When event management systems first came on the scene earlier this decade, software vendors billed it as the next “killer application.” Often referred to simply as “EMS,” the stand-alone products were designed to alert users via e-mail or fax messages when specified supply chain events occurred. Every shipper would want to buy an EMS, software vendors thought, because the programs would provide visibility from the time an order was taken to the time it arrived at the customer’s door.

The future looked so bright for EMS, in fact, that in 2003, when ARC Advisory Group last completed a study of supply chain event management (SCEM) software, the Dedham, Mass.-based research firm forecast a 50 percent-plus annual increase in sales. With companies like Descartes Systems and Yantra (acquired by Sterling Commerce earlier this year) leading the charge, SCEM sales were projected to reach $1.4 billion by 2006, recalls Steve Banker, ARC’s service director of supply chain management. For its 2003 study, ARC looked only at the logistics visibility and control aspects of SCEM, with a focus on inbound, outbound, and reverse logistics activities, segments that comprised a $200 million market that had grown at a 29 percent cumulative rate since 2000, Banker says.

SCEM software continues to enjoy brisk sales growth, but not as a stand-alone application. Those early dreams were folded into a larger one when software vendors realized that EMS did not have the “legs” to stand on its own. Today, a number of software vendors have integrated EMS into applications such as warehouse management (WMS), transportation management (TMS), and global trade management (GTM) systems.

Because EMS depends in large part on data gathered through WMS, TMS, and GTM applications, it makes sense that software vendors have woven event management features into such offerings. EMS products require users to specify what kind of information they want to receive and to set acceptable time parameters for various events in the order-to-delivery process. These events include normally occurring activities, such as shipment pickups and deliveries, as well as unusual or potentially problematic events. Shippers can specify, for example, that if an order arrives by a certain time, the product must ship from the warehouse and arrive at the customer’s premises within a certain timeframe.

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