Tim Taylor, senior director of platform product management at Tecsys, discusses how warehouse operators can balance the need for customized solutions with that of access to the latest and most secure applications.

Warehouse operations and IT leaders today are struggling to stitch together point solutions for execution, extend the enterprise resource planning application they already own, and opt for a purpose-built platform. Taylor says the tradeoff comes down to three factors: how much end-to-end visibility the facility has for accessing operational insights, whether it possesses the toolsets and teams to keep up with change, and what is the total solution cost over the long term.

“I’d be picky about accumulating point solutions,” Taylor says, noting that the growth of systems, partners and artificial intelligence agents complicates the security picture greatly. “It’s a matter of looking at security holistically, and securing the integrated ecosystem that comes with a bunch of best practices,” including identity management, least privilege and zero-trust access.

The coming of AI puts pressure on organizations to maintain a regular upgrade cadence for all of their systems, Taylor adds.

Application programming interfaces are key to building new integrations among multiple systems. “It comes back to the tools that allow you to adapt and extend the solution to address changing needs,” Taylor says. “The ability to customize the solution is real.”

In approaching the question of how to deploy AI within the operation, leaders should evaluate their capabilities in terms of return on investment. “Anything with a good business case earns its place in the conversation,” Taylor says.