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  • Supply chain management in Australia - Part 3

    As if data quality and stockouts weren’t enough of a day-today worry for CIOs, added pressure to serve demanding online customers and keep up with changing legislation are creating new challenges. With several retail giants lumbering online and the looming introduction of the government’s new carbon tax, CIOs need to be working with procurement, financial and other business leaders to ensure supply-chain systems are up to today’s new challenges.

    Written by David Braue • 21 Sept. 11 07:00

  • Big data - Part 2

    A second technology making a significant impact on solving Big Data problems is in-memory computing, which takes workloads that were traditionally resident on disk-based storage and moves them into main memory. This delivers a performance improvement many times above that which has been possible previously.

    Written by Brad Howarth • 20 Sept. 11 10:12

  • Supply chain management in Australia - Part 2

    If supply chain experts can spend so much time and effort improving efficiency and still have more work to do, how are smaller companies meant to get their supply chains right? It’s not as if they have been standing still: CIOs at FMCG organisations and other companies of all sizes have long focused on using high-end supply chain management solutions to trim fat from their company supply chains. Many embarked upon massive enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementations a decade ago as they stared down the end-of-life of existing systems and the spectre of the Y2K bug. Yet while their intentions were good, the same can’t be said for the methods of resolution.

    Written by David Braue • 20 Sept. 11 06:00
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    Supply chain management in Australia - Part 1

    It all started, as these things sometimes do, with a chicken.

    Written by David Braue • 19 Sept. 11 10:59

  • Enterprise collaboration: 4 ways to achieve more

    A new report from Forrester Research finds that while businesses continue to adopt enterprise collaboration tools in 2011, they're not seeing a wide range of benefits from them.

    Written by Kristin Burnham • 24 March 11 06:28
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    In-memory computing

    The massive explosion in data volumes collected by many organisations has brought with it an accompanying headache in terms of putting it to gainful use. Businesses increasingly need to make quick decisions, and pressure is mounting on IT departments to provide solutions that deliver quality data much faster than has been possible before. The days of trapping information in a data warehouse for retrospective analysis are fading in favour of event-driven systems that can provide data and enable decisions in real time.

    Written by Brad Howarth • 20 Jan. 11 09:33
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    5 open source ERP projects to watch

    Whatever the incarnation, Enterprise Resource Planning is at the heart of every business with the world’s largest software companies are all clamouring for a piece of the action. The big vendors may scoff at the idea of an open source ERP suite, but given the success rate of traditional ERP projects, CIOs could do worse than take a look at free options. In this edition of 5 open source things to watch, we take a look at ERP suites where the barrier to entry – for testing, at least – is on the small side.

    Written by Rodney Gedda • 06 Dec. 10 12:27

  • Your workplace in 2020: Gartner's predictions

    How will people work 10 years from now? Gartner thinks it has a pretty good idea, predicting 10 major changes that will occur during the next 10 years.

    Written by Thomas Wailgum • 05 Aug. 10 02:23

  • Apocalypse: 52 percent of CIOs plan to blow up IT groups

    The saying goes something like this: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." The statement is, of course, embraced as dogma by those fearful of change and by automobile owners praying for a reasonable bill of charge while waiting at the mechanic's garage.

    Written by Thomas Wailgum • 24 July 10 09:00

  • An IT department's crucial role in a new product launch

    In late 2008, Monsanto licensed a seed coating that helps corn, soybean and other seeds fight insects and disease during the tricky germination stage. By early 2009, company scientists had finished work on that cocktail of fungicides and insecticides, dubbed Acceleron, and the company wanted to get the coating to market in time for the 2010 planting season. "We were going after that opportunity very aggressively. If we don't hit season, that opportunity is another 12 months away," says CIO Shirley Cunningham.

    Written by Kim S. Nash • 22 July 10 07:01

  • SAP-Sybase: What to expect in the first 90 days

    Now that SAP's roughly $US6 billion acquisition of Sybase has gained clearance from European regulators, it may not be long before the deal is finalised. With that in mind, users and partners of the companies have much to consider during the next few months, analysts say.

    Written by Chris Kanaracus • 23 July 10 05:51

  • ERP Application Consolidation: When It's Time to Cut

    Remember Aron Ralston? He was the mountain climber who, back in 2003, was forced to cut off his own arm, which was trapped under a boulder, to save his life. Ralston had recklessly hiked alone and neglected to tell anyone where he was headed. His grave six-day ordeal was extraordinary and captivating.

    Written by Thomas Wailgum • 23 March 10 07:45

  • Why Watching 'Lost' Is Like Managing ERP

    Since the fall of 2004, I've invested a lot of time, given way too much thought to, and probably annoyed plenty of people over all things Lost. Like a crazy, unpredictable friend in your life, the show has consumed me, frustrated me, surprised me, exasperated me and kept me on my toes.

    Written by Thomas Wailgum • 09 Feb. 10 06:09

  • ERP Costs: 3 Signs Companies Are Wasting Less Money

    ERP investments have long held a stranglehold on corporate IT investments. The Great Recession, however, has pushed boards and budgeting committees to examine IT spending like never before. Not surprisingly, ERP's juicy slice of the corporate spending pie has come under closer scrutiny.

    Written by Thomas Wailgum • 08 Feb. 10 05:37

  • ERP: How and Why You Need to Manage It Differently

    Kennametal, a $2 billion maker of construction tools, has spent $10 million on ERP maintenance contracts during the past 13 years and not once could the company take advantage of upgrades, says CIO Steve Hanna. The company's implementation was too customized: The time and effort needed to tweak and test the upgrade outweighed any benefits, he says. But Hanna kept trying. Late last year, he priced the cost of consultants to help with an ERP re-implementation and was shocked by estimates ranging from $15 million up to $54 million.

    Written by Kim S. Nash • 02 Feb. 10 06:00

  • Oracle and SAP Are Big: Too Big for Their Own Good?

    The battle and competition in the enterprise software market between SAP and Oracle has fast become one of the hottest rivalries in high-tech. And while it might not have the pop-culture pizzazz of Red Sox-Yankees or Coke-Pepsi, the passion of the thousands of the combatants involved makes it no less fervent or important a battle.

    Written by Thomas Wailgum • 18 Jan. 10 07:00
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    ERP Investments Still Top the List for Corporate IT Spending

    Corporate IT budgets may have gotten slashed in 2009, but that apparently didn't stop companies from investing in their ERP software this year.

    Written by Thomas Wailgum • 16 Nov. 09 08:29

  • Inside ERP Budgets: Slicing, Dicing the Corporate Pie

    Lately, much of the furor encircling ERP costs has revolved around software maintenance and support fees. The global recession has forced customers of Big ERP vendors-SAP, Oracle, Lawson, Infor-to question the value they receive from the fees.

    Written by Thomas Wailgum • 10 Nov. 09 08:12

  • Rimini Street ups third-party maintenance ante

    Rimini Street fired the latest salvo in the ongoing war over software maintenance this week, announcing that it has expanded the number of SAP applications it supports.

    Written by Chris Kanaracus • 08 Oct. 09 06:28

  • Why ERP is still so hard

    Steve Berg knows what intense pain feels like: The man has been Tasered, in fact-not because he ran afoul of the law, but as VP of IT at Taser International he's partaken in a corporate rite of passage. "It's the worst five seconds of your life," he says. "You cannot move."

    Written by Thomas Wailgum • 10 Sept. 09 05:18
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