Excerpt from Food Logistics:
Every warehouse management system (WMS) vendor will tell you their system has the functionality you need. They might be right. The 2026 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Warehouse Management Systems (WMS) confirms what buyers already suspect: core capabilities have converged. Differentiators have shifted. One of them worth highlighting is something most RFPs still treat as an afterthought: usability.
Usability earning a seat next to functionality isn’t a minor shift. It’s a signal that how a system feels to use now matters almost as much as what it can do. And there’s a clear, measurable reason why: labor.
Warehouse staff turnover is running around 49% annually, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data, nearly double the average across all industries.
Workers go home to consumer technology that’s intuitive and responsive, then come back to systems still built on function keys and green screens. Younger workers clock that gap immediately, and it shows up in how long they stay.
Improving WMS usability is one of the few levers operators can pull to improve job satisfaction that has nothing to do with a wage increase.
Author: Jeff Jones, Senior Account Executive
