Vistaar Technologies Inc., a provider of price-management software, has made available version 1.5 of its Distribution Price Management application for alcoholic-beverage companies.

Is the term "demand responsiveness" a true call to action on the part of manufacturers, or is it just another buzz phrase? Rakesh Sharma, president and founder of Zyom Inc., believes it can have real value. He defines the term as an approach whereby companies with physical products work closely with an "ecosystem" of partners on the sales side, communicating through multi-tiered channels. Finding out in a timely fashion what has changed in those channels is no simple task anymore, given the expanding network of partners in outsourced relationships.

Gas and electric utilities may have a number of unique operating characteristics, but they share with other industries the need to emphasize customer service, operate safely, create a reliable supply chain and reward shareholders. PG&E's pursuit of those goals led it to integrate formal sales and operations planning (S&OP) into the organization.

Oracle Corp. has developed version 20.2 of AutoVue, its software for data and document visualization throughout business organizations.

Damco has launched a new service allowing customers easily to re-plan shipments in line with changes in delivery date, product cost or carbon footprint.

Most companies go through some form of portfolio planning, whether they use that term or not, says Eric Symon, principal with Digital Tempus. He defines it as a strategic effort to determine "what products you're going to sell to whom, and what businesses you're going to invest in." The model can help businesses to understand which products are growing in demand, and which need to be phased out.

In "truly collaborative" trading relationships, targeted operational metrics, such as inventory days, total landed cost, and cash-to-cash cycles, can be expected to improve by 50 percent over those without collaborative execution capabilities, according to a joint research project of E2open and SCM World.

LogFire, a provider of warehouse-management system (WMS) software in the cloud, has created new transload and deconsolidation functionality, designed to meet the warehouse-management needs of third-party logistics providers.

LeanLogistics, a vendor of transportation-management system (TMS) software, is releasing version 12.1.0. of its On-Demand TMS package.