In HotWax Commerce, the facility represents any location that stores inventory. Setting up and managing facilities is crucial for retailers managing multiple storage locations like stores or warehouses. Each facility has inventory for products and when online orders are brokered in Hotwax Commerce, each order is routed to the facility, and inventory of that facility is allocated to the order.
Previously, creating facilities involved a cumbersome process of preparing CSV files containing intricate facility details—address, geolocation, inventory selling permissions, order limits, and operational specifics. While the initial setup through CSV files was functional, managing details of facilities post-creation was complex. Handling additional facilities beyond the initial setup involved navigating through different tabs and managing settings separately, leading to a fragmented and time-consuming process.
To overcome these complexities and streamline facility management, HotWax Commerce has introduced the Facility Management App to empower users with simplified facility creation and centralized management. Here's what the Facility Management App offers:
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Effortless Facility Creation: Users can swiftly create new facilities by simply inputting essential details like name, type, and External ID, eliminating the need for CSV files.
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Centralized Facility Management: A centralized view allows users to manage various facility configurations such as addresses, associated product stores and channels where inventory of the facility is available to sell, operating hours, and order fulfillment settings—all from one location within the app. Users can also filter by facility type or product store.
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Mapping and Staff Management: Users can seamlessly map facilities with external systems such as ERP or e-commerce platforms, add staff members, and create specific locations within the facility for inventory storage.
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Create and manage Queues and Parkings: HotWax Commerce has a concept of managing queues aka parking for holding orders that aren't brokered to a specific facility for fulfillment. For instance, orders awaiting brokering are parked in the brokering queue, while pre-orders without inventory are parked in the pre-order parking. So these queues or parkings are also modeled as facilities in HotWax Commerce. So, the creation and management of these queues can also be done by this app.
This update simplifies facility management, allowing users to swiftly create, manage, and configure facilities within HotWax Commerce. By centralizing operations and minimizing the complexities associated with facility setup and management, this enhancement significantly boosts operational efficiency and user experience.
