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Looking for inventory visibility? Seeking order accuracy? A warehouse management system (WMS) can help your company gain operational insights and tackle the ecommerce boom. Here are three leading providers that can get your warehouse running at peak levels.
T he days of running a busy warehouse with spreadsheets and sticky notes are long gone. The warehouse stands at the center of the supply chain, a crucial connection linking inventory and order management and fulfillment, transportation management, and ultimately, customer satisfaction. To make this complex interaction of data and physical operations hum, “a sophisticated warehouse management system (WMS) helps companies manage and control the daily operations of warehouses or distribution centers,” says Thomas A. Deakins, managing director of the Global Supply Chain Institute at the Haslam College of Business at the University of Tennessee Knoxville. A WMS is the hub of a network of processes and applications, working with order management systems, enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, labor management, customer systems, and transportation management systems to interface with truckload, less-than- truckload, and parcel carriers. “A WMS gives users the tools to understand the inventory levels of their products and helps companies become more efficient in the way that they control the flow of materials inbound and outbound,” Deakins says. Given consumer pressure for fast shipping with accurate delivery dates, a WMS improves operational efficiency, order accuracy, and inventory visibility to give shippers a competitive edge. “I can’t imagine a situation going forward where consumers would be willing to accept that products are going to be shipped to their home in longer amounts of time than they are now,” says Dr. Robert Hooker, an associate professor at the University of South Florida and an associate with the Monica Wooden Center for Supply Chain Management & Sustainability. To serve the ecommerce boom, a WMS can enable a better omnichannel fulfillment approach, pulling from the same inventory for ecommerce and retail customers, including store fulfillment for online orders. “The WMS lets companies make sure they have inventory on the shelves because they have one shot at retaining a
customer,” Deakins says. “Companies should never get to the point where they get a signal that they need to fulfill an order and don’t have the inventory.” In the mid-market third-party logistics (3PL) arena, having the right WMS in place is a critical factor in serving the increasingly complex demands of B2B and B2C fulfillment. “Any competitive edge that a 3PL provider can have is valuable,” says Brian Kirst, chief commercial officer at SnapFulfil, which specializes in WMS for logistics providers. “A 3PL can accelerate their growth and take on opportunities or win business because they can move quickly to meet their customers’ demands.” THE SECRET TO WMS SUCCESS Since a WMS connects with many aspects of the enterprise, adopting a new system can be a daunting task from both operational and IT perspectives. The process starts with developing an internal process to identify requirements and evaluate candidates before making a significant commitment. “Know the functionality you’re looking for and make sure you have the internal bandwidth to get the project done,” recommends David Castanon, senior director of consulting for Datex. David Bretey, senior 3PL consultant with Extensiv, agrees. “Have an honest talk about which functions are core to your business and which are not,” he says. “Develop some sort of scorecard so you can compare systems on an equal playing field to get the features you need and don’t end up with things you don’t need.” There’s one secret to implementing a WMS: master data management. This means ensuring the data for inventory, customers, and other elements is clean and accurate, notes Deakins. Otherwise, the best WMS in the world won’t be set up for success. “The ERP sends orders to the WMS fill, and if those items don’t match what is in the WMS inventory, you’ll experience lots of errors,” he says. “I don’t care what technology you’re going to implement, you will have a bad outcome.”
September 2024 • Inbound Logistics 79
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