Amazon is going to develop an ERP system? Official supply chain integration

According to reports, Amazon's new system was developed based on its AWS business. In the past two years, Amazon has encountered a series of unexpected events that impacted its supply chain, such as the shutdown of Asian factories due to the epidemic, and the congestion at US ports last year, which led to a long-term disruption in logistics, resulting in a lot of out-of-stocks during the peak season at the end of this year, resulting in a large loss of sales. Officials realized the power of having a well-functioning supply chain operation, so they prepared this new supply chain management system to try to more strictly control the flow of goods from factories to consumers.

When it comes to supply chain management systems, the first thing that comes to mind is definitely various ERPs. If the government intervenes, it will inevitably bring huge changes to the current ERP market.

However, I want to popularize it here. The ERP on the market now generally integrates many functions other than supply chain processing, such as tracking competing products, sales data analysis, and even the function of adjusting advertising tracking and promotion. It can be said that the integrated system is used in many ways. At present, Amazon's official supply chain management software is only equivalent to the simplest SCM, which basically handles the management of purchase, sales and inventory (purchasing, sales and inventory levels) . The news broke that the software can identify the risk of out-of-stock and provide suggestions to prevent shortages and delays, so it should also have certain sales analysis functions. In general, judging from this point in time, the official supply chain management software is definitely not as good as the third-party one in terms of ease of use and extensiveness of functions.

Although the official supply chain management system currently has few functions and cannot be compared with third-party ERP on the market, it is still a powerful disruptor. Because Amazon has intervened in this market, you can’t guess to what extent the official intends to do it. If it really regards this as a new profit growth point, it is possible to add new functions and new policy support later. Compared with third parties, its competitiveness will only become higher and higher.