How to select and evaluate the best SAP Warehouse Management solution for your business

Over the past few years, we have written in depth about SAP warehouse management solutions (WMS) and the benefits organisations can derive from migrating to SAP Extended Warehouse Management (EWM).

The combination of legacy and new software platforms has led to four potential options for consideration, so how do you know that you are selecting the best fit platform for your business? Understanding the difference between the different SAP warehouse management selection tools – Stockroom Management, Warehouse Management (WM), EWM Decentralised (Basic) and EWM Embedded (Advanced) - can be a real challenge, so here is a quick outline of what’s currently available:

• WM is the original product offering from SAP. It has basic warehouse management functions that can be extended with TRM (Treasury and Risk management), so its shelf life has been extended, but it will not be developed further and will eventually not be supported. If you are on the lookout for a stopgap solution, WM could be your best choice. If you are replacing SAP WM and want to know what your options are for transition and future deployment, please download our latest eBook.
• Stockroom Management is a cut down version of the WM tool and offers basic functionality enabling users to manage stock rooms and smaller, simple warehouses. Although it will continue to be supported, it is no longer being developed. Stock room management would be a good choice if you required warehouse management capabilities for a small manufacturing parts store or keeping pharma samples for testing.

SAP Extended Warehouse Management (EWM) is a comprehensive warehouse solution using shared resources across your supply chain landscape. SAP EWM can be used in one of two modes - Basic or Advanced. To get some guidance on which one would suit you best, check out our blog for more details.

• Basic EWM has basic extended warehouse management and is aimed at users with smaller, more manually operated processes. With a reduced license cost in comparison to other platforms, it is part of SAP’s strategic offering and can be extended to include all of the additional functions as and when required. However, if the trigger functions of full EWM are exploited, the full licence cost is applicable. Basic EWM would work well if you operate a small wholesale warehouse or a raw materials warehouse.
• SAP Extended Warehouse Management (EWM) advanced option supports complex picking and put-away strategies, value-added services, kitting and automation integration (to name but a few). As it is part of the supply chain solution from SAP, it fully integrates with other solutions such as Transportation Management, Production Planning and Execution, Global Track and Trace and Quality Management. Providing flexible warehouse processes which can be automated, it drives efficient material flow through your warehouse ensuring the right task is presented to the right resource at the right time. Stock Management and reporting tools enable better decision making and quicker reaction to situations.

Selecting the right SAP WMS with total control and transparency

Making the right platform selection is an essential part of the project business case, ensuring alignments across strategic business, IT, operations objectives, as well as key functional requirements. With these four options available, where do you start in choosing the right solution?

The Rocket SAP Warehouse Management System (WMS) assessment tool provides IT and supply chain leaders with a method to rapidly align the WMS platform capability with their specific needs. It can help clarify your business needs and help to unpick the complexity of the solutions available so you pick the best SAP solution for you. Providing transparent results with detailed visual insights, it helps create robust reporting to engage and influence key stakeholders in support of the project from the outset.

Taking a condensed set of requirements based on what typically drives platform decisions, and evaluating these against the severity of needs, ‘not required’, ‘nice to have’, ‘required’ or ‘must have’, the evaluation logic matches the business requirements you have highlighted against the capability of the platform. The unique scoring matrix provides a suitability rating, recommending the most appropriate platform, which often is not the most costly or complex.

The results also come with detailed insights that show the proportion of requirements that fit, exceed, partially meet or have gaps, which offers customers real transparency and a deeper understanding of the scoring process and the choices available. Customers can access detailed personalised requirements analysis where line by line they are shown exactly how the recommendation has been built. You will see where there are gaps and also where the solution exceeded input requirements. This transparency also shows the weighting on each and every level of functionality, helping customers evaluate the benefit per each functionality item.

Free consultancy available

Rocket is also providing a level of complimentary consultancy with the free tool so that customers can discuss the platform options available and get expert opinion on each of the solutions available, key aspects highlighted by the tool and things to watch out for when making choices, based on Rocket’s 15+ years of experience.

There is a growing need for a solution for customers who want to do their own impartial research before speaking to suppliers, which has been accentuated by Covid. Rocket’s digital tool puts the control of the decision phase back into customers’ hands, which in the short-and long term can only be a good thing.

Try The Rocket SAP WMS Online Selection Tool Free Today and gain your free personalised report.

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