10 TIPS
Selecting a Warehouse Management System
Companies must understand some important considerations to ensure they select the best warehouse management system (WMS) for their needs today and the future. These 10 steps can help focus your decision.
1 DETERMINE OPERATIONAL COMPLEXITY AND STRATIFY THE WAREHOUSE NETWORK.
6 CONSIDER BUSINESS PROJECTIONS. A WMS has a long life span. Looking at short, medium, and long-term business projections into the future helps ensure scalability to support the business long term. Under-invest and you could be back looking at a new WMS in a few years. Buy too much and you will under-utilize the system, sometimes for decades. 7 DETERMINE LEVEL AND TYPES OF AUTOMATION. Consider current and future automation needs and how the WMS will support and integrate with them. Historically, this was easier as material automation was often a signi cant investment and the cost helped dictate the strategy. Now, with exible automation like intralogistics smart robots, just about any warehouse could consider automation.
8 GAUGE EMPLOYEE READINESS. Labor is a major challenge for warehouse operations. Evaluate the current composition of your team to ensure the right balance in both the business and technical aspects of deploying a new WMS. Few, if any, companies buy WMS to slash labor, but rather to improve productivity and reduce workforce churn. Aspects like user experience, exibility, and new ways of working can lead to a more engaged workforce and should be highly rated criteria. 9 IDENTIFY IMPROVEMENT OPPORTUNITIES (ROI). Companies must nd additional business value for the system, such as labor management, warehouse redesign or automation. The key is identifying these opportunities and then demonstrating both hard and soft bene ts to leadership.
Every warehouse is unique and can vary in complexity and sophistication, even within the same company across different warehouse sites. Understanding your warehouse network and the levels of complexity by warehouse helps when identifying the right WMS.
2 UNDERSTAND THE CURRENT STATE. Take stock of current
they absolutely must have, or the system will not work for them. These are not basic features and functions that might show up in an RFP. These are “must haves” that may require customization. 5 MAP END-TO-END PROCESSES. WMS solutions are good at handling the processes that take place inside a warehouse, but sometimes companies have processes that extend into other areas like manufacturing or omnichannel ful llment. Understanding the extended process ow and integration needs is critical to success.
operations. Are processes manual and paper-based or supported by legacy systems that might be functionally robust but aging and technically obsolete? This will in uence whether you should simplify or select an advanced system. 3 GET FAMILIAR WITH EXISTING APPLICATIONS. If you have an existing WMS (or multiple), familiarize yourself with the vendor(s) and determine if they have newer systems that you could adopt. Also, an ERP with WMS capabilities might be another route to explore if and where it makes sense. 4 IDENTIFY FUNCTIONAL ESSENTIALS. WMS is mature with parity but not equality across WMS offerings. Companies must identify the typically small number of non-standard or differentiating capabilities
10 PUT A SHARP EYE TO BUDGET AND FINANCIAL CONSTRAINTS (TCO). Be brutally honest about nancial constraints that could slow or stop an evaluation. Mandating a payback in less than two years might make justifying a new or replacement WMS dif cult. The good news is since most WMS purchases are now cloud and SaaS- based, OPEX (an expense that is incurred through normal business operations) can help with capital appropriation. But total cost should be evaluated in both scenarios.
SOURCE: DWIGHT KLAPPICH, RESEARCH VICE PRESIDENT AND FELLOW; SIMON TUNSTALL, DIRECTOR ANALYST; AND FEDERICA STUFANO, SR. PRINCIPAL ANALYST, GARTNER SUPPLY CHAIN PRACTICE
18 Inbound Logistics • January 2024
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