How is this different from your inventory management software page?
The boundary is the building. A warehouse management system runs what happens inside four walls: which bin a unit sits in, the sequence a picker walks, put away rules, labour, and dock loading. Inventory management, which we cover on a separate page under retail, runs stock levels across stores, warehouses and sales channels with replenishment, forecasting and stock counts. They integrate at the stock figure. If your question is how much stock you have and where to send it next, that is inventory. If your question is where in the building it is and how fast someone can get it, that is this page.
Should we build a WMS or buy one?
Buy, in most standard cases, and we will tell you so. Packaged warehouse systems are mature and a conventional distribution operation is usually better served by one. Building is worth considering when you are a 3PL whose process is your product, when your operation has genuinely unusual constraints such as bonded, regulated or highly variable handling, or when you need a tailored layer over an existing package that you are keeping. We are willing to be paid for an assessment that concludes you should buy.
Have you built a WMS before?
Not a full warehouse management system, and we will say that plainly rather than dressing up adjacent work. We have delivered a supply chain management system covering inventory management, demand forecasting and logistics for a supermarket chain, and a web based logistics management system with third party integrations and real time tracking for an automotive parts supplier. Both are published clients with verifiable reviews. The transferable experience is stock data, integration and operational reporting. Bin level warehouse execution and scanner ergonomics would be new build for us.
Will it work if our warehouse wifi is unreliable?
It has to, so we design for it rather than treating it as an exception. Scanner applications buffer locally, submissions are idempotent so a retry cannot double count a movement, the device shows the operator what is still queued, and there is a defined manual fallback for a longer outage. We will also survey coverage during discovery, because sometimes the correct answer is that a section of racking needs an access point rather than a software workaround.
How much will picking speed improve?
We will not quote a figure, because it depends entirely on your starting point, your layout, and your order profile, and any number offered before we have watched your operation would be invented. What we will do during discovery is time your current pick process and model the travel that a better sequence would remove, using your own layout and order data. That gives you an estimate built from your numbers, with the assumptions visible, which you can challenge.
Can you integrate with our existing scanners and printers?
Usually yes, and we test on your actual devices rather than on a datasheet. Rugged Android terminals are generally straightforward. Older Windows Mobile or CE devices restrict the options and sometimes justify replacement, and we will say so if that is what we find. Thermal label printers are well supported but print queue reliability and reprint handling need real attention, since a stalled printer stops a despatch lane just as effectively as a system outage.
What happens to stock accuracy during go live?
This is the highest risk part of the project and we plan it explicitly rather than hoping. Options include a counted cutover for a defined zone, a parallel period for a product group, or a phased move by area, and the right choice depends on your current accuracy and whether you can pause a section briefly. We assess your existing accuracy first, because migrating from a knowingly inaccurate baseline guarantees a later argument about whether the new system caused a variance.
Do you support RFID as well as barcodes?
Yes, where it earns its place. RFID suits bulk reads, portal based receipt and despatch confirmation, and asset tracking. It does not suit every environment, and metal and liquid both interfere with reads in ways that surprise people mid project. We would run a read rate test in your environment before committing a workflow to it, and we would keep a barcode path available, because a workflow that depends on a perfect read has no fallback.
Can it handle multiple clients if we are a 3PL?
Yes, and multi tenancy has to be in the foundation rather than added later. Each client needs its own storage rules, handling instructions, charging basis, documentation and reporting, with data separation enforced in the data model and access control. Client billing based on storage and handling activity is a distinct piece of work that is easy to underestimate, so we scope it as its own workstream rather than as a reporting afterthought.
How does the WMS work with our transport planning?
They meet at the dock. The warehouse system produces packed weights, dimensions and pallet configuration, and the transport side needs those to rate and plan accurately, then returns the loading sequence so the vehicle is loaded in reverse delivery order. Planning transport from ordered quantities rather than packed reality is a common source of re-rated invoices and rejected loads. If transport is your larger problem, our transportation management system page covers that side.
Who owns the code and the data?
You do, without qualification. Source code, infrastructure configuration, documentation and operational data are yours, in your repositories and cloud accounts where you prefer that, and we hand over so another team can maintain it. We do not engineer a dependency on ourselves, and your stock and movement data is not an asset of ours.
