Revenue to Grow 12 Percent, the Highest Rate since 2011
As per Gartner, revenue from supply chain management (SCM) software is on track to reach $10.0 billion in 2014, a 12.2 percent increase from 2013. This would be the highest annual growth rate since 2011.
“The market for supply chain technologies is buoyant,” said Chad Eschinger, research vice president at Gartner. “Both supply chain execution and supply chain planning revenues are on course to grow at double-digit rates in 2014.”
In the fourth quarter of 2013, Gartner conducted a survey of 447 supply chain professionals across North America. When asked which obstacles hindered their progress toward achieving organisational goals, respondents identified inaccurate forecasts of demand for products and variability of demand as the leading ones. Both can be overcome with the help of supply chain initiatives and technologies.
Forty-three per cent of the supply chain professionals surveyed indicated that, to deal with rising levels of integration complexity, they were strongly committed to a single underlying technology platform that would improve the visibility of internal processes and enable more effective communication and collaboration with suppliers and buyers. “This trend toward a unifying application platform is growing and will further drive sales of supply chain solutions as more companies adhere to a platform strategy,” said Mr. Eschinger.
Through 2018, Gartner estimates that nearly 70 percent of businesses will pursue a single-platform (underlying architecture) strategy to integrate disparate systems, to improve supply chain visibility.
