Why Food Distributors Are Ditching Spreadsheets for WMS.
Introduction.
Managing a food distribution warehouse with spreadsheets is like coordinating a kitchen brigade using sticky notes. It might work when you’re small, but as you grow, the system breaks down in ways that cost real money.
The financial impact is worse than most warehouse managers realise. Every order error costs £45 in direct expenses – multiply that by 50 mistakes per month, and you’re looking at £27,000 annually.
And that’s what you can measure. The hidden damage from lost customers, spoiled inventory, and burnt-out staff costs far more.
This article explains why food distributors are moving away from manual systems towards purpose-built warehouse management systems.
You’ll see real results from UK operations. You’ll understand what changes when you use a WMS. Plus, you’ll learn how to transition without shutting down your warehouse.
The spreadsheet problem is more serious than you think.
Let’s look at what is really happening in spreadsheet-based warehouses and why these issues compound over time.
When version conflicts create inventory fiction.
Here’s a real example that illustrates the problem perfectly.
Manual systems create inventory blind spots that cost real money. Arrow County Supplies discovered this problem firsthand – their spreadsheet-based system couldn’t show true stock levels until all orders were picked and shipped.
This meant they had no live visibility of what was physically available in their warehouse, leading to ordering decisions based on outdated information. After implementing Infios WMS, they gained real-time stock visibility and could finally see their true inventory position at any moment.
Why Rotation Rules Cannot Be Enforced Manually.
Your spreadsheet might show expiry dates. It might even sort products by date. But here’s the critical limitation: it cannot force pickers to grab the right stock.
Human nature takes over in these situations. Pickers naturally reach for the most accessible cases, which are usually the newest arrivals. Meanwhile, older stock sits in the back until it expires, creating write-offs that directly impact your bottom line.
One client reduced their inventory levels by 24% year-over-year – freeing up £2.6 million in working capital that was previously tied up in excess stock. When you can see exactly what you have in real-time, you stop over-ordering as a buffer against uncertainty
The system now directs pickers to the exact location with the oldest usable stock – not as a suggestion, but as a required workflow. This kind of enforcement simply isn’t possible with spreadsheets, no matter how well organised they are.
The Problem with Yesterday's Data.
By the time you compile a spreadsheet report, the numbers are already outdated. You can’t manage what you can’t see. If your team is still updating last shift’s transactions by hand, you won’t know what happened three hours ago.
For a distributor making £10 million a year, poor inventory accuracy is a big issue. It’s not just annoying; it can cost six figures and hurts your competitiveness daily.
Why Food Distribution Is Different.
General warehousing can tolerate 95% accuracy and stay profitable, but food distribution needs 99%+ accuracy or you’re systematically losing money. Let’s explore why the stakes are high.
Shelf life creates unforgiving deadlines.
Fresh produce lasts 3-7 days. Dairy gives you 7-21 days. Even frozen products need proper rotation to maintain quality. Unlike furniture or electronics, your inventory loses value every day it sits in your warehouse.
A case of fresh herbs worth £12 becomes worthless in four days. Spreadsheets can track dates, but they can’t enforce time-based picking priorities across thousands of SKUs simultaneously – and that’s where the losses accumulate.
Temperature control isn't just best practice.
Temperature control is essential to food safety. Ambient, chilled, and frozen products require careful handling. A single temperature mistake can ruin an entire pallet. Even more concerning is the cross-contamination risk. When raw and prepared foods aren’t properly separated, you are creating food safety hazards that could shut down your operation.
Infios WMS (formerly Körber WMS) tracks temperature and humidity across all your zones. The system automatically assigns products to the right receiving, storage, and dispatch locations based on their specific requirements. This prevents food safety mistakes before they happen – a level of control that manual systems simply can’t maintain as you scale.
Regulatory traceability leaves no room for error.
When a food safety recall happens, you need to identify affected products and their locations within hours. Searching through months of spreadsheet entries can’t meet this requirement, and the consequences of a slow response can be devastating.
Wing Yip, an oriental grocer, implemented Infios WMS specifically to address this challenge. Their operations manager Andy Yarnall explained the transformation: “Stock inventory checks are carried out weekly on key lines and are consistently accurate. We have seen better traceability of goods and our processes are better streamlined.”
That traceability transforms from a compliance burden into a competitive advantage. When food safety issues hit the news, distributors with robust tracking can immediately prove their products aren’t affected, maintaining customer confidence while competitors face difficult questions.
How errors cascade differently with perishables.
In general warehousing, a wrong pick typically means reshipping the correct item. In food distribution, that same mistake triggers a chain reaction. Restaurants cannot prepare menu items. Temperature-sensitive products sit too long outside proper storage. Other items in the order become suspect due to contamination concerns. Most importantly, customers start questioning your ability to handle food safely.
One quality failure spreads through tight food industry networks within days, and recovery takes years. This is why accuracy isn’t just an operational metric for food distributors – it’s fundamental to business survival.
What actually changes when you implement a WMS.
Let’s go through a real operation and see what transforms. The differences become clear when you examine the same workflows before and after implementation.
Your receiving process transforms completely.
Before WMS implementation, your team manually types product codes, quantities, and lot numbers into Excel. They might transpose digits. They cannot verify optimal storage locations before physically moving pallets. The spreadsheet only updates when someone remembers to save and share the file.
After WMS implementation, scanning the barcode captures everything automatically. This includes product details, batch numbers, and expiry dates, all with zero typing errors. The system quickly checks warehouse layouts and inventory. It finds the best storage spot by looking at temperature needs, pick frequency, and current space available. Your entire team sees updated stock levels instantly.
Stock rotation happens automatically.
This is where the biggest savings happen, and it is worth understanding exactly how it works.
Before implementation, pickers use printed lists. There’s nothing stopping them from grabbing the newest and easiest stock. Meanwhile, older products sit and expire in the back. After implementation, the system enforces FEFO (First Expired, First Out) automatically. When an order needs fresh basil, it directs the picker to the specific location with the earliest expiring batch that still meets customer requirements.
Picking times drop significantly.
Before WMS, pickers interpreted descriptions, guessed at locations when products had moved, and walked back and forth across the warehouse multiple times per order. After WMS, handheld scanners guide workers through optimised routes, showing exactly what to pick, from which location, and in what sequence. Scan verification confirms the correct item before it enters the order.
The results from Balloon One clients demonstrate the impact clearly. Pets Corner improved picking efficiency by 38% using clustering algorithms that group similar orders intelligently. Centrado reduced picking errors by 40% with guided workflows. Rapid Electronics achieved 99.6% On-Time-In-Full delivery – a metric that’s nearly impossible to sustain with manual processes.
You finally get real-time visibility.
Before WMS, your inventory count reflects yesterday’s activity at best. To answer “how much fresh mozzarella do we have right now?” you need to find the current spreadsheet version and hope nobody has made data entry errors since the last update.
After WMS, every scan updates inventory instantly across all integrated systems. You see exactly what’s in stock, where it’s located, which batch it belongs to, when it expires, and its current status – available, allocated, or quarantined. This visibility extends across multiple facilities if you operate distributed warehouses.
Comparing the complete picture.
The best way to understand the transformation is to see it side by side. The table below compares warehouse activities under spreadsheet management and WMS implementation, using real data from Balloon One clients:
| What You're Doing | Spreadsheet Approach | WMS Result |
|---|---|---|
| Receiving pallets | Manual typing, version conflicts, no location optimisation | Barcode scanning eliminates errors; system assigns optimal storage by temperature and frequency |
| Managing expiry dates | Dates tracked but rotation not enforced | Automatic FEFO enforcement; one client saved £2.6M annually through stock reduction |
| Picking orders | Printed lists with frequent errors and suboptimal paths | Guided routes with scan verification; Pets Corner achieved 38% efficiency improvement |
| Order accuracy | Manual systems typically achieve 91-95% accuracy | Rapid Electronics reached 99.6% On-Time-In-Full delivery performance |
| Inventory visibility | Historical data from disconnected sources | Real-time updates across all locations with complete lot traceability |
These aren’t projections or best-case scenarios. They’re documented results businesses working with Balloon One across the UK and Europe.
Speed Creates Capacity You Didn't Know You Had.
Faster fulfillment isn’t just about efficiency-it’s about what becomes possible when your operation runs smoothly. Let’s see how speed advantages compound over time.
Understanding the Mathematics of Time Savings.
Your current process might take 10 minutes per order to pick, pack, and stage. That means 48 orders per eight-hour shift per picker. Now reduce that to 6 minutes through optimised routes and scan verification, and that same picker handles 80 orders daily. That’s a 67% increase in capacity with zero additional labour cost, and the impact multiplies across your entire picking team.
When Inventory Turns Faster, Quality Improves.
Food distributors using spreadsheets typically turn perishable inventory 15-25 times annually. WMS implementations commonly push this to 30-40 turns for the same products. Higher turnover delivers multiple benefits: fresher average product age, fewer write-offs, and less working capital tied up in inventory. The result? Your cash flow improves while your product quality increases-two benefits that spreadsheets can’t deliver simultaneously.
How Customers Notice the Difference.
When you consistently deliver perfect orders faster than competitors, something fundamental shifts in your customer relationships. Restaurants plan menus knowing you’ll deliver reliably. Retailers allocate shelf space confident in your replenishment capability. You move from commodity supplier to trusted partner, and that transformation insulates you from price competition because switching costs rise when service quality differs significantly.
Why Your Staff Benefits Too.
Warehouse employees immediately recognise the difference between organised efficiency and constant firefighting. WMS-guided workflows reduce unnecessary walking, which decreases physical strain over eight-hour shifts. Clear priorities eliminate the stress of guessing which orders matter most. Accurate inventory means fewer angry customer calls and fewer emergency last-minute deliveries.
The improved work environment helps you keep experienced staff and attract quality candidates-increasingly important as labour markets tighten across the logistics sector.
Transitioning from Reactive to Predictive.
The biggest long-term advantage isn’t what WMS does today-it’s how the system makes you progressively smarter tomorrow. Every transaction generates insights that manual systems simply can’t capture.
When Patterns Emerge That Spreadsheets Can't Reveal.
WMS-generated data reveals operational patterns that spreadsheets miss entirely. Our client, Wing Yip’s finance team discovered this after implementation – the transaction-level visibility highlighted specific areas where processes were weak or controls inadequate.
This granular data allowed them to prioritise improvements systematically, driving better performance across their four-location operation. The insights came from having clean, structured data rather than relying on manual reconciliations across disconnected systems.
How Warehouse Layout Optimisation Works.
When you know which products customers frequently order together, you can store those items near each other in your facility.
For example, Birchall Foodservice discovered that their barcode scanning system made warehouse processes ‘virtually foolproof’ because the scanner instructs workers exactly what to do.
The system delivered efficiencies in stock replenishment and made picking more accurate – these benefits compounded across their four distribution centres.
Same warehouse, same team, just smarter product placement based on actual movement patterns rather than assumptions. Spreadsheets can’t capture this level of detail because they don’t track every individual choice and the relationships between products.
Why Demand Forecasting Becomes More Accurate.
Food distributors face particularly complex forecasting challenges because demand shifts rapidly based on factors beyond your control. A heatwave doubles cold drink requirements while halving soup orders. School holidays transform breakfast product velocity. Media coverage of health trends creates sudden spikes for specific items.
These patterns exist in your historical data, but only WMS-generated datasets make them discoverable and actionable. For more on leveraging this capability, see our complete guide to demand forecasting in the food industry.
Understanding the AI and Machine Learning Connection.
Modern warehouse management increasingly uses artificial intelligence for capabilities like slotting optimisation, labour forecasting, and inventory replenishment. These systems analyse pick frequency, product characteristics, order patterns, and dozens of other variables to make recommendations that improve over time.
But here’s the critical point: these AI capabilities require consistent, granular, real-time data. Spreadsheet data can’t feed AI systems because the structure doesn’t support machine learning. You need the clean, structured datasets that only purpose-built WMS platforms generate.
How the Compound Effect Works.
Each improvement you make based on data insights creates new data that enables the next improvement. This virtuous cycle distinguishes operations that pull ahead from those that fall behind. Balloon One’s experience implementing WMS across food operations shows a consistent pattern: clients start by seeking operational control but quickly discover the strategic value of their data foundation delivers more competitive advantage than the initial efficiency gains that justified the investment.
Your Competitive Edge Is Real-Time.
Food distribution grows more competitive every year, and the pressure comes from multiple directions simultaneously. Customer expectations rise while margins compress. Regulatory requirements increase while labour becomes harder to find and retain. In this environment, operational excellence isn’t optional-it’s the cost of survival.
Manual systems might have worked when operations were smaller and margins were wider, but neither condition applies anymore. You’re now competing against distributors with real-time visibility, automated rotation controls, and data-driven decision-making capabilities. Every month you delay gives them more time to build advantages you’ll struggle to match later.
What Food Distributors Say After Making the Switch.
Food distributors who made this transition consistently report they wish they’d done it sooner. Operational control provides peace of mind. Confidence in data accuracy eliminates constant second-guessing. The ability to respond rapidly to market changes opens opportunities that weren’t possible before. These capabilities fundamentally transform how they compete in their markets.
Nobody suggests going back to spreadsheets after experiencing the difference.
Taking the Next Step.
Balloon One specialises in food and beverage logistics technology. We’ve worked with food distributors for over 20 years, implementing Infios WMS (formerly Körber WMS) for operations facing exactly the challenges described throughout this article.
Our clients have achieved measurable results that speak for themselves: 24% reductions in inventory write-offs (£2.6M saved annually for one client), 38% improvements in picking efficiency, 99.6% on-time-in-full delivery performance, and 40% reductions in picking errors.
We understand food distribution because it’s where we’ve focused our expertise since 2003, when Balloon One became the first SAP Business One Partner in the UK. That specialisation means we understand your industry-specific challenges, from traceability requirements to temperature monitoring to handling perishables effectively.
Ready to see what's possible for your operation?
Contact our advisory team to discuss your specific situation, or schedule a free consultation. We’ll assess your current operation, identify your highest-impact opportunities, and show you exactly how the right WMS configuration can address your unique challenges.
No jargon. No wasted time on capabilities you don’t need. Just practical guidance from people who understand food distribution and have proven results to demonstrate it.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ's)
Spreadsheets lack real-time visibility, enforceable workflows, and the ability to handle the complexities of food distribution, such as expiry dates, temperature control, and regulatory traceability. As operations grow, these limitations lead to costly errors, inefficiencies, and compliance risks.
Every order error costs approximately £45. For a warehouse making 50 mistakes per month, this adds up to £27,000 annually. Beyond measurable costs, hidden losses include spoiled inventory, lost customers, and staff burnout.
A WMS provides real-time inventory visibility, enforces workflows like FEFO (First Expired, First Out), optimises picking routes, and ensures compliance with food safety regulations. It eliminates manual errors and inefficiencies inherent in spreadsheet-based systems.
Food distribution requires 99%+ accuracy due to the perishable nature of products. Errors can lead to spoilage, food safety risks, and customer dissatisfaction. Unlike general warehousing, where 95% accuracy might suffice, food distributors face higher stakes due to short shelf lives and strict regulations.
Real-time visibility ensures accurate inventory tracking, allowing distributors to know exactly what is in stock, where it is located, and its status (e.g., available, allocated, or quarantined). This eliminates outdated data issues common with spreadsheets.
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