Replies

"Commissioned by Britain's Department of Trade and Industry, the survey by the New York-based consulting firm was based on telephone interviews from April-July of nearly 8,000 businesses in Britain, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Ireland, South Korea, Sweden and the United States."

I'd like more information on how this study was conducted?
Did they contact an equal number of businesses in each country? What types of business?
Realize that some (all)of these countries individually have a GDP that would rank comparably with our lesser producing state economies.
VOIP is not an end all be all technology. It's time will come (is coming fast) but the US has a very reliable circuit switched system that many businesses are, for good reason , slow to give up because of the flaws that still exist even in the best VO/IP products.
I'd wager that there is as much or more (total $ volume) state of the art business technology deployed in NY and LA than the rest of the world combined!

Thanks, RamC for your intelligent question.

Some of this "technology grabbing" is not necessarily for the better. Lean manufacturers are learning that the traditional Master Scheduling software has to have some modules taken off-line to make lean work. Does this mean that the US is "techno-deprived?"

As to 'net communications w/the factory, ComputerWorld ran an article indicating that the SOX Act has put into question allowing people to use spreadsheets within an organization--because data entry errors are numerous and (with SOX) can have serious repercussions.

It remains to be seen whether this study is similar to the "studies" put out by a certain CPA/consulting firm, all of which tout the advantages of offshoring factories to PRChina. What the consultant does NOT mention is that they happen to make a lot of $$ in facilitating such offshoring.