Inspiration
- The inspiration for starting Ascension Logistics came from a need in the market. I was originally working for a mid-sized Warehouse Management software company named RedPrairie. This company had tremendous growth and had quickly transformed into a large corporation where it somewhat lost its culture and people and quickly went from being treated as “family” to a number. Customer satisfaction quickly became an issue due to my former employer’s tremendous growth. I saw this as an opportunity to cater to clients looking for individuals who were experts in the WMS software and were being treated as a priority. This was the start of Ascension Logistics.
- With the majority of RedPrairie’s customers being Fortune 500 clients having large operations, things like scalability, limited resources, lack of expertise, and even the cost of implementation quickly became a challenge. Initially working independently, I saw a grander vision of helping organizations not only perform WMS implementations but also guide them through implementing a WMS for the first time. Many customers who haven’t gone through a WM implementation and have traditionally used a paper process normally underestimate the difficulty of their employees adopting such a massive change. Having worked with quite a few colleagues in the industry with similar or greater expertise than me, we formed an initially small unit of 8 consultants (now over 100 consultants) catering to the growing demand for Blue Yonder (formerly RedPrairie) WMS and TMS implementation and post-implementation services.
My team and I built a truly amazing company in Ascension Logistics. Our culture is very much a family-based organization, as most of the people employed are people we have known for years and share the same values. Our simple principle is to make the customer the priority, and we do this by simply keeping our employees happy. As such, customer satisfaction is our number one priority, and after 20+ years in business, our over 100+ Blue Yonder customer base is a testament to this.
Services
Initially, Ascension Logistics started out primarily installing and implementing Blue Yonder WMS, but our vision has been to continuously expand our expertise in the Blue Yonder Execution space.Over the years, we’ve successfully built WLM, WFM, and TMS practices. Our TMS practice is our second largest practice and aims to install and implement the Blue Yonder TMS software. As a secondary service, we perform TM Modeling and Optimization as an annual subscription-based service that aims to identify gaps within a client’s transportation network and provide recommendations. Within the last two years, we’ve also developed a Managed Service Provider program that addresses the issues of resource constraints, employee retention, employee retirement, and lack of expertise.
The Transportation Manager Services of the company encompasses technical and functional assessments of the TMS, swift implementations of applications, and seamless integration of SAP, Edi, WMS & other systems. This service line is designed to reduce the high transportation costs in the supply chains. On the contrary, the Managed Services Provider is focused on delivering outsourcing services to businesses grappling with employee management and retention. MSP circumscribes services concerning warehousing, transportation, logistics procurement, transportation modeling, tariff management, and risk mitigation.
Identifying the warehouse network of any company as the last line of defense to satisfy customer needs, Ascension has developed the Warehouse management service. The integrated and holistic approach of this service helps in implementing warehouses, assessing functionality, and seamless technological integration in warehouse management.
the dynamics of the warehousing industry
The warehousing industry has been rapidly changing. Warehouse management software has been relatively unknown up until the 90s, and with the emergence of new hardware and software technologies, many large companies have quickly migrated from a paper-based solution to a full software solution. In the recent decade, there has been a growing shortage of labor, so customers have had to rely on software to optimize labor productivity through solutions such as WLM (Warehouse Labor Management) and WFM (Workforce Management).
Customers have also had to adapt to the need to have their systems integrated both internally and externally, as well as try to conform to industry standards and regulatory requirements. This has then made warehousing and supply chain overall a necessity in today’s times. The slow implementation of automation, robotics, and other material handling equipment has been a challenge for most companies as they tend to be quite expensive and don’t cover all aspects of what a human can do. Yet we’ve seen a steady rise in clients implementing automated technology and, as such, a need to develop integration between the WMS and these systems.
Ascension Logistics has had the amazing opportunity to work with many Fortune 500 and even Fortune 50 clients who’ve adopted new technologies, and in doing so, has given us vast knowledge and expertise in this area. Our involvement with these clients has allowed us to build first-time integrations, processes, and capabilities that, in some cases, have been a first in the industry, paving the way and setting a standard for others. We’ve been able to implement very complex Automation, Robotics, Goods To Person (GTP), and Material Handling Equipment (MHE) systems such as Bastion, Dematic, Vocollect, Lucas, and FastFetch. While implementing technologies and software for Fortune 500 customers has put us in the spotlight, we actually are more geared towards mid-tier customers. This is because we are, in essence, a mid-sized consulting firm that touts a low cost to value. We are a precision team that molds ourselves to fit your budget. We lack the politics and administration overhead, with each and every member of our team being an expert in some facet of the Supply Chain industry, enabling us to deliver value right from the get-go.
success is a mindset
If I had to attribute one characteristic as to why Ascension Logistics has been a highly successful business, it’s because of our mindset. I’ve seen many people come across opportunities or ideas but never take them. They think too much of the risk or too much of losing what they already have, the security of their current situation. Our mindset here at Ascension is that no matter what, we will be successful. We don’t think too much about any future obstacles, and if one does come, we see it as a challenge and even further, an opportunity. Most other businesses would stop when they see an obstacle. We see an obstacle as a great “engineering” feat that we can solve. Our consultancy mindset has helped us with this. For us, whenever our customers approach us with problems, our minds go ablaze with ideas. We thrive on thinking both within the box as well as outside of the box to see how we can “fix” or overcome this problem for them. We are firefighters and handymen at the same time. We are Jack-of-all-trades and Jackie Chan…resourceful geniuses. This is how the leadership at Ascension thinks, speaks, and acts. Our attitude of genuinely caring for the customer and looking to solve their problems has made our minds strong and empowered us to see what few others see…there is a solution to every problem, and we WILL be successful in solving it.
Success is a mindset. What originally started as finding solutions to problems for our customers became a passion and a desire for us. The rewards of this were both financial success as well as personal success. Our personal successes far outweighed the financial success as our journey brought about internal happiness, lasting friendships, and great pride in what we were doing.
This positive attitude and desire for success extended beyond just our customers but internally as well. We look out for each other and, without any hesitancy, endear to help our colleagues and aim to make them successful. This is our brand, this is our legacy, this is our culture…SUCCESS FOR ONE IS SUCCESS FOR ALL. We are a family; we work together as a single unit, striving first for our personal success and then helping the next person earn their own. It is then, through our shared struggles, that has made us bond together as a family.
BEYOND 2024
There used to be a show called Beyond 2000. This show was broadcast back in the early 80’s and displayed all the up-and-coming technologies that were being innovated at the time. PCs, color printers, cell phones, and flying cars were many of the gadgets that were displayed. So much of that has come true and in such short order at that. We have gone way beyond what we could ever have thought or dreamt of from those days. Where will we be in another 5 or 10 or 20 years? Artificial Intelligence has been a big topic these days, and this is fast and furiously being researched as to how we can implement it in our day-to-day lives as well as within the Supply Chain.
I do believe that it will revolutionize the Warehousing and Transportation Execution space, but it will come along with the adoption of Robotics and Automation. AI, in conjunction with robotics, will drive greater forecasting, planning, picking, shipping, and transportation efficiencies, as well as a much greater reduction in errors and damages. These are definitely exciting times to be in. The world is about to change again, and it’s exciting because we at Ascension will be at the forefront of these changes, helping our customers adapt and adopt this new paradigm shift in technology and evolutionary thinking.
