How to Overcome the Various Issues of a WMS Start-up

Whack-A-Mole. Such a fun game. We’ve all played it at some point right? You take a small bat and hit the heads of the mechanical mole when it pops up out of its hole. It’s a sort of metaphor for life isn’t it? Solving one problem can create another. Solve that one and a third pops up.

Act too slowly and you have moles popping up all over. You can never really win the game because there is always another mole. Success can only be defined by how quickly you can react to the next pop-up; by how you manage the moles.

Imagine if you knew, after slamming the first mole, exactly where the next one will pop-up? And the one after that? Things would be a whole lot more manageable wouldn’t they? If you played enough, you probably could get a feel for a sequence. They aren’t random, they following a pattern. Learn the pattern and you master the game.

Think of Whack-A-Mole now as a metaphor for a WMS start-up. Beat down one issue, and another pops up. Solve that one, a third rises to the surface, and on and on. Do it enough times and you come to realize that with a WMS implementation the sequence of issues IS predictable. It does follow a pattern. The same issues surface every time in pretty much the same sequence regardless of how well the project has been run. The only difference is the timing and severity of the issues. Every WMS implementation I have been involved, and those number over 100, followed a very similar, very predictable pattern. Think about how much more effective you can be if you know what’s coming.