So we thought we’d take this opportunity to go on a trip down memory lane, to offer customers a perspective on how Manhattan has evolved over the last two decades, focusing on the developments that have contributed to creating the company that Manhattan is today.
Developing a simple Pick Ticket Management System out of a motel 20 years ago, Manhattan Associates has gone on to fulfil its original vision of changing the world of supply chain and the company is today meeting the needs of more than 1,200 global customers in over sixty countries by employing close to 2,000 people in 10 offices, on four continents. But it all started back in 1990 when in Manhattan Beach, California, Alan Dabbiere, the company’s first President and Chief Executive Officer, came together with Deepak Raghavan, Deepak Rao and Ponnambalam Muthiah to develop the company’s original product, PkMS. The apparel sector-based Pick Ticket Management System simply comprised printing and verification modules.
World famous underwear brand Jockey International became the first client to deploy PkMS, having played a role in the development of the product. According to Vern Cook, Jockey’s CIO at the time, Alan Dabbiere came to him to “borrow some computer time” in order to build a “picking & packing system for apparel” and PkMS was born.
At that time, the company’s office was located in a converted motel in Manhattan Beach, California. Manhattan built its business by being a thought leader and selling PkMS, which offered Kmart suppliers complete compliance with the powerful retailer’s Inventory Control System (KICS) with an inbound shipping label.
Manhattan’s messages gained momentum and by 1993, the company reached $3.3 million in sales and ‘checked out’ of the motel to more suitable premises in Manhattan Beach. At this time the focus of PkMS was extended to consumer goods manufacturers and offered UCC 128 shipping labels, carton content labels and data needed for ASNs and invoicing.
In the summer of 1995 Manhattan Associates moved to Atlanta along with 30 of its 32 employees. There was also a move beginning towards retail compliance for a now broader target audience: manufacturers and distributors who ship to retail.
While it seems hard to remember a world without emails it wasn’t that long ago. It was as 1996 turned into 1997 when Manhattan launched a website and adopted email. Just as well, because 1997 saw sales double to $32.4 million, while the staff head count swelled from 88 to 200. This required a move from Tower Creek to bigger facilities in Windy Hill in Atlanta where it leased half a floor of an office building, believing it would be more space then they would ever need.
But more growth was to come. This was fuelled when Manhattan completed its initial public offering of stock in 1998 – it’s still traded on the NASDAQ under the MANH ticker symbol. That year also saw the company complete its first acquisitions: PAC (Performance Analysis Corporation), for its slotting optimisation capabilities, and the DCMS (Distribution Centre Management Systems) application from Kurt Salmon Associates. Also that year Manhattan launched the Top 100 Retail Compliance Guarantee to help eliminate charge-backs and began its global aspirations by opening its first international office in the United Kingdom.
By 1999 the company had four legacy international customers but it wasn’t long before they signed their first direct account. That first customer went live on the 4th of July and within the year Manhattan had enough customers to host its first European User Conference.
The year also saw the launch of the Direct to Consumer Initiative. Then, late in 1999, Alan Dabbiere handed the reigns over to a new President and Chief Executive Officer, Richard Haddrill and as Manhattan entered the new millennium, the acquisitions continued. The purchase of Intrepa bought an additional 100 ‘supply chain people’ and 250 customers into the Manhattan family and its offering was the precursor and foundation of Manhattan SCALE.
It was at this point that Manhattan started to become more than a warehouse management company, moving outside the four walls with infolink™ pilot, a forerunner to today’s Extended Enterprise Management solution which it supplied to Federated Department Stores and three key suppliers, while the Intrepa acquisition provided complete Transportation Management. The year also saw the precursor to Supply Chain Intelligence (SCI) begin with the launch of the Manager’s Workbench initiative.
The global footprint grew when, in 2001, the company began servicing customers in Germany and France. New products included GA SmartInfo, a component of SCI; a GA Unicode-enabled PkMS version for single and multi-byte languages for global expansion and PkMS Pronto, which would later evolve to become Manhattan SCALE, ready for SMBs. 2001 was also the year Manhattan gained its ISO 9001 Certificate of Approval. The year ended with more than $138 million in revenue.
International expansion continued at a rapid pace in 2002 with the company opening Centres of Expertise in Sydney, Australia and the Netherlands. It also established partnerships and began to serve customers throughout Asia-Pacific, including Japan and Singapore, and it launched a development centre in India that today employs over 700 people.
New product launches included the Extended Supply Chain Execution (x-SCE™); GA Logistics PRO TMS 7.0 and PkCost dynamic billing for 3PLs. Manhattan further extended its footprint with the acquisition of Logistics.com, which led to Manhattan offering a Transport Management System (TMS) alongside the Warehouse Management System (WMS).
RFID dominated the industry in 2003, and Manhattan took a leadership position by announcing its RFID in a Box® solution and expanding its Top 100 Retail Compliance Guarantee to include emerging RFID requirements. With the ReturnCentral acquisition Manhattan was able to build a reverse supply chain offer. The other acquisition that year was Streamsoft, which enhanced slotting capabilities, and the company closed out 2003 with over 1,000 employees, more than 900 customers and $196.8 million in revenue. Forbes ranked it 82nd on its “Best Small Company in America” list.
In 2004, Dick Haddrill handed the reigns over to a new president and chief executive officer, Pete Sinisgalli, who ushered in the era of platform thinking. Under Pete’s leadership, the R&D staff grew by 33 per cent and international operations were incorporated in China and Singapore. The company ended 2004 with over 1,400 employees in 20 offices located in 11 countries. To serve markets where the company did not yet have a physical presence, such as Russia and South Africa, Manhattan launched its GeoPartner program. Enhanced and integrated Warehouse Management and Transportation Management products were also released that year, while the acquisition of Avere Inc brought DOM (Distributed Order Management) capabilities to the party.
In 2005, the product footprint expanded to include Planning and Forecasting and Inventory Optimisation with the acquisition of Evant. The following year Manhattan added 400 employees to help it initiate 260 implementations. Then came the launch of the industry’s first fully integrated suite, spanning planning through execution for end-to-end supply chain management.
In 2007, the suite was launched as SCOPE: Supply Chain Optimisation - Planning through Execution, which integrated many of Manhattan’s solution components on a single process platform. At the same time X-suite Solutions was introduced for complex cross-functional issues, while Supply Chain Intelligence enabled dashboards, analytics, management reports and more.
Manhattan introduced the Total Cost-to-Serve supply chain platform application as part of its focus on creating new solutions to help customers optimise labour in 2008. It also celebrated its 100th European customer that year.
Manhattan turned its focus to ‘productisation’ in 2009 with the goal of delivering the industry’s best performing solutions. It also introduced the MORE™ methodology- Manhattan’s Optimised Roadmap to Excellence and rebranded Manh ILS™ to SCALE™ - Supply Chain Architected for Logistics Execution.
In 2010, its 20th year, Manhattan launched its Platform Thinking concept, which not only forms the basis of development over the coming years but also encapsulates the company’s original vision. As Manhattan founder, Alan Dabbiere reflects: “20 years ago the vision was that we were going to change the world of supply chain. Back then there were loads of silos and I think that we were truly the first company that recognised that supply chain was not about the company but about the enterprise and the way it interacted with other enterprises and the way a truly integrated supply chain could run.”