Where the Supply Chain Planning Players are at?

Gartner Research has published its magic quadrant (nothing magical about it but its an informative quadrant though) about the relative competitive position of Supply Chain Planning software vendors for the first half of 2006.

There are three key sectors (Process Manufacturing, Discrete Manufacturing and Distribution Intensive) for which the quadrants were created. They're available free of charge at Oracle's site (Magic Quadrants for Supply Chain Planning) at the following links:
1. Magic Quadrant for Supply Chain Planning in Process Manufacturing Industries, 1H06
2. Magic Quadrant for Supply Chain Planning in Discrete Manufacturing Industries, 1H06
3. Magic Quadrant for Supply Chain Planning in Distribution-Intensive Industries, 1H06
What I wanted to determine from perusing these quadrants was the criteria by which certain firms' SCP software was categorized as visionary and others as followers or laggards. Here is the summary of firms seen as visionaries (as opposed to niche players) in various segments of the SCP marketplace.

Process Manufacturing	Discrete Manufacturing	Distribution Intensive
Aspen	i2	i2
i2	SAP	SAP
Manugistics	Oracle	Logility
SAP	-	-
Oracle	-	-
Logility	-	-

According to the report, a visionary has to demonstrate:

• A developing global support strategy


• Five customer references in each targeted vertical industry


• Differentiated vertical-industry domain expertise and unique industry-specific functionality


• Development beyond a third vertical-industry-specific solution


• Development support for a multi-enterprise architecture on an SOA platform


• A targeted presence leading to influence and activity into how aspects of the market evolve

The meaning of visionary here seems to center around the notion that broad based acceptance in the market using the latest delivery/base operational system (SOA) and consequently influence in market changes which is about the definition that I might employ for market leaders. Why quibble about that? In the next post or two, I want to post a contending view of ERP/SCP and its use in today's business enterprise.
On a more general scale, the characteristics of the study comprised the following:
The criteria for qualification in the magic quadrant:

• An SCP product that has to include supply planning, and a range of offerings through collaborative planning, demand planning, inventory planning, distribution planning, and manufacturing planning and scheduling


• Annual revenue at least $20 million


• Of this, license revenue of at least $10 million or over 50 percent of reported revenue


• Global coverage - at least 5 percent of license revenue reported outside of the headquartered region (Americas, Europe/Middle East and Asia/Pacific)


• The vendor must have a presence in multiple sub-vertical industries to have an ability to execute score high enough to be placed in the Challengers or Leaders quadrants

To qualify for inclusion in two or more Magic Quadrants, the criteria for revenue (annual and license) have to be met for each. A vendor will need to show that it has achieved the $20 million annual revenue ($10 million license or more than 50 percent of reported revenue) threshold for each Magic Quadrant.
For this Magic Quadrant, an SCP vendor has to have a product centered on manufacturing planning and scheduling suitable for process/repetitive manufacturing-centric industries. Some vendors that are analyzed may not automatically qualify, according to these criteria. In our analysis, we will highlight any vendors that have particularly interesting, innovative or important offerings.

The key takeaway summarized from the report were:

ERP suite vendors are leading the change toward a foundational, near-commoditized set of functionality for supply chain planning (SCP); however, large customer bases and core ERP technology frameworks are enabling these vendors to innovate across the enterprise as opposed to specifically within supply chain management (SCM).
Best-of-breed SCP vendors are beginning to innovate at the edge of SCM with differentiated solutions related to complex SCP, sales and operations planning. ERP users should compare and contrast best-of-breed vendors to their incumbent ERP vendor when complexity and innovation is required or sought in their supply chain.

Tags: SCP, ERP, Supply Chain, Supply Chain Planning, Magic Quadrant, SCP Ranking, SCM Ranking, Logility, i2, Oracle, SAP, Manugistics, Aspen

posted by AJ @ 11:15 AM