It’s Feature Day!  Today’s WMS feature is Receiving Against an ASN.

Although it’s often hard to get them, supplier generated ASN’s can offer key productivity gains for inbound logistics.  What’s an ASN?  It’s an Advance Shipment Notification which is frequently formatted (although not always) as an ANSI X12 856 message.  It’s basically an EDI document that tells the receiving distribution center what’s inside a shipment and when it can be expected to arrive.

Obviously this data can be very useful to the receiving process:

1. It may not be necessary to enter an Inbound Order in your WMS.
2. If the outer packaging is bar coded it may be possible to receive the order with a single scan.
3. The ASN data can be used for planning purposes.  If you accurately know shipment contents and arrival time, you can better schedule resources like people, docks, yard space, pallet positions, etc.
4. Pipeline / Replenishment Visibility – Knowing what SKUs are on the way can make easier to deal with backorder situations and better plan for cross-dock opportunities.  3PLs can use ASN data to provide in-transit inventory visibility to customers as well.

With an EDI translator it’s not all that difficult to receive and parse an ASN.  There are plenty of solutions on the market for this.  The key question is can your WMS utilize the ASN data to achieve the above mentioned productivity gains?  Most WMS providers say they can.  However you may need to dig a little deeper. Can they support receiving against ASN on all levels including eaches, cases, and pallets?  Is the ASN data utilized for inbound logistics query screens and reports?  Does the data integrate with their web-based customer visibility tool?  Does the picking function look at ASN data to identify cross dock opportunities? Depending on your requirements you may need a lot more than a basic scan against ASN feature.

Your business depends on your warehouse management software so it’s rather alarming when many industry analysts think that quite a few of the smaller WMS providers will disappear during the next year.  Why is that?  For the last several years market share has been consolidating away from smaller WMS vendors to the larger players.  The top 5 WMS providers now have something like 50% of the total market.  This doesn’t bode well for the niche players in the industry which focus on the SMB market.  What can you do to mitigate the risk of your software solution disappearing overnight?

1. Don’t Panic – Even if you are noticing signs that your software vendor is in dire straights financially, it doesn’t mean you need to immediately replace your solution.  More often than not failing software vendors tend to be acquired by what I call “maintenance milkers”.  That means companies that acquire struggling vendors to get their hands on the annual software maintenance stream.  However if this happens, don’t expect a whole lot of software updates in the future.
2. Ascertain Your Provider’s Financial Situation – Most WMS providers are privately traded companies so you will have to rely on 3rd party services like Dun and Bradstreet to check financial health.  A great way to get inside information is to talk to tech support staff.  These are usually lower level people who are in risk of losing their job.  They have little to lose by being loose-lipped.  Or why not just have a frank conversation with your sales contact?  Of course they will spin the situation but they will drop many useful clues.
3. Build Relationships with the Vendor’s staff – Are you heavily dependent on the vendor because their people have skills and knowledge your company doesn’t have internally?  Well it’s time to develop a special relationship with the people that do.  If your vendor is really going down, odds are that their people are looking for new opportunities.  Perhaps you can hire the person as a part-time independent contractor or even full-time employee if appropriate.  Often the agreement you signed with the vendor will prohibit this but if they are going into bankruptcy they may be perfectly happy for you to help them with free outplacement services.
4. Look for Alternatives – If you are convinced your current provider is not long for this world, it’s time to make a contingency plan.  Can you keep the software alive yourself without updates and support from the vendor?  Pretty much all WMS packages use a SQL database that you can access with any popular development tools.  Perhaps you can build your own UI into their back-end database.  Lastly start looking at replacement WMS solutions.  There are still plenty of providers in the market.  The problem is that when smaller providers start to drop away, your only option will be to go with the larger more stable providers.  This means much higher licensing and maintenance fees than you were previously paying. 

It may be a good idea to view the failure of your provider as an opportunity instead of an obstacle.  If you purchased your current WMS solution many years ago you should realize that there have been huge advancements in WMS feature sets.  Replacing your WMS may result in a huge upfront cost.  However, it’s feasible you can achieve long term ROI from newer features like labor management and slotting which are typically available in the higher-end solutions.  You may also have the opportunity to move from a legacy platform to newer technology that is less expensive to manage.  What may seem like unnecessary pain in the short term may turn out to be a blessing in disguise several years down the road.

3PL Central which focuses on the SMB market recently released a 4PL Plus module for their 3PL Warehouse Manager solution. It allows a 3PL to extend the web-based WMS application to sub-contracted partners.  The module will allow a smaller 3PL to provide larger geographic coverage to a customer by aggregating data and visibility across multiple distribution centers even if they are owned by sub-contractors. It seems to be a natural evolution for 3PL Central’s SaaS platform.

Read the Press Release