Supply Chain Management Systems: whether they fit your business needs

In contrast to SCM software products that focus on one particular task or niche, supply chain management systems (SCMS) are designed to coordinate the entire flow of products or, at least, a substantial part.

Sometimes SCM systems include functions of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software that optimizes internal tasks and processes, relevant to the operations management field. Vice versa, ERP suites often contain SCM tools and their functionality can be expanded by implementing compatible SCM add-ons.

To be more specific, let’s take a quick look at offerings from top SCM software vendors that lead the pack in terms of revenue and market share.

SCM systems. comparison: the good and bad about them.

SAP Digital Supply Chain

One of the world’s oldest and largest software companies, Germany-based SAP has been on the market since 1972. It holds a leading position as a developer of robust ERP systems, with 90 percent of Fortune 500 companies using SAP software for their business needs. The latest and most renowned SAP S/4HANA ERP suite offers components that efficiently solve SCM issues.

During the past few years, SAP has been placing more focus on its SCM solutions, which are now marketed under the name Digital Supply Chain. The innovative software products built on top of SAP Leonardo intelligent platform employ machine learning and IoT to bring visibility, forecasting, analytics, and collaboration to the next level.

Digital Supply Chain is split into two large groups of products.

Supply Chain Planning harnesses capabilities of several other SAP products, such as Analytics cloud, Qualtrics, the first experience management (XM) software to anticipate customer behavior, and the Ariba Supply Chain Collaboration tool to share real-time information with partners and suppliers.

Supply Chain Logistics incorporates:

• Extended Warehouse Management
• Transportation Management
• Logistics Business Network integrated with Uber Freight to provide effective on-demand shipping
• Yard Logistics monitors and optimizes processes in the yards of manufacturing facilities, warehouses, or distribution centers.

Who can benefit from it? SAP products fit exactly into the requirements of large enterprises with thousands of employees and multi-million-dollar budgets. For mid-size businesses and doubly so for small companies, their suites are too costly to acquire, implement, and maintain. With SAP SCM, you’ll need a dedicated team of tech-savvy experts to administer the system. And, that adds to the total cost of ownership.