How to differentiate Produmex WMS when competing with other products
This blog post will explore how to differentiate Produmex WMS in a demo.
For this purpose, we have interviewed in a recent podcast Gil Van den Hauwe, a solution advisor in the Boyum IT partner success organization.
Before we get started, why don't you introduce, who you are, what you do, what's your role?
I've been with Produmex WMS for more than 10 years. I started out as a developer then quickly rolled into the role of a consultant. Then I led the support for a couple of years. And now I'm doing the demos as a solution advisor, and I'm also involved in developing logistic solutions. So managing the changes and looking at the roadmap.
Tell us what Produmex WMS is?
Produmex WMS is an add-on that enables the SAP Business One customers to have the whole WMS experience within SAP Business One. It is thoroughly integrated into the shop floor and warehouse parts.
There are four big sides to the solution.
- There's the administrative and management part, which we call a professional user, which allows you to do some management stuff from a warehouse manager's point of view.
- Then we have the mobile touch and scanner applications that handle all the shop floor processes. That means receiving, picking also you can use it in production.
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Produmex WMS includes a set of external running in the background, such as a picklist robot, replenishment tool, and others. These tools provide different services and create tasks that can be used in the warehouse.
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It's a mature solution that has been on the market for over 15 years focused on SAP Business One.
If you have to describe the main features of Produmex WMS, what would it cover?
We try to cover all the logistic processes from purchasing side. That means functionalities like:
- Goods receipt
- Putting it away
- Purchase returns
- and other types of logistic operations
We also cover:
- Moving and receiving goods from external warehouses
- Internal stock movements
- Cycle counting replenishment
- Replenishing the peak locations to make sure that we have enough stock to sell.
Then everything related to sales, which is:
- Different picking strategies
- Packing strategies
- Shipping methodologies, based on track routes or careers or whatever you would need from a shipping point of view
We also cover a lot of the logistics processes related to production:
- Picking the components up for production
- Issuing them to specific production lines
- Producing finished product
- Creating pallets of the finished product and even byproducts.
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We can label everything from a WMS site and issue, then the materials used, and close the production orders.
Those are the main features, and all focus on traceability. We have powerful features set related to batch traceability, expiry management, and serial numbers.
We also have quality features in Produmex WMS, which is not standard for other WMS systems. For example, you can put stock in quarantine or damaged state. You can also create specific locations for that.
These standard features are built on best practices we've built with our customers. But we allow many places to tailor the processes and set specific rules. Every warehouse has particular rules, even if they are in a similar industry.
What is the target market for Produmex WMS? Is it relevant for most industries, or do we target specific ones?
At the beginning of the solution, we focused on the European food and pharma markets. Then we quickly expanded to the US market and then globally. After these food and pharma customers, who were very focused on everything related to traceability, we opened up the solution a bit more for less regulated industries like retail distribution.
Now we have cosmetic customers, toys companies, furniture customers, and many customers in construction and decoration materials.
We have also included additional features to tackle specific industries, including many features related to webshops. What we call "the Amazon flow".
Webshops have their particular way of organizing processes in their warehouse.
And does that also mean a three PL support as well?
Yeah, sure. There's a module related to that where we see more and more where we handle the logistics for someone else, also possibly in a webshop environment. The system can automatically pull out all the charges and the logistic actions you performed for a specific customer.
When we talk about industries, we want to be honest. Some sectors may not be the best fit. An example is automotive with the "just in time" principle requirement. We have automotive customers in distribution, but probably not manufacturers that require "just in time" functionality.
As you know, businesses are vast in requirements. That means that even within the same sector, two companies can operate their logistics entirely differently within the same niche. Do you think this is a challenge with the current Produmex WMS available features?
No, and it's actually one of our strengths. The software is very flexible, and we supply the exact same solution to all of our customers across all of our different industries.
Here is an example of this. Customers can do a good receipt in two steps. They first unload the truck, put everything on a dock, an inspection area, inspect all the goods, print, maybe some labels on the pallets, and then put them away in a second step.
It's an entirely different process than other customers who know exactly what's coming. And when the forklift driver unloads the truck, he can immediately tell where it has to go. So there's no need for that intermediate step.
In Produmex WMS, it's just the matter of changing a checkbox or changing the way you want to work with those suggestions.
Here is another example of an existing customer that was first a distributor selling their customers' pallets and boxes of goods. Those were large orders which typically require a by-order approach. Later they then evolve into a webshop that still uses the same warehouse.
They open up a new webshop, and then they have a customer ordering one box of this, two boxes of that. And you need to organize that differently, or you will not be efficient.
Our solution allows you to grow into these new markets and implement this new process, with the same solution, by adding some configuration and custom logic to the system.
What is Produmex WMS strength? What are the features that the prospect will look at that will make a difference and move the needle for them?
1. Logistic Unit
One of them that we see a lot is the concept of a logistic unit. It's a unit of goods. That can be a box of 10 pieces, for example, or a pallet of a hundred pieces, or maybe a pallet with three different products on it that you always sell together.
It's a compelling concept that allows you to solve many problems. I'll give an example from a fabric industry customer that we have. They had big problems with their rolls of fabric. For example, they buy them at a hundred meters per roll, and then a customer orders 40 meters. They need to know exactly which roll holds how many meters because if they see 200 meters in stock, but it's 10 rolls of 20 meters, they cannot supply that customer. So they needed to know how many meters of fabric is on a specific role.
In Produmex WMS, we can solve that with the concept of the logistic unit because you can say, okay, a role is an SSCC. And that way, we can trace exactly how much meter is on that role. So this logistic unit concept can solve many problems.
2. Free Stock
Complete visibility on the real available stock is a powerful feature that many of our customers lacked before they had Produmex WMS.
This is something we hear a lot from SAP Business One customers. They have the available stock, or the "available to promise", but it has loopholes that are sometimes do not show 100% accuracy. So we created the concept of "free stock" in Produmex WMS.
We can have blocked areas from the warehouse where we know that we cannot sell from there. We have locked or reserved stock to secure stock for specific customers or for particular orders.
We have the concept of the quarantining and the damaged stock.
So all of those features together give you excellent visibility on which item you can actually sell today. It's something that many customers lack in their current system.
3. Pick and pack flows templates
A customer with a webshop order at the example I gave before might still be picking it the old way, one by one. When we come in with a solution, we say, "Hey, we think that it's better that you do it this way, group them together, all the small ones, you're gonna be way more efficient that way".
Because we already have all of those flows available, we can easily show this to the customer and show them the value of the software.
4. Detailed Reporting
This goes from anywhere from:
- Open tasks - see what our current workload is
- Open put aways
- Open pick lists
- Open packing tasks
- Which customers to prioritize
- And all kinds of instructions that we can put on dashboards\
- Performance reporting (which are my best pickers, who is performing the most picking lines, and so on)
5. Customization possibilities
Produmex WMS is completely integrated with the B1 Usability Package (B1UP) , which will allow you to create buttons and do all the beauty of B1UP up on the WMS screens.
We also have reports that can be completely customized to include user-defined fields. For example, a customer may have a specific UDF on a sales order, and they want to see that throughout the process.
They want to see that in picking, they want to see it on the packaging labels, and they wanna see it on the delivery note.
No problem. It's, it's effortless to customize all of that and have that customer-specific information included in those screens, in those reports, and maybe with some specific buttons.
For a new partner that sells the product, what would you recommend doing as part of building a Produmex WMS sales strategy?
It's an excellent question. We see a lot of different approaches to the way partners do it. We recommend a new partner to get into these logistic solutions is to start looking at the existing SAP Business One install base.
We also would recommend starting with a Produmex Scan deal. This way, consultants get familiar with the warehouse environment and customers' needs regarding labeling and other details.
In the meantime, they can get enabled on Produmex WMS and learn all the ins and outs of the solution's strengths and where it can really offer a lot of value for the existing customers or even for new customers, of course. Then as they do the implementation, they get more familiar with the logistics industry and build expertise.
Suppose they already have expertise from selling other WMS solutions. In that case, they can take that expertise and convert it into the logic or the expertise of Produmex WMS. And then it's always best to focus indeed on some specific industries.
Partners have another question on their minds, or at least the prospect has on their minds. And that is how does Produmex WMS stand against other similar solutions
We have two categories of competitors or solutions to compare ourselves against. We have integrated WMS solutions with SAP Business One solutions. And there, I'm not afraid to say that we are the most mature solution in terms of functionality and track record of proven customers.
And then the second type of competitors are the best in class WMS, which may have artificial intelligence built-in and all kinds of crazy stuff that we don't claim to have.
In this case, we're looking at a different budget. First of all, there's a price difference, and it's a pretty significant difference. So we don't pretend to be one of those best-in-class WMS systems.
Of course, if you are going for this best-of-class WMS, it will need to be interfaced with SAP Business One. And there, you always have an interface risk as the interface can cause problems. It can cause data discrepancies. That's something that you will never have with Produmex WMS, as it is an integrated solution. For example, there will never be any stock differences between SAP and Produmex WMS.
So what sets Produmex WMS apart?
When I do demos, a couple of things always bring the customers over the line. I say internally that it sells itself when you do an excellent demo to a customer, especially an existing SAP Business One customer.
They can see how easily it integrates with SAP Business One. That usually seals the deal because they like SAP Business One and want to stay within that system.
Another group of customers is convinced when they see we have a proven track record in many industries and probably also in one of their industries. And they're pretty impressed by the fact that the software can handle their specific requirements.
The proven track record is vital for a big part of the customers, and the fact that we built it with our customers based on best practices shows that we can do it.
One thing sets Produmex WMS apart from different software in the WMS market. Other software typically has one big screen where you have to do everything.
You have to scan your item on the top and the quantity on the bottom. And then, on the bottom of the screen, you have a list, and it's very cluttered screens.
We don't do it that way. So our solution works in a process flow way, which for example, a receipt is made out of four steps.
We select PO then we scan a product. We say how much, and a label comes out, and it's in concrete steps, which means the user doesn't have to think about what I have to do first? What is important?
It's obvious what he has to do at this point because it's the only option he has. And that's a big difference with other solutions out there. Our customers like it because it takes away the confusion and a lot of the learning curve. After all, you just have to do what is physically on the screen. And there are no other options.
What is the implementation time looking into WMS? What's the range like?
We always say anywhere from 15 - 30 days for a standard implementation, with not too many crazy customizations. 10 - 15 days could be the case for a customer not running production. That's typically the threshold for adding another 10 days if you're also doing production.
So if you're just doing retail distribution 15 days, maybe 20 days, if you want some very nice labels, we can work a day or two on labels. But in 15 days, you should be up and running.