What’s New in Supply Chain Control Towers?

It’s been awhile since we’ve covered supply chain control towers, and I thought it would be a good idea to revisit the topic, as there has been some really interesting research published over the past few months.

First–Nucleus Research released its 2015 Value Matrix: Supply Chain Control Towers.

This edition of the value matrix examines on-premise and cloud software vendors who provide inventory optimization (IO), applications that allow companies to minimize their inventory holdings while still ensuring enough stock on hand to maintain service and sales.

IO software continues to evolve as vendors develop friendlier interfaces for users, provide more analytics, and start to apply artificial intelligence to these applications.

Most vendors now provide multi-echelon (MEIO) solutions as standard functionality, thus allowing companies to adjust inventory holdings holistically across multiple locations in the supply chain.

Leading vendors have begun using demand signals such as point of sales data as the replenishment input rather than sales orders.

Although many vendors do have cloud-based offerings, there are still some well-known vendors who deliver solutions only as an on-premise applications.

If you haven’t done so already, I suggest you read the whole thing.

Below I’ve included a sneak peak at the outcome:

Supply chain control tower vendors continue to evolve as they begin to marry planning and execution systems into one console with an extended view down tothe stock keeping unit level. Leading vendors are incorporating advanced business intelligence capabilities to assist control tower operators to sift through reams of data.

There’s also the popular white paper: “The Truth About Supply Chain Control Towers”, which, although two years old, has proved to be extremely prescient and relevant to anyone who wants a good entry point to dive into the subject.

Finally, SCM World just released an interesting report (gated) on the “The Future of Supply Chain”, based on responses from more than 1000 supply chain leaders around the world.

Although it doesn’t discuss control towers explicitly, the same themes of visibility, automation, and rapid sense and response capabilities are present throughout.

The truth is, supply chain leaders are still struggling to manage through a tangled mess of legacy systems with outdated architectures.

As long as that is a case, control towers will remain a hot topic within supply chain, and software vendors will continue to sell solutions with that badge, even if behind the scenes their systems’ ability to deliver vary wildly.

Related: Evaluating Vendor Capabilities to Enable Supply Chain Control Towers