New Manhattan Associates, IBM partnership aims to offer shippers more integrated platform

By Jeff Berman, Senior Editor -- Logistics Management, 3/28/2007

ATLANTA and ARMONK, N.Y.—Supply chain software vendor Manhattan Associates announced earlier today it has bolstered its partnership with IBM in an effort to implement and sell supply chain technology offerings that are built on IBM’s open technologies for global shippers in the retail, consumer goods, manufacturing, and transportation sectors.

The companies said that this initiative will focus in on certain geographic markets, including Asia-Pacific, Europe, Latin America, Middle East, as well as its current interests in North America, where they share roughly 1,000 customers.

“This partnership is a great opportunity for us and makes a lot of sense with what are are doing with our supply chain solutions-and the innovation we are bringing to our customers-along with what IBM offers in terms of technology and R&D,” said Jeff Cashman, Manhattan Associates senior vice president of business development.

Prior to today’s announcement, the partnership between the two companies was described as a “go to market” relationship by Cashman over the last 15 years. It focused on re-selling hardware and the concept of working together in the future on global services, as well as possibly using IBM software.

“What has changed here is that we are truly now collaborating in both go to market by vertical and region,” said Cashman. “On the technology front, we are bringing our Integrated Planning Solution (IPS) and our Integrated Logistics Solution (ILS) together and launching it on IBM platforms.”

IPS and ILS are part of Manhattan’s application suite, which is made up of a planning, forecasting, and replenishment set, as well as a transportation, warehouse management, and standard order management solution set.

Through this collaboration, the companies are fundamentally building out a business process platform for the supply chain, according to Cashman. This platform is comprised of Manhattan’s application suite coupled with IBM’s technology and framework, including WebSphere, which supports e-business applications across multiple platforms.

Cashman added that this offering will function as part of an SOA (service-oriented architecture) that drives its LEMA (logistics event management architecture) business process platform. Shippers have access to this platform with a single sign-on and will have access to all of Manhattan’s application sets. These application sets can also be accessed over the Internet.

The main benefits of this collaboration for shippers are a more integrated business process and integrated data, as well increased speed to value, noted Cashman.

“The SOA architecture makes is easier for shippers to leverage the platform and build upon it,” said Cashman. “It also drives down total cost of ownership from when shippers relied on best of breed solutions with an ERP backbone that had a high amount of risk associated with that. Shippers are having the risk taken out at a lowered cost and seeing value sooner when they go about solving complex supply chain problems.”

These supply chain problems range from demand management, managing inventory, transportation management, said Cashman. And now shippers can place orders, allocate it across their distribution network to ensure the right product is going to the right place at the right time at the right cost.

“This [partnership] is touching on transportation, distribution, merchandise, planning, order management and the entire lifecycle from the time demand is captured all the way to delivery,” said Cashman.

In terms of how today’s news position Manhattan in a highly competitive marketplace, Cashman said that IBM’s global reach is a boon, along with its technology expertise in the industry. And he also noted that Manhattan’s ability to deliver value more quickly to its customers as a key differentiator.