We Have a New Warehouse! What does this mean for you
We’re excited to announce that we’ve expanded into a new warehouse right next door to our current offices. So, what does this mean for your business? In this article, we’ll walk you through the new facility and why it’s great news for you and us.
Meeting Increasing Demands
We pride ourselves on anticipating our customers’ needs and responding quickly—to continue to do that, we needed more space. The building we’re currently in has about 580sqm floor space, which includes our offices and a pallet capacity of around 120. But demand keeps increasing, so we decided to purchase the building next door purely for warehousing, increasing our storage capability by another 180 pallets.
More Stock Availability
Our new warehouse makes things much more convenient because now we’re even more of a one-stop shop. The last thing we want is for a customer to call us and say, “We’ve got five new staff starting on Monday, and we don’t have any notebooks for them. Can you help?” and for us to admit we don’t have stock availability. The new warehouse means we can stockpile many more items, so we’re ready to respond instantly. It gives our customers peace of mind, knowing what they need is just one phone call or an email away.
By increasing the amount of stock we carry, we can widen the range of products we can recommend. It also means we can ship items on the day they’re requested, giving us greater flexibility to deliver a better service for our customers.
Overcoming the Era of Supply Delays
With manufacturers and vendors still encountering supply delays of up to several months, it makes perfect business sense to partner with a company like Metro Computers that has the capacity to carry so much pre-ordered stock. By working with us, our customers can get their hands on the products they need many weeks earlier than if they were ordering on a back-to-back, need-it-now basis.
It’s also one of the reasons we’re seeing more and more businesses look to us for stockholding agreements. COVID has put increased strain on the supply chain, and there’s a shortage of certain components and products in the market right now, which means people are struggling to get stock, and lead times are pushing out to ten or twelve weeks in some cases. Companies with a stockholding agreement with us, where we’re ordering and carrying stock specifically for them, don’t have to worry about that.
A Better Setup for Stockholding Agreements
We’ve always had around 20 or 25 stockholding agreements in place, but the uncertainty caused by COVID has meant businesses are more focused on future-proofing. We’ve seen agreement numbers go up by 66% as companies realise it makes sense to be prepared. The more stockholding agreements you have, the more space you need to hold stock. So, that’s another factor that convinced us to expand our warehouse capacity.
Improving Business Continuity
Eliminating back-to-back ordering means there’s no break in business continuity. As soon as a business realises they have a performance issue or sees an end-of-life deadline approaching, we’re already one step ahead of them and have the right component or replacement product they need on our shelves.
For instance, if a customer is looking to upgrade their team to the latest HP devices powered by Intel®, they can be sure we can meet that demand because of our industry experience, understanding of our customers’ businesses and knowledge of their past ordering history means we can use our data analysis systems to predict what we’re going to sell three or four months down the track and order accordingly.
This is not just good news for our customers; it’s great news for us, too. By carrying stock and delivering within a reasonable timeframe, we’re winning new customers and adding new logos all the time.
How Much Stock Are We Holding Now?
If I look at the dollar value of the stock we’re holding specifically for our customers, it’s about $1.5 million. This is in part due to stockholding agreements because it means it’s been committed to in advance by our customers, allowing us to carry products on a larger scale. It also gives us the ability to respond quickly to critical situations.
How Our Warehouse Fits in with Our Sustainable Focus
We’ve always been committed to sustainability, cleaner energy, recycling and more efficient business practices. In fact, we currently produce over 32kW of energy from our existing solar panels. The new warehouse meant we could expand our solar panels across a larger area right next door.
We’re also enrolled in the HP Amplify program dedicated to reducing waste, disposing of equipment, toners and inks correctly and recycling packaging for monitors, PCs, printers and other office hardware. So, it’s all just part of doing the best we can for our world and our community.
Are you struggling with stock delays or want to upgrade your devices? Get in touch with our team to learn more about how we can help you get what you need faster.
