Western European firms are abandoning the ‘big bang’ approach to supply chain management (SCM) projects and opting more manageable phased implementations. According to research from IDC, by conducting a number of smaller consecutive projects, businesses are able to maintain tighter control over project milestones, deliverables, budgets and return on investment.IDC’s research also indicates that the Western European SCM services market will from US$9.5 billion in 2001, to US$19 billion by 2006, racking up a compound annual growth rate of 15%. The supply chain services market consists of discrete consulting engagement, outsourcing services, systems integration work, training and support services.“As SCM projects will form the next generation of large scale solution implementation projects, service providers must bear their customers’ ERP implementation experiences in mind, and develop a sales strategy that counters previous bad experiences well,” says Erik Bruin, senior IDC analyst. Consequently all SCM service providers should develop scalable offerings accompanied by strong in-depth return on investment (ROI) measurements.As a result most vendors are already going to market by vertical industry, and working on an ROI story. “However, we cannot stress enough that a sound, measurable, in-depth ROI message will be key in gaining new business. Developing tailored offerings to attack the mid-market is something that not all vendors are doing at the moment,” adds Bruin.
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