It seems that analysts across the board are finally recognizing the need for good data analysis. For example, this recent article in Industry Week on mastering complexity, driving out complication, notes that what most manufacturers are missing today is an adequate way to analyze and interpret collected data in terms of what are the potential impacts and risks on the business. Add this to all the articles preaching the need for spend analysis to get direct, indirect, and logistics costs under control, and one sees that the need for analysis across the board is now ubiquitous.

But yet only a small number of companies have solid analytical tools. Most companies still don’t have basic spend analysis applications that allow them to see where their organization spend is going. Far fewer still have Enterprise Manufacturing Intelligence (EMI) applications. But until there are data analysis applications across the supply chain, significant cost-saving opportunities are going to go unidentified. So when will analysis be ubiquitous? How many more years are we going to have to wait?