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For One SCE Vendor, It’s SaaS All the Way
TAKE Supply Chain goes all in on a transition to on-demand software, but hopes customers make an orderly switch to the new delivery option.
By Chris Chiappinelli | October 17, 2009
In the new world of cloud-based software, technology providers have tended to fall into one of two camps: young companies founded and reared on the SaaS premise, and more mature vendors whose tentative trips into on-demand are fraught with unease.
TAKE Supply Chain, a supplier relationship technology vendor, now adds a third: the wholehearted convert. “We are converting the entire company from on-premise, perpetual model software systems to SaaS systems,” declared Warren Sumner, COO and general manager of the company, in a recent interview with Managing Automation.
TAKE Supply Chain, once known as ClearOrbit, moved definitively in that direction late last summer with its acquisition of EntComm’s product division. EntComm offers some of the same supply-demand balancing functionality that TAKE does, and even adds such capabilities as monitoring vendor-managed inventory. But the true impetus for the deal was EntComm’s software platform.
“We acquired them to help us really launch into our SaaS initiative,” Sumner explained.
Soon after the takeover, TAKE’s development team began what Sumner described as a “fast and furious” transition of existing software to the on-demand model. The first byproduct of that effort is scheduled to debut this month, with a second to follow in December. Both will aim to automate the accounts payable process by connecting manufacturers electronically with their suppliers.
TAKE is also intent on building out its global trade management offerings, as evidenced by its recent purchase of the product division of privately held PSI Software, which specializes in NAFTA-based customs and trade management. Expect those capabilities to be SaaS-enabled, too, in a new TAKE product module that will be tightly integrated with other supply chain execution functions, Sumner said.
And the acquisition surge is not over. “We’ll always be filling holes,” he said.
As for the transition to SaaS, he said TAKE has weighed the risks and embraced the prospects. The risk of shifting from a traditional license model to a subscription one — and also the reason why the third camp isn’t bigger — is that it eliminates the sizable up-front license deals that traditional vendors love. Sumner admitted such a move breeds some worry. “If the customers choose to flip a switch and go all SaaS at once, I won’t lie to you, that would be a severe cash problem,” he said.
But even as the company moves toward the cloud, TAKE is treading carefully, Sumner said. The initial SaaS rollout focuses on accounts payable. Longer term, he said, TAKE will “build up that capability and then we’ll add more so that we can sell other functionality in a SaaS model and grow it over time.”
