Despite Eqos's auspicious growth, accretion momentum, accumulative savvy, and absolute acquaintance as a provider of all-around sourcing and supplier administration solutions for the retail accumulation alternation accepted (please see the antecedent locations of this series: One Vendor's Quest to Garner a All-around Sourcing Ecosystem, A Retail Sourcing Suite Congenital on Experience, The Secret of One Vendor's Success in the Retail Accumulation Chain, and How One Sourcing Vendor's Offerings Are Bolstered by a Wealth of Services), it would be heedless not to accede the challenges that still approach on the border for Eqos (www.eqos.com).
Eqos is, afterwards all, still an advancing aggregation with a blossom applicant agenda (especially alfresco the UK), and with abounding artefact enhancements and improvements yet to be developed and launched. As such, the bell-ringer still lacks all-around name recognition. Thus, abounding of the aboriginal few proof of conceptbarter came from the UK market.
As for biting the US market, angry antagonism has already arise from TradeStone Software (see A Well-designed Band-aid for Sourcing: Its Technological Foundation and How It Works). Like Eqos's solution, the TradeStone Suite is aswell a scalable, multitiered, server-based action appliance congenital on the standards-based Java 2 Action Edition (J2EE) development model, with abutment for Web casework and adaptable markup accent (XML) that is leveraged for integrations (see Understand J2EE and .NET Environments Afore You Choose.)
The two vendors' offerings and aspirations arise to be similar, with anniversary bell-ringer sometimes getting accusedof copycatting the other's letters and offerings. Yet in their efforts to accumulate up with anniversary other, the companies are in actuality acceptance anniversary other, as able-bodied as the bazaar in general. However, the companies are abutting the bazaar from altered perspectives. While Tradestone is a almost new software company, Eqos has acquired from its ancestry as a consulting aggregation with a collaborative belvedere into a provider of accepted appliance annual provider (ASP) hosted solutions.
The affair of accretion the brand occurs because of the complication of all-around barter and all-embracing logisticsan complication that stems from accepting to absorb so abounding parties or intermediaries and their accompanying processes. Namely, buyers, adopted sourcing offices, and agents that accept to accord with targeted suppliers (contract manufacturers) in agreement of behest processes, arrangement negotiations, artefact sampling, superior and safety, the tracking of avant-garde addition notices (ASNs), addition status, authoritative compliance, banking settlements, supplier scorecards, bid comparisons, and so on, is alone one allotment of the absolute process.
But what about the added accompanying processes complex with acquiescence and testing partners, bounded and all-embracing third affair acumen (3PLs), customs, banking institutions, administration centers (DCs), alone stores, and so on? Accommodating and enabling bales forwarders, non-vessel operating accepted carriers (NVOCCs), consolidators, community abode brokers, consign administration companies (EMCs) and consign trading companies (ETCs), addition associations, addition brokers, addition agents, consign packaging companies, etc. added complicates the picture. For added information, amuse accredit to APICS Certified Accumulation Alternation Professional (CSCP) Learning System, Module 2: Building Aggressive Operations, Planning and Logistics, 2007.
Also, the bazaar in which all all-around sourcing vendors accomplish is characterized by aboriginal adopters, and it is rapidly evolving. A aggregation of Eqos's accepted ability and agency will be challenged to advance its aggressive position adjoin competitors accepting decidedly greater banking resources, name recognition, and added resources. The bazaar is awful fragmented, and the acuteness of antagonism can be accepted to access in the future, area antagonism ability arise from centralized development efforts, consulting companies, added software companies, banking institutions, logistic companies, community brokers, forwarders, and third affair development efforts.
As user companies abide to embrace the bulk of broader sourcing and all-around barter administration (GTM) solutions, software vendors will generally be looked aloft to accommodate administration and to add added bulk to the absolute adjustment activity cycle, including acquirement adjustment management, absolute landed bulk modeling, allowance and claims, acceptation and consign compliance, aegis regulations, and added seamless affiliation with balance adaptation and barter costs systems.
Given user companies' acquaintance of their charge for GTM solutions and the like, there is a deluge of point band-aid providers that specialize in attenuated areas of this growing yet burst market. Such areas ambit from landed bulk calculation, retail artefact lifecycle administration (PLM), afterimage and accident management, collaboration, consign compliance, trading certificate generation, chancy actual handling, accumulation alternation and assembly planning (see Assembly Planning and Scheduling Software for the Textile Industry: Unknown Frontiers), advance times, appraisement or annual optimization, and administration adjustment administration (DOM), to added complete busline administration capabilitiesjust abundant to ataxia the bulletin and crumb at the abeyant revenues of full-fledged retail sourcing players. For a bulk of abeyant competitors in the market, see Challenges and User Recommendations for a All-around Trading Solutions Provider on a Roll.
Eqos would acceptable point confidently to its focus on supermarkets and hard-goods and soft-goods retailers, its blessed chump references, and the amplitude of its solution, complete with business action administration (BPM) and business intelligence (BI) enablement. However, even if not as accomplished and acknowledged as Eqos is in these areas, some of the above bazaar players will acceptable be able to edge into a bulk of enterprises and abate the allotment of the Eqos's annual dollars.
While generalist sourcing vendors like Ariba and Perfect Commerce ability not accept the retail ability per se, they ability still could cause the arrest or cessation of some controlling decisions. Additionally, accustomed SAP's contempo ecosystem advance to recruit the SAP Powered by NetWeaverand SAP Certified by NetWeaverally (see Multipurpose SAP NetWeaver), it ability not yield continued afore the behemothic ally up (or eventually acquires) with some of the aloft providers, appropriately creating a barrier of access for Eqos and its aeon to its all-inclusive install base. The aforementioned could alone be accepted from Oracle accustomed its contempo appetence for acquisitions and for rolling them into the Oracle Fusion platform. And let's not overlook the retail industry bounden JDA Software of i2 Technologies.
Furthermore, accustomed Eqos's needs and its intentions to augment its approach away and to accouterment industries above retail (for example, customer packaged appurtenances [CPG], customer electronics, or biologic manufacturers), the bell-ringer ability end up with bifold the bulk of investment (expenses) and added antagonism from these markets' incumbents.
Following this, the abiding ambition is to ability a sourcing-as-a-service,game-changing action by alms the broadcast band-aid bulk via agreeable ally and on-the-groundannual partners.
Eqos is, afterwards all, still an advancing aggregation with a blossom applicant agenda (especially alfresco the UK), and with abounding artefact enhancements and improvements yet to be developed and launched. As such, the bell-ringer still lacks all-around name recognition. Thus, abounding of the aboriginal few proof of conceptbarter came from the UK market.
As for biting the US market, angry antagonism has already arise from TradeStone Software (see A Well-designed Band-aid for Sourcing: Its Technological Foundation and How It Works). Like Eqos's solution, the TradeStone Suite is aswell a scalable, multitiered, server-based action appliance congenital on the standards-based Java 2 Action Edition (J2EE) development model, with abutment for Web casework and adaptable markup accent (XML) that is leveraged for integrations (see Understand J2EE and .NET Environments Afore You Choose.)
The two vendors' offerings and aspirations arise to be similar, with anniversary bell-ringer sometimes getting accusedof copycatting the other's letters and offerings. Yet in their efforts to accumulate up with anniversary other, the companies are in actuality acceptance anniversary other, as able-bodied as the bazaar in general. However, the companies are abutting the bazaar from altered perspectives. While Tradestone is a almost new software company, Eqos has acquired from its ancestry as a consulting aggregation with a collaborative belvedere into a provider of accepted appliance annual provider (ASP) hosted solutions.
The affair of accretion the brand occurs because of the complication of all-around barter and all-embracing logisticsan complication that stems from accepting to absorb so abounding parties or intermediaries and their accompanying processes. Namely, buyers, adopted sourcing offices, and agents that accept to accord with targeted suppliers (contract manufacturers) in agreement of behest processes, arrangement negotiations, artefact sampling, superior and safety, the tracking of avant-garde addition notices (ASNs), addition status, authoritative compliance, banking settlements, supplier scorecards, bid comparisons, and so on, is alone one allotment of the absolute process.
But what about the added accompanying processes complex with acquiescence and testing partners, bounded and all-embracing third affair acumen (3PLs), customs, banking institutions, administration centers (DCs), alone stores, and so on? Accommodating and enabling bales forwarders, non-vessel operating accepted carriers (NVOCCs), consolidators, community abode brokers, consign administration companies (EMCs) and consign trading companies (ETCs), addition associations, addition brokers, addition agents, consign packaging companies, etc. added complicates the picture. For added information, amuse accredit to APICS Certified Accumulation Alternation Professional (CSCP) Learning System, Module 2: Building Aggressive Operations, Planning and Logistics, 2007.
Also, the bazaar in which all all-around sourcing vendors accomplish is characterized by aboriginal adopters, and it is rapidly evolving. A aggregation of Eqos's accepted ability and agency will be challenged to advance its aggressive position adjoin competitors accepting decidedly greater banking resources, name recognition, and added resources. The bazaar is awful fragmented, and the acuteness of antagonism can be accepted to access in the future, area antagonism ability arise from centralized development efforts, consulting companies, added software companies, banking institutions, logistic companies, community brokers, forwarders, and third affair development efforts.
As user companies abide to embrace the bulk of broader sourcing and all-around barter administration (GTM) solutions, software vendors will generally be looked aloft to accommodate administration and to add added bulk to the absolute adjustment activity cycle, including acquirement adjustment management, absolute landed bulk modeling, allowance and claims, acceptation and consign compliance, aegis regulations, and added seamless affiliation with balance adaptation and barter costs systems.
Given user companies' acquaintance of their charge for GTM solutions and the like, there is a deluge of point band-aid providers that specialize in attenuated areas of this growing yet burst market. Such areas ambit from landed bulk calculation, retail artefact lifecycle administration (PLM), afterimage and accident management, collaboration, consign compliance, trading certificate generation, chancy actual handling, accumulation alternation and assembly planning (see Assembly Planning and Scheduling Software for the Textile Industry: Unknown Frontiers), advance times, appraisement or annual optimization, and administration adjustment administration (DOM), to added complete busline administration capabilitiesjust abundant to ataxia the bulletin and crumb at the abeyant revenues of full-fledged retail sourcing players. For a bulk of abeyant competitors in the market, see Challenges and User Recommendations for a All-around Trading Solutions Provider on a Roll.
Eqos would acceptable point confidently to its focus on supermarkets and hard-goods and soft-goods retailers, its blessed chump references, and the amplitude of its solution, complete with business action administration (BPM) and business intelligence (BI) enablement. However, even if not as accomplished and acknowledged as Eqos is in these areas, some of the above bazaar players will acceptable be able to edge into a bulk of enterprises and abate the allotment of the Eqos's annual dollars.
While generalist sourcing vendors like Ariba and Perfect Commerce ability not accept the retail ability per se, they ability still could cause the arrest or cessation of some controlling decisions. Additionally, accustomed SAP's contempo ecosystem advance to recruit the SAP Powered by NetWeaverand SAP Certified by NetWeaverally (see Multipurpose SAP NetWeaver), it ability not yield continued afore the behemothic ally up (or eventually acquires) with some of the aloft providers, appropriately creating a barrier of access for Eqos and its aeon to its all-inclusive install base. The aforementioned could alone be accepted from Oracle accustomed its contempo appetence for acquisitions and for rolling them into the Oracle Fusion platform. And let's not overlook the retail industry bounden JDA Software of i2 Technologies.
Furthermore, accustomed Eqos's needs and its intentions to augment its approach away and to accouterment industries above retail (for example, customer packaged appurtenances [CPG], customer electronics, or biologic manufacturers), the bell-ringer ability end up with bifold the bulk of investment (expenses) and added antagonism from these markets' incumbents.
Following this, the abiding ambition is to ability a sourcing-as-a-service,game-changing action by alms the broadcast band-aid bulk via agreeable ally and on-the-groundannual partners.
| Partner Type | Example Categories | Reason for Partnering | Advantages for Eqos | Advantages for Partner |
| Technology | platform | market credibility | global reach | gap in the footprint |
| Sales and Implementation | global / regional / country-specific systems integrators (SIs) | scale | sales leads and global reach | consulting revenues |
| Sales | retail-specific consultancies and content providers | route to market | sales leads | new business streams |
| Application | retail enterprise resource planning (ERP) / supply chain management (SCM) / PLM / supplier relationship management (SRM) vendors and resellers | route to market | installed base | gap in the footprint |
| Service Provider | order / logistics / 3PLs / financial services | route to market | installed base | gap in the footprint |
Table 1. Eqos's alliance strategy and value proposition
To that end, Eqos has been occupied lately with devising a sound alliance program and strategy in terms of goals, revenues, markets, and channels. The strategy seems to be doing well within the initial phase of identifying target geographic regions (the UK, the US, continental Europe, and the rest of the world) and channels as well as the types of partners (see Table 1). Only time will tell how well Eqos will execute the subsequent phases of recruiting the partners, striking the mutual commitment (to the agreements with spelled-out roles and responsibilities, commitment levels, marketing plans, etc.), and pursuing the joint engagement developments and joint support programs (in terms of education, training, Web-based support, incentives, ongoing relationship management, etc.).
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