The ARC Advisory Group has released a Global Service Provider guide to supplier selection.

ARC Advisory Group has released a new tool to help companies select and manage their suppliers.

The worldwide market for warehouse management systems grew by more than 10 percent in 2011. Growth was broad-based, occurring in both emerging markets and mature market segments. The high growth in the mature market segments implies that the post-recession market rebound is still active. "Going forward, we expect longer-term user adoption and technology trends to drive growth within the WMS market, as the effects from pent-up demand from the preceding global economic recession diminish. Emerging markets, add-on functionality, and numerous end-user industries are expected to lead the charge," says Clint Reiser, enterprise software analyst and the principal author of ARC's "Warehouse Management Systems Worldwide Outlook."

Today's manufacturers make increasing use of enterprise manufacturing intelligence (EMI) solutions, which offer the potential to improve processes and reduce costs, to help address their key challenges. The term enterprise manufacturing intelligence, also sometime referred to as "operational intelligence" or "manufacturing intelligence," applies to the technology and practices available to tap into the vast amount of plant data; contextualizing and exposing it as intelligent information with analytics, dashboards, and other visualization tools.

After being affected by the global economic downturn, the transportation management system (TMS) market, like many other enterprise software markets, has bounced back strongly, according to a new ARC Advisory Group study.

The worldwide supply chain planning (SCP) market is forecast to grow 44 percent over the next five years, representing a compound annual growth rate of 7.6 percent, according to a new ARC Advisory Group study. With the global economic downturn now predominantly in the past, capital spending on information technology has rebounded vigorously. The SCP market has participated in this rebound, as suppliers have reported recent revenue growth rates well above the long-term trend.