Monday, July 08, 2002

Leading SCM vendors continue to tank

AMR reports on the latest quarterly results from supply chain leaders i2 and Manugistics. Both vendors report continued fall off in license revenues. It is tempting to simply lump SCM in with the rest of the Internet bubble, but that would be a mistake. It's more a case of client expectations for supply chain management becoming more realistic. Both i2 and Manugistics have excellent products, but no piece of software, especially one with an entry point of multiple millions of dollars, is going to generate supply chain efficiencies by itself. It takes software, plus quite a bit of education, process improvement, and organizational change. The future for both vendors will likely be one of smaller deals and phased implementation by clients.