Register now or log in to join your professional community.
SaaS – WMS on-demand or Software as a service
Hello Team,
Key Trends:
• Logistics costs have been declining since 2001 for most companies and are now increasing in percent of sales and cost per hundredweight.
• Overall, the past year has been a difficult one for logistics costs and service improvement. • Customer service levels are still not improving.
• Logistics costs vary greatly between industrial groups.
Emerging Trends: Visibility of Product
Direct-To-Store (DSD)
Cross-Dock & Flow Through
Cross-Dock & Flow Through
• Warehouse Management – The workflow associated the distribution of product within the four walls of a warehouse.
• Labor Management – The workflow associated with the planning and measurement of human capital throughout an operation.
• Slotting Optimization – The workflow associated with optimizing the placement of inventory and fixturing within the warehouse.
• Extended Enterprise – The workflow associated with controlling and optimizing inbound inventory for the warehouse. 6 ARC Worldwide Outlook 2007 Add on Modules – A Critical Component
• If you are a company where logis tics and distribution expenses are a high percentage of your total costs, then logis tics needs to be a core competence.
• Such companies need an integrated, best of breed supply chain suite that includes a highly functional WMS, high ROI add-on modules like Labor Management or Slotting or Visibility
Regards,
Saiyid
WMS Labor management system is a workflow management system, which is a package of software and applications that are used to support and manage and conduct the flow of work where the work flow is simply that documents the movement of documents or forms and tasks related known for the performance of a particular transaction work and these steps are performed in accordance with the Order according to a particular set of systems and the conditions for a result
3. SaaS
Several key trends are currently shaping the WMS market:
Expanded Supply Chain Execution Footprint
The top WMS providers have expanded their solution footprint beyond the warehouse. The term supply chain execution has been embraced within the industry to reflect this shift toward comprehensive logistics applications, of which warehousing is just one component.
Many WMS vendors have acquired other software companies to expand their footprint rather than attempting to internally develop new applications. These WMS vendors have added transportation planning/execution, engineered labor standards, slotting, yard management, supply chain visibility, event management, and trading partner integration to name a few. Some WMS vendors have moved well beyond the confines of supply chain execution in their quest for growth. For example:
Clearly, the leading WMS companies recognize that future growth will be derived from expansion into other business operations and there is a strong push towards managing retail store operations. After all, there are many more stores than distribution centers.
Entrance and Domination of ERP vendors
Much has been written about ERP warehouse applications versus best-of-breed WMS applications: the logistics operators argue for best-of-breed solutions to optimize operations, and the IT people want integrated ERP solutions to reduce complexity.
Regardless of where one stands on this topic, SAP, Oracle, and Infor/SSA Global have made significant inroads into the WMS market either by self-developing advanced warehousing modules or through acquisition. In terms of market share, SAP has the largest share of the WMS market despite the fact that they are not even considered a WMS vendor within the trade. Infor /SSA Global’s acquisitions of EXE Technologies and Provia Software are examples of how quickly a powerhouse ERP vendor can move into a specialized software market. This contributes to heightened competition as market share is shifted away from niche WMS suppliers to large ERP firms.
Industry Consolidation
The past ten years have seen a dramatic reduction in the number of companies that service the WMS market. Although the market was overdue for consolidation, few people could have predicted the collapse of so many firms in such a short period of time.
By mid-1999, the number of new WMS orders had declined to a trickle due to the focus on Y2K. This forced most WMS suppliers to drive more revenue from their existing customer base through upgrades, service, and support revenue. Without new orders in the pipeline, sales revenues plummeted, resulting in spending cuts to R&D and marketing. The downward spiral led to many firms selling out and larger WMS software companies ending up with multiple WMS applications.
Today, many of these acquired applications are being sunset because it’s far too costly for software firms to maintain and invest precious research and development dollars into upgrading multiple warehouse applications. Recently, Infor sunset the Provia application which is a shame because that was a great product in its hey-day and similarly the MARC Global application will no longer be developed by RedPrairie. Buyer-beware: vendor viability and financial strength continue to require careful scrutiny, and it is becoming increasingly important to understand long-term development priorities to minimize the risk of buying a WMS solution that may be earmarked for sunset.
Service Oriented Architecture
SOA has become an important trend even though the concepts behind it have been around for more than a decade. SOA is an architectural style that enables a collection of independent services to communicate with each other. SOA has gained extreme popularity due to Web services.
Today, technology developers face complex issues like distributed software, software customization, application integration, varying platforms, varying protocols, numerous devices, the Internet, etc. In short, SOA (along with Web services) provides a solution to all of the above. It eliminates the headaches of protocol and platforms so that applications integrate more seamlessly, and it allows customized software enhancements to be constructed in isolation of the source code, which facilitates ease of upgrades.
SOA also enables true event-based processing, which improves how and when information flows and sends out Web alerts for exceptions or potential problems. It is an important evolution in the world of software development and mobile computing.
WMS On-Demand or Software as a Service (SaaS)
Large companies with small warehouses and small/mid-sized companies need WMS because they have the same operational challenges as their larger counterparts. Unfortunately, price can be a show-stopper because WMS solutions can be cost prohibitive to deploy in smaller facilities with lower head counts.
To this day, tens of thousands of firms rely on antiquated systems, memory-based processes, and paper-based human-directed warehouse operations. The WMS market opportunity is beyond huge - it’s epic. The age-old questions are how to reach this market and whether or not there is a profit in it for the WMS supplier.
Several WMS suppliers have decided to go after the low-end of the warehouse market by providing their software as a service (SaaS). In other words, the software is rented on-demand at a very low monthly subscription cost per user. For example, a small facility with say 10 operators renting a WMS can do so for $1200 per month. While it remains to be seen if this generates a profitable business model for these WMS software firms, it’s a concept that is definitely gaining momentum based on the number of new customers signing up. WMS vendor SmartTurn was one of the first companies to promote this model and in May, 2010 RedPrairie announced the acquisition of SmartTurn which provides a good indicator that this business model may have validity if it is backed by an established sales and marketing machine.
Expect to see the On-Demand Supply Chain Execution Software market take over a much bigger market share in the years ahead as companies seek greater flexibility and less capital investment for these types of systems, especially for smaller facilities. It is important to keep in mind that the cost of services to integrate, implement and support on-demand WMS does not necessarily change for the end user because it is a SaaS model and these costs can often account for the lion’s share of expenditure.
Cloud Computing
Cloud computing is a term that conjures up images of the Internet which actually is not a bad analogy to understand this concept. Quite simply, cloud computing means that the WMS vendor hosts the software application and hardware infrastructure as an on-demand, scalable and flexible service offering. Basically, the WMS vendor becomes the IT equivalent of a third party logistics service provider. For companies that have stretched their IT budget and have very limited resources to take on a WMS project, cloud computing is an important option to consider because the burden of application upgrades and ongoing support can be outsourced to the WMS experts - at a cost of course.
A Web user interface is used to access the WMS software which is basically a rented / hosted application (think of it as a timeshare vacation home). The benefit is that there is minimal capital investment required to get into WMS end game which helps to reduce risk for many companies that have not yet made the plunge into automating their distribution centers.
RFID
The WMS market wasted no time in developing solutions for RFID, typically for outbound slap-and-ship type applications. A number of WMS suppliers have simply partnered with RFID firms to develop an integrated solution. Unfortunately, the whole RFID excitement fizzled out when the true cost equation became a reality and powerful retail forces began to back off on compliance pressure. The RFID hype bandwagon has subsided but it is making a resurgence of late. Most of the WMS vendors have been burnt by making big R&D investments in this area with little or no return. We anticipate that going forward most of the tier one WMS suppliers will take a “wait and see” approach rather than taking a leadership position. As demand increases for case-level or even item-level RFID tags then there may be a greater emphasis placed on enhancing the RFID solution offering
i fully agree with the answers been added by EXPERTS..................Thanks.
Full Agree with expert answers above
SaaS – WMS on-demand because of its low cost
According to me it's
SaaS – WMS on-demand or Software as a service
The reason being most of the WMS supplier have decided to go after the Low-end of warehouse market by providing their software as SaaS. In short the software is rented on demand at a very low monthly subscription cost per user.
SAAS along with Automation is the latest trend in WMS software. Integration to hardware systems like sorter machines, Pick to light systems are also part of latest trend in distribution centers.
Dear Wasi Rahman
Please visit the website for WMS in KSA
My company deals in WMS Software and other software for Logistics
Study, Check and compare
I dont say it is the best but it is one of the Best
http://3s-logistics.com/pyxis.html
Answer for your question as below
The trends cover include:
