As we move into the heart of the holiday shopping season, consumer packaged goods (CPG) providers are once again faced with the challenge of matching supply with uncertain demand. How can they avoid the twin threats of stockouts and excess inventory at this crucial time of the retailing year? It's a delicate balance indeed.

As smartphones embrace always-on, ubiquitous location, location-based sensor fusion will become a standard feature.

When a musical instrument is sold, both the buyer and the seller face unknowns. The buyer must trust that the instrument is authentic, but the seller may also have to rely on faith that when a malfunctioning instrument is returned to the store, it has been properly serviced up to that point, and thus meets the requirements of any warranty. RFID is playing an important role in that.

Over the last year, we've posted a number of blogs and published some articles on the benefits of outsourcing. We've discussed the reasons why companies choose to outsource specific functions and shown how business process outsourcing (BPO) providers can actually improve operations and save money. What we glossed over was the necessary relationship that has to exist between the company that's outsourcing and its provider. Making a success out of this relationship is a shared responsibility, one that cannot be overstated.

The market for cloud-based enterprise resource planning systems, which eliminate on-premise implementation with its upfront capital expenditures for hardware and software, is ripe for growth in India, according to research from ARC Advisory Group.