Manugistics' slump signals tough times for best-of-breed vendors

With its final second quarter financial results about to be released, supply chain software vendor Manugisitics expects revenue figures, “to fall well below expectations.” Total revenue figures are projected to be between $68m and $70m, that’s roughly $20m less than financial analysts were expecting. It’s too early to suggest there’ll be a wave of job losses, but the firm will certainly need to re-focus its resources if it’s to survive this testing period. The downturn can be attributed to a number of things: general market conditions, economic uncertainty, lengthened sales cycles and, according to Manugistics’ CEO Greg Owens, “Unanticipated order delays.” The major ERP (enterprise resource planning) software vendors like SAP, Oracle and Peoplesoft will be rubbing their hands together at this latest news, with perhaps more opportunities to make further inroads into Manugistics’ (and i2 Technologies’) market share. The real debate now will be who is most likely to win the war between best-of-breed software (Manugistics and i2) and the ERP suites that offer just enough functionality to compete.