Kinaxis Named a Leader in the 2021 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Supply Chain Planning Solutions Report

Kinaxis evaluated on both execution and vision with furthest placement for completeness of vision in the Leaders quadrant

OTTAWA,
CANADA – Media OutReach – 4 March 2021 – Kinaxis® Inc. (TSX:KXS), the authority in driving agility for fast, confident
decision-making in an unpredictable world, today
announced it has been named a Leader in the 2021 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Supply
Chain Planning Solutions. The company is recognized for both the ability to
execute and its completeness of vision. Kinaxis is positioned furthest on the
Completeness of Vision axis amongst those in the Leaders quadrant ¹.

 

A complimentary
copy of the report can be downloaded from Kinaxis. This is the seventh
consecutive time Kinaxis has been named a Leader in a Gartner Magic Quadrant related
to supply chain planning ¹ .

 

“In the face of the unprecedented level of disruption
over the past year, corporate supply chains have never been more relevant and
doing nothing to improve planning has become the biggest risk. Supply chain
leaders at companies of all sizes have recognized a need for a transformational
shift to agility and resiliency based on a new planning technique — concurrent
planning, that only Kinaxis can provide,” said John Sicard, CEO of Kinaxis. “Kinaxis
uniquely combines AI, analytics and human intelligence to empower innovative
manufacturers to eliminate functional silos and cost-effectively optimize the
potential of their supply chains in just a few weeks.” 

 

Continued Sicard, “We believe we are the
leading innovator based on vision in the market and are thrilled with our positioning
for our current, proven RapidResponse platform. Kinaxis takes pride in our
talented team, the collaborative relationships we have with our customer and
partner community and helping advance the craft of supply chain planning for
the benefit of the planet.”

 

Top-tier manufacturers around the world use
Kinaxis in the aerospace and defense, automotive, consumer products, high-tech
and electronics, industrial, life sciences and retail industries, including
Unilever, Schneider Electric, Flex, Merck, Technicolor, Alstom and Honda, and
many others.

 

“Schneider Electric’s supply chain
digitalization journey, including our work with Kinaxis, has allowed us to
function as a truly global enterprise,” said Mourad Tamoud, Chief Supply Chain
Officer at Schneider Electric. “Through our engagement with Kinaxis, we have
found them to be industry-leading, and the partnership has enabled us to have
greater transparency, wider collaboration and increasingly autonomous high-quality
decision-making throughout the organization.”

 

Kinaxis RapidResponse® is a cloud-based
software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform purpose-built for planning, leveraging
patented in-memory database technology and always-on algorithms. Combined with
Kinaxis’ unique concurrent planning technique and AI, RapidResponse helps
global manufacturers gain agile and resilient supply chains. The Kinaxis suite
of ready-to-deploy planning applications (S&OP / IBP, Demand, Supply,
Command & Control Center, Inventory, Live Lens Insights) is optimized with
industry best practice processes and robust analytics that are synchronized
across long and short-term planning and across the end-to-end network from
customers to suppliers. The RapidResponse platform is uniquely extensible to
build, access or connect to custom applications, algorithms and external
systems across the supply network ecosystem.

 

Kinaxis helps customers accelerate value
realization with multiple deployment options to go-live in as little as six
weeks. These seamlessly expandable options allow companies to start now and
focus on the most important initiatives. All based on RapidResponse, these
options can grow over time to meet budget, team and change management needs
along the digital transformation journey.  

 

“Gartner defines a supply chain planning
(SCP) solution as a platform that provides technology support which allows a
company to manage, link, align, collaborate and share its planning data across
an extended supply chain. It supports demand creation through to the detailed
supply-side response and from strategic planning through tactical-level
planning. An SCP solution is the planning decision repository for a defined
end-to-end supply chain and is the environment in which end-to-end integrated
supply chains are managed. It establishes a single version of the truth for the
plan data and decisions, regardless of the underlying execution technology
environment.” ¹

 

The SCP market was worth $5.2 billion in
2019 and is projected to grow at a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR)
of 7.5% according to the Gartner Forecast: Enterprise Application Software,
Worldwide, 2018-2024, 4Q20 Update. ²

 

According to Gartner, “Leaders demonstrate
strong SCP solution vision and execution capabilities. They have a broad, deep
and differentiated functionality that addresses a broad range of user
requirements. Their coverage across the three categories of planning capability
— configure, optimize and respond — is good enough, with a good balance across
the categories now and/or planned for the future. They have a reasonable range
of features to support a user’s maturity journey. Their visions for supporting
the three paradigms of SCP — algorithmic SCP, digital supply chain planning and
resilient planning — align with Gartner’s vision. When these three paradigms
are blended together, they build the foundation to support a Level 5 SCP
environment. Leaders anticipate where customer demands and markets are moving
and identify how innovative technologies can be applied to planning
applications. They have strategies to support these emerging requirements to
build a future-proof SCP solution. Because leaders are well-established in
leading-edge complex user environments, they benefit from a user community that
helps them remain in the forefront of emerging needs.” ¹

 

For further information, you can access a complimentary copy of
the full Magic Quadrant for Supply Chain Planning Solutions report here.

 

¹   Gartner, Magic Quadrant for
Supply Chain Planning Solutions, A. Salley, T. Payne, P. Orup Lund, Feb. 22, 2021

Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Sales and
Operations Planning System of Differentiation, T. Payne et al, May 7, 2019; Gartner,
Magic Quadrant for Supply Chain Planning System of Record, Payne, Tim, Pradhan,
Alex, & Salley, Amber, 21 August 2018

²   Gartner, Forecast:
Enterprise Application Software, Worldwide, 2018-2024, 4Q20 Update, Amarendra,
N. Gupta, B. Abbabatulla, A. Woodward, C. Pang, C. Roth, E. Hunter, J. Hare, K.
Quinn, J. Poulter, Y. Dharmasthira, J. Kostoulas, December 22, 2020

 

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