Without question, today's supply chain applications can provide unmatched visibility into a company's supplier base, help spot inefficiencies and allow for better, smarter decision-making on logistics and inventory.
We've all had these types of situations happen, right? When we've either done something really, really stupid and realized we had to fix it pronto or there would eventually be hell to pay. Or we've ignored a small-ish problem and it's now on the verge of blowing up into something much, much worse.
AMR Research released its annual "Supply Chain Top 25" list, and the top dog leading the supply chain pack this year -as it did last year - is Apple.
The "Redmond Kid" has come out fighting this week! Microsoft announced, with great marketplace buzz, that two new versions of its products are on the way.
It's not shocking that many companies are scaling back, delaying or canceling IT projects. Recent Gartner survey data of 475 IT decision makers in global enterprises with 1,000 or more employees found that more companies are actually <a href="http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=978512">postponing or scaling back computing projects rather than canceling them outright</a>.
After nearly a week of all-things-SAP at the ERP giant's annual Sapphire Show, customers, bloggers and curious enterprise-software watchers have all done their best to sort through the major issues raised during the Orlando get-together. Analysis has not been in short supply.
Carmine Gallo, presentation coach and author of the upcoming book <em>The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs</em> (McGraw-Hill, October 2009), has counseled many executives on how to give a great presentation. He's also witnessed many common-yet avoidable-presentation errors that people always seem to commit.
SAP's 2009 Sapphire show in Orlando has officially kicked off. Typically, this multiday schmoozefest lets SAP trot out its executives to meet with customers, partners and tech journalists and talk up its line of ERP, CRM, BI and supply chain products.
Sometimes, one year can make all the difference for corporate IT departments.
At a time when most enterprise software vendors are boldly clinging to their sacred cash cows, bowing to the all-mighty shareholder and ignoring some basic customer needs, SAP has recently displayed a refreshing blend of common sense, customer service and business smarts.
Sometimes I forget that selecting, implementing and paying for core enterprise applications are just the first steps in the long and arduous journey of managing the lifecycle of enterprise applications.
Boy, did I pick an interesting week in which to join Twitter: First I join up (@twailgum) last Thursday. The very next day someone named Oprah Winfrey goes out there and steals all my thunder.
Conventional wisdom and decades' worth of IT project failures and less-than-desirable outcomes tell us that every tech-related investment-from a massive SAP ERP rollout to a small Salesforce.com SaaS CRM deployment-comes with some amount of risk.
Oracle's announcement of its <a href="http://www.cio.com/article/490038">intended US$7.4 billion acquisition of Sun</a> has certainly shaken up the hardware and server operating system (OS) business markets.
We're always trying to figure out why IT is vilified and demeaned by the "cost center" label uttered by CEOs, CFOs and other senior leaders. ("But, but...we're not really true business partners?!")