Transformative Upgrade : Enhancing Warehouse Management for a Leading Private Equity Firm in the UK

Customer Overview

One of the largest private equity firms headquartered in the UK acquired portfolio companies in the business of managing warehouses for elite people across the US and Europe. The private equity firm aimed to introduce a pivotal warehouse management system to manage the warehouse operations of all portfolio companies.

Project Overview

In the current system, each of the various portfolio companies utilizes its distinct warehouse management system to oversee internal processes. The private equity firm aimed to consolidate disparate systems and processes across its portfolio companies by implementing a unified warehouse management system. They want to start by building a system that enables users to efficiently search for warehouse items, submit service requests, and transparently track the movement of goods.

Challenges

Building a centralized system with advanced features, migrating multiple Warehouse Management Systems (WMS) into it, and ensuring uninterrupted operation.

• The primary challenge was to migrate all Warehouse Management Systems (WMS) modules from multiple portfolio companies to a centralized system, while ensuring continuous operation of centralized and individual portfolio systems throughout the transition.
• Implementing and managing warehouse items is the main priority in the new WMS, with a focus on full text search and handling service requests for warehouse items.
• Implementing a sophisticated role-based access management system for all types of users that can accommodate all future requests related to roles and permissions, considering the potential of drastic changes in role management.
• Enabling real-time tracking and damage detection of items during both inward and outward movements.
• The new system relies on data sources from various WMS of portfolio companies, requiring parallel operation until all modules transition to the centralized system.
• Onboarding and training users from multiple portfolio companies onto the new centralized system successfully.

Solution

We developed a client portal module as a web and mobile application. It is a part of the centralized Warehouse Management System (WMS).

• During the transition period until full integration, users had access to operate on both the centrally managed WMS and the WMS of their respective portfolio companies.
• Since the new system relies on the data from existing portfolio companies, we have implemented an advanced data pipeline that consistently transfers data from all portfolio companies to the databases of the new system.
• Approximately 80% of the system's functionality is dedicated to searching, categorizing and taking actions on items. Our approach aims to simplify stakeholder training & onboarding by providing a user experience similar to an online marketplace.
• To enhance our search experience and emulate the features of a marketplace, including full-text search, smart search, image search and filtering, we implemented Elasticsearch as our search engine offering sophisticated query capabilities.
• Due to the ever-changing nature of stakeholder roles, particularly concerning item access, we have deployed Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) to meet current and future requirements seamlessly.
• Efficiently managing the item movement is crucial, so we have integrated real-time tracking for users to monitor transit. Additionally, we've employed artificial intelligence to identify and flag damage promptly, during movement, alerting users of any issues thereby enhancing transparency.

Benefits

The warehouse management system we custom-designed and developed provides the following benefits to our client:

• Consolidating multiple portfolio companies' systems into one centralized location reduced the effort required for searching and managing service requests.
• Enhanced transparency in tracking and managing item movement across various geographical locations led to heightened customer engagement.
• Breaking silos in processes and data across the portfolio companies with our solution helped the client streamline operations and promote consistency in data management.
• The client gained better oversight and control over the operations of portfolio companies while enhancing efficiency and improving collaboration and communication.

Industry

• Logistics
• Warehouse management

Technology and Integration

• Java, Elasticsearch, React, Flutter
• AWS Lambda, AWS RDS, AWS SQS, AWS Fargate, AWS Amazon Rekognition, AWS Lookout, AWS Sagemaker