Much ado has been made of the recent moves by ERP vendors Oracle and SAP to acquire their way into the SaaS space. It is indeed high time that the big ERP players embrace cloud computing. Certainly, the value of cloud-based Software-as-a-Service has not been lost on next generation software and solutions players—nor, more importantly—on its users at global businesses of all sizes.
Further, businesses haven’t limited their SaaS investments just to sales and human capital management like the recent acquisition examples of RightNow and SuccessFactors.
Ironically, in the supply chain arena, for at least the last five years, it has been the new breed of SaaS player that has actually added more value to the very on-premise systems where Oracle and SAP dominate.
Sales & Operations Planning (S&OP) which informs better supply chain agility, is all about bringing together the planning process across demand and supply organizations for a single view of the truth to make better business decisions. While the process of S&OP has been in place for a few decades, it hasn’t been until the last few years that technology—especially easy to access, implement and configure SaaS-based technology—has enabled companies to unite the disparate ERP, CRM, SCM, BI and Finance systems data to achieve their S&OP priorities. Indeed some of the world’s largest, most complex manufacturers are trusting cloud-based S&OP solutions to help them harmonize their ERP and other rigid, on premise systems and, in turn, become more agile organizations, able to cope with today’s volatile business environment.
Since cloud computing solutions have been delivering better business leverage from ERP systems, it is time that ERP vendors give cloud computing the credit it deserves and has rightly earned.
Those following Supply Chain Industry Analyst Lora Cecere’s new Supply Chain Shaman blog (http://www.supplychainshaman.com) have read with keen interest her observations about SAP’s progress in the area of Supply Chain Planning. Lora points out that while SAP has made tremendous progress in many areas it is also struggling with integrating its many components – specifically Lora says that the “integration of business intelligence and performance management is moving [too] slowly.” Her notes on the growing disappointment with SAP APO – from within and outside the SAP organization – are also worth noting (http://www.supplychainshaman.com/2010/04/inside-insider:
“I leave the event with two major disappointments. The first is that the integration of business intelligence and performance management is moving slowly. …too slowly for this curmudgeon analyst. I was hoping to see the results of the Teradata/SAP Business Objects integration and the launch of a new generation of predictive analytics. While there is some progress in Performance Management, it is largely traditional reporting/dashboards.
The second is that SAP APO—SAP’s supply chain planning suite—was largely business as usual. At the event, I saw small, incremental changes, but no major innovation like I saw in MII, PLM and transportation management. I keep crossing my fingers. I would love to see SAP have the courage to blow up APO and start again. Who knows if it works for PLM, maybe there is a chance to bring innovation to a solution — and the larger Supply Chain Planning (SCP) market– that sorely needs to be redefined.”
As SAP friends and partners know, SAP has some truly outstanding employees and the SCM Product Group continues under the brilliant leadership of Lori Mitchell-Keller. Yet, overcoming legacy products and dated, mis-guided inertia is difficult for even the most effective of executives. The great news is that a whole new generation of cloud-based supply chain planning…
