Supply-chain-management

software Software is a set of computer programs and associated documentation and data. This is in contrast to hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. At the lowest programming level, executable code consist ...

(SCMS) is the software tools or modules used in executing supply chain transactions, managing supplier relationships and controlling associated

business process A business process, business method or business function is a collection of related, structured activities or tasks by people or equipment in which a specific sequence produces a service or product (serves a particular business goal) for a parti ...

es. Supply chain management maximizes the efficiency of business activities that include planning and management of the entire supply chain. It helps businesses in product development, sourcing, production, and

logistics Logistics is generally the detailed organization and implementation of a complex operation. In a general business sense, logistics manages the flow of goods between the point of origin and the point of consumption to meet the requirements of ...

by automating operations. In this way, it increases the physical flow of business as well as informative flow. The entire business benefits with higher performance, greater cost-efficiency, and thus increased

supply chain In commerce, a supply chain is a network of facilities that procure raw materials, transform them into intermediate goods and then final products to customers through a distribution system. It refers to the network of organizations, people, activ ...

efficiency. While functionality in such systems is broad, it commonly includes: # Customer-requirement processing # Purchase-order processing # Sales and distribution # Inventory management # Goods receipt and warehouse management # Supplier management/sourcing A requirement of many SCMS often includes

forecasting Forecasting is the process of making predictions based on past and present data. Later these can be compared (resolved) against what happens. For example, a company might estimate their revenue in the next year, then compare it against the actual ...

. Such tools often attempt to balance the disparity between supply and demand by improving business processes and using algorithms and consumption analysis to better plan future needs. SCMS also often includes integration technology that allows organizations to trade electronically with supply chain partners.

Shift to SaaS

SCMS adoption is growing faster than the broader enterprise application software market. The annual revenue from SCMS (on-premises and

SaaS Software as a service (SaaS ) is a software licensing and delivery model in which software is licensed on a subscription basis and is centrally hosted. SaaS is also known as "on-demand software" and Web-based/Web-hosted software. SaaS is co ...

) reached $10 billion in 2014, a 12 percent increase over 2013. While premises-based software was still more widely used than SaaS solutions for SCMS in 2014,

Gartner Gartner, Inc is a technological research and consulting firm based in Stamford, Connecticut that conducts research on technology and shares this research both through private consulting as well as executive programs and conferences. Its client ...

projects that about two-thirds of the growth in SCMS adoption between 2015 and 2018 will be based on the SaaS subscription model: driven by a growing realization of the benefits of cloud-based services, the SaaS-based SCMS market grew by about 24 percent in 2014 and is projected to continue to grow at a 19 percent compound annual growth rate (

CAGR Compound annual growth rate (CAGR) is a business and investing specific term for the geometric progression ratio that provides a constant rate of return over the time period. CAGR is not an accounting term, but it is often used to describe some ele ...

), reaching $4.4 billion in annual sales by 2018.{{Cite web, title = Forecast: Public Cloud Services, Worldwide, 2012-2018, 2Q14 Update, url = https://www.gartner.com/doc/2780417/forecast-public-cloud-services-worldwide, website = www.gartner.com, accessdate = 2015-12-06

References

Supply chain management