Supply Chain Application Marketplace Review

SAP grew their share of the worldwide SCM market from 23.9% in 2013 to 25.8% in 2014. 

There are broadly 4 categories of firms that supply supply chain management application software.

1.   ERP vendors offering comprehensive solution or a variety of vertical industries 
2. Independent vendors offering a comprehensive solution for a variety of vertical industries 
3. Niche Players offering solution for specific supply chain functionalities.
4.  Niche players offering solution for specific industries
   
   
     Its important for supply chain managers to understand the interaction between the ERP systems and niche functionality provided by supply chain retailers. Although the supply chain application marketplace players are  viewed as competitors they also rely on each other to compliment features and functionalities
   
   Among the major trends in the SC Application Market review  is the gradual shift to Cloud-Based (SaaS) Technology .SCMS adoption is growing faster than the broader enterprise application software market. The annual revenue from SCMS (both premise-based and SaaS) reached $10 billion in 2014, a 12 percent increase over 2013.
   
   A recent Gartner projection forecasts 60% of the growth in Supply chain management software (CMS)  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% in 2014 and is projected to continue to grow at a 19% (CAGR), reaching $4.4 billion in annual sales by 2018
   
    ERP vendors particularly SAP has added supply chain management functionality to their offering and succeeded in leading the marketshare by a huge margin, and make it difficult for independent or niche players to sell to ERP vendor clients. Further ERP vendors have been developing industry specific supply chain management solutions..and as a result the share of supply chain management software sales going to ERP vendors has risen , while the niche and start ups vendors have drastically been left at the bottom languishing in sales