The 10 Reasons Why Kinaxis and MPO will Change the Game of Supply Chain Planning & Execution

Last week we shared the exciting news that MPO partnered with Kinaxis. Let me take you through the why of the acquisition last week, and I expect you will be as thrilled as me about the giant upside ahead.

Kinaxis’ RapidResponse® is the leading global platform for supply chain planning with solutions for IBP, S&OP, Demand, Supply & Inventory Management. Complementary to this is MPO’s visionary Multi Party Orchestration platform for supply chain execution, offering multi-enterprise visibility, and order and transport management. These cloud platforms combined form a new software powerhouse that make it possible for companies to digitize their supply chains end-to-end. Here’s why:

The 5 Rock-Solid Foundations:

What We Have in Common & How Customers Can Build Upon It

1. Concurrent Technology: Both the Kinaxis RapidResponse® and MPO Multi Party Orchestration platforms each have one codebase, a single user interface, and real-time optimization across demand, supply, orders, inventory, logistics, transport, and costs. There is no other vendor offering such unified technology with concurrent planning and execution for agility, quality, and efficiency benefits.
2. Embracing Complexity: Kinaxis and MPO don’t shy away from the inherent complexity of supply chain challenges. Instead, both parties embrace supply chain complexity, recognizing it creates opportunities for optimization. The real world is dynamic, and thus our digital twins are capable of solving the most complex puzzles in continuously changing supply chains. We go wider and deeper, where others stop.
3. Strategic Importance: Our companies are shaped around the value proposition that supply chain performance makes or breaks a business. Our cloud platforms are not meant to be just cost cutters, but mainly key business drivers. Planning and execution determine both customer experience and operational excellence, and therefore the revenue, profitability, sales, retention, and business growth.
4. Flexible Functionality: Kinaxis and MPO provide multiple solutions to multiple industries in multiple regions, still on standard platforms, thanks to rich configurable features. For ease of implementation and quick value creation, our companies have solution standards, making the platforms affordable for not only the largest enterprises but also for the long tail of small and medium-sized businesses.
5. Trusted Talents: Our companies share the notion that our people make the difference, and therefore we put trust in our empowered talents, who focus on customer excellence, have open communication, and form a multi-cultural community of global citizens. We know that in our world of complex platforms, the ‘harder’ the technology challenges, the more critical is the ‘soft’ factor of expert team play.

The 5 Disruptive Innovations:

What Only We Can Offer & How Customers Will Benefit From It

1. Macro and Micro Supply Chain: The joint platforms build upon Kinaxis’ strength for planning manufacturing supply chains at the macro level, from business planning, sales forecasts, and inventory impact, to production planning, supply planning, and scenario analysis. MPO adds control over distribution supply chains at the micro level, from order promising, inventory checks and dynamic sourcing, to warehousing, transportation, and last mile execution steps in the end-to-end supply chain.
2. Companies and Networks: Kinaxis is the proven leading platform for supply chain planning within the enterprise, spanning the sales channels, manufacturing sites, and warehouse facilities of a company. MPO adds real-time visibility over orders, inventory, and transportation across an entire network of business partners. This multi-enterprise supply chain visibility covers outbound, inbound, and reverse flows across the company, suppliers, carriers, partners, and customers in the business network.
3. Visibility and Control: Both the Kinaxis and MPO platforms use top notch advanced business logic to control macro production supply chains and micro distribution supply chains. As joint platforms, supply chain execution decisions will benefit from visibility into broader supply chain planning. Likewise, supply chain planning decisions will benefit from the active visibility of orders, inventory, and transportation, including statuses and exceptions to achieve closed loop control.
4. Plans and Orders: The Kinaxis platform provides unparalleled concurrent intelligence for making all plans around demand, production, inventory, and supply management. Exactly where Kinaxis stops, the MPO platform starts and continues with concurrent intelligence to execute and optimize all orders in line with the plans, whether sales orders, purchase orders, return orders, or transfer orders. The combined platforms span the entire horizon, from months to minutes, to make the forecast and deliver on the promise.
5. Financials and Sustainability: Our companies have an extremely strong proposition when it comes to automating the financial impact calculations of supply chain decisions, in terms of production, inventory, transportation, and order costs. Together, Kinaxis and MPO will also empower businesses to determine the sustainability impact of their planning and execution decisions. This allows monetary costs to be traded-off against the non-monetary costs of greenhouse gases and other environmental impacts.

As you can see, Kinaxis and MPO offer the rock-solid foundations and disruptive innovations businesses need to make change happen. With so much to be discovered and so much to be achieved, I am very much looking forward to having inspiring talks with many of you soon.

From today on, we are changing the game of supply chain digitization, step by step, day by day. Let’s get something done – and make history together!

To get in touch and learn more, reach out to info@mpo.com or request a demo today.