The long tail of supply chain software
Blue Sky Logistics just posted an article about The Long Tail of Supply Chain IT Projects, which points out how The Long Tail applies to supply chain IT projects:
I think the long tail theory can be applied to IT projects, specifically in the area of supply chain collaboration. Traditional supply chain IT spending has gone to large, monolithic software packages that handle an entire functional area of the business: warehouse management, ERP, purchasing […]
With the growth of on-demand applications, faster and more dynamic software development, and XML standards, a company can test the waters with smaller projects and smaller risk[…] With a hosted application, there is much less upfront spending which lowers a big traditional risk of trying to make these kinds of changes.
This actually describes the rationale behind VisibleLogistics pretty well - simple low-cost hosted on-line supply chain collaboration software. The long tail is the large number of small supply chain partners who cannot individually justify or achieve expensive integration with traditional supply chain software, but who collectively represent a huge opportunity for improved collaboration.