Co-authored by enVista and Eric Maldonado, Director of Solutions Consulting at IFS Softeon
Warehouse management systems (WMS) have evolved substantially over the last several decades as infrastructure maturity has grown and base functionality has become more streamlined and advanced across vendors.
While a lot of time and thought goes into selecting the right WMS vendor for an organization, the hard work to create a system that’s truly a competitive advantage in your facility and broader distribution network doesn’t stop there.
Many supply chain executives and operations leaders don’t have the in-depth knowledge of WMS infrastructure needed to make the system support operational excellence across the facility. That’s where the value of a systems integrator shines. When a software vendor and systems integrator partner together, their combined technical and operational expertise helps ensure the hardware and software are sound, and the core functions are tailored to support peak operational cohesion.
Tips for Designing a Strong WMS Infrastructure
enVista and IFS Softeon have partnered many times to help warehouse and distribution center (DC) leaders implement WMS solutions, and over the years, we’ve seen the infrastructure design decisions that drive peak operational performance and the ones that slow operations down and create long-term scalability issues.
Here are a few of the time-tested tips that we’ve learned over the years for building a strong, scalable WMS infrastructure.
1. Consider your full technology ecosystem
Warehouse management systems have one primary purpose: controlling the flow of inventory into, within, and out of a DC. When designing your WMS, don’t try to do more than it’s intended to do. This means being prepared to make changes to your enterprise systems to support the WMS, rather than relying on WMS customizations or modifications to compensate for gaps in enterprise technology support.
Start by scoping out the full technology ecosystem of your facility: what systems you have, what each system does, and what gaps need to be filled. Make sure systems aren’t overlapping in ways they shouldn’t. For example, avoid patching transportation functionality into your WMS. Ensure your enterprise resource planning (ERP) system is properly updated and integrated for the necessary business and financial operations. Consider how you’re managing labor and whether an LMS could help you capture more ROI.
If your enterprise technology ecosystem is outdated and siloed, a new, state-of-the-art WMS won’t fix your underlying operational issues. Keep your entire network in mind when making technology decisions to make sure you get the maximum ROI and are able to continue scaling as your business grows.
2. Use a Middleware Layer for Systems Integration
Using direct integrations without a middleware layer to connect your WMS with other point systems like WCS, ERP and robotics systems often creates rigidity that can be difficult to navigate in daily operations. Long-term, it can also cause problems when something requires an integration change.
Say, for example, your WMS vendor upgrades the software, and the new version has slightly different data formats. With direct integrations, re-integrating the new data format to each point system will be much more tedious than if a middleware layer were in place.
Middleware serves two key purposes: first, it isolates integration mapping to the middleware layer, so you don’t need to make changes to systems on either end for an integration requirement. Second, it makes integrations easier and faster. For this reason, we always recommend that clients use middleware to connect their enterprise technology.
3. Plan Your Environments and Release Strategy Up Front
A WMS is not a one-time install. Most modern platforms are cloud-delivered and ship updates on a regular cadence, and your infrastructure should be designed to absorb them. That starts with environments. At minimum, plan for a production environment, a test environment that mirrors production closely enough to be trusted, and a sandbox where configuration changes can be tried without risk. Decide early who owns each, how data is refreshed between them, and how a change moves from one to the next.
Then decide how you will take vendor releases. Will you adopt each one as it arrives, or batch them? Who regression tests, and against which scripts? Operations that skip this planning tend to fall behind on versions and end up with the same support problems that come with custom code. Operations that plan for it treat upgrades as routine maintenance rather than projects.
4. Get the Wireless Network and Device Fleet Right Before Go-Live
The most carefully configured WMS still runs on a handheld in the far corner of the building. Wireless coverage, device selection, and print infrastructure are the physical layer of your WMS, and they are where a surprising amount of go-live pain originates.
Commission a site survey with racking and inventory in place, not on an empty floor, because coverage changes as the building fills. Standardize the device fleet where you can; a mix of scanners, tablets, and vehicle-mounted units multiplies testing, training, and support effort. Place printers and choose label stock against the actual workflow rather than the floor plan. And put a device management process in place for OS updates, battery rotation, and spares so a dead unit is a five-minute swap rather than a productivity issue on the floor.
5. Test Against Peak Volume, Not Average Volume
Volume testing usually gets done against a typical day because that is the data everyone has on hand. But a WMS does not fail on a typical day. It fails on the Monday after a promotion, in the last two weeks before peak season, or when a large customer doubles its order profile without warning.
Before go-live, load test against your peak with a margin on top, and include the full mix: order release, wave or waveless processing, replenishment, inbound receipts, and integration traffic from the host system, all running at once. Pay particular attention to the integration layer, which is often the bottleneck before the WMS itself is. If you are moving to a cloud platform, confirm with your vendor how capacity scales and what your operation is entitled to at peak. The goal is to find the ceiling in a test environment rather than on the floor.
6. Treat Master Data as Infrastructure
Item, location, unit of measure, and packaging data are the foundation everything else in the WMS is built on. Bad master data shows up as short picks, wrong cartons, failed putaway, and a slow erosion of trust in system directions that leads operators to work around the WMS rather than through it.
Give master data its own workstream with an owner, a timeline, and acceptance criteria. Establish where each attribute is mastered, typically the ERP for items and the WMS for locations, and how changes flow between them. Clean before you load; a new WMS will faithfully reproduce every error in the legacy item file. Dimensions and weights deserve special attention because cartonization, slotting, and capacity planning all depend on them. Finally, plan for ongoing governance, because master data quality starts degrading the day after go-live if nobody owns it.
7. Design for Your Next Site, Not Just Your First
Most organizations that implement a WMS in one facility will eventually implement it in another. The first site sets the pattern, so design it as a template rather than a one-off.
That means documenting configuration decisions and the business reasons behind them, separating what is truly site-specific from what should be standard across the network, and building a rollout playbook that covers integration, data migration, testing, and training. Resist the urge to configure the first site to every local preference; some of those preferences are simply how the old system worked, and locking them in makes every subsequent site harder. A well-built template can cut the timeline and cost of the second and third facilities substantially, and it keeps the network running on a common process rather than a collection of local variations.
8. Consider the Role of Automation
A lot of warehouse leaders don’t realize how much their WMS and other warehouse orchestration software affect automation and robotics performance in the facility. The more advanced automation and robotics become, the less equipped a traditional WMS is to intelligently orchestrate those systems alongside all the other variables in the facility.
If you’re designing a WMS for a highly automated warehouse, additional WES or WCS functionality will likely be required to maintain peak operational performance.
9. Make Sure Your WMS is Supportable and Expandable
A strong WMS design should account for where your operation is today and where it needs to go next. As you evaluate supportability, consider how quickly your team can get help when production issues arise, whether the system includes tools that enable internal teams to troubleshoot and resolve issues on their own, and whether vendor support resources understand your specific instance well enough to provide timely, relevant guidance.
Expandability matters just as much. If you open a new warehouse, add new automation, change workflows, or scale order volume, your WMS should be able to extend with the business without creating unnecessary implementation complexity or long-term support challenges.
10. Avoid Excessive Modifications When Possible
A quality WMS shouldn’t require too many modifications to the base functionality. Modifications add cost, timeline, and failure points to an implementation project, and support teams often have more difficulty providing ongoing support when custom code is involved. On your end, modifications can also make it difficult to stay up to date on the latest software versions because they’re often unsupported by the vendor. The less you stray from base functionality, the smoother ongoing support requests will go.
For the sake of your warehouse management system’s efficiency and scalability, limit modifications to requirements that make your business truly unique and provide specific ROI. This evaluation should focus on meeting the underlying business requirement, not simply recreating the way the requirement has historically been met. Operations teams often default to familiar workflows because they have worked around existing system limitations for years, but a new WMS may meet the same requirement in a different, more efficient way.
This is one of the most important processes to involve a systems integrator in. They can help you get creative with base configurations to meet your business requirements while avoiding modifications that could create problems down the line.
Continue the Conversation
Designing a WMS that can support today’s operation while providing a foundation for future growth takes careful planning across technology, infrastructure, integration and operations.
As enVista and IFS Softeon have seen through their work together, bringing the right software and systems integration expertise to the table early can help organizations make infrastructure decisions that support long-term performance and scalability.
About IFS Softeon
IFS Softeon is a WMS provider delivering visibility from the boardroom to the warehouse floor. Powered by Industrial AI, IFS Softeon combines deep industry expertise, robotics orchestration, and proven warehouse execution in a single, seamless offering. For over two decades, we have helped our customers optimize their fulfillment operations. IFS Softeon is laser-focused on customer results, with a 100% track record of deployment success.
As part of IFS, Softeon combines its tier-1 warehouse management expertise with the scale, global reach, and AI-driven capabilities of IFS, creating a powerful platform for end-to-end supply chain intelligence. We believe warehouse leaders shouldn’t have to settle for a one-size-fits-all approach to technology.
For more information, visit www.softeon.com.
