In a recent Supply Chain Management Review article, John Fontanella, Noha Tohamy and Wayne McDonnell of AMR Research articulated the reasons why it is a good time to invest in supply chain management technology.  According to the article, AMR feels “there is no better time than now to invest in technologies that yield greater transparency and control within the supply chain.”  AMR provides recommendations on how to use supply chain management (SCM) technologies to protect and enforce your company’s best interests.  The following are a couple of examples:

• Strive for transparency in all your supply chain activities.
• Prepare your company for the unexpected.
• Measure your company’s performance against goals.

As a vendor of supply chain management solutions, of course we agree!   But, I’ll leave the AMR experts to explain their reasons in the article.

What I will add to the discussion, however, is the huge advantages of selecting an on-demand service to solve your supply chain management problems vs. the traditional legacy on-premises solution.  An on-demand service means there are no hardware and services fees to be paid, you subscribe to an on-demand service instead.  This means the ongoing support and maintenance of that service are taken on by the vendor rather than requiring your IT staff to do these tasks.  Things like upgrades are done by the on-demand service provider rather than your IT staff.  These benefits are summarized here and here.

There’s an opportunity in tough economic times to consolidate custom supply chain management solutions (spreadsheets, custom applications, Access databases, etc.) into a single on-demand service capable of solving your supply chain managemnt business challenges.  The right solution can help address one of the burning priorities today – reducing supply chain costs.

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Tags: On-demand (SaaS), Supply chain management
Posted in On-demand (SaaS), Supply chain management
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