• The Grill: TASC CIO Barbie Bigelow

  By Robert L. Mitchell | 21 May, 2012 20:11

  After spinning off from Northrop Grumman in 2009, TASC had one year to establish itself as an independent company. That meant the 6,000-employee systems engineering operation needed to deploy a new IT infrastructure. In overseeing that effort, TASC CIO Barbie Bigelow built an IT organization and infrastructure from scratch. Her team spent about eight months working with 64 vendors and partners to design and build an operation that included a new ERP system, more than 4,000 computers, 800 mobile devices, 400 network devices and 134 data circuits across 60 facilities -- and they did it in six weeks. Here, Bigelow discusses the failures and successes that the team experienced as they pursued the aggressive schedule, and she reflects on how TASC's IT unit has evolved.

• SAP co-CEO Bill McDermott explains its five-market focus

  By John Gallant and Patrick Thibodeau | 19 April, 2012 05:31

  If you think SAP equals ERP, Bill McDermott would like a few minutes to set you straight about the 2012 version of the software giant, which he claims is in the midst of "an intellectual renewal." McDermott has been co-CEO -- along with Jim Hagemann Snabe -- of SAP since 2010 and has helped broaden the company's strategy beyond traditional applications and analytics to the cloud, mobile, Big Data and a bet-the-business focus on real-time computing with the HANA in-memory database at the forefront.

• Judge dismisses one Marin County suit versus Deloitte

  By Jaikumar Vijayan | 13 April, 2012 06:07

  A former judge hired to settle a protracted legal dispute between Marin County, Calif., and Deloitte Consulting over a botched SAP project last week dismissed all charges made by by the county in one of two lawsuits.

• How CIOs can help facilitate systems of engagement

  By Michael Friedenberg | 29 March, 2012 02:28

  As the U.S. economy begins to brighten, it's reassuring to see spending in the manufacturing, retail, financial and healthcare sectors starting to respond. Conversations within the IT leadership community also seem to be lightening up, as IT priorities are rebalanced to include strategies for revenue growth and customer engagement.

• 13 common ERP mistakes and how to avoid making them

  By Jennifer Lonoff Schiff | 28 March, 2012 07:47

  Costing anywhere from hundreds of thousands of dollars to millions of dollars, and requiring hundreds of man hours to implement, enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems are huge investments of money, resources and time. And while a successful ERP implementation can help your organization streamline workflow and cut costs, a poorly planned and implemented ERP rollout can severely cost organizations, in terms of lost productivity and delays.

• Supply chain management in Australia - Part 3

  By David Braue | 21 September, 2011 07:00

  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.

• Supply chain management in Australia - Part 2

  By David Braue | 20 September, 2011 06:00

  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.

• 5 open source ERP projects to watch

  By Rodney Gedda | 06 December, 2010 12:27

  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.

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

  By Thomas Wailgum | 24 July, 2010 09:00

  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.

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

  By Kim S. Nash | 22 July, 2010 07:01

  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.

Whitepapers about ERP

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  The 8 Ways Outdated ERP Damages your Business - How Cloud ERP Creates Competitive Advantage

  Technology has transformed the broader world of business software and consumer applications. Workers now interact through mobile devices and social media, and applications are increasingly connected together over the web. But many ERP deployments have remained oblivious to these tectonic changes—it’s as if the iPhone was never invented, social media was a futuristic concept and connecting ERP to web channels was a kooky concept for the dabbling few.

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  Running a Business in the Cloud: A CFO’s/CIO’s Journey

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  The Rise of Two-Tier ERP

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  Why Cloud Computing Matters to Finance