CIOs spend a heck of a lot of time trying to make their company's enterprise resource planning, customer relationship management, and supply chain management systems responsive to business needs.
Too often, though, the real reason a shipment to a customer arrived late, or a customer received an erroneous shipment, can be traced not to ERP or CRM or SCM, but instead to a place in the organization that's considered much more mundane: shipping. Problems with picking orders, packing shipments, or cross-docking of inventory, can quickly lead to customer dissatisfaction.
Enter the lowly warehouse management system. A veritable Rodney Dangerfield of enterprise software, the WMS doesn't command a whole lot of respect, at least not when compared to its front-office big brothers, ERP, CRM, and the likes.
But getting a WMS implementation right the first time can go a long way toward ensuring a company has satisfied customers that are receiving accurate orders delivered on time.
Source: Baseline, http://www.baselinemag.com