E-business spending to top $1.3 trillion in 2001
By Brian Carroll -- Furniture Today, November 12, 2001
High Point — By the time this tumultuous year gives way to 2002, U.S. businesses are estimated to have spent $1.3 trillion on e-business integration and applications, a huge sum paid toward a more connected business world.
The furniture industry is part of this increased connectedness as progressive manufacturers continue to try to wring costs out of the supply chain, even during difficult economic times. Without any of the hype associated with both the boom and bust of the dot-coms, companies are cutting costs and better integrating systems and operations.
The industry has earned a reputation for being technologically backward, even primitive. The case studies of a handful of companies show, however, that the Dark Ages perhaps are over and that an age of enlightenment has begun.
Retailers and suppliers finally are embracing the Internet, albeit for merely Web and e-mail use. Even these low-level of applications make e-business possible, requiring merely browsers on either end of the chain, with manufacturers and their enterprise resource planning systems in the middle providing the engine.
As IBM's Senior Vice President Steve Mills recently told a software conference, the IT landscape will continue to become ever more diverse, making this an "era of tremendous opportunity."
