WMS Pioneers Episode 3: What Makes A WMS Implementation Successful?
by Mike Catalino
In this episode, the pioneers talk about the secrets to a successful WMS implementation, how to avoid death by a thousand keystrokes, and share battle scars from challenging go-lives.
WMS implementations are like heart surgery – high risk. Softeon’s CTO, Mark Fralick, details how he has gone 79-0 in his career with WMS projects and the tips for getting there.
“The first thing you need to concentrate on is execution. People are not focusing enough on ROI and the smaller picture things. I think what happens is a little business in a job. You need to be laser focused on the jobs that operations bring you, starting with execution and leaving the door open for continuous improvement. Then it’s up to the project team executing against that focus.”
Softeon’s CTO, Mark Fralick
Avoiding losing ROI is critical during an implementation, especially in little ways.
“We used to have this thing I called my thousand keystroke rule. One keystroke is fine, but if you repeat that operation enough then it becomes a thousand keystrokes a day, a thousand keystrokes is 1-2 seconds per keystroke. That’s two thousand seconds – now add that up across your entire organization. Those kinds of things are where we leak ROI all over the place.”
Softeon’s CTO, Mark Fralick
Softeon’s CEO, Jim Hoefflin, believes there needs to be a balance when working with customers during implementation to prevent the operation from going off the rails.
“There’s the respectful challenge and collaboration of what is the right way to go. If something isn’t right, such as the exception processes when you go live. How many times have we gone through an implementation where you look at the problem pile and it grows and takes over the operation and causes it to stop.”
Softeon’s CEO, Jim Hoefflin
To learn more about the over 60,000 hours’ worth of projects Hoefflin and Fralick have under their belts and how they have learned from past mistakes, subscribe on Spotify, YouTube, or other popular podcast channels.
