With more high quality data becoming available to fraudsters than ever before, an economy forecast to contract and the UK's benefits spend reducing, overall fraud levels will continue to increase dramatically across the UK and the rest of Europe, according to UKFraud, a detection company focusing on fraud prevention.
The elements of supply chain confidence are visibility and control, the lack of which will increase supply chain risk. Without them, you are at great risk.
Big business could be saving millions of dollars per year - a full margin point or more - on their indirect spend: areas like IT, logistics, marketing, and energy that may not be a part of a business's core product, but have a big impact on the bottom line.
Companies can meet the challenge of ever-growing complexity in their global operations by synching their plant and supply-chain processes. Eric Green, vice president of solution strategy with Apriso, shows how.
Robert Byrne, CEO of Terra Technology, discusses highlights of Terra's 2012 benchmarking study on forecasting, which is based on raw data collected from the major CPG companies that are Terra's customers. Byrne explains why forecast accuracy is moving in the wrong direction and what companies can do to correct this trend.
These are difficult times for economists and company managers because the outlook for 2013 is highly dependent on how the fiscal cliff (the large government budget cuts and tax increases that take effect on January 1, 2013) impasse is resolved and secondarily on whether Europe continues to recover from the recession resulting from its fiscal and financial crisis.
The retail industry will lose an estimated $3.48bn to return fraud this holiday season, down from $3.73bn last year, according to the National Retail Federation's annual Return Fraud Survey, completed by loss prevention executives at 103 retail companies. Annual return fraud will cost retailers an estimated $14.37bn in 2011, up slightly from $13.66bn in 2010.
A survey by ShopRunner, which brings together a network of retailers to deliver shopping services, found that consumers are not concerned solely about free shipping on purchases, but free return shipping is increasingly at the forefront of their needs.