Demand sensing and planning applications, currently representing 8.5 percent of overall supply chain management spending, and are expected to climb to 8.7 percent by 2015 largely due to demand volatility.
While today's workers are increasingly relying on the use of mobile devices to do their work, mobile technologies are being used not only for ensuring effective communication, but also for tasks that were previously performed at the desk during business hours.
Pinterest boards, QR code walls, showrooming, mobile couponing, pop-up shops, mobile apps, Tweet Mirror, Facebook walls, digital circulars, augmented reality, flash sales"”it's a digital jungle out there for retailers today. As consumers embrace new technologies and services, companies find it difficult to stay current"”and harder still to determine where and how to invest their budgets. It's all too tempting simply to jump on the next new thing (and the next and the next), just in hopes of keeping pace.
Using an RFID-enabled inventory- and retail-management system provided by Nedap Retail, Dutch shoe retailer De Wolky Shop has significantly reduced its incidence of inventory errors. During the first two weeks of using the system, the company says that its stock accuracy jumped from 84 percent to 98 percent. Those accuracy gains, the company reports, led to fewer stock-outs and an increase in sales.
Descartes Systems Group has acquired KSD Software Norway AS, a Scandinavia-based provider of electronic customs-filing applications for the European Union.
