RFID pioneers are experiencing such numbers as a 14 percent increase in sales, a 30 percent reduction in labor costs, a 27 percent improvement in inventory accuracy, and ROI in three months.

Written by Sheldon R. Reich

The last time you may have considered whether Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) was right for your organization, you may have found that the costs for tags and equipment was high, implementation was long and complex, ROI was uncertain, and native software for your computing platform was unavailable or costly. If that's the case, it's time for another look because all that has changed.

Surviving through a tough market requires customers and suppliers to break down their silos to effectively work together and share data and knowledge.

Written by David Brault

Editor's Note: This article contains excerpts from "Supply Chain Synchronization: Recession-proof Strategies for Improving Efficiencies," a free white paper that you can download from the MC White Paper Center.

Whether you're a supplier, distributor, manufacturer, or retailer, the supply chain is the "lifeblood" of your organization. Like the circulatory system of the human body, the supply chain plays a vital role in the overall health of your business. If your company is starting to feel a tingling sensation in the left arm of your supply chain, then information bottlenecks and manual procedures are most likely blocking the main arteries of your supply chain network.

You can't be sure your software applications work properly without testing them. Solutions available for the IBM i help automate the testing process. But there are issues.

Written by John Ghrist

Before any software application is ready for sale or deployment, it has to be tested to make sure it works as intended. Although you personally have probably seen some software that seemed like it might not have followed that path, a majority of applications, whether homegrown or offered for commercial sale, must have some testing behind them.

With Infor's New CRM i Edition, users can have an integrated view of both customer and financial data, all from a Web browser.

Written by Chris Smith

While it seems that doubt about the IBM i platform permeates every conversation regarding the future of the IBM midrange platform, there is one company that continues to believe in the platform from both a technical as well as a business standpoint, and I'm not referring to IBM.

With budgets tight, anything free that can materially improve business efficiency is a sure winner.

Written by Chris Smith

The economy is pressuring people in odd ways and seems to be making some people more self-centered. So when you run across a business person who takes the opposite tack and makes a deliberate gesture of generosity--whether or not it costs them anything--you take note and smile and perhaps listen to what they have to say. I received such a gesture in an email today in the form of someone who was recommending to his clients that they try a free CRM solution for which he provided the link.

The answer to the question "Which is best, consulting or training?" is clearly "Both."

Written by CJ Rhoads
Over the years, I have done thousands of training sessions and hundreds of large consulting projects. In this article, we'll go into the best practices for how and when to use these two valuable services; but first, allow me to define the difference.

Companies interested in improving their IT department's effectiveness recognize ITIL's contribution in optimizing IT processes and thereby providing better service for their users.

Written by Philippe Magne

Editor's note: This article is an extraction from the free white paper "ARCAD and the ITIL Framework," which is available at the MC White Paper Center.

Companies that are concerned about the effectiveness of their IT organizations can take advantage of best practices models such as the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL), the Capability Maturity Model (CMM), and Control Objectives for Information and related Technology (COBIT) to help them evaluate and improve their processes. Let's take a look at the advantages of adopting the ITIL framework in your organization.

Applications and other computer services for in-house users consume plenty of resources. Virtualization enables outsourcing many of those expenses, but does it make sense for IBM i?

Written by John Ghrist

Outsourcing application and other computer services is far from an original idea for trimming IT budgets. What holds many enterprises back from taking this step are largely control issues, but it doesn't help that the many terms surrounding this kind of service remain murky. Virtualization, Software as a Service (SaaS), cloud computing, application streaming, and application virtualization all seem to be overlapping terms. Adding to the confusion is that vendors offering such services refer to themselves variously as application service providers, hosted service providers, and service bureaus. Finally, there's the problem that vendors providing such services essentially break down into three main types. It can be perplexing.