We think that the recent acquisition of Optiant by Logility is great not only for the financials of Logility, but also for their customers.Recently there have been a series of acquisitions in the optimization market: Logitech to Ilog and then Ilog off to IBM; JDA’s acquisition of i2; and now Optiant to Logility.
This leaves Logility,ToolsGroup, SmartOps, and JDA as prime sellers in the Supply Chain Optimization market. We had conversations with investors, executives and employees who were involved on both sides of the deal, and this is an all-around good thing. Though in the olden days vendors would look for bigger deals, this will add revenue to Logility over time. But most importantly, it adds support to Optiant customers, investment in the Optiant product and adds strong new functional capabilities and supply chain cost savings to the Logility customer base. Optiant’s capability integrated into the Voyagersuite enriches one of the best optimization solutions, with stellar Demand planning. A great one/two punch.
Other good news for customers, the CTO of Optiant stays with Logility and gets to develop a richer analytic solution. The Optiant sales and support team, who have taken great care of Optiant customers, stay onboard.We have talked to many Optiant customers over the years, like Hershey’s, P&G, HP and others who have gained great value as well as devoted customer care from Optiant.
Logility has been a pioneer in the Demand planning and Inventory space. With their past successful acquisition of Demand Solutions, they have done a great job of working out product and market segmentation for small, mid-size and large firm solutions and price points.
In talking to the combined team the discussion moved on to the ever-present challenge of inventory management and strategies for their customers, always a critical topic. Optiant adds Postponement strategy capabilities across the extended supply which has become a bigger issue of late in this outsourced world. (See Supply Chain Apps article.)
Logility can now play on a bigger stage beyond consumer products since Optiant has a solid base in electronics. You can read more about the acquisition on the Logility web site.
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