Grow Your Warehouse Operation Using Low Code WMS
Technology is continuously evolving, finding new and better ways to improve performance. Traditional warehouse management systems developed over the past twenty years or so, until recent years, were developed with rigid architecture that is not readily adaptable. To customize these WMS, one needed to make changes to hard code. This required longer periods of time and hours of effort by skilled, experienced software developers. When the WMS was purchased, it was designed to suit your business. Your business needed to adapt to how the WMS worked or an investment in customization was required.
As years went by, there was a period of rapid changed forced upon the supply chain industry: COVID. As consumers were restricted for periods of time to their homes and goods were not as readily available, retailers adapted. The E-commerce boom exploded across the global supply chain. The need for flexibility in WMS was significantly accelerated. It was as if the dinosaur era had come to life. Those warehouse operators with legacy warehouse management software who needed to pivot and shift to serving individual customer orders often lost business and were left behind if they could not adapt. It has been a lesson of “survival of the fittest”.
Today, modern software development methodologies have designed new platforms that have components and functionalities that are tightly connected to a single, large database. Individual components can be separated and modified independently. Changes to one part of the system do not necessarily require extensive testing and updates to the entire system. Real-time data can be shared. Seamless data exchange and system interoperability are incorporated in the design using the latest technologies and protocols.
Low Code Application Platforms are part of this modern software development evolution and the flexibility, scalability, and powerful capabilities this provides to warehouse management systems is a game-changer.
Why Low Code Application Platforms are Needed for WMS
With the rise of e-commerce, warehouses now need to process many more orders for individual saleable goods, rather than for goods by the case or pallet. This results in higher transaction volumes, multi-channel fulfillment complexities, and the need to meet the demands of impatient consumers. Warehouses need to rely on technology for speed, efficiency, accuracy, and agility needed to meet SLAs and maintain high levels of customer satisfaction.
Warehouse management systems need to be agile enough to make changes to operational processes and turn on a dime in today’s fast-paced world. Traditional warehouse management systems are often not able to make customizations quickly or at low cost. In addition, having the ability to be able to unify data across various systems, and integrate seamlessly without long implementation delays gives warehouse operators a competitive advantage.
In short, using a warehouse management system built on a low code application platform produces cost savings, and enables seamless integrations including to newer technologies. Using a WMS built on an LCAP can provide enhanced regulatory compliance capabilities and security features, as well as the ability to rapidly develop, customize and deploy new applications or features.
What Are Low Code Application Platforms?
Unlike traditional warehouse management systems, software applications built on low code application platforms (LCAPs) are more flexible, adaptable to meet changing business requirements, easier to integrate, and scalable. Using a visual drag-and-drop interface, software users can create applications by assembling pre-built components, integrations, and templates. This simplification of the software development process facilitates faster prototyping, iteration, and deployment. It also enables application development to be open to non-technical users who may have significant experience, knowledge, and expertise in warehouse operations. This can lead to better alignment of operational processes within the warehouse.
How Low Code Application Platforms Work
In contrast with traditional warehouse management software that is complex and rigid, WMS built on LCAPs do not require highly skilled IT resources or software developers to handle hand-coding or programming. Low code application platforms are development environments that include a library of pre-built components for common functionalities including integrations, data visualizations, and authentication. This enables both non-software developers and professional developers and IT resources to build applications more efficiently by using an intuitive development approach.
Application designers select from pre-built components, including robust integration frameworks and connectors, and build applications or adapt the existing WMS to meet changing customer or business requirements. LCAPs include tools for defining business logic. Non-technical users can work alongside IT resources to automate workflows, create business rules, process flows and data models. To do this, visual tools are used to replace the need for writing complex code. Event-driven triggers and actions are leveraged to automate repetitive tasks and integrate with other systems.
Low code application platforms may include features to promote team collaboration. Multiple users can work on the same project simultaneously, and version control mechanisms help to ensure that changes can be tracked and managed efficiently. In case it becomes necessary, rollback can be used to return to previous versions.
Low code application platforms include tools for deployment, hosting, and maintenance. Applications can be deployed by users to a variety of environments with only minimal configuration. Within the platform, maintenance and updates can be handled and automated testing and deployment pipelines are frequently used.
How a LCAP-Based WMS Can Solve Your Biggest Warehousing Challenges
Cannot adapt and customize the WMS to meet the specific needs of customers and operations. This limits the ability to adapt when needed to make changes in business requirements.
- LCAPs provide significant value for WMS due to the speed at which development of applications, features, and customizations can be developed and deployed. This can help to ensure higher customer satisfaction, adapt more rapidly to supply chain disruptions, changes in demand and advances in technology.
- LCAPs help solve the challenges faced by rigid traditional WMS by making the WMS faster and easier to tailor to meet customer or business requirements without high priced IT resources. This can translate into time and labor savings for the warehouse operator.
Unable to provide real-time seamless integration via cloud. Integration challenges are often common with traditional warehouse management systems. Often traditional WMS cannot integrate with cloud-based services, limiting the ability for them to take advantage of the cost benefits, flexibility and scalability of cloud computing. In addition, it is often challenging for WMS to integrate with the latest technologies including automation, robotics, autonomous guided vehicles (AGVs), conveyor systems, AI, IoT, and other technologies.
- Because LCAPs leverage built-in connectors as well as APIs that facilitate integration with other systems, integration is seamless, ensuring a more efficient, cohesive ecosystem. This ease of integration can aid in unifying data across different systems to improve decision-making and information visibility.
Challenging to scale operations as the business grows. This is often problematic as warehouse operations typically grow in complexity, beyond the capabilities of legacy WMS. This complexity typically leads to the need to handle increased volumes of data, more complicated workflows as well as expanded warehouse operations.
- Low code application platforms are better able to scale more easily to handle increased volumes of data, more operational complexity, and additional functionality without a complete overhaul of the WMS. It is faster and easier to make quick adjustments on WMS built on LCAPs such as to scale up or down to handle new business requirements, changes in demand and much more.
Lacking modern security capabilities to safeguard warehouse data. Older warehouse management systems may lack the advanced security features required to protect sensitive data from cyber-attacks.
- Robust security measures are included with modern low code application platforms to ensure that data is protected.
Outdated user interface and poor user experience are common with older warehouse management systems. This is important as it can hamper productivity and lead to errors. WMS users need to have a streamlined user interface, designed to focus their attention on operations, without distractions.
- Using a WMS built on LCAP can improve the user experience and boost productivity. This is because LCAPs often feature intuitive, user-friendly interfaces that enhance the overall user experience. This makes it easier for warehouse workers to navigate the software, reducing errors and frustration.
Lack of real-time visibility into warehouse operations, inventory levels, and order status. Older WMS may not be able to provide visibility in real-time. This can reduce responsiveness to customer and market demands and delay decision-making.
- One advantage of using a WMS built on an LCAP is that it can be integrated using Internet of Things (IoT) devices and sensors. This enables the capture of real-time data involving inventory levels, environmental conditions within the warehouse, equipment status, and more.
Inability to handle large volumes of data. Today, with the popularity of online shopping, the volume of orders and need to engage with many individual items per order is required. Traditional WMS were designed to handle goods by the case or pallet rather than by the individual saleable unit, resulting in performance issues, such as data lock up, data retrieval and other challenges.
- Using a WMS built on an LCAP can facilitate the integration of multiple data sources into one unified platform, improving data accuracy and consistency. All data is available in one place. In addition, there are built-in tools for data validation, cleansing, and governance. This helps to ensure high data quality, essential for reliable real-time data visibility.
Conclusion:
Technology continues to advance. Software development continues to evolve. Today, supply chain industry professionals can take advantage of the modern innovative approach of low code application platforms as development environments designed to simplify the software development process.
This enables rapid development, customization and deployment of software applications, enabling businesses to respond rapidly to changing market conditions and technological changes. The result is notable cost and time savings, increased efficiency and more effective operations. Using LCAPs, companies can take advantage of increased flexibility, scalability, and adaptability to be more competitive, drive operational excellence and support growth.