GXO: WMS Standardization, SG&A Leverage and Launch Execution

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I'm trying to decide where to go next. I guess the question is, do you understand the key role of bringing in either Manhattan or Blue Yonder as critical for sales to the largest customers? I might have misunderstood, but I thought the Blue Yonder partnership announcement meant they would standardize their smallest clients with limited bespoke attributes, while larger clients would still have a customized system. Are you saying they will do that, but also deprecate all the WMX instances?

Yes, in my roadmap, that was the long-term transition. I had around 120 to 125 exempt IT folks on my team in the U.S. to manage all of the WMS systems. If I compare that to how we managed WMS at Amazon in the early days, when we had 300 warehouses, David Glick probably had 40 or 50 people. It was a very different setup, with speed and transaction volumes of a different magnitude. My SG&A spend was linear relative to sales, which didn't make sense to me. I wasn't gaining economies of scale with the system, nor was I able to spend enough to keep up with the next best thing from a customer integration perspective. My five-year plan was to deprecate and roll out. We tried to roll smaller customers into WMx, but my cost structure still required me to charge a lot, and it wasn't as good a system. When customers who paid 50 cents are now asked to pay three dollars, they want to know what's better. If I say it just does everything, but now I can do upgrades, they see no benefit other than a higher charge. Blue Yonder, with its labor management system, offers specific incremental benefits compared to what we could claim. I was the U.S. CIO for two and a half years, so I believe my understanding is accurate. I'm hands-on and learn a lot by doing and observing processes. For example, at Amazon, it took three clicks to process a return, while WMx required 26 clicks when I first arrived. Many of those steps made no sense and were outdated, yet still required. That's a challenge.

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