Many manufacturing and distribution companies are wrestling with the enormous challenge of Big Data, trying to turn mountains of data into actionable information. And while some companies curse the landslide of data overwhelming their organizations, others look to capitalize on what they realize is an opportunity to better understand their customers, suppliers and costs. But the challenge is more nuanced than sculpting a huge collection of unwieldy data.
Analyst Insight: Driving richer connectivity and communications as well as human dialogue amongst partners or team members is changing the face of business and society. We are moving from siloed enterprises to federations of partnerships and communities of ideas that think and execute in streams - not rigid processes. This is changing not only how we work, but the technologies that support us. - Sree Hameed, Vice President, ChainLink Research
Analyst Insight: Simply stated, the marketing mission of any business is to profitably create "something" that a customer will buy. The operational objective of the business is to deliver the "something" to the satisfaction of the customer. The financial objective is to charge a fee equivalent to the customer's perceived value while generating a return on the capital investment the business made to create "something."
- Rich Sherman, Supply Chain Discipline Expert at Trissential
Analyst Insight: Today's businesses are witnessing the evolution of business process management (BPM) applications to meet new paradigms shaped by user experience and comply with the increased number and complexity of corporate demands. The next generation of BPM applications looks to increase efficiency in all stages of process design and implementation, virtualize the work environment of its users, and enrich the user experience - thereby ameliorating their usage, deployment and development. - Jorge Garcia, TEC Senior BI and Data Management Analyst, Technology Evaluation Centers
New York-based BizSlate is launching its cloud-based resource planning tool to give small business a hand with their supply chain challenges. Unlike legacy vendors in that sector, including SAP and Netsuite, the technology is specifically designed for department stores, retail chains, small boutiques and the like. Chief executive Marc Kalman says BizSlate is ideal for companies that have "outgrown QuickBooks" but don't have ample resources at their disposal for IT.
The Supply Chain Resource Cooperative (SCRC) in North Carolina State University's Poole College of Management is one of several partners in a five- year, $3.9m grant-funded project to build and evaluate supply chains for local farmers and fishers to supply large-scale markets in North Carolina. The project is led by the Center for Environmental Farming Systems (CEFS) in NC State's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS), which has been awarded the first year's funding of the grant by the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI), part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Institute of Food and Agriculture.
This is why they call Big Data big: IDC, a research firm, predicts that the Big Data market "” including technology and services "” will grow at a 31.7% compound annual rate through 2016, becoming a $23.7bn market by 2016.
In the last couple of years, the popularity of predictive analytics offerings has increased significantly, as many companies looking to improve their existing business intelligence and analytics faculties are looking to the field of predictive analysis to enhance these capabilities, and in some cases even replace them. But, is predictive analysis really the new BI? Is it a replacement for the good old business intelligence offerings? Or is it really just the evolution of BI?
Global executives are increasingly concerned about the growing risks to their supply chains and costly negative impacts such as margin erosion and inability to keep up with demand, according to a report from Deloitte. Yet as they operate in this environment of escalating risk, an alarming 45 percent of surveyed executives say their supply chain risk management programs are only somewhat effective or not effective at all.
