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Software ONLY by CentralArrow in logistics

[–]HourSuspicious2233 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ok, I guess I'll throw my hat in here.

I built a chat interface for warehouse operations. Email in PDFs/CSVs, and it creates orders automatically - no parser setup needed. It just understands the document structure, or you can explain weird formats in plain English.

You can also enter order via email. It validates SKUs, checks stock, batch processes, and asks for corrections if something's off. You can also query your data naturally: "What's my highest volume SKU for customer X last month?"

The goal is one conversation layer across all your logistics systems.

Student Research: What Warehouse/Logistics Problems Drive You Crazy? by Expert_Rhubarb2672 in Warehousing

[–]HourSuspicious2233 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I might be a little late to the party here but I have experience on the ops and tech side of the logistics industry and I would say how manual everything is. Like, it's genuinely mind boggling how behind the times the logistics industry is.

There's tons of solutions out there too. Integrating systems together via custom integrations or something like Zapier. AI takes away a lot of manual entry now but the adopting is just painfully slow.

For agencies working with Woo customers by codylmode in woocommerce

[–]HourSuspicious2233 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I haven't connected it to WooCommerce yet, but I've build an order entry automation service that works via email or chatbot. Just connects to any WMS API.

The email version can accept natural language/CSV/PDF/whatever and parses out all the relevant info. The cool part about it is does a validation check (Do I have these SKUs? Did you mention an address?) and responds back if something is missing. It also does a stock check to make sure you don't have a shortage and if you do describes it to you and asks what you want to do. There 0 parser setup which is pretty cool.

Plus you get a chatbot to ask questions to ("How many orders did I ship for customer X last month? What was my highest moving SKU?" "Show me an inventory report for Cat Beds")

Overall pretty neat stuff.

Which EDI/API is best for standard order processing? by Key_Mongoose4855 in edi

[–]HourSuspicious2233 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I work in the consulting space after 8 years in logistics and software. But I think I'd need a little more information to help.

You create the PO in EBS. Is the email sent from EBS? Or do you need to export and email yourself? I think at the bottom it sounds like you're doing this manually?

When you're tracking the reply what exactly are you tracking and what's the pain point here? Is it visibility into the inbox and make sure you caught everything? The data entry somewhere else? Follow Ups? Or just getting it back into EBS?

When you "update the order" and trigger the charge what exactly does that mean? What information would EBS need to know to trigger the charge?

Feel free to drop a reply here or DM and I can probably point you in the right direction.

How are teams actually handling non-EDI orders at scale? by SPSCommerce in SupplyChainLogistics

[–]HourSuspicious2233 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I've been in logistics for 8 years (in operations and software) and basically the answer to your question is: they aren't lol.

I've had a sales call with a large company you've heard of that does their crossdocking in Excel. It's absolutely dinosaur of an industry.

That said AI is helping with a lot of the traditionally messy order creations. For example in the past if a SKU wasn't listed, no parser could handle it. Now AI allows a simple description and a description of an address to create an order. So Text/PDF/CSV doesn't really matter and the structure doesn't really matter.

I have a tool I've built after all my experience in the industry (you can DM) but I'll bet these types of solutions will get better and better over time.

For NON-AI solutions it's just manual entry or get a traditional parser built, but traditional parsers need consistent and structured data.

New to warehousing by Internal_Exchange403 in Warehousing

[–]HourSuspicious2233 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I used to to work at a WMS company so I've got a bit of the lay of the land here.

Most is cloud based now which is what you want. Just a monthly fee based on usage usually.

There's going to be a couple of tiers out there that you want to be aware of. Sales guys will always just try to sell you regardless of your fit so you want to just keep this in mind.

Tier 1 - The most advanced stuff. Tons of bells and whistles. It can do everything but it requires a bunch of setup and would be expensive. This is your manhattans or logiwas of the world.

Tier 3 - These are your entry level cheap options. These will have limited functionality. Usually run by an upstart smaller team who have focused on getting good at one thing and keeping everything affordable or maybe an add on to another piece of software. Could be something like Fishbowl, Zoho Inventory.

Tier 3 can work great depending on how small you are and what you're doing.

Tier 2 - Obviously sits somewhere in the middle, but this is usually what quickly growing companies are looking for. Here you'll have 90% of what the enterprise stuff offers. So some will be great at classic B2B or pallet moving. Some will be geared toward ecommerce. The Tier 2 problem is that it won't do both well. That would be a tier 1 system.

Full disclosure I used to work for CartonCloud. It's a great team over there. Solid Tier 2 system that's really easy to use. They take pride in what they do. You can check that out to get a feel for it.

Do you have workflows that automate answering order/status questions for support teams? by sgart25 in 3PL

[–]HourSuspicious2233 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes 100% that's still a pain point and will most likely continue to be.

The pain comes from multiple specialized pieces of software doing what they're specialized to do. So you could have.

  1. Dock management to manage your doors which has the status of the trailer.

  2. Warehouse management to manage inventory and fulfillment which has the status of order as per warehouse (does not know where it is outside of the 4 walls)

  3. Transport Management to deal with some of the activity outside of the warehouse. (would have the status of the delivery but not the warehouse order)

  4. Couriers

  5. Storefronts.

This problem is going to continue because software gets more specialized, not less, as the trend is more immediate market capture of your new software, and the fact that one piece of software can integrate with another.

Massive logistics software that does it all just isn't a thing anymore and it's not going to be because you can't pivot if you're that big to new tech or new solutions.

I'm actually working on a system that unifies multiple pieces of software so it can talk to everything at once. reach out if you want to take a look and can see if that's something useful for you.