Software spending may have slowed in the current economy, but a leading market research firm still expects that supply chain software packages will rack up $6.4 billion in sales this year.

AMR Research of Boston says the market for supply chain software should reach $13.6 billion by 2006. Companies that continue to spend money on supply chain software, however, are shifting their spending from planning to execution applications. Examples of execution applications are warehouse management and transportation management systems. Planning applications generally manage inventory forecasts.

AMR says it expects that sales for long-term planning applications will grow by only 9 percent annually over the next five years, while execution and fulfillment applications are expected to grow by 26 percent annually.

Leading the pack of supply chain software vendors in sales this year was i2 Technologies, which took in an estimated $671 million in revenues. Next was SAP AG with $602 million, followed by Manugistics with $367 million in revenues.

AMR's software forecast also notes that enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications are expected to rise from $21 billion in sales in 2002 to $31 billion by 2006. It estimates that the market for customer relationship management (CRM) software will grow from $11 billion in 2002 to $26 billion in 2007.