SaaS SCM tools are another example of SaaS opening up all kinds of niches, because they were previously impractical to implement and to market and maintain. Niche things like this had too narrow a market potentiality to justify the expense of minting CDs and supporting with patches, upgrades and further development. The costs were too heavy.
Now, though with SaaS SCM being practical to develop and market, a number of tools have appeared that so many have wished could exist in the past. SaaS like this is making possible the automation, tracking and maintaining of so many variables and tasks, tedious and lengthy to perform or measure previously. This makes a lot of jobs and lives much easier. Along with the on average lower cost of SaaS and the ease of keeping it contemporary due to automatic updates, well, it’s no surprise that so many businesses love these new tools.
What kind of SCM tools are there? We haven’t looked at these before, and this is swerving slightly away from the types of tools that are normally my experienced expertise, but I know something about this. I’d like to think I can recommend qualified offerings.
#1 – Qontext
I don’t know how you pronounce this, and I hear debates like the ones for Linux and GIF. But, pronunciation doesn’t matter, it’s all about how well the software works, right? If nothing else, I can vouch for that much.
This one offers enterprise social network infrastructure, activity feeds, document sharing, microblogging, bookmark sharing, discussion tools, groups and various user modes, iPhone support, collaboration tools and integration with Salesforce, Sugar CRM and HRnet.
The only real downside with this one is the support for mobile stops at iPhone. iPhones are kind of overhyped junk when it comes to doing real work with them, as most offices will use Android (a far more practical system if ever so slightly less user friendly).
#2 – ProcessGene BPM
This one’s not limited to SCM, but none of these really are. Even in the world of SaaS, SCM is too specific to not be a feature in something bigger, and no harm done, because if you need SCM, you need BPM anyway!
ProcessGene is a big one, offering, among other things, triple modeling interface, collaborative modeling, direct connectivity to ERP, reuse of models and sharing, management rollout, automatic amendment of charts and documents, monitor and control of change requests, ERP implementation and rollout and so much more.
#3 – Cognidox
Cognidox is an online document management system which shares a lot of its target feature set with SCM tasking as well. But, this is scraping the bottom of the barrel to be honest, because this is a niche that is still being carved out, all in all.
Still, it does work well with easy personalized widgets, document version control, MS Office compatibility, and a lot more. Still, the best one of these is probably ProcessGene. Cognidox only gets an honorable mention when it comes to this particular list.
These are the SaaS SCM tools available right now. More will come along in the very near future, so don’t let the narrowness of this review get you down.
