New warehouse staff productive in days rather than months
Frequently asked questions
Do we need industrial handheld terminals?
Not to start. Android phones with a camera work for most operations and cost a fraction of a rugged terminal. Dedicated devices earn their price in cold storage, in dusty environments, where drops are frequent, or where scan volume per shift is very high. We usually recommend starting with phones and upgrading the stations that prove it necessary.
Our products have no barcodes. What then?
We generate and print internal barcodes, either as item labels applied at receipt or as location labels so the scan confirms position rather than product. For bulk materials weighed rather than counted, we configure the unit of measure properly instead of pretending they are pieces.
How much accuracy improvement is realistic?
Warehouses that move from paper to scanning with defined locations typically reach the high nineties within two to three months, from a starting point that is often in the eighties. We will not quote a number before seeing your operation, because the honest answer depends far more on discipline than on software.
Can we still do a full annual stocktake?
Of course, and many companies must for audit reasons. The difference is that it becomes a confirmation rather than a discovery. When cycle counting has been running all year, the annual count produces very few adjustments, which is also exactly what an auditor wants to see.
What if the warehouse has poor network coverage?
We survey coverage in the aisles during setup, because a dead zone behind a steel rack is a very common and very destructive surprise. Where coverage cannot be fixed affordably, the handheld application can queue operations offline and synchronise when it reconnects.
Related solutions
Talk to a senior consultant, not a call centre
Tell us what you are trying to fix and we will tell you honestly whether we are the right team for it.