Siemens Expands Offerings To Service Supply-Chain Market

Siemens Business Services is looking to capitalize on the supply-chain market with the launch of its Supply Chain Services Organization, a division that will help customers with supply-chain implementation and management.

The organization will focus most of its efforts on business process consulting for implementations of SAP's Advanced Planning and Optimization Solution supply-chain products. The new division will tap into Siemens' existing hardware, network, and Internet infrastructure services, and will use the company's customer support and outsourced data center offerings for maintenance services.

In addition, the organization has initiated an "engagement management" service, by which Siemens will use a different approach to measuring the completion of a supply-chain implementation. "On regular projects for ERP environments, the goal of the project is to implement a software project--on time and within budget--and we leave," says Chris Botha, principal manager of Siemens' Supply Chain Services. "[Supply Chain] is several clients and several products, so it's not a question of successfully implementing the project, it's 'have our customers reached their business goals and have the business benefits been achieved after the system has gone live?'"

One of the benefits users will see from this offering is the existing relationship between Siemens and SAP, as Siemens was one of the original implementers of SAP's enterprise resource planning products, according to Nancy Meecham, an analyst with the Aberdeen Group. "Supply Chain is relatively new for SAP, so I think that if users are looking to use that product they should at least get somebody that's familiar with SAP because these implementations are hard enough," Meecham says.

Though primarily interested in SAP's products, Siemens will also be able to implement management and product optimization interface software from companies such as i2 Technologies and Aspen Technology's Chesapeake Supply Chain Division.