The Manhattan Associates’ Bangalore Center is not just another technical programming factory. It is a full extension of the company’s domestic enterprise and engages in all activities from research to development and concept to design. With globalization, supply chain engineering is becoming an increasingly complex field that warrants the skills and knowledge of the talented workforce.

New Wave

Manhattan Associates is at the forefront of building the framework to make the next generation of global supply chain. Its early lead into new technology arena is one of many positive byproducts resulting from the establishment of the company’s Scientific Advisory Board. The board comprises leading professors from Columbia University, Georgia Institute of Technology, MIT and the Wharton School of Business along with key industry experts in the supply chain domain. Its main objective is to explore what the supply chain landscape will look like in future. They had long foreseen store clustering and alerted Manhattan Associates’ research team to this growing development.

Right away the research team started developing the set of algorithms necessary for a tangible product and then handed them over to the applied research staff at Manhattan Associates’ India facility. This team was in charge of turning ideas and numbers into workable solutions by developing prototypes and isolating the strongest algorithm. Sometimes, that meant working on multiple sets of equations simultaneously. For example, when the company developed its fleet management software, engineers pursued two algorithms in parallel for a period of six months, with the goal of determining the best solution.

“We ultimately discovered the best algorithm to use as our foundation for the fleet management solution,” says Pervinder Johar, Manhattan Associates’ Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer. “Our goal is to engineer the highest quality solution and we recognize that can’t be done without dedicated up-front research.” About 90 percent of the work on the fleet management software happened out of India.