wms implementation

High-Level implementation steps

1Project kick-off and your project plan

We kick-off your project with an introduction to your dedicated Peoplevox point of contact, your Project Manager. They’ll review the scope of what you’ve signed up to implement with you and ensure we are all aligned before a project plan is considered and put together for you to review and approve.

If you’re implementing with a ready-made integration and a bundled feature we can fast track you with a proven implementation plan that we’ve refined with other clients. This can get your project started and scheduled in when timelines are tight.

2Setting up your warehouse, software & hardware

The steps that you need to do only once to get you ready to configure and test the workflows in your warehouse and with your products.

Wherever possible, our Implementation Consultants will provide you with best practice examples, templates, and pre-load settings to save you time.

Areas where we are able to add the most value during setup:

• Warehouse location coding and intelligent pick route planning
• Advice on warehouse storage types and packing bench setup
• Hardware recommendations to ensure they are compatible and robust
• Pre-loading best practice user roles with specific access rights e.g. Temporary Picker
• Importing locations and their hierarchies
• Checking your product data and advising on errors
• Reviewing your product barcodes and ensuring any labelling is done correctly

3Configure your workflows and integrations

Transitioning from a core part of your business to a new way of working requires careful change management. The configuration process is designed to enable you to road test the warehouse processes you are going to use for your initial go-live.

We believe in starting simple to get live and using an iterative process to optimise them once you have adjusted to a new way of working. Data on your operations performance can inform further changes to refine your configuration.

Integrations need to be configured in full in advance of any end-to-end testing and will be measured against their documentation or specification if they are bespoke. We’ve invested time into our relationships with integration partners and vendor partners plus our internal support team to address this critical part of implementation.

4Training from week 1 through go-live plus 14 days

Your superuser training begins as soon as you have access to your Peoplevox account. We want your key people to be proficient early on to help you make informed decisions during configuration and help you own the training for your operators.

Training is where our remote model offers significant advantage over on-site training that we always found got disrupted or demanded too much uninterrupted attention than was realistic for an e-commerce operations team.

We record all training sessions so they can be shared out and revisited by new starters. The content is tailored to your configuration and delivered in a standard way that ensures nothing important is missed.

Flexible training sessions fit in around your day to day demands and you can even reschedule sessions up to 48 hours in advance if people are needed for other projects or meetings.

5User Acceptance Testing

This is the part of the implementation that we recommend you invest the most time and energy, which will enable a smoother transition to go-live. Your Implementation Consultant will organize the user-acceptance training and provide you with test scripts to share with your team.

The test scenarios will help identify any potential gaps in processes and ensure your understanding of the configuration to avoid any issues prior to go-live.

User-acceptance testing will help minimize stress and service-level issues across your organization.

6Inventory count and location assignment

We recommend that your inventory count on the platform is as close to 100% as possible. This will be critical in building trust in the new warehouse management system. If you get his part right, everything else will follow.

Inventory counting can be done gradually, where you add new locations and their inventory onto the system bit by bit. Once inventory goes on the system, the mobile app is used to adjust inventory when it is sold.

Whether you’ve started inventory counting gradually or not, your inventory count on the system should be at 100%.

We will help you work out the level of effort needed to add your inventory to the system and provide a schedule that will meet your target go-live date.

7Go-live

Prior to your go-live date, we will hold a meeting with your team to review the go-live checklist. We will review everything that has been completed so far, all of your configuration requirements, address any additional testing and training needed from your Implementation Consultant and Project Manager prior to giving the go-live approval.

Our standard go-live period is 3 days and consists of the first day preparations, the go-live day and a third day for addressing any issues, whilst closely monitoring your system’s performance.