WHAT RESPONDENTS ARE SAYING ...

• "Business still holding its own. Some growth in margin now that some of the raw materials prices have abated. Oil is pushing $100 so that has not been favorable." (Chemical Products)
• "Order management for the remaining two months have increased after an extended 'summer dip' in sales overall. We expect to finish the year approximately 10 percent above 2010. Our company uses capex software to help plan budgets and track spending." (Electrical Equipment, Appliances & Components)
• "Seeing a slight slowdown in orders; could be related to the holidays. We provide tracking document services to help clients monitor important documentation." (Primary Metals)
• ...

Inventory Sentiment

The ISM Non-Manufacturing Inventory Sentiment Index in November registered 63 percent, which is 5.5 percentage points higher than the 57.5 percent reported in October. This indicates that respondents believe their inventories are still too high at this time. In November, 31 percent of respondents said their inventories were too high, 5 percent said their inventories were too low, and 64 percent said their inventories were about right.

The nine industries reporting a feeling that their inventories are too high in November — listed in ...

WHAT RESPONDENTS ARE SAYING...

• "Business activity continues to swing back and forth. Customer traffic remains lower than expected, but discretionary spending is fluctuating, making it difficult to find the pulse of the consumer." (Arts, Entertainment & Recreation)
• "Lending is getting a little better. Competition for good deals is fierce because there remains a very limited number of high-quality borrowers." (Finance & Insurance)
• "Raw materials prices appear to be stabilizing, and in some cases are dropping. Diesel fuels remain elevated and have not dropped." ...

Richard Howells, SAP

Gartner likes to publish the Top 25 Supply Chains every year. Unfortunately, there’s one supply chain the esteemed analyst firm continues to overlook. And it just so happens to be the greatest supply chain ...

About five years ago, Apple design guru Jony Ive decided he wanted a new feature for the next MacBook: a small dot of green light above the screen, shining through the computer’s aluminum casing to indicate when its camera was on. The problem? It’s physically impossible to shine light through metal.

Ive called in a team of manufacturing and materials experts to figure out how to make the impossible possible, according to a ...

by Claudia Bruemmer

Business in the wholesale industry can be very competitive. That’s why wholesalers need to make it easy for their customers to find them in the right vertical search directories, and then make it easy to conduct business. Some important variables include order response speed and customer service requests, the time to market with new products, your delivery speed and the overall customer experience on your site. Retaining customers and growing revenue from existing customers is vital to a wholesale company’s success.

Background and Motivation for the Research

When I am often told about the reasons for decisions to go with software that I am familiar with, the logic often does not seem to make sense. In fact the entire process for repeatedly selecting expensive and lower functionality software from the major monopoly vendors turns out not to be based on the main comparison points of software. The main comparison points of enterprise software are the TCO and the application’s functionality. However, companies primarily look for solutions from vendors that ...