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| Bringing Clarity to your Supply Chain Decisions |
| Insight provides value by transforming data into useful information and presenting it in meaningful ways to the right person. It takes an objective-driven approach by providing profiles that allow a person to view only the information they need to achieve a specific objective.
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| Bringing Clarity to your Supply Chain Decisions - Part One |
| Software vendors often market their applications using a wide array of buzzwords and acronyms. Even in a relatively focused area such as Supply Chain Management (SCM), there are literally dozens of terms used to describe an application without really helping a potential customer understand what it does. Part One of this featured guest article from Randy Marble of Blue Sky Logistics
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| SAP merges North and South American sales |
| Business application vendor SAP AG is merging its North American and Latin American business operations into one organization in a move aimed at increasing sales and market share.
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| Microsoft Partner Rolls Out .Net SCM for SMBs |
| Microsoft partner ODS Software on Monday rolled out a .Net Framework-enabled supply chain application first created for Fortune 100 customer Weyerhaeuser Inc. as a commercial product for small and midsize businesses.
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| Vendors Unveil New Supply Chain Software |
| Oracle Corp., Lawson Software Inc. and i2 Technologies Inc. all have either shipped an updated supply chain management (SCM) system or plan to ship one over the next month.
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| RFID and Supply Chain Visibility |
| AutoID Labs, the successor to the Auto-ID Center, centered at MIT and other locations worldwide, works to create a global system for tracking goods using a single numbering system called the Electronic Product Code. The project is supported by many major cpg and retail companies, along with technology providers.
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| Starting a Trucking Company |
| One of the most popular types of logistics company to start is a trucking company.
The first decision is really about scale, do you want to be a single owner operator with your own rig? Or do you want to set up a larger operation where you organize a number of owner operators into a larger trucking firm?
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| Introduction to Logistics and Supply Chain Management |
| Logistics Gains Prominence
Logistics became a topic for discussion in the Business World in the 1960's and 1970's and rose to prominence in the 1980's. It was truly in the 1990' s; however, that Logistics began to garner the appreciation it deserved. In the twenty-first century and beyond, the creation of a sleek, flexible and effective supply and value chains will no less than define the success or failure of organizations and perhaps even entire business types
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| Compliance, SCM Driving Renewed Master Data Management Market, Says IDC |
| A renewed focus on information governance should push the market for master data management to $10.4 billion by 2009, according to IDC market research. Master data management software and services support business goals such as compliance and supply chain efficiency. It is a set of processes that create and maintain a single view of products, customers, accounts or locations across the enterprise -- or across enterprises -- through a physical or logical hub.
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| i2 Technologies Moves Into SCM |
| A company most recognized for its integration capabilities, i2 Technologies is moving into the SCM (supply-chain management) arena. The company announced Tuesday its namesake Supply Collaboration/Lean Replenishment module designed to help companies better manage supplier interactions
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| Edge Dynamics Targets Pharma Supply Chains |
| Edge Dynamics, an SCM (supply chain management) vendor specializing in the pharmaceutical space, on Monday launched CCM (Channel Commerce Management) 3.0, a new edition of its software for regulatory compliance and transaction management among manufacturers, distributors, retailers and other trading partners.
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| i2 Technologies Moves into Next Gen SCM |
| i2 Technologies is releasing another piece of its next generation supply chain management suite. The company announced Tuesday its namesake Supply Collaboration/Lean Replenishment module designed to help companies better manage supplier interactions.
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| You Only Have One Supply Chain? |
| Here, two supply chains were indeed better than one. The company needed one supply chain for its bulky, inexpensive traditional products, and a second, completely different one, for its small, valuable electronic components.
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| The Impact of Demand-Driven Technology in the SCM Market: IBS |
| The Sweden-based enterprise resource planning (ERP) and supply chain management (SCM) provider International Business Systems (IBS) (XSSE IBS B), while currently not a uniformly well-known mid-market global vendor, seems to be poised to change that situation. As the ERP and SCM markets suffered throughout the dismal last several years, IBS also felt a pinch of flat revenues at nearly $350 million (USD), but remained mostly profitable. This was a notable feat, especially with its ambitious product development effort is combined with the difficult competitive sales situation...
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| Truth and Trust: They Go Together |
| Q: We' ve lost trust. How do I regain the trust of my employees after six rounds of layoffs? How does my organization regain the trust of the community after we dumped toxic waste and covered it up? How does my management team regain trust of each other after a nasty political battle?
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| Supply Chain Innovation |
| What Is A Supply Chain?
The term supply chain represents the sequence of processes and activities involved in the complete manufacturing and distribution cycle - this could include everything from product design through materials and component ordering through manufacturing and assembly and onto warehousing and distribution until the finished product is in the possession of the final owner.
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| Achieving Supply Chain Productivity |
| What' s the biggest problem in supply chain management today?
It is that all too often, the mission of the supply chain organization is defined much too narrowly. In most companies, many of the most important elements of supply chain management actually lie outside the supply chain organization. They are managed by other departments or, more often, not managed at all
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| The Power of Effective Procurement and Strategic Suppliers |
| Senior financial officers are paying more attention to procurement costs—and with good reason. Because of challenging economic times, the intense focus on fiscal responsibility, and supplier contracts averaging $2 million and higher for a large portion of Fortune 500 companies, more and more companies are putting their procurement process under the microscope. While the purchasing function was once considered a back-office operation, it has steadily become as important as generating revenue.
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| Demand Chain Strategy - The Missing Link? |
| In recent years supply chain management has moved up the corporate agenda and is increasingly being cited as a reason for corporate success or failure. Poor on-shelf availability of products that consumers want, and excessive stocks of those they do not - have plagued high street names such as M&S, Mothercare, Boots The Chemists and, more recently, Sainsbury’s. As a result, supply chain management is now seen as a major competitive weapon. The complete alignment of sales and marketing, supply chain and process enablers is the key to success, argues Janet Godsell.
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| Route-to-Market Knowledge Builders |
| The past year might turn out to be a watershed one for supply chain analytics in the distribution market, certainly if RONA’s ambitious move is anything to go by. The hardware, home improvement and gardening distributor and retailer took its financials to a new level by introducing and integrating value chain analytics (VCA) software and activity-based management (ABM) software to create route-to-market cost modeling for its substantial supplier base. Such a system takes cost efficiencies to a new level, and it’s a model that will likely be adopted quickly by other companies that want to see their costs properly allocated and better accounted for.
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| Let CRM Drive Your Supply Chain |
| As Russ Hill, worldwide director of retail, consumer products, and distribution industry marketing at business intelligence provider Business Objects, says, "As retailers spend every day in 'survival mode,' the competition to gain insight that helps them understand who their customers are is increasingly intense.
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| Lucrative but "Risky" Aftermarket Business—Service and Replacement Parts SCM |
| Growing pressure to improve customer responsiveness and profits has lately changed the traditional role of service management for spare and replacement parts. As competitive pressures push more products to a commodity-like business model, many manufacturing companies are increasingly relying on customer service to retain or establish a competitive advantage. Many manufacturers and distributors are also beginning to recognize that there are significant revenue stream and ways to increase customer satisfaction in the aftermarket once their product has been sold...
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| SCM Blasts Off into Space |
| With a recent $3.8 million NASA award to MIT for research on "interplanetary supply chain architectures," SCM is soaring to new heights of visibility
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| The Tao of Supply Chains |
| The CIO of a national distributor says the lessons he gleaned from a 2,500-year-old Taoist philosopher helped him come up with a low-cost inventory system that worked.
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| Consignment Stock: An Innovative Approach to Inventory |
| The relationship between companies and their suppliers is more important than ever in today?s dynamic and selective marketplace. To create and maintain competitive advantage, companies must collaborate with their suppliers in the search for innovative ways to handle pivotal issues such as inventory policies and management.
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| Trends, challenges and success factors in KM |
| In these eight articles David Skyrme reflects on the past, present and future of knowledge management and offers us his vision concerning trends, challenges and success factors in the field.
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| Connect Demand With Supply |
| The CIO's next big challenge will be figuring out how to bridge the company' s sometimes conflicting CRM and SCM objectives
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| Don't let your SCM software be the weak link in your supply chain |
| Not that you'd take any commitment to a supply chain management solution lightly, but isn' t it important to make the best choice anyway? Choosing an application to handle your supply chain management (SCM) system is one of the most crucial decisions your company can make.
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| Making I.T. Work: Naked Goes the Enterprise |
| The pressure for greater enterprise transparency is coming from all directions. CIOs can't resist the concept; they can only manage the execution. And they' d better do it well.
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| IBS–Slow but Steady (and Demand-Driven) May Win the SCM Race |
| International Business Systems (IBS) (XSSE IBS B) is a Sweden-based global provider of enterprise resource planning (ERP) and supply chain management (SCM) industry-specific software solutions and other accompanying services for companies embracing IBM-based technologies. Since the early 1990s, IBS has achieved some success in transitioning from mainly being a Scandinavia-based solutions provider to a player in the broader European, Asia-Pacific, and North American markets. It now has an international network in over twenty countries...
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| Enter the B2B Gateway |
| The facts presented here will force most integration middleware vendors to re-examine their B2B capabilities, increase investment in B2B research and development, and remarket and package their B2B solutions.
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| Cisco on Video |
| The networking equipment giant is sure of the return on investment for its e-learning system
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| Real-Time One Domino at a Time |
| Real-time data can prevent distortions in product demand forecasts. But as Network Services' CIO learned, it isn' t something that can happen all at once.
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| Enterprise-wide Solutions to Drive KM Market |
| The Knowledge Management (KM) market in India is all set for a take off according to a recent F&S report. However, the market may witness a major change, with the current high demand for point-specific solutions changing into demand for enterprise-wide solutions in the coming days.
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| Putting It All Together Again |
| THIS BEING THE last in a series of columns here about knowledge worker productivity, I thought you might be expecting some answers.
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| Connecting the Dots |
| In the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001, it became all too tragically apparent that federal agencies needed to improve the ways they gathered and shared information among themselves.
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| The Ideal Supply Chain Is Within Reach |
| The U.S. economy is experiencing a productivity boom last seen in the post-World War II era. The last boom was fueled by the widespread deployment of mass production systems, the automobile, and their pervasive impact on the way we live. This new one can be linked to the widespread deployment of technology and information and, at last, their pervasive use throughout business and society. Economists and futurists argue persuasively that we are at the beginning of the deployment phase of the technology revolution, and that if it plays out, we will see an unprecedented boom cycle.
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| Knowledge is Business |
| The Indian CEO is faced with the challenge of a new economic order, where knowledge is the decisive factor.
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| Knowledge is Business |
| The Indian CEO is faced with the challenge of a new economic order, where knowledge is the decisive factor.
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| Future Results Not Guaranteed |
| When it comes to real demand forecasting, computer software isn' t there yet. Existing products simply cannot exercise the kind of rational analysis or judgment at which human beings excel.
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| It All Adds Up |
| Can you instill knowledge management concepts into the engineering field? MathSoft, the Cambridge, Mass.-based provider of the well-known engineering software called Mathcad, thinks you can and should, and it spreads that news with missionary fervor.
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| Withering Heights |
| We thought companies would want to single out their "high end" knowledge workers for special treatment. We were wrong.
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| Creative Management |
| Intellectual property asset management tools help businesses get a handle on mind-based products.
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| Forward Thinking About Reverse Auctions |
| ONLINE REVERSE AUCTIONS look like a silver bullet that cuts costs quickly using e-business tools. Reverse auctions are fixed-duration bidding events hosted by a single buyer, in which multiple suppliers compete for business.
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| Integration the Right Way, the Wrong Way |
| Besides being giants of their respective industries, they share a similar organizational structure—at least with respect to how each company approached integration, says Marco Iansiti, the David Sarnoff professor of business administration at Harvard Business School and author of Technology Integration: Making Critical Choices in a Dynamic World
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| Management Reports: Knowledge Preservation |
| FOR MOST COMPANIES in today' s knowledge economy, the workforce is the supreme driver of performance. So what happens when a keystone worker, or a slew of workers, leaves?
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| KM and CRM: More Than Just the FAQs |
| How one company used a single KM system for customers and employees to bring self-service out of the stone age of frequently asked questions.
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| Knowledge Management Vendors Go Vertical |
| Tough times in the technology industry have prompted some players in the knowledge management arena to develop solutions or suites aimed at specific verticals. By developing a solution that meets a certain business need within a vertical, the vendors believe they will be able to offer potential buyers a stronger value proposition, and a measurable return on their investment.
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| How Siemens Keeps KM Blooming |
| While knowledge management programs may seem to sprout up out of cracks in the sidewalk, they require cultivation, care and feeding.
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| The Momentum of Knowledge Management |
| What began almost 10 years ago - Knowledge Innovation - has now reached the stage of a critical mass of insight. Dedicated expertise across all disciplines are exploring and defining new management practices fundamental to capitalizing upon the knowledge-based economy.
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| Gathering, organizing, distributing info |
| You know a "word" has gone mainstream when you start hearing it on Headline News. Now, for the TV masses, the word "portal" is applied to all Web applications. In financial reports, you often hear Yahoo.com described as a portal. Well, the word originally referred to user-specific info feeds, sort of a porthole view of the ocean of information on the Web and corporate nets.
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| What are the challenges of KM |
| In an environment where an individual's knowledge is valued and rewarded, establishing a culture that recognizes knowledge and encourages employees to share it is critical. The need to sell the KM concept to employees shouldn't be underestimated since in many cases employees are being asked to surrender their knowledge and experience.
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| KM and Universal access |
| In large global organizations, the infrastructure required to maintain a well-oiled KM system are enormous. Technology support is needed not only to keep all the servers housing information in working order but also to develop databases and web sites.
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| Suspicious Minds |
| Collaboration among trading partners can unlock great value. Mistrust is the barrier. Here are six ways to build confidence.
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| KM' s Next Generation |
| For the Young Presidents' Organization (YPO), a group founded with the express purpose of facilitating networking among its members, knowledge management is a natural fit.
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| Portals Finally Get Down to Business |
| Portals have been with us since the early days of Internet applications. Now they've come of age, and they' re ready to engage customers and business partners.
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| Making B2B Pay: Four Tips |
| Federal Home Loan Bank of Dallas developed an application to let customers—small to midsize banks—automate wire transfers for cash advances.
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| How to Practice Safe B2B |
| Before swapping information with multiple e-commerce partners, it pays to protect yourself by pushing partners to adopt better security practices.
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| Knowledge Management: Why and how? |
| Knowledge Management is not just a new buzzword doing rounds in the corporate circle. The `tech concept' is increasingly becoming a must to share, mobilize and leverage knowledge as a tangible organizational asset.
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| Drilling for Every Drop of Value |
| When ChevronTexaco stopped worrying about how much oil it could pump and started worrying about how much its customers wanted, it began driving cost out of its supply chain, increasing efficiency and transforming its business.
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| Approaches to B2B Integration |
| Today’s businesses increasingly depend on strategic relations with
partners and suppliers to create value chains that provide a competitive edge. A new network economy is emerging where companies trade with partners and customers over the Internet in real-time.
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| KM and Human Nature |
| Knowledge exchange initiatives require more than just flashy software to effect a change.
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| KM and Human Nature |
| Knowledge exchange initiatives require more than just flashy software to effect a change.
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| KM Works Magic for Ketchum |
| A New York City-based PR firm finds that knowledge is key when it comes to controlling employee turnover.
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| KM Works Magic for Ketchum |
| A New York City-based PR firm finds that knowledge is key when it comes to controlling employee turnover.
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| The 5 Keys to Supply Chain Success |
| Automating your chain is the most difficult software project you'll ever do. Get it right, and you' ll save your company huge amounts of cash. Get it wrong, and it will break you.
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| R&D and Knowledge |
| These days, "knowledge" is a popular term for justifying increased spending on technology tools. But beyond anecdotal explanations, I have seen no hard evidence to demonstrate that spending more money on KM programs, devices and solutions would improve a company' s financial results.
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| Dial K for Knowledge |
| With frantic researchers and frustrated analysts in mind, British Telecom created an online site that easily handles 7,000 customer inquiries a day.
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| The Knowledge Crunch |
| IT TAKES MORE THAN GOOD FLAVOR AND a heartY crunch to sell the salty snacks churned out at Frito-Lay.
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| KM, IT and Organizational Capital |
| In addition to intellectual capital, knowledge capital and intangible assets, you may soon need to understand how to value and build on the "organizational capital" in your corporation.
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| Prophecies Don' t Serve Knowledge Capital |
| As I have noted before, the proliferation of articles about the value of knowledge is propelled by the stratospheric stock-market valuations of high-technology start-ups. Even though the profits of these dot-coms may be negligible or nonexistent, attributing their stock appreciation to a new financial artifact -- conveniently labeled "intellectual capital" -- enables many analysts to rationalize their otherwise fantastic valuations.
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| How to Value Information Security Risks |
| As I have noted before, most of a corporation' s wealth is reflected not in its accounting records but in the valuations of knowledge capital. For more than 90 percent of U.S. corporations, this asset is greater than the financial assets that they report in audited financial statements.
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| A Growing Body of Knowledge |
| Knowledge management is the Holy Grail of the modern company, much rumored but rarely found. Many software solutions—from document management and data mining to search engines and portals—have claimed to be the key, only to fail.
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| How E-Business Affects Knowledge Capital |
| This year a new topic has occupied magazines, business meetings and executive conferences. Business-to-business (B2B) electronic commerce is heralded as the next great opportunity for increasing profits, enhancing productivity and reaping "new economy" gains from the Internet. Desire for this bonanza has produced a flock of start-up companies and purchasing consortia, all professing to have discovered a way to create instant wealth.
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| One-Third of Web Revenue Headed to B-to-B Firms |
| Web sites that market to other businesses online comprise the second largest industrial group with 38 percent of publicly listed domains on the English-language Web, according to a report by ActivMedia Research, which also found that (more importantly) the online business-to-business (B-to-B) industrial sector is leading the way in revenue growth in the year 2000.
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| What Can P2P Do for B2B? |
| As the courts and Shawn Fanning wrangle over copyright issues, the service behind Napster brings up thoughts of some interesting possibilities in the B2B e-commerce space, and is the topic of this week' s column on EC Outlook.
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| Intelligence in Question |
| Many a book or study about knowledge management mentions Skandia Insurance Co. of Sweden as the foremost pioneer and most sophisticated proponent of accounting for the worth of its intellectual capital.
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| The Real Business of B2B |
| A World Wide Web site where goods and services can be bought from a wide range of suppliers is called a B2B marketplace. Three kinds are forming, based on industries, on products, and on functions.
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| Sector Spotlight: Hooking Up Is Hot in B2B |
| While business-to-business companies once bragged about having end-to-end software programs that took care of everything, they' re now increasingly looking toward alliances with potential competitors to stay ahead of the game in e-commerce.
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| Macro to Micro: B2B Shifts Focus |
| The giant opportunity in business-to-business is about to get a whole lot smaller, but only because that' s where the money is.
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| Prices, Finances and Knowledge Capital |
| An article in Fortune this spring used the measure of cost per pound as a way to show that "manufactured goods increasingly are congealed brainpower"--in effect, it tried to explain the worth of knowledge capital embodied in various products. Such approxi- mations may be useful in explaining the value of so-called "intangible" goods.
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| A sober look at B2B exchanges |
| The first 800-pound gorillas of the business-to-business (B2B) E-commerce world arrived on the same day last November, when, hours apart, General Motors Corp. and Ford Motor Co. announced they were establishing Internet trading exchanges for their supply chains.
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| Knowledge Power in the Cyber-Economy |
| Discussion of knowledge capital and knowledge assets often is accompanied by euphoric visions from a new class of futurists whom I call "cyber-utopians."
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| B2B not what it' s supposed to be |
| Despite their rapid birth in a myriad of different industries, business-to-business (B2B) Web exchanges are struggling to attract customers and generate revenue, according to a new report.
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| B2B infrastructure Complete |
| A new report from Morgan Stanley Dean Witter declares that with the B2B infrastructure up and running, technology can now be viewed as a way of doing business, rather than a cost.
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| The Knowledge-Devouring Web |
| Last month, I estimated the Knowledge Capital of major U.S. corporations employing 36.2 million people as worth $6.4 trillion.
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| RFP engines hope to cash in on cobranding opportunities |
| It happened first with auction software. Companies like Fairmarket.com created an auction application for their own site, then realized that the greater market was selling their application as a backend to other sites. Now a similar evolution is taking place with RFP applications, the software that lets someone in need of just about anything post a request for proposal to sellers of products or services.
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| The achievable market |
| There seems to be a widely held assumption that the business models of many business-to-business e-commerce players offer virtually unlimited scalability. Many companies’ market valuations appear to hinge on the assumption that they will capture entire industries. But a closer look often reveals that the addressable market for many of these companies is actually quite small.
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| Going, going, Gone! |
| It was bound to happen. The success of E-commerce has led to the electronic version of another time-honored retail tradition: haggling.
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