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If you have a WMS, sooner or later you’ll be faced with the possibility of upgrading to the latest version. Organizations usually struggle with upgrades; weighing the costs and benefits of the new version vs. advantages/disadvantages of continuing on with the old. One of the biggest and stickiest points is generally around WMS customizations. While not everyone has customized their WMS, for those who have, the amount of WMS customizations varies from a few to a high number. If you’re considering an upgrade, it may help to also consider that you probably don’t have to upgrade every customization that exists today.
Based on our experience, a lot of WMS customizations can fall into three categories:
- Never Used – Customizations that were requested and created, but never utilized.
- Obsolete – Customizations that are no longer needed by your organization. Sometimes these become sacred cows unless someone really digs in and asks “Why do we have this?” and gets to the bottom of it.
- Unnecessary – Customizations become unnecessary either due to new functionality in the upgraded version or not understanding functionality that already existed.
One approach that works well is to make a complete list of your WMS customizations (Hint: it helps to maintain a list from day one) and assign the appropriate categories using the three above as well as the following:
- Competitive – Customizations that give you a clear competitive advantage.
- Legal – Due to some legal or contractual requirement, you must have this WMS customization to stay compliant. This could also include requirements with your customers such as bills of ladings or shipping labels. It helps to note what the legal requirement is on the list.
- High ROI – Customizations that have proven to generate a high return on investment or cost savings. The ROI should be documented to help evaluate the cost of WMS customization and ownership (i.e., ongoing maintenance and support upcharges) against the benefit to be gained.
- Nice to Have – Customizations that you can truly live without if you did not have them.
From this final list and categorization, you can now quickly turn your focus to the WMS customizations that make sense to preserve and have good justification for maintaining those enhancements.
Struggling with a WMS upgrade decision or developing a categorized customization list? Open Sky has created a way to use GIT with the built-in JDA WMS installation service which may help you keep track of your customizations more easily. Contact us today for more information.
The post WMS Customizations – Don’t Just Upgrade Everything! appeared first on Open Sky Group.
