How Pyramid rolled out their first ever warehouse with the help of Akatia's WMS for Salesforce, WAM.

Pyramid Transport & Cold Storage is a third party logistics provider (3PL) and operate out of Rhode Island and Delaware USA. They specialize in cold temperature controlled storage and transport and have been doing so for the last 25 years. As a 3PL they are a key part of their customers supply chain as they provide the storage and transportation logistics of the goods that their customers require to do commerce. They have the responsibility of insuring that their customers inventory is properly handled, stored correctly, and that they guarantee best practices in conformity to regulatory standards. Given their experience in this specialized industry they have earned the trust of their customers and have become an invaluable part of their partners and customers businesses.

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PROJECT BACKGROUND

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Pyramid Transport & Cold Storage had a long history of cold and temperature controlled transportation and logistics as a company. They had the experience and the expertise required of the regulatory protocols involved in cold transport. With their national logistics network footprint and with so much experience comes growth and a recurring customer base.

 

To manage and store the inventory that needed to be transported by their customers before it was scheduled to be transported, Pyramid relied on renting warehouse space for their customers goods through third party providers in the cold storage industry. These warehouses were primarily used for cross docking purposes. Ultimately with their business growth it was not going to be a sustainable path forward and so a new strategy needed to be taken.

 

Pyramid determined that owning and operating their own warehouse was going to be the best strategy moving forward. Having their own warehouse though necessitated having the right infrastructure and systems put into place.

 

Pyramid thus needed a warehouse management system, or WMS, to effectively manage the warehouse. Pyramid was also already using Salesforce for their logistics management business, specifically through the use of a Salesforce native transportation management system, or TMS. This being the case it was determined that whichever WMS was selected would also have to be Salesforce native. Furthermore, the WMS would need to be able to communicate and be integrated with their already existing TMS. Further the WMS also needed to be able to integrate with their current accounting software package.

 

The new system would also need to be able to generate documents according to their specifications. One inherent challenge was being able to separate customer information on shipping documents where multiple customers inventory were being shipped on the same transport, and often times the same goods. They wanted to have documents in place where each inventory being shipped on the same transport was only visible and pertained to each individual customer.

 

To facilitate fulfilment processes the WMS system also needed to support bulk picking strategies. Also, the WMS needed to accommodate cross docking procedures for inventory that would enter the warehouse, and quickly be transferred onto another truck for shipment out of the warehouse.

 

Lot number tracking was also going to be a requirement. Yet there was a catch, customers provided the lot numbers against the inventory they would be storing in the warehouse to Pyramid. But Pyramid wanted to apply their own lot number tracking number to each inventory that came into the warehouse for a customer. This being the case Pyramid's lot numbers would have to be associated to customer supplied lot numbers, so that there would be no confusion later during management and fulfilment.

 

Being that they were now transitioning to be a warehouser as well as a transportation company, Pyramid also wanted to make sure that they were maximizing the work in relationship to the inventory they managed. So, the WMS needed to allow for price book creation that were segregated by customer, and charges and rates applied to their customers and specific product types. These charges would of course have to be tracked and accumulated as work was performed and then sent to their account package for invoicing.

 

Lastly, to allow customer visibility on their inventory being stored and transportation progress a customer portal needed to be created.

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WAM IMPLEMENTATION

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Pyramid isolated Akatia Technologies WMS application for Salesforce, WAM, as the solution of choice. First and foremost was WAM’s fit with their goal of consolidating their systems under their Salesforce environment and ability to deliver robust out of the box features as well as the potential for bespoke configurations.

 

Akatia’s WAM WMS application being that it was Salesforce native would also allow for ease of integration with their current TMS application, Revenova. This would allow them to marry the two core aspects of their business: transportation and warehousing logistics.

 

Previously document generation was also a difficult process. WAM though has a proprietary document generator within the application. With this document generator Akatia were able to create the necessary documents that were required by Pyramid as well as segregate the multiple customer’s information on a shipment, thus achieving the goal of restricting visibility of customer consolidated shipments once they were delivered to each destination. On top of this the document generator is built as a drag and drop tool. So, as the need arose for further document types to be created, users at Pyramid could create them without the need of development skills.

 

WAM had the ability to also set up price books for each customer and apply inventory or task specific rates and charges within these price books. Furthermore, these charges, once created were set to be accrued as tasks were performed or as certain types of inventory were received, automatically. These charges would then be gathered, or batched at the end of each month, sent to their account software and then invoiced to the customer. To of course facilitate this process Akatia also integrated with their account software package, Accounting Seed, another Salesforce native application.

 

Thus, Pyramid were able to achieve their goal of consolidating their system infrastructure all on the Salesforce platform.

 

WAM has out of the box lot number tracking for any type of item or product. Of course, Pyramid would need to be able to apply their own lot against a customer’s inventory, who were supplying their own lot numbers. WAM though can account for any type of tracking number required by the business. Relating the numbers then was highly achievable due to the data relationship structure of Salesforce. Once we configured the variable for an extra lot tracking against the customer lot, the relationship was simple to ensure that they were mapped and related to each other.

 

The portal build was again completely created on the Salesforce platform. By sharing the inventory information, as well as transport and logistics information from the TMS integration customers were now able to login and view their order progress, transportation updates, inventory currently stocked and other key information. Pyramid were also able to restrict the type of information and its visibility accordingly.

 

WAM also has a mobile scanner application for the WMS, WAM Mobile. This scanner application is uploaded to a scanner device and then through a login, similar to a Salesforce user login, allows access to workers to be able to perform inventory management tasks, including printing of documents all on the go. The WAM Mobile application also sync live with the Salesforce org, and so as tasks are performed data and figures are updated instantaneously to Salesforce. This provides huge efficiency as well as real time and accurate figures for all stakeholders and employees. Pyramid took full advantage of this feature and have a completely mobile warehouse environment.

 

RESULTS

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WAM has been able to allow Pyramid to meet the challenges of their business. They have been able to eliminate the use of their previous warehousing renting strategy and bring all inventory management and logistics operations under their roof.

 

They have also fully maximized the Salesforce platform. Rather than having multiple systems, across multiple platforms, these core business applications now sit under one consolidated environment. They now have transitioned Salesforce from a purely CRM platform to a full scale business ERP.

 

Since transitioning to their in house warehousing model and implementing the Akatia WAM WMS the warehouse operations have taken off and with great success. They have achieved 90% capacity of their warehouse and growth potential is strong.

 

WAM has also provided a completely configurable application that will keep in step with their growth and has provided a high ROI. Fittingly, now that phase 1 implementation is complete, new phase 2 configurations and integrations are coming to extract even more potential from WAM and maximize the Salesforce platform.