Robert Celeste, director of healthcare with GS1US, relates the group's efforts in establishing industry-wide standards for the life sciences sector.

Hallmark Cards Inc. selected Fujitsu to provide a cloud-based, retail-as-a-service (RaaS) solution for its more than 2,500 independent retailers and corporate stores in the U.S. Hallmark and its independent retailers will use a monthly subscription model to cover a combination of Fujitsu TeamPoS and third-party hardware, software, support, maintenance and data center hosting services. The contract calls for the solution to be deployed over the next three years.

Wayne McDonnell, director of pharma and life sciences advisory with PricewaterhouseCoopers, talks about the core fundamentals of supply-chain capabilities today, as well as PwC's latest "Pharma 2020" report.

As we all know, many unique and time-sensitive activities occur in all areas of business, government, or even research. Those activities, regardless of their specific nature, can be managed using the project management approach with its associated tools and techniques. This approach is generally intended for assessing the progress of projects and using the necessary and relevant resources of an organization to ensure project effectiveness and completion within planned time-frame and assigned budget.

JCPenney CEO Ron Johnson is going all in with his bid to remake the customer experience at the century-old department store retailer. A mobile POS deployment beginning this fall is just the first step in an ambitious plan involving storewide use of RFID to eliminate traditional cash wrap stations, allowing anywhere, anytime checkout, including self-checkout, by 2014.

In a move to bring white-glove asset tracking in house, Southwest Airlines has unveiled Cargo Companion, a cellular-based device that can track shipments as well as monitor temperature, humidity and other useful information. It is being targeted at shippers of high-value perishables, time-critical parts and irreplaceable items.

The newest versions of Epicor Software Corp.'s enterprise resource planning (ERP) application and business software sold under the Epicor iScala brand will both support Microsoft Corp.'s SQL Server 2012.

In 2011, the business analytics market extended its post-2009 recovery with another stellar performance by growing worldwide revenues 14.1 percent year over year. International Data Corporation forecasts that it will continue to grow at a 9.8 percent compound annual growth rate through 2016 to reach $50.7bn. Helping to drive this growth is media attention focused on Big Data, putting broader business analytics on the agenda of more senior executives.