The S&OP literature highlights the importance of integrating financial planning with S&OP. However, neither S&OP nor budgeting literature offer descriptive or prescriptive studies on this daily organizational reality. This paper provides a case study in a multi-national, detailing the relationship and reciprocating effects (positive and negative) between S&OP and budget.

Previous research has identified numerous obstacles that hinder the efficient procurement of innovation by the public sector. This paper introduces the case of Digipolis – the public ICT service provider of the City of Antwerp in Belgium. In 2015, the company implemented a comprehensive overhaul of its procurement strategy centered around 3 key components: a flexible procurement process, a community built around Digital Antwerp, and a challenge-oriented company culture. The case adopts a holistic perspective on the implementation of innovation procurement in a local public sector organization, and investigates the specific conditions and mechanisms that allowed to leverage the Antwerp startup community in order to increase the number of purchased innovative solutions. The case also sheds light on how public procurement of innovation can lead to knowledge-intensive entrepreneurship – an area that is still largely undiscovered.

In the contemporary fast-changing business and consumer environment, traditional businesses experience a wide range of challenges and opportunities, coming from new digital technologies. EPCA has therefore engaged in this research project with Vlerick Business School to identify how digitisation can create extra value in the supply chain of the petrochemical sector. Professor Ann Vereecke and researchers Joachim Van den Bergh and Olga Varganova conducted the research in two phases. Through a survey to a large number of respondents, they have investigated the digital technology awareness and digital innovation practices present in companies that are active in the petrochemical supply chain. Secondly, they identified some best practices of digitisation in the petrochemical supply chain and present them as eleven short cases, eye-openers showing the value that can be created through digitisation and how to get it done.

Big data is at the pinnacle of its hype cycle, offering big promise. Everyone wants a piece of the pie, yet not many know how to start and get the most out of their big data initiatives. We suggest that realizing benefits with big data depends on having the right capabilities for the right problems. When there is a discrepancy between these, organizations struggle to make sense of their data. Based on information processing theory, in this research-in-progress we suggest that there needs to be a fit between big data processing requirements and big data processing capabilities, so that organizations can realize value from their big data initiative.

Love is all around in the world of InsurTech today. Both large corporates and startups have observed and learned from what happened and is still happening in FinTech: disruptive innovation does not necessarily equal "bye bye traditional insurance companies". Not all large corporate insurance companies will disappear and startups will not rule the insurance world.