Why cloud migration is crucial in employing warehouse management confidence

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"Over time, each organisation builds the distribution ecosystem that uniquely addresses its needs. The challenge emerges when only a handful of people understand how to manage and maintain that system successfully and perhaps only one individual truly understands the complete picture," says Phil Lewis, Infor’s VP of Solution Consulting EMEA.

"With a mission-critical WMS and corresponding data at the very core of the business, any scenario that puts it at risk can be detrimental to getting products out the door."

Mitigating risks

One of the ways to mitigate this risk is to accelerate cloud migration. By shifting the WMS to the cloud, organisations are supported by a comprehensive solution that is continuously updated. This guards against new trends forcing upgrades to the system down the road.

"A trusted cloud partner should have a substantial investment in IT personnel that would be difficult for some of the largest organisations to match. A small army is dedicated to monitoring the organisation’s WMS and its data to ensure both optimisation and protection," adds Lewis.

A recent CIO tech priorities survey by IDG showed that "despite increased budgets and interest in new technologies that can positively impact business in the future, organisations still face familiar challenges to adoption. The top challenges that IT leaders encounter are lack of sufficient budget (48%), lack of staff (46%), and lack of skill sets (42%)."

It’s time to shift the responsibility of managing and maintaining the organisation’s WMS over to a cloud provider with modern capabilities.

"With this approach, organisations will not only create an opportunity to reset expectations and priorities for their IT staff but also ensure their WMS always has the support it needs to stay up and running so that customers receive their orders on time and in full,” concludes Lewis.