SCM Technology

I started with HighJump Software in February of 2002. The economy was still rocky following the September 11^th tragedy and the enterprise software industry was particularly hard hit on the back of the dot com bubble burst. Some might have said it was a terrible time to move from management consulting to the software business. Interestingly, HighJump was able to weather the difficulties and produced rapid growth in the early 2000’s. For several years in that time period, our marketing message prominently highlighted that we were the “fastest growing supply chain execution software provider”. As HighJump established a larger position in the supply chain execution software market, we de-emphasized that message.

The recent news that HighJump was cited as the fastest growing provider of Warehouse Management Systems (WMS) in a report by ARC Advisory Group titled “Warehouse Management Systems Worldwide Outlook: Marketing Analysis and Forecast Through 2013” was a bit like déjà vu, especially given the current economic situation. There appear to be some factors that remain important to WMS warehouse management system buyers when they select HighJump over our traditional competitors.

Flexible Architecture – traditional approaches to WMS solutions remain primarily switch driven. This means that functionality is enabled through setting of interdependent switches to define a business process. HighJump does provide switches for all standard functionality in the warehouse management system (WMS). In addition to the traditional switches, HighJump’s architecture provides a workflow modeling tool which provides even greater flexibility when defining operational processes such as those in a warehouse. Prospective buyers who understand their distribution center operations will likely change over time, see value in this flexible architecture.

Total Cost of Ownership - ongoing cost of enterprise software applications is being heavily scrutinized by IT organizations during this economic slowdown. HighJump encourages buyers of warehouse management systems to evaluate cost of ownership over the full lifecycle of the software system, typically 7-10 years. Specific areas to understand include: initial software license fees, implementation services, customization fees, maintenance and support fees, upgrade fees (assume an upgrade every 2-3 years) and ongoing customization fees to support business changes. Our experience shows that buyers who perform this analysis will see clear differentiation in total cost of owner between HighJump its traditional competitors.

I believe flexible architecture and total cost of ownership are heavily weighted criteria when evaluating a warehouse inventory management system in an economic slow period like we experienced in the early 2000’s and are currently experiencing. These factors may provide some indication of why HighJump’s business performance will remain healthy during these time periods.