It’s a busy conference season and quarterly results reporting period. TEC is chugging down the coffee, keeping up with happenings in the supply chain space. Descartes has announced another acquisition this past week, and we share a few insights from our conversation with them. We also found ourselves on the phone recently with DCRA’s Jon Kirkegaard. TEC’s new Supply Chain Management (SCM) Market Survey Report is out, just before we head to AspenTech’s OPTIMIZE2013 this week. Lastly, the tragedy in Bangledesh should probably be a wake-up call to the importance of supply chain risk management. Where are you headed this week? What’s capturing your supply chain attention? Drop us a line.

Descartes

Descartes has announced the acquisition of KSD Software Norway AS, a vendor of electronic customs filing solutions for countries in the EU, as well as Switzerland, Norway, Israel, the United States, and Canada. Descartes’ Chris Jones indicates that this is one of the larger of the half-dozen or so acquisitions that it has made in the past 3 years. Descartes obviously covets the additional users to the Descartes Global Logistics Network (adding 1,300 onto the currently cited >8,000 figure), as well as the $10 million in additional recurring revenue. Descartes also believes that, with this acquisition, it become the largest supply chain vendor in Scandinavia, and one of the largest in Europe. (Descartes’ presence in Europe has grown from perhaps a couple of dozen people in 2009 to more than 300 people today.) Descartes will have more to say about this acquisition in its next quarterly call scheduled for May 30. Read the rest of this entry »

In this week’s Shorts, we talk about JDA’s release of JDA eight; Retails Solutions’ value proposition; and a recent visit to Oz Development. What have you been up to this week, supply chain-wise? Wandered off the beaten path and happened upon something interesting? Drop us a line or give us a call.

JDA

JDA has released JDA eight, as expected, which should be a terrific new platform—product, and marketing—for JDA. With its several acquisitions, and storied history, JDA has become a conglomeration of technologies. With this announcement (which TEC will have more to say about in the near future), JDA brings 30 different solutions onto a common, cloud-based platform. JDA has certainly had the breadth of supply chain capabilities to make it a leader; now it potentially has the underlying platform to make its solutions—and its marketing message—a more integrated one.

JDA’s John Kopcke, executive vice president and chief technology officer, who had been RedPrairie’s (first ever) CTO from 2011–2012, seemingly jumped from the proverbial frying pan into the fire, going from tackling the rationalization of RedPrairie’s architecture to being the face for the platformization of JDA Software, to integrating the RedPrairie-JDA solutions. Read the rest of this entry »

The companies that managed this week to take our minds off of our broken NCAA brackets and the only slightly less broken Red Sox were Epicor, Logility, ProcessWeaver, Quintiq, and Security Engineered Machinery. We also tell you about a few events on our calendar that you might want on your calendar.

Logility

We recently caught up recently with Karin Bursa to get an update on Logility. Clearly (and understandably), Logility likes to talk about inventory optimization, and sales and operations planning.

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This week TEC brings you news from Manhattan Associates, Descartes, TXT e-solutions, United Technologies, Agilent, and a company called Oz Development.

Registration has opened for Manhattan Associates’ Momentum 2013, happening May 19–22 at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, NV. Industry events (see RedPrairie and JDA) have made the future even more interesting for Manhattan Associates; TEC continues to watch Manhattan’s strategy with considerable interest. TEC has written before about growth opportunities for Manhattan in manufacturing and in the retail space. We expect to hear more about Manhattan’s cloud strategy. What do you think will be the focus at Momentum 2013? Read the rest of this entry »

Yet another of our weekly news round-ups from the world of supply chain. This week, we bring you some brief (and not so brief) news from SAP, TradeCard, Apriso, TECSYS, Epic Data, Waterloo Software, and Fishbowl Inventory. His Eminence, Pope Benedict XVI, may be going off duty to hide from the world, but we aren’t. The office is open, the phones are working, and the Wifi is running. We are ready to talk supply chain.

SAP announced this week the general availability of v9.0 of the SAP Transportation Management (SAP TM) application. Read the rest of this entry »

Snippets of recent supply chain news…

Quintiq, dually headquartered in the Netherlands and Philadelphia, announced this week that Republic Steel has selected Quintiq for campaign planning, order promising, finite capacity planning, inventory optimization, detailed scheduling, and sequencing optimization. Read the rest of this entry »

We’re trying out a new feature on you this week: snippets of supply chain news designed for quick and easy consumption, including insights and sound bites, perhaps occasionally bordering on the irreverent. We’d like to think of this as a conversation with you. Let us know what you think.

Oracle held its Value Chain Summit last week in San Francisco. Were you there? Rick Jewell, Oracle senior vice president for applications development, with overall responsibility for supply chain applications kicked it off. Read the rest of this entry »