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The increased cost of doing business domestically and the impact of global competition are two reasons companies establish plants in foreign locations. To have a successful global business, manufacturers must have an effective global supply chain infrastructure, which requires effective information technology. Firms now routinely consider remote domestic and international locations when evaluating potential sites. Many factors must be considered when choosing the right location for manufacturing facilities. These include: physical infrastructure, proximity to suppliers and customers, tax considerations, international trade conditions, and as this research explored, telecommunications infrastructure. This study examined the degree to which the telecommunications infrastructure impacts the decision to select a specific foreign manufacturing site for the organisation. The results of four case studies of electronics firms indicated that telecommunications is a necessity to conduct business. Two of the firms indicated that telecommunications was considered in their most recent site selection. Although the other two firms did not overtly consider telecommunications in the site selection criteria, they did indicate that it is critical to the success of the company in a global market.

Data warehousing is believed to be a competitive necessity. The management of knowledge supports the competitive advantage of organisations. Therefore, the effective use of data warehousing to store knowledge can be instrumental in supporting the competitive advantage of companies. "Ongoing management of the data warehouse with minimal adjustments to the data architecture and business users excited about their data are true indicators of project success". Data warehousing can be used as a repository, which is considered a gateway to managerial information or the expert's knowledge, i.e. the Knowledge Management (KM) concept. Corporations can enhance their ability to share information by utilising data warehousing and KM. This study examines how companies are extracting valuable information by utilising a data warehouse. This article presents an exploratory study of three industries that have effectively implemented and utilised data warehousing and knowledge management. These case studies examine the corporate expectations of data warehousing and its support for storing and retrieving the expert's knowledge.