Client Background

Client: A US-based multinational company

Industry: Courier

Areas of operations: Worldwide

Number of Employees: Over 350,000

Challenge

The client had older versions of Blue Yonder/Red Prairie Warehouse Management Systems (WMS). These legacy versions had many customizations and maintaining the custom modules was a challenge. They wanted to consolidate disparate warehouse systems (legacy, in-house WMS, older versions of JDA WMS, etc.) across the US and APAC regions to a single WMS platform.

Many of the client’s customers had multiple instances, and the client wanted Wipro to define a proper instance strategy to reduce operational complexities.

Solution

Wipro defined site-specific instance strategies for the client. These strategies were based on a global template-based rollout. Since many customers had their own instances, Wipro team demonstrated ‘how a site with multiple customers could be configured on a single template with industry templates pinned in’.

Wipro set up a microservices-based architecture so that any complex customizations required for business operations could be handled outside the standard product, and JDA WMS would integrate the core workflows with the microservices layer and labor productivity.

Wipro team successfully transitioned multiple sites with minimal documentations and business impact on the BAU team. We also configured and integrated the Labor Management Module (Workforce Management) to track warehouse tasks and labor productivity.

Implementation highlights:

• Global template based instance strategy
• Microservices-based architecture to ease out majority of the complex custom modules
• Designed and configured site and customer specific interfaces from multiple ERP to the core WMS solution
• Integrated the JDA Workforce Management tool with SAP and all in-house WMS solutions
• Designed and configured specific warehouse solutions to handle processes for task interleaving, track and trace, and defined a factory model for rollouts and migrations
• Defined an effective support model (L1, L2 & L3) for Blue Yonder WMS for all sites/customers and provided key user training
• Enabled proper configuration management policy for all custom modules. We enabled custom interfaces from WMS to WCS vendors and pick to voice devices
• Deployed Selenium automation testing framework for all regression cycles
• Implemented parcel services integration and rating services for the client’s customers

 Business Impact

Wipro enabled business process optimization for the client’s warehouse operations. Instance strategies, which were adopted based on customers’ industry verticals, led to increase in customer confidence. Wipro also helped the client identify KPIs to measure their WMS Success.

Outcomes include:

• 25% increase in labor productivity
• 20% – 30% faster migrations to all sites by leveraging global WMS template deployment
• Faster regression cycles using automation, thereby improving efforts by 15%
• Improvement in customer service levels due to standardization of business processes and lesser WMS Instances
• 30% reduction in incidents due to service improvements
• Average SLA compliance improved from 85% to 90% initially and then later to 95% using Left Shift strategies
• Improved business KPIs (stock visibility, picking accuracy, workforce overtime etc.) for different sites

Due to the delivery excellence exhibited by Wipro, the client has extended the partnership with Wipro to enable rollout in their remaining 25+ sites.