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Category Archives: Business Planning
Plummeting Polysilicon Prices: What Does it Mean for Solar?
Energy crisis has been the topic of discussion for many years now. Supply constraints, burgeoning demand, and the continuous surge in energy prices serve as constant reminders that the need to explore newer sources of energy should be more intent. … Read More…
The World Reaches 7 Billion People: A Look at the Numbers and its Implications
In 2011, the world population hit seven billion. More than half of the seven billion are huddled into less than three percent of the earth’s land area. While it took more than 123 years to reach the second billion from … Read More…
Real Option Analysis: A Multi-faceted Approach to Efficient Capital Budgeting
Traditionally, managers have used a range of tools and techniques in the process of making the most efficient project evaluation decisions i.e. whether to invest in a given project or not. These have included approaches such as Payback, NPV, IRR … Read More…
Social Media and Procurement: A High-Level Perspective
Social media has grown at a breakneck pace over the past few years, and has become firmly entrenched in our daily lives in one form or another – whether it is Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or one of the myriad other … Read More…
How CMOs Perceive the Future of Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing (SMM) appeals to consumer companies as a means to better anticipate customer preferences, understand attitudes toward their brands, and engage with consumers at a personal level. Interacting with customers via social media allows companies to build brand … Read More…
Understanding the Recent Growth in Food Prices
The last year has seen an all too familiar pattern of food price hikes, not dissimilar to what we experienced back in 2007-2008. The 2008 food price hikes were driven by several factors, including high oil prices and the increasing … Read More…
Africa – A Closer Look
Africa is a continent that evokes a wide range of perspectives, from the cultural to the political to the economic. In all of these different, yet interrelated ways, it is clearly a force to be reckoned with. Consider a few … Read More…
Precious Metals – The Outlook for Silver and Gold
“The ultimate asset bubble.” This is how George Soros described gold last year, even as his fund took sizable long positions in the precious metal. Why not take advantage of rising values (so long as the bubble doesn’t burst), particularly … Read More…
The Cloud and Corporate Computing Capacity
A lot has been written about ‘cloud computing’ as the next megatrend that is set to change the IT landscape. Cloud computing is defined as a system where scalable and elastic IT capabilities (both hardware and software) are provided as … Read More…
Nuclear Energy in Germany
Nuclear energy has been heralded by many as one of the most important solutions to the growing energy demands of the world, particularly given concerns regarding increasing greenhouse gas emissions and the rising price of oil. The popularity of nuclear … Read More…
Understanding the Concept of Market Basket Analysis
Retailing today is nothing if not a hypercompetitive industry. A complex & rapidly changing landscape, stiff competition, and ever more demanding customers are pushing progressive retailers to rethink how they operate. Their responses have included strategies of scale (consolidation, growth, … Read More…
4 Key Trends Influencing Automotive Procurement
Few industries today are as global, interrelated and complex as the automotive sector. (Fewer still have gone through the level of challenge and change that we have seen over the past several years.) As the automotive sector has emerged from … Read More…
Success in Mergers & Acquisitions
Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) activity is par for the course in the corporate world these days. Over the last several decades, there has been a consistent increase in both the number and value of transactions taking place, not only in … Read More…
What’s Next for the Chinese Yuan?
On February 17th, in a significant announcement by Chinese authorities, plans to allow domestic trading of Yuan options against other currencies from April onwards were rolled out, with the fundamental aim of assisting Chinese exporters and importers hedge against currency … Read More…
Tags analytics, Business Planning, business strategy, China, Emerging Markets, Finance, Financial Research, Knowledge Process Outsourcing, Marketing Comments Off
Is There Any Value in Forecasting? A Manager’s checklist
Year after year, as companies navigate their way through annual business planning cycles, executives and analysts alike work tirelessly to try and predict how the next fiscal year will unfold, making a range of decisions from where best to focus … Read More…
Tags analytics, Forecasting, Prediction Models, Procurement Research, Research Reports, Strategy Executives Comments Off
The Key to Establishing Procurement’s Credibility within the Organization
The last two decades have seen a sea change in the Procurement function’s (and the Procurement executive’s) standing within the organization. No longer the proverbial ‘back water’ department, Procurement now occupies an important seat at the executive table—a development that … Read More…
Four key challenges for supply chains in 2011 and beyond
These four challenges are highlighted in this article, along with a high level look into the types of informational tools and techniques that can be leveraged to help manage them effectively. If there is a truism in supply chains, it … Read More…
The Evolving Model for Professional Services: A practitioner’s perspective.
These days, companies aren’t questioning whether to outsource as much as they are pondering how best to go about it. Although (at times) still the proverbial hot potato fraught with workforce issues, political quagmires, and public relations sensitivities, outsourcing moved … Read More…
Rethinking Satisfaction Survey Analytics – How the factor performance index transcends the conventional importance-satisfaction matrix.
The core objective of the traditional customer satisfaction survey is to gauge the consumer’s overall satisfaction levels (or perceived satisfaction) with a given brand or a product. To make this information actionable from a marketer’s point of view, though, one … Read More…
6 Key Actions – Aligning supply chains with corporate strategy.
The supply chain and procurement executive(s) has a ‘seat at the executive table’. To illustrate its potential impact from a pure economic perspective, where else in an organization does one executive have the ability to influence and manage the cost … Read More…