Gartner recently released the 2021 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Warehouse Management Systems (WMS) report1 and Blue Yonder has again been named a Leader. 

Per our understanding, to determine this year’s Magic Quadrant Leaders, the breadth and depth of core and extended WMS capabilities were assessed. As requested by our diversified customer base, Blue Yonder has been focusing on bringing the latest capabilities to serve our customers in the areas of, for example, labor management, performance management, distribution, and scheduling.  

As a Leader since 20122 for the Magic Quadrant for Warehouse Management Systems, Blue Yonder was positioned among a total of six vendors in the Leaders quadrant. Blue Yonder believes it is being recognized for its long history of serving a broad customer base, particularly for sophisticated and demanding needs. In addition, with the accelerating WMS and logistics market growth, Blue Yonder has increased the pace of completing the supply chain convergence vision for customers and has expanded its partner network which now supports the majority of new deals. 

With this latest Gartner Magic Quadrant for Warehouse Management Systems, Blue Yonder is the only company recognized as a Leader in three 2021 Gartner Magic Quadrant reports covering supply chain planning solutions, transportation management systems and warehouse management systems. 

Blue Yonder’s Differentiator: Innovative Solutions and Platform 

Blue Yonder is committed to leading through innovation by: 

  • Operationalizing and unifying digital distribution across warehouse, labor, automation, and transportation. 
  • Improving performance for omni-channel fulfillment with real-time transaction processing and scale. 
  • Leveraging artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML) in an increasing number of microservices for warehouse tasking, robotics hub and warehouse execution, and fulfillment. 
  • Taking customers along the journey to the cloud to reach the best time-to-value. 

The company is leveraging its domain expertise in AI and platform technologies:  

  • Robotic Orchestration: We introduced robotics hub, a SaaS-native application that accelerates onboarding of multiple robotics vendors in the warehouse, to address integration related challenges through automation. It is built on the Luminate™ Platform and interconnected with WMS. An implementation with DHL Supply Chain at a warehouse in Spain in 2020 led to a 60% reduction in implementation time for robotics, resulting in faster delivery of ROI in the first six months. In fact, Blue Yonder won the 2021 AI Breakthrough Award for robotics hub, which was selected as the “Best Robotic Process Automation Solution.”  
  • Warehouse Tasking: This solution utilizes ML-driven task management and resource determination capabilities to perform escalation or de-escalation of tasks based on multiple factors, thus greatly improving resource utilization and on-time, in-full delivery performance. Combined with the robotics hub, the solutions greatly benefit warehouse operations. 
  • Luminate Platform and an API-centric Approach: WMS is connected with other Blue Yonder capabilities, including our transportation management, supply chain planning, and Luminate Control Tower, to provide customers with dynamic planning and execution; end-to-end, real-time supply chain visibility; and built-in AI and ML. 

Looking Ahead 

The company is continuing to innovate and is launching its Luminate WMS, a SaaS-native solution powered by microservices with a focus on improving customer’s time to-value. Capabilities include:  

  • Fulfillment-as-a-Service: a set of simplified, seamless, and scalable services for enabling last- and middle-mile fulfillment including micro-fulfillment centers (MFCs) and dark stores, where vendors are enabling digital fulfillment to service the customers. 
  • Warehouse Execution System: a multi-tenant, API-led solution to intelligently synchronize, sequence, and assign work to both labor and machine in the most efficient way 

Learn more about Blue Yonder’s Warehouse Management and Labor Management solutions. 

1 Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Warehouse Management Systems, Simon Tunstall, Dwight Klappich, 30 June 2021*. To view these reports visit: blueyonder.com/Gartner-Magic-Quadrants. To view our press release, click here.  

2* Blue Yonder was previously listed as JDA because the company rebranded in early 2020. Also, recognitions were in the post-JDA/RedPrairie acquisition timeframe announced in 2012. 

This graphic was published by Gartner, Inc. as part of a larger research document and should be evaluated in the context of the entire document. The Gartner document is available upon request from Blue Yonder. 

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