New JDA warehouse tool focused on operational personas

The latest version of the supply chain software provider’s warehouse management system seeks to sort workflows by the nature of the warehouse operator, and eliminate unneeded screens.    JDA Software this week released an update to its core warehouse management system tool that’s designed to better enable different types of users by focusing on the parts of the system they are most likely the use.
   The supply chain software provider is doing so through what it calls persona-based user experiences.
   “This year was where we focused the (user interface) on the operating personas,” Fab Brasca, JDA’s vice president, solution strategy, Intelligent Fulfillment told American Shipper. “We focused on their enablement, streamlining their processes. We’ve created a 30 percent reduction in their screen flows.”
   Essentially the goal was to focus on relevant workflow based on the nature of the operator, he said.
   The WMS update also includes broader mobile functionality since that aspect of warehouse management is particularly crucial, allowing operations personnel to “respond to business demands both in and outside the facility without being locked down to a workstation,” JDA said in a statement earlier this week.
   Brasca said the new user interface has been upgraded in phases.
   “We did this in conjunction with customers,” he said. “Doing that advance work with customers gives us an approach for other customers in terms of total cost of ownership.”
   He said it’s up to WMS customers as to when they want to switch to the new UI.
   “We didn’t create a ‘cliff event’ where everyone had to switch to the new UI,” he said. “And as a culture, we’ve never really abandoned support of any previous versions.”
   Brasca also noted that from a trend perspective, warehouse management is starting to see more adoption of cloud-based systems. Users of WMS products have often been reticent to move to cloud-based applications because of a perception that there is more latency in updating critical information through cloud applications.
   “Whether that’s accurate or not, that’s the perception,” he said. “WMS has a higher degree of transaction processing, so there’s a fear that if you centralize it, it won’t be fast enough, particularly when you get into high volume retail warehouse operations. (With a cloud-based transportation management system), you might not care about a carrier tender taking a few extra seconds, but if you have a guy on a forklift waiting for a picking instruction, there can’t be a delay.”
   The flipside of that argument is that moving to a cloud-based WMS environment helps customers update more often, with JDA taking charge of those updates.
   Brasca said JDA’s previous WMS update focused on ease of setup and implementation, with the company providing a new guided process for configuration that sought to significantly scale down that initial learning so that it “doesn’t require such deep expertise as it did in the past.”
   “WMS is a lot like TMS when you’re talking about the really robust systems,” he added. “There are so many bells and whistles and flows configurability. Set up can be pretty onerous because there’s so much to plan.
   “So in the last update, we focused on how to think about configuration, and checks to understand where they are in the process. What they missed and what they can’t miss. Did I set up my docks? It resulted in a 10 to 15 percent reduction in configuration time, plus the associated impact on quality of the implementation. That’s important because the warehouse is the end of the whip, especially in e-commerce.”