IT

Best Supply Chain Management Software

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Supply chain management couldn’t be easier now. Are we nuts? No. Only giddy about our findings. We reviewed the top six providers with thought-provoking detail. Our best for most choice is Anvyl. They help teams grow their business while maximizing their output. Anvyl nurtures automation and collaboration throughout your business, improving your workflows and communication.

Best Supply Chain Management Software for Most

Anvyl Logo

Anvyl

Best for Most

Anvyl is a cloud-based SCRM built to enhance real-time visibility while helping small teams grow. It’s easily scalable, easy to use, and takes around 24 hours to deploy. It’s perfect for businesses outgrowing spreadsheets or other manual supply chain processes, with expert onboarding support and extensive training included.

Want to stop struggling with supply chain management? Anvyl gives you the easy way out to remove all the fuss and complexity most business owners face.

Your ability to leverage the right supply chain management software makes your business more agile and capable of meeting the demands of customers. Anvyl’s industry-specific expertise will help you continue to anticipate the dynamic demands coming your way every day.

The Best Supply Chain Management Software to Consider: 

  1. Anvyl – Best for most
  2. SAP Supply Chain – Best for businesses manufacturing complex products
  3. Magaya – Best for transportation and logistics service providers
  4. Logility – Best for consumer goods and retail companies
  5. ArrowStream – Best for businesses in the foodservice industry
  6. Vizient – Best for healthcare organizations and pharmacies

When Does It Make Sense to Invest In Supply Chain Management Software?

If the supply and demand equation really is impossible to solve, what’s the point in trying? 

That’s a great question, and I’m glad you asked. 

Despite perfection being impossible, the closer your predictions are to reality, the better things are for your bottom line.

With the right software, you can leverage real-time data and internal demand trends to gain actionable insight into future supply demands. 

However, there will always be unpredictable circumstances even the smartest robots can’t foresee, like our recent situation with toilet paper and hand sanitizer demand. 

Your customers still expect you to keep up, regardless of what’s happening in the market or the world around us. 

With that said, successful supply chain management isn’t just about attempting to forecast demand.

It’s about balancing inventory levels, automating routine actions to make your life easier, saving money, and creating excellent customer experiences. 

Plus, when you streamline and optimize your supply chain management processes, you make your business flexible and agile enough to adapt to dynamic demand. 

Now, raise your hand if at least one of these situations sounds familiar:

  • You sell goods or produce products to generate revenue
  • Your customers wait too long to get their orders
  • Your production and supply chain management process feels clunky
  • You’re spending too much money on supplies
  • You run out of supplies/ingredients/materials more often than you’d like
  • You’ve lost money because of expired or wasted materials
  • You’re tired of trying to attack the supply and demand equation blind
  • You’d like to have the flexibility required to meet shifting demand
  • You want to improve your bottom line

If your hand is up right now (and if it’s not, you’re not playing along), you should carefully consider supply chain management software. 

Even as a small local pub, there’s (almost) nothing worse than telling one of your regulars you’re out of their favorite beer. But the good news is that leveraging the right supply chain management software means you don’t have to. 

The bottom line: If you sell products, re-sell products, or produce goods to generate revenue, supply chain management software is a smart idea. This is true for businesses of all shapes and sizes, from local restaurants and urgent care clinics to international retailers and aircraft manufacturers. 

#1 – Anvyl — Best For Most

Anvyl Logo

Anvyl

Best for Most

Anvyl is a cloud-based SCRM built to enhance real-time visibility while helping small teams grow. It’s easily scalable, easy to use, and takes around 24 hours to deploy. It’s perfect for businesses outgrowing spreadsheets or other manual supply chain processes, with expert onboarding support and extensive training included.

Anvyl is a cloud-based (use it from anywhere) supply chain relationships management (SCRM) platform. It exists to enhance real-time visibility while providing teams with the automation and collaboration features they need to increase output, optimize their processes, and grow their businesses.

Anvyl is easy to use, fast to implement (within 24 hours), and scalable as your business grows. This is excellent for all types of business owners because when you start out you may not have an idea of how large you want your business to be. But Anvyl is there every step of the way.

As such, it’s an excellent choice for growing small businesses currently outgrowing their manual supply chain processes. 

On the one hand, Anvyl delivers the exact features you need to start optimizing your business and preparing for sustainable growth. On the other hand, you don’t have to pay for expensive features you don’t need.

The introductory plan gives you plenty of insight into orders and inventory levels, excellent if you’re looking to track how much inventory you really use . 

But the higher tiers are there for you when you’re ready for heavier logistical insight and tools for effectively managing suppliers. 

When you upgrade to higher tiers, you get access to more advanced features like logistical shipment tracking, custom automations, and supplier performance insights. 

On top of that, every plan comes with expert onboarding and in-app chat support, plus quarterly business reviews to ensure you’re using your new software to its full potential. This is incredibly helpful, especially if you’ve never used supply chain management software before. 

And as you upgrade to higher tiers, you get even more hands-on support, including RFQ support, parts and supplier uploads, supplier training, and supplier coordination. 

The Basic Plan, suited for smaller businesses, comes with a wide variety of features, including:

  • A parts library and a supplier directory
  • Purchase order issuing, cloning, and management
  • Automated check-ins with suppliers to track progress
  • A supplier portal for collaboration and file sharing
  • Unlimited collaboration seats for buyers, suppliers, and third-parties
  • Full API access to create a fully customized solution

The small business plan also comes with exclusive access to a library of certified, pre-vetted suppliers to help you compare and create new partnerships within the platform. Only 1% of suppliers that apply make their way into the library, so you’re in good hands. 

This is an excellent time-saving feature for businesses that want or need to quickly build new supplier relationships in addition to inventory management. 

Plus, you can pre-fill purchase orders using historical inputs, automate check-ins and follow-ups with suppliers, and reference what you need within seconds using Anvyl’s powerful search bar.

As such, you get everything you need to prepare your business for long-term growth, even on the lowest tier. 

Request a free trial to learn more and take Anvyl for a test drive today!

#2 – SAP SCM — The Best for Businesses That Manufacture Complex Products

SAP Logo

SAP SCM

Best for Complex Manufacturing

SAP SCM is an end-to-end supply chain management software with extensive features and capabilities specifically for businesses manufacturing complex products like aircraft, cars, industrial machinery, and electronics. Plus, the platform is based on the Industry 4.0 revolution to digitize the manufacturing process and is highly customizable to match your needs.

The more complex your products are, the more opportunities there are to improve supply chain efficiency, mitigate risk, and cut costs throughout the manufacturing process. 

So, whether you’re manufacturing cars, airplanes, innovative electronics, industrial machinery, or military-grade defense products, SAP’s expansive 50+ year history in the automation and manufacturing industries make it a smart choice.

With SAP SCM, you can make improvement all along your processes and manage the multitude of vendors and suppliers that your manufacturing operation relies on. 

This platform is truly future-proof with its capability to leverage automation and artificial intelligence. Built as an all-encompassing SCM solution, you can:

  • Track and analyze manufacturing performance at global and localized levels
  • Gather data from various manufacturing systems to improve visibility
  • Leverage machine learning and advanced algorithms for continuous improvement
  • Manage extreme product variability while maintaining margins and quality
  • Optimize the use of manufacturing resources while minimizing downtime
  • Quickly assess and resolve quality and productivity issues

With SAP’s supply and demand planning software, you can set inventory targets, seamlessly connect your sales and operations teams to balance inventory with profitability, and optimize material flow based on demand forecasting. 

From there, you can easily integrate Ariba SAP—an additional module available for purchase— that centralizes and simplifies collaboration with suppliers, partners, and other contractors. 

On top of that, you can use the software to streamline onboarding processes for new suppliers, drastically reducing the learning curve for everyone involved. 

There are also solutions for supplier management, strategic sourcing, warehouse management, transportation logistics, order management, asset management, and supply chain planning. 

So, you can build a custom and scalable supply chain management solution tailored specifically to your complex, multifaceted manufacturing processes. 

Furthermore, SAP’s advanced solutions can help you transition from outdated practices to modern processes that come with real-time analytics, in-depth insights, and powerful manufacturing automations. 

With SAP’s support services for implementation and success, you never have to navigate your new software alone. 

Plus, you can always refer to the robust product documentation, detailed knowledge base articles, bustling community support forum, and SAP’s various online training modules for help when you need it. 

Since SAP offers countless solutions and various deployment options, we highly recommend reaching out to their team to figure out the right combination of products for your business. 

Keep in mind that it may take some time to get your supply chain management system up and running since there are numerous modules and things to learn. 

With that said, you’ll get your time back (and then some) thanks to more efficient processes and time-saving automations. 

Get in touch with SAP to learn more and see if it’s right for you today!

#3 – Magaya — The Best SCM for Transportation and Logistics Service Providers

Magaya Logo

Magaya

Best for Transportation and 3PL

Built specifically for freight forwarders, NVOCC, third-party logistics, carriers, and import/export businesses. Its cloud-based deployment requires no maintenance on your part and is quick to deploy. Includes a mobile app for customer tracking, customs compliance, auto-dimensioning, courier integrations, accounting automations, and more.

Magaya is an end-to-end supply chain management solution for transportation and logistics service providers, including freight forwarders, third-party logistics firms, carriers, and importing/exporting businesses. 

With Magaya, you can centralize and optimize operations, real-time tracking, rate management, and compliance to streamline the entire process from order acquisition to product delivery. 

It’s a cloud-based solution that requires no maintenance or existing infrastructure on your part, making it incredibly lean to manage and easy to implement. 

You can access it from anywhere with an internet connection and it’s easy to use thanks to its familiar, user-friendly interface. 

Magaya comes with pre-built transportation and logistics workflows you can use to kickstart setting things up. It also comes with built-in warehouse management features so you can manage and optimize your entire supply chain from anywhere with one tool. 

And you can easily automate the most mundane processes like handling customs agencies, bookkeeping and accounting, and delivering progress reports to customers.

Magaya is arguably one of the most feature-rich supply chain management tools on this list, with features like freight quotes and booking, inventory management, ecommerce order fulfillment capabilities, automated replenishment, local pick-ups, and more. 

All of that comes in the form of modular solutions designed to add advanced functionality and capability to your supply chain software as your business grows. So, you get enhanced scalability while reducing IT-related costs because you can easily add new functionality without the help of in-house support. 

Some of the most popular add-ons include:

  • A mobile app that delivers service, visibility, and tracking to your customers
  • Photo capturing to send photos to your system in seconds
  • Warehouse automation for cargo photos, dimensions, and weight
  • U.S. customs compliance to turbocharge the brokerage process
  • Air, ocean, and courier integrations (like FedEx, USPS, and UPS)
  • Accounting automation to sync customer billing data
  • Cargo insurance functionality

Alternatively, you can upgrade to the Magaya Ecosystem, which includes all of those modules plus custom compliance and rate management solutions in one package. 

Request a free demo to learn more and see if Magaya is right for you today!

#4 – Logility — The Best SCM Solution for Consumer Goods and Retail Companies

Logility Logo

Logility

Best for Consumer Goods and Retail

Streamline and optimize inventory levels while gaining in-depth insight into dynamic product demand, despite seasonal changes and extreme demand variability. SaaS, hosted, and on-premise solutions available with expert customer support, in-person training sessions, online courses, and a certification program to help you get the most out of your new software.

Consumers have numerous ways to buy products, including online marketplaces, social media, your website, and in your brick-and-mortar store. 

With multiple places where customers want to buy from you, consumer demand and customer lifecycles can be challenging to forecast. To make matters worse, having too little stock makes for an awful customer experience. 

But too much stock sitting on the shelves or in warehouses leads to diluted profits. 

However, Logility makes it easy to simulate different situations and quickly respond to evolving demand, various market changes, and emerging global competition. 

It’s an AI-powered supply chain planning solution designed to help consumer-based businesses like yours manage dynamic product demand. In doing so, you can create better customer experiences regardless of where they happen. 

For example, you can quickly leverage artificial intelligence and smart demand sensing to enhance in-stock positions and re-plan those positions as new market intelligence becomes available. 

You can even forecast demand down to the SKU level. 

This means you’ll always have stock available, regardless of market shifts and other variances outside your control. 

On top of that, you can also:

  • Streamline the introduction of new products into the market
  • Model demand shifts based on new stores, special offers, and other promotions
  • Create service-based replenishment triggers, so you never run out of what you need
  • Strategically optimize your inventory investments for better distribution
  • Flawlessly manage seasonal volume changes and demand variability

Plus, you can efficiently run simulations on a global or store level with variances for location-specific climate, culture, and trends. This makes it incredibly easy to forecast demand more accurately and turn those insights into higher profit margins. 

You can even generate multiple supply plans with various suppliers to ensure you’re continuously optimizing your sourcing decisions.

The Logility team is with you every step of the way with online and phone-based customer support. On top of that, there are dozens of in-person training events, online courses, and a certification program to help you make the most of your new software. 

SaaS, hosted, or on-premise deployment options make Logility an excellent choice for businesses of all sizes with varying degrees of complexity. 

Schedule a free live demo to see if it’s right for you today!

#5 – ArrowStream — The Best SCM Software for Businesses in the Foodservice Industry

ArrowStream Logo

ArrowStream

Best for the Foodservice Industry

Balance fast-paced demand variability, quality standards, and strict compliance regulations from one platform built by experts who speak foodservice. Includes various modules for restaurants, suppliers, and distributors of all shapes and sizes available as a SaaS cloud-based deployment for easy scalability and implementation.

ArrowStream delivers industry-specific solutions perfect for fine-dining restaurants, fast food chains, local taco joints, and everything in between. It even works for food distributors and suppliers of all shapes and sizes.

In the foodservice industry, you face expiring ingredients, wildly variant demand from day to day, quality concerns, and strict compliance regulations. 

The good news is that the team behind ArrowStream “speaks foodservice” and understands the unique challenges surrounding what you do and the types of products you manage. 

There are numerous solutions, including: 

  • Rapid-deployment inventory management
  • Contract price auditing for restaurants
  • Quality incident management for restaurants
  • Strategic sourcing for restaurants
  • Supply chain visibility for restaurants
  • Inbound logistics optimization for distributors
  • Collaboration tools for suppliers
  • Commodity intelligence for restaurants and suppliers

ArrowStream knows that cookie-cutter solutions aren’t going to cut it in foodservice and hospitality. Combine the tools you need to create a custom supply chain management solution, making it fit your business no matter its shape or size. 

Plus, ArrowStream has a database of more than 7,500 foodservice suppliers waiting to connect with your restaurant. 

From there, you can evaluate your options and take a deep dive into historical spend analytics and existing contract data to uncover potential sourcing opportunities that are better for your business. 

All without spending weeks or months researching your options and doing the weeks-long “back-and-forth” dance to learn if a supplier is a good fit for you. 

If you’re a supplier, you can tap into ArrowStream’s restaurant network to uncover new partnerships in a matter of minutes. Plus, you can easily monitor market trends and stay on top of commodities that impact the cost of your products.

So, you’ll have deep insight into how to price your products for profit today and in the future. 

Alternatively, if you’re a foodservice distributor, you can transform your inbound logistics processes, leverage data to find the perfect balance between inventory and cost management, and lower your operational costs. 

All solutions are available as a SaaS, cloud-based deployment, which means you don’t need existing infrastructure or continuous maintenance on your end. 

As such, it’s easy to deploy and easily scalable. 

Request a free demo to see if ArrowStream is right for your business today!

#6 – Vizient — The Best SCM for Healthcare Organizations and Pharmacies

Vizient Logo

Vizient

Best for the Healthcare Industry

Optimize patient care costs, source medical supplies and PPE, gain in-depth insight into market trends, and measure your supply chain performance. Plus, get help guaranteeing product availability amidst COVID-19. Vizient offers numerous highly customizable supply chain management solutions for healthcare organizations and pharmacies of all sizes.

From vaccines and everyday medications to optimizing patient care costs and sourcing medical supplies, the healthcare industry demands world-class performance from its supply chain management software. 

This is especially true in a world where COVID-19 vaccinations are popping up and healthcare facilities are consistently at maximum capacity. 

Vizient offers various healthcare-specific solutions to help you lower supply costs, optimize operational efficiency, gain deep insight into market trends, measure your supply chain management performance, and provide nothing but exceptional care.

There are dozens of solutions to choose from, including:

  • The industry’s largest repository of real-time market data
  • An integrated clinical solution for data insights and supply chain performance
  • A supply chain resiliency program for inventory levels and effective use of supplies
  • A pharmacy program with analytics, clinical support, and product availability
  • Automation tools to streamline your back-office operations
  • DataLYNX to gain control over supply spend and ensure data accuracy
  • A healthcare construction, renovation, and consulting program

One of Vizent’s standout solutions is a PPE and essential medications resiliency program that delivers additional medical supplies to mitigate disruptions and unpredictable demand surges. In turn, you have a resilient supply chain and less risk of supply shortages. 

Plus, you also get more insight into where products came from, how they’re produced, and current inventory levels. 

The program also includes the industry’s most competitive supplier pricing with more profound benefits for high purchase volume facilities. 

For pharmacies, Vizient offers deep insight into the costs of COVID-19, its impact on pharmaceutical spend, and the latest drug pricing forecasts available. There are also various supply chain management programs designed to guarantee product availability when you need it. 

Overall, Vizient cares about driving innovation and improvements within the healthcare industry to ensure continuous, cost-effective care, even during challenging and unpredictable times. Plus, the company has 550 consultants dedicated to helping its members thrive. 

However, it’s essential to keep in mind that highly custom supply chain management solutions take a while to deploy and learn. 

And some of Vizient’s solutions may require dedicated in-house support as well. 

Get in touch with Vizient to learn more about its supply chain management solutions and to see if it’s right for you and your business today!

Methodology For Choosing The Best Supply Chain Management Software

Choosing the best supply chain management software for your business is incredibly difficult, yet it’s critical to get it right the first time. 

There are dozens of features to consider, various deployment methods to choose from, and muddy (at best) comparisons out there that don’t seem to make your decision any easier. 

So, we put together a definitive list of factors to consider when making your final decision. 

Industry Matters

When building a new house, you wouldn’t hire just any engineer off the street. You want a specialized contracting company with experience building custom homes. 

You should be thinking the same about your supply chain management software. The more specialized a software provider is, the better it’ll be at helping you solve even the most complex supply chain challenges in your industry. 

This is especially important as you grow and start to tackle more advanced logistical problems.

As such, you should prioritize industry-specific solutions, even if you’re a smaller business interested in streamlining or automating processes and preparing your business for sustainable growth. 

To put it simply, cookie-cutter solutions aren’t good enough. You deserve more from your supply chain management software and the team behind it. 

What About Your Use Case?

There are dozens of use cases for supply chain management software, including business planning, order fulfillment, better inventory management, enhanced collaboration between you and your suppliers, and in-depth business intelligence to aid in making important decisions. 

On top of that, you can use supply chain management software to manage finished goods, partially finished goods, raw materials, and any combination of the three. 

Some solutions may offer excellent inventory management features but are lacking in the collaboration and business planning departments. And others may be the best on the market for business intelligence and analytics but aren’t useful for much more than that. 

Or maybe you’re adding a new ecommerce store and need help managing your suppliers and distribution centers to tackle this new challenge. 

As such, you really need to understand how you plan to use the software before making your final decision. 

It may help to outline your current solutions and any upcoming changes you plan to make. From there, you can identify bottlenecks, potential supply chain issues, and areas for improvement. 

Those problem areas should probably be the first things you tackle with your new software. 

However, you should still have an idea of what you want to do soon and what you want to do in the next ten years. Understanding this will help ensure you’re making the right choice both for today and the future. 

Your Current Supply Chain Management Solution

After you identify your use cases and understand your current supply chain management processes, it’s crucial to look at those processes and determine what’s wrong with your current solution. 

This is true whether you’re using spreadsheets and manual processes or an existing supply chain management software. 

You need to figure out what isn’t working so you can find a solution that actually makes your life easier, rather than making a lateral move to something that still doesn’t quite fit the bill. 

Once you know where your current system fails, you can quickly identify the features and capabilities you need from your new solution. 

Scalability for the Long-Term

Now that you know why your current system isn’t cutting it and what will change the game for your business, you need to make sure your new solution is a viable option in the long-term. 

It may make more sense to invest in software that offers more than what you need today so you can easily access what you need five or ten years down the road. Why? Because switching to new supply chain management software isn’t exactly a smooth-sailing process. 

So, it’s worth the extra research to make sure your chosen solution can scale to meet your needs in the future. 

It may help to talk about this with the software provider’s sales team. They can help answer questions about the software’s current capabilities and their product improvement roadmap for the future. 

Plus, you’ll have a better understanding of the software’s pricing tiers, available features, and whether or not it can handle your specific challenges as you grow. 

Onboarding and Training Materials

One of the worst parts of implementing new software is the learning curve. Supply chain management software is incredibly complex and can take months or even years to grasp fully (without the right support). 

A new tool you can’t use is useless to you and your team. At worst, it’s fatal for your existing processes and workflows. 

So, you should carefully consider the level of onboarding support and training materials that come with your investment. Some may not provide anything at all and others may charge additional fees for these services. 

If you can’t find this information online, be sure to ask during your demo or consultation. 

Deployment and Maintenance

Some solutions may take months to deploy, especially those of the highly-customizable and on-premises types. 

This isn’t a bad thing, but it’s important to keep in mind. If you’re looking for end-to-end supply chain management software with all the bells and whistles, you will not get instant gratification.

With these types of solutions, you may even need dedicated in-house support to maintain it and train your team.  

Cloud-based solutions, on the other hand, could take less than 24 hours, while others even offer immediate access. This type of deployment is typically much more flexible, versatile, and scalable, with no dedicated in-house staff or continuous maintenance crew required.

However, cloud-based solutions may not be as customizable as onsite deployments. 

So, you have to decide which option makes the most sense for your specific situation. 

Anvyl Logo

Anvyl

Best for Most

Anvyl is a cloud-based SCRM built to enhance real-time visibility while helping small teams grow. It’s easily scalable, easy to use, and takes around 24 hours to deploy. It’s perfect for businesses outgrowing spreadsheets or other manual supply chain processes, with expert onboarding support and extensive training included.

Summary

Supply chain management software used to be reserved solely for large businesses and enterprises managing thousands of moving parts simultaneously. 

But today, cloud-based deployments and innovative technology make it more accessible and affordable for businesses of all shapes and sizes. 

Whether you’re a local pizza joint interested in sourcing better ingredients at lower costs, a mass-manufacturer of highly complex products with thousands of suppliers, or anything in between, supply chain management software can help streamline your entire business. 

To recap, our top recommendations are:

  1. Anvyl – Best for most
  2. SAP Supply Chain – Best for businesses manufacturing complex products
  3. Magaya – Best for transportation and logistics service providers
  4. Logility – Best for consumer goods and retail companies
  5. ArrowStream – Best for businesses in the foodservice industry
  6. Vizient – Best for healthcare organizations and pharmacies

And don’t forget to use the methodology we talked about as you go through the process of choosing the best supply chain management software for your business, your team, and your customers. 


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