Supply Chain Planning: Sustainable Strategies and Cutting-Edge Software Solutions

Globalization has resulted in highly complex and volatile supply chains. Organizations are actively exploring sustainable strategies to organize their supply chains in order to make them fast, agile, and adaptable to future changes. Many unusual situations exist today, such as COVID-19 and climatic shifts. Supply chain planning software must be efficient and sensitive to interruptions. This capability would enable firms to plan and forecast at the same time, while guaranteeing that all other supply chain processes are flexible enough to adjust to changes. Organizations that successfully adapt to supply chain planning software will be better able to communicate throughout the enterprise, quickly adjust to market changes, and reap benefits such as lower costs and increased efficiency.

The supply chain planning software also provides end-to-end insight across the supply chain, going beyond their existing network of wholesalers and retailers to detect demand signals directly from customers. Provisions must also be made to link historically compartmentalized supply chain planning with sales, operations, and financial planning. This link would allow customers to integrate their short-term operational planning with their overall business planning procedures, as well as make real-time modifications to inventory estimates and supplies.

Quadrant Knowledge Solutions defines Supply Chain Planning (SCP) as "software that balances dynamic demand and supply of goods, services, and information across the extended supply chain." Supply chain planning streamlines processes, improves efficiency, eliminates delays, lowers operating costs, and generates revenue. The program accomplishes this by monitoring real-time demand changes, planning for what-if situations, and replanning while taking into account overall process restrictions.

Machine learning can be used to improve policies such as safety stock levels, forecasting policies, dynamic sourcing analysis, and predicting potential disruptions caused by natural catastrophes such as tornadoes and their impact on suppliers or customers. Machine Learning is also used to correct the model, discover market trends that are not immediately apparent to users, and provide actionable information. Another trend focuses on data integration and centralization, as well as increased supply chain visibility. Enterprise-wide visibility uses advanced analytics and AI-powered technologies to integrate current systems and a variety of apps that can span the entire breadth of business activities, from order to payment and transportation.

Centralized data provides a unified view of each process on a single platform, allowing for easy plan updates and modifications. The platform also includes NLP for data search, role-based data access, disaster recovery, and end-to-end data encryption. Finally, firms and their supply chain networks are placing a strong emphasis on reducing their carbon footprint, as well as on environmental and sustainability measures. The organizations are focusing on sustainability KPIs such as greenhouse gas emission metrics, electrical grid monitoring, transportation carbon baselining and reduction, bill-of-material carbon roll-up, resource forecasting, multi-party data collection, insights, and reporting, to understand current emissions scenarios, track improvements to reduce carbon footprint, and provide transparency to end-customers.

Key questions this study will answer:

What is the current level of competition in the Supply Chain Planning (SCP) software for Business Users market?

What is the market share of the top suppliers in this market?

What are the primary competitive dynamics in the worldwide and regional markets for Supply Chain Planning (SCP) software for Business Users?

Who are the top vendors in the global and regional markets?

Are there vendors who specialize in specific industries?

How do different providers compare their provision of cloud-based versus on-premise solutions?

What competing variables influence the market placement of various vendors?

What are the respective strengths and challenges for the vendors in this market?

How do different vendors position themselves competitively across customer categories, ranging from SMBs to large enterprises?

Vendors covered in this study:

Adexa, AIMMS, Anaplan, Arkieva, Blue Ridge, Blue Yonder, Coupa, E2Open, FuturMaster, GAINSystems, Infor, John Galt Solutions, Kinaxis, Logility, Manhattan Associates, o9 Solutions, OMP, Oracle, QAD DynaSys, RELEX, RiverLogic, SAP, Slimstock, ToolsGroup.