AIMMS mentioned in four areas of Gartner’s Hype Cycle for Supply Chain Planning Technologies

We are really excited to get multiple mentions in Gartner’s Hype Cycle for Supply Chain Planning Technologies, which was released in October 2019. We feel like we’ve come a long way with our supply chain focus in recent years and Supply Chain Planning seems like a ‘home sweet home,’ with all of our capabilities covered.

AIMMS is mentioned in these four areas

• Network Design: while our clients have been using AIMMS to build their own network design applications for decades, our off-the-shelf and easy-to-use network design applications were released in 2017. These Apps have quickly become mainstream and are in the consideration set for many new network design users. Customers appreciate the rapid deployment and how easy it is to use the software to identify new areas of improvement by tapping into side-by-side scenario and what-if modeling capability.
• Integrated Business Planning: we’ve made large investments in S&OP and have many active users taking their business to the next level with ‘in meeting’ scenario processing capabilities. We’re now investing, even more, to extend S&OP into IBP and are enjoying the functional coaching of both Gartner and Oliver Wight to infuse our software with new capabilities.
• Configure Planning: this area is part of Gartner’s (C)ORE model, a very interesting and valuable way for companies to categorize their supply chain capabilities. According to Gartner, “Configure Planning refers to the technology that supports a company making decisions and plans about the future configuration of its supply chain. The different configuration options are evaluated to see how they might support the company strategy.” We’re delighted to get mentioned here because many of our customers use AIMMS to bring insight and resilience to critical strategic decisions. It’s an area we will continue to invest in.
• Prescriptive Analytics: it’s no surprise we’re mentioned in Prescriptive Analytics. It’s the foundation on which we build many of our capabilities. Many software vendors see the huge value of this foundation and it’s become clear that this key differentiator is very difficult to replicate, which is a relief as we’ve invested over a million hours into this capability.

Where we’d like to be mentioned

There are a number of areas where we already have great coverage with active customers. These include: Resilient Planning, Algorithmic Supply Chain Planning, Respond Planning, Digital Supply Chain Planning, CORE and Optimize Planning. We need to do more to encourage our customers to share their stories in these areas, so that we can add to the supply chain body of knowledge.

Another area we are working on is Multi-Echelon Inventory Optimization. We are actively building our off-the-shelf application, which is set for release during 2020.

DDMRP is also interesting. Our colleague Brian Dooley is an expert in this area and led one of the first implementations at British Telecom. Some say it’s a distraction, but the vast majority of professionals who have implemented DDMRP are delighted. Many of the hold-outs (I’ll admit, I’m still on the fence about it) don’t have the implementation experience of DDMRP. Brian’s view is that the mistake with DDMRP is to view it in isolation as a standalone approach. Viewed more holistically as part of CORE, it provides an excellent way to link decisions made at the configure and optimize level with those in the respond and execute layers. It’s definitely a compelling area and we will make a final decision if we want to build DDMRP off-the-shelf technology this year.

Other technologies on the Hype Cycle

Most vendors highlight Machine Learning as a key differentiator. We’re not convinced. While we do see great value in ML, our approach is not to be leaders in ML. Instead, we want to be leaders in the use of this capability to make our planning applications more insightful and users’ scenarios more valuable for their business. That is why we’re investing in Python integration for customers. When appropriate, we will use ML technology in our applications. Our soon to be released Demand Forecasting app is a good example, it uses an ML algorithm to continually adjust and fine tune the statistical models used to forecast demand.

AIMMS mentioned in four areas of Gartner’s Hype Cycle for Supply Chain Planning Technologies – Tweet this

We would like to thank Gartner for featuring us in their Hype Cycle for Supply Chain Planning Technologies. We appreciate the recognition. It also inspires us to keep building. Reach out if you have any questions about AIMMS’ work in the areas across the Hype Cycle.