Watson Says... |
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| No wonder the release notes for some of these new WMS versions looks like a patch-work of fragmented ideas rather than a strategic move forward.. |
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What do you say? |
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Even if you never call their support group (hint: people have successfully negotiated support out of their arrangement) - you say to yourself "Okay, but at least I get upgrades and that is worth it, right?"
Not so fast, let's look more closely at that. These days, nearly all the WMS vendors fund a lot of their product enhancements via Customer Funded Development (CFD). In other words, someone is paying for their enhancements to get shoved into the standard product.
This means, for most customers, unless you are really well-aligned to some big company, whose license fees were great enough to impact the build schedule, you will likely be disappointed in up-coming features. If you are asking, isn't that "double-dipping" because you are paying maintenance (for new features) but most of the enhancements are funded - you'd be asking a good question.
But that's really not the biggest problem with all of this.
You see, CFD is pretty much the opposite of "skating to where the puck will be" as Wayne Gretzky is quoted as saying. Meaning it is typically not innovation, but more about customer-specific modifications that are getting squeezed into the next release. So, it's more like "Skating to someone else's opinion of where the puck has been for the past couple years in their previous WMS."
No wonder the release notes for some of these new versions looks like a patch-work of fragmented ideas rather than a strategic move forward.
Frustrated? You are not alone. We've been frustrated watching it.
Part of their Innovation Drought stems from views inside the big WMS companies characterized by a conversation I once had with one of their product managers. He said, "It's a WMS - there isn't much more to do!"
Well, we beg to differ! Innovation in this space is happening with or without these big WMS vendors. We think WMS vendors should support innovation, no matter where it comes from.
As an example, we're looking at new ways of interacting with the system which better supports the ways the current generation of workers use their mobile devices in real life. This "Intent-based" metaphor allows for better interactions with mobile devices via voice and texts in more precise ways. Text the WMS "Follow order #1232343" and it sends you the current status and all the status updates on that order until you text "Stop #1232343".
So, no, Mr. WMS Product Manager, there actually is a lot of innovation going on out there - and it will change everything.
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