James and I talked to Michael Pytel, co-founder and CTO of Fulfilld, a cloud SaaS warehouse management startup. As a fellow SAP nerd, we have shared background for commiseration. Michael has done some amazing things with the technology powering Fulfilld, and he and the rest of his team have given a lot of thought to matching that technology up to business needs for several warehouse worker personas. It was a blast geeking out.

Highlights

• Techie with CNC machining in his blood — grandfathers, uncle, father
• Co-founded NIMBL
• Geeks out about digital twins — even got the chance to do a digital twin of 49ers stadium

The new face of bread

• Mastered breadmaking during COVID
• One way to look at goals: “how do we become the Uber and Waze of the warehouse?”
• Why SaaS? IT departments are hampered by operations and maintenance. It’s HARD to get that innovation done with those burdens.
• It’s freeing to come out of the limitations of the ERP systems to really build what Fulfilld wanted
• It’s not vapor, customers are signed.
• The cost to develop in new, open technologies is much lower than the traditional ERP realm.
• Autoscaling infrastructure allows them to spend much less on infra and much more on engineering
• It all boils down to: cost of license, cost of maintenance. Everything else is details.
• Michael sees augmented reality (AR) as a natural next step for the future of the warehouse.

Money Quotes

Michael

We walk into the warehouse, we see a bunch of mobile devices on the charger…no one using them.

Building open, building flexible. That’s the key.

If enough employees are trained on Fulfilld, could we create an on-demand workforce for warehouses?

Paul

[Choosing your own stack] It’s a breath of fresh air!