What is supply chain planning software?
Supply chain planning (SCP) software is a robust platform that empowers companies to seamlessly manage, connect, align, collaborate, and share planning data across their extended supply chains. It typically encompasses a wide range of planning activities, from demand forecasting to detailed supply-side response planning and from strategic planning to execution-level coordination.
When planning functionality is connected to channel, supply, and logistics functionality, it is the central repository for all planning decisions within an end-to-end supply chain. Furthermore, it provides an environment for managing integrated supply chain decisions, ensuring a consistent version of planning data and decisions, regardless of the underlying execution technology.
E2open Connected Planning goes beyond planning and execution
At e2open, we deliver supply chain management solutions that enhance visibility, efficiency, and collaboration across the entire supply chain ecosystem – and supply chain planning sits at the core of the Connected Supply Chain. The underlying premise is that it’s not a matter of if the next disruption will occur but rather how many disruptions will happen, how often, and how they will impact your supply chain.
E2open Connected Planning aims to transform supply chains to solve today’s pressing challenge of end-to-end planning in a supply-constrained world with unpredictable swings in demand and logistics capacity; it’s not to fixate on incremental improvements to traditional enterprise-level planning. Transformation leaders choose e2open Planning because it goes beyond planning and execution convergence to include multi-tier collaboration across supply, distribution, logistics, and global trade ecosystems.
Finding the right supply chain planning software for your needs
One reference point is analyst competitive evaluation reports. These are valuable tools for technology buyers to get a quick assessment of the landscape in a clearly defined marketplace. But they are just one tool, one insight, not an absolute. Analysts always advise readers to consider their own use cases, complexities, and maturity requirements when evaluating solutions. Just like you should not judge the value of an elephant by how well it climbs a tree, supply chain planning solutions should be assessed against the organization’s needs today and well into the future. Gartner recently published the 2024 Magic Quadrant™ for Supply Chain Planning Solutions Report. Against Gartner’s evaluation criteria, e2open was named a Visionary in this report.
Another reference point is to benchmark against supply chain leaders with similar challenges. At e2open Connect Europe 2024 in Amsterdam, enterprise leaders from various industries shared their experiences with e2open supply chain planning solutions. Among them:
- The world leader in luxury cars and trucks, JLR, talked about how they transformed into a customer-centric supply chain through optimized and feasible supply plans supported by automated digital supplier collaboration with more than 1,500 suppliers.
- We heard from ASSA ABLOY, a global leader in door and building access solutions, who acquires 1.5 companies per month. With e2open solutions, they are able to standardize the S&OP process across dozens of newly acquired, fragmented businesses with varying maturity, data integrity, and legacy systems to drive millions in savings.
- The director of supply chain development at Goodyear shared how they lowered working capital through reduced inventory levels while improving customer service metrics.
- Sensience, a leader in thermos sensors and other electronics, discussed how e2open Sales & Operations Planning drives significant improvements in forecast accuracy and planner productivity, streamlining the entire process and cutting freight expedited expenses by 18%.
Our customers’ continued successes speak volumes. Today’s supply chain processes span internal operations, multiple tiers of upstream and downstream trading partners, and reach down to the end consumer. These processes and the inherent dynamics of demand, supply, and transportation are all connected, interdependent, and highly reactive. Few companies have sufficiently invested in connecting end-to-end processes and systematically leveraging current information to build resilience. These winning companies and many others are better prepared to weather future disruptions with resilient processes, support the communities you serve during trying times, and emerge stronger than before.
If you would like to learn more about our supply chain planning software, or our other connected solutions, or request a demo, please contact us.
Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Supply Chain Planning Solutions, By Pia Orup Lund, Tim Payne, Joe Graham, Caleb Thomson, Jan Snoeckx, 23 April 2024
GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally, and MAGIC QUADRANT is a registered trademark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates and are used herein with permission. All rights reserved.
Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.
Author
Mike Hitmar
Mike is a Senior Director of Product Marketing and leads the product marketing team at e2open. In this role, he works with clients to understand their needs and help deliver mission-critical, end-to-end supply chain management solutions. He has over 25 years of supply chain experience as a practitioner and business solutions provider across multiple industries. Prior to e2open, he held leadership roles at IBM, SAS, and General Motors, as well as early-stage startups, in engineering, marketing, product management, and product marketing. Mike holds a BS in Industrial and Systems Engineering from Ohio University and an MBA from the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business. Outside of work, Mike likes to be outdoors and marvel at his two talented son’s – one a designer and jazz musician, the other an athlete and entrepreneur. A native of Ohio and a Gulf War Veteran, Mike now lives under sunny blue skies in Raleigh, NC.
