The structure below is the standard pilot: a paid, defined engagement where we configure your workflow, train your crew, and measure throughput against your current process for 30 days — while whatever you run today keeps running. It is deliberately designed so the adoption decision is made on your own numbers at day 30, not on a demo.
Week 0: scoping (before the pilot starts)
A short working session, usually one call, that determines how smooth week 1 is:
- Walk the workflow verbally. What are your stages, really — not the org-chart version, but what the floor does? Intake, chamber, inspect, store, pack-back? Where must photos be mandatory? What questions must be answered before an item advances?
- Name a floor champion. One respected crew member who will run the first live jobs and become the internal answer-person. Rollouts with a champion move roughly twice as smoothly as rollouts driven from the office.
- Inventory the hardware. Crew phones (ItemStage is mobile-first — crews use their own devices), a label printer and stock, and a wifi reality-check of the warehouse. Dead zones are fine — the app works offline — but knowing where they are prevents week-2 confusion.
- Pick the first jobs. One or two real, representative pack-outs — not a toy test job. The pilot measures reality or it measures nothing.
Week 1: configuration and training
We configure your stages, required photo gates, checklist questions, and dispositions from the week-0 session, then train the crew on their own phones — intake with barcode labels printed on-site, stage scans, photo capture, and what the app refuses to let them skip. Most facilities run their first live items inside this week. Two honest notes: the first day of live intake runs slower than your current process while the motions are new, and this is the week most teams discover their crew never fully agreed on what each stage means. That argument is a feature — settle it now, in configuration, rather than in a dispute eight months from now.
Weeks 2–3: live jobs, both systems running
New pack-outs run end to end in ItemStage; jobs already open in your old system finish there. No single job spans two systems — that rule protects your claim documentation during the transition (the migration guides for Encircle and Assured PackOut cover the platform-specific details). During these weeks the system is quietly building your baseline: items per day per stage, photo compliance, time from intake to completion. The floor champion fields the "it won't let me move this item" complaints — which are the gates working — and we adjust configuration where the workflow was specified wrong.
Week 4: measure and decide
Day 30 is a numbers meeting, not a sales call. You compare per-stage throughput, photo and checklist compliance, and export time against what your current process produces, and you see your own data in the reporting views your managers would live in. Then you decide: continue on a standard plan ($299 or $699 per facility per month, unlimited users), or stop — in which case everything the pilot created exports as CSV plus a full image archive, and you have lost a pilot fee and gained a documented workflow definition. For calibration on what production numbers look like: the facility ItemStage was built inside sustains roughly 2,200+ items a month with a 12-minute median from intake through all four stages — real data, one facility, published with its caveats.
Weeks 5 and beyond: cutover and deepening
Facilities that continue typically do three things over the following month: cut all new work over to ItemStage while the last legacy jobs close out, tighten the configuration now that a month of data shows where the bottleneck stage actually is, and — on the Facility tier — layer in teams, shifts, and bay-level reporting once the basics are muscle memory. Resist configuring everything on day one; the operations that stick are the ones that let the workflow stabilize before adding structure.
The honest failure modes
Rollouts stall for predictable reasons: no floor champion, a pilot run on fake test items nobody cares about, stage definitions left ambiguous "to sort out later," or leadership that never looks at the day-30 numbers. All four are addressable in week 0 — which is why week 0 exists.
Frequently asked questions
How long does it take to get ItemStage running?
Most facilities are running live items within the first week: stage configuration and crew training typically take days, not weeks. The full 30-day workflow pilot exists not because setup is slow but because the decision should be made on a month of real throughput data, not a good first impression.
What does the 30-day workflow pilot include and cost?
It is a paid, defined engagement: we configure your stages and checklists, train your crew on their own phones, set up label printing, and measure throughput against your current process for 30 days. Pilot pricing is scoped to your facility — ask for current terms when you book.
Do we have to stop using our current system during the pilot?
No — the pilot is designed to run alongside whatever you use today. New jobs run in ItemStage; in-flight jobs finish in the existing system. No single job ever spans two systems, and your current tool keeps running until the numbers justify the cutover.
What usually slows a rollout down?
Rarely the software. The common drags are workflow disagreements surfacing for the first time (what actually counts as 'inspected'?), label printer logistics, and warehouse connectivity dead zones — which offline mode covers, but crews need to trust it. Naming a floor champion and settling the stage definitions in week one prevents most of it.
If this timeline fits how you would want to evaluate, book a workflow demo and bring one real job's workflow to the call — that conversation becomes your week 0. New to the contents process itself? Start with the complete pack-out guide.