enterprise resource planning - News, Features, and Slideshows

News

• Microsoft opens Office for Android tablet preview to all comers

  Microsoft today opened its preview of Office for Android tablets to all eligible comers, expanding the sneak peek from the invite-only beta it first offered in November.

• Apple-IBM partnership off to 'impressive' start

  Apple and IBM last week kicked off their five-month-old partnership with an "impressive" 10-pack of focused mobile business apps catering to sectors ranging from financial to law enforcement.

• CA portfolio management services can now reflect IT budget changes

  IT and business managers who want to play with their projected budget numbers can now get a hand from a new add-on for CA's flagship project and portfolio management software, formerly called CA Clarity.

• Battery World commences rollout of cloud-based business model

  Battery World, a large retail franchiser providing portable power and specialist batteries, has commenced the rollout of a new cloud-based business model to improve insight and customer service.

• SAP gives on-premises software customers assurances, even as it pushes the cloud

  SAP may be trying to become a big player in cloud-based business software, but most of its customers run their applications on-premises and many have no plans to move them into the cloud anytime soon.

• Price tag for troubled SAP project will skyrocket to nearly $1 billion, audit says

  The cost of finishing a massive SAP software overhaul at a New York gas utility will rise to nearly US$1 billion from an original estimate of $383.8 million, a newly released audit report has found.

• How to avoid an Oracle ERP upgrade disaster

  Users who have gone through the experience advised their peers during OpenWorld

• Asset managers crave location data

  Each of the concrete and steel wharfs at the Port of Rotterdam, Europe's busiest shipping hub, hosts the loading and unloading of billions of dollars in goods over its useful life. Managing and maintaining these waterfront structures so that the world's largest cargo containers can dock at them means the difference between collecting revenue and watching ships sail elsewhere.

• Workday ships first app for higher education in strike against Oracle

  Workday has made good on a promise it issued a year ago with the release Thursday of Workday Student Recruiting, the first in a series of apps it's developing for higher education institutions.

• Kisters

  In 2012 and 2013, Belgium endured heavy rainfall as Europe's jet stream changed paths and brought flooding to central Europe. The Flemish Environment Agency needed a better way to inform citizens and water management officials about forecasted flood conditions.

• LA Clearinghouse

  Tracking cellphone activity plays a key role in helping law enforcement officials determine where suspects were before and after crimes were committed.

• Merck

  Variations in the manufacture of batches of pharmaceuticals can force drug companies to discard products, potentially incurring tens of millions of dollars in losses.

• Persistent Systems

  As head of digital marketing for the 2013 Indian movie Chennai Express, Shailja Gupta needed to work social media channels to optimize interest in the film. She teamed with Persistent Systems in Pune, India, to analyze social media content. "Just looking at numbers doesn't really help. How you use those numbers for your own strategy is what matters," she says.

• Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium

  Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium turned to cloud-based analytics when it needed a way to better predict how many visitors would be coming on any given day. With 65% of its expenses dedicated to payroll and attendance swings that ranged from 1,200 to 5,000 people per day, finding a way to ensure that staffing levels corresponded to attendance levels represented a huge opportunity for savings. "We live and breathe by attendance at the gate," says Donna Powell, business and administrative services manager at the Tacoma, Wash., facility.

• Shine Technologies

  Shine Technologies helped one of Australia's largest online advertising publishers find better ways to target its audiences and break down their behaviors in detail after ad campaigns. A Melbourne-based IT services provider, Shine developed a deep analysis tool that enabled the publisher to gauge the success of ad campaigns and determine how and when audiences interacted.