This week GXS participated in SAPPHIRE, SAP’s annual customer event. We debuted GXS Trading Grid for SAP (with official endorsement from SAP with SAP NetWeaver Certification). Our investments in SAP started accelerating about a year ago almost entirely at the request (actually the imploring) of many of our enterprise customers.

I was not certain what to expect from this event. Every year we build a marketing plan that spans events and tradeshows worldwide, primarily driven by geography (US, Canada, UK, Germany, France, Japan, China, Australia, Korea and so on), by industries (retail, consumer goods, high-tech, automotive, financial services) and alongside..

Now this blog entry is not suppose to be a maths lesson!, I thought it was an opportune moment to review the performance of the North American automotive companies during Q1 and take a quick look at the external influencers that are impacting their recently released quarterly results.  So let’s take a look at the vehicle manufacturers first. 

The surprise of the last three months is Ford, they have somehow turned around their business to produce a $100 million profit last quarter.  Considering all the problems that Ford were experiencing just last year, this is dramatic turnaround for their..