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Visibility and event management are critical for optimizing supply chain networks. Aberdeen defines event management (EM) as consisting of three primary components that include real-time visibility, in context/in process decision support and analytics, and process management capabilities (i.e., the functionality to allow users to take action on their decisions). Supply chain managers preconfigure these EM agents to respond to determined thresholds or actions, and collect and process information, which is then sent as alerts to the appropriate corresponding person or system in the supply chain. Prescribed as a widely encompassing technology set, event management has been roughly defined as a technology enabling organizations to measure, monitor, notify, and simulate actions that take place in the supply chain.
However, such capabilities have proven ineffective as stand-alone solutions. Instead, visibility and EM is an enabling technology, dependent on a networked environment and analytics or execution capabilities to be truly useful. EM, without association to data and process flows between SCM systems, is meaningless.
These factors have made it difficult for stand-alone EM vendors to survive. (Witness the merger of Viewlocity with SynQuest and Tilion.) Instead, EM is one of a group of enabling supply chain technologies -- including integration, planning, analytics, content/date management, and trading partner enablement. Aberdeen refers to this group of enabling technologies as Supply Network Services. Such SNS technologies are becoming the underlying platform for broader supply chain technology suites from vendors such as i2, Manugistics, Oracle, SAP, and webplan.
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