The U.S. National Retail Federation annual conference began this week, and software vendors in the retail business segment tend to make announcements during this time. Oracle has already released the news of two new retail customers: Australian footware manufacturer and distributor Deckers Outdoors, which owns such brands as UGG and Teva, and one of the largest Russia-based consumer electronics retailers, M.Video. Besides the shared industry vertical, these two companies may not have much in common. Nevertheless, they both have opted for Oracle’s product suite for a number of reasons. Read the rest of this entry »

The Bentley Group is one of Canada’s largest luggage and bags retailers, with stores located in practically every mall across the country. It operates more than 400 retail stores and has a central distribution center, and it has selected Oracle Retail solutions for its operations. Read the rest of this entry »

Part 1 of this blog series analyzed Manhattan Associates’ innovative Supply Chain Process Platform (SCPP)-based analytic applications, including Supply Chain Intelligence (SCI) and Total Cost to Serve (TCS). I discussed other Manhattan SCOPE suite modules as well as the company’s recent evolution from being a mere supply chain execution (SCE) provider.

In Part 2, I zoomed in on the Distributed Order Management (DOM) module, which is a critical “cerebral” SCOPE/SCPP application. I explained the DOM inner workings via a few scenarios of how the system could take customer orders and decides which location is best suited to fulfill them based on inventory on hand, inventory in transit, and complex delivery requirements and preferences.

Manhattan Associates’ platform pieces also enable the vendor to identify new ways to combine solutions to uniquely address industry-specific business problems. At the 2011 National Retail Federation (NRF) Annual Conference, the vendor revealed the next generation of Zero Disappointment Retail (ZDR), a concrete deployment of its SCOPE, SCPP, and multi-channel order management concepts in the retail sector.

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Part 1 of this blog post series followed the genesis of Manhattan Associates from its inception in 1990 throughout the mid-2000s. During this time, Manhattan Associates was the epitome of an impeccable supply chain management (SCM) software company in terms of market share, growth, profitability, and its product capabilities. Indeed, the company set the industry standard for the supply chain execution (SCE) space and was the envy of its competitors.

But lately, the two competitors that had long looked at Manhattan from behind, RedPrairie Corporation and JDA Software, have been posting much more upbeat news in terms of growth in contrast to Manhattan’s declining revenues. Part 2 analyzed some possible reasons behind that occurrence and focused on RedPrairie’s track record.

Part 3 analyzed the current market dynamics in the retail sector, and explained the ongoing resurgence of JDA Software.

Part 4 of this blog post series will conclude with predictions about what’s in store (no pun intended) for all three renowned SCM vendors. Read the rest of this entry »