IRVING, TX–(Marketwire – May 17, 2012) – For today’s health care organizations, analyzing and leveraging vast amounts of spend data presents a formidable challenge. Many health care leaders are employing business intelligence tools to help interpret the numbers so they can improve their supply chain processes and reduce costs. To assist in this process, VHA Inc., the national health care network, has introduced Spend Essentials, a new component to its comprehensive VHA LYNX™ suite of business intelligence resources. VHA LYNX provides a powerful business solution to support spend decisions and promote system-wide transparency; Spend Essentials combines member spend history with industry-leading contracts offered through Novation, VHA’s supply contracting company.

Spend Essentials’ users can pinpoint cost reduction and standardization opportunities. Results are delivered in 15 detailed, easy-to-understand and user-friendly dashboards available on any computer through proprietary web-based software. Views by individual facility, system and buyer facilitate transparency and efficiency across the organization. Spend Essentials integrates seamlessly into existing supply chain processes, aligning directly with health care systems’ specific needs.

“Spend Essentials’ capabilities reflect what our members have told us they want and need to improve their performance and succeed in the current health care environment,” said Scott Downing, VHA executive vice president and chief sales and marketing officer. “With this new VHA LYNX solution, members can truly maximize their contract portfolios, sorting and drilling down to see specific spend while improving efficiency throughout all of their purchasing activities. This transcends anything that currently exists in the market and will help make supply chain performance improvement easier to achieve at a time when hospitals are under intense pressure to manage costs.”

With the ability to dissect and analyze supply chain spend information alongside Novation’s industry-leading pricing, purchasing departments can easily identify and prioritize the largest cost reduction opportunities, Downing adds.

“The day after I attended training on Spend Essentials, I peeked into the system and found some immediate savings,” explained Steve Dana, senior purchasing agent for Watertown Regional Medical Center, Watertown, Wisc. “It showed there were two contracts where our volume had increased to the point that we qualified for the next tier. I requested the tier move on-line, which was instantly accepted. That click of a mouse will save us $5,000 a year. It was quick and easy. I am continuing to look into other contracts and individual items through this new solution.”

For more information on VHA LYNX and Spend Essentials call 800.842.5146 or email vhacustomerservice@vha.com.

About VHA Inc.
Based in Irving, TX, VHA Inc. is a national network of not-for-profit health care organizations that work together to drive maximum savings in the supply chain arena, set new levels of clinical performance, and identify and implement best practices to improve operational efficiency and clinical outcomes. Since 1977, VHA has leveraged its expertise in analytics, contracting, consulting and networks to help members achieve their operational, clinical and financial objectives. In 2011, VHA delivered record savings and value of $1.8 billion to members. VHA serves more than 1,350 hospitals and more than 30,000 non-acute care providers nationwide, coordinating delivery of its programs and services through its 15 regional offices. VHA has been ranked as one of the best places to work in healthcare by Modern Healthcare since the publication introduced this list in 2008.

Article source: http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/new-vha-lynx-business-intelligence-solution-accelerates-performance-1658704.htm

David D. Igla lost out on three Ellicott City homes in the past few months before he finally beat the competition and had an offer accepted.

What kind of so-called buyer’s market is this, he wondered?

Some houses zip off the market — occasionally above asking price — while others languish because the price isn’t right, the home isn’t updated or other aspects of the property don’t appeal. The result: plenty of frustrated buyers and sellers.

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Welcome to the post-bubble, post-bust housing market.

“The inventory is limited out there for good houses,” said Igla, a foreign exchange sales trader.

Redfin, an online real estate brokerage, said nearly half the offers made by its Baltimore-area buyers in the first three months of the year had competition. That’s up from one-fourth at the beginning of last year.

Which is not to say that half of all homes for sale had multiple offers. Many had none.

More homes for sale in the Baltimore area last week had been on the market for at least six months than for less than one, according to Metropolitan Regional Information Systems, the listing service for the region — and 1,140 homes had been sitting for more than a year.

“If you price it to sell and it shows really well, it’ll be gone,” said Lynn Ikle, a Redfin real estate agent who works in the region. “If you think, ‘I’m going to take advantage of this market,’ and overprice it, it’s going to sit.”

Dwindling choices are fueling the rise in bidding wars for the best picks. The number of houses newly listed for sale between January and April — when homes generally hit the market for the spring selling season — is the lowest since 2003, according to data from RealEstate Business Intelligence, a unit of the listing service.

April was especially slim, with the fewest new listings for the month since the service started operating locally in the late 1990s. Nearly one-fifth of the homes that sold last month went under contract in 10 days or less, the highest share since 2006.

Ikle had clients who beat out two offers on a house in Towson’s popular Stoneleigh neighborhood this spring because they offered to rent it back to the owners for two months — gratis. Noah Mumaw, a real estate agent with Prudential Homesale YWGC Realty in Baltimore, just sold three homes in Ruxton before they officially hit the market. His buyers are starting to use escalation clauses — offers with built-in increases in case of a bidding war — echoing the bubble years.

But it’s a different story than during the market frenzy of the mid-2000s, despite the déjà vu of buyers fighting over homes and mortgage rates continuing to hit new record lows. Sellers aren’t popping open the champagne.

“It’s not like what it used to be when the housing market was crazy and people were escalating $100,000 over asking and still not getting it,” said Mumaw, who’s been a real estate agent for 10 years. “Even with these escalations that I’ve done in the spring, only one time did we go over asking and one of them we went to asking price. The other two, we got the house for less.”

Here’s why:

•Far fewer people buying. About 6,700 Baltimore-area homes changed hands in the first four months of this year. During the same stretch in 2005, buyers snapped up 12,200 homes. Real estate agents say would-be buyers are out looking but don’t want to settle for an iffy deal.

Far more homes sitting unsold. Newly listed properties are relatively scarce, but there were 12,600 homes for sale in the region at the end of April. That’s more than twice the number in April 2005, leaving a lot of would-be sellers with no takers.

Lower values. Prices are down 26 percent in the metro area since peaking in late 2006, according to real estate data firm CoreLogic. They seem to be stabilizing — prices were unchanged in March compared with a year earlier, CoreLogic said — but that’s a far cry from the long stretch of double-digit gains in the bubble years.

Shadow and ghost inventory. Statewide, more than 90,000 homeowners are seriously behind on their mortgages but haven’t yet faced the auction block because servicers hit the brakes after foreclosure-abuse inquiries. Now that the national mortgage settlement is done, analysts expect to see more bank-owned homes for sale soon. Then there’s the “ghost” inventory of homes whose owners would like to sell but can’t or won’t at today’s prices.

It’s also less competitive for buyers here than in a handful of hot-again markets, such as San Francisco and Washington. But the Baltimore market is tighter than it’s been for years.

Article source: http://www.baltimoresun.com/business/real-estate/bs-bz-housing-market-multiple-offers-20120520,0,1263424.story

Intelligent transportation systems developer Traffiko is in the throes of an ambitious business development drive targeting North America and Europe to build on its UK, Australia and Gulf client portfolio.

A spin-off from Maltese company Charonite, Traffiko develops Web-based interfaces for all types of transportation through its Malta-based research and development, and intellectual property functions.

The solutions are developed by an eight-member team of gifted IT and science graduates. They are supported by15 people in sales, support and other functions, together with Traffiko’s partners abroad.

Traffiko’s international business flourished after its first major project – the design and delivery of the integrated solution controlling vehicular access to Valletta in 2007. It still has shares in CVA Technology Ltd.

“Our vision is to constantly innovate, and provide an element of intelligence to transport on land, sea, aviation and space,” co-founder Angelo Dalli told The Sunday Times.

“We have an ambitious export drive. We work through a growing network of system integrators overseas on business-to-business sales.

“We are looking to place more sales functions in Malta. Europe, North America and Australia are our preferred target markets.”

Traffiko’s competitive advantage is its entirely Maltese development team with its expertise in image processing and parallel computing, including specialisation in graphics card technology. This expertise has enabled the company to take part in EU projects in computer vision applications. It is now looking into tracking using GPS and Galileo, the EU initiative for a global satellite navigation system involving 30 satellites and ground infrastructure.

Its product portfolio includes solutions for access and parking control, enforcement, traffic analysis, payment kiosk systems, traffic junction safety, crowd analysis, journey analysis, parking analysis, and visitor pattern studies for business intelligence purposes.

Thanks to funding under an ERDF programme granted through Malta Enterprise, Traffiko undertook two EU projects in Malta using the Intelligent Digital Traffic Enforcement System. It successfully ran a pilot project to track vehicles in London.

The company is venturing into maritime research with systems for yacht tracking following the development of an aviation project to detect maritime movements. Its was involved in an EU project with Air France to monitor servicing sequen­ces and increase safety on airfields.

Traffiko recently developed technology for multiple-target speed cameras, enabling the speed detection of numerous vehicles travelling in different directions in several lanes. The technology was highly praised at the global traffic trade event Intertaffic Amsterdam last March, which Traffiko took part in.

The company opened a sales office and subsidiary in Marlow, outside London, in 2009, where a team of six conduct international marketing and identify new trends in traffic management. UK Trade and Investment, the body which facilitates internationalisation, soon named Traffiko as a “company of exceptional potential” in its Global Entrepreneurship Programme.

Traffiko has won several major projects in the UK. Later in 2009, it delivered a parking solution for Aberdeen’s £250 million (€309m) Union Square mall. It was also entrusted with developing a system for Andover, one of the UK’s busiest traffic interchanges used by 60 million vehicles a year.

Now it has won the tender to delivery an access control and security system for Hinkley Point nuclear power plant near Bridgwater in Somerset, where protests relating to its expansion were staged late last year.

“More than 40 million traffic routing decisions occur at Andover every year,” Dr Dalli explained.

“To help ensure heavy vehicles do not enter the nearby village core, our technology detects the shape of the vehicle before it is driven over a weighbridge. According to the information fed by the weighbridge, traffic lights are configured to direct heavy vehicles to a particular lane and route them to a bypass outside the village core.”

Traffiko is also developing innovative technology that allows traffic light controlled junctions to be monitored constantly via automated intelligent cameras, increasing safety for motorists and pedestrians.

Systems relating to car park management and peripheral security were deployed at Abu Dhabi International Airport’s new Terminal 3, and at a number of sites in Sydney and Melbourne.

Dr Dalli said Traffiko was now showcasing the successful application of these technologies and the expertise behind them to potential new partners in Australia and the US to grow the business’s footprint.

The company recently signed an exclusive agreement with CVA Technology Ltd to market and represent its on-street traffic products in Malta.

Article source: http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20120520/business-news/Ambitious-growth-drive-by-transport-IT-systems-firm.420454