Ian Darley, an inventory specialist in the mining industry, tells how he helped to pioneer a new method for storing materials on site - and eliminating a substantial amount of unnecessary packaging.
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.
Infor, a vendor of multiple business applications, has formed a strategic partnership with Business + Decision, an international consulting and systems-integration firm.
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.
HighJump Software has created a hosted version of its electronic data interchange (EDI) tool for users of the Sage 100 enterprise resource planning (ERP) system.
Few phrases are generating more buzz in the business world today than cloud computing. This concept has been rapidly embraced by companies in every industry because of the obvious opportunities to save money and other valuable resources. In fact, Forrester Research projects that the global cloud computing industry will grow from $40.7bn in 2010 to more than $241bn by 2020.