I2's Revenue Falls, But Company Sees New Opportunities

I2 Technologies Inc. reported a decrease in revenue in the fourth quarter and for the full year of 2004. Fourth-quarter 2004 revenue was $84 million, compared with $98 million the same quarter a year ago. For the year, revenue was $389 million, down from $495 million in 2003.

But with new customers like U.S. Foodservice, Nissan North America, and China Steel, i2 says it continues to build a strong momentum in the supply-chain market despite its rocky financial history.

There are several new opportunities for i2 in the changing market, chairman and CEO Sanjiv Sidhu says. Global outsourcing of supply chains continues to increase at a rapid pace, which is forcing companies to innovate and bring new products to market faster to meet customer demand.

To address these changing needs, i2 has created a five-pillar strategy, which includes application services, data management, and an integrated development environment. "What we want to bring is an integrated data model and reference workflows so with our solution, customers need not build a data model or a workflow from scratch, and [they] can tailor i2's reference models and workflows to their specific needs," Sidhu says.

The software vendor also is coming up with new customer-support programs. For example, i2 launched the Supply Chain Leaders program last year to help companies create and deploy demand-driven supply-chain software using i2's intellectual property over the course of an agreed-upon contract term.

Says Sidhu, "You'll see that certain customers will move away from buying licensed software and they will move to more holistic solutions."