Inventory Planning Blog

SaaS will be $14.5 Billion Market this year!

Revenue for the worldwide software-as-a-service (SaaS) market will grow by 18% in 2012 to $14.5 billion, according to new research from Gartner, the world's leading information technology research and advisory company.  The SaaS market will be worth $14.5 billion in 2012, and is expected to expand up to $22.1 billion by 2015. That 2015 figure is an increase of almost $1 billion from the prediction Gartner made last year.

SaaS adoption is being driven by platform-as-a-service development communities and has increased its estimate for the value of the SaaS market in 2015 by almost $1billion, up to $22.1 billion says Analyst Company.

SaaS adoption in 2012 will be driven by the growth of the platform-as-a-service developer communities, Gartner said, as well as a growing interest in cloud computing. Organizations most commonly use SaaS for horizontal applications (i.e. applications that address business divisions, rather than specific industries) with common processes, Gartner said, but added that there was increasing interest in vertical-specific offerings.

Sharon Mertz, a Gartner research director, said the issues holding back SaaS deployments varied strongly by region. "Limited flexibility of customization and limited integration to existing systems are the primary reasons in North America," she said. "In EMEA, network instability is the issue most frequently encountered, whereas longer-than-expected deployments are the top issue in Asia/Pacific." Gartner said it is seeing increasing penetration of North American SaaS vendors into the Western European market, forecasting Western Europe's SaaS revenues to surpass $3.2 billion this year, up 35% from $2.7 billion in 2011.

www.gartner.com
TechNavio’s analysts forecast the Global SCM Software market to grow at a CAGR of 8.7 percent over the period 2010–2014. One of the key factors contributing to this market growth is the need to boost productivity and improve decision making. The Global SCM Software market has also been witnessing the increasing demand of SCM in the retail sector. However, increasing complexity of supply chain networks could pose a challenge to the growth of this market.

TechNavio’s report, Global Supply Chain Management Software Market 2010–2014, has been prepared based on an in-depth analysis of the market with inputs from industry experts. The report covers the Americas, and the EMEA and APAC regions; it also covers the Global SCM Software market landscape and its growth prospects in the coming years. The report also includes a discussion of the key vendors operating in this market.

http://www.technavio.com/

Discover an affordable, seamlessly integrated inventory planning optimization solution to SAP Business One for small and midsize businesses. A solution that frees up your resources (including cash), reduces losses from obsolescence, and increases service levels. The tools you need to forecast, plan, and optimize inventory, manage your business more efficiently and meet the demands of customers and suppliers are powerful and affordable.

Happy New Year!  2012 brings the promise of improving global economies. Balancing short term resilience with longer term needs is what is needed now.  Reducing costs, buying less, increasing productivity, improving cash flow is important, and to keep these inventory objectives balanced and in perspective you need an efficient way to optimize these important business demands.   Improve your competitive advantages responsibly and efficiently with inventory planning optimization solutions.  Waiting until its too late in your ordering cycles will invite your customers to investigate other opportunities, and that can happen by making the reduction of the wrong item at the wrong time.
 
If your company tends to reduce items with the highest investment because it creates a larger reduction faster, what it actually does is creates potential stock outs, higher backorders and increased expedited shipping – and, even more importantly, customer dis-satisfaction.  We all know that when customers are unhappy they become former customers.  Randomly cutting inventory has been proven time and time again to be the wrong strategy as does overstocking your inventory.

There are a lot of inventory planning solutions available from all types of companies around the world.  Many are designed for large enterprise companies as they cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and are highly complex. Some so complex a math or science degree is required just to operate the system. Others at the low end may be just point solutions for just forecasting, as an example, or offer individual modules you need to buy separately.

Did you know that certain inventory planning solutions are easier to use than ever? Until recently Small and Mid-size Businesses (SMB) did not have affordable, easy to use software tools to help them effectively manage and balance their inventory investment. Software solutions that forecast, plan and optimize an inventory are found in widespread acceptance in large enterprise companies but these solutions can cost between hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars, take months to implement and are generally not affordable or usable by SMBs.

We love our partners. They're out there every day, promoting Valogix, becoming supply chain experts and selling our software. We like to recognize the best of the best from time to time.

1. Login with your own user name and password, any time, anywhere.
2. Lower upfront capital: By going to an SaaS model, you avoid the up-front capital requirements and funding requests, and pay for the software as an on-going expense
3. Faster implementation: There is generally less overall set-up time, and in some cases, companies can often leverage the hosted solution’s existing integrations with existing key ERP solutions.
4. Faster “time-to-value”: Given a more rapid implementation, the time-to-value and positive cash flow returns are more rapid than a traditionally deployed, on-premise implementation.
5. Strategic flexibility: In theory, it may be easier to “unplug” an on-demand solution and move to an on-premise implementation down the road if required.
6. Reduce internal IT resource requirements: No installed application software or hardware to manage over time. 
7. Overcome objections to best-of-breed software: Some companies are finding that they are able to overcome the objections or rules against implementing software that doesn’t come from the company’s ERP provider if they use an SaaS model.
8. Fit for “on-demand” usage: Users can access the solutions when they need them - anytime and anywhere, 24/7.
9. Stay current with technology: The software will be automatically upgraded with enhancements to functionality. This should serve to keep users on the current platform, and keep them from falling behind the state-of-the-art technology.

Want to know more about cloud computing? See our SaaS website page and contact us to schedule your personal consultation.

How should a planner set the reorder point and reorder quantity (or order-up-to level) for thousands of items, perhaps at multiple locations? Due to the absence of an ‘intelligent’ planning system, three commonly used approaches have been Brute Force Review, Economic Order Quantity, and Periods of Supply, usually done in spreadsheets.

Recently, Supply Chain Brain announced their list of reader-nominated, The 100 Great Supply Chain Partners.  Over a six month period, supply chain and logistics professionals were asked to nominate their providers who made a significant impact on their company’s overall operational and financial bottom line.  Below is the list of the qualities deemed most important in regards to the supplier relationships: