WMS Upgrade & System Facelift

Posted on by Kallol Nandi

 

WMS Upgrade & System Facelift

 

Our client is a leading distributor of books, videos, and music products to libraries, institutions and retailers. They have been in business for more than 175 years and have customers in more than 120 countries.

Situation: 

  • In need of WMS upgrade
  • Outdated interfacing system
  • Changing landscape for industry bar-code standard
  • Expensive label development process resulting from an outdated approach

IN NEED OF A SYSTEM FACELIFT…

When a leading book distributor needed to upgrade their WMS and update their technological processes, they turned to Initechs. Our client had been using an outdated system to interface data between their ERP and WMS, which had numerous problems and wasn’t suiting their complex needs. Additionally, their industry standard for tracking their products was changing. Finally, they were spending far too much money developing and modifying bar-code labels, and were in desperate need of a new approach.

INITECHS’ EXPERIENCE AND IN-DEPTH KNOWLEDGE MADE IT POSSIBLE

After surveying our clients’ needs we determined that a standard upgrade would fail to correct any of the underlying problems they were experiencing. Instead, we helped them understand what technologies were available so they could make informed strategic decisions. We:

  • Upgraded their WMS on time and within their project budget
  • Replaced their outdated legacy interface system with the MQ series technology
  • Incorporated software to handle their complex business logic needs and real-time alerts to notify IT personnel of network or data integrity issues
  • Altered their interfaces to support the new ISBN-13 (International Standard Book Number) convention, and created an interactive verification program to monitor the results
  • Modified their reports and labels to support the new ISBN-13 convention
  • Modernized their development efforts to allow the use of a GUI interface to design and modify their thermal printer label needs

Our technologically savvy consultants were able to do all of this for about the same amount of money that their WMS vendor would have changed just to perform the WMS upgrade.

EXCELLENT RESULTS, EVERY TIME INITECHS DOES IT WITH PASSION

In the end, our clients’ systems would now be able to meet the needs of their business for many years to come with much lower annual support costs.

 

RESULTS

 

  • Seamless upgrade and addition of new interfacing technology
  • Adaptation to new ISBN-13 standard
  • Update to GUI-based barcode software