IDC Manufacturing Insights

IDC’s analysis of the need for improved forecasting pulls no punches, in explaining that manufacturers have been running supply chains for centuries, and, for nearly that entire period, it is something that they have agonized over, with this zinger to complete the working thesis: “The only thing that has been universally true about any forecast is that it will be wrong.”

Our latest Virtual Summit tackles the most serious transportation issues facing shippers and explains what companies can do to operate smarter and more efficiently in the tightest freight environment in more than a generation.

As we do every December, we avoid “year in review” content and instead aim to help readers prepare for the year ahead through our annual virtual summit—an online educational event that puts the current market realities into context and offers logistics professionals practical advice to help streamline operations.

In this excerpt from their complete 2016 Vendor Assessment, Simon Ellis, Program Vice President for IDC Manufacturing Insights’ Global Digital Supply Chain Networks and Planning Strategies shares why Quintiq has the expertise and technologies to deliver higher optimality in any planning scenario.

Mobile technologies are certainly changing how we track freight outside of the four walls, putting “real-time” logistics management within the grasp of many savvy shippers. However, our analysts content that we have more work to do in the areas of investment and integration into existing operations.

Utilizing an Enterprise Resource Planning solution built natively on the Salesforce platform, Kenandy Inc has redefined enterprise resource planning by allowing customers to map their ERP to their existing business processes.

This White Paper forecasts the economic contribution of Salesforce and its ecosystem of partners and customers to local economies in terms of jobs and gross domestic product (GDP) impact, the study relies on IDC's forecasts of job creation from organizational use of cloud computing, IDC's understanding of Salesforce's market share.

The amount of data, increasingly real time and near real time, that is bombarding businesses in this industry requires faster and more comprehensive data collection and analytics capabilities to support both current ways of doing business and future innovation.

With the abundance of cloud, big data and analytics, social business, and mobile resources - often called the 3rd Platform - there is a surge to bridge digital technologies with operational, organizational, and business models.

Organizations worldwide are facing unique changes and are subject to unprecedented challenges in their marketplace.

IDC Manufacturing Insights recently conducted a worldwide study on behalf of OpenText; the objective, understand the role B2B technologies can play in today's manufacturing organizations and to evaluate the impact on their supply chain processes.

The next four years are likely to see a re-imagining of the manufacturing supply chain amid changing customer demands and technological innovation.

With adoption levels still low, three top industry analysts outline their reasons why every shipper should be integrating a tms, transportation management system, into their overall supply chain management efforts.

Implement a dynamic business-to-business infrastructure that seamlessly integrates Con-way with its customer and partner community, and creates automated transaction intelligence for both application integration and business-to-business flows.

With fewer people to provide analytical support, yet exponentially more data to interpret, supply chain organizations are being asked to provide superior cost and service performance.