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Business Intelligence
A new study from Stanford University released August 1 by The Manufacturing Institute, the research and education arm of the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), puts numbers to the notion that supply chain security and hence better visibility helps your bottom line."Innovators in Supply Chain Security: Better Security Drives Business Value" studies the practices of 11 major manufacturers and three logistics providers. Among the collateral benefits the companies realized from upgraded supply chain security were, on average:
Looking to learn more about TIFs, TADs and other tax-increment financing tools and schemes? You can't do better than The Council of Development Finance Agencies' TIF Resource Library. From enabling legislation to case studies and original research, CDFA has TIFs covered. According to the July 2006 issue of CFO, citing its annual Duke University/CFO Business Outlook Survey, just 24 percent of 584 U.S. CFOs are more optimistic about the direction of the U.S. economy. Their chief worries, according to the percentage of CFOs who ranked these issues No. 1, are:
Readers of the Louisiana Spotlight in the July issue of Site Selection may have noted that executives who just participated in the U.S. Commerce Dept.'s Gulf Coast Mission on business investment had one overriding concern:"How do you get enough help?" John Little, director, DuPont Capital Asset Productivity, told us. One answer was delivered Friday, July 28, via a construction work force recruitment and training campaign being launched by the Business Roundtable and co-chaired by leaders from DuPont and Bechtel. NAS Recruitment Communications, an agency of McCann Worldgroup, offers great documentation of economic and downsizing trends affecting work force recruitment. Its"NAS Insights" newsletters are one medium, offering specific news items as well as trend analysis. For the broad overview, check out NAS's Workforce 2014 report, an analysis of the Bureau of Labor Statistics' latest projections on the labor force, industry employment and occupational employment. The cost-of-living survey of 144 cities worldwide conducted by Mercer Human Resource Consulting every six months finds Moscow and Seoul taking the top two spots as of late June. The survey examines costs for housing, food, entertainment and some 200 goods and services. Though Beijing and Shanghai both have risen in cost, the city seeing the most dramatic rise in costs among the Top 20 (listed below) was Singapore. The least expensive cities in selected territories were Winston-Salem, N.C. (U.S.); Leipzig, Germany (Europe) and Asuncion, Paraguay, which is the least expensive of all cities surveyed worldwide.
Doha may be dead, but feuding doesn't erase facts. In contrast to domestic calls for tariffs on imports, the Coalition of Service Industries in early July issued a study documenting the great gains to be had from greater trade liberalization."Making the Most of the Doha Opportunity: Benefits from Services Liberalization" reports, among other things, that service-sector liberalization could yield a global welfare gain of US$1.7 trilion — more than twice that of goods liberalization and 31 times that of agricultural liberalization. Foreign direct investment in services far exceeds that of both goods and primary products."Yet services account for only 20 percent of world trade," said Norman Sorensen, chairman of CSI and president and CEO of Principal International, Inc. The report says that the huge volume of FDI in services ($103 billion to developing countries from 2001-2003) means investment in new technologies and services that create new jobs. Over the past decade, employment in the service sector increased from 34% to 39% of the global work force. Countries that fully liberalize their financial services sectors could see an income gain close to $300 billion by 2015, equivalent to 2 percent of GDP. And the report pointed to Brazil and India as territories that could gain considerably from greater liberalization of their supply chain sectors, as those countries' costs of transport continue to prohibit FDI increases. In the realm of FDI, the OECD in late June released its"Trends and Recent Developments in Foreign Direct Investment" report, identifying the U.K. as the world's largest recipient of inward FDI in 2005, at $165 billion. Though the ranking was due in large part to multinational restructuring and M&A, not direct corporate project investment, the report nevertheless offers insights into where project activity is strong and the reasons behind it. The Portland Cement Association in early August reported that cement consumption will increase by 2.3 percent from 2005 levels, to 129.6 million tons, then by another 1.2 percent in 2007. The projection is down from the PCA's previous projection of 3.5 percent for 2006, mainly because of slowing residential building. While non-residential building will also slow, the good news is that only two states are reporting tight supply conditions, compared to 30 states in 2004-2005. Care to guess what percentage of corporate real estate executives carry iPods? We don't have the answer here. But Ernst & Young is counting on enough to be interested in their new series of Podcasts, which initially will focus on two areas with their own channels: transactions and international tax. Public-private is hot everywhere else ... why not in the classroom? Just in time to temper that back-to-school enthusiasm, a July report from the College Board's Center for Innovative Thought,"Teachers and the Uncertain American Future," calls for a six-point plan that includes the establishment of a public-private Teachers' Trust to finance an immediate pay increase of 15 to 20 percent and targeted programs to increase the number of qualified math and science teachers."It is hard to sugarcoat the obvious," says the report."When professions are sorted by starting salaries, teaching ranks at the bottom.""At the end of five years, almost half of all new teachers have bid the classroom goodbye," it states elsewhere, in large part because working conditions and staff morale are so poor. The report cites estimates that the annual costs of teacher turnover are at least 50 percent of leaving teachers' salaries. |
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