By Yuji Nakasu

Hello and welcome to another edition of The Extended Enterprise. Though the economy has turned around for many in the manufacturing sector, times remain challenging. The Institute for Supply Management announced that its index of national manufacturing slipped to 55.3 in February from 56.4 in January. Likewise, the index reported new orders in February declined to 55.8 from 56.5, as did prices paid, to 65.5 from 69. Few businesses can afford to miss opportunities in the market and virtually none can afford excess costs. Cost reduction is always on any manufacturing executive or manager's mind and is one of the primary reasons people choose enterprise software solutions.

We take a look in this issue's feature article, "A Matter of Principal," at the ways that your investment in Glovia and glovia.com can help you to reduce costs. Further, our Solution Highlight article "Beyond The Margins" will give you a little more background about some of the specific modules and strategies cited in the feature.

Of interest to our automotive customers, but none the less a good example of Glovia's innovation and commitment to new solutions, is the news reported in our article "Honda of America Approval." Glovia now has yet another rare distinction amongst ERP manufacturing solution providers: we have successfully obtained Honda of America Manufacturing's EDI and shipping software approval for North American automotive plants. By completing this test, Glovia has demonstrated that our automotive shipping solution meets Honda's requirements for their North American suppliers.

Honda is known as one of the strictest OEMs — with the most rules and requirements — especially on the back-end for shipping and packaging where products must be identified correctly before going in the right container and being shipped on time. The new Glovia solution also offers the serial traceability and lot control that may soon be required by all OEMs. This is just one of many important developments and we will have more to announce this May at our upcoming User Group.

If you are going to lead a company, you need to be involved and responsible at virtually every level — and certainly anywhere financials are involved. In this month's Career Coach column, "Leaders Go First," John Steiner, who will be speaking at our User Group Conference in two months, addresses who makes a good leader and how they do it. I think you will find it interesting.

Speaking of the User Group Conference, spaces are beginning to fill up and you may want to register now and secure favorable rates for both the conference and the hotel. You can find out more about the agenda — which includes presentations on cost reductions through glovia.com — and of course registration information by reading our User Group column in this issue.

We are very excited about this year's conference in Long Beach on May 22-26, including your user presentations. Thanks to the excellent response to our call for presentations in the last issue, we have now filled every spot. I hope everyone else makes plans to come to Long Beach and take the opportunity to find out about your colleagues' ingenuity and success with glovia.com. These are always special conference highlights.

Thank you for taking the time to read The Extended Enterprise and please feel free to submit your comments to me at extended-enterprise@glovia.com.

See you in Long Beach,

Regards,

Yuji Nakasu
President and CEO
Glovia International, Inc.