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 »

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 »

Everyone waits, as we go to press, to see how domestic political forces will impact the U.S. business climate right from the 2013 get-go. If ever “waiting with bated breath” was a relevant turn of phrase, it is probably now.

While both the near-term U.S. fiscal policies and the ongoing debt crisis in Europe will strongly influence the outlook for 2013, the further removed we are from the depths of the 2008 recession, the more companies want, and need, to shift from defensive to more offensive market-focused supply chain strategies. Read the rest of this entry »

On November 1, 2012, RedPrairie Corporation and JDA Software announced their merger. Under the terms of the agreement, the entities affiliated with RedPrairie will effect a cash tender offer to acquire all outstanding shares of JDA common stock for $45 per share. My initial positive and negative thoughts on the merger were outlined in Part One of this blog series.

Cynical and jaded market observers will see this merger as a déjà vu whereby two software companies that have been unable to perform to their full potential are coming together with the hope things will improve just like that. Read the rest of this entry »

My blog series in 2009 entitled “A Tale of a Few Good SCM Players” talked at great length about RedPrairie Corporation, JDA Software, and Manhattan Associates, including their corporate history and acquisitions. The general feeling at the time was that hardly any of these three great supply chain management (SCM) software companies would remain independent in the long term.

It took a few years for two of these companies to decide to merge, but on November 1, 2012, RedPrairie and JDA announced their merger agreement, under the terms of which the entities affiliated with RedPrairie will effect a cash tender offer to acquire all outstanding shares of JDA common stock for $45 per share. Read the rest of this entry »

Jesta I.S. Vision Suite software is geared toward retailers, manufacturers, and distributors in the apparel, footwear, and soft goods industries. The broad retail suite consists of near real-time Web-based applications that are designed to help manage business processes in the areas of merchandising, merchandise lifecycle management (MLM), planning, supply chain management (SCM), and warehouse management, as well as financial management and analytics. 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 »

My recent article SAP SCM – Stepping Out of (Relative) Obscurity analyzed SAP’s revamped comprehensive supply chain management (SCM) suite, its major components, and its supply chain process bundles. In addition to receiving a number of public comments and ratings by TEC’s readers, I was recently roasted privately during a lunch meeting with a couple of peers.

Namely, they expressed their surprise at the quite positive tone of the article, and at the lack of my typical skepticism (and sometimes sarcasm). Well, perhaps I am a sucker for a good “big picture” vision, and it seemed to me that SAP had created a compelling strategic story. The ideas such as the “Visual Enterprise” sounded refreshing to me, especially after several years of SAP being quiet on the Line of Business (LOB) applications delivery front. At the end of the day, it was important to highlight that the solutions that SAP is offering for supply chain executives expand across the traditional TLA (three letter acronym) boundaries of SCM, product lifecycle management (PLM), customer relationship management (CRM), enterprise resource planning (ERP), manufacturing execution system (MES), etc.

Read the rest of this entry »

It gives me great pleasure to announce that the 2012 Supply Chain Management Buyer’s Guide is here. Download your copy now.

In this buyer’s guide, I address a topic that deserves more discussion among supply chain strategists: collaboration. Read the rest of this entry »

As I’m in the process of developing the 2012 Supply Chain Management (SCM) Buyer’s Guide, which will be discussing the challenges that businesses face with managing their supply chains and the role of software in mitigating those challenges, I thought it would be worthwhile to conduct a short survey and see how companies today are faring with some important SCM issues. This survey will shed light on the areas often eluding businesses and that are wreaking havoc on their supply chains, as well as areas that are receiving much attention. The results, as well as recommendations for improvement, will be integrated into the buyer’s guide, which is slated for publication in March of this year. Read the rest of this entry »

TEC is coming up with four new buyer’s guides for 2012, and one slot is reserved for supply chain management (SCM) solutions. My main reason for pushing for this was that the global business landscape has been battered significantly by a slew of economic, political, social and environmental events over the past five years. This has resulted in significant losses for businesses around the world.

It is no secret that the world is going to engage in  a fairly trying period for the foreseeable future. And businesses will need to examine their outside environment more closely than ever before committing themselves to action. They will also need to take measures for obtaining greater visibility into and around their supply chain in order to adapt more quickly to changing circumstances.

TEC’s 2012 SCM Buyer’s Guide will discuss the issues that will continue to challenge supply chains, specifically in regard to managing complexity, achieving insight into the chain, and managing collaboration within the chain.

Here is a short synopsis of items I’ll be covering in the guide. Read the rest of this entry »

Supply chain management (SCM) software is a key part of a successful global business. With it, companies can monitor transactions between suppliers, manufacturers, shippers, retailers, and a host of other partners. They can anticipate problems, eliminate bottlenecks, and avoid expensive delays. Without SCM, companies lose visibility, and control, of anything outside their four walls, and risk losing time and money to frequent supply chain disruptions.

But despite the advantages SCM offers, many companies have been slow to adopt it—particularly service providers who view SCM as being mostly for manufacturers.

That perception seems to be changing, though. At TEC, we’ve seen a surge in the popularity of our SCM Evaluation Center as companies of all sizes look for ways to be more competitive in a harsh economic climate. So to help IT decision makers navigate the SCM landscape, we’re hard at work preparing the 2012 SCM Buyer’s Guide.

Read the rest of this entry »

Labor management systems (LMSs) are used primarily as a way for distribution operations to manage and track its labor activities. This includes real-time interaction with warehouse management and warehouse control systems in order to collect data on what workers are doing, how many locations they have visited, what inventory they have handled, what equipment they have used, and what paths they have traveled.

Most often used within the supply chain, an LMS helps a distribution operation improve worker productivity by providing the ability to

•    report on all labor activity;
•    compare labor activity to historical data; and
•    report labor activity against established labor standards. Read the rest of this entry »

Many people are aware of a reality show on television titled “Jon & Kate Plus 8”, which features a couple that is separated and ready to get divorced. Occasionally couples have disagreements and need to get away from each other to sort things out then come back to the table with new perspectives.  That’s what JDA and i2 have done with their deal from last year. JDA plans (once again) to acquire i2 Technologies. This time around, the offer is for $396 million (USD). Read the rest of this entry »

Many CFOs, CTOs, supply chain managers, and logistics managers struggle to decide which supply chain management (SCM) software is best-suited to their organizational needs. It doesn’t help that there is an abundance (literally hundreds) of SCM solutions available on the market. Today, I’ll help you understand key SCM modules, and look at some key players with well established SCM solutions. Read the rest of this entry »