Report:

Magic Quadrant for Supply Chain Planning Solutions

Top Vendor Products for Supply Chain Planning Solutions in 2024

• Blue Yonder
• Kinaxis
• Logility
• OMP
• Oracle

Supply Chain Planning Solutions Vendor Product Comparisons 2024

• Adexa - Niche Player
  

  Pros:

  • Modeling of constraints: Adexa has a strong vision for the range of constraints it can model in the solution, which go beyond the traditional supply chain resources and into areas such as environmental, social and governance (ESG). It combines this with a broad range of analytics to create strong, feasible end-to-end plans.
  • Plan granularity and latency: Adexa's vision includes planning at highly granular levels by using detailed scheduling and strong attribute-based planning capabilities. It extends this with a strong vision for decision data latency, bringing in real-time data to the platform and leveraging Adexa Genies to run algorithms more autonomously, creating plans readily available to end users.
  • Pricing: Adexa offers a straightforward pricing model, based on the module(s) purchased and users. Furthermore, the cost of the solution tends to be lower than that of solutions offered by this vendor's peers, making it more affordable.

  Cons:

  • Digital and AI: While Adexa has a vision to leverage areas such as deep learning and big data, it lacks a strong vision for utilizing a broader set of techniques such as robotic process automation (RPA), process mining and natural language processing (NLP). This gives customers less choice and opportunity to take advantage of the broader spectrum of these advanced capabilities.
  • Extensibility: Adexa's vision for extending the platform is limited compared to other vendors evaluated in this Magic Quadrant. Customers and third parties can build their own Genies and can change/configure business rules to affect algorithms; however, the vision lacks broader support to extend the solution with, for example, low-/no-code capabilities and development features within the platform.
  • Third-party implementation services: Adexa has fewer third-party implementation partners than other vendors in this Magic Quadrant. This impacts customers' choice of partners to support them on their implementation and transformation journeys.


• AIMMS - Niche Player
  

  Pros:

  • Range of resource types: AIMMS' vision for a range of resource types is broad, covering traditional supply chain resources (such as machines, locations, transportation and labor) and extending to finance and ESG resources, such as carbon. The platform allows customers to add new resource types in a flexible way and not only report against them, but also include them into multiobjective optimization models.
  • Plan granularity: The AIMMS platform is capable of planning at any level of granularity, taking into account elements such as individual resource lines, attributes and lots/batches down to the second level. This is due to its strategy in delivering a flexible low-/no-code environment for custom-made app development, allowing it to include almost any modeling requirement.
  • Overall viability: AIMMS is above average on overall viability, primarily driven by a high cloud deployment ratio as well as high employee satisfaction scores.

  Cons:

  • Vision for sales and operations execution (S&OE): AIMMS' vision for supporting S&OE processes is weaker than that of other vendors evaluated in this Magic Quadrant. Its primary focus is standardized strategic design and tactical planning. More granular planning activities, such as order promising, event management and detailed scheduling, are supported by the platform but need to be custom-built case by case.
  • Geographical coverage: AIMMS has a more limited physical presence across regions, and has fewer distributors and value-added resellers globally compared to other vendors in this Magic Quadrant.
  • Capability coverage: Despite AIMMS' ability to cover many different use cases across planning, its current native, out-of-the-box functional capabilities are below average compared with its peers. Even with the platform's broad coverage, several areas require major or minor configuration or customization to achieve the desired results.


• Anaplan - Challenger
  

  Pros:

  • User experience (UX): The Anaplan Connected Planning platform offers a unified UI with business-owned configurable user screens and graphical layouts. It has robust workflow management that engages users, tracks progress and secures approvals across enterprise planning. In 2024, it plans to expand its analytics with a GenAI co-pilot leveraging large language models (LLMs).
  • Extensibility: Anaplan has one of the most extensible solutions on the market due to its open architecture, API strategy and no-code/low-code configuration capabilities. Anaplan continues to expand its offerings with prepackaged functional applications and industry solutions. With PlanIQ and Optimizer, users can access intelligence forecasting and optimization frameworks, and its CloudWorks product can provide connection to external, third-party data sources and services.
  • Financial impact analysis: Anaplan is a leader in financial planning. Leveraging these capabilities translates into a top strength for financial impact analysis, critical for planning processes like IBP. Multiple customers make use of Anaplan for both xP&A and supply chain planning.

  Cons:

  • Digital supply chain twin (DSCT): Anaplan has a more conservative digital supply chain twin vision compared to other vendors in this Magic Quadrant. Its vision covers elements of the supply chain twin definition (such as visualizations and streaming), but is limited due to its lack of the use of a graph database to support modeling of configuration and correlations.
  • Decision support: Anaplan's vision for supporting decision making through policies and thresholds is less mature than other vendors in this Magic Quadrant. Its newly introduced data management system delivers functionalities to enforce business rules, detect anomalies and provide alerts during data conversion into the core platform engines. However, Anaplan lacks a strong vision for creating, maintaining, recommending, and improving policies and thresholds.
  • Deployment options: Anaplan offers fewer deployment options than others in this Magic Quadrant. Its solution can currently only be deployed on Anaplan's own cloud, AWS Cloud or the Google Cloud, which may deter organizations that prefer to use other hyperscale clouds or require an on-premises solution.


• Arkieva - Challenger
  

  Pros:

  • Planning decision alignment: Arkieva's vision for aligning planning decisions horizontally and vertically is strong. The ability to support areas such as financial impact analysis, network modeling, E2E scenario analysis and granular levels of plan optimization support this strength.
  • Speed and scalability: Arkieva's vision for supporting a scalable SCP solution while maintaining speed is strong. With no technical or commercial limits, it's well-positioned to support its customers' growing data model needs. Utilizing multithreaded (parallel) processors and a continuous planning approach, Arkieva can also take advantage of streaming data in a feasible manner.
  • S&OE and execution visibility: The Arkieva Enterprise platform has strong S&OE and execution visibility capabilities, which are supported by machine-driven decisions based on real-time, event-driven updates. Arkieva provides a range of capabilities, from demand sensing and order promising to detailed scheduling, as well as visibility enablement through its supply chain command center.

  Cons:

  • Decision support: Arkieva's vision for supporting decision making through policies and thresholds is weaker than other vendors in this Magic Quadrant. Arkieva lacks support for creating, maintaining and improving policies that would help users make the right decisions in various situations.
  • Industry strategy: Arkieva has a strong focus on process manufacturing industries, such as chemicals, food and beverage, and oil and gas, but much less focus on discrete manufacturing and distribution-intensive industries. This can prove challenging for companies with a diverse product portfolio that requires considerable experience in several sectors.
  • Customer engagement: Arkieva's methods to engage with customers are weaker compared to other vendors in this Magic Quadrant. It has fewer and more infrequent customer conferences, and a weaker customer council consisting mainly of users versus strategic decision makers from its customers.


• Blue Ridge - Niche Player
  

  Pros:

  • Growth strategy: With its sole focus on supply chain planning, Blue Ridge maintains an organic growth strategy and has added a greater-than-average percentage of employees to support customers. This covers business functions such as sales support, product support, consulting and implementation, as well as research and development.
  • Viability: Supported by its customers' tendency to use Blue Ridge's platforms as a single global reference for SCP as well as above-average employee satisfaction and solid financials, its viability in the market is above average compared to other vendors in this Magic Quadrant.
  • Service cost and pricing: Blue Ridge's strategy to provide low service-to-software ratios as well as below-average overall price levels has allowed Blue Ridge to perform better in this criterion than other vendors in this Magic Quadrant. These are important considerations for midmarket organizations that often operate with more constrained resources and need to do more with less.

  Cons:

  • User experience: Blue Ridge's vision for user experience is below average compared to other vendors in this Magic Quadrant. While its vision is developing, it lacks current capabilities to take advantage of different techniques, such as natural language, cognitive computing and generative AI, to enhance the user experience. This limits its ability to provide explainability of planning results.
  • Geographic strategy: With offices only in North America, Western Europe and APAC, Blue Ridge is below average for its geographic strategy compared to other vendors in this Magic Quadrant. Furthermore, it does not make use of distribution partners or value-added resellers to reach a broader customer potential.
  • Deployment options: The Blue Ridge solution is mainly deployed on the AWS hyperscale cloud, which limits customer choice for cloud deployments. This may drive some organizations away if they prefer to use other hyperscale clouds or require an on-premises solution.


• Blue Yonder - Leader
  

  Pros:

  • Platform composability: Blue Yonder's platform vision is based on a comprehensive microservices architecture with the microservices consuming data out of Snowflake. Users will be able to break down a function into independent microservices that can be composed into various workflows. Blue Yonder currently has over 200 SCP microservices available for use, combined with a published API catalog and an API gateway portal.
  • Range of analytics: Blue Yonder's vision to leverage different analytical techniques such as heuristics, optimization, simulation and machine learning across demand and supply is above average. It also has a compelling vision around the use of GenAI, ranging from contextual support for decision making to AI model improvements and steering intelligent planning agents.
  • Capability coverage: Blue Yonder has broad and deep capability coverage to support all the different layers of planning. Capabilities range from network design, inventory optimization, demand and promotion planning to order promising and detailed scheduling.

  Cons:

  • Digital supply chain twin: Blue Yonder's vision for the DSCT is more narrow than other vendors in this Magic Quadrant. It is centered around making use of real-world data with direct live access, with Snowflake acting as an enabler for simplified data sharing. However, while its contextualized data-driven model generation is evolving, it isn't carrying much weight in the current vision.
  • Customer experience: Blue Yonder received below-average feedback for customer service and support, as well as for the tendency for customers to recommend the solution to others. This results in an overall customer experience that is below average compared to other vendors in this Magic Quadrant.
  • Pricing: Blue Yonder has recently taken initiatives to simplify its pricing structure with a pricing model that charges per item location and per user. However, up until now, data shows that Blue Yonder's pricing model is complex and less transparent than other vendors' models. Furthermore, the subscription price for the software is higher compared to other vendors in this Magic Quadrant.


• Coupa - Niche Player
  

  Pros:

  • Configure functionality coverage: Coupa excels in the configure layer with a strong vision and focus on network design, optimization and long-term demand planning capabilities. This strength is supported by an ability to optimize and report against a wide range of resource types, such as cash and financials, and ESG resources.
  • Customer experience: Coupa is above average on all customer experience subcriteria with positive customer intentions to recommend the solutions to others. This is supported by strong feedback on service and support as well as the overall buy experience. Coupa also performs strongly within customer enablement due to availability of extensive training and certification programs combined with a high number of customers already certified.
  • Implementation partners: Coupa is above average on implementation support through third-party consultancy partners with an extensive partner network covering all regions. Its partner network is growing and consists of a large number of trained and certified consultants.

  Cons:

  • User experience: Coupa has a vision for a consistent UX with embedded visualizations, self-service extraction, transformation and loading (ETL) capabilities, pluggable analytics (bring your own), and an app studio. However, contextual collaboration as well as explainability and transparency around planning results are lagging, and Coupa is still in the process of bringing more capabilities from its desktop app into its native web application.
  • Vision for S&OE: Coupa's vision for supporting S&OE processes is weaker than that of other vendors evaluated in this Magic Quadrant. Areas such as event management and order promising are not supported. Coupa's vision for more granular levels of planning decision making is limited to impacting operational planning policies and constraints rather than providing actual functional coverage.
  • Deployment options: Coupa's SCP cloud strategy is evolving in a cloud-first direction, but it currently pursues a hybrid approach of platform and desktop integration. Only the desktop version can be deployed in a private cloud (such as on Google, Azure or AWS), and only AWS is fully available to its customers for deployment. Its supplier collaboration application is 100% cloud-based and supports AWS and Microsoft Azure.


• Dassault Systèmes - Visionary
  

  Pros:

  • Capability breadth: Dassault Systèmes has a strong vision for supporting the different layers of planning and extension into design, engineering and execution. This includes capabilities ranging from network design and inventory optimization to order promising, detailed scheduling, workforce, transportation and broad execution visibility.
  • Modeling of constraints: Dassault Systèmes has experience dealing with complex supply chains, including many different types of constraints, and it can plan with these constraints down to the level of production planning and detailed scheduling. It then uses its broad range of analytics to generate optimized plans across the supply chain.
  • Deployment options: The Dassault Systèmes SCP solution can be deployed on a variety of hyperscale clouds and can also be an on-premises installation. This gives customers options to choose their preferred deployment option.

  Cons:

  • User interface/experience: Dassault Systèmes' vision for the user experience includes development of a modernized user interface aligned across applications, but it will take some time before this is realized. As complex algorithms are typically used in the platform, it also needs to increase the focus on providing more insights into the automated planning results, making users feel more comfortable accepting the plan proposals.
  • Customer experience: Dassault Systèmes has a highly structured and broad approach to engaging with customers through, for example, councils and newsletters, but the overall customer experience is below average compared with other vendors in this Magic Quadrant.
  • Price level: Dassault Systèmes has a complex pricing model, and the overall price is typically high compared to other vendors.


• e2open - Visionary
  

  Pros:

  • Modeling of constraints: The provider can model many different types of constraints, going beyond traditional supply chain planning constraints and into areas such as finance, energy and emissions. It then uses different types of planning algorithms, such as heuristics or optimization, to generate feasible plans respecting these constraints.
  • Digital and AI: e2open has a strong vision for leveraging various advanced technologies, such as deep learning, process mining and several machine learning techniques. This provides users with broad options to choose the appropriate techniques relevant for their use cases.
  • Customer engagement: e2open's strategy for customer engagement includes hosting two user conferences, e2open Connect, which are held annually in both North America and Europe. It also engages with customers through customer advisory boards, newsletters, webinars and whitepapers. The e2open University offers a training and certification program including e-learning and instructor-led training, ensuring that customers have plenty of options to strengthen their skills.

  Cons:

  • Capability coverage: Despite a solid vision for capabilities to support the different layers of SCP, e2open's current native, out-of-the-box coverage is below average compared to its peers. The platform offers a solid set of capabilities, but areas such as production scheduling and network design are not covered natively or through partnerships, leaving customers to go elsewhere when such capabilities are needed.
  • Extensibility: Currently, e2open prefers its customers to use embedded e2open analytics or to have systems integrator partners or third-party developers build analytics on the platform. Its vision to support self-service analytics is lagging compared with its peers.
  • Vendor implementation services: The provider has not grown its implementation services over the past year at the same rate as other vendors in this Magic Quadrant, despite having a good number of new customers on the platform. This can be indicative of a more effective implementation strategy, but it can also be a watchout in terms of vendor resources availability.


• GAINSystems - Visionary
  

  Pros:

  • Capability breadth: GAINSystems has a strong vision for supporting the different layers of planning. This includes capabilities ranging from network design and inventory optimization to production planning and order promising.
  • Range of analytics: GAINSystems' current state and vision for providing a range of analytics is very broad and includes various aspects of heuristics, optimizations, simulations and ML. This gives users a range of choices when generating plans across the supply chain.
  • Customer experience: GAINSystems' customers express positive experiences with several areas such as customer service and support, and evaluation and contract negotiations. Customers also express above-average likelihood of recommending the solution to others, indicating overall satisfaction with the solution and service.

  Cons:

  • User experience: GAINSystems' vision for user experience is below average compared to its peers. It has commenced a modernization process to unify the user experience across legacy capabilities and acquired capabilities (e.g., from 3TO extending its supply chain design offering); however, as with all new developments, it will take some time for the new user experience to be fully deployed and matured. Furthermore, its vision for providing explainability into planning results is comparatively below average.
  • Customer awareness: Gartner customers do not often ask about or search for knowledge on GAINSystems. This may be impacted by the type of end-user organizations it targets.
  • Third-party implementation services: GAINSystems has been growing its own consulting and implementation support positively and is seeking to expand its ecosystem. However, it has comparatively fewer third-party implementation service partners, limiting customers' options in this area.


• John Galt Solutions - Challenger
  

  Pros:

  • Vision for decision automation: John Galt Solutions has an above-average vision for decision automation. Its Atlas Expert Systems run closed loop, automatically deriving and adjusting thresholds based on experimentation and probabilistic inputs. Atlas Intelligent Workflows are designed to orchestrate human and machine activities, allowing growth in the level of automation over time.
  • Implementation time: Compared to its peers, John Galt Solutions is above average in achieving shorter-than-average implementation times (covering demand, supply and S&OP). To achieve this, it leverages, among other things, a wide variety of templates as well as a standard implementation methodology, blending defined stages and sprints.
  • Critical issue resolution and customer support: John Galt Solutions receives strong customer feedback for customer support. This may be indicative of its similarly strong support for the resolution of critical issues, which end-user organizations value highly as their dependency on a SCP solution increases.

  Cons:

  • Composability: John Galt Solutions' vision for composability has evolved in a positive direction but remains weaker compared to other vendors in this Magic Quadrant. A public API portal can be accessed to consult its catalog, but it currently has no API marketplace nor a marketplace for extensions, although indicating future development in this area. Furthermore, its communicated microservices strategy is comparatively less tangible.
  • Global reach: John Galt Solutions has a more limited physical presence with offices in fewer regions and fewer distribution partners than other vendors in this Magic Quadrant. However, the company continues to grow its global network across South America, Africa, Middle East, Asia/Pacific, and Australia/New Zealand.
  • Implementation partners: John Galt Solutions has fewer third-party implementation partners than other vendors in this Magic Quadrant and fewer of these are certified. It accelerated its phased global partner program across regions in 2023 to accommodate this caution.


• Kinaxis - Leader
  

  Pros:

  • Planning automation and alignment: Kinaxis has a strong vision for supporting its customers' requirements for automating and aligning all layers of planning with execution, as well as extending into multienterprise planning. Decision intelligence and automation is incorporated into many areas across demand and supply, from collaborative workflows generation to automated scenario planning.
  • User experience: The vision for user experience, based on areas such as a unified user interface, self-service, scenario management and content rich collaboration within the platform, is above average. Kinaxis also leverages several techniques to enhance the user experience and to obtain explainability of planning results.
  • Implementation partners: Kinaxis is above average with regard to certified third-party implementation partner coverage. Through its partnership investment over the years, it can offer a diverse portfolio of large as well as boutique (smaller) consulting partners with broad global and regional coverage.

  Cons:

  • Uncertainty management: Kinaxis' vision to manage or leverage supply-side uncertainty is below average. Kinaxis' vision focuses on demand-side risks to manage variability and uncertainty and includes partnerships with risk management systems, use of probabilities in multiechelon inventory optimization, and robust scenario and simulation planning. Investments in supply-side uncertainty are being expanded through existing partnerships that leverage similar techniques to enhance mitigation of supplier and part-specific risks in the future.
  • Customer service and support: Kinaxis' customers indicate below-average satisfaction with its customer service and support. A contributing factor to this may be the limited number of languages its help desk and software support; however, Kinaxis is actively investing in this area.
  • Pricing: Kinaxis' pricing model is complex (consisting of several factors) compared to other vendors in this Magic Quadrant. Additionally, its price level is above average. Kinaxis is, however, actively working on simplifying the pricing model and making the cost of the platform more attractive for a broader audience.


• Logility - Leader
  

  Pros:

  • Innovation: Logility has an above-average vision for AI as well as speed and scalability compared to other vendors in this Magic Quadrant, supporting graph technologies, GenAI and other AI/ML techniques. This is coupled with a vision to move toward continuous planning that is supported through distributed processing, multithreading and a cloud-agnostic approach for delivery of its solution.
  • Decision alignment: Logility's vision for providing planning support across different layers of planning (strategic, tactical, operational) is above average. It is developing a governance and orchestration approach to align data across planning horizons for the different personas involved in an end-to-end planning process. Logility has a vision to automate multienterprise planning processes across planning phases and to align processes and decisions through granular reconciliation.
  • Customer experience: Logility is above average on its engagement, customer service and technical support compared to other vendors in this Magic Quadrant. This is supported with a strong certification program, customer councils and conferences to support its customers on a digital supply chain planning journey.

  Cons:

  • Decision support management: Logility is below average compared to other vendors in this Magic Quadrant in supporting its customers on the improvement and automation of policies, parameter settings and thresholds that guide supply chain planning processes.
  • Global reference for SCP: Compared to other vendors in this Magic Quadrant, its customers are less likely to utilize Logility's platform at a global scale and to use a broad set of functional capabilities. As Logility continues to expand enterprise accounts in its sales strategy, this is an opportunity to improve.
  • Cloud deployments: Compared with most other vendors in this Magic Quadrant, Logility has a lower percentage of customers that have deployed its primary SCP solution in the cloud. It also has a lower percentage of on-premises customers that have migrated to cloud deployment models. Supporting its significant on-premises customer base, and/or transitioning them to the cloud version, risks diverting resources from development of its cloud solution.


• o9 Solutions - Visionary
  

  Pros:

  • Digital supply chain twin: o9 Solutions' vision for the digital supply chain twin shows strength in all areas including the use of low-latency, granular data and graph database technology. The digital supply chain twin is a core element in generating high-quality end-to-end plans.
  • Extensibility: The o9 Solutions' platform has been designed to be an open and extensible platform. It can integrate specialized algorithms developed by client data science teams or partners in Python, R, Gurobi and others through an open plug-in architecture. This gives customers more choices when leveraging the platform, as they are not tied to using only the embedded algorithms.
  • Customer engagement and enablement: o9 Solutions engages with customers in a variety of ways, including user conferences, executive councils, road shows, newsletters and webinars. The o9 Academy offers standardized training with certifications across different user groups, and postimplementation support is enabled by the o9 customer success program. An o9 customer can use these broad options to keep up to date and to engage with other o9 Solutions customers for experience sharing.

  Cons:

  • Sales strategy: o9 Solutions' sales strategy is below average compared to other vendors in this Magic Quadrant. It has not acquired as many net new customers, which may be driven by its focus on selling to large enterprises. Furthermore, the number of internal employees has grown significantly, which is a caution for customers requiring support from experienced, internal o9 Solutions consultants but may prove to be valuable in the longer horizon.
  • Pricing: o9 Solutions' pricing model is more complex and less transparent compared to its peers. Furthermore, subscriptions have above-average price points, compared with those of other vendors in this Magic Quadrant, for instances of similar scope and scale. This might be due to its focus on providing a lower total cost of ownership throughout the deployment life cycle.
  • Customer stickiness: While o9 Solutions is putting a lot of effort into engaging with its customers, Gartner data shows that the tendency for customers to recommend the solution to others is below average compared with other vendors.


• OMP - Leader
  

  Pros:

  • Capability breadth: OMP has a strong vision to support all the layers of planning — short term, midterm and long term. This is combined with a strong vision for enabling execution visibility through a variety of internal and external data sources leveraging its Data Genie capabilities and technology partnerships.
  • Modeling of constraints: OMP shows significant strength in its vision as well as its execution of modeling many different types of constraints, going beyond traditional supply chain constraints into areas such as sustainability. Combined with a broad range of analytics, it enables the creation of optimized plans across the supply chain.
  • Vendor implementation services: OMP shows a healthy growth in its implementation services alongside a broad range of certified, third-party implementation partners. This enables broad support to customers through their implementation journeys.

  Cons:

  • Industry strategy: OMP has solid expertise in process manufacturing industries, such as chemicals, pharmaceuticals and CPG, but much less focus on discrete manufacturing and distribution-intensive industries. This can prove challenging for companies with a diverse product portfolio that require considerable experience in several industry verticals.
  • Customer functional penetration: OMP started as a specialist provider within production planning many years ago, which results in several customers using a narrower range of planning capabilities in the platform. However, Gartner has observed a tendency toward broader deployments over the years as this has become the target customer group for OMP.
  • Price level: OMP has a simple functionality and per-user pricing model, but the overall price is typically high compared with that of other vendors in this Magic Quadrant.


• Oracle - Leader
  

  Pros:

  • Vision for composability: Oracle's composable architecture vision is above average. It has extensive microservices for fine-grained planning process integration, a substantial library of technical and functional APIs, and openness for third parties to develop apps and integrate AI algorithms via the Oracle PaaS platform.
  • Planning granularity: Oracle has a strong vision for planning granularity, enabling its customers to plan at any level of detail, be it aggregate or specific. It covers all granularities of time (seconds up to years) as well as attributes, order lines, batches, resources and subcustomer levels.
  • Pricing: The price of Oracle's solution is competitive compared with peer vendors in this Magic Quadrant. Additionally, its pricing model is very simple (based on modules and number of users) making it easy for customers to understand the financial impact of scaling the solution up and down.

  Cons:

  • User experience: Oracle's vision for its next-generation unified user interface is promising but has not reached its full potential. Its unified UX work is leveraging the Oracle development platform that goes across all Oracle apps, but it is still missing a stronger vision in areas such as explainability into planning results.
  • Decision support: Oracle's vision for managing and automating planning guardrails is narrow compared to other vendors in this Magic Quadrant. Automation and autonomous improvements suggested by the system are limited. Its focus lies primarily on providing the user frameworks to manage rules and (dynamic) thresholds.
  • Deployment options: Oracle's solution can be deployed in a private or public cloud, but only on OCI, which can be challenging for customers with a preference for other hyperscale clouds. However, Oracle applications can be connected to other hyperscale clouds in hybrid environments.


• RELEX Solutions - Challenger
  

  Pros:

  • Modeling of constraints: RELEX's platform provides visibility and optimization to a breadth of constraints, including typical physical ones such as space and throughput, but also nontypical resource constraints such as financial (including cost, revenue and profit) and sustainability ones (such as CO2 emissions).
  • Data management: RELEX's vision for data management includes using data from internal sources and third-party data providers to enable streaming data uploads for its SCP solution to provide continuous planning in fast-moving customer environments.
  • Customer engagement: RELEX is above average in customer engagement. It leverages a variety of channels, such as special interest groups, customer councils, newsletters, webinars and whitepapers, to engage with customers. Furthermore, it offers standardized, online training through the RELEX Skills Academy, upskilling customers both during and after implementation of the solution.

  Cons:

  • User experience: RELEX's vision for a unified interface and single data model across the RELEX legacy application and the recent acquisitions is solid but currently still in the early stages of execution. Its vision for explainability and cognitive computing helping to build trust with end users and automate planner decisions across the platform could be stronger.
  • Uncertainty management: RELEX's vision for handling uncertainty in supply chain planning is weaker than other vendors in this Magic Quadrant. Probabilistic approaches to provide a wider range of planning outcomes focus on more limited use cases. RELEX also is lagging in leveraging external data and risk signals to create a more resilient plan.
  • Pricing strategy: Pricing for RELEX's platform is based on the functionality deployed and the size and complexity of the business. The definition of complexity varies, based on the customer setup, which makes RELEX's pricing model less transparent, though it aims to take into account the customer's specific use case. Additionally, RELEX prices its solution slightly above the average for vendors in this Magic Quadrant.


• SAP - Challenger
  

  Pros:

  • Global strategy: SAP has one of the largest footprints of the vendors in this Magic Quadrant, with a global network comprising many distribution partners, value-added resellers and implementation partners across the eight regions defined in this research. It also serves more industries than any other vendor, which enables it to provide broad support to customers.
  • Customer growth: Year-over-year growth in the number of customers subscribing to SAP IBP is above average compared to other vendors in this Magic Quadrant. Data shows that most SAP IBP customers deploy the solution leveraging a broad range of capabilities and across several geographies. With its cloud-native platform, SAP IBP is an attractive option for both large and midmarket enterprises.
  • Customer engagement: SAP engages with customers in a variety of ways through conferences, customer councils, webinars and newsletters, among others. It offers standardized training courses and certifications for customers combined with post implementation support to ensure continuous improvement.

  Cons:

  • Digital supply chain twin: SAP is evolving its digital supply chain twin in a positive direction, but the current state of the digital twin as well as the overall vision lags behind some of the leading vendors in this Magic Quadrant. Not leveraging graph databases is an example of this.
  • Customer stickiness: SAP has increased its efforts in engaging with its customers; however, customer feedback shows that SAP IBP customers are less likely to recommend SAP to peers. They are also less satisfied with the service and support they receive from SAP than are the customers of other vendors in this Magic Quadrant.
  • Pricing: SAP's pricing model is very simple, with the only driver being cost of goods per functional module; however, the price level is above average compared to other vendors in this Magic Quadrant.


• Slimstock - Niche Player
  

  Pros:

  • Sales strategy: Slimstock maintains an organic growth strategy and has continued to add a greater-than-average percentage of SCP customers to its client base over the past year. To achieve and support this growth, it gradually increased the number of employees across all its regional offices and business functions (sales, marketing and consulting).
  • Single global reference: Slimstock's customers indicate a high tendency to leverage the solution as a single global reference for SCP, signaling the likelihood of continued investment and functional and/or regional expansion of its solution instances.
  • Pricing: Slimstock's pricing model for Slim4 is simple and transparent, being based on activated modules, scope and size of the supply chain. Furthermore, the solution's price level is typically lower compared to other vendors in this Magic Quadrant.

  Cons:

  • Range of resource types: Although Slim4 supports core planning requirements for demand, supply, S&OP and financial planning, Slimstock's overall vision on constraint-based planning across different resource types is limited. Use cases focus on material, transportation (containerization) and spare parts planning, with storage, warehousing and waste as the primary key constraining resources to consider. Labor and work centers are not part of the vision.
  • Vision for decision automation: Slimstock pursues automation of all routine operations with the help of monitoring, exceptions alerting and process/workflow guidance leveraging RPA and AI to reduce the amount of simple and repetitive tasks. However, Slimstock's overall vision on decision automation is conservative when it comes to autonomous prescription of key planning actions across demand and supply.
  • Implementation partners: Slimstock does not leverage implementation partners for the delivery of its solution. In addition to limiting customers' choice of partners, this affects Slimstock's ability to scale and grow compared to other vendors in this Magic Quadrant. The latter limitation is partly compensated by a higher-than-average growth of employees supporting SCP.


• ToolsGroup - Niche Player
  

  Pros:

  • Managing uncertainty: ToolsGroup has an above-average vision for handling uncertainty in supply chains through partnerships enabling risk monitoring and modeling. With strong support for probabilistic techniques for both demand and supply, it enables its customers to proactively handle uncertainty.
  • Data latency: ToolsGroup's vision for handling data latency is supported by the module, Inventory Hub, and its ability to support real-time latency upstream and downstream. It detects events in the supply chain and can reoptimize through probabilistic techniques as well as execute data cleansing to ensure an accurate model is maintained.
  • Pricing: ToolsGroup has a simple and transparent pricing model combined with an affordable price level, making it attractive for both midmarket and larger organizations.

  Cons:

  • User experience: When compared to other vendors in this Magic Quadrant, ToolsGroup's user experience strategy is below average. It expects to leverage AI broadly in the platform, which includes the user experience, but the vision is not tangible on how this will evolve nor is it comparatively as far in the journey. Furthermore. it has a more conservative approach to explainability compared to other vendors in this Magic Quadrant.
  • Digital planning and AI: ToolsGroup's vision for digital planning and artificial intelligence is below average compared to other vendors. The vision contains elements such as support for RPA, deep learning and process mining, but lacks a strong vision for the use of graph databases and big data.
  • Customer experience: ToolsGroup performs below average for customer service and support, and for evaluation and contract negotiation. The same is true for customer stickiness, which results in an overall customer experience below the average for vendors in this Magic Quadrant.

Reference

• Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Supply Chain Planning Solutions, 23 April 2024, ID G00794751

View Market Definition
View Vendor Movements