In 2002, bom.com changed its name to Arena Solutions and expanded into a full engineering change order (ECO) management and collaboration tool that is used by thousands of people, including seven of the top ten contract manufacturers in the world. Arena has helped hundreds of innovative manufacturers bring better products to market faster with its cloud offerings that speed prototyping, reduce scrap, and help them collaborate on product changes with strategic partners across the globe. The vendor has over 500 corporate customers, 20,000 individual users, and millions of BOMs in the system.

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During introduction, companies typically focus on the success of the product. Maturity is the stage when their focus is to take advantage of momentum and sell as much as possible. Only during maturity or decline do they start worrying about product end-of-life—which may be too late, as the transition from maturity to decline can happen very quickly (not to mention that there is no clear delimitation between stages, which means that a product can move from maturity to decline in its lifecycle without the manufacturer even noticing). Preparing for a product’s end of life should definitely start earlier, but the question is when and how they should approach it.

In order to understand that, let’s take a look at some basic concepts of product end-of-life, as well as the most important challenges that companies face when managing it. (more…)

The turnaround started when the company decided to focus on spend management software and know-how (sourcing, contract management, spend analysis, invoice automation, etc.), rather than on merely providing the “plumbing” for procurement transactions between trading partners. While the financial performance and posture of Ariba were noticeably improved by the mid-2000s, the company was still criticized by some market observers as being too conservative and focusing on traditional solutions.

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Los Angeles County selects SAS to provide analytics services and applications
Industry tags: BI/business analytics
“Los Angeles County will use SAS predictive analytics and data mining solutions as well as SAS BI solutions to fight organized fraud within the Department of Public and Social Services. Uncovering more than 200 probable fraud cases = BI and business analytics at their best.”—Jorge García, TEC BI Analyst

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Business metrics—the quantifiable measurements by which a company’s performance is gauged—are part of the broad area of business intelligence (BI) or business analytics (BA). (more…)

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The company’s flagship software, Xactly Incent, helps sales representatives and other sales professionals determine compensation for sales transactions. Additionally, sales executives can use the company’s analytics software to analyze post-sales information such as what, where, and to whom their product lines have been sold and how profitably.

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European manufacturer of construction chemicals selects IFS Applications
Industry tags: Process manufacturing, mining
“Polish corporation Atlas Group, which operates 18 business entities and 5 mines in Poland and internationally, has selected IFS Applications as its corporate-level ERP system. The first areas slated for implementation will be financials, distribution, manufacturing, maintenance, controlling elements, consolidation, trade management-commerce portals, WMS, and document and quality management. Atlas Group is a typical “sweet spot” IFS client, as the product provides good functional support, particularly in process manufacturing and mining.”—Aleksey Osintsev, TEC Research Analyst

• TEC profile for IFS Applications
• Compare process ERP software now!
• Compare mining software now!
• Press release

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