Imagine you have the job of buying shelving for a warehouse, store or office space. It will need to be done quickly of course, and for the lowest possible price, and all the different shelving items you get will need to fit the space perfectly. What a potential headache! Just imagine getting a shelving system delivered, assembling it, and finding that it's too small or too large. You could get the blame, and possibly fired. Or you could get it all done properly, on time and within budget, and then your boss could say, why did you put that over there, why couldn't you have put here instead? Well now many shelving suppliers have a great online tool to help make the whole planning job go along really smoothly, from start to finish. You just go to their website and the online tool is there, ready for you to use. You don't need any logins, passwords or special skills in software or CAD (Computer Aided Design). Using these online planning tools, you can create a two-dimensional scale diagram of the floorspace that you're working on, with walls, floors, doors and windows all to scale. The best online shelving planners will have sample layouts to help you, or you can create your own blank sheet from scratch if you prefer. You can 'virtually' place the shelving items that you're thinking of buying onto your floorplan, and see if they fit. All the items will be ready to use on the website, so you just drag and drop them onto your diagram. The best online planning programs will enable you to click on the product for more information about it. If later on you decide it's not really what you want, you can just delete it from your floorplan and it will disappear. This way you can move things around as much as you like to make sure you're making the best use of the available space.

As you go along, you can keep an eye on the budget by working out costs for the different items you're thinking of buying. Your boss and other managers will be impressed by the diagrams of the floorspace, which can be printed out for discussion at meetings, and emailed around for general approval and comments. The shelving firms that have such online planners on their websites are helping their customers and helping themselves too. If a customer uses their planning tool, they will have the assurance that they are doing the right thing for a large scale, time-sensitive purchase. Everyone that may have an opinion will get the chance to participate in the decision-making, so that the end result will have everyone's 'buy-in' and all interested parties will be satisfied on every aspect: cost, timing, layout and health and safety. The shelving company will have a happy customer and little involvement in the planning of the purchase, and no problems to sort out afterwards. This means that many hours of the shelving company's time can be saved, meaning lower process for the customer. A win-win situation all round!