By Caroline White | August 5, 2021
Whether you’re rolling out a Warehouse Management System (WMS) to a network of facilities or just implementing at a local hub, selecting the proper platform is a crucial step many organizations fail to see the appropriate value in. Warehouse Management Systems can vary drastically in price, features, and integration with current network solutions. What’s good for a Fortune 500 food and beverage manufacturer is seldom the correct choice for a locally owned business supplies distributor. Whether your site is running a tier-1, homegrown, or no WMS at all, a proper WMS selection with your organizations’ needs in scope can significantly impact your bottom line.
While cost will often always be the biggest factor in any organization’s decision-making, it’s important to note what base features that cost provides. Some providers might include Yard Management, Labor Management, or Warehouse Flow Optimization solutions for no additional cost with their WMS. While some of the higher quality WMS vendors tend to be higher priced, many of these more developed platforms are more efficient, provide fewer service outages, and better support. Vendors can price solutions on a few different scales such as named users, concurrent users, or the number of transactions. This is an important piece of information to determining how to maximize return on investment.
With the price of WMS systems being the biggest driver in many selections, the feature set is often overlooked as a significant value driver. Robust feature sets can reduce and eliminate certain WMS roles and improve task cycle times that increase bandwidth. For instance, some warehouses pay a group of associates, separate from the warehouse team, to perform cycle counts throughout each week. Almost any WMS selected will have directed cycle count features which will thus eliminate the need for a separate workforce. Eliminating WMS roles and increasing bandwidth can result in significant ROI that builds over time. While some features are standard across different tiers of WMS, a few stand out as differentiators that unlock huge potential savings. Task Interleaving, Intuitive Integration Platforms and app-stores full of crowdsourced enhancements are differentiating features just to name a few.
While many organizations are quick to proceed with this initiative and reach out to WMS vendors on their own, the value of a non-biased 3rd party evaluation of vendors is more valuable than ever. Here at Bricz, we specialize in the highest knowledge base of not only WMS but all supply chain software and technology solutions. Bricz can provide implementation rollout plans, ROI scenarios, vendor scorecards, and a business case that prove the benefit of the selection. Reach out to us at info@bricz.com today to get started on a path to optimizing your warehouse with a WMS selection.
Contributor: Adam McGuire, Senior Supply Chain Consultant at Bricz