If you are running warehouse(s), or if you are running a company that needs to manage warehouse items (not necessarily a warehouse), then you got tough choices to make in Warehouse Management. It is because of three things:
- Cost of procurement and maintenance of software system(s)
- Integration and/or interface between the software system(s)
- Functionalities needed in the Warehouse Management System/Module
Many videos and blogs have already been written about the above points, so I am not going to go into them. I would just focus on the testing considerations on these choices.
- If you choose to have an ERP system (does not matter if it is enterprise or a SMB version), and if you do not customize your WMS module in it and go with the options that are available in-built, then your integration is straight-forward, and the amount of testing that you need to do is also relatively less involved and straightforward.
- If you choose to customize the WMS module in your ERP system specific to your needs, then the integration testing needs to cover those additional aspects that are customized in the WMS module, and how those aspects interact with the mother ERP system.
- If you choose to have the two software systems ERP and WMS separate, then that brings about the interface testing (with or without middleware between ERP and WMS), which is pretty involved, and needs careful planning of end-to-end solution testing with various facets like communication protocols, manual or automated or hybrid operations considerations, third-party middleware integration testing, etc.
In any case, testing the WMS-ERP integration or interface functionality needs to done by professionals, and it needs careful planning of solution test architecture, test strategy, and test planning. If you have a need in testing for your ERP/WMS integration, you can contact me, and I would be glad to see if I can help you.