Many, if not most of us, are familiar with Garter’s “Magic Quadrant,” where technology vendors and service providers of all sorts are ranked on two dimensions: “Completeness of Vision” and “Ability to Execute.”
That includes Magic Quadrants for both Warehouse Management and Transportation Management Systems, among many others.
Software functionality is just one input into the Magic Quadrant scoring on those two dimensions.
Repeated yearly, at least for WMS, the Magic Quadrant for Warehouse Management is usually released in May, right before Gartner’s annual supply chain conference.
But many logistics and supply chain managers do not know that for some technology categories, including WMS, there is a companion piece called the Critical Capabilities report. That analysis for WMS is usually released in late August, as was the case for the 2022 report again this year.
Unlike the WMS Magic Quadrant analysis, the Critical Capabilities report focuses solely on functionality across nine different attributes. Those attributes include core and extended WMS capabilities, adaptability, usability, the ability to support automated material handling systems, and several others.
There’s more. The scores for the nine WMS attributes are weighted differently depending on the level of warehouse complexity, using Gartner’s 5-level model, in which level 1 is the least complex and level 5 is the most complex warehouse operation.
The end result: WMS vendors are ranked numerically by their score for each attribute and the weighting of the attributes for each level of warehouse complexity. In other words, a given WMS vendor could rate very highly for a relatively simple level 2 warehouse operation but much lower for a highly complex, automated level 5 facility.
Softeon has acquired the reprint rights for the 2022 WMS Critical Capabilities report, available here: Gartner 2022 Warehouse Management Systems Critical Capabilities Report
And if you want to infer that Softeon scored very highly in the 2022 Critical Capabilities report for WMS, well – that would be a pretty good guess, especially in level 3, 4, and 5 operations.
The Gartner WMS Critical Capabilities Report – it’s an excellent resource for those interested in Warehouse Management Systems.
