AMR Research expects shared services organizations and outsourcing delivery models to be a crucial vehicle for reducing sourcing and procurement overhead expenses. This will be enabled by a labor arbitrage, centralization of resources, tighter efficiencies in managed spend, improved process acumen and access to new technologies. These technologies, however, will see a shift from traditional license approaches to a more economical, integrated SaaS approach.

The evolution of service oriented architecture has enabled significant opportunities for companies to expand their existing solutions without making large-scale upgrades and re-implementations. However, these solutions tend to be more suitable only for larger companies rather than mid-sized ones due to the initial investment needed to enable these solutions.

Multi-enterprise supply chain management solutions are successful when companies are able to achieve large-scale, global adoption with their trading partners, overcoming both technical and business change management challenges. Software as a service solutions play an important role in enabling multi-enterprise business networks.

Globalization and the economics of purchasing technology will continue to catalyze the growth for network platform and applications. Out of the rubble of the internet have come real industry solutions that address the ever complex supply networks that the enterprise must cope with. A new generation of savvy tech buyers will continue to be the primary purchaser for the networked solutions option.