Seattle’s Union Gospel Mission Automates Inventory Processes to Better Serve the Greater Seattle Area

Seattle’s Union Gospel Mission is a nonprofit ministry that loves and cares for homeless neighbors throughout greater Seattle. The Mission’s 40,000 square foot distribution center Handles over $5 million in donations each year.

Although hugely successful, the staff at Seattle’s Union Gospel Mission knew improvements had to be made to grow their reach to those in need. The improvements needed included:

• Locate inventory in real time.
• Automate their ordering system.
• An easier way to fulfill and track orders

Challenges

Seattle’s Union Gospel Mission had several challenges that they knew needed to be remedied so they could better serve others.

We wanted an easy to use system that allowed our staff to focus on more impactful and meaningful work, instead of tedious tracking, locating, and managing inventory.”

Tracking inventory and locating inventory in the warehouse was time consuming. “Our system did not allow real-time inventory tracking, meaning that our team had to manually search  the warehouse when asked if specific items were available.”

Seattle’s Union Gospel Mission wanted to make the process better for their internal customers as well. “Ordering from our internal customers posed numerous time-consuming challenges.”

Our annual inventory process is faster by several days, and the most accurate that it has ever been!”

“Our annual inventory process was time-consuming and extremely challenging. The process required numerous days to correct any inaccuracies or to make adjustments.”

How DistributionPlus Helped

“We accomplished all of our goals and more. We can easily track inventory in real time. The easy to use ordering systems results favorably with our customers, and orders have increased.”

Processes became much more efficient with DistributionPlus. “We can fulfill order much faster, and with greater accuracy. Our annual inventory process is faster by several days, and the most accurate that it has ever been.”

Impact On Business Goals

Seattle’s Union Gospel Mission needed to improve processes to grow their reach to those in need. “We can better serve our internal customers, which allows them to better serve more than 12,000 homeless neighbors in the greater Seattle area. DistributionPlus frees up time for us to focus on more important work.”