A number of macro-economic developments, such as the expansion of the Panama Canal, are driving changes in supply chain design, says John Trestrail, supply chain solutions manager at LLamasoft. "Supply chain managers are trying to understand the impact of the canal's expansion on cargo flows, especially from Asia to the East Coast," he says.

Proenza Schouler has chosen the product specification, material management and calendar management modules of the Centric 8 product lifecycle management system for apparel and luxury goods companies.

In the past, when employees at T-Mobile Austria's stores began each work day, one of the first tasks performed involved updating prices and other product details. Workers printed and cut out paper labels, both before store hours and again during lunch breaks. Thanks to the installation of RFID-based electronic shelf labels from ZBD Solutions, the staff has reduced that labor time by approximately 40 percent.

In the mid-2000s there was a beginning of public discussions and a surge in market awareness about support and maintenance (S&M) alternatives for users of enterprise applications. Companies in the market for enterprise software S&M services, like nearly every other market in the world, have responded to monopolistic-like pricing and profit margins by seeking choice. Enterprise software licensees now have a choice of annual support providers.

Making the business case for an accounting or HR system is clear-cut: Avoid unnecessary costs, manage cash better, reduce risk and you're done. If you were to invest twice as much in one of those systems, you might increase business payoff by 20 percent, so you can find the optimization point for ROI in a single spreadsheet. But what about the customer relationship management system?

Just as homeowners are more likely to renovate their current homes rather than purchase a new one when the economy is soft, so too are many manufacturers opting to maintain and repair their existing equipment rather than making substantial capital investments in new systems.

There is a huge consolidation going on in the ERP market today. The market seems healthy, and some of the participants are really quite active.

While many retailers are receiving merchandise with RFID tags attached by their suppliers, others are still daunted by the prospect of employing radio frequency identification for inventory-tracking purposes. Many RFID deployments include the installation of one or more fixed readers, as well as software and integration services.

The savings that can be retrieved by automating and rationalizing approval and purchasing processes in small and mid-sized companies are palpable. A 2009 Aberdeen Group study estimated that "improving the percentage of all non-payroll, tax, tariff and fee-related spend" - that is, indirect, nonstrategic expenses - brought under the management of a dedicated group can help enterprises "achieve a 5% to 20% cost savings for each dollar brought under spend management".

A few years ago, when Bill Weeks was CIO at a leasing company, a vendor pitched some software intended to manage leasing throughout Europe. Weeks was skeptical. "We noticed that half the stuff they were showing us was PowerPoint slides and not actual functionality. We decided it wasn't strong enough to run a business on." He and his team decided to pass.