From Paper to Precision: How Digital Innovation Transforms Warehouse Management

Effective warehousing is the backbone of humanitarian assistance. It ensures that vital aid supplies can be stored, managed, and rapidly deployed during crises – saving lives and livelihoods. Warehouse management allows humanitarian organizations to track supplies and their expiry dates in real-time, minimizing waste while maintaining stock availability. By optimizing warehouse information management, aid organisations can enhance their impact, alleviating suffering in disaster-affected communities. The Zambia Red Cross Society, in collaboration with the Netherlands Red Cross, has pioneered a centralised digital stock management tool. This easy-to-use system, maintained autonomously by the National Society, proves how the interplay of readily available applications can enhance operational efficiency without incurring significant expenses.

A digital solution to a common problem

While effective warehouse management is critical to humanitarian operations, National Societies often grapple with tracking incoming and outgoing goods, monitoring stock levels, and ensuring timely distribution during emergencies. Paper-based tracking methods can be tedious and error-prone, frequently causing delays. Recognizing these challenges, the Zambia Red Cross Society sought a solution to streamline their warehouse operations by creating a user-friendly, autonomous system built on tools already in use.

Based on this premise, the National Society, with guidance from the Netherlands Red Cross’ data and digital team, 510, integrated three primary tools into their stock management system. Open-source data collection tool Kobo Toolbox is being used to record details of goods entering the warehouse, including item types, quantities, and expiration dates. When new goods are dispatched, the forms are updated accordingly, ensuring real-time data capture and minimizing errors. Users receive email alerts informing them of all new stocking activities submitted to Kobo. The information collected through Kobo is pulled to an Excel sheet for storage and analysis and visualised in a Power BI dashboard for a comprehensive overview of stock levels across warehouses, categorized by relevant metrics such as item type or donor. Such visual representations on the dashboard facilitate informed decision-making, timely restocking, and efficient reporting to donors. Leveraging these three powerhouse tools comes with a range of benefits, from being cost-effective and operational offline to providing handy email alerts on stock movement or expiry, as well as a familiar look and feel which makes the system easy to navigate. This approach ensures that the National Society can maintain and adapt the system as needed, and therefore fully own it.

“We needed an electronic system to track stock and expiry dates of items. Staff would constantly have to follow-up on stock balances, which is exactly what this system helps with – and so far so good, the system is easy to use.”

Howard Nduli, IM Focal Point and PMER Officer at the Zambia Red Cross Society

To date, the digital stock management still runs complementary to paper-based records such as stock cards and warehouse requisitions, to back up the electronically available information. The paper records can be consulted within the system, ensuring both records match.

Collaboration – key to championing humanitarian digital solutions

This customized data management system has resulted from close collaboration between the Zambia Red Cross Society and the Netherlands Red Cross. It addresses the unique requirements of the Zambia Red Cross Society and empowers the National Society to use it independently. The 510 team took on a technical advisory role in the configuration of the system, ensuring it aligned with the Zambia Red Cross Society’s operational context and providing remote support.

The partnership between these two National Societies demonstrates that working together is essential for strengthening humanitarian response. By combining local knowledge with technical expertise, this collaboration enabled the development of a digital warehouse management system tailored to the Zambia Red Cross Society’s needs. This synergy allowed for long-term capacity building and a solution that the National Society can autonomously maintain. Joining forces and sharing expertise in this way can drive innovation and create scalable solutions that benefit a global humanitarian network.

“Together, our National Societies have developed a system that can smoothly reflect reality at the warehouses across Zambia. We are ready to respond, because we know exactly what is available in our stock and what will expire soon. I see potential for replication across different contexts.”

Simon Doreille, Project Management Delegate of the Netherlands Red Cross to the Zambia Red Cross Society

Implications for the wider humanitarian sector

The success of the Zambia Red Cross Society’s digital warehouse management system offers valuable insights for other National Societies facing similar data management challenges. The collaboration between the Zambia Red Cross Society and the Netherlands Red Cross exemplifies how tailored digital solutions can revolutionize warehouse management in the humanitarian context. By championing simplicity and prioritizing autonomy, National Societies can enhance their operational efficiency and responsiveness – demonstrating that significant improvements are within reach, without substantial investments or complex infrastructures required.