The notion of a “SaaSpocalypse” continues to be questioned across all industries, and the supply chain space is no different. Publicly traded players in the market like Manhattan Associates and Kinaxis have seen sharp knocks to share price this year, with Manhattan down about 16% year-to-date and Kinaxis down 5.5%, as many have questioned where established operational software players stand in this new environment.
Sentiment has somewhat shifted in the last few weeks, with share prices recouping some of the loss, and a more favorable outlook for major players. Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) from both Blue Yonder and Kinaxis have addressed the question directly, both discussing how the new wave of Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools is purely a tailwind for their platforms and, among others, have presented radical new ways for companies to interact with their supply chain data and develop custom workflows to suit specific requirements. Placing more control in the hands of the end user and drastically reducing the time and effort to develop custom systems and agents could spell bad news not for established providers, but rather the Systems Integrators (SIs) and add-on solutions that have long thrived on integration complexity and slow product development cycles.
Major solution providers in the supply chain space have been repositioning end-to-end supply chain platforms as bases for agentic functions and trying to place more control in the hands of the end user. For example:
- Blue Yonder is collaborating directly with NVIDIA on a model-training environment to accelerate the development of specialized supply chain agents.
- Manhattan Associates introduced the Manhattan Agent Foundry, allowing users to design and deploy their own task-specific agents.
- Kinaxis, through Kinaxis Maestro, is evolving its concurrent planning platform into a coordinated agent-based decisioning layer.
These approaches represent the next great shift for supply chain management software. Rather than users thinking about what solutions they need to source to manage or enhance a part of their operations, users can leverage these foundational platforms to develop their own solutions to the problems they’re trying to solve. This is where the idea of a “SaaSpocalypse” and potential product consolidation does hold weight in the industry. Where users previously needed to layer add-on solutions onto their Warehouse Management System (WMS) or procurement tool, for example, to optimize performance or generate additional insight, it is increasingly possible to create these capabilities directly through dedicated agents that can be tailored more precisely to their end goals.
This approach not only enables custom product development, but it is greatly simplifying solution deployments. SIs like Accenture, Capgemini, and Cognizant have long played a key role in managing the lengthy integrations of new systems, something that’s particularly complex for supply chains given the number of disconnected nodes that need to be involved and supported. But major providers like Blue Yonder are now referencing successful deployments that are taking a matter of days, not weeks or months, using forward-deployed engineers and agents taking on a bulk of the technical migration work.
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As things stand, the most likely outcomes are as follows:
- Solution providers that own data in their domain, be it visibility platforms, WMS, Yard Management System (YMS), or operational Internet of Things (IoT) platforms will continue to thrive and compete on agentic capabilities. As is always the case, the best AI tools come from the best data, which is why established supply chain software providers are at no risk of losing competitive advantage to horizontal AI platforms. Where competition will intensify for these providers as they transition to agentic platforms will be in the development environments they create for users and the channels they can create to realize the value. Pressure will be on vendors to move beyond product features, and focus instead on extensibility, means of execution, and measurable outcomes.
- SIs will need to shift value proposition as integrations become simpler. SIs should now be considering a move up the value chain, with more support for governance and oversight than just delivery. Key areas of focus should be AI governance (model risk, explainability), data integrity, and lifecycle management. While AI will be reducing technical frictions, it won’t be eliminating operational complexity, and there will still be a big need for regulatory support, multi-region deployments, and cybersecurity measures. And in the same way that solution providers will win with native industry data, SIs can win by leveraging industry-specific expertise.
- Solutions that sit on top of existing systems to optimize or enable new ways of working will be less attractive as users are able to customize their base solutions better. These dedicated “optimization” and “visibility” tools that serve as additional layers to embedded systems are likely to face the greatest pressure. In the past, they have filled gaps and made up for the shortfalls in system capabilities, but often only until underlying platforms catch up. And these platforms will both be able to catch up much faster, and create even more customized tools tailored to specific user needs.
