WMS Redesign Consulting to Save Up to $170K in Annual Employee Time

Summary

A US logistics and transportation provider had a custom on-premises warehouse management solution (WMS) whose scalability and performance had fallen behind its growing business — warehouse workers waited up to 15 seconds for each page to load, costing an estimated $170,000 a year in compensation for wait time. INNERLUXES audited the WMS in five business days and delivered a strategic redesign roadmap, performance and process improvements, and a cloud-migration strategy for a future SaaS version.

About the Client

The Client is a US provider of logistics and transportation services and solutions.

A custom warehouse management solution (WMS) needed evolution

The Client had a custom on-premises WMS, with user apps for warehouse workers and supervisors, integrated with third-party software (e.g., a help desk platform). As the business grew, the solution's scalability and performance became insufficient for the increased diversity of logistics operations and the number of new clients. For instance, warehouse workers waited up to 15 seconds for the next page of their app to load; by the Client's calculations, the compound wait time accounted for $170,000 of workers' compensation costs per year.

The Client's internal IT team was gradually evolving the WMS, aiming to upgrade the worker and supervisor apps, then the remaining modules, and eventually turn the solution into a subscription-based SaaS product. However, progress was inefficient due to the team's commitment to other routine IT tasks, the absence of established project management workflows, and gaps in software testing practices. Defects in new WMS versions also led to more user support tickets and a low issue resolution rate. The Client turned to INNERLUXES to audit its WMS and design a roadmap for a strategic revamp.

WMS solution audit and review of project management practices

INNERLUXES conducted multiple interviews and workshops with the Client's upper management and IT department to get a clear picture of warehouse operations, WMS evolution project management, and user support workflows, and examined the new solution architecture designed by the Client's IT team.

As a result, our team provided a high-level plan covering milestones, cost and time estimates, and the talent needed to redesign the worker and supervisor apps within the Client's 18-month deadline, and documented the inefficiencies and remediation measures across these critical areas:

WMS architecture and infrastructure

INNERLUXES found the architecture and on-premises infrastructure solid enough to support the internal WMS, needing only minor fine-tuning, and recommended:

• Adopting DevOps practices, starting with container orchestration (Kubernetes, Rancher, Helm) for zero-downtime deployment, easy rollbacks, and autoscaling.
• Duplicating the existing Microsoft SQL Server with continuous data replication to account for potential primary-server failure.
• Transferring BI, reporting, and testing workloads to the duplicate SQL server to reduce the burden on the main server.
• Implementing monitoring tools (e.g., Zabbix Server, Uptime Kuma) to track request rate, latency, error rate, connection rate, throughput, and connection counts.

Database performance optimization

INNERLUXES found that slow database stored procedures caused the performance issues and 15-second page loads. To pinpoint the exact bottlenecks, the Client would need to monitor database performance logs and investigate each issue, so we shared:

• Best practices for identifying slow stored procedures, with a list of common issues (e.g., outdated table statistics, long-running transactions, sorting issues) and optimal mitigation steps.
• Performance optimization measures for the future SaaS version (e.g., table partitioning, memory-optimized tables for frequently accessed data).

Project management optimization

• Scope management — creating a prioritized product backlog and using user stories for efficient sprint planning.
• Change management — a clear change-request workflow to avoid scope creep and ensure timely implementation of feasible changes.
• Resource allocation — best practices for resource selection plus a list of roles needed over the next 18 months, with responsibilities and involvement estimates.
• Stakeholder management — classification models (power/influence, power/interest grids) and sample stakeholder management tables.

QA process optimization

• Introducing load and stress testing into the QA pipeline.
• Integrating automated tests into the existing CI/CD pipelines for immediate feedback.
• Differentiating defects found in production from those reported by users for better resolution planning and accountability.
• Incorporating security and reliability testing into the framework.

Help desk optimization

• Regular manual ticket review sessions to identify and clear outdated or irrelevant tickets.
• New ticket groups for better accountability, since many tickets for new features were piling up in the 'Other' category.

High-level consulting on cloud migration for the SaaS version of the WMS

INNERLUXES concluded that meeting the future SaaS version's scalability needs would require migrating the system to the cloud. Given the current WMS tech stack, INNERLUXES suggested Azure as the most suitable platform and provided cost estimates for two pricing models — pay-as-you-go (on-demand instances) and yearly packages (reserved instances) — showing reserved instances would be 30% more cost-effective given the Client's stable usage patterns.

Our engineers also analyzed data intake and processing options and concluded the SaaS would benefit from a robust message bus, documenting a detailed comparison of options (e.g., NATS, Apache Kafka, NSQ, RabbitMQ) against delivery and ordering guarantees, throughput, persistence, replayability, and scalability — recommending Kafka as the best option. We also provided cloud security guidance, including role-based permissions and access and multi-factor authentication using Azure Active Directory.

WMS evolution roadmap and performance enhancements with the potential to save $170K a year

• In just five business days, the Client received a full audit of the new WMS architecture with optimization recommendations and a detailed roadmap for evolving the WMS worker and supervisor apps.
• INNERLUXES instructed the Client on improving its on-premises WMS performance — implemented enhancements that can save the company up to $170,000 per year.
• Our team also analyzed the Client's project management, QA, and help desk workflows and provided improvement recommendations, plus strategic consulting on migrating the WMS to the cloud for its further development as a SaaS.

Technologies and Tools

Microsoft SQL Server, Azure Cloud, Azure Active Directory, Node.js, Zabbix Server, Uptime Kuma, NATS, Apache Kafka, NSQ, RabbitMQ.