Supply Chain Management

When you think about it, no other domain in core SCM (and I'm not including indirect procurement in core SCM) has won over such a lot of converts into on-demand as TMS. We just do not see that many WMS, OMS, B2B-commerce or any other SCM functions being so prevalent in the on-demand space. I know a few contract management examples (Frictionless pretty much ran in this fashion, there are a few examples of Upside as well), but TMS simply dominates.

My view on this is that it has to be either (a) an acceptance of lower customization in the package (mostly configuration driven) or (b) willingness of the transportation department to be fairly insular in the overall SCM scheme of things or both. Why? it comes with a solid payback of quick onboarding in as little as 10 weeks to 4 months. While keeping my own views on this, I did raise this with Patrick as well. He did concur and also added the difficulties on the other side, especially, trying to make WMS or OMS on-demand in large corporations where he felt there could be greater levels of customization demands purely from the fact that they were early riders on the software space. TMS, on the contrary, really came to its own only in the 90s and companies are still deciding on enterprise strategies around this function.

One of the audience members gave a positive testimony of onboarding 135 carriers and going live in just 4 months with Sterling's on-demand TMS offering (the Nistevo acquisition) while multiple folks did agree that an on-premise for similar sized larger companies would typically take 2 years to go live. Patrick in his session also highlighted offerings from JDA/Manugistics and i2, esp the latter since this offering came out of nowhere from the company and has given them some extra momentum, compensating for drops elsewhere. However, he did agree with my suggestion that going on-demand on TMS does inhibit an integrated Supply Chain Execution (SCE) play especially with everything else remaining on-premise.

One final takeaway from my side: On-demand ventures like this work on a "change management" plane as well. From the success stories, it looks like people automatically lower customization expectations which could only explain such fantastic go-live schedules. So "on-demand" as a change management tool could be an additional point of leverage for companies trying to convince their managers. Me? I'm waiting for integrated SCE in a cloud!