Suite functionality covering the key selling processes is provided on a global basis by CAS, Oracle and SAP. Suite vendors as a whole have not closed the functionality gap with the best-of-breed vendors in retail execution and monitoring and category management. Oracle has improved its rating to positive by refocusing on customers, while SAP has seen its rating reduced because of functional gaps, a lack of understanding concerning regional business processes and numerous implementation failures. CAS and Oracle have raised the stakes in this space by offering predictive modeling and optimization.

Sales force automation (SFA) solutions are critical because of the amount of time and resources associated with executing with retailers. Investment in SFA solutions continues to be steady, but primarily among consumables companies (such as food and beverage), with considerably less among semidurable companies (such as apparel and footwear and entertainment), and still less among durable companies (such as housewares, appliances and consumer electronics). This continues to be a surprise, since the economy is strong in all sectors and manufacturers continue to invest more than 20% of annual revenue on trade promotions, which is a component of SFA functionality. There have been some positive changes in the offerings, which shows how SFA is maturing. These include:

• Investment in predictive modeling and optimization by vendors such as CAS and Oracle.
• Consolidation of vendors, such as Gelco Trade Management being purchased by Adesso Solutions, FDV Concept by Coheris, and Euremis by Belgacom.
• Continued investment in retail execution and monitoring, with more analytical, ergonomic and optimization capabilities by vendors such as CAS, O4 and StayinFront.
• Introduction of interoperable components through service-oriented architectures (SOAs).
• Continued polarization of trade promotion management (TPM) solutions with larger or regional companies choosing suites such as CAS, Oracle and SAP, and smaller companies choosing stand-alone capabilities or hosted solutions from Synectics Group, Adesso/Gelco and MEI.
• Software as a service (SaaS) becoming a more viable alternative to on-premises.
• More privately held or public SFA provider companies being more patient in their approach. In this year's MarketScope, only MEI remains as a venture-capital-backed company. We this see as a definite sign of maturity in the market.

Meanwhile, category management continues to see underinvestment. We believe this may be in part due to consumer goods manufacturers overestimating their analytical capabilities relative both to their competition and to retailers. A Gartner survey conducted earlier in 2007 found this to be the case (see "Manufacturer/Retailer Beliefs About Analytical Capabilities Underscore Need for Increased Dialogue").

We expect large companies to continue favoring on-premises options where they can satisfy their predilection for customization in tailoring standard practices to match their best-practice business approaches. The inverse will also be true for smaller companies that choose hosted and often intentionally less flexible options.

We also expect that the suite vendors will not be challenged by point solutions seeking to expand their offerings to match those of the suites. This is due to the investment required to be a complete SFA suite. Clearly, SOA could become the great equalizer over time, but we have yet to see any SOA success stories that have added point solutions to suites in a repeatable way. SOA is conceptually appealing, but we are more skeptical about how it will work in practice — particularly as consumer goods companies still have many legacy applications that are not SOA-compliant.

This MarketScope analyzes the recent performance of the 13 vendors serving this market that meet our criteria, and it rates each based on our vendor-rating definitions. The number of vendors featured has expanded as more have met the criteria. Specifically, O4, StayinFront and Trimble Mobile Solutions have been added, while Gelco and Adesso have been combined. We also provide an overall market rating using the same definitions.

The market continues to evolve as larger user companies seek to enable the key processes in concert by selecting vendors that can enable a suite of functionality. Some companies are still choosing point solutions for individual processes, but the early adopters and Tier 1 companies (with more than $1 billion in revenue) are selecting solutions that allow them to enable multiple key processes over time.

The SFA market for the consumer goods industry continues to evolve. Several vendors have improved their offerings by providing solutions based on all five key field sales processes:

• Category management
• Planning and trade promotion management
• Volume planning
• Retail execution and monitoring
• Settlement

Figure 1 shows the 13 major vendors serving this market and the solutions they offer.

The market for SFA in the consumer goods industry is still fragmented based on the size of the organization using the solution and the specific requirements for functionality:

• Tier 1 companies tend to have a global presence and annual revenue of more than $1 billion. For their SFA needs, these companies tend to choose CAS, Oracle/Siebel and SAP for customer planning, and O4 or RW3 Technologies for retail execution and monitoring. These vendors continue to dominate among the Tier 1 users, while attempting to strengthen their positions among the other two tiers.
• Tier 2 companies have revenue between $250 million and $1 billion, or have operations based in specific countries that are part of a global company. Vendors that are most active with this tier are CAS, Oracle/Siebel and SAP. Offerings available only in North America include Adesso/Gelco and Synectics Group. Vendors serving this tier that operate only in Europe are Euremis (now part of Belgacom), FDV Concept (now called Coheris FDV after being acquired by Coheris) and Xtel. Global offerings specializing in specific key selling processes include O4.
• Tier 3 companies have revenue of less than $250 million and, in general, do not have a commercial solution for SFA. All vendors in this MarketScope are active in this segment. Companies offering solutions just in North America are Gelco Trade Management, Synectics Group and VeriSync (MEI). Companies only use these vendors for TPM as part of customer planning. Euremis, FDV Concept and Xtel are active in this segment in Europe and are looking to get more involved in North America. Adesso has expanded its footprint into the U.K. O4 is also active in this segment.

Several of the vendors in various tiers are not covered in detail in this MarketScope because they do not meet the inclusion criteria. However, we continue to monitor their progress in the marketplace.

The market continues to evolve as more companies using the technology want to enable the five key processes in combination and look for vendors that can offer comprehensive functionality and meet their business needs worldwide. Service-oriented architectures (SOAs) will continue to play a key role in enabling a more-federated solution approach. However, we have not yet seen enough fully deployed success stories to understand the practical realities of this approach. Some companies still select point solutions in cases where suites do not meet their needs in category management and retail execution and monitoring.

Vendors must have at least $5 million in consumer goods SFA revenue specific to the five key field sales processes to be considered in our MarketScope. This overarching criterion automatically eliminates many startups.

We are frequently asked about Microsoft and salesforce.com, but neither vendor offers out-of-the-box functionality for key consumer goods selling processes. Microsoft's vision is to align itself with key partners that use its architectural components and to wrap nonindustry functionality (such as outlook integration) around these partners. Hence, Microsoft does not intend to offer vertical-industry-specific solutions at this time. This is consistent with its approach to other vertical industries such as pharmaceuticals, and we believe this is the right one, considering how mature the market is.

Overall Market Rating: Promising

Our outlook for this market continues to be "promising." The various offerings continue to expand their expertise, but the market is still fragmented by solution type and tier. We do not view investment in SFA as less advisable, but too many consumer goods companies tend to take too tactical of an approach and do not think strategically in terms of linking these customer-facing processes. Some of this may be due to uncertainty about Oracle's Fusion path or lack of maturity in SAP offerings. There are also too few vendors — in this case, CAS, Oracle and SAP — that have solutions that include all five key processes. Other factors that contribute to our continued "promising" rating are:

• The lack of more-global solutions or vendors seeking to expand globally. Also, some vendors such as MEI are reducing their global focus to concentrate on customer planning and trade promotions in the North American market.
• Recognition by user organizations of the need to automate the category management process, but an unwillingness to do so.
• Continued disparities between the suites and best of breed in retail execution and monitoring and category management.
• A lack of investment by semidurable and durable goods companies in these enabling technologies.
• A lack of SOA success stories, which indicates the relative ease of combining various solutions, including best of breed.

Adesso Solutions/Gelco Trade Management

Adesso has purchased the Gelco Trade Management as part of a larger sale of all Gelco businesses. This now makes Adesso the largest of the TPM point solutions in the North American market. Gelco had not seen much growth in recent years, as user organizations often selected it as a temporary solution (and often remained loyal longer than they intended) because of its hosted nature and year-to-year contract structure. This gives Adesso two separate technologies, but the positive thing is that Gelco has a strong post-promotional tool plus the payment business, while Adesso has better deduction management and analytics. Adesso will rely on SOA to pull together the best of both worlds.

Adesso has added offline capabilities to its solution, but Gelco had been reluctant to do so. Advantage Sales and Marketing's minority investment with Adesso provides sales opportunities and a testing ground in conjunction with one of North America's largest sales agent organizations.

Any acquisition — particularly one featuring two companies of roughly equal size — will face integration challenges, but existing as well as prospective users should see the benefits of more functionality over time. Moreover, Advantage Sales and Marketing's purchase of StayinFront as its retail execution and monitoring solution provides the capability to expand the functional footprint using SOA. Tier 2 and 3 companies will continue to see Adesso as a promising option. Given Adesso's integration challenges with Gelco, its concentration on a narrow set of SFA capabilities and its primary focus on the U.S. market, we recommend caution to ensure the right fit.

Rating: Caution

CAS moves up in the ratings from "positive" to "strong positive" based on the strength of its references, vision, flexibility and grasp of business process nuances around the globe. It continues to be the solution of choice among users with SAP in the back office until SAP can mature and better understand regional and country-specific business processes. CAS's expansion into predictive modeling/optimization demonstrates its longer-term vision. Optimization actually spans multiple dimensions such as number of sales calls needed to achieve an objective, promotional tactics, promotional duration, pricing, assortment, and promotional frequency. CAS has a good balance of implementations using major as well as boutique partners. We were also impressed with recent developments in multidimensional planning, which works like online analytic processing (OLAP) but enables a user to plan and allocate a plan from top to bottom, or in any direction. Additional analytical capabilities from modeling to dashboards to OLAP to reporting are the best we've seen. They include an enterprise view from the office of the CEO down to the individual user.

CAS has made strides in retail execution and monitoring, with better analytics and ergonomics. It also has more functionality for various selling models such as direct store delivery (DSD), van sales, retail coverage and field service (such as damages and returns). Other differentiators include bar code scanning, signature capture and support for mobile receipts.

The challenge for CAS will be to continue innovating and generating positive customer results to such a degree that Oracle and SAP are always a few steps behind. This is not easy for a vendor approaching $50 million in revenue, but CAS has shown vision going back to when it was the first vendor of its kind to bring a Web-based solution to market. One limitation of CAS is its lack of experience in durable and semidurable goods. Prospects with these requirements should ensure that CAS is appropriate and provides the needed configuration, as opposed to vendors with experience in more industries.

The company's management continues to be stable, except in the Asia/Pacific region, and growth is strong. CAS needs to decide quickly whether it will offer a hosted solution to appeal to more Tier 2 and 3 companies. At present, CAS has a good mix of all tiers because of its significant presence in Europe, but smaller organizations in the U.S. market have shown a strong predilection for hosted solutions.

Rating: Strong Positive

Interactive Edge continues to be an innovative force, creating a space in the market that the suite vendors have not yet been able to enter. A presentation iteration Web service, unveiled this year, enables the development of presentation generation job shops on the Web. DataDefractor, which has potential in multiple vertical industries, allow users to link all sorts of data sources and pull them into a single data solution. Examples include spreadsheets, assorted flat files or direct point-of-sale (POS) data. We continue to see investment in a solution such as Interactive Edge's XP3 or Kenosia's DataAlchemy as the area where consumer goods companies can have the greatest impact on field sales activities for the smallest investment. Nevertheless, uptake continues to be slow relative to other spaces such as TPM. Because of its open technology standards, ease of use and powerful analytical/presentation capabilities, we continue to rate Interactive Edge as "promising." It could move up in the ratings, either by expanding its presence to include more of key processes (highly unlikely) or as SOA breaks down functional barriers. We strongly recommend it as a stand-alone solution based on its capabilities and excellent user references. However, based on the SFA spectrum criteria, it continues to be "promising."

Rating: Promising

Kenosia has fallen on relatively hard times, with parent company Halo Technologies filing for bankruptcy protection in August 2007. Halo's future doesn't look bright, with a high level of debt and a precipitous sales drop from 2006. Nevertheless, Kenosia has retained a loyal following and has been able to stay focused. Thus far, it has not been compelled to lay off personnel or dramatically curb investment in product development. The last five years have been tumultuous for Kenosia, beginning with its spin-off from Bristol Technologies. The result has been less innovation than Kenosia is capable of. We expect Kenosia to be sold to reduce debt. Halo has a disparate portfolio of companies and provides no industry expertise to Kenosia. Because of its loyal following of power users, we expect Kenosia to survive. The best scenario for Kenosia would to be acquired by a data and analytics player such as IRI or Nielsen. User organizations should not panic because they have a solution that works and will continue to be supported. They should watch the bankruptcy process closely during the next 6 to 12 months. We assign a "caution" rating to Kenosia due to the precarious state of its parent company, but believe that the solution merits consideration. Were it not for Halo's financial situation, Kenosia would be rated "promising," because no company in the market other than Interactive Edge offers similar capabilities.

Rating: Caution

MEI/VeriSync

MEI will not engage with or brief Gartner since it emerged from bankruptcy. Therefore, our analysis is based on available market information. Nevertheless, users and prospects need to see how we regard MEI in the marketplace. MEI's efforts continue to be aggressive, with money-back guarantees and claims of high returns on investment. We believe it has shed employees in R&D, sales, country management and product management. We also believe that the company is focusing primarily on hosted deals and may discontinue selling its software altogether.

All European operations continue to be closed, with global support coming out of Canada. One European user we spoke to said that support had become very difficult to obtain compared to the high level of support enjoyed previously. We do not know whether reporting inadequacies and the inability to work offline in the solution have ever been addressed.

MEI finds itself in a very competitive situation due to the numerous hosted TPM alternatives in North America. Despite only modest growth potential, we believe that MEI will survive as a company. We estimate its 2007 revenue to be approximately $8 million. The reason MEI will find it hard to grow substantially is because large clients in North America and Europe have defected or will defect due to a lack of local support in Europe and the move away from software solutions in favor of hosted solutions. It will take a lot of new, smaller hosted deals to offset maintenance revenue lost as larger, often global software clients defect. MEI's best scenario would be to continue focusing on hosted solutions in North America and support its customer base to deter defection. We do not believe that it has much growth potential due to the loss of key personnel and standing in the marketplace.

Industry sources say that MEI typically is the low bidder in requests for proposals, but that prospects are gaining more confidence in MEI's future despite overt support by its minority shareholder, Acosta. With fewer employees, we believe that MEI has stabilized its revenue and is winning deals in the U.S. and Canada. Five recently reported deals consisted of four Tier 3 companies (average revenue of $66 million) and one Tier 2 company (reported revenue of $925 million), which is consistent with where MEI is positioning itself. With continuing maintenance revenue, increasing deal flow and smaller head count, MEI appears to present less of a financial risk. However, due to the shift from global software to more commoditized TPM hosting, the loss of key personnel and the lack of financial/operating transparency, we continue to rate MEI a "strong negative." Resolving the personnel and transparency issues could help MEI move to a "caution" rating during the next year.

Rating: Strong Negative

O4 is a privately held retail execution and DSD vendor that has expanded its presence in the U.S. and Europe from its roots in Australia. The heart of its strategy is to be able to drive the activities of the field force from the manager's desk while giving the field force an exceptionally ergonomic solution that can be modified at the user level. The analytical capabilities on the local device make the user more effective in understanding and executing against opportunities. O4's appeal is broad: Current users range from one of the largest global consumer goods companies, to a broker sales organization, to a durables company, to a 20-user dairy company. O4 offers hosting, with data centers in Europe and Texas. Of the best-of-breed retail execution and monitoring solutions we cover, O4 will be the first to execute a global deal, with deployments in more than 20 countries. This says a great deal about the flexibility of the solution to accommodate changes in business process across countries and regions. The solution is the most flexible and has the best analytical capabilities on a mobile device of any that we will review here.

O4 also has a good vision for pushing POS-data-driven analytics and optimizing activities based on predictive outcomes — all at the individual user level. We see this as a powerful competitive advantage in the future. Because of its unique functionality and global appeal despite its focus on a single selling process, we rate O4 "promising."

Rating: Promising

Oracle has worked hard to improve its relationships with its user base by incorporating various aspects of feedback, providing more user group forums and industry events, and hiring individuals with deep industry knowledge. Adding functionality has not been as important to Oracle as integrating the various pieces from acquired companies. The exception, however, is retail execution and monitoring, which has seen positive enhancements in the user interface, Sidewinder route optimization (an acquisition), and multilanguage/character. Still in the planning phase is the integration of retail execution and monitoring to the rest of the suite.

A standout area is optimization and predictive modeling, with former Demantra capabilities currently being combined with Siebel and already combined with JD Edwards. The screens are dense, but the presence of optimization and predictive capabilities is a key differentiator. We particularly like the ability to simulate both manufacturer and retailer outcomes.

Implementation strategy continues to evolve to include more implementations led by Oracle, as well as by global and boutique partners. This is a positive development, as Oracle covers all tiers of users in concert. Another positive aspect is the breadth of companies served — including food, beverages, home entertainment, alcohol, apparel and footwear, cosmetics, luxury goods, toys, tobacco, and durables. On the flip side, however, is the depth of capabilities across multiple countries. Several user organizations we spoke to use Oracle/Siebel in the U.S. and U.K. but find that its cost or functionality is less suitable for the rest of Europe, where more-lightweight functionality or simplified processes are required. This remains a development area going forward. Fusion is uncertain and risky, so companies must pursue an on-demand solution while they wait for the Fusion vision to play itself out. The company has stated that it will pursue on-demand models hosted by Oracle and by partners, but has not disclosed when.

Because Oracle has responded to the market need to improve its retail execution and monitoring capabilities, provided advanced analytics such as predictive modeling and optimization, and refocused on really listening to its users, it is a recommended solution. Prospects, however, should seek to understand the Fusion strategy and how it would impact them. The Oracle vision includes a complete solution, from demand creation to demand fulfillment in the near term through its Applications Unlimited approach, but the realization of the endgame vision requires the success of Fusion, and it is unclear when this will occur. Nevertheless, Applications Unlimited does not obligate users to migrate to Fusion.

Rating: Positive

RW3 Technologies remains a strong player in merchandizing. Users looking for order entry or DSD capabilities should look elsewhere. However, this solution extends beyond software because it is hosted and offers consulting, analysis and reporting. It also has a broader penetration than its competitors in the durable and semidurable sectors. RW3 is still offshoring its support services to India and is looking to expand similar services to Europe, but its solutions are currently only live in North America. A visionary element of RW3 is the inclusion of POS data for a better understanding of what needs to be done at each store location. Not only does RW3 use the POS data, but actually cleanses and stages the data like the direct POS data vendors. Being able to see where a product is being sold against where products are approved for sale helps to spot distribution voids and out-of-stocks.

Another visionary element is a new "alert engine" that notifies users and prioritizes the activities to be performed. We believe this is the type of intelligence that will achieve the greatest return on investment for users and raises the stakes for the entire industry.

As a merchandizing solution, RW3 is a strong player. However, the company has a function gap compared to many of the suite vendors that it has not been able or willing to close. We rate RW3 "promising," because of its limited geographic and key selling process focus.

Rating: Promising

SAP continues to expand its SFA vision but is lacking in execution. The strategy has come full circle from "SAP solutions aren't as good as best-of-breed but they are good enough" (circa 2001), to "SAP solutions will rival best-of-breed" (circa 2004), to "whether you purchase SAP or best-of-breed, SAP will be the SOA glue that holds it all together" (circa 2006). We believe that this signals a return to mediocrity. Users consistently tell us that SAP doesn't understand their business processes. Simple aspects such as what constitutes a product listing must be explained over and over. Subtle nuances and requirements from market to market are not captured, and the flexibility to accommodate them is low. Joint development projects that are taking years to complete are failing. TPM and retail execution and monitoring are particular weaknesses. Mobile sales functions such as order entry are a relative strength. SAP still struggles to sell to its own user base.

Version 2007 for consumer goods (due out in early 2008) will attempt to address some of the inadequacies identified in the various joint development projects. We're hopeful that version 2007 will be the one that users begin deploying, rather than always looking forward to the next version as a means of monitoring how SAP is progressing relative to their needs.

We applaud SAP for looking to be the foundation of the SFA solution with NetWeaver, but as we stated earlier, SOA success stories are still far from being realized. This approach is also borne of an inability to match best of breed while trying to stay relevant in the overall application stack.

User organizations seeking to perform remote order entry or basic contact management should consider SAP. For customer planning, it is still too inadequate and inflexible. Because of the low quality of feedback we get from users, as well as SAP's lack of business process expertise, we advise caution when considering its use. SAP remains committed to the space, but the functional immaturity, lack of region/country-specific business process expertise and continued pursuit of joint development projects outweigh the merits of an end-to-end solution.

Rating: Caution

StayinFront is another addition to the MarketScope as it moves more into the consumer goods arena and away from its pharmaceutical roots. StayinFront has been active in the space for years, but only recently met the criteria when it secured a deal with Advantage Sales and Marketing, a large U.S. broker sales agency. Its primary focus is on merchandizing but has capability in order entry and route sales. There are also elements of category management, such as assortments/space planning and brand/category/account analytics. StayinFront has the executional elements of customer planning just shy of trade promotion management, but given Adesso's relationship with Advantage, we would expect, if not encourage, the two to join forces to provide a more-complete solution from planning to execution.

The StayinFront solution is highly ergonomic. We find its usability to be among the best — along with O4, CAS and RW3. Functionality includes surveying, workflow, guided merchandizing, expense management, objectives/quotas, and even specific views for brand management to get insight into the business. Because StayinFront already has a presence in Europe, the U.S. and Asia/Pacific, and can enable merchandizing, route sales, and some DSD functions (as executed in the beer business), we predict that it will be a global player and rate it as "promising." Because it is closely and privately held, it has the patience to slowly build its presence in the market.

Rating: Promising

Synectics Group has surprised us with the lack of user uptake in its migration from FoxPro (version 6.0) to SQL Server (version 7.0). Clients don't seem interested in upgrading. On the surface, it appears that version 7.0 has the same functionality, but users aren't motivated. Synectics continues to provide customer-planning solutions for small and midsize users in North America. The company offers hosted as well as on-premises solutions. Clients we have spoken with are highly satisfied with the speed of implementation and quality of service. Because Synectics is closely and privately held, it does not feel pressure to grow or expand its presence.

Tier 2 and 3 users looking for a smooth implementation of a plan/execute/pay solution should consider Synectics. Those needing international capabilities or wanting to move quickly to SOA should look elsewhere. Synectics does not work through external service providers, but it is known for rapid, high-quality implementations. The company has no intention of expanding beyond customer planning and reporting capabilities. Synectics has deep industry expertise and is skilled at providing customer-planning capabilities to smaller U.S.-based companies. Because it has a relatively small functional and geographic presence in SFA, we continue to caution clients that Synectics is good at what it does, but has a very limited scope.

Rating: Caution

Trimble Mobile Solutions is new to the MarketScope for 2007. Its solution, Trimble Retail Execution, has a unique perspective on retail execution, which is to combine elements of retail execution and DSD and with Global Positioning System (GPS) enablers. The idea is to increase productivity by being able to trace sales rep activity in real time. The other solution, Trimble DSD, combines elements of pre-sales and delivery with route sales. Both solutions benefit from in-vehicle GPS to know where vehicles are physically located, thus avoiding overtime and fraud through time-stamping. There appears to be uptake in the market for a solution leveraging GPS and having retail functionality. These solutions are available in six languages and take a modularized approach.

Companies wanting to track physical movements and locations in conjunction with retail rep activities should consider Trimble for enabling any Windows Mobile device. The solutions use .NET technology with Trimble GPS — which is its strength — at the core. The DSD solution has algorithms to suggest order quantities based on store attributes, and the retail solution can guide the retail person through various activities and can work in connected or disconnected mode. The solutions don't perform computations or scenarios on the actual device, but can handle pricing or promotion permutations to support frequent changes. Because it has functionality for retail that is not addressed by many of the suites, we rate it "promising."

Rating: Promising

Xtel, added to the MarketScope in 2006, is a privately held company based in Bologna, Italy. The company has a suite that covers customer planning, pricing management, volume planning, retail execution and monitoring, settlement, and quota/incentive management. It specializes in the contract-driven promotional activities that are common in southern Europe, and stresses retail execution, including syndicated data integration from Nielsen to assist with in-store activities. It continues to be unchallenged in the Italian market. In fact, Xtel is the fallback position for failed deployments for ERP players' solutions where users can't afford to fail twice and hence are looking for more certainty. This is yet another example of the lack of global perspective among many suite vendors. Essentially, they know that southern Europe has unique requirements, but they aren't willing to invest in them.

New for 2007 is the functionality for sales quota administration and incentive compensation. Both are key elements of selling in a less-chain-store-dominated environment. The solutions are offered in client/server and Web formats. We see them having substantial appeal in Latin America. North America may be a bit more of a stretch. We find the graphics to be excellent and the solutions intuitive.

Overall, the analytical capabilities border on being able to do category management, and efforts are under way to provide more-predictive capabilities. Role-based views include brand manager, sales manager and salesperson. Partnerships in the professional service area are better developed than other vendors of this size, and include global as well as boutique firms. The limitations of the solution are the languages (Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, English and French) and support outside Europe. Because Xtel has a functional footprint that other vendors don't have, we view the company in a positive light. For consumer goods companies doing business in southern Europe, it is the benchmark solution. However, because of its limited geographic capabilities, we rate it "promising."

Rating: Promising

Other Vendors

We do not see any more suite vendors entering the suite market simply because of the massive investment required in so many functional areas. However, there are some niche vendors that did not meet our criteria, yet are worth noting. Coheris FDV has excellent retail execution and monitoring and customer planning offerings, including some very appealing shelf simulation capabilities. It is primarily active in France, with some presence in bordering countries. Euremis has been relatively quiet since being acquired by Belgacom, but has a solution that is well-suited to the beer business in Europe and, to a lesser degree, in the U.S. Brimstone is a Microsoft partner and a vendor we are watching in Europe for possible inclusion.