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Industry domain brief

Wholesale Distribution & Warehousing

COBOLpro maps order, WMS, inventory, purchasing, pricing, freight, rebate, and supplier EDI dependencies for distributors.

3

Legacy estate

Systems and data surfaces to inspect

9

Workflows

Business workflows grouped by capability

3

Risks

Business impacts with control focus

4

Deliverables

COBOLpro assessment artifacts

Executive summary

Distribution and warehouse operators often depend on IBM i and long-lived ERP or WMS customizations for order entry, allocation, pick-pack-ship, replenishment, pricing, freight, returns, supplier EDI, and finance. Inventory accuracy depends on file timing and exception handling as much as screens.

COBOLpro builds a domain brief that lets operations, finance, ecommerce, and technology teams document without losing control of warehouse and order behavior.

Legacy systems in scope

The source estate to turn into an operating map.

Each row is structured for executive review: where the COBOL behavior sits, what it touches, and what the documentation must prove.

Order and warehouse operations

Legacy estate

Order management, WMS, RF, barcode, picking, packing, shipping, route, carrier, and return systems

Documentation focus

Allocation, pick-pack-ship, inventory updates, returns, carrier handoffs, and service exceptions

Inventory and replenishment

Legacy estate

Inventory, receiving, putaway, transfers, cycle count, purchasing, supplier EDI, ASN, backorder, and drop ship systems

Documentation focus

Stock accuracy, replenishment rules, supplier timing, purchase orders, exceptions, and warehouse day closure

Commercial and finance logic

Legacy estate

Contract pricing, rebates, freight, invoicing, claims, ecommerce, marketplace, portal, and finance feeds

Documentation focus

Customer-specific pricing, rebate accrual, freight selection, margin impact, and reconciliation

Operational workflows

Business capabilities, not raw program lists.

COBOLpro groups source behavior around the operating workflows buyers need to preserve, explain, or replace.

01

Order-to-ship

  • Quote, order entry, allocation, picking, packing, shipping, and invoicing
  • Carrier selection, route, freight, returns, and exceptions
  • Customer service, ecommerce, marketplace, and portal handoffs

02

Procure-to-stock

  • Receiving, putaway, replenishment, cycle counting, transfers, and adjustments
  • Supplier EDI, purchase orders, ASN, backorders, and drop ship
  • Warehouse close, inventory reconciliation, and exception processing

03

Commercial controls

  • Contract pricing, rebates, freight, claims, and deductions
  • Invoicing, finance feeds, margin reporting, and customer-specific overrides
  • Supplier, carrier, customer, and marketplace integration management

Risk and control priorities

Where legacy ambiguity becomes business exposure.

The assessment narrows risk to business impact and source-backed control evidence instead of treating documentation as a generic code inventory.

01

Inventory accuracy

Business impact

Warehouse, order, ecommerce, and finance systems can diverge when inventory timing is misunderstood.

Control focus

Trace stock movements, adjustments, allocations, transfers, jobs, files, RF flows, and interface timing.

02

Customer-specific pricing

Business impact

Contract pricing, rebates, freight, and overrides can create margin leakage and customer disputes.

Control focus

Document pricing and rebate rules with source references and downstream invoice impacts.

03

Supplier and carrier coupling

Business impact

EDI, ASN, carrier, and marketplace dependencies can constrain WMS, ERP, and ecommerce documentation.

Control focus

Inventory each file, format, trading partner, timing assumption, error path, and reconciliation control.

COBOLpro assessment output

Concrete artifacts for continuity decisions.

Outputs are written for shared use across business, audit, architecture, application, data, and delivery teams.

01

Order-to-ship lineage

Order, allocation, WMS, RF, carrier, invoicing, returns, ecommerce, and finance dependencies mapped end to end.

02

Inventory and pricing rule catalog

Rules for allocation, replenishment, adjustments, pricing, rebates, freight, claims, and returns.

03

Warehouse runbook

Jobs, files, RF flows, EDI paths, carrier interfaces, exception handling, and warehouse close steps.

04

Trading partner interface map

Supplier, customer, carrier, ecommerce, marketplace, portal, and finance integrations organized by workflow.

Domain assessment

Build the evidence package before changing Wholesale Distribution & Warehousing systems.

Plan domain assessment
Wholesale Distribution & Warehousing Legacy System Domain | COBOLpro