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Scripted Demonstrations in a WMS Selection: The Moment of Clarity

Cal Petty, Supply Chain Solutions Director – WMS/TMS  :  14 July 2010 / 7:12 AM  :  0

Your company has performed all the necessary due diligence and determined there is sufficient payback to proceed with acquiring a warehouse management system (WMS).  Now what?  How do you select the best product for your needs?

For some this is the beginning of a lengthy journey involving internet research, possible trade show attendance, purchasing analyst reports, contacting vendors, and on and on and on.  When I talk with companies about their selection process, inevitably the process leads to a few software vendors coming in to do product presentations.  Might I be so bold as to suggest we abolish all standard product presentations in the WMS market?  My associates in the software sales space will surely protest.  However, I believe it will not only save wasted customer time but will allow them to spend less time in airports, planes, trains, transfer buses, cabs, etc.  Even better the time could be spent preparing for more scripted demonstrations … the focus of this blog.

As a side note, I discourage this selection “journey” as there are qualified consultants who live in the WMS marketplace every day and can help you quickly develop a quality list of possibilities that fit your company.  I estimate that quality selection assistance averages only about 5% of total WMS implementation project cost.

Nuances of each WMS product are big differentiators between WMS vendors and in my experience comparisons of RFP responses isn’t sufficient in the WMS space.  Often IT consultants hired to run WMS selections don’t include a scripted demonstration step, but I think this is a faulty methodology.  Yes technology and platform are still drivers during the selection process, but of significant importance is demonstrating capabilities around particular functional areas to reduce enhancement and integration costs.   

I typically recommend a scripted demonstration for a WMS last one day per vendor.  The time needs to be very specifically slotted for each topic area.  The topics should vary for what is most important to your company.  Setup time, breaks, lunch, and a wrap-up period are planned in.  A sample is shown below.

Each topic area is further broken down to clarify for the vendor what points are important for you to see.  Understand that any WMS vendor can perform receiving, putaway, cycle counting, and picking.  The script should request more specifics about how the functions are performed.  I typically recommend that WMS demonstrations happen in consecutive days.  This “side by side” view of the vendor solutions is where “the system can do anything” ends and the real clarity begins.

Posted in Supply Chain on 14 July 2010
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Tagged: Supply Chain  WMS  

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