Warehouse Management Leaders
April 16, 2009
Which book publishing software solutions are strongest in warehouse management?
From our perspective the leader in warehouse management is IBS Bookmaster. If you are running a major distribution or 3rd party fulfillment operation with sales over $10M its IBS Bookmaster. Most of IBS Bookmaster clients run major distribution operations and because of this IBS has more WMS (warehouse management system) implementation experience than its competitors, and its software offers greater functionality in this area.
Last year; in 2008, National Book Network ( www.nbnbooks.com ) implemented IBS Bookmaster. NBN went live with no downtime.
Number two in my list would be Vista, because of their experience with large WMS systems. Vista is not as powerful in WMS as IBS Bookmaster, but they offer more marketing tools for publishers. Vista also offers a powerful hosted WMS solution for smaller publishers.
For a smaller publisher, with sales of $3M to $10M I would say that ACUMEN Book is the leading solution based on functionality and price. ACUMEN offers a choice of optional advanced waremanagement modules; including ASN, along with an option of using a more powerful (and more expensive) 3rd party WMS.
When looking for a WMS the first thing that we tell our clients to ask the vendor is how many WMS have you installed over the past 1, 2 and 3 years. Then we advise our clients to contact those vendors for feedback on their experience. You want a vendor that has a track record of implementing warehouse management systems with minimal or zero downtime.
