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Quality & Metrics: Page 252

Report Focuses on Food Safety, Traceability and Government Legislation

Although the Food Safety and Modernization Act of 2010 was passed nearly a year ago, and food and beverage companies have had a significant period of time to calculate and understand its impact, and implement traceability solutions, there are still many issues and processes to be resolved or implemented before food and beverage enterprises can be considered 100-percent compliant.

A New Generation of Measurements in Ocean Transportation

Analyst Insight: While on one hand the container shipping industry has become ever more commoditized, a new range of service measurements could increase the potential for market differentiation. The key to any differentiation is the ability to make it clear to the customer what the difference is. Such transparency would certainly be a novelty in the industry. - Lars Jensen, CEO, SeaIntel Maritime Analysis

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Next-Generation Rail Fleet Management

Analyst Insight: As the global economy slowly begins to improve, large-scale manufacturers who ship bulk product by rail are again experiencing the issues of service reliability, asset turnover, capacity constraints, working capital optimization and risk. With that said, after the dismal 2008-2009 economy, we're right back into the bane of a one-hundred-year rail dilemma: enhancing service reliability while improving fleet utilization to sustain a lean rail fleet. Current rail management tools are effective at tracking historical transit times and identifying the position of each car at a certain point in time. However, an important disconnect exists between seeing the future demand for rail shipments and predicting the usage and location of the cars over the entire enterprise planning horizon. - Alfred Sherk, CEO, SherTrack LLC

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Oracle Debuts JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Mobile Expense Management

Oracle Corp. has developed a mobile expense-management software application, under the JD Edwards EnterpriseOne brand.

The Open Group Previews First Standard for Supply-Chain Security

The Open Group has issued a "preview" of its new standard for promoting best practices in the area of supply-chain security. The Open Trusted Technology Provider Standard (O-TTPS) Snapshot, developed by The Open Group Trusted Technology Forum (OTTF), was designed for use by global providers and users of commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) products for information and communication technology (ICT).

Spend Analysis Has Improved Greatly, But We Still Need Better, More Complete Data

Modern spend analysis systems are capable of incorporating a huge variety of types and sources of data - everything from supplier data to contracts, purchasing transactional data, financial data, risk data, and much more. However, the power of these systems is often limited by the availability, completeness, and quality of spend-related data from source systems.

Food & Beverage Technology: It's Cold, It's Safe - and It's Got ROI

Analyst Insight: The generally low-margin and high-waste food & beverage sectors will continue to increase their technology investments in 2012. Traceability, quality and fulfillment technologies are emerging with strong ROI, though compliance and traceability get much of the attention. No doubt global regulations on food safety may be somewhat of a catalyst, but companies say that the benefits are what really drive their investments. - Ann Grackin, CEO, ChainLink Research

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Food & Beverage Traceability Impacts Brand, Consumer Safety

Analyst Insight: Food and beverage manufacturers have the distinct advantage (or detriment, depending on how you view it) of often having direct access to the customer. In today's more open, collaborative, social world this can reap major benefits of understanding one's customer base and responding to its needs. On the flip side, food and beverage manufacturers are susceptible to a major downfall simply from minor issues across its supply chain. Open or not, it's the new reality. - Simon Ellis, practice director, Supply Chain Strategies, IDC Manufacturing Insights

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IMO Adopts Guidelines for Mandatory Energy Efficiency Measures in International Shipping

An important series of guidelines to support the uniform implementation of mandatory measures to increase energy efficiency and reduce emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) from international shipping was adopted by the Marine Environment Protection Committee (MEPC) of the International Maritime Organization (IMO), when it met for its 63rd session from Feb. 27 to March 2, 2012, at IMO Headquarters in London, paving the way for the regulations to be smoothly and uniformly implemented by Administrations and industry.

Defining Consumer-Driven Processes in CPG Industry

Analyst Insight: While 95 percent of consumer products companies talk about building the end-to-end supply chain extending from the customer's customer to the supplier's supplier, most of it today is only lip service. Why? The processes that made the CP company strong are the very same processes that need to change to drive growth, improve supply chain resiliency and power market share. - Lora Cecere, partner, Altimeter Group

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ERP, Enterprise Systems Software Evaluation Is So Much More Complex

Analyst Insight: The rapidly changing business environment has caused software evaluation to evolve, and organizations that do not realize those shifts will be left with inadequate solutions and an increased chance of IT failure. These new trends have complicated an already difficult software evaluation process due to cloud, SaaS, IaaS, PaaS, SOA and Web 2.0 technologies. - Keean Persaud, managing director, Eval-Source

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A Data-driven, Widely Supported, and Collaborative Approach to Successful Business Process Management

Analyst Insight: Though there is no question that modern business process management (BPM) applications have the potential to solve many technical aspects of business processes challenges, the productive consolidation and integration of this evolution into the corporate culture requires that the management of business processes shift toward an approach that is data-driven, widely supported, and better communicated at the organizational level. - Jorge GarcÃƒÂa, research analyst, Technology Evaluation Centers

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