eBook
TOP 5 WMS FRUSTRATIONS
& HOW TO FIX THEM
Since Warehouse Management Systems (WMSs) took off in the last century, they’ve become mission-critical to warehouse operations. But they haven’t really evolved from their original purpose of digitizing the file cabinet.
Today, the big 5 WMS software vendors—Manhattan (founded 1990), HighJump (founded in 1983, now part of Körber), Blue Yonder (founded in 1985, formerly JDA Software), Oracle WMS, and the most recently, SAP EWM (introduced in 2006)—can be found in the distribution centers of many of the largest companies across the world.
WMS software provide inventory workflow tools that allow warehouses to receive inventory, count it, position it, pick it, and send it. The goal is to get stuff into the warehouse and get it out.
Basically, they were built to focus on goods and supplies, not people. When some estimates put labor cost at 50-70% of warehouse operating expense, that’s a missed opportunity. But it’s only one of the WMS frustrations we hear from our customers.
Get the eBook to see the frustrations WMS users face and how CognitOps can help – without a costly and time consuming rip and replace.
Why Warehouse Teams Are Frustrated With Their WMS — And What to Do About It
Warehouse Management Systems are essential infrastructure. No serious distribution operation runs without one. But ask the people who use them every day — supervisors, operations managers, DC directors — and you’ll hear a consistent set of complaints that have persisted for decades, regardless of which vendor’s logo is on the software.
The reason is structural. The major WMS platforms — Manhattan, Blue Yonder, Körber, Oracle WMS, SAP EWM — were designed in an era when the primary challenge was tracking inventory: knowing what you had, where it was, and where it was going. They solved that problem well. But they were not designed for the modern warehouse’s most pressing challenge: managing people, workload, and real-time labor productivity at scale.
Frustration #1: No Real-Time Labor Visibility
Most WMS platforms provide transaction data — what was picked, packed, or received, and when. What they don’t provide is a real-time picture of labor productivity as it’s happening. By the time a supervisor pulls a report, the shift is half over and the window to intervene has passed.
Warehouse managers consistently report making staffing decisions based on intuition and walking the floor rather than data. When labor cost represents 50–70% of warehouse operating expense, the absence of real-time visibility into who is performing, where labor is concentrated, and where it’s needed is a significant operational liability.
Frustration #2: Engineered Standards That Don’t Reflect Reality
Many WMS platforms include a labor management module, but the engineered standards embedded in those modules are often set during implementation and rarely updated. Over time, product mixes change, facility layouts evolve, and the original standards become disconnected from what the work actually requires.
When standards are inaccurate, productivity reporting becomes unreliable. A picker who is flagged as underperforming may simply be assigned to a zone with outdated standards. A zone that appears productive may be masking inefficiencies that accurate standards would surface immediately.
Frustration #3: Siloed Data That Requires Manual Reconciliation
Even in facilities running best-in-class WMS platforms, operations teams typically manage data across 3–5 separate systems: the WMS, a time and attendance system, an LMS, a reporting or BI tool, and often a collection of Excel workbooks that serve as the connective tissue between all of them. The result is that producing a comprehensive view of operational performance requires hours of manual data pulling and reconciliation — work that is both time-consuming and prone to error.
The other two frustrations — poor planning tools and lack of cross-facility benchmarking — are covered in full in the eBook, along with practical guidance on how to address all five without a costly WMS rip-and-replace. CognitOps integrates with your existing WMS as an intelligence layer, filling the gaps in real-time visibility, labor planning, and performance measurement that the WMS was never designed to address.
Download the eBook above to see all five frustrations and the specific steps leading warehouse operators have taken to overcome them — without changing their core WMS infrastructure.
WMS Software & Warehouse Technology
Want to go deeper? Read our complete guide:
Top 5 Things Customers Hate About Their WMS Software (And What to Do Instead)
