Abstract: On October 25, Hershey Foods Corporation announced a sharp decline in revenue and earnings for its third fiscal quarter ended September 30, 1999. Consolidated net sales were $1.07 billion compared with $1.22 billion for the third quarter of 1998. Net income for the third quarter was $87.6 million, or $ 0.62 per share-diluted, compared with $107.5 million, or $ 0.74 per share-diluted, for the third quarter of 1998. Hershey Chairman and CEO Kenneth L. Wolfe blamed the poor showing on problems encountered since July, when the company switched over to new systems for customer service, warehousing and order fulfillment.

Abstract: Software development best practices can save you money and make your team more productive. When software development teams don’t invest in a solid development platform, it makes their work harder and often ends up costing them more money over time. A hosted platform, however, provides a level of convenience and savings that makes it the obvious choice for today’s IT development, management, and consulting organizations.

Abstract: Because products ultimately define a manufacturing company’s success, product development is mission-critical by definition. It’s also expensive—in most manufacturing sectors, companies annually reinvest between 3 and 8 percent of their total revenues back into product development. Find out how to leverage global product development to gain a dramatic increase in productivity within your product development operation.

Abstract: J.D. Edwards reported revenue of $232 million, $8 million down from last year's third-quarter revenue of $240 million. While licensing revenue fell quarter over quarter from $98 million last year to $75 million this year, the company was saved from total disaster by an 11% increase in services revenue to $157 million, compared with $141 million in third-quarter 1998...

Abstract: The term The Third Opinion was coined by Clark Clifford, advisor and friend to many US Presidents. One thing is clear to all of us who have been observing business, politics, and life: good advice is hard to get. Ms. Joni bases The Third Opinion on the years of her advisory work with some of the world’s top executives.

Abstract: Software company Terra Technology’s development team often worked remotely, without a centralized development system. Managing documents manually was quickly becoming an unproductive use of the team s time—and increased its chances of making errors. Since using ProjectLocker’s document management system, Terra Technology has saved valuable time and money, and can now focus on its core competency—supply chain software.

Abstract: One of the most formidable IT challenges that companies must solve is the extreme cost of the development process. Don’t let your data warehouse development project become part of the 50 percent that’s abandoned—and don’t lose time and money. Learn how to optimize your development process and improve the performance of your database management systems through a complete examination and debugging of your database schema.

Abstract: Life cycle development can be a complicated and intimidating process for many organizations. Are you struggling to adapt the development process successfully to your own projects? Do you want to use various formal life cycle processes such as Agile, Incremental, Spiral, and Waterfall, or various informal processes, such as extreme programming (XP) and others? Are you burdened by the development process? This paper will explain how you can simply and easily adopt any life cycle process.

Abstract: Since our research-driven beginnings, Johnson & Johnson Advanced Sterilization Products (ASP) has continually improved the new product development (NPD) process. Detailed process mapping has revealed three tiers of business metrics, starting with drivers and moving up through execution metrics to business performance metrics. When driver metrics improves, so does business performance. Six Sigma tools helps identify specific metrics at all tiers and the causality linkages among them. Each NPD process step at ASP results in a deliverable, and each deliverable relates to a trade-off triangle (cost-time-resources) and, ultimately, to investment dollars. To track performance, ASP calculates how actual NPD decisions and what-if scenarios affect deliverables, alter investment triangles, and thereby influence business results. ASP uses similar process and tools, including the investment triangles and Six Sigma QFD, to make idea management decisions. The IDweb real-time software environment enables both the NPD and idea management processes at ASP. By deploying the strategic planning, idea management, portfolio and pipeline management, process management, and resource management modules of IDweb, ASP has increased throughput by 20 percent and reduced cycle time by 40 percent.

Abstract: Failed projects do not bode well for the vendor. It can cause their sales cycle costs only to rise even more and their reputation to suffer or, at least, become suspect. Surely, the consequences can be much more severe for the client where an incorrect software selection can lead to business losses. Accordingly, it is in everyone's best interest to select the right enterprise software and do it economically but with confidence.

Abstract: Recently, the traditional method of selecting software based on functions and features has come under scrutiny. Some even suggest that this method is unduly drawn out and fails to focus on the critical processes of business. As you might expect, vendors would rather sell you out-of-the-box business processes and solutions that would improve efficiency, increase yields, and drive their costs down. A third alternative for selecting software, which will be discussed in this article, attempts to provide the assurances needed by the buyer and the efficiency desired by the vendor.

Abstract: Six months after announcing its partnership with IBM, Industri-Matematik posted positive license growth in its third fiscal quarter ended January 31, 2000 but still has some problems to overcome.

Abstract: Rimini Street is not trying to be a software vendor. Rather, the third party support and maintenance provider is a focused system implementation and consulting firm that sells its services under service contracts instead of mere break-fix arrangements.

Abstract: Although Rimini Street's client base is still budding, the third party provider of support and maintenance has been quite bullish, owing to the accelerating demand for its service lines; healthy win ratios; and solid execution of its aggressive business plan.

Abstract: In this article we describe author's experience with the distributed development of multi-lingual three-tier Java/ CORBA/database Internet applications. We believe that the described tips and tricks of trade may be of great use to readers who are involved with Java applications development.

Abstract: Third-party logistic (3PL) providers are under pressure to keep costs low, expand services and capitalize on evolving supply chain management technology. As customers are becoming more discerning, 3PLs can leverage service oriented architecture to meet customer needs.

Abstract: Manugistics Group recently reported a 35% increase in third quarter license revenues to $14.6 million, a result of signing a number of new clients. The company reported a net loss for the quarter of $4.8 million, or $0.17 per share.

Abstract: Supply chain systems to date have represented the back-end of that process of servicing markets and have taken us a long way in replacing assets with information. But the fact is, building products still takes a long time. Contrastingly, markets require short response times--days. For the last few years, we have begun the process of trying to understand the unplanned event. The first and second paradigm systems deal in knowns--this is what I think I need and therefore this is what I will buy. The Third Paradigm focuses on the uncertainty elements to understand risk. This is the key. Isolate, understand and organize the chaos—creating an operational and financial model.