Oracles shortcomings in MEIO and supply chain design

Although Oracle touts its integrated platform in the Oracle E-Business Suite Supply Chain Management family of applications, specialty supply chain software vendors in most cases offer better value for the price. For this study Nucleus looked at types of supply chain software in the area of multi-echelon inventory optimization (MEIO) and supply chain network design from best-of-breed vendors in comparison to Oracle, evaluating the applications in terms of usability and functionality. Based on extensive discussions with users, standalone solutions offer a higher return on investment (ROI) than Oracle’s solution in those two areas. Although Nucleus is continuing to analyze the payback (ROI) of best of breed vs. application suites for these software categories, our initial assessment suggests that best of breed can generate ROI 1x to 2x higher than Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP).