A WMS decision belongs in the value creation plan, not in an approval memo at the end of one.
A portfolio company brings a WMS request that will run for a decade and often cost seven figures. Most of the people in the room who know the category have a stake in the answer: the vendor, the implementer, and the executive who championed it. Fullstride doesn't, and has worked on every side of that table.
No vendor relationships. No implementation revenue. No referral fees.
What the default choice would have cost the fund
$0.8M–$1.3M
For one two-facility distributor, the reputable vendor the company started with ran $93k a year more in subscription than the system that actually fit the operation. Subscription is opex, so the fund pays for it twice. Once in cash: $280k–$465k through a 3 to 5 year hold. And again at exit, where every dollar of EBITDA is priced at the multiple: $560k–$835k at 6x to 9x.
Fit decided the ranking, and the money followed from it: the cheapest system on the table was ruled out before cost came up.
- 2
- facilities, one on each coast
- $93k
- a year in subscription between the starting vendor and the one that fit
- ~$1M
- ten-year cost gap between the same two
- 10x+
- the gap, against the full fee for the Sprint and Vendor Scrutiny
Before tax and undiscounted. The exit figure is a one-time hit to the sale price; the hold figure is subscription paid along the way. Neither counts the one-time implementation gap between the two vendors, which would only add to it. Ten-year figures are projections from the scorecard, not observed savings.
Where the plan meets the warehouse
Five places the thesis stalls
Roll-ups, new facilities, and margin targets all run through the warehouse system. Most of these stay out of the deal model until they've already cost something.
- 01
An add-on closes, and its warehouse runs on a different system, or on paper.
The plan assumes one way to receive, store, and ship. The buildings don't share one yet.
- 02
The plan says consolidate buildings. The systems work isn't in the number.
Moving volume between buildings means moving it between systems, and that cost sits outside the model.
- 03
A capex request arrives with one vendor's name already on it.
If the shortlist came from a reseller or someone's memory, approving it ratifies a selection that never happened.
- 04
The implementation is behind, and the board deck still shows the original date.
Status reports describe the plan. By the time the date moves, the work has usually slipped well before it.
- 05
Exit is 18 months out, and fulfillment runs on a few people's memory.
A buyer's diligence finds the spreadsheets and the workarounds. Fixing them on a buyer's timeline is expensive.
Across a portfolio
Which portfolio companies to send
Operations that run on rules set by other parties: client SOPs, retailer routing guides and chargebacks, regulatory traceability, customer SLAs. The software has to encode rules the operator doesn't control, which is what makes the decision expensive to get wrong.
3PLs, founder-led or sponsor-backed
Every client is an outside rule-setter, and the operation lives or dies on keeping each client's inventory separate and billing it accurately.
Distributors that have outgrown their ERP's warehouse module
Retailer compliance, regulatory traceability, customer SLAs with teeth, often several sites, and sometimes supplier-owned inventory tracked on paper.
Not a fit
- Simple pick-and-pack ecommerce, or pallet-in, pallet-out. A bad choice hurts them less, and a specialist is harder to justify.
- A decision already made that only needs a signature: a favored vendor, a replacement someone wants blessed, a project that has to be declared healthy.
Four moments in a hold period
Each is a fixed-fee engagement with a defined deliverable, so the cost is known before anyone approves it.
Before capex approval
System Fit Sprint
Which system fits the operation, or becomes the standard across a roll-up, ranked before vendor demos set the agenda.
See how it works →Proposals on the table
WMS Proposal Review
What each proposal covers, what it assumes, and what it leaves for later, before the portfolio company signs.
See how it works →Mid-hold, behind schedule
WMS Project Triage
Where the implementation actually stands, the sequence to recover, and a straight answer on the go-live date.
See how it works →Live, and straining
WMS Solution Review
Whether the system can carry the growth the plan needs, and if not, whether the gap is the software, its configuration, or the operation feeding it.
See how it works →Evaluating a target whose warehouse system matters to the thesis? Pre-close work is scoped to the deal and its timeline. Start with the intro call.
For the operating partner
The view from the other side of the table
You bring pattern recognition across a portfolio. A WMS decision turns on knowledge that's narrower and harder to come by: how a given vendor behaves after signature, which implementation estimates tend to hold, what a demo was staged to avoid. That knowledge mostly sits with vendors and implementers, the people selling.
Fullstride brings it from the other side. Casey Winans spent 25 years building, selling, and implementing these systems before advising on them, and Fullstride's only revenue is a fixed fee that doesn't depend on what gets chosen. Management still makes the call. You get a basis for approving it that you can trace back to the operation.
For the next board meeting
Three questions to ask before approving a WMS
- 1
Which vendors were ruled out, and why?
A shortlist assembled from the ERP reseller's suggestion and someone's memory isn't a selection. If nobody can say what was eliminated and on what grounds, the market was never searched.
- 2
What is Year 1 after the implementation estimate is corrected, and who corrected it?
Implementation estimates run optimistic, and by a different amount for each vendor, so the quotes can't be ranked as submitted. The cheapest bid can turn out to be the least accurate.
- 3
Has the team that will implement the system run it in front of you?
Demos are usually run by the people selling. If nobody on the delivery team, the vendor's or a partner's, has run your scenarios, nobody knows whether they can.
All three came up in the engagement below.
Five real options where there had been one foregone conclusion before the Sprint.
A PE-backed produce distributor, two facilities, an ERP rollout already further along than the warehouse question, and a VP of Tech who had rolled out two warehouse systems himself before this one. He hired an outside advisor anyway, and the reasons had nothing to do with capability.
"The options you brought to the table were things that would have been excluded otherwise, so the value was there for the company just based on that alone."
Includes both deliverables, reproduced with the vendor names removed.
From the deliverable
Two rankings. Same five vendors. They disagree.
| What the analysis said | What they proved on demo | |
|---|---|---|
| Vendor C | 1st | 3rd |
| Vendor F | 2nd | 1st |
| Vendor A | 3rd | 2nd |
The gap between them is the difference between the vendor most likely to serve the operation and the vendor best at showing that it would. Collapsing the two into one number would have been easier to read and worth less.
- 2 of 5
- vendors on the final shortlist had never come up before the Sprint
- +200%
- markup the cheapest quote in the room needed to become realistic
- ~$1M
- ten-year gap between either finalist and the vendor they started with
Frequently asked questions.
How is this different from our operating partner or a consulting firm?
An operating partner brings judgment across a portfolio, but a WMS decision turns on knowledge that usually sits inside the market: how a vendor behaves after signature, which implementation estimates hold, what a demo was staged to avoid. The people who have it are mostly selling. Many of the consulting firms that do WMS selection also sell the implementation or integration work that follows, so the recommendation and the follow-on revenue sit in the same firm. Fullstride's view comes from having built, sold and implemented these systems, and its only revenue is a fixed fee that doesn't depend on the choice. The operating partner keeps the oversight. Fullstride adds the view from the other side of the table.
Do you take kickbacks or referral fees from WMS vendors?
Never. Fullstride has no vendor relationships, takes no referral fees, and earns no implementation revenue. The client's fixed fee is the only way Fullstride gets paid, and it doesn't change with the answer: which vendor wins, whether a project is called on track, or whether a live system gets a clean verdict. That leaves one incentive, which is getting the answer right.
Who makes the decision, Fullstride or the portfolio company's management?
Management does. Fullstride documents how the operation actually runs, filters the market against it, and ranks the options with the reasoning shown, but the call stays with the team that has to live with the system and answer for it to the board. What changes is what the decision rests on. Without an independent view, management chooses from inputs shaped by the parties selling to it, and the sponsor approves a choice it has little independent way to check. With one, management chooses from options tested against the operation, and the sponsor approves a recommendation it can trace.
Can Fullstride work on a deal before it closes?
Sometimes, when the target's warehouse system matters to the thesis: an add-on that has to move onto the platform's system, a consolidation plan that runs through it, or a target whose fulfillment depends on a system it has outgrown. There's no standard diligence package, because the useful question differs by deal and the close sets the timeline. The scope gets agreed on the intro call: what has to be answered, by when, and with what access. The independence doesn't change. The fee is fixed before the work starts, and it's the same whether the answer helps the deal or complicates it.
Next step
Bring the decision in early
A short call with the operating partner, the portfolio company's lead, or both. If one of the four engagements fits, you'll leave knowing which one and what it costs. If none do, you'll hear that too.