WMS: Agility over customisation

After all, your operation is bespoke, it's not quite like any other. However, a leading research firm has cautioned against modifications, arguing that significant shifts away from standard processes makes upgrades or migrations more complex and costly. This is one of the insights in Gartner's report – The Dominant Themes of WMS Vendor Evaluation.

It is not that modifications are never necessary but it is vital to carefully evaluate if customisation is really the best, rather the easiest, option. As well as adding costs, excessive modifications make it difficult to move on when the underlying architecture starts to show its age. Gartner says companies that customised extensively when implementing WMS “can spend more than 50% of post-implementation TCO to support these modifications, and many are looking for ways out of this situation”. Consequently, more users are “demanding vendors have a coherent strategy for delivering a zero-modification implementation”. You can read our summary of the Gartner research here.