On July 25th Lenovo, a Chinese computer firm, announced a deal to sponsor the National Football League. The PC maker has come a long way since 1984, when it was founded by 11 engineers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences who wanted to supplement their meager stipends.

The savings that can be retrieved by automating and rationalizing approval and purchasing processes in small and mid-sized companies are palpable. A 2009 Aberdeen Group study estimated that "improving the percentage of all non-payroll, tax, tariff and fee-related spend" - that is, indirect, nonstrategic expenses - brought under the management of a dedicated group can help enterprises "achieve a 5% to 20% cost savings for each dollar brought under spend management".

A few years ago, when Bill Weeks was CIO at a leasing company, a vendor pitched some software intended to manage leasing throughout Europe. Weeks was skeptical. "We noticed that half the stuff they were showing us was PowerPoint slides and not actual functionality. We decided it wasn't strong enough to run a business on." He and his team decided to pass.

There are many, many things that can go wrong in today's extended supply chains, a reality that can make managing supply chain risk seem overwhelming, says Richard Sharpe, CEO of Competitive Insights.

Now that software as a service and the broader cloud computing concept have gained widespread recognition and acceptance, it will be interesting to see whether online marketplaces will become a preferred method for acquiring these on-demand resources.

Cargo volumes dropped steadily at Frankfurt Airport during the first half of 2012, Fraport Group traffic figures show. In addition to recording a 9.9-percent, year-over-year, drop in domestic freight volumes, the airport saw an overall tonnage stall of 9 percent from the first six months of 2011. The declines were "strengthened" by the night-flight ban imposed last fall.