February 7, 2005

SSA is mostly known as the enterprise resource planning company that has consistently followed a strategy of aggressive acquisition of B2B companies and related providers.

But after two years of product development, the company wants to get the word out that it is also an increasingly sophisticated supply chain management (SCM) provider.

This makes sense given that SSA's ERP acquisitions have also resulted in the aggregation of many supply chains applications. "Baan brought planning and CAPS logistics and EXE was distribution and replenishment planning," says Eric Nilsson, director of solutions management for SSA SCM, by way of example. "We've been working on integration for two years."

The end result is an SSA SCM product that covers demand planning, forecasting, inventory planning, sourcing and replenishment, product planning, scheduling, and transportation planning - - which, together, represent "complete SCM process capabilities," according to Nilsson.

SSA is primarily targeting its installed base of 13,000 ERP customers, who will be glad to know that SSA SCM integrates with SSA's ERP products. "One objective in the SCM group is to get the word out that we do have these applications that extend the investments the customer base has made in ERP," says Mike Uskert, solutions manager for SSA SCM.

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