Challenge: It's hard to manage what you don't know. When our client, a large food ingredient manufacturer sought out our transportation management solution, there was data spread out across multiple facilities and paper freight bills piled high waiting to be processed. Compiling this data into meaningful information was a lengthy and a cumbersome task.

Challenge: Your company spends millions of dollars on shipping every year, and you know there has to be a better way to manage it. McLeod Freight Management Solutions (FMS) not only devises a shipping plan that promises to cut your shipping costs by 10-20% annually, it also ensures that those savings are delivered. Our client achieved savings at that level while managing freight procurement for two Fortune 500 food manufacturers.

Challenge: Key inventory planning personnel retired from a parts manufacturer for heavy duty vehicles, and the resulting experience/knowledge void led to costly inventory mistakes. Because the company's cash was tied up in the wrong inventory, its ability to stock the needed products was limited. Over two years, the company launched a new S&OP process to correct its inventory and cash problems.

Challenge: With limited IT resources, multiple ERP systems, and an unprecedented need for greater business visibility, a mid-sized CPG company turned to Silvon for help.

Challenge: Like all manufacturers, our client's value chain behaves in a non-linear fashion influenced by supply chain capacities, straight and over-time labor rates, input/output price curves, etc., making it difficult to focus on the most profitable activities and products. Recently, demand volatility, input price fluctuations with contractual discount curves, retailer pressures, and multiple decision points along the value chain increased the difficulty of conducting business using traditional costing and supply planning tools.

The data explosion: so much to look at, so much to sift through! We are so fascinated with big! Big boats, big cigars and big shoes. But what, really, is big data? What does it mean to your business? And how can you or should you manage it? Although adoption of the buzz word is new, the management of big data is not.

Netflix executives John Ciancutti and Todd Yellin are trying to create a video-recommendation system that knows you better than an old friend. It's a critical mission as Netflix faces pressure from its internet video rivals and subscribers still smarting from recent price hikes.

AFS Technologies Inc. has released Priya Standard 2012, the company's warehouse management system (WMS) software.

One of the most common mistakes that companies make when they enter into cloud and SaaS contracts is failing to negotiate exits from the contract as fully as they negotiate entries.