Posted by : bpburnwal on Nov 10, 2003 - 02:46 AM General

In a slack market for enterprise software, the distributed order management (DOM) space is growing. Sales of DOM applications, which are targeted on automating aspects of the order-to-cash cycle--such as order capture, customer fulfillment, and settlement--reached $4.9 billion in 2002, and should grow to $13.3 billion by 2007, says Boston-based analyst firm Yankee Group .
The reason? Order management remains for many businesses both a costly and a largely unresolved business problem--in other words, says Kosin Huang, a Yankee senior analyst, a significant vendor opportunity. DOM also differs from traditional order management modules in that DOM can put what amounts to an order management umbrella over multiple back-end systems.

But which vendors will capture the opportunity--the major ERP players, or DOM specialists such as Industri-Matematik International (IMI)? "In every category of enterprise software, companies have been able to carve out growing and profitable segments by providing specialized capabilities that offer real business value," says Timothy Campbell, IMI's president and CEO. DOM, he reckons, should be no different.

But not immediately, warns Yankee Group's Huang: "Most companies will try to get the functionality they need from their ERP vendor first, ideally out of the box. They'll exhaust that approach before turning to the specialists.