The Epicor Retail division of global business software solution provider Epicor Software Corporation provides solutions for retailers seeking to streamline processes, integrate channels, and leverage intelligence  in a variety of industries including apparel, footwear, discount, general merchandise, automotive aftermarket, lumber and building materials, nursery, and pharmacy. Epicor is the retail technology partner of choice for thousands of retailers—from Aeropostale, Aftermarket Auto Parts Alliance, and Build-A-Bear Workshop, to General Nutrition Centers, True Value Company, and Under Armour ( more details here).

New Epicor Retail Strategy
Early in 2013, Epicor unveiled a multi-year strategic plan to grow its market share and expand its global footprint in the retail technology space. While Epicor is recognized as the No.1 provider of point of sale (POS) software among the top 250 largest specialty soft goods and hard goods retailers by IHL Group, the multi-year strategic plan was designed to enable Epicor to maintain and grow its leadership position. Initially, Epicor has been focused on the following four strategic priorities: global expansion, cross-channel execution, and continuing investments in both POS and enterprise cloud technology.

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E2open, a provider of strategic cloud-based solutions for collaborative execution across global trading networks, seems to be on a roll of late. After its recent big wins at Yanfeng Visteon and HP, the company has announced that Konecranes, a provider of lifting solutions as well as services for lifting equipment and machine tools, has selected E2open as its collaborative execution platform, and that the program has gone live with Konecranes’ supply base.

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Similar to the Ariba LIVE conference last year, one of the main themes at the Ariba LIVE 2013 conference was again that Ariba, now an SAP company, is making it easier than ever for companies to connect to the Ariba Network and collaborate. Accordingly, Ariba and Dell Boomi announced that they are teaming up to deliver pre-packaged integration as a service offering for selling organizations.

Designed to simplify and speed up integration to the Ariba Network, the Ariba Integration Connector, powered by Dell Boomi Integration Packs, aims to enable companies to collaborate more efficiently. The first available connector, which integrates with Intuit QuickBooks, was officially unveiled at Ariba LIVE 2013. Additional connectors to enable sellers who own Microsoft Dynamics GP and Sage 50 (a.k.a., Sage Peachtree) to integrate with the Ariba Network are planned to be released later this year.

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After being recently selected by Yanfeng Visteon, E2open continues to prove that supply chain management (SCM) solutions lend themselves well to cloud deployment with its most recent win. Namely, HP has just selected the E2open Business Network as one of its platforms for consolidated global procurement. The cloud-based platform for collaborative execution across global trading networks will be used across all major HP product lines.

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QAD, a provider of enterprise applications for global manufacturing companies specializing in automotive, consumer products, electronics, food and beverage, industrial, and life sciences products, recently announced that the Automotive Edition of QAD Enterprise Applications has greater market share in China than any other ERP solution, according to the IDC report “China Automotive Industry IT Solutions 2012–2016 Forecast and Analysis”. Of the top five ERP providers in China, QAD was the 2011 automotive industry leader ahead of SAP, UFIDA, Infor, and Siemens.

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Sharp vertical focus is helping QAD win in the Russian market against the fierce local competitor 1C. QAD recently announced Saturno-TP, a manufacturer of interior auto parts, selected QAD Enterprise Applications to support its manufacturing operations. Saturno-TP is an automotive parts supplier focused on the development and production of interior parts such as interior trims, door panels, parcel shelves, pillars and other injection-molded and thermoformed parts, luggage compartment components, and sun visors. Read the rest of this entry »

In its early days in the 1990s during the first wave of trading exchanges (anyone still remember the crash and burn of Commerce One?), SciQuest used to help manage procurement and inventory management for reagents, those substances or compounds that are added to a system in order to bring about a chemical reaction (or are added to see if a reaction occurs). SciQuest’s Enterprise Reagent Manager (ERM) is a procurement-focused chemical inventory solution used by seven of the world’s top ten life science organizations and leading higher education institutions.

SciQuest has since quite expanded its industry savvy and spend management functional footprint to now be a leading provider of cloud-based business automation solutions. Staying true to its roots, SciQuest and eMolecules just announced a partnership to make eMolecules’ catalog of in-stock molecular building blocks available within SciQuest’s ERM platform. As a result, ERM users can now directly purchase in-stock molecular building blocks via eMolecules’ market-leading database.

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SciQuest, a leading public provider of cloud-based business automation solutions, has announced the next major version of its spend management product suite. The latest version includes a redesigned user interface (UI) with consumer-like features and experiences similar to popular Web sites such as Amazon, Facebook, and LinkedIn. In short, SciQuest is bringing a consumer-like experience to business-to-business (B2B) shopping. Read the rest of this entry »

Even after nearly 15 years as an enterprise analyst, I still find myself coming across a vendor that has been around for more than 40 years but one that I am not familiar with. One such example is Montreal, Canada-based Jesta I.S., a vendor that delivers integrated enterprise resource planning (ERP) and supply chain management (SCM) solutions to manufacturers, wholesalers, distributors, and retailers in the apparel, footwear, and specialty retail industries worldwide. Jesta I.S. solutions address the complex business processes, rapidly changing product mix, and short product life cycles faced by manufacturers, importers, distributors, and retailers in these industries. Read the rest of this entry »

E2open’s recent win at Yanfeng Visteon introduced the E2open Collaboration Center as part of E2Open Business Network (EBN). This command center-like module consists of E2open products and services that provide real-time dashboard visibility for various partners on the network into demand and supply changes. It also provides access to analytics to assess the operational and financial impact of changes, and it offers decision support to preempt issues or resolve problems (see TEC article for more details).

According to Descartes Systems Group CEO Art Mesher in his recent thought leadership blog post, E2open is one of a new breed of companies that have risen to tame the fleeting nature of business relationships and their supporting IT systems in various communities:

These companies are characterized by continuous investment in systems that foster network communities and authenticated community participation with credentials, leading to creation of “trust federations” or what is dubbed “Entrusts.”  Read the rest of this entry »

Yanfeng Visteon Automotive Electronics, a joint-venture of Yanfeng Visteon Automotive Trim Systems and Visteon Corporation, has selected E2open to transform its supply chain collaboration program. E2open is a California-based provider of cloud-based, on-demand software solutions enabling enterprises to procure, manufacture, sell, and distribute products more efficiently through collaborative execution across global trading networks.

Brand owners use E2open solutions to gain visibility into and control over their trading networks through the near real-time information, integrated business processes, and analytics that E2open provides. Read the rest of this entry »

QAD Inc. continues to gain new customers via its relatively autonomous divisions, such as Precision Software for transportation management, and the recently acquired DynaSys for supply chain management (SCM) and CEBOS for quality management. QAD expects all of those products to carry their own weight and continue to sell to non-QAD enterprise resource planning (ERP) customers (in addition to cross-selling to QAD ERP customers).

Most recently, DynaSys, a division that provides solutions for demand and supply chain planning, announced that the RAJA Group has implemented DynaSys n.SKEP Retail Planning to help its growth strategy. The European distributor of packaging, business supplies, and consumables deployed DynaSys n.SKEP Retail Planning “Ready To Plan” (RTP) solution as part of its plan to upgrade its IT systems.

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Right on the heels of enhancing its aspenONE umbrella platform, AspenTech has announced the acquisition of pipeline scheduling system (PSS) and dock scheduling system (DSS) software from Refining Advantage, Inc. PSS allows pipeline companies, refineries, and terminals with pipelines to optimize their pipeline schedules, and thus potentially improve profitability and safety. DSS is used by refineries and terminals to schedule their docks, which should help them save on demurrage costs incurred from delays in on-loading and off-loading cargo.

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Process industries often find the sophisticated software products from Aspen Technology (a.k.a., AspenTech) quite functional and useful in catering to their complex supply chain planning (SCP), manufacturing execution, and engineering process optimization needs. The vendor has about 1,500 companies in the energy, chemical, construction, and pharmaceutical industries as its customers (its name, curiously, stands for “Advanced System for Process Engineering”). In fact, had BP used the Aspen HYSYS petroleum process simulation software, it is likely that it wouldn’t have attempted the costly and ineffective “top kill” attempt to stop the Gulf of Mexico oil leak of 2010.

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Technology Evaluation Centers (TEC) had the occasion recently to speak with Aurionpro Solutions’ president of supply chain management (SCM), Atul Kaushal, and director of SCM, Dhananjay Jadhav, to learn more about the company and its solution.

Aurionpro is a $100 million (USD) Mumbai, India–based software vendor, with a US base in San Ramon, California. It is a publicly owned company trading on the Indian stock exchanges (BSE, NSE).

This 15-year-old firm started out on the banking side of things in Africa and the Far East. Its banking penetration remains a point of pride, but after some eight to 10 acquisitions, banking is now just one of four lines of business: Read the rest of this entry »