By Brandon Vallonio and Enzo Duarte
After working with dozens of warehouse teams to implement tier-one warehouse management systems (WMS), we’ve noticed one overwhelmingly common pattern — postponed go-lives.
Most WMS teams miss their go-live deadlines not because anything went wrong during the project, but because they selected the wrong date in the first place. A go-live date shouldn’t be decided arbitrarily. A lot goes into the decision, and getting it right is critical. A pushed go-live isn’t just inconvenient; it costs time, resources and money and can hinder growth goals for the rest of the year.
To help your WMS implementation go as smoothly as possible, follow these recommendations to select the right go-live date from the start.
How to Select Your WMS Go-Live Date
There is no one right time to implement a WMS. The right time for your organization will be entirely unique and aligned with your people, processes and technology. It’s important not to put yourself in a box. Keep an open mind based on your analysis of the following factors.
Budget
Budget is the first and most obvious piece of the puzzle when planning for a WMS implementation. It’s important to align with executive leadership on when you’ll have the budget to fund the project and what KPIs you’ll use to track ROI.
Certain strategic decisions can play into this portion of the decision-making process, such as implementing a transportation management system (TMS), which can often provide such significant ROI as to fund a WMS implementation.
Peak periods
Avoid implementing your WMS during or too close to a peak season. WMS implementations don’t happen in a vacuum. Training can be disruptive to the floor, which is the last thing you need when handling peak-level order volumes. While it’s possible to complete design, configuration, testing and bug fixes during peak season if you have a dedicated team, if you plan to lean on your operations team for these tasks, you’ll need to get them done well before peak season to avoid workflow disruption.
For this reason, many businesses, especially retailers, go live in Q3, because it leaves time to have everything running smoothly by the holiday peak at the end of Q4. But the winter holiday season isn’t the only peak to consider.
When an American multinational food and beverage corporation was implementing a new system in its warehouse, it eliminated the months of July through September – what it called its ‘100 days of summer’. This is because one of the business’ highest-selling products is soda, and its peak season is during the summer when holidays like the Fourth of July and Labor Day drive up sales.
On the other hand, we worked with a luxury jewelry designer and fashion house that eliminated Q1 for its B2C go-live due to its regular peak season in February for Valentine’s Day.
Whenever your peak season or seasons fall, make sure to schedule your go-live with plenty of time before and after to ensure a seamless transition and no hiccups during your highest revenue periods.
System complexity
Every WMS implementation will vary in project length based on the complexity of the system you’re implementing your warehouse processes.
Factors like integration with other warehouse systems and required customizations all add time onto design, configuration and testing.
A basic WMS with little to no integrations or customizations could go live in six to nine months. A WMS that needs to integrate with other systems like a WCS, WES or ERP can take as many as nine to 15 months to go live. Add on any complex customizations like unique automation systems and you could be looking at anywhere from 15 to 24 months for your implementation.
| Low Complexity – 6-9 Months | Mid-Range Complexity – 9-15 Months | High Complexity – 15-24 Months |
| Standard ERP integrations (POs/ASNs, orders, receipt/ship confirmations, item master, inventory adjustments) | Complex or additional integrations with ERP | Complex automation and robotic systems requiring integration |
| Mostly out-of-the-box functionality | WCS/WES integration for conveyors | Integration with multiple SCE systems like WES, unique automation systems (e.g. pick-to-light, goods-to-person, auto stores), etc. |
| Little to no automation or robotics involved | Some customizations but mostly out-of-the-box functionality | Complex customizations like reporting dashboards, UI changes and workflows |
When determining your go-live date, be sure to consider the complexity of your warehouse operations and be honest about how long you will need for integrations and customizations.
Team size and bandwidth
A WMS project can be a full-time job by itself. While some organizations try to have their teams contribute to the WMS project work alongside their typical day jobs, it’s normally best practice to have a dedicated team that is solely focused on the implementation.
If you have a dedicated team across project management, operations and IT, your go-live will likely go faster than if your team is managing the implementation on the side. Make sure to factor this in when determining your go-live date and be really honest about how much your team can get done in a certain amount of time.
Tips For Keeping Go-Live on Track
Even with these considerations in mind, there are still some pitfalls that we’ve seen WMS teams fall into when selecting a go-live date. Here are some tips and tricks we recommend to our clients to help them select the right go-live date and stay on schedule throughout the project.
- Be realistic. There’s a lot to look forward to with a new WMS, but it’s important not to rush the project with an unrealistic timeline. Avoid setting a go-live goal that is too ambitious for what is truly attainable. For example, allotting two weeks for configuration is unrealistic and a quick way to end up behind schedule early in the project.
- Don’t underestimate testing. The testing phase is when you determine what load and scenarios your WMS can truly handle. Testing can take months depending on the complexity of the system and warehouse processes. Leave yourself plenty of time for testing, and if you want to make the process more efficient, consider automated Testing as a Service (TaaS), which can reduce testing time by up to 50% and provide higher accuracy than manual testing.
- Allot ample resources. Try to advocate for a dedicated team that can focus solely on the WMS implementation. Not only will this make the project go faster, but it will improve the team’s ability to become super-users of the WMS, enhancing post-go live success.
- Don’t limit yourself. Don’t risk wasting the resources you’re given by being overly limiting with your timeline. No warehouse project is perfect, so it’s important to have options for go-live, rather than just one small window. Give yourself a reasonable yet flexible window to improve the likelihood that you’ll be able to hit your goal.
- Stay organized. The teams that have the most successful WMS go-lives prioritize planning and organization. Set yourself up for success by building detailed test scripts, defining expected results and creating KPI tracking processes. Even the best WMS implementations can feel like chaos; the goal is for it to be organized chaos.
- Don’t overdo customizations. As warehouse processes become more automated and complex, it’s common for an out of the box WMS not to work for everyone. However, certain customizations can convolute the system, slow down your processes and jeopardize your go-live timeframe. Be realistic about what can be customized in the WMS and what will need to be done with a different system.
- Select the right system. A quality WMS selection project will go a long way toward ensuring you find the system that meets your warehouse’s unique needs without excess customizations. The right WMS will go live much faster than the wrong one.
Conclusion
An on time go-live is one of the most frequently unachieved goals in a WMS project, but it doesn’t have to be that way. The challenge for many organizations is that, while their warehouse leaders are experts in their unique warehouse operations, they are often not experts in WMS technology and what it takes to implement it well.
For this reason, it can be valuable to leverage a third-party integrator that has a deep understanding of both warehouse processes and WMS technology and can help you facilitate a well-planned implementation.
We know warehouse management system implementations inside and out, having implemented hundreds of systems from tier-one providers like Infios, Blue Yonder and Manhattan Associates. Contact us today to get expert guidance on your implementation and be one step closer to meeting your go-live goals.
