The new study, “Transportation Management Systems Worldwide Outlook,” authored by Adrian Gonzalez, Director of ARC’s Logistics Executive Council, notes that demand remains strong but financial hardships for three leading producers kept growth to 1.5%in 2003. With statistics for those vendors eliminated from the analysis, the remainder of the market grew at a healthy 10.6%.
In addition to SAP and Oracle flexing their TMS muscles, Gonzalez notes that, “There are several factors forcing TMS vendors to revisit their strategies and product development plans. These include the growing acceptance of subscription-based pricing and ‘on-demand’ deployments and the obsolescence of traditional, batch-oriented optimization.”
While externally hosted TMS solutions represent approximately 32% of last year’s revenues, according to the study, not all hosted solutions offer the same value. As Gonzalez explains, “Those that truly create a many-to-many network arguably offer the greatest value proposition by enabling new business processes and facilitating collaboration amongst shippers, carriers and other network participants.”
To learn more about the study, visit the website, www.arcweb.com/res/tms
