WMS Microservices mean faster innovation for your warehouse

Why WMS Microservices mean faster innovation for your warehouse

It used to be standard, but these days, waiting months for software enhancements for your WMS just isn’t practical. Customer demands change overnight, and operational challenges crop up just as quickly. It doesn’t matter if it’s a new SLA requirement from your biggest customer, or a requirement to integrate some new robotics… whatever gets thrown at you, your systems need to keep up if you’re going to stay competitive.

Which is where microservices come in. No longer just a technical buzzword, they’re actually a powerful game changer when it comes to how quickly you can adapt, modernise, and stay ahead of the competition.

Why Speed of Innovation Matters in Warehousing

Think about the pressures you face every single day:

• Next-day and same-day delivery expectations are fast becoming (if they aren’t already) the norm.
• Labour shortages mean that you need rapid process automation.
• Increased complexity from even more SKUs, complex returns management, and omnichannel demands.

A warehouse management system that takes months to roll out enhancements is going to add even more layers of complexity. You need a workhorse (Dispatcher WMS), PLUS something that can evolve as quickly as your operation does – adding new features, refining processes, and supporting growth without slowing everything else down.

How Microservices offer faster deployment

Traditionally, warehouse management systems have been built as one large application. This meant that making a change to any part of it required extensive testing and coordinated releases to avoid breaking the whole system. It’s why enhancements are typically bundled into major releases, but that way of working can delay fixes and new features for months.

Microservices have turned that approach upside down:

• Independent modules: e.g. Socius24’s User Services Portal, eBilling – and our new Mobile application – have all been developed as individual services.
• Faster development and testing: Changes can be made to one service without affecting others, which reduces testing time.
• Incremental releases: New features and enhancements can be rolled out in small, targeted deployments instead of waiting for full-scale upgrades.

Think of it like the way you update your smartphone. You don’t wait for a complete operating system upgrade to get new features in your individual apps. Each app updates independently as individual improvements are released. Microservices bring that kind of agility to your warehouse management system. They’re the layer between your Dispatcher WMS and the ever-changing environment that you’re trying to harness.

Real Examples from Socius24 engineering and projects

This is what it looks like in the Real World.

A recent Mobile App project: Updated cross-docking

One of our customers needed a change to the way that they received in pallets and cross-docked them. Their operations team identified a tweak that would give them a quicker way to receive multiple pallets, that could then be automatically cross docked onto a Service Provider’s vehicle. It was a small change that had a big operational impact.

Because of our microservices architecture, our engineering team scoped and developed the enhancement in a few weeks. Then, using Agile methodology, they rapidly deployed individual parts of it to a staging environment for customer testing.

As each part of the new functionality was finished, it was deployed, without having to wait for the entire system to be online before it could be used: it was released to production after approval with zero disruption to other modules – and minimal rework.

From initial request to live deployment took weeks. In a traditional monolithic system, the same change would have been queued for a future major release – possibly months away.

Business impact of faster innovation

The technical agility our engineers have is nice, and all, but this was about direct operational benefits:

Teams got new features when they needed them, which meant no more workarounds or waiting months for small but critical improvements.

Process bottlenecks were resolved faster, which meant that improvements designed to remove daily frustrations could be deployed really quickly – driving productivity gains.

When you deploy microservices properly, you get to stay competitive – because Warehouses that can deploy rapidly evolving WMS solutions can stay ahead of their competitors – who are still waiting for their next software upgrade window.

Ready to see it in action?

If you want to see how microservices-enabled enhancements could transform your warehouse operations, get in touch now: info@socius24.com