April 1, 2005
When catalog order management systems were first developed in the 1970s, they were designed to manage all aspects of catalog operations: from order entry, customer service and customer database management to response analysis, inventory management, purchasing, fulfillment, and returns. Thirty years later, they still are, which is why so many direct merchants can run their businesses on these applications without a need to add specialized solutions for things like warehouse management. Some companies, however, find their catalog management systems don’t provide the flexibility or sophistication they need to address their inventory or fulfillment challenges. For them, a warehouse management system (WMS) is a necessary
