Softeon’s Vice President of Solutions Consulting, Chris O’Stean, sat down with Helen Atkinson, Managing Editor at SupplyChainBrain at MODEX 2024 to discuss the importance of flexibility in the warehouse.
Is your business growing? When onboarding extra capacity or adding a new facility, it’s critical to have a flexible warehouse management system that can adapt to your company’s needs.
“A sophisticated WMS has a great deal of configurability and flexibility, and you need to be able to support different types of products, channels and customers,” says Chris O’Stean, Vice President of Solutions Consulting at Softeon. “You don’t want to have to start from scratch when you’re onboarding that customer. You want to quickly be able to get them up and running, and not have to reconfigure the entire application.”
Speaking of the ability to quickly get customers up and running, Softeon’s Warehouse Management System, the only Tier-1 vendor exclusively focused on optimizing warehouse operations, offers a configuration tool. “Templatizing,” as O’Stean calls it, provides a foundation for your network, with the ability to add on as needed.
“When I initially go live with the WMS, I develop a global template that those facilities have in common,” O’Stean says. “And then I just layer on top of that what might be unique or different for each building. Then, with expansion, the same process can be repeated, using the underlying template and adding custom elements on top. That way, I only have to configure or set up what’s unique about that additional building.”
When it comes to micro-fulfilment centers, O’Stean believes you can’t take a one-size-fits-all approach to WMS.
“You have to understand how much sophistication you want within the store,” says O’Stean. “Are you going to track inventory at the shelf level, or only in the backroom? If there is a backroom. Fulfillment and picking can require different processes too, and you may or may not want to integrate with a point-of-sale system. The key is to have a lot of flexibility in the system.”
Gain sophisticated, Tier-1 capabilities for your supply chain with Softeon
With a focus on the distribution center, Softeon’s suite of supply chain management solutions empower you to craft unique workflows perfectly aligned to your business requirements.
As O’Stean mentions, customer satisfaction is a major priority for Softeon – with every implementation and install, we provide personalized attention to ensure that your business achieves your goals and matches your delivery experience with your brand.
To learn more about how we are optimizing our customer’s warehouse operations with our powerful suite of supply chain solutions, read our latest case study or visit our Solutions page.
