Business owners have been using analytics to analyze their business data for many years. The real question is, what do we do with that data? Up until recently, there really hasn't been much guidance when it comes to interpreting and utilizing that data to meet your business needs. However, in today's highly competitive supply chain it is more important than ever to know how to utilize those analytics to solve problems in your supply chain. Think about it: If you can't use that analytical data to solve real world problems for your business, what is the point of the analytics in the first place? Read more...

What are our collective perceptions of SaaS, Cloud computing, and Hosted solutions. Of course we are mainly interested in supply chain solutions, but the definitions appliy to any application. If you're not completely certain, here is a primmer on the major differences and some discussion of the advantages of each. This falls far short of a full detailed explanation, but the basic concepts are accurate. Read more...

I've harped on the use of big data in the supply chain a few times already. In fact, historically one of the issues with the supply chain in general and EDI specifically is the amount of data generated by the plethora of transactions moving between trading partners. And as the demands for visibility increase so does the number and complexity of the documents. Read more...