Pre-Employment Tests Surging in Popularity, Survey Finds
Now that the economy appears to be recovering—however anemically—companies are finally paying attention to a long-neglected part of their operations: staffing. And in the years during which HR was relegated to the back burner, approaches to pre-employment testing have changed markedly, reports a new survey of 210 executives conducted jointly by the Boston-based research firm AberdeenGroup and the Human Capital Institute, a think tank in Washington, DC....
How to Fire Up Employee Performance
You’ve tried pizza parties and ice-cream socials, holiday bashes and casual Fridays—all to no avail. Employees continue to complain, and the low morale in your facility is infecting other parts of the company. What do you do? Take a tip from the marketing pundits and “sell” your company to its workers, advise the authors of Light Their Fire: Using Internal Marketing to Ignite Employee Performance and WOW Your Customers (Dearborn Trade Publishing, 2005, $23.00). Marketing pundits Susan M. Drake, Sara M. Roberts, and Michelle J. Gulman assert that the best way to deal with ho-hum employees is to kindle their enthusiasm for the company and the brand. And no, this isn’t just an “HR thing”—firing up employees is a CEO-level priority, the authors emphasize. ...
Warehousing Construction, Occupancy Expanded in 2004, Report Says
Commercial warehousing facilities have been in a slump for a few years, but the market is on the upswing, according to year-end surveys conducted by ProLogis, a global distribution solutions provider. During the second half of 2004, newly started bulk distribution and warehouse projects expanded. In the nation’s top 30 markets, total new starts amounted to 54.2 million square feet (msf) during the second half of 2004, a 33% increase over the square footage recorded in the first half. The previous warehouse construction boom peaked during 1999-2000, and total new warehouse starts in the top 30 markets topped out at roughly 125 to 130 msf a year....
Global Operations Prefer Outsourcing Trade Management, Study Finds
Even if your business isn’t a mammoth multinational, chances are you conduct or expect to conduct some form of trade with a foreign country. But managing the process all by yourself is fraught with risk, according to a new report from ARC Advisory Group. Based on in-depth surveys of eight major U.S. companies, the report concludes that global trade management is not a core competency for most firms and that outsourcing the process typically works better. ...
How to Think Like a Customer
We’re told that the marketer always puts the customer first, but actual experiences often prove us wrong. Logistics expert Debra Ellis of Wilson & Ellis Consulting takes us on a trip to the movies—where reality, she discovers, is far grimmer than the fantasies onscreen: ...
Future Workforce to be Led by Temps, Dreamers
Planning your hiring strategy for the next few years? Consider these two major trends identified by The Herman Group, a business management consultancy: (1) You’re more likely to be hiring temporary employees, and here’s why: In the past few years, you’ve probably cut your staff to the bone. Yes, productivity is up, but the employees who have stayed with you through all the layoffs and downsizings are burned out and almost certain to jump ship as soon as possible. An estimated 85% of today’s workers will move to different jobs in the next 12 months. ...
Most Marketers Don’t Know Their Target Customers, Study Finds
DNA isn’t just for labs. Customer-centric DNA is the very stuff of life for firms that want to deliver a superior customer experience, according to Forrester Research Inc. In a provocative report, Forrester analyst Bruce D. Temkin describes the deployment of a DNA diagnostic tool—and the disturbing results of the experiment....
Supply Chain Costs Under Control, But Inventory Turns Up, Study Finds
In supply chain management, as in life, you win some, lose some. Although retailers and manufacturers have increased product availability and held supply chain costs, they’re moving inventory more slowly, reports the consulting firm Accenture. In a recent study of 184 supply chain execs from companies in Europe and North America, Accenture analysts found that overall product availability increased from 87% to 90% between 2001 and 2003, making for a 25% drop in out-of-stocks. During the same period, average supply chain costs also decreased, from 10.2% of sales to 9.8%....
Tip for Retail Tech Vendors: Seek out Specialty Stores
Got a cool new retail automation program to sell? A specialty store just may snap it up. Only 39% of North American specialty stores are automated to any significant extent, according to “The 2004 Retail Automation Equipment Vertical Market Analysis,” a study by Venture Development Corporation. The “unserved market opportunities“ in retail, notes the report, are worth an estimated $5 billion. Key technology offerings that vendors should focus on include EAS, handheld scanners, mobile terminals, payment processing terminals, POS terminals, receipt printers, and stationary scanners....
March More Like a Lamb for Retailers
Belying March weather across much of the country, the National Retail Federation’s Retail Executive Opinion Survey for February showed a rise of 5.3 points in the Retail Sector Performance Index, to 55.6. ...
Scaredy Cats Cause Supply Chain Inefficiencies
Wars, earthquakes, labor disputes, outbreaks of disease, investment bubbles all affect the supply chain. And as with the stock market, so with the supply chain: In many if not most cases, it’s human psychology that causes aberrations in behavior. Loss of confidence in a supply chain can lead to such activities as highly disruptive hoarding on a large scale, according to a recent paper by Hau Lee, Thoma Professor of Operations, Information, and Technology at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, and marketing and logistics professor Martin Christopher of Cranfield University in the U.K. ...
Work Across Boundaries to Improve Supply Chain Profitability
Improving supply chain visibility may just provide incremental improvements in overall cost savings for a company. The way to accomplish paradigmatic change in supply chain management is to manage productivity actively, not just ride herd on costs, according to a recent column in MIT’s Supply Chain Frontiers newsletter written by Jonathan Byrnes, a senior lecturer at MIT and president of consultancy Jonathan Byrnes & Co. In other words, if you are a supply chain manager, shift your focus from managing supply chain costs to managing supply chain productivity, or return on invested capital. ...
Cuts in Technology Infrastructure Spending Key Element in World-Class Results
According to business process advisory firm The Hackett Group, world-class IT executives achieve superior results in part by shifting their spending and staffing priorities away from technology infrastructure and towards application management, software, and other areas. Hackett's Book of Numbers research, produced as part of its IT Executive Advisory Program, shows world-class IT executives spend $1,686 in total technology infrastructure process costs (labor and outsourcing) per end-user -- 23% less than their peers, who spend $2,183 per end user. The lion's share of the reduction in staffing that world-class organizations see is also concentrated in technology infrastructure, with only 9.2 full-time equivalent staff per 1000 end-users, compared to 21.7 for peer companies -- a 58% difference....
International Study: Widespread RFID Implementation, but Challenges Impede Integration
RFID has the clear potential to transform the retail supply chain through real-time product tracking and identification and elimination of human error, but the industry is slow to embrace the new possibilities it offers -- and technical and human challenges are impeding industry-wide RFID integration. So concludes an international survey conducted by Deloitte and Retail Systems Alert Group. The survey, "RFID: How Far, How Fast: The State of RFID," provides the most recent snapshot of how 122 retailers, distributors, CPG companies and apparel manufacturers view RFID adoption and innovation in the 2004-2005 timeframe. It also provides initial insight into industry-wide investment and expectations for RFID in the next five years....
Retailers See Varying Colors
Three recent reports from the National Retail Federation (NRF) paint somewhat different views of the retail picture past, present, and future. ...
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