Kinaxis positioned in the Leaders Quadrant of Gartner's Magic Quadrant for Sales and Operations Planning Systems of Differentiation

Supply chain planning software company receives positioning for second consecutive time

OTTAWA, May 4, 2017 /CNW/ - Kinaxis® (TSX:KXS), provider of RapidResponse®, delivering the leading cloud-based concurrent planning solution, today announced that it has been positioned by Gartner, Inc. in the Leaders Quadrant of the May 2017 "Magic Quadrant for Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP) Systems of Differentiation (SOD)" for a second consecutive time.¹ A complimentary copy of the report can be downloaded from the Kinaxis website at www.kinaxis.com/GartnerMQ.

"RapidResponse is revolutionizing supply chain planning and delivering significant business results," said John Sicard, Chief Executive Officer, Kinaxis. "Large global enterprises need real-time end-to-end visibility, planning, simulation and collaborative decision making and we have helped our customers accomplish this through our unique ability to provide concurrent planning across planning hierarchies, organizational boundaries and time horizons. We believe our leadership position in the Sales and Operations Magic Quadrant is strong validation of our vision for the future of supply chain planning to help our customers advance their S&OP processes by taking advantage of all the capabilities in our single product."

A sales and operations planning (S&OP) system of differentiation (SOD) is a software solution that provides technology support for a Stage 4 or higher maturity S&OP process. According to the Gartner report, "Leaders have a strong vision for their S&OP SOD capabilities. They recognize the role they will need to play in enabling the move toward multienterprise horizontal planning allied with vertical integration that links strategy to operations and execution. They are looking at developing analytics to support probability-focused end-to-end predictive and prescriptive analytics to support profitability trade-offs and supply chain design and configuration capability. They will build a broad portfolio of capabilities covering CORE areas such as S&OP SOD, SCP SOR with relevant respond planning, supply chain configuration and design, and strategic and financial planning. Their vision for S&OP aligns with Gartner's definition of Stage 5 S&OP maturity. This should inspire strong buying intentions among their existing customers as these users advance along the maturity curve. It should also enable them to achieve strong net-new wins. Leaders are able to articulate a strong roadmap for the support of active S&OP, the emergence of deep supply chain modeling capabilities, and support for scenario and initiative collaboration. Their solution architecture plans demonstrate appropriate application of technology to support scale, speed, big analytics and the need to draw on a strong SCP SOR that includes a viable respond-planning vision. Leaders are actively developing their geographic and industry strategies."

Gartner defines Stage 4 S&OP as the "Collaborate" stage. In this stage, the S&OP system creates a demand-driven, profitable supply response across the increasingly extended supply chain, taking into account internal and trading-partner capabilities. Potential benefits include improvements in gross margin, working capital and market share.

Kinaxis RapidResponse connects the data, processes and people in the supply chain allowing them to simultaneously work together to power the entire supply network. As a single platform, RapidResponse integrates previously siloed and sequential functional planning activities and ties them directly into the S&OP process so companies can plan concurrently across functions and at both the aggregate and detailed level. It provides a platform on which a team of people across functional and even organizational boundaries can explore the financial and operational consequences of planning scenarios quickly and collaboratively. Managing S&OP from a single solution enables companies to make better tradeoffs across competing metrics quickly and to make value-based decisions for the enterprise as a team – both at the time of plan development or when the S&OP guidance is violated due to unplanned events.

The S&OP capabilities of RapidResponse  include the ability to:

• Provide concurrent planning across planning hierarchies, organizational boundaries and time horizons
• Identify gaps between the consensus demand plan and aggregate supply plan, and re-balance by changing or "shaping" the forecast demand in such a way as to be achievable
• Evaluate multiple supply-demand balancing scenarios against various company metrics to enable optimal trade-offs
• Set various financial targets and acceptable levels of variability, and measure progress against those targets as well as enter and maintain S&OP assumptions

For further information, you can access the full Magic Quadrant for Sales and Operations Planning Systems of Differentiation report here.

[1] Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Sales and Operations Planning System of Differentiation, T. Payne, May 1, 2017.

Disclaimer: Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner's research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

SOURCE Kinaxis Inc.

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