QuickREAD

June 6, 2007

Philly Retail Forecast Calls For Rain And RFID Spyware
If you're walking around Philadelphia on a rainy day and take up a shopkeeper's offer to borrow an umbrella, then welcome. You may have just become part of an RFID-enabled experiment in mobile advertising.
A start-up called Dutch Umbrella is selling advertising spots on umbrellas to shopkeepers and restaurateurs in the Fairmount neighborhood of Philadelphia. Patrons can borrow and later return them, or leave umbrellas at the "RainDrop" of a participating business owner. Dutch Umbrella, whose name was inspired by the bicycle-sharing program in Amsterdam, has signed up eight merchants as sponsors.
But these aren't just any umbrellas: each one is identified by a Motorola RFID tag that's inlaid in plastic and dangles from the strap. Dutch Umbrella periodically dispatches an employee with a handheld reader to visit business sites and identify each umbrella. This information is later loaded into software developed by Concept2 Solution.
Dutch Umbrella uses this information in a few different ways. First, it shows merchants that are paying $100 a month to have 100 umbrellas circulating their advertising messages that the umbrellas are getting used, and where their messages are being seen through various parts of the city. And because umbrellas are easily destroyed and sometimes go home with patrons, it also lets the company track which umbrellas are still in circulation.
Dutch Umbrella also creates printouts from the software showing where merchant's mobile messages have traveled; data they can then use for marketing intelligence. A restaurateur may discover that umbrella-toting patrons who visited his restaurant often have come from or departed to places close to the city's museums, signaling that's a good area to target for other types of advertising and promotions.
Source: Information Week, http://www.informationweek.com

Do You Run Your Business Like The Cable Guy Does?
Almost everyone knows what waiting for the cable guy is like.
You call for service, and the cable company assigns you a date and a window of time spanning several hours when you can expect a technician to come to your home. You clear your schedule to be on hand on the appointed day. The day arrives and you wait--and wait. Sometimes the technician doesn't show. After the designated time frame has elapsed, you put in another call to the company, and the person who answers your call sounds clueless. The process then starts over again. While you may have gotten a good deal for the cable itself, when it comes to repairs or maintenance, sub-par service seems to be a necessary--or at least widely accepted--evil.
In the business-to-business sector, however, some vendors are striving to give customers high-quality service after the sale. Unlike in the consumer cable market, rival vendors may be waiting to secure the business of frustrated customers, so such initiatives become even more imperative.
Service delivery problems originate within the vendor's operation, of course. But why is there sometimes a disparity between a great product and the quality of its maintenance program? After a customer has invested in a product, the vendor's reputation is at the mercy of the service department, says Rebecca Wettemann, vice president of Nucleus Research, a firm that tracks ROI on technology investments. "This is an important issue when it comes to customer retention."
Manufacturers can do better than the cable company on customer service by using service management software to coordinate activities and share information.
Source: Managing Automation, http://www.managingautomation.com

I Have to Actually Buy This Thing Before It Will Work?
If thieves knew that what they were stealing wouldn't work until purchased, would their motive be removed? Two technology companies think so, and they have created an RFID solution to DVD theft and possibly to the theft of many other consumer electronic products.
Because the solution would disable the DVD at the point of manufacturing, and enable it upon purchase, it might thwart both in-store theft and theft during shipping.
Source: Mobile Tech Today, http://www.mobile-tech-today.com

Air Cargo Is Cool Toward Advances in Temp-Controlled Shipping
In the shipment of perishables, air cargo has always been behind the technology curve when compared to other modes. In road or sea freight, continuous cool chains, logging of temperatures in transit, and even the use of modified atmospheres to preserve produce have long been standard. In air cargo, by contrast, many shippers still put their fish, fruit, vegetables or flowers in insulated boxes with a gel pack, and hope for the best.
Source: Air Cargo World, http://aircargoworld.com

You're Usually to Blame For Corporate Data Breaches
"If you don't need it, don't store it." That's rule no. 1 when it comes to corporate data security. Rule no. 2? Most victims have two things in common: The company was storing data it should not have been storing in the first place; and the data that fell into the wrong hands was data it didn't know it had. And if there had to be a Rule no. 3, it would be this: Most victims of a data breach are unwitting enablers of that crime. Don't think that could possibly be your company, or your IT department? Think again.
Source: Optimize, http://optimizemag.com

Say, Let Me Tell You Why BI Tools Are Such a Good Thing
Business intelligence tools can bring a host of advantages to companies, but IT shops must first ensure that the technology is accepted by business users, said a panel of IT executives at the Microsoft Business Intelligence Conference.
Panelists noted that IT managers continue to face several obstacles in efforts to convince users of the merits of BI, including difficulties showing a return on investment.
Despite such challenges, Randy Benz, CIO at Energizer Holdings Inc., says the St. Louis-based battery maker turned to Microsoft BI tools several years ago when its stock price stumbled. The tools helped the company make better decisions, which in turn helped boost its stock price to the $100-per-share level today, he said.
"My passion for this process grew from that," Benz says. "We in IT have a very important role in terms of getting information in front of [users] so they can make better decisions."
But Benz also acknowledges that IT employees must work hard even today to convince users of BI's benefits. Some users still "don't realize the power" of BI technology, he says.
Source: BPM Today, http://www.bpm-today.com

U.S. Spotlights Bribery of Foreign Firms as Well as Domestic
When news broke this spring that the Securities and Exchange Commission had launched an informal investigation into the bribery scandals plaguing Siemens, CFOs in Europe gave a collective shudder. Combined with the announcement that the U.S. Department of Justice also had the German electronics and engineering company in its sights, the SEC news confirmed what many CFOs suspected: that America's crackdown on overseas bribery is targeting both U.S. and foreign companies.
And as the long arm of U.S. justice stretches across the Atlantic, CFOs in Europe aren't just worried about fines and reputational damage; concerns are also growing that their own countries' regulators will take their cue from the United States and raise the heat.
That would be a radical change.
Source: CFO, http://www.cfo.com

We're Really Behind JIT Processes ... Unless Maybe We Aren't
Natural disasters and other supply chain disruptions can play havoc with just-in-time (JIT) processes. Nevertheless, for the most part, analysts and manufacturers contend the benefits of JIT outweigh the risks.
"The risk is so small when you consider the gains and what it does for you as far as the bottom line," says Paul Adelberg, vice president of lean technology for swimming pool components manufacturer Hayward Industries Inc. Certain research supports Adelberg's contention, other studies suggest manufacturer confidence in JIT could be waning.
The latter could be because manufacturers jump ship too quickly when problems arise with JIT. "It seems very common that people get on the bandwagon of some of these philosophies like JIT, and they give up as opposed to understanding that it's not something trendy to do," says Lisa Anderson, president and founder of business processes advisory firm LMA Consulting Group Inc.
Anderson and other industry experts say manufacturers can lessen the risks associated with JIT and make it more effective by forming strong partnerships with their suppliers and establishing backup plans for unforeseen circumstances.
Source: Industry Week, http://industryweek.com

ERP Market Has Hardly Run Out of Gas
The Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) market has been viewed as mature for some time, but there is still plenty of room for innovation. Driving ERP market growth over the next 5 years will be acquisitions, emerging markets like China, penetration of new industries, increasing maintenance revenues, and exchange rate movements. The ERP market is currently worth $18bin, and is expected to grow at a compounded annual growth rate of 6.7 percent, to reach $25bn by 2011.
Source: ARC Advisory Group, http://arcweb.com

HP Taylors Its Negotiation Technique to Culture of Asia
When a company buys $40bn in materials and services from suppliers in one region of the world, it wants to make sure it gets the best possible value for its purchases.
That's why Hewlett-Packard, based in Palo Alto, Calif., conducted a study to determine which negotiation strategies and techniques are most effective when dealing with suppliers in China, Japan and South Korea.
The study concluded that the Mutual Gains Approach to negotiations, which stresses the idea of win-win for both parties, works well in Asia. It also found that knowing the background of the Asian negotiator and using a "middleman" to set the stage for negotiations are effective tools in cross-cultural negotiations.
"The use of middlemen, managing status of negotiators, understanding the underlying interests of the people involved in negotiations, looking for opportunities to avoid haggle and to build strategic partnerships work are viewed favorably in Asia," says Ben Webster, global negotiation program manager for HP.
Source: Purchasing, http://www.purchasing.com

PLM Market Has Considerable Momentum Behind It
The product lifecycle management (PLM) market is growing at a rapid rate compared to its enterprise application peers. Growth in software license revenue (excluding maintenance) is expected to grow from $1.9bn worldwide in 2006 to $4.1bn in 2012, at a compound annual growth rate of just over 13 percent. Leading this charge will be the discrete manufacturing industry, which looks set to make significantly more of an investment in PLM than the batch and process industries.
Source: CBROnline, http://cbronline.com

Is Packaged Planning, Scheduling Software Best? You Bet.
When it comes to planning and scheduling software, packaged applications are usually--but not always--your company's best option. That's according to Simon Bragg, a software analyst at ARC Advisory Group.
"There are many packaged applications available today for optimal planning and scheduling for supply chain, manufacturing and transportation," Bragg writes in a recent report. In most cases, he says, these applications provide adequate plans at the least cost. But in some cases, more expensive customized software is actually a better choice.
What are these special cases?
When multiple packaged applications (or multiple modules of the same application) would be necessary;
when you need considerable flexibility in evaluating alternative plans; when your company is part of a small industry; and when your goal is something other than maximizing profit/minimizing cost.
Source: Modern Materials Handling, http://www.mmh.com

SOA Projects Can Fail For Any Number of Reasons
The adoption of service-oriented architecture (SOA), a computing architecture that allows an enterprise to make its applications and computing resources, such as databases, available as "services" that can be called upon when necessary, is growing. Gartner, in a new report issued last month titled Applied SOA: Transforming Fundamental Principles Into Best Practices, said that SOA will be used in more than half the mission-critical applications and business processes created this year, and in more than 80 percent come 2010.
No surprise, given SOA's promise: flexible applications, which can be developed quickly, that cut corporate software development costs.
However, as Gartner and others note, SOA projects can fail. There are any number of reasons these efforts don't succeed. The requirements might not be properly defined, the budget might not be adequate, business processes might be misaligned, or there might be problems with underlying data. It could even be that the information-technology department is developing services the business doesn't really need. Or that good SOA baselines aren't formulated and, therefore, there's little chance to show real ROI.
Source: Baseline, http://www.baselinemag.com

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100 Great Supply Chain Partners: It's All About Teamwork
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In the July issue of Global Logistics & Supply Chain Strategies magazine.