Supply Chain Software Top 10 Suppliers in 2021

If 2020 was the year for uncertainty and turmoil in global supply chains, Gartner Inc.’s ranking of the Top 10 supply chain management (SCM) software suppliers didn’t show it. Most of the top software vendors grew at or above market growth rate to maintain their market share rankings during a very unpredictable period of time.

“It was pretty quiet on the Top 10 supply chain software front in 2020; there weren’t very many changes,” says Balaji Abbabatulla, Gartner UK’s senior director of product management research for SCM software. “All of the companies in the top five retained their positions, and in the top six to 10 there were just some minor changes.”

Similar to 2019, the top five vendors on the list were SAP, Oracle, Blue Yonder, Coupa and Infor Global Solutions. The first four all posted revenue gains in 2020, with Infor experiencing a slight drop in its supply chain software sales for the year. Descartes Systems Group took the sixth spot away from E2open, which fell to ninth place.

WiseTech Global, Jaggaer, and Manhattan Associates rounded out the Top 10, which didn’t welcome any newcomers in 2020. The companies holding the sixth through 10th spots all reported revenue gains for the year.

Under the hood

Things may have been quiet on the surface for the Top 10 in 2020, but a closer look reveals a supply chain software market that was extremely active. With companies looking for new ways to tackle the rigors of the pandemic, deal with labor shortages, and manage supply chain disruptions, vendors were coming up with new ways to address these and other emerging issues.

“There was a lot of change among supply chain leaders in order to survive the disruptions caused by the pandemic market,” says Abbabatulla. There were also changing attitudes (i.e., a willingness to invest in new software capabilities to impact specific outcomes such as supply chain agility) and an acceleration of the adoption of Cloud software.

Procurement

Within the procurement sector, demand for procure-to-pay software suites spiked as companies sought out ways to improve business continuity in the midst of pandemic-driven uncertainty.

Rather than looking for software that could handle all of their procurement-related processes, companies wanted to digitize invoicing, automate invoice processing and eradicate paper checks in favor of electronic payments.

“We received more inquiries about invoice automation in 2020 than ever before,” says Abbabatulla, who also saw more interest in procure-to-pay automation, which effectively supported the shift to remote working and gave people a way to do their jobs while away from the office.

Supply chain planning

A similar trend took place in the supply chain planning (SCP) space in 2020, where vendors began exploring new ways to bring innovative capabilities to market.

These capabilities would not only help customers manage pandemic-related challenges, but also prepare them to face future disruptions. Demand planning took center stage in these conversations, thanks to the high degree of supply chain uncertainty that companies were suddenly facing.

“There was a significant interest in new software capabilities for identifying and planning for demand,” Abbabatulla says. Supply chain leaders also needed to have a set of plans in place to fulfill that kind of demand—despite the disruption going on around them.

Combined, these factors created a bigger need for effective planning capabilities that could be used across different time horizons and in a coordinated manner.

Answering the call, vendors began folding more simulation, modeling and scenario planning capabilities into their platforms. They added more machine learning and AI to those solutions, all with the goal of helping supply chain leaders “sense and respond accordingly without having to look into a library and customize a templated response,” says Abbabatulla.

Supply chain execution

Software that drives the flow of goods from procurement to delivery, including production, warehousing and transportation, supply chain execution (SCE) came into the spotlight in 2020 as companies worked to shore up these activities in a “new normal” operating environment.

With an e-commerce boom pushing out a larger volume of smaller orders right to customers’ doorsteps, companies sought out new technology to help them address this and other challenges.

Even before the pandemic emerged, transportation management systems (TMS) vendors were adding more connectivity and real-time visibility into their platforms, many of which are now Cloud-based. In 2020, more companies began taking advantage of these functionalities, most of which were already in place and ready to simply “turn on” and use. Once activated, these features helped companies identify potential points of failure within their transportation networks, understand the implications of specific delays, and navigate larger trends like port congestion, container shortages and a lack of qualified truck drivers.

On the warehouse management system (WMS) front, Abbabatulla noticed acceleration of Cloud software usage. “We saw more investment in new technologies for warehouse management,” he explains. Continuing a trend that was underway pre-Covid, organizations also invested in more warehouse automation and robotics.

Abbabatulla says companies also took a bigger interest in distributed order management (DOM) in 2020. With digital becoming more relevant as a sales channel for a larger swath of industries, the need to optimize fulfillment in a way that ensures orders arrive on time and for the lowest possible cost became very real for these organizations almost overnight.

“Companies needed to be able to receive new orders across multiple types and formats,” says Abbabatulla, “so they invested in DOM as their front-ends for order receipt and fulfillment.”

As organizations continue to tackle pandemic-related challenges and work toward the future, the Top 10 supply chain software vendors will likely benefit from the various trends and forces outlined in this article. For at least the foreseeable future, supply chain software of all varieties will continue to play an important role in creating more resilient, future-proof companies.