SSA Global lays out its future in warehouse management systems

ARC Advisory has a good summary of SSA's direction for warehouse management systems (WMS) in general and EXE in particular. Through acquisitions, SSA now has a number of WMS offerings: individual WMS modules that are part of SSA's various ERP packages; the Warehouse BOSS system that it picked up from Computer Associates; and EXE, a Tier I WMS provider that SSA acquired last year. ARC explains the individual EXE solutions:

EXE 2000 is aimed at high volume warehouse, e.g., retail, or automotive spare parts, and include task management and labor standards, but its 200 customers mainly reside in English speaking countries. EXE 3000 is the old mainframe Dallas product, and EXE 4000 is an n-tier, highly international WMS aimed at Third Party Logistics (3PL) and CPG with approximately 500 customers.

ARC goes on to explain how SSA's various WMS offerings will fit with its ERP offerings:

In the short term, most likely the iSeries Warehouse BOSS will fit best with the predominantly iSeries based BPCS & PRMS ERP solution, and Unix/NT based EXE 4000 will sell into the Baan base. There were hints that EXE 4000 and Baan ERP could create a useful automotive solution, particularly for Tier 1 and 2 automotive suppliers required to support sequence-in-line supply into the OEM. 3PL could be another target market, especially if the solution integrated CAPS Logistics, a strong TMS offering and Baan ERP.

The full summary is on the ARC Advisory web site.

For more on the the untapped potential of warehouse management and transportation management systems, see my post back on Jan. 21, 2003.