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

Kinaxis Situated Highest on Ability to Execute Axis

OTTAWA, May 6, 2015 /PRNewswire/ - Kinaxis®, provider of RapidResponse®, delivering cloud-based SCM and S&OP applications, today announced it has been positioned by Gartner, Inc. in the Leaders Quadrant of the "Magic Quadrant for Sales and Operations Planning Systems of Differentiation."  This is the second leadership quadrant placement for Kinaxis in a Gartner Magic Quadrant.¹

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 focused on developing analytics to support end-to-end profitability trade-offs and configurable supply chain design and configuration capability."²

"We believe that this additional leadership placement in a Gartner Magic Quadrant marks a growing recognition of our overall place and value in the industry," said Douglas Colbeth, CEO, Kinaxis. "We are particularly pleased that among the seventeen providers evaluated in the report, Kinaxis was placed highest on the ability to execute axis.  We consider our proficiency in consistently delivering a quality solution to our customers as foundational to our value. Our goal is to both enable quick initial success and help our customers advance their S&OP processes from early stages through to Stage 4 (and beyond) over time by leveraging the full capabilities of our solution."

Gartner defines Stage 4 S&OP as the "Collaborate" stage. In this stage, the S&OP outcome is to create a demand-driven, profitable supply response across the extended supply chain, taking into account both internal and trading partner capabilities. The benefits attributed to S&OP and the metrics used to measure the success of the process are more quantitative, including improvement in gross margin, working capital and increased market share.

Kinaxis RapidResponse is a single system that 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 possible planning scenarios quickly and collaboratively. Managing S&OP from a single application 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.  Find out more about the RapidResponse S&OP application here.

For further information, read our blog post. You can access the full Magic Quadrant for Sales and Operations Planning Systems of Differentiation report here.

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[1] Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Supply Chain Planning System of Record, T. Payne, March 6, 2014

[2] Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Sales and Operations Planning Systems of Differentiation, T. Payne, April 29, 2015

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. 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.

About Kinaxis
Kinaxis is a leading provider of cloud-based subscription software that enables our customers to improve and accelerate analysis and decision-making across their supply chain operations. The supply chain planning and analytics capabilities of our product, RapidResponse, create the foundation for managing multiple, interconnected supply chain management processes. By using the single RapidResponse product instead of combining individual disparate software solutions, our customers gain visibility across their supply chains, can respond quickly to changing conditions, and ultimately realize significant operating efficiencies.

SOURCE Kinaxis Inc.