Kinaxis Inc, a leader in influencing individuals to make self-assured supply chain decisions, has expanded its RapidResponse platform to become the only concurrent planning platform with the power to generate custom, interconnected applications and algorithms and operationalise external algorithms in practical, profitable ways across the supply chain ecosystem.
Kinaxis is unveiling these new and enhanced capabilities at its annual user conference, Kinexions ’19.
Kinaxis also continues to invest in strengthening the building blocks of the platform, including new data visualisations and a new patented way to present data on small screens, like smartphones.
Planners will be able to shrink the time it takes to understand insights from hours to seconds and balance automation with human intuition. These new capabilities help customers and partners accelerate innovation and shorten time-to-value, maximising their competitive and intellectual advantage.
As business landscapes become more complex, having the ability to address specific supply chain challenges in a way that seamlessly works with existing systems is critical to success. “Since our first day in business, we have focused our energy on innovating how people plan and execute their supply chains, and building the unique technologies that enable them,” said John Sicard, CEO of Kinaxis.
“Today, we are thrilled to announce that our platform will be open to third parties for the development of new applications and extensions. This will provide the market with ultimate control and the potential to embed unique differentiation without suffering challenging upgrades over time. It also represents an exciting opportunity for Kinaxis to advance our own path into new markets and adjacent applications.”
As the world’s only concurrent planning platform, RapidResponse lets people make and manage synchronised plans across time horizons, business processes and organisational boundaries simultaneously. With the addition of new development capabilities on the platform, Kinaxis customers and partners can:
- Build, certify and license applications using industry-standard languages and tools through the application builder framework, which includes improvements to the existing no-code authoring experience and the introduction of a new Developer Studio for advanced creation. Apply the strength of RapidResponse to more types of applications across functional areas to further connect and synchronise the planning ecosystem.
- Create and run embedded algorithms directly within RapidResponse in addition to having access to world-class Kinaxis-built supply chain planning algorithms. Companies can leverage custom logic as part of any application, scenario or analysis, taking full advantage of RapidResponse’s unique always-on concurrent planning engine.
- Transform complex data relationships from tables into visual analytics with enhancements to the RapidResponse user experience, including a new, unique interactive supply chain network map that lets planners explore and manipulate data faster than ever before.
- Bring together the supply chain ecosystem easily with new connectors to systems like SAP Cloud Platform and Salesforce.com, and the ability to connect and operationalise external algorithms using optimisation and machine learning scripts and languages like R. These integration points help companies better utilise real-time data and seamlessly close the loop with plan execution in ERP systems.
Building custom applications and algorithms is fast and cost-effective because development happens on top of a solid foundation of technology and productised supply chain expertise. Positioned as a leader by industry analyst Gartner in six consecutive reports, Kinaxis, its RapidResponse platform, and existing supply chain applications are well recognised for having best-in-class usability and superior supply chain functionality.
The RapidResponse platform’s core capabilities include smart collaboration, what-next scenarios, and practical applications of AI and machine learning, to help companies boost customer satisfaction, lower risks, and cut costs.
“In today’s world of trade wars, constant tariff fluctuations and ever-evolving regulations, speed and agility in supply chain management are more critical than ever before,” said Mike Landry, global service line leader, supply chain, at Genpact. “As one of the leading providers in supply chain planning, Kinaxis is a strategic partner as we jointly develop solutions to help our clients meet challenging and changing market demands.
The strong foundation of its RapidResponse platform and with this new ability to develop applications and algorithms, combined with Genpact’s digital, process, and deep domain expertise, helps our clients drive supply chain transformation that delivers true business impact across their entire enterprise.”
To further advance all RapidResponse applications, Kinaxis has made significant advances to its patented database technology, delivering best-in-class speed, scalability, and synchronisation across the supply chain network, and enhanced security protocols, providing more granular control over people’s access rights to information.
“Every company has its own subset of unique requirements and are expecting their supply chain partners to be able to deliver tailor-made solutions,” said Seth Lippincott, Director of Research, Nucleus Research. “Kinaxis has a strong history of supply chain planning excellence. By investing in development capabilities on its platform, Kinaxis customers will benefit from the growing number and diversity of available applications to more easily drive value across the organisation.”
The new Kinaxis development capabilities will be generally available in the first half of 2020. For more information, please fill out the enquiry form attached to this page.