For manufacturers focused on that particular brand of supply chain management (SCM) known as supplier relationship management, CVM Solutions this week launched Supplier Central 10.0, a new cloud computing version of its core supplier management tool.
The 10.0 release marks Supplier Central’s debut on the Force.com cloud computing platform maintained by SaaS pioneer Salesforce.com. The Supplier Central application had been delivered as a SaaS offering prior to the 10.0 release, but CVM officials said the Force.com infrastructure adds more capabilities to the supplier management tool.
Many of the functional enhancements in Supplier Central 10.0 were inspired by a survey CVM conducted among 280 of its customers, all of them members of the Fortune 1,000. The vendor found that the supplier base for many companies is shrinking as the overall supplier population itself is winnowed by merger activity and business closures.