WMS Upgrade Scales Retail And Direct To Customer Fulfillment

Businesses in the personal care industry have to leverage the power of technology to meet consumer demands and improve business operations. The same is true for Jack Black, the number one men’s skincare brand in the country, whose tech innovation journey is guided by their desire to get ahead, if not keep up, with emerging trends. 

In our podcast episode with Tony Whyte, Group Director of Operations and Supply Chain of Jack Black, we discussed why they felt the need to upgrade their warehouse management system (WMS) and what benefits they got from it.

Top reasons to upgrade your WMS

When the pandemic hit, businesses scoured through tech solutions that would help them adapt. Luckily for Jack Black, they were already implementing a WMS upgrade right around the time the pandemic started. He shared their primary reasons for opting to do the upgrade:

• Meet FDA compliance requirements. For products that are considered drugs, full lock control tracking is required. “In order to do that, we needed to have a systematic way of doing it, and be able to control it with handheld scanners in our warehouse across our operations. So we put this solution into place.”
• Provide support to their strong web growth. E-commerce growth has increased over the past year and in order to turn orders around fast, an efficient solution was needed.
• Be more environmentally-focused. Aside from becoming more efficient in moving products around and receiving them, the system also allowed Jack Black to reduce  the amount of paperwork in their warehouse, ultimately becoming a more sustainable company.
• Manage inventory control better. Not only did it make them more compliant but internally, the upgrade allowed them to be more systematic while saving on costs.

Overall, their WMS upgrade helped Jack Black handle orders more systematically and accurately and cut extra steps along the way, making the whole process more efficient. This is especially helpful during peak holiday seasons including Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and all the way up to Christmas Eve, according to Whyte.

When asked what mistakes other businesses should avoid when doing their own WMS upgrade, he highlighted the importance of testing. “I would strongly recommend having a good three months of testing before moving to production,” Whyte said.

He also advised narrowing down what the operator has to do and looking at getting the comfort level of the operators up to speed faster. “I would recommend that you give yourself more time and train more people, get the equipment that they need and be patient.”

Tune in to Down to Freight podcast, where we sit down with transportation, logistics, supply chain, and warehousing subject matter experts to discuss the Digital Transformation Project.