Thursday, April 8, 2010

Is Supply Chain Mangement Emerging from the Clouds?

By 2012, research firm IDC estimates that $7.7 billion will be spent worldwide on cloud services, but the lion’s share of it will go to ERP (enterprise resource planning) and CRM (customer relationship management) cloud services providers, not to supply chain management. Supply chain cloud solutions lag the marketplace, but there are signs now that initial enterprise trepidation about outsourcing supply chains is starting to fade.
Read the rest of Mary Shacklett's article on WorldTrade.

Thursday, April 1, 2010

Economic Recovery Tops Supply Chain Agenda

Economic recovery has surpassed economic downturn in the list of business drivers for 2010, according to results of Capgemini Consulting’s new study of 300 leading companies across Europe, US, Asia-pacific and Latin America.

Specifically, the study found that:

  • Over 58 percent of the supply chain managers say their main business driver for 2010 is “Meeting (changing) customer requirements”.
  • More than 50 percent of the participating companies indicate they will start up or continue with operational excellence / LEAN.
  • 37 percent of the participating companies plan to centralize supply chain organizational functions.
  • On average, supply chain IT projects (e.g. TMS and WMS implementations) increased by 3 to 12 percent, compared with the results of Capgemini’s 2009 study.
  • Sustainability is the second most important business driver for 2010 — up 16 percent over last year. However, the survey results suggest that this has not yet directly translated into a significant increase in supply chain sustainability projects.
Read the rest of the article on @Risk.com