Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
Thank you. (Operator Instructions). Our first question is coming from Trace Urdan from Signal Hill. Please post your question.
Trace Urdan - Signal Hill Capital
Hey good morning, guys.
David Vander Zanden
Trace.
Trace Urdan - Signal Hill Capital
I really want to focus on the free cash flow number. And I understand that's maybe some of the gains this quarter were the result of sort of increased diligence around collections and the like. Could you just maybe speak to the sustainability of the kind of rate of increase that we saw? Because it was pretty stunning and it doesn't look like there is anything that's obviously sort of onetime in nature but maybe you can talk qualitatively around how you feel about the ability to maintain this kind of free cash flow growth?
David Vander Ploeg
Sure Trace. This is Dave Vander Ploeg. We are actually very pleased by the progress we have made in this area, especially in the working capital management area. That said we are also confident that there is more work to do and more gains to be had in both the areas of day sales outstanding as well as in the area of inventory management. I think in both cases as we apply the lean principals and as we get more accustomed to using some of the tools that have come with the Oracle platform and some of the other forecasting tools that we have, we believe that we can even drive more efficiency into the balance sheet in that area. So that would be one comment.
I think the second I would make is that we've been very diligent about managing and monitoring our capital spending investments as well as our product development investments. And we certainly do not want to short change the product development area because it's so critical to our future. But as we really meet monthly on those topics and those projects we're finding that we will not have to invest as much this year and probably going forward not as much as we've seen.
I typically get the question just on CapEx spending so I'll comment on that. We're currently looking at about $11 million spend for this year, which is down from I think a previous estimate I had shared on the call of 15. And in the area of product developments we're looking investments in the 8 to $9 million range as opposed to something closer to 11 on previous call. So we're getting... we think equal value for lower investments. We've talked from time to time that in kind of a steady state when we don't have a major Oracle implementation that we ought to be able to run this business with 16 to $20 million of CapEx and product development, and we see that going forward.
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