I'm gonna go out on a limb here without knowing much about your situation and say that you're intuition about "...our current solution seems like a straightforward CRUD app, I fear the devil is in the details" is spot on. CRUD is inflexible when modeling processes. It doesn't have time as a core part of its design.
But the problem isn't about the details, it's that most developers don't want to actually do the job that they're trying to automate with software. They won't shadow the warehouse workers, they won't pick product, they won't work with the tools to do the job. Thus, they won't understand how to write software that models your businesses processes because they won't venture to experience the pain and gain the knowledge. They'll just end up building a CRUD app that uses the latest frameworks and "Best Practices", which, unfortunately, have nothing to do with making your business adaptable.
Sure, there's exceptions, but they're hard to find and demand a high pay because of the daily value they create. Hi ;)
You can attract experienced developers to a non-glamorous industry like logistics (I would LOVE THIS JOB). They don't even need to be experienced developers, they need to be willing to gain empathy by "going and seeing" the work to model it correctly.
Look for people who want to create value, who want to "go and see" for themselves before writing any software. The curious shall inherit the earth.
You don't need to hire a bunch of people, so pay well.
I hate saying this, but marketing is everything. Start posting on LinkedIn. I know. Everyone hates it. But software developers are on it. And so are tons of people looking for jobs.
When you do finally hire someone to do the work, go live every day. And the only way to do that is to identify small wins in the processes. Start chipping away at the bottlenecks. This is the way.
Good luck. You're not alone. So many people have the problems you're experiencing.
But the problem isn't about the details, it's that most developers don't want to actually do the job that they're trying to automate with software. They won't shadow the warehouse workers, they won't pick product, they won't work with the tools to do the job. Thus, they won't understand how to write software that models your businesses processes because they won't venture to experience the pain and gain the knowledge. They'll just end up building a CRUD app that uses the latest frameworks and "Best Practices", which, unfortunately, have nothing to do with making your business adaptable.
Sure, there's exceptions, but they're hard to find and demand a high pay because of the daily value they create. Hi ;)
You can attract experienced developers to a non-glamorous industry like logistics (I would LOVE THIS JOB). They don't even need to be experienced developers, they need to be willing to gain empathy by "going and seeing" the work to model it correctly.
Look for people who want to create value, who want to "go and see" for themselves before writing any software. The curious shall inherit the earth.
You don't need to hire a bunch of people, so pay well.
I hate saying this, but marketing is everything. Start posting on LinkedIn. I know. Everyone hates it. But software developers are on it. And so are tons of people looking for jobs.
When you do finally hire someone to do the work, go live every day. And the only way to do that is to identify small wins in the processes. Start chipping away at the bottlenecks. This is the way.
Good luck. You're not alone. So many people have the problems you're experiencing.