Despite being firmly rooted in the digital age, 75-80 percent of all business processes are still transacted through paper forms. It has also been estimated that 50 percent of the labor expenses involved in traditional pre-printed forms can be saved by utilizing electronic forms.

In the present competitive environment, business necessities always drive technology solutions. In order to respond to increasing customer demand and active competition, companies are under high pressure to reduce time-to-market by providing customized products to clients for the economy of scope, to reduce time-to-volume by mass production for the economy of scale, and to decrease time-to-profit by improving the competence of the entire lifecycle for the economy of service.

In this era of severe competition, the focus of every industry is on cost reduction in business operations, while making various products available to customers as per their requirements. Maintaining a flawless supply chain across all its operations has thus become mandatory for any business requiring better agility and speed of response in order to meet the changing global demand and supply patterns.

In today's fast paced world, communication and collaboration form an integral part of all companies. But when a company continues to grow, globalize, acquire, and partner, this communication and collaboration becomes a tough and time-consuming task to accomplish in a highly decentralized environment. The industry is slowly taking up Enterprise 2.0 as a convenient option to enhance Business Intelligence and Decision Support Processes. This is a system of web-based technologies that offer quick and agile collaboration, information sharing, emergence and integration capabilities in the extended enterprise.

Deploying the latest technology and recruiting highly-skilled resources are essential to every business. But this is not enough to achieve a competitive advantage in today’s market, especially in the manufacturing sector. It is essential to adopt processes that integrate plant floor information systems with the overall enterprise information system. This can be achieved through the Manufacturing Execution System (MES).