Event
Summary
SCT has announced that it will embed Vanguard OLAP and business
analytic technologies in new iProcess.sct Business Analytics
offerings, with availability for general distribution planned for September.
The first two offerings will be iProcess.sct Demand Analytics
and iProcess.sct Market Analytics. Further, SCT intends
to launch additional offerings including one based on its "actual costing"
capabilities. SCT states that the offerings will be tightly integrated
with SCT's supply chain execution/ERP and web-based collaborative demand
planning.
SCT
produces and globally distributes iProcess.sct, a complete business solution
for process manufacturers in the food, beverage, cpg, pharmaceutical,
biotech, chemical, and related industries. iProcess.sct includes solutions
for collaborative supply chain planning and optimization, supply chain
execution/ERP, Internet commerce, and relationship network management.
Vanguard Solutions is a supplier of tightly integrated,
pre-configured BI for ERP and SCM. Both companies have demonstrated knowledge
of the needs of the process industries. SCT is leading the pack in solutions
designed exclusively for the process markets, Vanguard has roots in the
PRISM product, and GPS has rich process specific functionality.
Interviews
with existing users of this technology reveal some of its advantages:
- Fully
supported integration
- Ease-of-use,
ease-of-learning
- Rapid
implementation cycles
- Pre-configured
OLAP views
- Robust
set of process industry analytics and KPI's (Key Performance Indicator)
- Work
online using windows or a browser UI (User Interface)
- Work
offline totally unconnected
- Automatic
distribution via e-mail or web server development
Users reported
that (as with many BI applications) the value of the underlying transaction
or planning system was dramatically increased by the both the increased
accessibility and the organization of the data.
Market
Impact
Trends
in the BI market include pre-packaged, out-of-the-box solutions which
gets away from tool kits that require user organizations to build their
own integration and end-user solution. Another trend is the move toward
industry specific products that address unique needs of specific target
vertical markets. SCT's BI offering is an example of both of these trends.
Many
BI vendors are only beginning to follow these two trends with current
projects having the characteristics of a development project with large
budgets and long schedules as compared to the short, low cost implementation
offered by the approach typified by SCT.
User
Recommendations
Existing users of SCT's products should evaluate the new BI products with
an eye towards extending the value of existing applications. Users of
the SCT Supply Chain solution should be pleased with the solutions becoming
available in September.
Process
enterprises looking for SCM, e-commerce or ERP solutions should have placed
SCT on the short list before this announcement. These enterprises should
consider BI as an absolute requirement during their evaluation.
SCT
should educate its existing user base in the value of BI and push to make
the total BI suite available as possible.