Significant changes are occurring in the global landscape that require a fresh look at one of the most important business processes in the supply chain—demand management. Companies that more accurately predict product demand and integrate a single view of demand into operational planning are poised to win in today’s competitive landscape. Read this white paper and gain strategic insights for accurate demand planning.
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Technology Evaluation Centers (TEC) is pleased to announce that IntegrateIT product ERP 123 is now TEC Certified for online evaluation of enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions for distribution in TEC’s ERP Evaluation Center. The certification seal is a valuable indicator for organizations relying on the integrity of TEC research for assistance with their software selection projects. Download this report for product highlights, competitive analysis, product analysis, and in-depth analyst commentary.
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NASCO, a healthcare claims administrator provider for BlueCross and BlueShield companies, deployed SumTotal’s integrated talent management platform to streamline performance management processes and introduce efficiencies to better manage its workforce. It chose SumTotal for its easy-to-use technology and personalized approach to service and support. See how it achieved a 38% improvement in its performance management process.
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Having experienced rapid growth, HDFC Standard Life (HDFCSL) needed to scale up learning and development to accommodate the rush of new hires and reach all employees. HDFCSL launched a companywide learning management program based on the SumTotal Learning Management solution that delivers, tracks, and analyzes the progress of blended online and instructor-based training, raising employee participation to 100% within 5 months.
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Effective management of customer data is a critical success factor for insurers. To provide products and service that stand out from the crowd, insurers need a 360-degree view of each customer that covers his or her entire experience with the company. Read this white paper on how information technology that supports tightly integrated, end-to-end business processes can increase insurer responsiveness and customer loyalty.
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The PLM product Lectra Fashion PLM (V2R2) is now TEC Certified for online evaluation of fashion product lifecycle management (PLM) solutions in TEC's PLM Evaluation Center. The certification seal is a valuable indicator for organizations relying on the integrity of TEC research for assistance with their software selection projects. Download this report for product highlights, competitive analysis, product analysis, and in-depth analyst commentary.
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CXInsight for Electronics (v5.2.0) from Adeon Software House is now TEC Certified for online comparison of discrete product lifecycle management (PLM) software in TEC's Evaluation Centers. The certification seal is a valuable indicator for organizations relying on the integrity of TEC research for assistance with their software selection projects. Download this report for product highlights, competitive analysis, product analysis, and in-depth analyst commentary.
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This paper describes new methods in the Trak charged-particle optics code to find the self-consistent, beam-generated magnetic fields of high-current beams. The modifications are helpful for general work with relativistic electron beams. They are critical for simulations of high-power microwave devices like the relativistic magnetron and the magnetically-insulated line oscillator.
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Across the retail industry, store operations are under-served when it comes to analytics and business intelligence (BI). Merchants and marketers must exploit this information every day in order to succeed. If store operations were empowered to do the same, retailers could build and sustain competitive advantage in a market that’s tougher than ever. Find out how.
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Surprisingly few retail managers, planners, and executives make business decisions based directly on information regarding their customers’ purchasing behavior. This is a big problem for an industry whose very purpose is to fulfill the needs of their shoppers. This white paper examines how customer transaction information is vital to everyone within the retail enterprise.
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Demarc extensions have been a recurring gray area in the telecommunications industry for years. There is often misconception when it comes to who actually performs the Demarc extension. This confusion can lead to finger pointing and eventually a bad reputation for those involved. Understand the issues surrounding the Demarc extension and how they can be resolved from the very beginning.
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For industries in regulated environments, validation of processes and systems is a required part of business. The goal of the validation process is to provide confidence in a process or system by demonstrating consistent and repeatable results through documented evidence. This article provides an overview of a validation for a computer software system, for compliance with US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulations.
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Each day brings a new set of challenges for process manufacturers. Some of these challenges need to be addressed with personalized company policies and well-designed standard operating procedures (SOPs). Other challenges can be addressed through implementation of an integrated enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. The six most common challenges addressed by an ERP system are described in this paper.
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For manufacturers, barcoding carries with it numerous benefits, including increased accuracy, efficiency, and traceability, along with easier adherence to customer or regulatory requirements. Discover how implementing barcoding as part of an integrated software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution can help manufacturing companies of all sizes, and in many different industries, improve operations and business performance.
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Food manufacturers are facing tougher challenges than ever before. To meet record-keeping and lot-tracking requirements, they must be able to track every single ingredient in their products—from receipt through processing, packaging, and shipping—to the exact customer location. Discover how enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions help, and learn the seven features a food manufacturer must have in its ERP solution.
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This IDC Vendor Profile focuses on PTC’s FlexPLM product for the retail, footwear, and apparel (RFA) industry—a product that leverages the product lifecycle management (PLM) capabilities of PTC’s Windchill product line. Find out about PTC’s entrance into the RFA market, its acquisition of Aptavis, and its customer collaborations with companies such as Nike, Liz Claiborne, and Nordstrom for continuing product development.
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Demand for food and beverages continues to rise. The market will pay a premium for partially prepared healthier choices that are convenient and easy to eat anywhere, or more cost-effective for large-scale food preparation. Discover how software solutions can help companies with innovative solutions for these niche markets gain brand dominance and market loyalty, and achieve higher revenues, profits, and market share.
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Today’s distributors have an opportunity to drive performance to new levels by investing in advanced inventory management. These companies can expect to increase inventory visibility while driving down inventory costs. Learn how these kinds of inventory management initiatives can help your company strengthen customer relationships, bargain for better terms with suppliers, and generate more profitable growth.
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Wholesale distributors that pursue growth while neglecting supply chain effectiveness are putting their long-term survival at risk—usually for no good reason. Supply chains have gained complexity in recent years, but solutions for achieving supply chain management (SCM) effectiveness have become both more accessible and easier to deploy. Learn how these solutions can help your company overcome its SCM challenges.
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Although the industrial equipment market has been growing, based on strong customer demand, companies cannot rest on their laurels. Manufacturers and distributors must keep adding value to maintain existing contracts and win new business. They must be efficient enough to meet new demands while maintaining margins. Discover solutions that can help total industrial solution suppliers stay profitable during this expansion.
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The three top issues facing food and beverage manufacturers and distributors: offering appealing and fresh products; complying with new regulations to ensure product safety; and delivering total solutions to customers—including special packaging, complementary products, and timely delivery. Learn how the right enterprise software can help food and beverage companies profitably meet the challenges these issues present.
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To expedite planning production, many companies have gone the way of integration with a manufacturing resource planning (MRP) or enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. Although these systems have paved the way in planning production, they can leave a lot to be desired. Learn how manufacturing production scheduling (MPS) can be enhanced by finite scheduling and advanced planning and scheduling (APS) systems.
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With nearly 200 million Web sites vying for traffic, there’s more to marketing a Web site than waiting for the masses to discover it. Search engine optimization (SEO) techniques can help, but your site will be competing with millions of other sites. Discover how one of the most powerful SEO techniques—link building—can persuade search engines like Google to value your site over others lacking quality incoming links.
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The true indicator of a store’s potential is accurate incoming traffic data. But opportunities to act on that data and improve performance occur before shoppers ever reach the cash register. To achieve their true sales potential, retailers must schedule to shopper traffic. Find out how combining accurate traffic data with workforce scheduling tools can help retailers increase revenue and sharpen their competitive edge.
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With an economic recovery underway, retailers are leveraging workforce management (WFM) tools to help them address their most pressing needs—cost reduction, return on investment (ROI), and measurably improved performance—while instilling practices that will serve them tomorrow and beyond. Find out how market leaders are leveraging the considerable benefits of WFM systems to gain a significant competitive advantage.
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London Health Sciences Centre (LHSC) needed a workforce management solution that could accommodate the requirements of a 9,000+ employee organization with multiple unions and facilities. Learn how LHSC replaced its cumbersome and outdated timekeeping systems, with a solution that helped enhance payroll accuracy and efficiency, comply with labor and organizational rules, and advance the human resources (HR) agenda.
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An optimal workforce creates a shopping experience that is profitable for retailers and satisfying for customers. However, for many retailers, achieving optimal workforce supply across large and distributed operations is hampered by cumbersome and inaccurate labor budgeting and planning efforts. Learn about planning and budgeting techniques, and workforce management solutions that can help your workforce stay agile.
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Increasingly complex regulatory requirements in the health care industry have intensified pressures on health systems to assure compliance and operational governance while maximizing business performance. This study draws on a survey conducted by Healthcare IT News and Healthcare Finance News to share strategies that will improve governance, compliance, and business performance across today’s health care organization.
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For managed services providers (MSPs) aiming to serve small and medium-sized businesses, the ability to capture and retain lasting customer relationships is a determining factor for long-term profitability. Only by clearly and consistently communicating your value to your customer can you hope to attain the role of trusted advisor—a position that will help protect you from losing business to lower-priced competitors. Learn how an integrated, offline reporting solution can help ensure that your customers perceive your value in the ways that matter most to all managers within the customer organization.
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Wireless broadband systems are becoming ever more complex at an unprecedented pace. Verification of such an intricate system in a short development cycle is a challenging and tedious task. This white paper throws light on the need for automated test frameworks required for a wireless broadband system. It discusses two approaches that can help accelerate the verification process of physical layers and higher layers respectively of the protocol stack in wireless broadband systems.
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As software-as-a-service (SaaS) spreads rapidly as a business model among independent software vendors (ISVs), the importance of SaaS configurability has come to the fore. With increasingly competitive deployments, the ability of individual tenants to configure their own options, business processes, and data structures will become the key differentiator among otherwise similar offerings—and will often prove critical to
the success or failure of a SaaS deployment. Discover the variety of configurable options, typical technical challenges, and common approaches for optimizing SaaS configurability.
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Now that the economic recovery is under way, many food processors are investing in enterprise solutions. This special report explores how food and beverage processors are moving to a predictive maintenance model; the critical role of computerized maintenance management systems (CMMS) in safety and compliance; how to “go green” without breaking the bank; and how to renovate processing plants for energy efficiency.
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Condition monitoring is a critical component of predictive maintenance. In this special report for the chemical processing industry, you’ll learn six steps to implementing a condition-based maintenance program; condition-monitoring techniques that can increase equipment uptime; how to protect your condition-monitoring program during the recession; and how to supplement your condition monitoring program to reduce downtime.
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Levi Strauss SA needed a marketing application that would support its customer relationship management (CRM) programs. In addition to insight into customer behavior, Levi’s wanted to know about customers’ preferred communication channels and their response to brand campaigns. Learn about the solution that helps Levi’s achieve this, as part of Levi’s Loop program, by expanding the company’s communication channels.
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Charlotte Russe, a women’s clothing retailer, had complicated processes for sales, markdown, and performance analysis. These processes often resulted in missed deadlines, and so the company searched for a way to automate and improve them. By implementing a business intelligence (BI) and corporate performance management (CPM) solution, the company reduced sales analysis and markdown planning from days to minutes.
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DataQuick, provider of data products and services, was looking for a powerful analytical tool to help its customers easily uncover hidden patterns and trends. After defining its needs, the company found a business intelligence (BI) analysis and reporting tool with the features it needed, including a fit with its existing Microsoft technology, and dynamic reports and dashboards customers could easily create. Learn more.
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Arysta LifeScience, one of the largest privately held crop protection and life sciences companies in the world, needed a business intelligence (BI) and business performance management (BPM) solution that would give users access to information from multiple systems, across multiple business areas. Learn how TEC’s software evaluation and selection methodology helped Arysta select the winning solution in only three months.
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Why install an Internet content filter? Schools can use one to set limits on students’ Internet access. Businesses might want to use a content filter to ensure employees better focus on the task at hand. But unlimited Web surfing also increases the risk of infecting your system with malware. Learn about five factors can help you better understand why you need a content filter, and how to select a content filter solution.
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The rapid change in consumer’s shopping behavior—switching from in-person shopping to online shopping—has resulted in a demand for agility, flexibility, and transactional processing power in e-commerce solutions. But more and more online merchants find that their shopping carts are not “smart” enough to convert random visitors into shoppers with confirmed orders. Learn about a new shopping cart solution that can help.
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In a challenging economy, many companies focus cost-cutting on direct materials and capital spending rather than maintenance, repair, and operations (MRO) supplies (also known as indirect materials). But an alternate concept allows you to implement lean processes to create a high-efficiency MRO outsource model. Find out how it offers greater visibility and promotes continuous improvement along the indirect supply chain.
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Today’s mobile software companies face a daunting challenge: How can they achieve quality while getting to market swiftly? After all, speed is king in the mobile market. The trade-off between speed and quality in mobile software development is an illusion—or should be. Get a closer look at the situation with a framework that presents a way to use quality assurance (QA) processes to accelerate development.
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Stand-alone learning management systems (LMS) often lack scalability, reliability, and secure access—and the interfaces to offer these features. But new development strategies, standards, and tools can move LMS into the “next generation.” If you’re an independent software vendor (ISV), an engineer of educational software products, or the chief learning officer of a corporate university, this info will interest you.
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Today’s technology and application leaders are pressured to deliver functionality that drives efficiency, innovation, and growth—while reducing costs. As a result, technology and application portfolio management (APM) are top business priorities. Learn about a framework for implementing an APM program that can enable your company to monitor and analyze the impact of application changes and reduce portfolio complexity.
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Oracle’s Accelerate is a program in which Certified and Certified Advantage partners build industry-specific solutions combining Oracle enterprise applications and rapid-implementation tools with the partners’ own expertise or software. The program aims to reduce the time, complexity, and cost of deploying Oracle solutions, to make them suitable for mid-market companies and governmental organizations. Learn more.
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Everything manufacturing executives thought they knew about project management and operations management is changing. Now, project managers may be connecting elements of an ongoing enterprise with a project in order to achieve certain defined goals, or use projects in a recurring way. Discover the many benefits manufacturers can realize by adopting a management-by-project approach with project-centric ERP software.
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Many oil and gas industry suppliers chose enterprise software prior to 1999, when software designed to meet the needs of the oil and gas industry didn’t exist. This affects the efficiency of these companies—and will prevent them from pursuing new revenue streams in the future. However, project-enabled solutions can now cater to the oil and gas industry’s needs, helping you adjust to current market demands. Learn more.
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Organizations managing a fleet often operate on razor-thin margins. A recession can further deplete fleet companies’ purses, resulting in reduced scale of operations, lower profits, and process inefficiencies. Visibility is key to fleet optimization and can be achieved with a fleet management system. Learn how to maximize the availability of your resources and lower the total cost of ownership (TCO) of your mobile assets.
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Up to 75 percent of a company’s carbon footprint comes from transport and logistics functions, in the context of goods storage and distribution. Today, logistics companies are going green not just out of goodwill or compliance requirements, but also because savings in carbon emissions from green initiatives directly translate into cost savings. Consequently, emissions management and reporting are important. Learn more.
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Acts of cyber aggression could lead to a cyber war or worse. Capitol Hill is giving attention to this security issue, and vendors are creating new offerings and expanding existing programs—creating new opportunities in the defense industry and opening doors for new players. Learn more about the blurring between information security vendors servicing the private sector and those in the defense and intelligence industry.
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Continuous change in the retail industry is limiting retailers’ ability to plan, forecast, price, and replenish. Thus, many retailers are facing a dilemma: they need new retail technology to adapt their processes and respond more rapidly to changing markets, but they can’t afford the up-front expenditure or lengthy implementation. But advances in new software-as-a-service (SaaS) retail solutions can help. Learn how.
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The global march toward making products and services more sustainable is gaining breadth and speed. No manufacturer will be left untouched by this phenomenon. To thrive in this new low-carbon world, you need to have a deeper and more sophisticated understanding of your products’ environmental footprint—from raw materials to manufacturing to distribution to end of life. Learn about life cycle methodologies that can help.
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Heinz Frozen Food Company was set on improving its manufacturing and maintenance process efficiency, and knew that implementing a new enterprise asset management (EAM) system would involve monumental change for employees. Heinz choose a Web-based system to help it gain better visibility into processes and work towards more progressive lean manufacturing and lean maintenance practices for greater efficiency. Learn more.
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At Mohawk Fine Papers, a new Web-based enterprise asset management (EAM) system replaced a maintenance management system (MMS) to provide efficiencies for paper-making and converting equipment. Since implementing the new EAM, Mohawk has standardized its maintenance processes, streamlined work order flow, automated business rules, and achieved more detailed tracking of assets. Learn more about the EAM software’s modules.
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Pressures to reduce costs still outweigh all other business drivers that have an impact on enterprise resource planning (ERP) in 2009. ERP is more than a necessary infrastructure; it’s also a strategic weapon in streamlining and accelerating business processes—while providing visibility to those processes. Discover more about the overall value ERP brings to manufacturing, with Aberdeen’s annual assessment of ERP usage.
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As has been proven time and again by successful companies, the correct technology, deployed in a well-managed organization with clearly defined estimating, procurement,
fabrication, and shipping processes, is more likely to consistently meet customer requirements on schedule and on budget. Learn more about the importance of identifying the correct technology to produce the benefits you need.
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R.G. Barry, a leading developer and marketer of accessory footwear, lacked real-time visibility into production schedules at its factories. As a result, the company built more safety stock, required long lead times, and could not quickly update customers on the status of their orders. Find out how a new Web-based global sourcing solution helped R.G. Barry free up cash and minimize the risk of carrying excess inventory.
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Recently introduced Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA) regulations include labor-intensive safety and testing guidelines for children’s products, footwear, and apparel. Brands and retailers that may have slashed jobs in response to the weak economy must meet these regulations with fewer people. Learn about solutions that help your company make compliance part of a comprehensive supply chain strategy.
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To ensure the safety of domestic and global food supplies, demands for brand protection assurance are on the rise from customers in the food industry marketplace itself. To address these requirements, food processors and distribution warehouses now find automated traceability systems a necessity. Discover an automated approach to traceability that’s both cost-effective and a good fit for your current business operations.
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Unencrypted communication between users’ workstations and the backend SAP servers is a significant vulnerability to your SAP environment. This can put the confidential data inside your SAP systems and your entire business activity at risk—and have a negative impact on your customers. Find out how to reduce business risks and improve audit results through encrypted communication and two-factor user authentication for SAP.
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Too often, manufacturers implement technology for financial reporting, but overlook efficiencies that can generate cash flow and reduce costs on the shop floor. While credit won’t cure the credit crunch manufacturers are facing, automated processes that improve cash flow and keep lenders in the loop can go a long way in convincing lenders that their risk is low. Find out more about how automated systems can help you.
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Search engine marketing (SEM)? We’re talking about tactics for Web site promotion—increasing both a site’s visibility to Google (and other search engines) and the site’s prominence in search engine results. We’re talking about pulling visitors through search engine optimization (SEO) and improved organic listing and using paid placement to push visitors to a site. Learn more about how to develop an effective SEM process.
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In today’s demanding project delivery environment, meeting contract deadlines is paramount. Companies are under pressure to rapidly establish plans, isolate deliverables, and deliver quality products. Learn about a project delivery management system that can help you streamline collaboration between business units, ensuring each step is monitored and controlled so you can deliver your project on time and on budget.
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Kempe, a provider of innovative engineering solutions and services for a variety of industries, was using separate systems to manage the financial and operation aspects of the business. These systems were out of date and made accurate financial reporting almost impossible. With the help of a value-added reseller (VAR), Kepme implemented a centralized, integrated solution that stores information in real time. Learn more.
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Heineken USA imports, markets, sells, and distributes its premium beer products through its network of 650 beer distributors. This supply chain requires precise forecasts and meticulous planning—and an easy-to-understand forecasting tool that provides greater transparency in the collaborative forecasting process. Discover more about the benefits of the forecasting solution on Heineken’s sales and operations planning.
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Terumo Cardiovascular Systems, global manufacturer and distributor of medical products, has more than 1,500 finished goods, many of which are assembled in one factory and sterilized in another. With so many products and steps in the supply chain, supply and demand planning abilities are key to smooth operations. Find out how the company saved $1 million (USD) with forecast management and requirements planning solutions.
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Fair Isaac Corporation’s FICO scores—the global industry standard for objective, profitable risk assessment—are the most widely used consumer credit scores in the world. Fair Isaac was using a simple in-house license manager to protect new installations of the FICO score, but as new implementations spread around the world, the company decided it needed a new system to manage its licenses. Learn about its chosen solution.
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An effective traceability system involves determining which product and manufacturing process attributes to collect and maintain—and deciding when during the manufacturing process to begin collecting those attributes. Do you begin with raw material attributes from the supplier, at inspection, at assembly, at shipping? Explore the many facets of meeting product traceability challenges using automated data collection.
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Retaining good IT staff for clients is no easy task. They face issues regarding competitive rates, contracts, benefits, liabilities, and more. So how do companies determine if they have the right model of retained staff? Or how much of a firm’s IT should be outsourced? What are the typical billing models used by service providers? Get help with these and other questions, addressed from the service provider’s perspective.
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Currently, India’s population is approximately 1.0009 billion. The middle class is large and still growing; wages were low, but now are some of the best in various industries; many workers are well educated and speak English; and investors are optimistic and local stocks are up. Despite political turmoil, the country presses on with economic reforms. But for potential investors, there’s still cause for worry—find out why.
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In 2006, Poudre Valley Health System (PVHS) was about to open a new hospital in Colorado (US). PVHS’s human resources (HR) department saw the need to change some existing processes, including the method of referencing job candidates. After one year of using a new HR hiring process solution, PVHS was able to predict supervisor evaluations of new hires and had the potential to save over $850,000 (USD). Learn more.
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Since 1996, Air International US (AIUS) has used an outsourced manufacturing strategy instead of maintaining its own facilities. For the first few years, communication between AIUS and its outsourced partners was manual, which formed a barrier preventing the company from maximizing its contract manufacturing strategy. To improve outsourcing processes, AIUS chose a change management solution with bill of materials (BOM) management and a software-as-a-service architecture. Learn more.
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Pixel Velocity, provider of video automation systems to governments and other organizations, grew from having one supplier to having dozens with which they needed to collaborate and source hundreds of components. Knowing operations were becoming too complex to be supported on spreadsheets, the company decided that using a dedicated collaborative bill of materials (BOM) and change management solution would be the smartest choice. Learn about the on-demand solution Pixel now uses.
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With all the discussion, books, Web sites, and other materials on the topic of lean manufacturing, it’s hard to know which resources are credible—much less understand the mounds of information. The first part of this series breaks down the definition of lean manufacturing into easy-to-digest concepts and shares the real-life example of a supplier of remanufactured solvents that is working toward the goal of lean. Get tips on how to determine what you need in your production operation and why.
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Martin’s Wood Products, producers of solid wood furniture for over 20 years, is a family-run business that has aimed to keep pace with the enterprise resource planning (ERP) advances of the 21st century. To bring costing under control, and to automatically place accurate and consistent work orders on the shop floor, the company uses an ERP and product configurator solution. Learn more about how the solutions help the company.
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The increasing number of passwords actually decrease productivity and present a security risk when people get frustrated and write their passwords on a sticky note. This means the application of a single sign-on (SSO) solution provides greater security and improved user-friendliness and productivity. Learn how to increase the security and usability of existing and alternative authentication methods, and how the requirements for user authentication can be realized efficiently and at low cost.
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At a time when many companies are concerned about operational expenditure, a business assurance system with consultancy can help. Instead of randomly entering a remediation program whenever a major fault is found, use the business assurance system. The following areas have seen results: revenue management, customer acquisition and retention, credit management and bad debt recovery, supply chain management, among others.
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Pronto Software—Australian vendor of software meeting the needs of a range of vertical industries such as retail and food and beverage—wants to ensure it sustains profitable growth. To find partnerships with value-added resellers (VARs) in North America and in other markets, Pronto relies on Technology Evaluation Centers’ (TEC’s) software industry programs. Learn about the other ways Pronto benefits from using TEC.
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There’s nothing like a recession to reveal the efficacy of shared services as a delivery model for human resources (HR) administration. Companies experienced with HR shared services find the model efficiently handles day-to-day administrative transactions, including such delicate issues as the paperwork aspects of layoffs, thus freeing staff to focus on morale and other issues caused by the economic downturn. Learn more.
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Knowledge management requires a platform that identifies all data associated with business processes—and the people that participate in or have responsibility for them. A true enterprise information management platform helps capture knowledge: it captures tacit knowledge as workers perform daily tasks and converts it to actionable knowledge items. Learn how knowledge management is vital to the nuclear industry.
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Pronto Software's enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, PRONTO-Xi v.670, is now TEC Certified. The certification seal is a valuable indicator for organizations who rely on the integrity of TEC's research services for assistance with their software selection projects. Download this 39-page TEC report for product highlights, competitive analysis, product analysis, and in-depth analyst commentary.
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Understanding the nature and scope of the sustainability challenge—as well as the attendant opportunities and risks—is of growing importance to firms around the globe. Companies that don’t get involved in the debate risk hurting their own finances, as well as the environment and social conditions worldwide. Learn more about developing a sustainability policy that balances stakeholder demand with social responsibility.
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Specialty Products needed to address several warehouse and manufacturing management issues, including real-time inventory tracking. As it looked for a new enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution, the company also wanted one-step order processing. Learn how the new ERP system, featuring a virtual shop front and electronic data interchange (EDI) capabilities, meets the company’s business and warehouse operating needs.
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SuperPharm, the first retail pharmacy chain in Trinidad (West Indies), opened its first store in 2005 with the focus on establishing a healthy business. It was critical that the enterprise resource planning (ERP) system have integrated point of sale (POS), inventory management, and purchasing functionality in place. Learn about the ERP system it chose, and the functionality that helped the company open four more stores.
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To do their jobs, knowledge workers use the gamut of media and technologies. However, although the proliferation of new means to locate and access data has multiplied the amount of information available to these workers, it’s also made the efficient dissemination, management, and processing of data more burdensome. Find out more about how collaborative tools are—and aren’t—being used in the information-sharing workplace.
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For the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) to fulfill its vital health mission, it must expedite and streamline its workflow processes—and the forms, approvals, and documents associated with those processes. As NIMH grew, tracking and managing forms was just one challenge that needed to be addressed. Learn about the Web-based workflow software that provides users with automated business process management.
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With goals to decrease operating costs and increase sales, Hayward—a leader in the building materials industry—knew it needed to replace its 25-year-old software with an enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution that would enable business process re-engineering and more. The solution Hayward chose enabled it to more effectively manage its supply chain and generate bottom-line value to customers. Find out why.
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Following several acquisitions, Colombia-based ceramics manufacturer Corona found itself with multiple enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems to manage. To find a single ERP solution that was suitable for all of its facilities, and would integrate with its existing business software, Corona turned to Technology Evaluation Centers (TEC). Learn how TEC’s selection methodology helped Corona choose the right ERP software.
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American Refrigeration Supplies (ARS) is a wholesaler of refrigeration and heating equipment, parts, and supplies. In a difficult economy, there is little margin for error with respect to how ARS manages its clients and vendors. Because a growing number of product vendors are using electronic data interchange (EDI), ARS was pushed to upgrade its distribution processes. Learn about the EDI solution the company chose.
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Endries International, distributor of products for original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), aims to develop partnerships by helping customers meet their cost reduction, vendor consolidation, and productivity improvement goals. But Endries knew its old software wouldn’t enable long-term growth or manage business changes. With the new solution, processes such as demand planning are more accurate and efficient. Find out why.
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Successful businesses start with a plan, and begin with the end in mind. A Web site is no different—it simply functions in the online world, rather than the physical world. The Australian government tells us that over 11 million Australians frequently use the Internet—why not take advantage of this? Here are seven key strategies that can help you decide what type of environment to create as you plan your online business.
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The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), designed to quickly stimulate economic recovery in the US, also marks the start of a new era in the regulation, oversight, and accountability of the use of public funds. Agencies at all government levels will be challenged to maintain focus on programs that achieve long-term results—while ensuring they adhere to the complex requirements for stimulus funds. Learn more.
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Business networks have come to the fore in the past decade, as the power of customers and consumers has increased relative to the manufacturers and retailers that serve them. These networks enable these companies to deliver faster innovation to customers at lower costs by sharing investment, assets, and ideas. Find out how information technology and communication (ITC) systems can help you unlock new market opportunities.
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IT has long been one of the best ways to address business challenges. Yet significant obstacles at the level of IT infrastructure stand in the way. Siloed IT operations and rigid IT management processes can impede business agility. When IT partners with the business to act less as a technology provider and more as a service provider, business objectives can be achieved more efficiently and cost-effectively. Find out how.
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As one of the fastest-growing home shopping retailers in the UK, JD Williams sells products through its 45 Web sites and more than 700 annual catalogs. To better face the challenges of its Internet sales—and to take advantage of opportunities—JD Williams began an end-to-end supply chain initiative, with a merchandise life cycle management solution suite. Learn how it helped the company increase sales in key departments.
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Rapid growth plus the need to continually offer new seasonal products led American Eagle to replace its old sourcing and order management systems while unifying product design, sourcing, and merchant processes. The company didn’t want to completely replace its legacy solution, however; it was important that its global supplier base adopt the solution too. Learn about the Web-based sourcing solution the company chose.
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Deutsche Woolworth has been in business for over 75 years. After splitting off from its American parent company, the company’s restructuring efforts focused on purchasing processes. It was discovered that there was no purchase planning in place, and no visibility into shipments and goods en route from suppliers. The company deployed a solution that reduced inventory levels by up to 90 percent. Find out how.
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For years, utilities have seen a growing need to enable a smarter electric grid, promote cleaner power sources, and replace aging structures. These issues came into sharper focus when US President Obama signed into law the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). This legislation provides funding for many energy initiatives—however, strict compliance guidelines come with the stimulus plan. Find out more.
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Given the dramatic events in the capital markets, everyone is wondering what will happen next—and what the implications are for the wider economy. Learn about the crisis both in the capital markets and the wider economy; explore likely future economic scenarios and the challenges facing companies outside the financial sector—and discover the actions your company should take in order to respond to these challenges.
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Many aerospace and defense (A&D) manufacturers are enjoying a competitive advantage because of early adoption of lean manufacturing tools. However, considerable differences still exist in performance among A&D companies. The best way for A&D manufacturers to achieve best-in-class performance is to use external domain expertise and enterprise resource planning (ERP) with lean-specific functionalities. Learn more.
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As financial institutions look to the future, there’s bound to be a careful reappraisal of the role and responsibilities of risk management. Were the tools available to risk managers fit for purpose? Was the approach to risk management appropriate? Examine lessons that have been learned from the current financial crisis, and get 10 tips to help you address weaknesses in risk identification, assessment, and management.
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One company executive has a growing influence in today’s boardroom—the chief financial officer (CFO). And the role of the finance organizations that these CFOs lead is expanding as well. Examine the changing role of the finance organization in today’s business environment, learn how your CFO can take on a more prominent role in defining company strategy, and find out how you can develop a best-run finance organization.
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In a business and technology environment that evolves faster all the time, a key challenge for franchise operators is to continue finding ways to improve. Some recent advances in the architecture of Web-based business tools have major consequences for franchise operators. Find out more.
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Electronic product code information services (EPCIS) is a standard mechanism for inter-company collaboration and data sharing, which can enable health care partners to deploy solutions that meet short-term mandates driven by patient safety, as well as lay the foundation for long-term business value. Learn more about the impact of EPCIS in a study concerning data management and data sharing in the health care supply chain.
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Hydrocontrol, manufacturer of hydraulic components for mobile applications, grew from its founding offices in Italy to being a leading player in the global market. Needing to gather the knowledge of its specialist staff and make it available throughout the company, Hydrocontrol decided to look for a solution that would automate its processes and reduce costs. Discover the product configurator solution it implemented.
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Accurate product data is key to retail success. Merchandise planning, purchasing, inventory management, and logistics all depend on accurate initial item setup, as well as ongoing updates. But globalization has brought a variety of standards, making it more complex to ensure data accuracy. Learn about a product data synchronization solution that can help synchronize your product data with your global trading community.
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For many retailers, the transition to global sourcing and demand-driven inventory models creates both opportunities and challenges. Supply chains are becoming longer, with a smaller buffer for mistakes or delays. To continually improve, you need to gain visibility across your partner community. Find out how a partner performance management solution can help buyers and sellers work together to improve business processes.
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Electronic connections with corporate customers determine much of a bank’s competitive differentiation and cost structure. But many banks are held back by outdated file transfer systems, which make it difficult to reliably connect to clients and rapidly deliver new services. Learn how using a managed file transfer platform can help banks simplify data transfers, lower costs, and deliver compelling services to customers.
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Big Lots, the largest closeout retailer in the United States (US), needed a way to manage vendors, and get its products to stores as quickly as possible. The company chose Inovis Partner Performance Management—an on-demand, service-oriented architecture (SOA)-based solution—as its supplier management system. Learn how this solution helped Big Lots share data with vendors, reduce errors, and improve its supply chain.
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Oxford University Press (OUP), the largest university press in the world, publishes over 4,500 books per year. OUP has long used electronic data interchange (EDI) for inbound orders, invoices, and credit and delivery notes. Learn why incorporating a value-added network (VAN) to its existing EDI software helped OUP improve its warehouse efficiency, boost trading partner adoption, and reduce annual VAN costs by 60 percent.
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For many suppliers, keeping up with their retail customers’ compliance guides is a challenge, driven by the fast pace of the retail supply chain and complex trading partner systems. But even when retailers and vendors work together, data errors can slow down the supply chain and trigger deductions for compliance errors. Discover a solution that can help you eliminate preventable chargebacks in your supply chain.
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As EXEX Jewelry began to grow, the company’s founder realized her existing system of tracking transactions couldn’t keep pace. And increasingly, large retailers demanded that all transactions be completed via electronic data interchange (EDI) and that product information be uploaded to a centralized, third-party repository. Find out how EXEX has improved efficiency and increased product data accuracy with an EDI solution.
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Projection is often seen as the big compromise: you must have either a very powerful and bright projector or a very dark room to achieve high-quality, commercially acceptable images. However, many people don’t know that a revolutionary concept is now available—a screen technology that allows very high-quality projected images in brightly lit environments that removes the need for dark rooms or very expensive projectors.
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Web-borne malware is now more common than malware entering a company through e-mail. The number of Web sites carrying malware increased by 400 percent in 2008. This can cause serious issues for your business. You need to proactively protect your networks both by instituting acceptable usage policies for employee Web usage and by implementing a solution that can effectively combat these malware intrusions. Find out how.
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High-performance digital video recorders (HPDVRs) solve a range of business and scientific challenges. The ability to capture, play back, correlate, measure, and analyze visual events can be invaluable for various industries. Learn key guidelines for selecting an HPDVR from amongst the multitude of DVR solutions on the market today—very few are designed and built to meet the demands of high performance video recording.
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Today’s economic environment requires you to evaluate whether your current financial institution is in it for the long haul and can offer the full breadth of services that you may need. Many of these vital services can be delivered from one source—your bank. Your primary concern in selecting a financial services institution should be the security of your assets and data. Find out what to look for, and what to avoid.
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Most financial offices run at least three separate industry-specific software packages—often from different vendors. The problem with having all of these different solutions is that most of them require their own databases and do not integrate very well with each other. Document management systems (DMSs) are becoming popular with financial advisors, as they help organize the office and provide risk management. Learn more.
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Of the many industries that are attempting to go paperless, the insurance industry has been on the leading edge of a completely digital environment. For companies in insurance industries, as well as other types of organizations looking to digitize their offices, there are a number of implications. Learn about the realities of a paperless office environment, and how your company can take steps to become paperless.
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For years, SEM Products Inc.—manufacturer of interior and exterior auto body repair and refinishing products—was managing its business with two software systems and various manual processes. As the business grew, it became clear that these systems were lacking in data accessibility and overall functionality. Learn about the enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution SEM now uses for improved order entry functionality.
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Telbix Australia, a lighting importer, wholesaler, and retailer, added 400 new products to its product range of over 1,600. Telbix needed a solution to replace manual systems and provide tools to help ensure that it had the information to manage growth wisely. After implementing PRONTO-Xi for warehouse and distribution, as well as point of sale (POS), Telbix saw improvements in data integrity and visibility. Learn more.
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Global demand for food and beverages continues to rise, and the market will pay a premium for partially prepared healthier choices. Food and beverage manufacturers with innovative solutions for these niche markets are in a position to gain brand dominance, resulting in higher revenues, profits, and market share. Discover tactical and strategic innovative practices that can help support changes in your business processes.
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At Nagoya Guidance and Propulsion Systems (NGPS), more than half of production time goes into to products such as aircraft guidance systems. In 2003, NGPS installed Asprova’s advanced planning and scheduling system for greater efficiency from the planning it had been doing manually until that time. In 2007, NGPS added the sales module for more uniform production planning. Learn more about the efficiencies NGPS gained.
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A Japan-based department store chain was experiencing fast growth, opening new stores in commercial complexes at prime locations. The company’s existing business intelligence (BI) tool took up to 12 hours to update sales data from the point of sale (POS) systems. Discover how the company reduced this time, while providing managers the reporting abilities they needed to control sales and improve customer satisfaction.
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Hirotec has been supplying and caring for the assets of some of Australia’s biggest industries for more than 30 years. In 2003, Hirotec was on a strong growth trajectory and realized its IT system couldn’t support its expansion—but that deploying an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system across the company would require staff buy-in. Now, with PRONTO-Xi, Hirotec has reduced invoice cycle time by 20 percent. Learn more.
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Hyne Timber, with over 1,000 employees and 12 wholesale outlets in eastern Australia, finds advantage in taking a long view in developing its strategy. Part of that strategy is its IT operations. PRONTO-Xi, the company’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, offers functionality for effective manufacturing, sales, and inventory management. Discover how Pronto’s ERP offers Hyne an integrated view of timber operations.
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Outdoor equipment and clothing retailer Kathmandu sought a new enterprise management system to support expansion throughout Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. The new system, with capabilities for point of sale (POS) and inventory management, had to be scalable. Based on a strong customer reference, Kathmandu chose PRONTO-Xi. Find out how PRONTO-Xi has helped improved efficiencies and promotion management.
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As you streamline your supply chain, don’t forget about the shipping or receiving department. Often, a company aligns its supply and demand but doesn’t provide the key inventory prioritization rules for shipping and receiving—and the right product is delayed from its final end-point. Learn how appointment scheduling can help—meet with your supplier, customer, and carrier to plan an efficient and effective flow of goods.
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A growing number of smart suppliers recognize the competitive high ground to be seized as they deepen their connections to retail clients in regional markets. By adding value in the replenishment process through vendor-managed inventory, small and midsized manufacturers can differentiate themselves from larger brands. Most importantly, they can develop more loyal and profitable relationships with retail clients. Learn how.
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In 2005, Nu-West Construction Products was executing a rapid expansion plan that included three new distribution facilities in Western Canada. Believing it had outgrown its existing solutions, Nu-West conducted a comprehensive enterprise resource planning (ERP) software evaluation project to find a replacement. Learn how the chosen solution, TGI’s Enterprise 21 ERP, helped Nu-West meet its unique distribution needs.
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If planetary life is to be found outside our solar system, the W. M. Keck Observatory will play an important role in discovering it. Perched on the summit of Hawaii’s dormant Mauna Kea volcano, the Observatory’s twin telescopes probe our solar system and the deepest corners of the universe. But, how does such a sophisticated system get built? And, how does the engineering team ensure it’s done right? Find out more.
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As a business leader, you’re likely thinking about ways to save money and improve performance. A little fiscal probity coupled with an increase in productivity will ensure you ride out tough times and emerge as a stronger, more robust, successful business. Find out how Microsoft® business solutions can help not only save money, but drive productivity change with customer relationship management (CRM) and other solutions.
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Food and beverage producers need to effectively address the impact of industry-specific requirements and legal mandates on their businesses. Since 2002, the greatest legal impact is in the critical process of handling product recalls. Explore your options for minimizing and eliminating threats to your business—be “emergency ready” by better managing quality control processes and food traceability data. Find out how.
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Today, more than 100 million web sites vie for the attention of consumers worldwide. Many of them will use a search engine to find the goods, services, and information they want. When they do, you want to make it clear that you have what they’re looking for—you want their search to start and end with you. Learn more about how to use a content management system to create web content for search engine optimization (SEO).
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Small and midsized companies may need help configuring Google Analytics installations to aid their clients in the real estate, vacation rental, and resort markets—and to measure and enhance the effectiveness of their online marketing programs. If you’re tired of being kept in the dark about the effectiveness of your Internet marketing programs, then it might be time to implement a comprehensive Google Analytics program.
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Electronics enterprises must respond to business drivers such as reduced time to market, technological innovation, and distributed operations and cost control to remain competitive. Effective collaboration among internal engineering and manufacturing, as well as external suppliers and distributors, requires great effort. But an engineering collaboration solution can help teams work together in real time. Learn how.
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Today, food manufacturers face significant challenges. Increasing costs, government regulation, safety concerns, and constantly changing consumer tastes are a way of life. Senior management must know about these food industry issues; why an integrated business software system is essential for controlling costs, managing inventory, and meeting regulations; and the key functionality to look for in new business software.
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ODG’s industrial division has a reputation for the design and manufacture of quality gears and transmissions. But back in 1991, ODG was using four separate systems for inventory, accounting, sales, and materials resource planning (MRP). The challenge was to combine all four into an integrated management system, with an emphasis on data integrity and scalability. Discover the solution ODG chose to help improve processes.
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People—that is, talent—are at the heart of any strategy to master the business challenges of high-tech companies. For best results, human resources (HR) organizations must transform from taking the role of service provider to that of strategic business partner. Find out about the four imperatives a successful HR organization must address in order to develop a competitive HR strategy and win the war for talent.
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Swiss financial services company Global Refund needed to replace its antiquated customer relationship management (CRM) system. To find a mobile-enabled, user-friendly solution that could handle the company’s 15 million yearly transactions, Global Refund turned to TEC. Learn how TEC helped Global Refund turn its long-list of 40 vendors into a short-list of four, and shave two months off the selection process.
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Industrial equipment manufacturers (IEMs) have been hit especially hard by today’s economy. But the industry has come back better than ever before by adopting new efficient manufacturing methods and new software and business processes that let them compete head-on, satisfying customer demands while reducing costs and raising margins. Learn about the methods industrial equipment manufacturers are using to stay competitive.
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The environmental protection agency (EPA) is limiting the amount of R-22 hydrochlorofluorocarbon (HCFC) refrigerant to 20 percent less than industry demand. This means R-22 will likely increase in cost. It could also mean that reclaimed, recycled, and used R-22 could become more valuable. Learn how to continue education related to R-22 phaseout requirements and begin managing your refrigerant inventory more accurately.
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Collecting, organizing, and reporting refrigerant gas usage is challenging and loaded with complexity. Often system auditing is confusing, and it’s difficult to remain in compliance with constantly changing regulations. Find out why staying in compliance is so important, and how you can save money, reduce emissions, and retain critical assets. Thrive in a carbon-constrained world while managing your refrigerants.
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Chief financial officers (CFOs) are under greater pressure, scrutiny, and accountability at companies large and small. An ideal CFO is a steward of decision-support information, cost controller, and more. With data supplied by some of the world’s most successful CFOs, get insight into what CFO responsibilities should be today to achieve extraordinary results, and how they should change to meet future challenges.
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Guardian Management had a clear vision for its business: shift emphasis from real-estate management to real-estate investment, and expand throughout the western United States. But Guardian’s technology infrastructure didn’t support these goals, so the company embarked on comprehensive infrastructure optimization. Discover why the new infrastructure is more available and reliable—and how it’s fueling business productivity.
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Industrial equipment manufacturers (IEMs) face fundamental changes to the way they do business. Combined with ailing economies and cash-strapped customers, the ability of IEMs to effectively manage their operations—and those of their supply chain partners—can determine success or failure. Get insight into the changing IEM customer market and the skills and tools you need to fully address these changes and challenges.
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Diamond Plastics has a nation-wide network of PVC pipe manufacturing facilities. After years of customizing its financial software, the company was unable to upgrade to newer versions. The existing system also could no longer accommodate the company’s continued growth. Needing a new accounting and business management system, Diamond chose to implement Microsoft® Dynamics AX. Find out about the near-flawless transition.
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King Plastic manufactures polymer products for worldwide distribution. Upgrading to the latest versions of Microsoft® Dynamics GP and Microsoft® Dynamics CRM, the company wanted to boost user adoption without scaling support costs. Now, it uses the solutions to track sales leads and manage profiles for its growing list of customers. Find out how it gained better control over IT costs while improving employee productivity.
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Coordinating all shipping processes—from inbound to outbound freight—can be a logistics headache in a global economy—especially if you don’t make the most of all a transportation management system (TMS) has to offer. One director of logistics found that a web-based TMS solution resulted in a 10 percent decrease in the number of carriers, with a 15 percent increase in carrier load factors. Learn more about the benefits.
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As a result of exponential growth via acquisition, an international metals manufacturer realized it was trying to function with six disparate systems. Because of this lack of integration, transportation costs were skyrocketing. Learn about the solution that helped the company automate tendering processes, centralize core functions like carrier management, increase management’s visibility and control—and more.
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While analyzing load statistics with its key carriers, a multinational manufacturer and distributor noticed that deadhead mileage statistics were excessive. Often, inbound trucks delivering goods into its facilities had different dispatchers than those handling outbound loads. The company needed to improve communication with carriers. Learn about the solution that helped save money by reducing deadhead mile charges.
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Due to ever-changing business, market, and economic conditions, shippers cannot afford to rely solely on a certain size of carrier—and often it’s the smaller regional or family-owned carriers that can fill the unique needs of a shipper. But can those smaller carriers provide the level of communication you expect and get from larger carriers? Learn about a solution that offers integrated communication for any size carrier.
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In 2008, a multinational manufacturer and distributor wanted to elevate its load tendering process to a more sophisticated level. To guarantee cost savings, the company wanted to be able to create a batch of tendered loads for a given time period before releasing them to the routing guide tendering logic. Now, it has the capacity to move orders with no increase in costs. Learn about the solution that helped enable this.
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Relevant to the current economic recession, find out about key challenges faced by the retail industry, such as multichannel integration. Get an introduction to a process excellence and governance approach specific to retail, for radical cost reduction and organizational agility and visibility. You’ll also find a case study about business performance management (BPM) in the food and beverage industry.
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The new capabilities of web-based technologies and the burgeoning digitalization of the battlefield have positioned the military to adopt complete cross-service logistics solutions. This interoperability is key for integrated logistics system (ILS) projects—as is the need for ILS to include a deployable aspect. Learn more about the importance of ILS deployability to enable “foxhole to factory” supply chain capability.
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Unimed Porto Alegre, with 41 percent of the health care market share in Sao Paolo (Brazil) managed to make significant improvements to its operations by implementing a new solution to deal with hundreds of thousands of monthly online transactions. For one thing, the payment process has been reduced from 3 days to 10 hours or less. Learn about the other benefits this online customer service solution provides.
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Brazilian health care cooperative Assefaz wanted to change its health care plan administration system, as it didn’t offer enough options to create business rules and specific procedures. The new system it chose offers new modules, including Medical Audits. Find out how the co-op divided up the implementation, and how the new solution has streamlined numerous processes related to its administrative health care services.
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Customer buying decisions are often affected by “inspiration”—an emotional state that separates a casual browser from an engaged customer. Successful retail merchandisers select products and promote them in ways that lure prospects into the selling environment. But what are the elements of an ideal selling environment? How can you create one? And how can you tell if it’s working? Learn more about how to inspire customers.
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In the face of increasing global competition, a retail company can remain visible only if it provides a differentiated shopping experience for customers. The majority of retailers, however, are still struggling with inadequate technology and the difficulty of hiring and training competent in-store salespeople. Discover the strategies other retailers are using to anticipate customer needs and improve customer satisfaction.
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To customers bombarded with so many products and experiences, it is the brave retailer who can claim to offer anything unique by way of intelligent merchandising or customer service. So how do retailers try to hook customers with fresh, unusual, and relevant shopping experiences? Learn about the results of a global survey of 180 senior retail execs, looking at three aspects of merchandisers’ relationships with customers.
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Want to know more about distributed agile best practices for software development projects? Find out about the challenges and lessons learned from this implementation of distributed agile for teams distributed across US, Europe, and India. Discover how this large, globally distributed project for a large telecom vendor realized such benefits as better collaboration, higher quality product, and on-time delivery.
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Does your company need to capture and cost direct and indirect labor? Does it also need to configure user input devices to meet their specific requirements and accommodate changes in the way time and attendance are calculated? Learn about a web-based workforce management solution that automates the collection of labor and attendance information, facilitates the processing of complex attendance policies, and more.
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Tortilla and wrap manufacturer La Tortilla Factory had three software systems to manage its business: one for billing, one for financial reporting, and one for inventory. As the company grew, this multisystem setup wasn’t providing the necessary integration. Find out about an enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution that helped the company establish process controls to help it grow, while integrating older systems.
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To select a new enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, Katy Independent School District (Katy ISD) turned to Gibson Consulting Group to manage the project’s complexities. Gibson partnered with TEC, taking advantage of the eBestMatch decision support system (DSS). Find out how TEC and Gibson helped Katy ISD reduce the cost and duration of the selection project, and deliver a compelling business case to stakeholders.
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The IT investments that have allowed firms in process industries to increase the efficiency of their operations and supply chains have also created vast stores of data. Unfortunately, many companies are still unable redeploy that data to drive innovation. Learn how the next generation of business intelligence (BI) tools can help your company gain a competitive advantage by harnessing the information IT systems generate.
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Many chief financial officers (CFOs) have started to take on new strategic roles. Their goals are to enforce stricter controls to ensure legal and regulatory compliance, offer strategic insights into the internal and external business environment, and connect the business strategy with daily operations through performance tracking. Learn more about the changing role of the CFO in today’s finance organization.
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Increasingly, companies in the aviation industry are outsourcing their maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) operations, especially for engine and component repair. However, many companies still report using custom, in-house applications instead of standard, off-the-shelf solutions. Learn how companies are balancing their outsourced and in-house MRO solutions, and discover the top three trends impacting the MRO segment.
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Best practices in technology can help manufacturers of complex products and equipment get their offerings to market more quickly and profitably by enabling them to become more cost effective and efficient. But there are still challenges to be overcome, due to product life cycle complexity. Discover the best practices that can help you make the product and make it right, on time, and within budget—while making a profit.
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Hospitals around the world are facing increased pressure to improve operations from multiple directions. Legal requirements, aging populations, and an ever-growing need to be service-oriented are forcing hospitals to do more with less. Hospitals could be doing more to coordinate, analyze, and use data to improve operational performance. A new generation of business intelligence (BI) tools, such as dashboards, can help.
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Fuel marketers and distributors must act quickly to keep up with the volatile marketplace. Margins are narrow and fuel prices fluctuate constantly—and at the same time, you must coordinate a fast-paced replenishment cycle. To optimize the efficiency of your processes and improve the accuracy of your forecasts, there’s an oil and gas software solution that offers automated functionality for invoicing and billing, and more.
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Life sciences manufacturers face new pressure on operations from many directions, including market needs, compliance requirements, and the transition to new IT technology. Many companies recognize that improving performance demands better sync with the plant floor and more accessible data. A real-time performance management solution can help drive excellence in manufacturing performance via better integration. Learn how.
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A producer of whole milk powder for the chocolate industry, VernDale Products wanted to replace its existing manual system with automated, fully integrated enterprise resource planning (ERP) software. The company, aided by technology consultants, found an ERP software system that was the best functional fit—reducing the time needed to perform routine office tasks and improving accuracy in financial statements. Learn more.
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Investment banks, hard-hit by the subprime meltdown and credit crunch, are grappling with a dramatically different deal landscape, all while coping with massive write-downs, staff cuts and budget cuts. Learn how client-centric strategies and customer relationship management (CRM) tools are helping banks maximize the value and loyalty of their client bases, take advantage of new opportunities, and do more with less.
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Laptop users often are forced to sacrifice performance and functionality, “dumbing down” critical applications for the sake of portability. Executives in many industries are looking for ways to increase productivity, expand the reach of sales and marketing, and reduce total cost of ownership (TCO). Learn about common issues involved in deciding between laptop and desktop computing, and discover a solution.
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In the wake of the subprime meltdown, many financial services firms are coping with huge write-downs and high market volatility by cutting staff and budgets. But even in uncertain times, smart financial firms can find ways to grow. Learn how you can use customer-centric strategies and customer relationship management (CRM) tools to maximize the value and loyalty of your client base and gain insight into new opportunities.
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Keeping track of the accuracy of packaging components in the pharmaceutical industry can be very challenging. It is important that every company be completely confident that printed packaging workflows are as efficient and effective as possible. Examine how automated proofreading has been proven to be an integral part of solidifying content integrity within a complex packaging workflow process.
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Headquartered in Shoreview, Minnesota (US), PaR Systems, Inc. provides specialized material handling and automation equipment to many diverse industries. Each of the company’s customer contracts is unique—like a separate job—with charges included for labor and materials in these jobs. Find out how PaR’s engineer-to-order (ETO) solution helps the company manage its contracts—from engineering and manufacturing to final delivery.
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Order-driven manufacturers—those who engineer-to-order (ETO), assemble-to-order (ATO), and make-to-order (MTO)—face numerous challenges. To stay competitive, they must contend with increased competition, more demanding customers, and the need to refine business processes. Learn how enterprise resource planning (ERP) software can help your company meet marketplace challenges and create sustainable competitive advantages.
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Preventable deductions are a major source of frustration and cost for suppliers, while the compliance violations that trigger them are likewise frustrating and costly for retailers. Eliminating the violations—and, thereby, eliminating the deductions—is in the best interests of both parties. Find out how a system that automates information handling processes, as well as compliance enforcement and monitoring, can help.
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InMotion, with more than 50 stores in 33 airports, delivers portable entertainment to the travelers’ market. InMotion faced inventory control issues due to limited store space, and plans to merge with another airport retailer added to the problem. The merger required InMotion to find a solution that could handle multiple sales channels while providing real-time inventory updates to prevent overstock in stores. Learn more.
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Based in Houston, Texas (US), Commonwealth provides engineering and construction management services for chemical process industries. Aiming to drive operational efficiencies and enable cost-effective growth, the company chose to centralize project management and accounting, and turned to Microsoft® Gold Certified Partner, New Vision Consulting Group, to deploy Microsoft® Dynamics® SL. Learn how the company benefited.
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This white paper highlights the key challenges facing the financial services industry, and discusses how the 2007 Microsoft® Office system can help financial institutions affect business performance with innovative and powerful enterprise capabilities that extend far beyond improving personal productivity.
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Founded more than 60 years ago, the Rodgers & Hammerstein Organization (R&H) represents a wide variety of entertainment copyrights. R&H used Microsoft Dynamics AX to gain a full picture of its business, but wanted to give all employees fast, easy access to the data they needed to serve customers. By upgrading to Dynamics AX 2009, employees now have business intelligence (BI) and workflow tracking at their desktops.
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Formerly just a soccer team but now a large company, Brazil-based Cruzeiro Esporte Clube needed effective administrative management. Cruziero had to choose a new system that would be able to integrate with its legacy systems. The results of the successful integration include business intelligence capabilities that allow a flow of information between the team and the board of director—and a reduction of costs. Learn more.
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Midsize food and beverage companies are striving to be more things to more markets, while ensuring consistent customer satisfaction and regulatory compliance. This industry is experiencing unprecedented opportunities at a time when reliability, quality, and food safety are growing concerns. Learn how business systems that tightly integrate vertical operations have helped these companies achieve a competitive advantage.
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Plasti Dip International has been a leader in rubberized and specialty coatings since 1972, selling its products to manufacturers, retailers, and distributors worldwide. To compete in a crowded retail marketplace, dominated by large retailers, Plasti Dip required integrated enterprise resource planning (ERP) and electronic data interchange (EDI) functionality. Discover how the company found the right solution.
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Connecting company networks securely to the Internet has been the role of the venerable network router. Companies seeking to securely link trusted networks with external users and Internet resources—like software-as-as-service (SaaS) applications—are discovering that identities must be unified across internal and external networks. Discover the benefits of a new device created to meet this need: the identity router.
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Manufacturers already apply transportation management systems (TMSs) to outbound shipping, but they often overlook the money they could save by using a TMS to control inbound shipping costs as well. Find out how improved inbound transportation practices can help you predict true total delivered costs, get visibility on inbound shipments, enforce routing guides, optimize freight, and minimize accessorial charges.
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With its recent rapid growth, Bank of Choice found that paper-based loan approval processes were standing in the way of providing the fastest and most effective customer service. The bank decided to adopt a document management system (DMS) based on software from a Microsoft® Gold Certified Partner. Find out how the bank improved customer service, reduced the costs associated with meeting regulatory compliance, and more.
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The insurance industry’s turn from an underwriting-oriented vision to a customer-centric view has been painfully slow. Success isn’t just a matter of delivering superior products and services, but of incorporating customer insight into enterprise strategy on an ongoing basis. Learn how you can use your customer segment data for customer analytics that can help you determine which segments to grow and which to retain.
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Operating as a provider of dairy products to consumers and of agricultural services products to farmers and ranchers, Land O’Lakes had two challenges. One was to educate the people selling the agricultural services products so they would know what to recommend to farmers. The other was to retain those people. Learn how Land O’Lakes used a learning management solution as part of its expert seller strategy.
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Mobile and Internet technologies are now the de facto standards for daily communication. Service providers take the opportunity to launch innovative solutions. One such is femto cells: small base stations and access points providing last-mile access and better coverage in densely populated areas. Learn about the differences between unlicensed mobile access (UMA) and second generation/third generation (2G/3G) femto cells.
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Long-term cost savings and extensive feature sets make voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) phone systems an attractive option for many businesses. But with prices for a single VoIP phone ranging from $150 to $700 (USD) or more, switching to VoIP can be an expensive proposition. Find out what to look for in a VoIP phone system, how to buy, what you can expect to pay, and how to get the most out of your investment.
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The payment card industry (PCI) Data Security Standard establishes common processes and precautions for handling credit card data. Although achieving PCI compliance can seem daunting, the requirements represent security best practices that should be observed by any organization with IT systems and data to protect. Learn about network scanning and security assessment solutions that can help you manage PCI compliance.
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Designed to improve consumer financial services, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA) includes security provisions for protecting confidential electronic financial information. For the approximately 9,500 financial institutions affected, compliance can be complex and process-intensive. Learn about network security auditing and vulnerability management solutions that can make GLBA compliance faster and more cost-effective.
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As companies come to grips with current fiscal realities, choices may result more from reaction than the use of sound judgment. Removing vital resources and reducing services can create an even lower return on investment (ROI) than existed before downsizing. Outsourcing may offer a solution. Learn about the effects that the present financial situation will have on the outsourcing community, including buyers and suppliers.
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To remain competitive, retailers must improve costs, differentiate the shopping experience, and ensure effective promotions. Many retailers are asking how to improve vital business processes while offering customers more. Learn about key trends in the retail sector and how business process management (BPM) can help address challenges across in-store operations, supply chain management (SCM), and multi-channel integration.
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Whatever you offer as a service provider, success depends on how well you manage key accounts to ensure long-term relationships and the highest possible margins. But with today’s challenges, it’s difficult to maintain market share, let alone grow. SAP’s All-in-One fast-start program offers a solution that can help you maximize client and service-line profitability by supporting industry best practices. Learn more.
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As a midsize wholesale distributor, you need to stand out from your competition while improving efficiency. SAP Business All-in-One Solutions offer software designed to help you with your current needs, while remaining capable of supporting future growth. Find out how this solution can help you improve transparency and coordination between the warehouse and the executive suite, but also streamline inventory management.
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In fast-paced, low-margin manufacturing environments, companies must embrace technology in order to solidify or gain competitive advantages. It is equally important to avoid adopting technology for technology’s sake. Find out how leading companies are focusing on efficiency and cost reduction by integrating manufacturing execution systems (MES) or manufacturing intelligence (MI) with enterprise resource planning (ERP).
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Recruiting IT talent to insurance companies has never been easy—but today, demographic pressures make the task of IT staffing even harder, as IT professionals retire and fewer new graduates become available to fill the positions. IT outsourcing may not offer the help you seek. To make sure your company can survive and prosper, learn how to find ways to hire qualified IT staff, and keep the IT staff you already have.
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To better support mobile employees, Lifetime Products deployed a unified messaging solution focused on the flexibility of wireless devices. Using features in Microsoft® Exchange Server 2007, Lifetime replaced its voice mail system with a voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) solution, and streamlined access to e-mail, voice mail, and fax messages. Learn how this solution helped the company boost productivity and reduce costs.
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Lower IT costs, faster return on investment (ROI), and better security—just a few of the promises the software-as-a-service (SaaS) business model makes. SaaS can help small-to-medium businesses manage customer service and support cost-effectively. But there are a few concerns to consider if you’re thinking of an on-demand service. A vendor that offers the best of both on-demand and on-premise solutions may be the answer.
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Engineering firm Barge Waggoner Sumner & Cannon, Inc. needed to collaborate more efficiently across its 11 offices in the eastern United States. The firm chose ProjectWise collaboration software for engineering content management, content publishing, and design review, and integrated it with Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server 2007, to manage business processes and documents in a distributed environment. Find out more.
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Until recently, St. Vincent Heart Center used an HTML-based intranet to disseminate various types of information to its 470 employees and 200 contract workers. But information on that system wasn’t easy to find. Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server 2007 offers the organization easy access to information—and it enhances productivity and supports increased security for confidential information. Read more about the benefits.
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Limited office space at the National Aquarium in Baltimore required staff to share computers, resulting in several security risks and inefficiencies. For more efficient and secure computer sharing, enhanced data security, and reduced support time, the Aquarium moved all users to Windows Vista. Learn how the move has reduced login time from 15 minutes to 5 seconds, provided faster access to information, and more.
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Recent EquaTerra market research finds a consensus among western business leaders that increased globalization is inevitable—and that it will generally be beneficial. Quickly and efficiently leveraging opportunities created by globalization is the best way to avoid being overwhelmed by its challenges. Learn how to compare buyer and service provider data and get insight into developing a responsive global strategy.
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For many companies, the second largest cost after people is facilities. Solutions have evolved from traditional out-tasking and outsourcing to the more recent strategy of integrating facilities management and real estate under a single service provider. But first, understand marketplace realities: provider capabilities don’t always line up with buyer expectations. Learn about the challenges of integrating these services.
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Chief financial officers (CFOs) and procurement directors want to speed up and simplify the outsourcing provider selection process, to reduce costs and gain benefits sooner. Here are key issues you should consider when fast-tracking the process of scoping and negotiating a sourcing transaction. Collaboration and interaction are key to shortening the process while still achieving your end goal. Find out more.
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Globalization and digital technologies provide great opportunities for companies operating in business to business (B2B) markets. There are many strategies you can use to automate the demands of business communication so it is more reliable, efficient, and profitable—and delivers more value to your customers. Learn about the four key practices that can help you improve your B2B relationships with buyers or sellers.
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The constant launch of new telecommunications products creates stiff competition, and to manage increasingly complex product portfolios, you should ensure your processes are optimized, your data is accurate, and your solutions are integrated. The first business area you should focus on is order management. Find out how you can better address the challenges of the order-to-cash cycle, decomposition, provisioning, and more.
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The printed circuit board (PCB) manufacturing market has changed, as production shifts from Europe and North America to countries in Asia. As markets migrate to these low-cost suppliers, how can a PCB manufacturer in Europe or North America compete? The best opportunities lie in high value-added products and services that can’t be easily duplicated. Learn more about taking the lead with new technologies and processes.
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Haynes Wire Company produces wire for structural and welding applications as well as medical. The company’s existing homegrown system was increasingly unable to manage and provide access to the information needed to operate the growing business, such as per-order costs. Find out how an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system helped by enhancing knowledge of costs, with increased control, visibility, and profitability.
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From its two locations, All Flex serves industrial, medical, and other customers with printed circuits. Five years ago, All Flex kept its records in multiple, inconsistently updated spreadsheets—leading to parts shortages and production delays. With an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system designed for the printed circuit industry, All Flex increased sales and reduced delays to less than 1 percent. Find out how.
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Anderson Power Products manufactures power connectors for telecommunications and other industries. The company, needing to consolidate data for its standard and customized products across five global locations, found an enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution that offers one reliable point of entry. Discover how the ERP solution helped improve shipping, customer relationships, financial reporting time, and more.
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When Johnstown Wire Technologies left its parent company, it had to quickly establish its own IT resources, as the legacy system inhibited growth. The new system would have to be integrated, responsive, and include functionality for quality, lot tracing, scheduling, and cost management. Learn about the return on investment (ROI) the company found after it implemented an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system.
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Toronto, Canada-based printed circuit board (PCB) manufacturer Coretec expanded from one location to three. But its custom systems weren’t well integrated and were difficult to maintain. The company needed an integrated system to facilitate its goals for order volume and customer service and growth. Find out how an enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution helped the company increase capacity and improve delivery times.
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A few years ago, the top customer complaint for plastics provider Rowmark was shipping errors. For several reasons, customers weren’t receiving what they ordered. Problems were traced back to handwritten inventory labels, and manual counting and checking of orders. Learn how the company upgraded the system it already had by adding bar code labels and scanning, as well as other electronic data interchange (EDI) techniques.
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At first glance, less-than-truckload (LTL) purchasing seems like a straightforward process. However, purchasing approaches that save you money in the short term also introduce your company to financial and operational risk. A truly successful LTL bidding process is data-driven and has very different financial outcomes for shippers, 3PLs, and their customers. Discover more about this and other LTL best practices.
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Kaiser Permanente serves the health care needs of 8.2 million members across the US. To maintain high quality of service, Kaiser continually invests in training its employees at all levels of the organization. But its regionally based training programs were resulting in inconsistent training and massive duplication of effort. Find out about the learning management solution Kaiser installed and the subsequent benefits.
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The drive to deliver high-quality produce—on time, against increasingly tight deadlines, and at reduced prices—is a challenge for even the most efficient suppliers. Having access to and sharing real-time information is essential to efficient delivery. Learn how an integrated supply chain solution with business intelligence (BI) capabilities offers greater efficiency, reduced of costs, and improved customer service.
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It’s old, it’s new, and it’s the future. Pedigree tracking regulations were originally passed into law through the Prescription Drug Marketing Act of 1987 (PDMA). After two decades of postponing enforcement, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has lifted its final stay. Pharmaceutical companies are expected to be in compliance with 21 CFR Part 203 by the year 2011. Do you have what it takes for compliance?
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Swedish-based Tylö is the world’s leading manufacturer of sauna, shower, and steam bath systems. Family-owned since the 1940s, today Tylö generates growth by leveraging IT-based operational support. Thus, when new growth objectives called for a new enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution, Tylö considered four alternatives: Movex, Jeeves, Axapta, and an upgrade of ASW. Find out which system it chose.
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Swedish-based PIAB is a global leader in industrial vacuum technology, and develops and sells solutions for improving productivity in the graphical, medical, and automobile industries, among others. Established in the 1950s, PIAB has subsidiaries and distributors in over 50 countries. In the early 2000s, PIAB sought to replace its aging enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. Find out which system it chose, and why.
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As raw material and energy costs skyrocket, it is essential that food processors understand and control the costs of production. Unfortunately, many food manufacturers rely on inventory procedures that are peppered with disconnected technologies and inefficient manual processes. Find out how you can avoid the five problems caused by poorly controlled inventory and how to protect your margins in an uncertain market.
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KLM Catering Services (KCS) Schiphol prepares and delivers 45,000 meals a day for 12 airlines, 350 flights, and 50 different types of aircraft. KCS also manages non-food supplies such as beverages, sales trolleys, and navigation bags to the private airport lounges in Schiphol Airport. Find out why it’s achieving a delivery performance of over 99 percent.
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Indiana, US-based Old National Bancorp owns multiple financial services operations and offers a range of services. With over 3,000 employees, the bank needed a comprehensive policy-based e-mail retention plan to address compliance, legal discovery, and the exponential growth of message stores. Learn how an e-mail retention solution helped the bank meet compliance, scalability, and information life cycle management needs.
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Escalating health fears, new global policies, and a highly competitive market means that traceability is an issue food and beverage companies cannot afford to ignore. All this has led to a need for information on quality and food safety that companies must live up to. Explore the key issues surrounding traceability in the food and beverage industry, and find out why you might need to consider a new traceability system.
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When the first Kenneth David Apparel store opened in 1992, the company could manage operations with an accounting solution alone. But as new stores opened, the company needed software to scale with growth—not only on the retail side, but design and manufacture too. Its new solution has e-commerce and point-of-sale features, and allows the company more insight for more effective management. Read more about the benefits.
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Fischer, the world’s largest ski manufacturer, grew 47 percent in a three-year period and found its operational staff was spending too much time reconciling data among disparate systems. Plus, it was impossible to accurately analyze customer data to forecast sales and inventory projections. After implementing Everest, Fischer has increased customer satisfaction with real-time order and inventory information. Find out how.
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In the competitive auto industry, Nissen Chemitec America knows the need for lean manufacturing. Its legacy enterprise resource planning (ERP) system was preventing the company from adopting lean principles, and so in 2003 it looked for an ERP tailored for contract manufacturers serving the auto industry. Learn how the new system helps the company stay lean within the confines of compliance and changing customer demands.
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The oil and gas resource sector is under pressure to improve operations and finances while continuing to meet the growing demand for energy. Radio frequency identification (RFID) benefits retail, but it’s little known as a tool for improved efficiency and customer satisfaction in the oil and gas industry. Discover how RFID can offer multiple benefits in production and distribution to companies in the oil and gas sector.
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The loss of your computer facilities, even a temporary one, can seriously affect your operations, resulting in significant monetary consequences. And the risk of catastrophe has greatly increased. For this reason, you should invest in an effective and reliable backup system. Learn about procedures for server backup management, and the various tools available on the market that can help you protect your vital data.
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Financial services companies need the right solutions to manage the delivery of trading applications. But this challenge grows ever more complex, with regulatory initiatives forcing trading services to provide market access in a timely manner. Learn the issues involved in effectively managing the delivery of electronic trading applications and order management systems—and how to ensure consistent delivery for end users.
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Real estate firm The Norris Group was holding ten years of customer history with an online e-mail marketing vendor. Costly errors, data loss, and the lack of vital features convinced the firm to find a new solution that would store data and make it available whenever needed. Find out how the new online solution safeguards, analyzes, and shares customer data with employees, while easing the IT administrative burden.
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Cruise line Holland America is committed to developing employee skills and competencies, enhancing customer service and satisfaction, and proactively addressing regulatory compliance requirements. At any given time, thousands of the company’s employees are at sea—complicating training and records-keeping. Discover how the cruise line found in SumTotal a solution that increased the skills of a globally dispersed workforce.
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St. George Bank is Australia’s fifth largest bank, with over 8,500 employees. Along with teaching its channels about the bank’s products, St. George must ensure its partners comply with Australian financial regulations. To replace a cumbersome paper-based system used to train its distribution channels, the bank installed SumTotal learning management system (LMS). Find out how the bank benefited from the LMS solution.
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The publishing industry is experiencing dramatic changes that are forcing companies to re-examine their operations, and to implement new processes and technologies to help them in the future. To handle the new cyclical flow of content in digital media, publishers will have to discover new ways to produce and deliver content to meet the changing demands of the market, using an integrated publishing model. Learn more.
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You need a new Internet protocol (IP) phone system—but you’re not quite sure which features and functions would best meet your business operation’s needs. It’s important to know if you’re better off migrating to a hybrid IP PBX system or to a pure IP system. Answer this question and 10 others so you can be prepared to talk with resellers and vendors about IP phones for your voice-over-Internet protocol (VoIP) system.
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Looking for a new business phone system? To find a premise-based private branch exchange (PBX) solution that meets your needs, you should ask yourself several key questions about your current situation. Be sure to specify your business requirements up front to PBX providers—and know which you’re prepared to drop in return for a lower cost. This checklist can help you ask the right questions and keep track of the answers.
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A hosted Internet protocol private branch exchange (IP PBX) system can provide an easy way for small to medium businesses (SMBs) to move to voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) and get a new range of features and capabilities. While there are several IP PBX options, hosted applications are usually quicker and cheaper to install. Discover the critical features and services your SMB needs in a new hosted phone system.
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The Washington Post Company (WPC) needed a system to manage tax and asset depreciation from 25 companies, while allowing each company to independently add fixed assets and generate reports. With more than 100,000 fixed assets throughout the company, this was no minor task. But with the new Web-hosted fixed assets management solution, WPC accesses all data in real time, saving time and ensuring accuracy. Find out how.
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Genius Project4Domino and Microsoft Project are both project management tools, and though their range of features is different, they are also complementary. Using the solutions together can bring a well-rounded project management solution to companies of all sizes. Learn how they can be used to ensure consistency and eliminate downtime, so your long-term strategic project plans are a success.
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The power grid is pushed to its physical limits with our growing demands for cheap electricity. To keep up, we need a “smart” electrical grid prepared for real-time information and enabling fast response. A new power delivery system can manage supply and demand while allowing consumers to manage their energy usage online. Read more about the benefits for utility companies, consumers, the economy, and the environment.
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Establishing, maintaining, and making records available as outlined in the Bioterrorism Preparedness Act is overwhelming for manufacturers. To prepare for any type of disaster—from cross-contamination to processing failure—you need to make sure your processes are adhering to regulations. An enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution can help minimize potentially adverse effects—on both your business and consumers.
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Manufacturers today must respond quickly to ever-changing customer demands—while keeping costs low and efficiency high. How can original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and contract manufacturers (CMs) effectively manage the demand-driven supply chain? A solution that increases your visibility of inventory planning and management throughout the supply chain can help reduce your response time. Learn more about the benefits.
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Managing the demands of constant change is one of the biggest challenges facing the electronics manufacturing services (EMS) industry today. Collaboration between original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and contract manufacturers (CMs) can help both sides leverage the supply chain to manage change. Find out about a solution that can help you create a successful collaboration strategy that optimizes your supply chain.
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In today’s global economy, organizations must strengthen customer relationships to maximize performance. UNICEF needed customer software to support a feature-rich Web store allowing real-time flow of order data. With a new e-commerce solution, UNICEF rerouted more than 30 percent of its sales to self-service, with online orders up by an average of 50 percent. Learn more about how the Web retail system benefits UNICEF.
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Server security is a key issue for the health care industry. Between an expanding body of regulations and the need for 24/7/365 system availability, it’s essential to address vulnerabilities as soon as possible. But with constant new threats, protecting your server isn’t easy. Learn about the special needs of server security in the health care environment, and how you can have comprehensive protection with no down time.
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Buying a software solution that doesn’t closely fit your business processes significantly impacts the time and money your company needs to make it work. There are particular challenges in using a generic enterprise resource planning (ERP) system for the printing and packaging industry. Read about the functional gaps to consider when choosing an ERP system, and how to use it to lower your total cost of ownership (TCO).
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Effective CRM deployment can bring many productivity gains. And although free customer relationship management (CRM) tools may sound great to overburdened company directors, there are five reasons why free CRM tools should be avoided. For one, free isn’t always free, as hidden costs can undermine your budget. Find out about the other reasons why it’s better to tighten your CRM budget now, rather than go bust later.
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A national health insurance company’s spreadsheet-based telecom management process was leading to time and money wasted as staff tried to make up for lack of spend visibility. Further pressure to prepare the telecom function for upcoming merger activity pushed the company to find a technology that would effect immediate cost savings and long-term telecom expense management. Read more about the solution the company chose.
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A company’s best opportunity to gain major margin improvement is in its front end—the sales, customer service, and processes needed to transform inquiries into orders. And one of the best strategies is to apply lean thinking to the front end. Read about an integrated solution that addresses the unique requirements of your sales processes to help dramatically reduce cycle times, eradicate waste, and increase your margins.
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A parts distributor had poorly used space and storage media with limited material visibility resulting in frequent stock-outs. To replace its old warehouse management system (WMS), the company decided to redesign its existing storage space and media in order to improve picking and replenishing efficiency and to reduce inventory carrying and material handling costs. Find out how a logistics modeling and design tool helped.
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A manufacturer of multiple electronic goods needed to maximize its available storage. A logistics modeling and design tool can help the company benefit from pull replenishment and focused storage approaches to logistics by enabling users to evaluate different storage options. Find out how the solution can support transition during initial design, including re-engineering of existing process, for continued results.
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Internet protocol (IP) and voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) systems allow inexpensive transport, cheap phone calls, and simple management of a single network. But the true value is in the new applications IP enables, such as unified communications (UC). How can you use UC to further decrease costs, enhance productivity, and improve customer service? Learn how to go beyond messaging for real-time call control and more.
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Although Active Voice is a global provider of business telecommunications, it didn’t have a dedicated solution for sales automation or customer service. Sales reps lacked what they needed to follow up on leads and were losing valuable opportunities. But when the company implemented an e-customer relationship (e-CRM) solution, its users gained mobile access to valuable customer information. Learn about the other benefits.
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Oil and gas industry leader MODEC was already using Microsoft Dynamics SL for core financial activities. But as the company faced rapid growth, it began to look at how the technology could be used to improve other vital business processes. Discover how MODEC worked with the NexTec Group to hone those processes, identify areas for improvement, and propose and direct the technology initiatives to effect the needed changes.
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As part of its effort to improve literacy in grades K-3, the Chicago Public Schools District needed to manage thousands of personal digital assistants (PDAs) and other devices to ensure distribution to the right teachers at the right institutions—and under serious time constraints. The schools deployed an asset-tracking solution that enabled real-time tracking, as well as budget planning with depreciation. Learn more.
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Electronic health records can provide many benefits for patients and health care providers and insurers. Health care technology managers should have a strategic technical background to make informed decisions about integrating, partnering, or supporting personal health care record (PHR) solutions. Learn best practices on implementation, and how to leverage your existing health care technologies with new PHR platforms.
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As the banking industry goes global, the need to be available 24/7, increased demands for customer service, and reduced budgets have introduced new pressures to small to medium banking firms. And with the ongoing challenges of regulatory compliance, firms need financial services software that can reduce the risk of noncompliance while addressing the scale of their operations. Find out how an integrated solution can help.
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To maintain a leadership position in the high-tech complex equipment industry, electronic equipment manufacturers need reliable solutions to improve order accuracy, optimize fulfillment, and increase revenue for value-added services. Does your solution quickly commercialize new technology, integrate software with systems, and differentiate those systems with value-added services? Find out about what you might be missing.
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Food and beverage manufacturers must aim to keep up with customer demands for a wide range of products, while managing the complex global supply chain and taking advantage of growth in new markets. For fast-growing or midsize companies, the challenges are even greater. Find out about a solution that can help optimize sales and marketing, and enable consumer-driven supply chains by speeding collaboration with suppliers.
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The effort needed to manage a non-durable consumer goods company is more strenuous than ever. Business issues such as expanding product portfolios, complex distribution channels, and compliance requirements can impede your ability to compete in the global supply chain. Does your current business application enhance your sales and marketing, and enable demand-driven supply chains? Learn what you need to compete—and win.
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Consumer electronics companies of any size must deliver superior customer service, optimize performance, and design agile supply networks. When using business software to deal with these challenges, growing electronics companies face the same issues as larger companies, but also have concerns about cost and implementation speed. Learn how a new class of scalable solutions can meet the needs of electronics manufacturers.
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Efficient procurement and sourcing. Storing and moving inventories. Attracting and retaining customers. Such challenges have an impact on wholesale distributors’ revenues, competitiveness, and profits. To make timely and informed decisions that can impact your business, you need answers to questions like “How can I offer value-added services to improve customer loyalty?” Get the answers to this and other key questions.
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What makes your enterprise resource planning (ERP) requirements difficult for most vendors to satisfy? As a life sciences company, you have operational processes that set you apart from other manufacturing companies. And, your regulatory requirements, including 21 CFR part 11, aren’t like those of any other industry. The challenge is to manage compliance risks and compliance costs. Learn about an ERP compliance strategy.
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An online American bank, providing various financial services, needed to replace its legacy script-driven batch job processes with a job scheduling solution that could handle the bank’s growth. The bank’s IT team, however, faced two major hurdles affecting growth: both batch job processes and script-writing were manual and inefficient. A job management solution helped the bank achieve new levels of growth. Learn how.
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Dramatic progress in communication and media industries are pushing service providers to seek new differentiation strategies. Next-generation services can play a major role in your future as a service provider. But first you need to understand the implications for your operational- and business-support systems—in particular your billing system. Learn how to make the most of next-generation services to generate revenue.
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Ever stricter guidelines and policies to ensure the safety of the US food supply mean many food company executives need to assess their methods of minimizing food safety incidents. Existing “one-up” or “one-back” measures no longer go far enough. Make sure you get a wider view: find out how multi-dimensional traceability (MDT) can help collect and analyze information at every step in the food production process chain.
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Internet protocol multimedia subsystem (IMS) is transforming service providers’ networks by helping roll out blended voice-data-content services for wider markets. But before you implement IMS architectures to deliver more complex offerings, you need to know how IMS impacts your IT environment—and to address vital questions related to profitability and pricing, return on investment (ROI), and quality of service.
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Today’s reality for service providers is about dealing with falling voice revenues—and keeping existing customers. Some providers look for alternative sources of revenue via digital content and gaming. But as this happens, the product offerings become more complex, and the role of partners more and more important. Automated partner settlement solutions can play a very crucial part in your partner strategy. Find out how.
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Spreadsheets have boosted the productivity of the financial reporting supply chain for nearly two decades. But in the current age of compliance and legislation, it’s necessary to create controls around the sharing of information—and so spreadsheets can be a liability. How can you control formal, important documents while allowing them to be easily changed and shared? Treat spreadsheets as a software product. Find out how.
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Many companies now combine services in pre-packaged, high-value bundles to reduce customer churn rates. And these bundled services have proved to bring returns. But they also bring complexity—some major service providers may have over 150 product catalogs. Get tips on how to overcome the problems of bundling, and avoid catalog duplication in your product or service offering, with product information management (PIM).
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Mine evaluation studies, including those that support mine water management or environmental compliance, are rife with challenges. The biggest: to quantitatively evaluate alternative approaches for completing projects, and to identify and manage associated risks. Models must be accurate, and yet still take uncertainty into account. Learn how a simulation tool can you help forecast the behavior of complex mining systems.
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Like other successful technology solutions, once proven in an enterprise environment, virtualization spreads quickly. While virtualized resources can address your growing capacity needs, they can also pose significant challenges—with long-term success depending on how well you can manage the virtualized system. Learn about what tools you’ll need in order to provide seamless physical and virtual server management.
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Data security breaches are a common occurrence in business. As such, today’s business climate needs to find better ways to collaborate—without compromising sensitive information. Documents can be kept more secure through best-practice, persistent security strategies that provide end-to-end protection beyond the firewall. By deploying such a strategy, you can securely accelerate business and gain competitive advantage.
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Inventory has been—and continues to be—the lifeblood of the distribution marketplace. While many companies are slow to adopt new strategies and technologies, a growing number of distributors are leveraging inventory practices to improve key metrics like customer retention, gross margins, and inventory turns. Read these research survey findings to find out how you can make better inventory management technology decisions.
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In today’s increasingly competitive global economy, manufacturers must find ways to improve quality while maintaining compliance with government and industry mandates. But in the search for a suitable enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution, many are often left with empty promises. Discover why key capabilities such as traceability are vital in an ERP solution—especially for high-precision manufacturers.
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Three problems are common to most complex environmental modeling efforts: they’re uncertain, multifaceted, and hard to communicate. Overcoming these challenges is especially important when modeling the performance of proposed and existing radioactive waste management facilities. Graphical simulation tools can help represent uncertainties, integrate all aspects of the system, and ease the presentation of complex models.
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Identifying and managing the risks associated with water resource projects is a challenge due to the variables of water systems. To overcome this challenge, you need to compile all available information into a framework that can be used to predict the outcome of alternatives. Find out how a computer simulation model can help water resource engineers improve the financial and environmental performance of their operations.
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When it comes to the business challenges of the distribution industry, one solution does not fit all. Packaged with smart functionality to address key business issues, Infor’s products have successfully fulfilled the needs of distributors worldwide. Learn how its enterprise resource planning (ERP) and supply chain management (SCM) solutions have helped companies improve market position, streamline business processes, and more.
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What does it take to give your clients a better customer experience? While there are many answers to that question, a common answer these days is “through a customer relationship management (CRM) portal.” Learn everything you need to know about CRM portals, including their key characteristics, the different kinds of CRM portals available, who is using them—and most importantly—how they improve customer service.
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To be successful today, companies must form and maintain strong profitable relationships with their customers. Failing to maintain a complete 360-degree view of all customers’ interactions can leave a company in a weakened competitive position. While customer relationship management (CRM) can improve customer interaction, it’s important to know which system will provide you with the best total cost of ownership (TCO).
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With today’s varied communication technologies, there are more ways than ever to stay in touch—and more pressure to respond immediately. This and the need to prioritize multiple messages prove that companies must provide employees with tools suited to managing an increased flow of messages. Learn more about second-generation enterprise communication solutions and how your company can deploy them for maximum benefit.
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In today’s competitive market, creating and maintaining successful customer relationships is vital. That’s why everyone involved with the customer must work together as a team. In most companies, sales, engineering, and marketing often use separate systems—causing communication gaps in customer support. Discover how sharing information through integrated customer relationship management (CRM) can help bridge those gaps.
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Most businesses recognize the strategic importance of customer relationship management (CRM), but some small to medium businesses (SMBs) continue to use basic contact managers or simple spreadsheets to track customers, manage leads, and collaborate on sales. Achieving great results requires more than just installing CRM software. Learn how assessing your business’s CRM maturity level can help build your road map to success.
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In the computing world, a dramatic shift is taking place—enabling a new way for IT departments to manage services. The promise of a leaner, more efficient data center has many businesses clamoring to go virtual. In the rush to virtualize, however, they have forgotten the painful and expensive lessons learned from introducing risk into the physical environment. Find out how detective controls can mitigate those risks.
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Do you think great IT performance is achieved through luck or chance? You can bet real money it’s not. But regardless of how you measure up to high performers, there are a few steps you can take to improve your processes—starting with controlling change. Find out how this simple and significant way to improve performance and processes can help you achieve your operational effectiveness and efficiency objectives.
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Migration can be risky and expensive if handled by inexperienced developers. Seemingly small things can lead to bigger issues and cause performance problems. Hence, the services of a professional migration service provider who has executed similar projects is recommended. Learn about the different ways you can completely migrate from Windows to UNIX and Linux, so that you can make an intelligent, informed decision.
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It seems that these days you need a password for everything. And with so many to remember, it’s no wonder helpdesks are bombarded with calls that tie up the IT department’s resources. Password inflation and the resulting fatigue increasingly frustrate not only end users, but the support teams that deal with the fallout of strict password polices as well. Find out how some businesses are putting an end to this madness.
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While the growing trend among companies today is to implement stronger password policies to increase network security, it seems that many still struggle with finding the most cost-effective solution. Read about what a recent survey of over 600 IT professionals discovered about password policies, and find out why implementing a low-risk, cost-effective, and secure password management solution is just what you need.
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Companies looking to expand their facilities and strategize their way into the marketplace often focus most of their efforts on bottom line results. During the process, they factor in infrastructure costs but often pay little attention on how to control them. Find out how a Web-enabled solution that puts infrastructure management sharply in focus can help you easily access distributed information while helping curb costs.
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As with any project, implementing a new content management system (CMS) for your web site must start with a set of ideas outlining the types of services, capabilities, and desired outcomes you wish to have. Choosing the right Web CMS will undoubtedly take some time, but with the proper guidance—and this handy system pocket guide—you’ll be on your way to a successful implementation and a number of new opportunities.
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There’s no disputing the fact that content management systems (CMS) and service-oriented architecture (SOA) are closely related. From reuse, the ability to loosely couple service and functions, to being able to combine services into a new form, SOA and CMS share many common threads in the enterprise world. Find out how the forces that have made SOA so important today are now doing the same for CMS in web site management.
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While consumer products manufacturers are relatively recent adopters of lean programs, they are already achieving value through a firm commitment to understanding how lean will affect their business processes. Those who are eager to begin the lean journey, however, must learn how to prioritize the metrics that matter, and frequently measure them in order to monitor the effectiveness of the program. Discover why it works.
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As a fast-growing company, you have the same objectives as any business. But you’re probably finding it challenging to gain the control you need to achieve these goals without sacrificing your IT budget. And when you try to achieve control, it’s often at the risk of slowing down your business. Find out how having enterprise-wide visibility of your business processes and activities can put you back in the driver’s seat.
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Compliance with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) is mandatory. As such, businesses must think seriously about their data storage security and the day-to-day encryption management of their customer data. As a merchant or credit card processor, will you be ready when the auditors come knocking? Learn more about the foolproof way that many businesses are passing PCI DSS audits.
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Enterprises are becoming increasingly aware of their fiduciary duty and legal obligation to protect confidential and personal information. As such their IT departments must find a way to effectively secure storage tiers from unauthorized access and viewing. Discover why today’s storage security technology with integrated encryption processing is the type of solution that many IT professionals are turning to.
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This report identifies the major IT issues faced by small to midsized businesses (SMBs), including information silos, lack of IT staff, and outdated business applications. Because they lack the right information to meet customer expectations, SMBs have difficulty reacting quickly to fast-changing market dynamics and growing their revenue. Find out how the elimination of information silos can create a more consistent effective customer experience.
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Industry research shows that one of the most important challenges facing supply chain professionals today is supply chain visibility. As companies scramble to adopt a way to gaining better visibility into their supply chain, they quickly realize that it’s not as simple as it seems. While achieving the right type of visibility is the first step, leveraging it to take quick and effective action is the key to its success.
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Most companies are aware that the buying processes of the world and its buyers are changing, but many have yet to recognize the need to make changes within their own sales force. Often sales professionals don’t have the proper skills or tools needed to be successful. But by integrating the four sales process components, they’ll be able to capture information that can be used to place them high above the competition.
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Years ago, businesses primarily focused on how to compile valuable information that could be shared within the organization. But today’s regulatory requirements have changed all that. By adhering to several fundamental guidelines, organizations can improve data accessibility, and at the same time create a proactive e-discovery environment. Find out why establishing content management principles is critical to your success.
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Complying with current good manufacturing processes (GMPs) is no easy task for food manufacturers. Companies that don t have a solid foundation to help with quality control procedures, audit trails, and product traceability and recall are at an even greater disadvantage. Find out how an enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution can help with food safety compliance—so it's your cookie that crumbles, not your foundation.
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Today, financial services firms are increasingly focusing on organic growth—forcing contact centers to drive cross-selling efforts as well as strengthen customer relationships. But in order to contribute to profitable growth, they must be able to quickly identify and address customers in a personalized fashion and present offers that are highly relevant. Discover how a customer interaction optimization solution can help.
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As the growth of electronic records continues, two major trends in the world of document and content management have now become intertwined. In view of these trends, companies are beginning to assess their current record management practices, and what has resulted is the clear need for electronic records management (ERM). Discover how ERM can provide a cost-effective solution for your growing business.
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For Dillard’s Inc., copying thousands of documents a day was just part of the routine. It soon came to realize, however, that this practice was not only wasteful, but costly too. To manage its documents more efficiently, the company turned to Xerox’s Document Centre multifunction system and DocuShare software. Since installing the new system, Dillard’s has reduced its copying costs from $1.54 (USD) per print to 28 cents.
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High-speed Internet access (HSIA) has become a key technology asset for many hospitality providers around the world. But as a widely regarded bottom-line impacting resource, HSIA must be properly managed in order to prevent negative impacts on a facility’s revenue. Learn how to create a strong, winning HSIA strategy that will increase your guest satisfaction and secure recurring revenue well into the future.
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Billions of dollars are spent each year on business travel worldwide, of which over 5 percent is spent on tracking and reporting expenses. But is it possible to complete an expense report with virtually no human intervention? Now, automated corporate travel and expense management solutions are making this possible—reducing both direct and indirect costs, and providing significant savings to your bottom line.
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With the globalization of business, the rise of virtual offices, and an increase in traveling employees, travel and entertainment (T&E) spend is ever increasing. While business travel is considered a vital function and a cost of doing business, it’s not always seen as a category of spend that can be controlled and reduced. To efficiently manage T&E expenses, the procurement department must be involved. Find out why.
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Although information technology service management (ITSM) is not a new discipline, many organizations have yet to adopt it as a part of their IT service improvement strategy. To be successful, businesses must start by building a custom road map. Read about how focusing on long-term, strategic objectives—including a realized return on investment (ROI)—can greatly improve your IT service delivery and support.
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In the public sector, where it’s often more about process than the business case, recompeting a current outsourcing relationship doesn’t always make the most sense for ensuring continued value. Due to the cost and time investment in the recompete process, it can often cause more problems than solutions. In many cases, outsourcing agreements simply need to be updated to meet changing business requirements. Find out how.
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In the past 10 years, business process and IT outsourcing markets have become globalized, raising some key issues for outsourcing buyers. How can you develop a service delivery model for your business that fully exploits global sourcing opportunities while supporting overall corporate strategies, goals, and principles? By developing a set of integrated capabilities and processes as part of your core competency.
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Empirical evidence demonstrates that the benefits of a distributed IT services model are considerable—yet many companies still resist the change. If IT professionals took the time to fully understand the positive impact of distributed services models on both cost and value, they’d be better equipped to fight organizational resistance and develop a road map for successful change. Find out how you can build yours today.
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A contact center is a mission-critical component of any organization’s operations—regardless of who they service. Yet stakeholders often remain dissatisfied with its performance. In the past, contact centers benefited from advances in information and technologies, yet many companies struggled to determine how they could take advantage of these benefits. Find out how embracing both old and new technologies today can work.
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For many organizations, undertaking IT and business process outsourcing involves everything from finding and assessing providers, to selecting locations, to determining which services are required. But the hardest part of outsourcing occurs after the deal is done. To help businesses ensure consistency in outsourcing governance, there are nine critical factors to keep in mind that can help guarantee its success.
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Collaborative tools are becoming essential to sharing data in today’s office environment. You need a solution that can grow to accommodate new projects and uses—and a storage system that is flexible enough to meet initial demands and adapt to changes. Find out how a multiple-node storage area network (SAN) can maximize the scalability and functionality of your collaboration tools, and ease storage administration.
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To retain the integrity and availability of your key operational data, your server infrastructure must provide effective data backup and recovery. When used with a storage area network (SAN), a data protection manager (DPM) can help increase your storage space, reduce time needed to create backup, and allow for quick recovery of data when disaster strikes. Learn more about this scalable and cost-effective solution.
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Many businesses today rely on telecom expense management (TEM) for mission-critical functions ranging from sales to service to customer relationship management. But despite its overall importance, nearly one-third of a telecom staff’s time is spent on processing orders and invoices. Maximizing the potential of a telecom system requires a data-driven approach. Find out how Map-To-Win is helping businesses do just that.
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The days of telephone switchboard operators are long gone. In today's electronic age, through private branch exchange (PBX) technology, operators have been replaced with Internet protocols that automate the switchboard process. But how can you make the most of your modern phone system when you're not really sure how it works? Discover some tips and tricks that can help you understand—and optimize—your business phone setup.
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In recent years, the BlackBerry smartphone has transitioned from being a small-scale productivity tool to a widely used mission-critical platform. This shift has prompted IT organizations to explore what key technical capabilities and internal process standards are needed to ensure superior performance and availability. Discover why traditional monitoring technologies have failed, and what new approaches have emerged.
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A lean supply chain consists of two major components—lean manufacturing and lean distribution—which focus on satisfying customer demand efficiently, at the lowest cost, with the least amount of waste. But what if your replenishment strategy is your distribution center’s weakest link? To improve customer satisfaction and achieve efficiency and balance, your replenishment strategy must consider all the key variables.
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Getting lean is not a simple task; it requires an aggressive, iterative approach to examine complex tradeoffs. And given the number of variables that characterize a distribution center (DC) and its constituent stock keeping units (SKUs), performing this type of analysis without using the right tools can be daunting—if not impossible. Find out how a tool-based approach can make getting lean easier.
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Earlier-generation spam systems all share a common weakness—they rely heavily on analyzing content that can easily be manipulated by spammers. As such, state-of-the-art antispam systems must go beyond content examination by analyzing messages in the full context in which they are sent. Find out how using a multilayer defense approach can help you successfully eliminate spam and blended threats in your enterprise.
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Every enterprise must be prepared to confront an incident that threatens the security, privacy, or general operations of the company or its customers. But how is it possible to respond to an incident quickly, without interrupting corporate operations? By building an incident response team (IRT) with the right skills, authority, and knowledge to properly deal with a range of known—and unknown incidents. Find out how.
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Like telephony, radio, and television, the Internet has become the ultimate disruptive technology—dramatically changing many aspects of daily life. With each technological revolution, sales professionals have had to learn how to use disruptive technology effectively. Find out why some software firms are now launching their products under the Sales 2.0 banner, and how you can use it to leverage Web 2.0 technology.
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It’s almost a certainty that every company will, at some time or other, face a significant incident. As such, many experts are turning to enterprise incident management. It empowers professionals from a variety of fields to work together to solve problems in a coordinated, disciplined manner so that budgets can be justified and progress can be made quickly. Learn how incident management can benefit your business.
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While there are numerous strategies for dealing with the restoration of functions through a recovery process, there is only one for continuing operations with minimal interruption. It’s called a reserve system, and it’s vital for business continuation. It’s fast and easy to activate, simple to move, low in cost, testable, available, and highly reliable. Find out how it compares to some of the more traditional strategies.
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JM Family Enterprises knew there had to be a more efficient way to organize its picking, packing, and tracking systems. Because of the specific nature of its documents, it was vital they arrive at the correct dealership on time. In order to achieve continued growth, it would need an automated system. Since implementing a warehouse management system (WMS), the company has reduced its paper processing by 80 percent.
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International Marketing Group (IMG) was used to tall orders. And although fulfillment mistakes were rare for the third-party logistics company, any errors that did occur were extremely costly. In order to stay competitive, IMG realized that it would need to increase its fulfillment output. With its new warehouse management system (WMS), IMG’s shipping time has gone from several days to mere hours.
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Just when malware design seemed to have reached a plateau, new and more complex attack techniques have now emerged. For a while, security controls designed to manage spam, viruses, and malware were working, but as a result of this success, the threats they protected against were forced to change. Learn about today’s key security trends and how you can fight against the sophisticated new generation of Internet threats.
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Once a revolutionary concept, data warehouses are now the status quo—enabling IT professionals to manage and report on data originating from diverse sources. But where does log data fit in? Historically, log data was reported on through slow legacy applications. But with today’s log data warehouse solutions, data is centralized, allowing users to analyze and report on it with unparalleled speed and efficiency.
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Customer relationship management (CRM) software can work as a strategic business initiative to help companies accelerate sales while enabling staff to satisfy every customer. But your software is only as good as your business processes, which are good only if employees adhere to them. Monitor your team’s performance with four crucial steps—for a successful CRM implementation, and a successful and growing business.
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As part of their compensation strategy, many businesses today are looking for software products that can manage commissions, sales incentives, and bonus programs. But with the number of companies now offering a variety of viable solutions, it has become even more difficult to know which one to choose. To help you select the right solution for your organization, consider these key evaluation factors first.
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To effectively serve their customers, operations managers need to have visibility as well as control of the delivery and quality of their outsourced components. And because supply chain management is such a critical part of the manufacturing process, it’s important to have the right tools to optimize performance. Find out how real-time collaborative manufacturing is now helping to solve some key manufacturing problems.
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Telephony is a key element of convergence—and the primary reason for the hype surrounding it. But why is telephony so important to convergence? Voice or telephony traffic is very sensitive to latency on the network. The fact that converged networks must provide timely and reliable delivery of voice traffic makes it a key component to a successful converged solution implementation. Learn more about how it all works.
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Is your business tangled in a maze of voice data networking equipment that burdens your staff and is cumbersome to support? If the answer is yes, then you may want to think about network convergence over Internet protocol (IP)—the foundation for IP telephony, unified messaging, and multimedia customer contact centers. Find out more about how your business can benefit from data and voice convergence solutions today.
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Most spam, viruses, phishing, and e-mail denial-of-service attacks can be traced back to a single common cause: lack of e-mail protocol authentication. This lack of authentication means that a receiving mail server cannot reliably verify that a particular message is in fact from the sender it claims to be from, making it harder to distinguish friend from foe. Find out more about new standards that can help.
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While a great deal of attention has been given to protecting companies’ electronic assets from outside threats, organizations must now turn their attention to an equally dangerous situation: data loss from the inside. Given today’s strict regulatory standards, data loss prevention (DLP) has become one of the most critical issues facing executives. Fortunately, effective technical solutions are now available that can help.
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With the number of vehicles worldwide expected to triple in the next few decades, the toll collection market will need to adapt to meet demand. Increasing traffic will make the use of conventional toll plazas unfeasible. Electronic toll collection (ETC) systems can help by supporting multilane, free-flow tolling that can be tailored to specific standards and processes. Find out what you need to know, before ETC passes you by.
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The media industry is undergoing radical and rapid change driven by liberalization, privatization, and digitization. Broadcasting is no longer highly regulated, but is ever more dynamic and competitive—and the logistical challenges of production planning for TV and radio ever more complex. Implement a composite resource planning and scheduling solution to maximize your equipment, facilities, and employees.
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Today, all retailers that process, store, or transmit cardholder data have a fiduciary responsibility to protect that data. As such, they must comply with a diverse range of regulations and industry mandates. However, many retailers struggle with the task of implementing the proper policies and controls. Discover how log management and intelligence (LMI) can help you simplify and accelerate the compliance process.
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Understanding the full scope of risk in today’s complex business environment is a must for achieving compliance with governmental mandates and industry regulations. However, many companies have a limited perception of risk and struggle to make compliance an enterprise-wide, integrated process. Compliance is no longer a one-time isolated project; it’s an ongoing effort—and you’re just tens steps away from discovering why.
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For years, manufacturers have been driven by sales forecasts and the need to maximize production efficiency at every level of operation. But in order to be successful, manufacturers must look toward adopting a lean mentality. While lean techniques are more easily applied to some manufacturing styles than others, new software tools are now able to deliver the benefits of lean to both high-mix and low-volume operations.
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For food-service manufacturers, effective trade-spending and contract management are essential to stimulate demand, and to reward distributors and operators for achieving volume and growth objectives. The execution of such programs, however, is often a painful process for all parties involved. Find out how you can manage the entire bill-back life cycle, from initiation to settlement, and minimize error-prone manual intervention.
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University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics (UWHC) had never suffered from a shortage of data sources. But the executives felt it wasn’t effectively using this data to make decisions—leading the university to seek a solution that would help it rise above the data confusion. With an automated dashboard system from ActiveStrategy, the UWHC has aggregated its data and can now focus on issues that will help move its strategy forward.
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In the past, full efficiency was almost impossible for most manufacturing sites thanks to lack of integration between plant systems and business systems. But that’s changing now, with the advent of enterprise service-oriented architecture (SOA). SOA allows you to change and improve your processes without expensive IT integration projects. Learn about the business opportunities SOA can create for you.
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Survey says: trade promotion spending is up, but the majority of consumer package goods (CPG) companies aren’t spending wisely. Reuse of same old seasonal promotions, supply not meeting demand, and invoice errors also contribute to a decreased return on investment (ROI). Trade promotion management (TPM) can provide visibility into the life cycle of each promotion—so you can provide better service to your customers.
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Developing business acumen isn’t easy, but it is fundamental to business alignment. What does that mean exactly? It means understanding what it takes for a business to make money, and it involves the financial literacy of how strategies, decisions, and actions impact the bottom line. Through classroom-based training, your managers and employees can learn how these connections are made to the business. Find out more.
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There’s a war going on, and many companies are fighting it—and losing. It’s a war to attract and retain great talent. While projected economic growth is fueling demand, companies of all sizes are finding it difficult to get and keep skilled employees. What can be done to stop this talent crisis? Organizations must make talent management a top priority. Find out how this simple tactic can lead your organization to victory.
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Organizations today, in the face of increased global competition, need educated managers and employees who can solve problems, understand complex issues, and learn new skills quickly. This means that training organizations need to provide learning opportunities that effectively address these issues in ways that produce high retention rates. But if lectures don’t work, then what does? Enter discovery learning.
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DIRECTV is one of the largest broadcast satellite providers in the US. Faced with increased competition, the company decided to transform its supply chain by synchronizing its material requirements with its main equipment providers and automating its return materials authorization (RMA) process. With the help of SAP Solutions and Services, DIRECTV has improved its processes and reduced nonqualified returns by 20 percent.
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In the face of shrinking budgets and increasing demands, public sector agencies must transform themselves into providers of value-added services. By developing strategic human capital management (HCM) operations, they can align and engage every employee in the pursuit of organizational mission delivery. The most cost-effective approach to this challenge is through the integration of a comprehensive HCM solution.
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Managing growth is a monumental undertaking—and one that Valero Energy Corporation has mastered. But as one of the largest oil refinery companies in North America, with revenues exceeding $90 billion (USD), the company needed to find a way to fit new applications into its existing infrastructure in a quick and cost-effective manner. By switching to SAP’s NetWeaver platform, Valero saved $480,000 (USD) in the first month.
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As supply chains continue to grow in size and complexity, companies are focusing more of their energies on managing supply chain risk. While the topic is gaining prominence in boardrooms, many companies do not yet fully comprehend the risks they face. But understanding risk is the first step to managing it—and using the right IT tools can help. Learn what steps you can take to better address your supply chain risks.
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A common issue facing small to medium business (SMB) manufacturers today is finding out how to increase revenue and grow business without significantly adding staff. With larger firms able to compete by drawing upon greater financial resources, the SMB manufacturer is at a distinct disadvantage. Find out about five ways a lean strategy for small business can help you maximize resource use and minimize overhead costs.
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The procure-to-pay (P2P) environment has become a major challenge for companies adopting global sourcing and distribution as a strategic component of their business. And the increase in global trade has shifted their focus from manufacturing efficiency to global supply chain efficiency. Discover what the current P2P gaps in global commerce management solutions are and what can be done to deliver optimal P2P capabilities.
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A recent study by Jupiter Research found that e-mail marketers using Web analytics click-stream data to generate targeted e-mail campaigns produce an impressive average click-through rate of 14 percent, and a conversion rate of 3.9 percent. Can your business claim numbers this high? If not, find out how you can with Web analytics tools that will help you gain insight on your subscribers’ behaviors while increasing sales.
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As one of North America’s premier producers of duck products, Maple Leaf Farms knew the importance of delivering fresh, quality goods to its customers. But in order to streamline its manufacturing, shipping, and reporting processes, it would need to invest in an enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution. Since implementing ERP, the company has profited from greater inventory control and improved customer service.
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As one of the largest gear manufacturers in India, Sona Koyo knew that in order to retain its competitive edge, changes to its legacy systems would be required. On average, Sona’s employees were wasting 5 percent of their time redoing paperwork and tracking activities. Since integrating a business process management (BPM) system, Sona’s employees have cut down their tracking time down to zero hours with minimal efforts.
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As an international leader, the American Management Association (AMA) was focused on maximizing the advantages of instructor-led training, while minimizing its disadvantages. Before adding a blended learning offering to its core business, AMA needed to define its strategic targets, and turned to Eedo Knowledgeware for help. Since launching its blended learning offering, AMA has greatly increased value to its customers.
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Lufthansa, one of the world’s leading airlines, wanted to improve the way it trained its Miles & More loyalty program customer service staff. Traditionally, training was a five-day, classroom-based workshop, but the company now wanted more flexibility in its training approach. By moving to a blended learning content management system (LCMS), Lufthansa experienced a 65 percent savings on course development costs.
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The reasons most enterprises upgrade to an IP PBX system range from wanting to replace outdated equipment, to saving money, to adding needed functionality, to keeping up with growth. To evaluate competing offers from both established and new vendors, you need to learn about the market, background information, technology, standards, and the features and services that are critical and important to enterprises. Learn more.
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In the past, training was seen as a preventive action or default activity. Then learning came into the forefront as a proactive initiative that was more strongly linked to enhancing performance. This radical change from training to learning has created a new awareness of measurement that chief executive officers (CEO) need to take note of. Discover the 7 key learning indicators that can get you started on the right path.
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Look at any office around the world and you’ll see how the workplace has changed dramatically in the last decade. Rapidly changing technology coupled with geographical dispersion has meant that organizations need to be more flexible than ever. Workers too have had to face this constant change and need to retool themselves to not only adapt, but survive. Discover how collaborative technology is becoming their saving grace.
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To understand the meaning and value of dynamic content, you must first look at the various approaches to e-learning. Traditional e-learning hard-bakes content into static material, causing updates to become a very lengthy process. Dynamic content strategies, however, delivered through evolving learning content management (LCM) technologies, provide efficient, error-free content revision. Find out how LCM can benefit you.
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Euromadi was looking to automate its business processes and increase effectiveness. With hundreds of suppliers all over the world, it needed a system that could help manage the relationships of more than 220 associate companies. By integrating business process management (BPM) with an enterprise content management (ECM) system, Euromadi has increased productivity and reduced data input and maintenance by 30 percent.
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JACIE, a non-profit corporation, was looking for an application that would enable a more effective hospital accreditation process, as well as provide the ability to process complex medical files. With the help of Polymita, JACIE created a decision support system that could centralize access to important information and manage an unlimited number of certification processes simultaneously—without increasing the resources.
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Purchasing an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system is a huge investment for any business—and knowing whether or not you’re buying the right system for the best price isn’t easy. Before meeting with your ERP vendor to negotiate the contract, there are a few important things you should take into account. Discover ten tips that can help you reach an agreement on pricing and service levels quickly and painlessly.
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There’s no doubt that competing in today’s global marketplace is tough. In order to survive, organizations must become more aware of what’s going on throughout their supply chain. While many realize the importance of supply chain visibility, some businesses aren’t sure exactly how to achieve it. Find out the five things you’ll need to put together a visibility solution that’ll give you timely, accurate, and useful data.
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Customer relationship management (CRM) is being adopted by businesses worldwide. But the key question for many executives as they create their CRM strategy: how can they gain strategic advantage if their competitors are implementing these same CRM systems? The answer: through integration. Find out how leveraging your existing information assets can turn CRM from a tactical project into a key strategic initiative.
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In today’s fast-paced business environment, providing customers with timely support when problems occur is critical. But in order to do so, information must be readily available throughout the enterprise. By integrating your customer support, defect tracking development, and knowledge management systems, your business will benefit from improved customer satisfaction and retention, as well as increased staff productivity.
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The world of business is constantly evolving, often making it difficult for midsize businesses to keep track of their leads and contacts. While larger companies have benefited from increased efficiency with sales automation (SA) and customer relationship management (CRM) solutions, midsized enterprises haven’t been as fortunate—until now. Learn about their challenges and discover how SA and CRM software have helped.
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Sant Joan de Déu Hospital is one of the most important hospitals in Spain, and specializes in pediatrics and women’s medicine. Because of its status, it needed to find a way to automate its internal processes and develop a corporate portal for patients and health professionals. Since deploying a business process management (BPM) solution, Sant Joan has increased accessibility and created autonomy within its departments.
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When it comes to US Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) compliance, safe change actions are critical. But what’s the best approach for file integrity monitoring and change detection? While there are many solutions on the market, continuous file integrity monitoring (CFIM) is winning over the competition worldwide. Find out how CFIM can handle your operational control monitoring requirements.
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If the auditors came knocking, would you be prepared? When they do come, you’ll need to be ready to answer some tough questions regarding your change management processes. Implementing and assessing change management controls for Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) compliance in the US can be a very expensive and time consuming process. Find out how you can reduce the SOX burden by improving the way you manage your change processes.
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The University of Maryland School of Medicine had already experienced VMware technology as a way to consolidate its servers; what it didn’t realize was that the company’s solution could also address its disaster recovery needs. By combining two storage technologies—creating a common storage area network (SAN)—the school has reduced unexpected downtime from hours to seconds and has saved thousands of dollars in hardware costs.
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As the Microsoft Exchange environment continues to grow, building and managing the underlying IT infrastructure becomes increasingly difficult for Exchange administrators. Adding more and more storage can lead to frequent system downtime and slower response times. Discover seven ways your administrators can spend less time on day-to-day Microsoft Exchange management—while planning for future growth in the process.
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Delivering full-service home care services to over 1.5 million people in the US was challenging enough for Apria Healthcare. Added to that was the need to meet government and industry regulations and maintain the highest standards of skills and knowledge. To overcome these challenges, Apria implemented a learning content management system (LCMS) that has helped the company deliver the rapid training it was looking for.
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Kadaster, a national mapping and cadaster agency, was looking for an improved method for training its staff of 2,600. The company realized that effective training would be critical to its success, so it turned to a blended e-learning solution that would allow easy interaction with its current systems. With over 1,200 staff already using the new system, Kadaster is well on its way to reaching its training objectives.
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El Hospital Sant Joan de Déu, uno de los hospitales más importantes de España, recurrió a Polymita para crear su web corporativa, una intranet personalizada para cada uno de sus trabajadores y automatizar sus procesos internos. Las soluciones BPM y ECM de Polymita llevaron al hospital a ganar el Premio al Mejor Portal del Empleado, y a lograr una gestión unificada de personas, procesos y contenidos.
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The pressure to reduce costs, increase network performance, and improve productivity has been a constant battle for IT and telecommunications groups alike. While new technologies have emerged to help solve some of these requirements, in many cases they have proven to be inefficient and expensive. Find out how Layer 2 link balancing technologies can help your organization build a faster, smarter wide area network (WAN).
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Euromadi, una central de compras y servicios y miembro de la Central Europea EMD, buscaba automatizar sus procesos de negocio para aumentar su eficacia, específicamente con proveedores de diferentes partes del mundo, y gestionar las relaciones entre más de 220 empresas asociadas. Para abordar las cuestiones, Polymita sugirió una plataforma integrada de BPM y ECM basada en sus productos.
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La corporación no lucrativa JACIE buscaba una aplicación que le permitiera agilizar el proceso de acreditación y el procesamiento de expedientes para varios centros médicos en Europa. Asimismo, requería que todos los usuarios tuvieran acceso a la comunicación y a un sistema de soporte a las decisiones. Con la ayuda de Polymita, JACIE logró, entre otros beneficios, centralizar el acceso a la información y aumentar su capacidad productiva.
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Many companies spend an inordinate amount of time and money ensuring their documentation meets regulatory standards. But in order to streamline the document submission process in a cost-effective manner, companies should adopt document management technologies coupled with collaborative document transformation tools. Learn how these tools can help your company accelerate its submission-compliant document workflows.
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Is it possible for a business to ensure uninterrupted, secure, and high-performance access to network-based business applications and web sites? Yes. With network load balancers, user requests are evenly distributed among available servers so that individual servers do not become overwhelmed. Learn about the basics of load balancing and how it can improve the performance and security of your business applications.
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Small to medium businesses (SMBs) can benefit from the expansive use of IT just as much as their larger counterparts. And in many cases they have to, because of their interactions not only with remote users, but with suppliers and customers as well. To this end, an SMB’s IT infrastructure needs to be resilient and secure. To ensure end-to-end care of data assets, businesses need to adopt the right strategy. Find out how.
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As the global marketplace continues to become more competitive, enterprises are struggling with how to retain their competitive edge. While many have transferred their databases to internet protocol (IP) to replace outdated systems, some have yet to upgrade their phone systems as part their strategy. Discover how migrating to voice over IP (VoIP) as part of an overall telecommunications strategy can help your business.
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Aon Corporation’s business is part of a highly regulated industry that maintains strict licensing requirements. With these constantly changing requirements, the company realized its outdated procedures and processes were no longer adequate and that a learning management system (LMS) was what it needed. The company turned to Cornerstone OnDemand for help, and since adopting LMS, Aon has achieved 100 percent compliance.
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While today’s regulatory environment poses significant challenges to businesses, it should be looked at as an opportunity—one that turns compliance efforts into capital gains. You can accomplish this with an internal audit of your change management policies. This checklist will help your business prepare for a high-level process audit while providing tools your IT managers can use for maximum results.
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The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS) was created by credit card companies to protect cardholder data, ensuring that merchants and service providers maintain the highest degree of information security. However, many retailers are still questioning its effectiveness and necessity in light of the high cost of compliance. Read this white paper to find out what this cost really means for your organization.
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While most organizations have some integrated sales and marketing (ISM) elements in place, few have adopted a comprehensive approach. To achieve this, they must identify an ideal goal, establish a supply chain strategy, and then work methodically toward that objective. While the appropriate path to achieve ISM differs from company to company, there are a few key steps that can help simplify the process.
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The blade server market is one of many fast growing in the IT industry, helping large businesses resolve issues with power, cooling, and space constraints in their datacenters. But what about the mid-market customer whose needs are very different? Hewlett Packard (HP) addresses these needs with the launch of its new HP BladeSystem c3000—a complete blade server and storage solution designed with the mid-market in mind.
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As businesses become increasingly dependent on technology, service quality becomes more important. With so much riding on IT’s performance, a new service-centric model has emerged: service lifecycle management (SLcM). Based on the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) principles, SLcM provides a framework that enables organizations to optimize business outcomes and facilitate continual service improvement.
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Utilities are under intense pressure to improve corporate performance despite increasing costs, regulatory pressures, and enhanced customer expectations. The need to supplement existing cash flows with the low-risk, low-investment, high-impact option of plugging revenue leakage has never been more critical. Find out how you can plug revenue leakage by using technology to make improvements across the utility revenue chain.
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Unlike most other business, transmission and distribution companies do not have the flexibility to adjust their prices independently based on demand-supply dynamics. Given the practice of performance-based rate-making, these companies must continually strive to reduce cost. To achieve this, supply chain managers must create a blueprint of their processes by systematically analyzing their supply chain practices.
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Customer information system (CIS) projects in the utilities industry have earned a reputation for being disruptive to business, very expensive, and always behind schedule. As a mission-critical cash register for utilities, it pays to examine CIS more closely. Learn about the perspectives on strategic CIS assessment frameworks and how a structured solution can help you improve the agility of CIS without a huge investment.
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Founded in 1985, Taiwan-based In-Win manufactures desktop PC chassis, server chassis, and power supplies. With channels covering Europe, America, and Asia, In-Win’s multiple sites were complicating its internal work processes—and increasing its communication costs. The solution: a document management system (DMS). Find out how In-Win used a DMS to automate workflows and increase work efficiency by a whopping 80 percent.
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Production lines and distribution centers have optimum target levels for leanness, but reaching these levels can be difficult. By implementing LeadTime Technology (LTT), manufacturers benefit from leaner inventories, greater customer service levels, and increased economic profit. Find out what the five most important points on LLT and lean operations are and how applying these tools can work to your advantage.
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Given intense competition and thin margins, more and more retailers are struggling to execute their corporate vision at the store level. Unfortunately, many attempt to tackle these industry realities without a strategy or supporting system. As a result, many leading retailers are turning to advanced workforce management (WFM) solutions to ensure proper staffing levels, combat employee turnover, and reduce payroll costs.
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Today’s configuration management tools focus on collecting and reporting statistics, logs, and failures, but fail to address the need for analyzing this data to determine best practices for improving efficiencies. That’s why Configuresoft has developed software that enables you to link core systems configuration and change management disciplines into actionable analytics. Find out how it can work for you.
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Canadian manufacturers are getting squeezed. Challenged by a rising Canadian dollar, forced to hold the line on prices in the US market, pressured by customer demand for lower prices, better quality, and quicker service, these manufacturers need a way to retain their competitive edge and increase bottom-line profitability. Find out why product data management (PDM) is a solution you can turn to in these challenging times.
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Microsoft Visual SourceSafe (VSS) is a popular tool for the Windows platform that offers essential version control features and helps promote team collaboration. However, while it performs certain functions well, it’s not optimized for remote access, lacks many critical security features, and suffers from stability problems. Find out why many developers are now switching from VSS to SourceAnywhere Standalone.
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When implementing customer relationship management (CRM), organizations often lose sight of their customers and focus on efficiency gains instead of looking at the bigger picture from a customer perspective. But organizations that can build a business-centric system flexible enough to quickly respond to changing customer needs will have a sustainable competitive advantage and enjoy profitable growth for years to come.
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A business phone system is only as effective as its implementation. Despite its streamlined architecture, installing a voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) telephone system can present some challenges. The key to a successful rollout is a well-planned, phased approach. Following these 10 steps can help you lay the foundation for a system overhaul as well as streamline your business communications for many years to come.
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Construction companies often use a combination of outdated, paper-based, and software tools to manage their projects—which puts them at a severe disadvantage. Online project management, however, can provide you with a more efficient method to manage projects. Find out why these businesses are shifting to owner-centric solutions, and discover what main factors you should consider before implementing a web-based tool.
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Tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) helps ensure that projects are delivered on time and within budget, and creates a system for improving accountability. Once KPIs are established, there needs to be a way to easily track this data—otherwise it will become an arduous task that may be done improperly. Learn how leveraging integrated project management software can help drive your business process improvements.
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What’s the difference between the right enterprise resource planning (ERP) system and the wrong one? What it’ll do to your bottom line. Knowing which questions to ask when researching your options, however, can help mitigate this risk. Here are five essential criteria that should top your list when evaluating ERP vendors. Find out how exercising due diligence can help you choose a system that won’t drain your IT budget.
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According to Web services provider IronPort, over 92 billion spam messages are sent around the world daily. While it may seem like an uphill battle, several strategies are available that can help. To combat these threats, many organizations are implementing new technologies to secure their inboxes by blocking unsolicited messages. Discover what other tactics your business can adopt to help e-mail deliverability.
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It’s an inescapable, undisputable fact that most organizations have conflict between IT security and IT operations. Having been given two distinctive—yet potentially contradictory—goals, in a sense they were destined to be at odds with one another. What does it take to bridge the gap between these two teams to achieve compliance? Can standardized processes and software tools help (or hinder) this effort? Find out here.
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Choosing the right professional services automation (PSA) solution may be one of the most important decisions a billable services organization will ever have to make. It’s a decision that can clearly impact your company’s bottom line, so it’s crucial that you get all the facts—up front. When talking with PSA vendors, knowing what questions to ask in order to make an informed selection is vital. Read here to find out why.
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With the growing significance of services to the bottom line, it’s never been more important to effectively monitor, measure, and manage your services business. Knowing which key performance indicators (KPI) can help drive success and contribute to your bottom line is essential. But with over 150 KPIs available, where do you start? Discover how these few small key improvements can help your service business performance.
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Effective resource management not only impacts profitability, it generates loyalty that translates to competitive advantages in recruiting and retaining the best people. System inefficiencies, however, often make it difficult for businesses to find time to improve their resource management processes or upgrade their systems. Find out how these five steps can help your business in its resource management planning efforts.
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The competitive nature of the financial services industry today and the changing landscape of the customer approach to investing puts an onus on suppliers to consider how well they are dealing with customers’ business transactions. In order to provide better customer service—while at the same time improving operations—these organizations must invest in a system that allows real-time visibility of the entire process.
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Managing a newly deployed voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) integration project is not as easy as some IT managers believe it to be. Delivering voice traffic over the IP network is time-consuming, and requires the right tools and a proper budget. To fully understand the costs associated with IP telephony implementation, businesses must first conduct a thorough evaluation of their management options—prior to deployment.
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The number of leads captured from conventional channels is steadily declining due to the increasing importance of web sites. While Web analytic and e-mail marketing solutions provide useful data, they do nothing to capture leads. If there was a service that could prospect all your web site visitors, would you use it? Find out how LEADSExplorer is helping businesses convert their web visitors into potential leads.
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Ensuring customer quality is the key to customer loyalty and retention. When a company treats its customers like it doesn’t know them, it’s bad for business. This occurs when companies work with disparate data—using one database for sales, another for marketing, and a third for operations. Developing a real-time solution that provides a single view of the customer is by far the best way to increase customer satisfaction.
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For a decade, IndustryWeek and the Manufacturing Performance Institute (MPI) Census of Manufacturers have provided data to US manufacturers. This year, MPI fielded a similar survey in Canada, offering an intriguing look into the differences between the Canadian and US manufacturing landscapes. This executive summary presents combined data from these surveys, aimed at helping manufacturers meet future challenges.
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This second annual survey of the warehousing and distribution industry, conducted by the Manufacturing Performance Institute (MPI) Census of Manufacturers, explores the metrics, management practices, and business concerns of over 200 US warehouse and distribution facilities. This data is presented in easy-to-understand tables and charts, and may be useful for companies currently facing distribution center challenges.
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Human resources (HR) systems have been around for many years, providing robust and efficient solutions for companies of all sizes. When properly designed, implemented, and maintained, these systems allow companies to engage and nurture their employees and critical processes. When these systems are neglected, however, the result is a loss of competitive edge, increased employee dissatisfaction, and unnecessary costs.
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Recent surveys have shown that 76 percent of respondents rated customer loyalty as extremely or very important to top management. Many companies feel they exercise due diligence in this area, but as global competition increases and markets mature, they’ll have to go that extra mile. To better measure customer’s attitudes and behaviors, companies must make loyalty management an integral part of their business strategy.
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Globalization, rising costs, and high customer expectations create serious challenges in supply chain management (SCM). Given these factors, transportation management now plays a key, strategic role in driving supply chain value. Learn how moving goods quickly and predictably through the global supply chain can help you achieve consistency and increase visibility—while supporting best practices across the enterprise.
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Manufacturers today face increasing pressures to boost revenues and secure profitability. But for them to realize the full financial value of these initiatives, they must invest in a system that can quickly and easily implement or consolidate core business applications. With QAD on-demand, businesses can reduce IT complexity and costs with simplified deployment options and complete application management alternatives.
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Many companies struggle to adapt to their ever-changing workforce, as employees start the job and then leave for better offers. Competition is fierce—and retaining highly skilled job candidates has never been more difficult. In order to achieve their business goals and stay competitive, many companies are turning to integrated talent management (ITM). Find out how you can get started on your ITM development plan today.
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Why choose on-demand when there are so many integrated software solutions on the market? Because on-demand packages provide a number of benefits that can help IT focus on innovation and creating true business value, rather than dealing with network headaches. But along with the benefits there are a number of challenges. Read more about these challenges and how you can manage your on-demand implementation project.
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Customer relationship management (CRM) has become increasingly popular, and provides enormous benefits to businesses that adopt it. So why does it encounter so much “what’s-in-it-for-me” resistance from frontline salespeople? Often, the reason is because they view CRM as strictly a management tool. With Oracle CRM On Demand, however, you can minimize data entry—allowing your salespeople to spend more time selling.
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Soudronic AG’s incoming order confirmations were getting out of hand and finding misfiled critical documents was increasingly laborious. Before implementing OCR for AnyDoc, documents were printed and filed in binders, together with supporting documentation. With AnyDoc’s optical character recognition solution, Soudronic can retrieve its documents more quickly, and its labor and storage costs have been reduced.
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PSCU Financial Services mediates disputes between its customers and their credit card companies. Many of these disputes require multiple pages of documentation as evidence—which need to be scanned. Its scanning process was draining its resources and PSCU knew it was time to get automated. Since deploying OCR for AnyDoc (an optical character recognition solution), PSCU has realized an annual savings of $125,000 (USD).
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A combination of manual data entry processes and the sheer volume of invoices it received every day was causing Northeast Utilities major backlogs in processing—as well as added payroll expense. To automate its processes and free up its staff resources, the company adopted AnyDocINVOICE. Since its implementation, Northeast has reduced its backlog by more than 90 percent and saved $240,000 (USD) in labor costs.
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Sykes-Health Plan Service Bureau (SHPS) was growing and needed a solution that could boost its productivity and deliver results to its clients. Processing thousands of health- and benefit-related forms was a major component of its business, and as such, employees faced ever-increasing workloads. To ease the load, SHPS implemented AnyDoc’s optical character recognition (OCR) solution and drastically reduced labor costs.
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Microsoft Windows Storage Server 2003 is frequently deployed in small or midsize applications. And while many customers view it as an excellent small network-attached storage (NAS) solution, they often move to larger, proprietary file server appliances when their needs expand beyond its capacity. This approach, however, adds more expense and complexity. But with Sanbolic’s Melio Cluster, capacity can be added as needed.
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Microsoft System Management Server 2003 and Operations Manager 2005 storage monitoring solutions provide the necessary tools to centrally manage and monitor Windows client and server infrastructure. Now, Sanbolic’s LaScala clustered volume manager and related products offer a complementary toolkit which enables administrators to centrally configure and assign storage assets in a storage area network (SAN) environment.
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Administrative errors can and do happen, but native tools do little to aid administrators in this area. While Microsoft’s Group Policy Management Console (GPMC) is a great tool for managing group policy, it has its limitations. Discover how to implement best-practice approaches to help successfully extend the deployment of group policy to your server security settings, while reducing costs and minimizing errors.
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Effective IT disaster recovery (DR) and planning is essential for every business. However, IT environments have become so complex that safeguarding the business against disasters can present some major challenges. One way to improve your business disaster recovery planning is by pre-testing DR scenarios using network simulation. Find out how a simulation testing solution can help you better protect your business.
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Company employees, business partners, and customers all demand secure and low-response-time access to business applications—from wherever they are. While SAP addresses this need through its enterprise service-oriented architecture (SOA) solution, when security features are added the application response time is slower. So what’s the best way to test global SOA deployments? Read this white paper to find out.
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UreSil, a manufacturer of specialized health care products, feared its legacy manufacturing resource planning (MRP) software was hindering efficiency and compliance. The Sage ERP X3 enterprise resource planning (ERP) came to the rescue, and after a formal ERP training program, full implementation required only one week. All processes, including tracking and inventory, are now streamlined, flexible—and compliant.
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Are you on top of data security compliance? Is your source code secure? Are you looking for a new approach that can help ensure these things are taken care of? With SourceAnyware Hosted solution—which provides 128-bit SSL encryption—your data is protected and your source code is secured from attacks. Find out how SourceAnywhere can help you lower total cost of ownership and improve your development team productivity.
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As businesses become increasingly dependent on the effective delivery of IT services over global networks, technologies that optimize application performance over wide area networks (WANs) become more competitive. But how do you know which WAN to choose when there are so many solutions on the market? By learning about WAN best practices and principles, and by making comparative evaluations of competing vendors’ offerings.
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The nature of software is that it constantly evolves, requiring regular updates throughout its lifetime as new features are introduced. But managing and implementing these changes is often left to experienced administrators who are often overwhelmed with other projects. Find out how moving to a delegated administration model can help your business improve its administrative productivity, system availability, and security.
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Increasing user productivity is an ongoing challenge for many companies. While an abundance of online information and applications is available to them, facilitating fast and secure access to the information can be a complex task. An integrated provisioning and single sign-on (SSO) solution provides secure access to the network from the moment an employee starts the job—enabling full productivity from day one.
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The threats faced by small to medium businesses (SMBs) are multidimensional and must be handled differently from big enterprises, given the smaller number of personnel dedicated to look after them. The ideal security software for SMBs looking to protect their information systems would be the combination of antivirus, antispam, and content security solutions, combined with a powerful network firewall. Find out why it works.
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When you connect to the Internet, you do so through the Windows Socket (Winsock) layer. While this layer is an integral part of the Windows operating system and acts as an interface between your computer and the Net, it cannot distinguish the difference between good traffic and bad. MicroWorld Winsock Layer (MWL) technology helps by sitting on the Winsock layer and analyzing the traffic—before it gets to your computer.
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What do you do with a growing number of customers and not enough office space for workers? Health eConnex, a health care claims-processing service, found the solution in optical character recognition (OCR) for AnyDoc Software’s remote verification feature. Now employees telework, processing 75,000 claims a day with 99.5 percent accuracy. Learn how the solution helped make manual data entry a thing of the past.
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Food-borne illnesses are recognized as a significant public health problem in the US today. As such, food inspection and safety administrators have implemented Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP) systems regulations. Without the proper software system, however, complying with HACCP requirements can be difficult. With Sage ERP X3 process manufacturing enterprise resource planning (ERP), it doesn’t have to be.
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Today, more and more companies are purchasing goods from overseas. But once those goods are on the water, many companies find it difficult to keep track of where they are at any given time. Ineffective container management leads to extra costs, but with Sage ERP X3’s import tracking functionality, business functions are tied together in a single database—enabling real-time access to information and improving productivity.
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CTS Cement Corporation, a manufacturer of professional-grade construction cement, operates out of 15 facilities across the US. As the company grew, it needed to address the inefficiencies of its accounts payable invoice processing, which was being keyed manually into two different systems. With this lack of connectivity between systems, CTS turned to AnyDocINVOICE solution and now indexes nearly 2,500 invoices per month.
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Bluecross Blueshield of South Carolina (BCBSSC) had been using optical character recognition (OCR) technology for many years, but wanted to improve productivity by automating its claims processing system from document and data capture to document storage. By integrating AnyDocCLAIM into its existing automated system, BCBSSC has increased its processing speed and averages more than 400 claims per hour.
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Golden Artist Colors knew that operating its business with several stand-alone software packages would no longer cut it. To streamline the flow of information throughout its facilities, it felt the time had come to invest in a true enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution. Sage ERP X3 offered Golden the most functionality for the best price, and since implementing it, Golden has increased on-time shipments by 15 percent.
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In a 2006 SAP survey, 93 percent of respondents experienced data management issues during their most recent projects. The problem: many organizations believe that they are using master data, when in fact what they are relying on is data that is dispersed throughout the enterprise. Discover the importance of master data and how the ideal master data management (MDM) solution can help your business get it under control.
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The amount of malware that is being released around the world is increasing at an alarming rate. To combat these cyber-crimes, new layers of protection are needed that take advantage of automating the entire malware protection cycle—from sample collection, analysis and classification, to remediation. By combing automation with Panda’s Collective Intelligence, targeted attacks can be detected more quickly and efficiently.
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For advocacy firms, safeguarding client information is of paramount importance. One key concern for these law firms is the presence of vulnerabilities in their networks due to the general lack of user awareness in information security issues. While there are a number of solutions on the market to combat threats, MicroWorld’s suite of security solutions provide highly advanced protection that businesses can rely on.
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Spam has become a global epidemic. And because it is constantly evolving and mutating, spam makes it difficult to separate good e-mails from the bad. While most mail servers have mechanisms to combat spam, they often require third party solutions to eradicate spam from the network. Find out more about the shortcomings of established filtering methods, and how one community-based approach to filtering can work.
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Have you ever received a call from your existing long-distance phone company asking you to switch to its service and wondered why they are calling? Chances are the integrity of its data is so poor that the company has no idea who many of its customers are. The fact is, many businesses suffer from this same problem. The solution: implement a master data management (MDM) system that uses an accurate data matching process.
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Ensuring the quality, accuracy, and security of customer data has never been more important than it is today. The growing potential for privacy breaches and tighter compliance regulations have created unique challenges and responsibilities for many data providers. Here we discuss some of the key privacy issues surrounding data management, and how partnering with a provider of master data management (MDM) software can help.
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Duke Realty Corporation—the largest publicly traded office and industrial property owner in the US—needed to find a more organized way to process the nearly 20,000 invoices its thirteen locations handled each month. To ensure data was properly captured and processed, Duke Realty turned to AnyDocINVOICE solution and has since been able to create a faster, more visible invoice process that uses 50 percent less staff.
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More than 95,000 documents arrive annually at Baton Rouge’s Department of
Finance in the form of invoices, purchase orders, confirmations, and more. In an effort to get this vast amount of documents under control, it sought an automated indexing solution that would eliminate the need for filing cabinets. Since deploying BROKERit, the department has increased productivity and realized an annual savings of $58,000 (USD).
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In order to meet the increasing need to extend services around the world, companies must be able to consolidate data centers and business applications while adhering to compliance rules and security regulations. While SAP addresses these business needs through its enterprise service-oriented architecture (SOA) solutions, the question of how to test these global enterprise SOA deployments still needs to be answered.
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Virtual private networks (VPNs) are optimized to perform specific functions within the remote access architecture. But deploying the often complex mix of approaches for managed and unmanaged devices can affect your security. Blue Coat RA provides a new approach that bridges the gap between traditional and endpoint security technologies—helping businesses meet remote access requirements in a simple, cost effective manner.
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Businesses today are increasingly committed to Web-enabled applications as a cost-effective way of delivering critical business solutions. But as more and more businesses follow suit, it becomes increasingly apparent that better performance and availability across the Internet must be realized by the early movers in order to maintain their lead. With the deployment of advanced products and services, this can be achieved.
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Blade computing is a new computing architecture that provides a highly dense, scalable, and powerful flexible platform to support businesses’ software needs. Blade architecture was once used for simple server consolidation, but it has now become a way of managing IT assets, which provides significant business benefits. Find out how a blade system can benefit your company while optimizing your existing infrastructure.
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Today, more business than ever is done in branch offices or at remote sites, but very few IT resources are actually hosted there. To reduce costs, businesses often consolidate applications—but consolidation can lead to poor performance. With the right solution, however, acceleration techniques—like bandwidth management and protocol optimization—can be properly dispersed to remote applications, helping increase performance.
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According to Symantec, 40 percent of malicious attacks target your browser. With Web content threats quickly on the rise, there’s an opportunity for businesses to enhance their Web filtering strategies. Enforcing appropriate use policy and providing robust Web content security, however, requires a dynamic filtering solution that can mitigate a variety of content security threats—not only today but in the future as well.
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Although secure sockets layer (SSL) is a ubiquitous enabler of e-commerce and outsourcing, it creates a special challenge for network administrators and security professionals because its encryption is known to decelerate data. In order to regain control over application delivery—when everything business-related is encrypted—organizations need to look toward SSL-aware solutions that can help decipher and accelerate data.
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Customer relationship management (CRM) solutions have changed. What was once used to help sales personnel maintain records of contacts, sales-related activities, and individual team progress has now become so much more. But since CRM is now intertwined with other sales management solutions, it has left businesses that have implemented it in a bit of a quandary when it comes to the global sales market. Find out why.
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Compliance with regulatory requirements is a business-critical need you must maintain. But meeting this need is more challenging with the creation of new regulations, such as 21 CFR Part 11, governing the use of software for secure data processing. But compliance is possible: an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system can help with audits, document and digital signatures, validation scripts, and other security needs.
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Aceto Corporation, a global importer and distributor of chemical-related products, was operating on a legacy system that didn’t allow the company to meet new compliance demands. To increase automation and improve real-time performance, Aceto implemented the Sage ERP X3 Process enterprise resource planning solution. Learn more about how Aceto’s needs for compliance and industry-specific functionality were met.
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A clear customer focus is an essential part of improving business effectiveness and efficiency. But how can businesses achieve global customer visibility in today's competitive market? With the implementation of a master data management (MDM) solution, businesses can gain multidimensional, real-time visibility of their customers, resulting in improved competitiveness, higher profit margins, and reduced business risk.
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To understand the complex relationship between business and customer, there are several questions companies must ask. How much do we spend on advertising to reach out to customers? How much do our customers spend on purchasing our products? With customers scattered all over the globe, it’s difficult to know. With an organizational hierarchy management solution, finding the answer to these questions just got easier.
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What kind of tangible return on investment (ROI) can you expect from your enterprise resource planning (ERP) software? The answer: a lot more than you might expect. Purchasing ERP software represents a significant financial commitment, but in most cases, the software pays for itself within the first year—and will continue to generate cost savings for many years after. Where do these cost savings come from? Find out here.
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As the solution of choice for many companies, enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems have helped many manufacturers operate more efficiently and effectively. By streamlining business operations, ERP systems can solve many of the problems faced by today’s manufacturing companies—and help them become leaner and more competitive. Find out how an ERP solution can work for your company.
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Managing IT assets is a vital corporate function—and a source of potential liability if not performed properly. By effectively managing IT assets, businesses can be assured that each IT dollar has been well spent. With an asset management solution, your IT staff can monitor application usage and budgets more accurately, and improve in-house IT support and performance—resulting in greater efficiency and reduced costs.
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For years, outsourcing has been a way of life for many original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), as they regularly offload certain activities to contract manufacturers (CMs). But despite the significant benefits that outsourcing provides, there are also risks and challenges involved that OEMs must consider. Learn about the seven common pitfalls to avoid, and how they can impact your manufacturing outsourcing success.
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Explosive data growth, shrinking backup windows, and unreliable restores are just a few of the issues you have to manage on a daily basis—especially if you’re using a legacy tape backup application system. But you can still use your legacy system by extending its life and enhancing its reliability with a hardware-based disk compression solution. Find out how, and considerably reduce your backup and recovery times.
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The capacity of today’s storage systems is increasing at an astonishing rate. But the truth is: the more storage you have, the more you use. So, how do you create an efficient data storage system? And how much space can it really save you? Advanced single instance storage (A-SIS) deduplication can reduce storage consumption up to 95 percent—helping you conserve disk space, while keeping your system overhead low.
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Chances are, if you’re backing up your data, you’re using backup tape as your solution. But advances in data management technologies are making disk-to-disk (D2D) backup a vital component of any sane data protection strategy. In fact, D2D backup provides answers to the challenges threatening traditional tape backup strategies. Find out how to evaluate the different advanced data protection solutions available on the market today.
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Storage system administrators are constantly battling with growing volumes of data. But can you create more space-efficient storage? You can. With a data virtualization solution like NetApp Snapshot, administrators can create point-in-time copies of data volumes—consuming only a fraction of the space normally required. Find out how using data virtualization tools can help reduce your ongoing data storage management costs.
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Eight years ago, architect Kevin Harris, like many other architects, found it difficult to accurately charge clients for his services. But after attending courses to learn the proper methods for tracking time and costs, he realized that what he really needed was an integrated system. Since implementing BillQuick time billing and project management solution, Kevin has been able to easily and accurately manage billing.
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Accounting firm Fox and Fiorino P.A. knew there had to be a better way to take care of billing. With most of its billing being entered manually, no real-time reporting was available to ensure accuracy. So in 2003, the company implemented BillQuick. With this automated time-keeping and billing solution, Fox and Fiorino has improved the quality of its information, reduced overtime, and increased revenues and cash flow.
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For AG & Co., embracing new technology was the only way to go if it wanted to continue increasing its revenues. Although it had purchased a new computer system back in 1986, the old software products it was using were non-integrated, making it difficult to keep track of engagements and billing. Billable time meant revenue, so AG & Co. opted to implement BillQuick, and has since reduced its overhead and increased profits.
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Every company faces different challenges and has different needs in regard to enterprise resource planning (ERP). Choosing the right ERP system can be difficult because there is really no one-size-fits-all ERP solution. However, there are certain basic principles that apply to nearly every company’s situation. Find out what they are, and learn how you can increase your chances of a successful ERP implementation.
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The first step in any enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementation involves bringing together the team that will plan and implement the project—your ERP task force. But who should be a part of this task force and why? Selecting the right people is imperative and can play a major role in determining the success or failure of your ERP effort. Find out about what you should beware of when assembling your team.
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When it comes to business-to-business (B2B) communications, two of the basic requirements for regulatory compliance are having a reliable network and a high quality dial tone. So why would you want to settle for anything less? To ensure that both are obtained, many companies are entrusting their data—and their compliance responsibilities—to the Inovis Multienterprise Expert Services Hub (MESH) platform. Find out why.
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E-mail archiving systems are no longer simply tools that focus on regulatory compliance, but instead are multifaceted systems that can help companies satisfy legal discovery requirements, improve messaging-related storage management, and assist in disaster recovery efforts. While there are several solutions available, a hosted solution can offer a number of important benefits you should consider.
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Does your business have a records management policy that addresses e-mail? Well if it doesn’t, now’s the time to consider adopting one. To meet Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP) requirements, businesses must create and enforce a clear corporate messaging policy. With Fortiva’s on-demand archiving solution, your legal team can easily develop e-mail policies—making compliance with legal discovery demands much easier.
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With the recent amendments made to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP), businesses must take a closer look at how they manage their electronic data. Recent studies have shown that many companies are not prepared for how these changes will affect their business. To improve their governance procedures to meet these new requirements, businesses must invest in technology that can adequately preserve electronic data.
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It’s no secret that there is a bevy of deployment options available with most customer relationship management (CRM) solutions today—ranging from customized to out-of-the-box. But with choice comes complexity. In order for CRM buyers to choose wisely, they must find a deployment approach that best matches their needs while delivering superior performance, application integration, and functionality. Find out how.
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Implementing an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system—even for small to medium businesses (SMBs)—is a smart move. But depending on the type of business, there can be many different processes to integrate—making it difficult to know what type of system to choose. For growing project-based companies faced with the challenge of managing many complex projects, the ideal ERP system should be customizable yet scalable.
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Wi-Fi has become the access method of choice for users at the office, at home, and on the road. According to research, nearly 200 million Wi-Fi chipsets were sold in 2006 alone. But can Wi-Fi work effectively in a wireless local area network (WLAN) environment? Yes it can. To deliver Wi-Fi more reliably to increasingly diverse devices requires a self-configuring platform that covers larger areas and higher user densities.
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For consumers, fixed/mobile convergence (FMC) means a world where integrated voice and data services are available anywhere through a single mobile handset. For carriers, FMC represents a lucrative opportunity to leverage inexpensive technology. This technology, however, has its technical challenges, making performance hard to predict. To be successful, carriers need to understand the factors that influence this behavior.
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Today, dozens of independent operating companies and international carriers offer Internet protocol TV (IPTV) services to homes around the world. But IPTV for in-home distribution has been a weak link in the IPTV delivery chain—until now. Ruckus Wireless multimedia systems can help overcome current Wi-Fi limitations and enhance subscriber experience by uniquely enabling a whole-home network for video, voice, and data.
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Radio communications are subject to unpredictable behavior due to environmental dependencies and various types of interference. But with the proper operating parameters and an agile antenna system, many of these impairments can be mitigated. Using smart antenna technology like Wi-Fi, with its adaptive real-time system, you can greatly improve the transport of demanding applications in challenging wireless environments.
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It is widely acknowledged that unauthorized changes made to an IT infrastructure cause up to 80 percent of a system’s unavailability. So what key ingredient is needed to reduce that percentage? By adding change control to an existing or planned change management infrastructure, businesses can improve IT service availability, lower compliance costs, and accelerate their IT infrastructure library (ITIL) implementations.
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There are key systems in every infrastructure where unapproved change can pose significant business risk. These guidelines show you how to properly categorize these systems in order to identify those that have risk characteristics. By learning how to identify critical change control failure points in your infrastructure, you reduce the threat of costly downtime, potential security breaches, and compliance weaknesses.
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Identity theft and credit card fraud affect all businesses—and the problem is only getting worse. In order to combat these threats, credit card companies have joined forces to introduce the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS). For financial institutions, complying with PCI DSS by using real-time monitoring and selective enforcement software can help to relieve the burden of unauthorized changes.
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Deploying and migrating JaveEE applications is hard work, the kind that is error-prone, repetitive, and time-consuming, resulting in lost man-hours, soaring costs, and potential configuration issues that are bound to pop up later. In response to this complex environment, Phurnace Software has created a software application that accelerates the deployment of JavaEE applications and helps to minimize errors.
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Before an organization can truly realize the cost and agility benefits of enterprise service-oriented architecture (SOA), there are a few concepts it should know about. By understanding the various stages of SOA adoption and by knowing what technologies are available, an organization will stand a better chance of succeeding in its SOA initiatives. With these seven steps, effective SOA can be realized.
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For over 30 years, Madison Chemical Industries has sold 100 percent polyurethane coatings and linings to companies around the globe. With the technical challenges it faced as a growing company, it was becoming clear that the DOS-based system it was using to maintain its inventory had to go. With an integrated enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, however, Madison has been able to reduce its inventory by 15 percent.
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Raining Rose, maker of body care products, started as a family hobby back in 1996. Since then, business has soared—making it one of the fastest growing companies in the US. In 2004, however, it faced serious challenges related to this rapid growth; poor inventory control was affecting customer service. But since deploying an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, it has seen vast improvements in inventory accuracy.
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Superior Quality Foods was growing, but poor inventory control was impacting its profitability. To ensure there was enough stock to meet production needs, it always ordered extra raw materials—just in case. To reduce costs and improve inventory control, Superior chose an enterprise resource planning (ERP) and mobile wireless inventory system—and since its implementation has realized 98 percent accuracy in inventory.
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Corporate governance encompasses the processes and systems by which organizations operate—and it affects every business. To effectively participate in governance processes, businesses should consider closed-loop service oriented architecture (SOA). Although stand-alone applications for governance, management, and security exist, find out why they do not enable the demand and value management that closed-loop SOA offers.
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Corporate IT organizations are struggling to satisfy the demands of a constantly evolving business environment. Lowering costs and responding to changing markets are a few of the challenges they face. Another is understanding how to leverage mission-critical applications as they develop new composite applications. Find out how deploying a service-oriented legacy architecture (SOLA) can help—and save you time and money.
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Corporate IT departments and independent software vendors (ISV) alike are faced with a number of similar business challenges. One such challenge is the problem of how to derive additional value from their existing Windows and UNIX software applications and create advantage with Web-enabled solutions. Discover the pros and cons of Web-based and Web-enabled applications—and learn about the solutions that lead the pack.
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Linux operating systems are taking the world by storm, and have seen double-digit growth rates for seven consecutive quarters. With its promise of higher performance and better stability and security, Linux has become the alternative to traditional Windows-based servers. By deploying Linux in key strategic areas and taking advantage of application publishing solutions, you can lower your costs and speed time-to-market.
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Nearly half of all US companies have serious data quality issues. The problem is that most are not thinking about their business data as being valuable. But in reality data has become—in some cases—just as valuable as inventory. The solution to most organizational data challenges today is to combine a strong data quality program with a master data management (MDM) program, helping businesses leverage data as an asset.
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“It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack!” That saying and Internet site searches go together like ham and eggs. To help maximize search effectiveness, many online retailers are now establishing competitive advantages through site search analytics. By manufacturing and analyzing search content, they’re improving the relevancy of search results, thus closing the gap between searching and finding—and buying.
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The security provisions of the US Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA) are complex and process-intensive, and non-compliant financial institutions and their officers have suffered penalties as a result. With QualysGuard’s vulnerability management and policy compliance solution—including on-demand auditing capabilities—financial institutions can easily meet the key security guidelines that are detailed in the GLBA.
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Despite the defensive efforts of firewalls, intrusion detection, antivirus solutions, and the like, criminals, careless employees, and contractors have exposed more than 158 million digital records of consumers personally identifiable information since 2005. With this critical need for stronger network security, Qualys has developed an on-demand solution that effectively manages these vulnerabilities.
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While most information vulnerabilities stem from external intrusion and theft of data, there remains a greater potential for information to be lost, stolen, or accidentally erased by internal sources—the employees. Don’t let this be the case with your business! Information vulnerability management (IVM) is a corporate issue—one that needs addressing. To learn how you can reduce your exposure, download this white paper.
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As with all things, there’s a good side and a bad side—the Internet is no different. Although it improves communication between businesses and customers, it can also overwhelm customers that are bombarded with marketing e-mails on a daily basis. Customers want more convenient contact channels. Smart companies understand this and are responding by adopting a multichannel approach to customer relationship management (CRM).
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One of the largest expenses for distributors and wholesalers is stock. Many have difficulty finding the perfect balance between ensuring products are available when they’re needed and not holding too much inventory. So, how is it possible to increase profitability while lowering inventory costs? By exploiting an inventory optimization system, businesses increase automation and collaboration—allowing greater profitability.
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As a provider of employee benefits, CIGNA must observe a bevy of regulatory compliance mandates. Because much of its efforts are compliance-focused, it continually embraces technology, searching for new products to better manage its benefit offerings and track its security risks. With QualysGuard’s vulnerability management solution, CIGNA has mitigated vulnerabilities and remained up-to-date with compliance regulations.
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With a vast global network that supports over 60,000 employees, vulnerability and risk management programs are crucial for Oracle GIT. To further enhance its IT system risk management capabilities, Oracle deployed QualysGuard’s on-demand software vulnerability and compliance management solution. Since its deployment, Oracle has optimized its scanning capabilities and automated its demand security auditing processes.
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As one of the largest Internet marketplaces, eBay proclaims that the trust it enables between buyers and sellers has been the key to its success. To ensure continued success, eBay wanted to standardize its network security auditing and remediation processes, and turned to QualysGuard’s vulnerability management solution. With Qualys’ automated solution, eBay can now quickly and easily remediate any network vulnerabilities.
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The communications landscape has never been more complex nor offered so many choices and solutions as it does today. As more employees go mobile, companies need to be able to offer better communication capabilities to their people. The convergence of technologies involved, however, can cause service provider issues and create confusion for customers. To solve these issues, several questions need to be asked.
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When it comes to data and storage management, midsize organizations often face similar issues to those of their larger counterparts. Rapid data growth, business continuity, and data archiving are just a few of the problems they must deal with. By coupling IP-based storage area network (SAN) technology with Ethernet-based SAN connectivity, however, organizations can gain higher levels of efficiency and effectiveness.
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With the increasing complexity of the data center and its dependent systems, data center automation (DCA) is becoming a necessity. To replace the costly and inefficient human aspect of managing the data center, IT departments must adopt DCA solutions. Combined with utility-based computing architectures, these solutions can provide greater dynamics in the environment and facilitate speed of response to market demands.
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Web analytics has never been an exact science—which can make the process extremely frustrating. How can you be 100 percent certain that the data you’re working with is always accurate? To deal with this and many other questions that will arise, businesses must gain a better understanding of how well their analytics tools work with their existing data integration solutions, and how using testing platforms will help.
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For small businesses with limited budgets and IT support, customer relationship management (CRM) has been out of reach. Until now, these small companies have missed out on the benefits provided by CRM because most applications were built for larger companies. New technology, however, has now emerged that levels the playing field for these smaller businesses by providing a fully customizable and affordable CRM system.
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What can user-driven applications like Morello and Microsoft’s Office SharePoint (MOSS) 2007 do to help your web content management strategy? By combining the two, users can develop web applications and collaborative workspaces themselves rather than acquiring IT development input. In doing so, they unlock the silos of working practices and content stores, and add significant value to the web content management strategy.
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When testing firm Promissor’s system kept crashing, it knew it was time to make a change. With over 800 employees made up of part-timers, temporary workers, and employees on various pay cycles, its payroll team was constantly reconstructing lost time sheets and wasting valuable time. Since implementing an automated Web-based solution, it has benefited from improved data collection accuracy and reduced manual processing.
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Non-profit organization The March of Dimes realized that to continue its success, it would need to find more efficient and effective ways to work. Its human resources (HR) department was doing most of its HR and payroll processes manually—for over 1400 employees in various locations. To automate these processes, it turned to a Web-based application and has since significantly cut down on processing time and expense.
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There are many factors to consider when purchasing a new phone system. In addition to planning the scale of your proposed system and how long you expect to use it, you should also think about the number and type of features you need, from call hold and speed dial, to computer telephony integration (CTI). Put your money where your voicemail is: find out about the latest phone system features and improve your bottom line.
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TESTCo was accustomed to managing its issue tracking for software testing using Microsoft Excel or one of its customers’ homegrown solutions. But as operations expanded, the company realized it needed a better system to manage this process—one that could monitor issues and ensure they were resolved and documented. Using ProjectLockers Issue Manager, TESTCo has benefited by saving on maintenance hours and costs.
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For many years, S&C Electric, a global provider of electric power system equipment, used internally built tracking and Subversion data to manage source code and documents and to track viruses. But as it grew, its needs became more complex, and more maintenance time was required. A managed source control solution now manages and protects S&C Electric’s intellectual property, and saves the company a lot in man-hours.
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Software company Terra Technology’s development team often worked remotely, without a centralized development system. Managing documents manually was quickly becoming an unproductive use of the team s time—and increased its chances of making errors. Since using ProjectLocker’s document management system, Terra Technology has saved valuable time and money, and can now focus on its core competency—supply chain software.
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When crafting an e-mail marketing campaign, a few guidelines should be followed in order to maximize its effectiveness. Believe it or not, e-mail marketing is not only an art, but a science as well. Carefully balancing the needs of the audience, properly communicating your inspiring message, and using the right technology to manage the interaction are some of the key ingredients needed to make it a success.
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Any geographically distributed business with three or more remote sites has likely dealt with tape-based backup systems. If this sounds like your business, then you certainly understand the complexities involved with managing growing data—not to mention the risks. The good new is that an agentless, multisite backup and recovery software solution is available that can offer a high-speed alternative to tape-based systems.
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Would spending millions of dollars and countless hours securing your data center be enough for it to pass a compliance audit? While many businesses work hard at securing their data centers, they often forget to secure remote office data. With the consequences of non-compliance ranging from financial penalties to job loss and worse, it could mean the end of your business. Don’t let compliance become your Achilles heel.
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IT managers today face plenty of problems when it comes to protecting remote office data—problems that agentless architecture could eliminate. Many organizations outsource their data protection, which can be costly. But an agentless architecture disk-to-disk (D2D) software solution can offer your business bottom-line benefits that range from lower administrative costs to pay-as-you-grow scalability and increased security.
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Amcor Sunclipse realized that although it knew the importance of encouraging and rewarding employees, to actually demonstrate support for them through timely, comprehensive appraisals was becoming a challenge. Since implementing Halogen’s employee performance management (EPM) solution, Amcor has improved the speed and quality of its employee appraisals and has centralized the results to enable reporting of employee skills.
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Online advertising has grown so fast that it has surpassed billboards, magazines, and cable in spending. Local advertising is growing even faster, and the need to provide competitive services to advertisers is becoming imperative. As demand for local listings increases, a tool enabling advertisers to manage their own web site listings will not only save them significant operating dollars, it’ll provide a competitive edge.
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Today’s IT professionals are often challenged by unrelenting changes in the enterprise, increased data growth and compliance regulations, and geographic distribution of assets, to name a few. Keyboard/video/mouse (KVM) over Internet protocol (IP) can help by providing an effective tool that can remotely manage servers—regardless of their physical location. When looking for a KVM over IP solution, you should consider some basic requirements first.
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For many years, the various departments at Walker Foods worked independently of one another, which seriously impeded the flow of data throughout the enterprise. It was clear that an integrated system was in order, and after a few initial upgrades, the company decided on AppFinity’s WebCustomer overall online solution. Since its implementation, Walker Foods has increased order accuracy and significantly reduced expenses.
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An estimated 55 percent of users of business critical applications work in remote locations. With so many users working remotely, networks become congested and user productivity suffers. Until now, wide area network (WAN) monitoring and shaping has required special appliances, but there’s a new alternative software-based solution available that leverages the power of the user’s PC—providing unprecedented traffic control.
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Is it possible to easily migrate from legacy tape devices to encrypting tape drives and still keep costs to a minimum? The answer is yes. With a comprehensive key management storage security system, a manageable and affordable migration process is achievable with a simple 3-step process. This process includes many benefits, such as a complete feature set that enhances system auditability and minimizes operational costs.
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What’s all this hype about wikis anyway? According to Gartner’s Hype Cycle, wikis are descending from the crest of a hype wave and coasting into areas where real business value can be recognized. Why? Because their ability to allow corporate users to collaborate on any number of internal projects in an online environment where everyone is given an equal voice is not only empowering, but speeds the process of innovation.
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What can a managed Subversion solution do to help .NET businesses solve their integration problems? Subversion meets the challenge of software development by allowing teams to use branching and tagging methods that help them work better with their QA organizations. It also saves .NET businesses a lot of money over setting up and maintaining a development infrastructure in house, which keeps the cost of ownership manageable.
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Software development best practices can save you money and make your team more productive. When software development teams don’t invest in a solid development platform, it makes their work harder and often ends up costing them more money over time. A hosted platform, however, provides a level of convenience and savings that makes it the obvious choice for today’s IT development, management, and consulting organizations.
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What does Visibility’s .NET enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution have that others don’t? .NET technology. And because it contains no legacy code, it provides a system that’s accessible using a web-browser and has a user interface equal in functionality to a client-server application. In fact, any client PC with Internet Explorer 5.5 or later can operate it—without compromising the quality of the user experience.
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Creating a give-and-take relationship with a software vendor will help you get the most from any application. If your organization does not use a request for proposal (RFP) tool, use this checklist to help you with your software selection process. Make this solution-provider checklist work for you: your best-fit vendor and the software tailored to your business needs are easier to find than you think.
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In their efforts to accelerate time to market and improve business process efficiency, many marketing organizations adopt customer relationship management (CRM). But CRM often falls short in exploiting the exponential growth of content associated with product and brand marketing. By using a digital asset management (DAM) solution, however, you can increase productivity and achieve a favorable return on investment (ROI).
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In today’s business world, heightened privacy concerns and tightened regulations such as the US Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) Act have forced organizations to improve their workflow and archival and records management processes. That's why many results-oriented organizations are now using workflow software—bringing together people, processes, and documents to improve efficiency, reduce costs, and meet compliance requirements.
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The future of customer service management (CRM) is changing—and SAP’s CRM 5.2 is a big part of the reason. SAP is known for constantly enhancing its products—whether it’s changing its tier architecture or introducing new dimensional components. But its latest in CRM technology provides many new features and functionalities, and introduces some of the latest trends. If you want to know more about SAP CRM 5.2, here it is.
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Today’s complex enterprise networks present unique challenges to those whose task it is to manage and secure them. Existing security measures that worked yesterday may not be sufficient tomorrow. But by combining Configuresoft’s Enterprise Configuration Manager (ECM) with Microsoft’s System Center 2007, businesses can secure their data, protect their bottom lines from costly downtime, and meet regulatory standards.
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IT is often characterized as distinct groups pursuing individual agendas and launching disconnected initiatives to increase operational efficiencies. To overcome this, organizations need a set of capabilities that can help improve coordination between IT and the rest of the business while facilitating effective service management. Adopting foundational technologies and a best-practice benchmark is a good place to start.
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Most businesses today depend on their own IT departments to satisfy corporate governance objectives and meet increasing customer demand. Unfortunately, many have failed to clearly demonstrate to themselves—and to their customers—that they are truly managing their business. Only when the IT department understands what the business wants can it benchmark itself and build continual improvement plans that can meet these demands.
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Small businesses often become trapped by their outdated accounting systems, limiting their profits and arresting their growth. How can your business avoid this software trap? Planning and anticipating your business growth will help you minimize this costly mistake. Find the right accounting or enterprise resource planning solution to help your small business continue to expand and remain successful.
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Accounting and enterprise resource planning software are not interchangeable solutions. How do you decide which option is for you? Outlining your business structure and considering four key facets of your selection process will help you determine which software meets all your business needs. You can find the right product for your business, whether you need a bookkeeping or all-encompassing business software.
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Offering health insurance is critical to recruiting new employees and retaining current staff. Taking care of your employees and attracting future intellectual property is a high priority in any business. But is it possible to find an affordable health plan in today’s costly health insurance market? Discover what insurance brokers can do for your business.
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How can you get the most out of a customer relationship management (CRM) solution while reducing operating costs and increasing overall profitability? By purchasing a hosted CRM solution that’ll provide the benefits of an on-premise CRM solution without the need for a complex implementation or the assistance of an in-house IT team. Hosted CRM is a cost-effective solution that promises a quick return on investment (ROI).
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Manufacturers’ business needs have changed significantly over the past few years, evolving the roles that technology plays within the manufacturing process. Two key technologies—enterprise resource planning (ERP) and product lifecycle management (PLM)—have developed into key success factors for manufacturers and when combined, provide a collaborative environment that adds value and helps in maintaining a competitive edge.
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Developing a good disaster recovery plan (DRP) in today’s business world is a must. In fact, downplaying the importance of a DRP can be costly—especially if you’re a small to medium business (SMB) that is slow in adopting DRP. Recent studies have shown that 40 percent of businesses that have encountered a disaster close their doors within the following five years. To stay afloat, here are ten steps that should be taken.
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In order for a business to stay on top of compliance requirements required by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX)—and avoid financial penalties or possible jail time—it must take a good look at its IT environment and financial reporting processes. The collection, management, and analysis of log data are integral to meeting SOX requirements and as such, require a system that automates these processes across the IT infrastructure.
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Organizations of all sizes face similar challenges when managing storage—not enough capacity or protection. Help has arrived with Internet small computer system interface storage area networks (iSCSI SANs)—and they're steadily gaining momentum. With iSCSI SANs, businesses can effectively manage their storage needs, while lowering costs and increasing security. Find out why many industry leaders are choosing iSCSI today.
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Today’s extensive use of data collection tools coupled with the easy access to communication networks has woven more devices and systems into the fabric of our daily lives. As the scale of integration and complexity grows, so does the need for the appropriate paradigm to address it. In order to scale, system software architecture must be organized around a common-shared information model that can span multiple systems.
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Information lifecycle management (ILM) is rapidly gaining acceptance as a process crucial to the success of many IT initiatives. The reason for this is the importance of managing data. With the growing demand for ILM comes a variety of solutions that follow a disjointed, point product approach. By choosing an ILM software designed to scale to its needs, a business can benefit from software built on a unified platform.
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Every day, sensitive business information finds its way into the wrong hands—through external breaches or internal theft. Such data is highly regulated, and any risks of exposure can result in stiff penalties and legal liabilities. Many of these security risks lie in the test/dev environments, and as such require a solution that protects data application clones from unauthorized access without jeopardizing its integrity.
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The growth of application data has placed an enormous burden on IT organizations to maintain acceptable application performance and availability. The weight of managing and navigating through vast amounts of inactive data has caused outages and raised budgets, among other problems. Active archiving software, however, addresses complex data management issues and delivers lasting benefits to organizations and its users.
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Data breach is a very real problem in business today. Every day, organizations store massive amounts of data inside database tables—data ranging from credit card transactions to product inventories. This valuable information is what runs the business. In order to protect this data and stay on top of compliance, an enterprise data management solution that respects information privacy regulations should be considered.
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Because products ultimately define a manufacturing company’s success, product development is mission-critical by definition. It’s also expensive—in most manufacturing sectors, companies annually reinvest between 3 and 8 percent of their total revenues back into product development. Find out how to leverage global product development to gain a dramatic increase in productivity within your product development operation.
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As one of the world’s leading manufacturers of construction and mining equipment, Komatsu has enjoyed significant growth. In fact, 2004 marked the best business performance in the company’s history. Now the company is focused on accelerating product development by making better, faster decisions throughout the product lifecycle. The solution: PTC’s ProductView.
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When it comes to product lifecycle management (PLM), unreachable information is as expensive as excess inventory lying in a warehouse. That’s why ITT Industries, a multibillion-dollar manufacturing enterprise, needed desperately to reach its goal of a single source of data for everyone, everywhere. Unfortunately, the transition would require overcoming serious resistance and cultural issues. Find out how they did it.
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After adopting two-dimensional computer-aided design (2D CAD) in the 1990s, Dalian Shipyard discovered that 2D technology didn’t meet the real-world challenges facing ship designers. For example, 2D CAD could not graphically reproduce real ship design challenges, such as collisions. Dalian Shipyard needed better product lifecycle management (PLM) tools. The solution: CADDS 5i—a complete 3D CAD tool for shipbuilding.
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Asyst Technologies develops and delivers factory automation solutions for the protection, transport, handling, and management of semiconductor wafers and flat panel display glass plates. Not only did Asyst want to automate product data and document management, but it also wanted a true paperless process for tracking information and facilitating design team collaboration. Find out how Windchill PDMLink got the job done.
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Medical device manufacturers face the usual manufacturing challenges, with the added burden of having to plan, develop, test, and produce in an environment controlled by strict regulatory requirements. With paper-based systems, product lifecycle documentation adds a huge burden to an already colossal task. Find out how you can “hardwire” compliance into product development—without short-circuiting your business processes.
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Fax hardware plays a crucial role in the sending and receiving of business documents. With high-volume use over time, instabilities in performance can occur. Therefore, how well fax boards and fax software applications perform together becomes an important consideration. With IQ Express intelligent fax board series, fax servers send and receive corporate documents electronically—reducing costs and improving productivity.
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For automotive manufacturers and their suppliers, consumer demands are high and global competition is fierce. To compete successfully, manufacturers must meet expectations and still generate an acceptable profit margin. By using QAD’s Just-in-time (JIT) Sequencing process together with its Manufacturing Execution Workbench (MEW) tools, automotive manufacturers will have the foundation needed to meet these challenges.
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Three strikes—your out; that’s what lockout management does. But employees often forget the many passwords needed to access information. What ensues is a flood of calls to the help desk that, over time, can become a huge administrative burden. Adopting a strong password policy is critical. By implementing a lockout management strategy via automated management solutions, businesses enhance security and improve workflow.
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DaimlerChrysler Research & Technology North America (DCRTNA) focuses on developing new technologies for the next generation of cars. It desperately needed an automated time and attendance application to replace its outdated and laborious manual system. With a Web-hosted solution, not only did DCRTNA see a 30 percent increase in productivity, but it finally regained control over management of employee time and attendance.
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Best-in-class manufacturers are driven to improve plant floor data management by the need to enhance performance improvement program effectiveness, as well as operational performance visibility. Up to two-thirds of these manufacturers address these pressures through technology. If you want to lead the pack—instead of getting buried under it—read this white paper to find out which technologies are right for you.
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Leading research finds that the top pressures for improving sales and operations planning (S&OP) processes include rising customer order fill rate expectations, shrinking profit margins, and customer retention challenges. However, current S&OP processes are failing to alleviate these pressures. Is your company on the wrong side of the industry benchmark? Learn what steps your company should take before it’s too late.
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Process industries (chemicals, food and beverage, oil and gas, etc.) face rising manufacturing and logistics costs. And they’re finding that the old strategies for cost containment no longer pack the same punch. Some surveys show that 75 percent of all respondents are redesigning their supply chains to keep these costs in check. Are you one of them? No? You’ve got a lot of catching up to do—and very little time to do it.
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When Naghi Group’s annual revenue began to soar, it realized that running core business operations on multiple systems was no longer feasible; its current solution lacked the integration capabilities necessary to communicate with its distribution and manufacturing departments. After only a few months since integrating VAI’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution, Naghi has already realized its many benefits.
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Financial service institutions spend thousands of dollars every year on securing their networks from external breaches, but often fail to think about possible internal threats. Employee fraud has become a growing problem in the financial sector—one that many institutions are not fully prepared to handle. Implementing automated detection technologies, however, can be their first line of defense to eradicating this problem.
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Are virtual appliances really more advantageous than physical appliances? For businesses looking to decrease server complexity, increase load balance, and optimize scalability and mobility, the answer is yes. Virtualization has brought distributed computing to a new level and provides many key benefits. This white paper looks at four of those benefits and uncovers why more organizations need to consider making a change.
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While virtualization technology can simplify server management and reduce operating costs, in production environments it presents a disaster-recovery challenge. The problem: simply backing up a host server doesn’t always ensure that data within virtual machines is recoverable. With Acronis’s True Image, IT managers can rest assured their data, settings, applications, and operating systems are protected against disaster.
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Aerospace and defense (A&D) has unique security needs. Avoiding the unauthorized sharing of technical information and intellectual property is essential. Product development systems (PDSs) provide the secure, real-time collaboration A&D needs, including extended and secure collaboration of distributed product development processes. PDSs control access to intellectual property, mitigating information sharing risks.
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When it comes to data, it’s all about location. Although more than 80 percent of enterprise data has a geographic dimension—such as stores, customers, and competitors—it’s rarely used in traditional business intelligence (BI) analysis. In order to react faster to market changes and to improve competitive advantage and operation efficiency, businesses should consider adding location intelligence tools to their BI platform.
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Improving the content of technical publications is possible with a product development system (PDS). A PDS solution can automate and optimize the technical publishing process and can end publication bottlenecks caused by launch delays due to poor process. A PDS solution allows for concurrent development of products and publications—keeping your engineering and publishing departments in sync.
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To boot or pre-boot, that is the question. There’s no doubt that operating systems (OSs) are complicated given the sheer amount of code that must be flawlessly interfaced and the potential vulnerabilities that can ensue. While full disk encryption (FDE) is one step closer to a more secure OS, encryption without strong authentication isn’t enough. For security-conscious users, pre-boot authentication is the only way to go.
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Many manufacturers want to increase production efficiency and improve quality—but how can they ensure their efforts are successful? A process-oriented enterprise resource planning (ERP) system may be the answer. This white paper includes case studies on a variety of process manufacturing industries and provides valuable insights into the ERP capabilities required to successfully manage a process-oriented implementation.
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On top of the many challenges faced by IT managers today comes yet another challenge: ensuring efficient and secure user access to SAP. Because of the unencrypted communication between users’ workstations and the backend servers, the SAP environment—and the confidential data it stores—become vulnerable. With a secure single sign-on solution to SAP, however, you can significantly improve the security of this environment.
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Today’s business environment is more mobile than ever. With more employees traveling—using laptops, personal digital assistants (PDAs), and home computers to conduct business—vulnerabilities increase. Companies are now protecting their digital assets with full disk encryption (FDE). Recent advances in FDE allow businesses to protect data stored on users’ mobile devices, without jeopardizing intellectual property.
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Protecting your company’s data is not only wise, but often legally necessary. In order to beef up their data security programs, more companies are implementing full disk encryption (FDE). In the past, FDE was software based, which left it open to greater security risks. With the advent of new technology, however, it is now possible to migrate from software- to hardware-based FDE while still protecting your existing systems.
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Fax servers are essential for the financial services industry. Their reliability and security help transmit financial information quickly and safely. Financial institutions, however, also have workflow and document needs due to lots of back-office paperwork. Luckily, there are fax servers on the market that help financial institutions optimize workflow and business processes—organizing and reducing paperwork backlog.
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When you decide to implement a new fax software solution, you should review how the solution will be implemented and managed, as well as its ability to grow with your network. Within a Windows network, critical architectural, administrative, and usage concerns should be thoroughly considered. Review your options with this fax server overview outlining the benefits of different fax servers and e-mail integration.
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Secure transmission of health care information is critical to your medical organization and your clients. Volumes of critical medical data are sent to you every day, making it imperative that the information be sent quickly and safely. Fax servers are easy-to-use point-to-point systems that provide secure transmission of confidential information—saving you time and money while protecting all your sensitive data.
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Whether field service is your primary business or a service offering, incorporating mobile technologies into your existing system can give you a competitive edge. Electronic information capture not only increases reporting accuracy, but it also provides real-time data for your planning, billing, and purchasing needs—bridging the gap between your front-office operations and back-office processes.
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Keeping up-to-date on security features is challenging for any size business. Making your computer system secure without sacrificing usability isn’t easy. In fact, careful planning is absolutely necessary to ensure a secure system that works for you. Whether you’re worried about hackers, phishing, or internal breaches, there is a security solution to help you protect your critical data.
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What would you do if a critical error occurred during production—all because the wrong data was input into your enterprise resource planning (ERP) system? You’d probably be asking “how could this happen?” The ability to communicate information between teams can mean the difference between production success and failure. Avoid these snafus with a system that can integrate the data of both the design and ERP systems.
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Why is Vyatta’s open source networking approach so successful? Because it is in touch with today’s users needs. By eliminating the reliance on specialized hardware, Vyatta’s open source, Linux-based approach to networking is changing the way networks are being purchased and deployed. With its strong community of users, Vyatta is challenging even proprietary networking vendors like Cisco. We challenge you to find out more.
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How can you get the most out of your virtualization project and avoid the common mistakes made by many businesses? By adopting a strategy that’ll allow you to be free of risk and save on your pocketbook. Don’t let your virtualization project become another implementation failure; make it a success. Sensitizing yourself to the five mistakes common to many enterprise virtualization implementations is a good place to start.
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Microsoft Dynamics is a business management solution designed to allow your employees to customize and automate their Microsoft Office system user interface according to their preferences and work styles. Microsoft Dynamics helps your employees and your business work more efficiently—giving you a faster return on investment and an effective and profitable business.
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The open architecture of Microsoft Dynamics GP provides a flexible solution for organizations implementing a business management system. The foundation is provided by the Dexterity runtime engine and Microsoft SQL Server, helping Microsoft Dynamics GP offer many features and benefits. These include an extendable architecture allowing add-ons and vertical enhancements—so that organizations can grow today and tomorrow.
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Microsoft development tools will help developers and independent Microsoft software vendors integrate Microsoft Dynamics GP with existing applications. This accounting and business management system includes many features and benefits, as well as guidelines to help developers choose the right tools for various development tasks and create custom applications that integrate with Microsoft Dynamics GP.
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With ever-changing technology, businesses often spend too much time and money trying to sustain their outdated systems. But is it possible to maintain a legacy system without the substantial costs of frequently updating it? By adopting service-oriented architecture (SOA)—which provides a suite of automated tools and services for migrating and extending legacy platforms—businesses can maximize quality and minimize costs.
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Systems integration with service-oriented architecture (SOA) helps you reuse the functionality in your mainframe applications. Extending your mainframes to an SOA through Web services will accelerate your time to market, keep your costs low, and help you avoid undue risk. Keep your business dynamic and current, and stay competitive in today’s marketplace—modernize your existing mainframes with SOA.
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In the rush to explore the “next big thing” in software technology, it’s easy to forget the huge investment you’ve already made in mainframe assets. These assets have performed the business functions that they were designed for, but it’s OK to remain open to new solutions too. By leveraging existing assets while moving to a service-based architecture, you can extend your existing business resources while saving money.
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Color printing used to be reserved for only the most important documents, where the high cost was justifiable. As printing technologies have advanced, however, color printing has been added to the everyday office environment. Today, the demand for color printing is growing as more and more organizations discover that they can print in color as easily, quickly, and inexpensively as in black and white.
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Environmental concerns are a focal point for businesses wanting to “go green,” and they are looking at every aspect of their operations, including their printers. Replacing even a portion of energy-inefficient printers with environmentally friendly ones will have a positive impact on the environment, helping to conserve energy and reduce waste. Saving energy is not only good for the planet; it’s also good for business.
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The role of finance departments needs to shift from cost center and scorekeeper to that of key advisor to the business. That’s why you need to change processes to help employees work more efficiently on high-value analytical tasks. Implementing next-generation enterprise financial systems will help balance control, transaction processing, and decision support—as well as lower your total cost of ownership.
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Chemical companies struggle with outdated manufacturing and financial systems, often not reaching their profitable goals. How can they give customers high-quality chemical products while improving the bottom line? Industry best practices can help you gain control over every aspect of your business by increasing your visibility into operations, helping production go more smoothly, and reducing costs and lead times.
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To survive in today’s global marketplace, companies must develop a competitive advantage. Your business can thrive with the help of enterprise service-oriented architecture (SOA). With the ability to implement business strategies more quickly, this greater flexibility will help your new business processes and empower your information workers—giving your company long-term growth and an ongoing competitive advantage.
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Globalization is one of the top issues affecting organizations’ supplier management strategies. True supplier collaboration can no longer be avoided: working closely with suppliers around the globe is the best way to streamline and reduce costs and increase value. With practical tips and techniques on how to achieve your vision statement, you can attain sourcing excellence while setting a pace that’s right for your company.
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Storage area networks (SAN) continue to grow in size and complexity. Often, the ongoing cost of maintenance and upgrades exceeds the initial acquisition and implementation cost. The ideal solution is to find an architecture that provides a simple migration path without disrupting the existing infrastructure. A stackable fibre channel switch can deliver—without diminishing your ability to upgrade and expand in the future.
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Educational institutions have plenty to manage without having to make up for the deficiencies of inadequate learning management systems (LMS). Information Mapping, Inc. decided to switch from its old system to SyberWorks Training Center Learning Management System. The result: more efficient scheduling, integrated data management, better tracking of registration and cancellation, and an increase in seminar attendance.
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Lost sight of your bottom line? Product pricing not in step with your actual costs? So busy trying to stay on top of cost behavior that you can’t keep your costs under control? Cost and pricing models, as part of an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, can help you better understand your costs. Put corrective measures into motion before problems occur—and save your food and beverage enterprise time and money.
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VMware and blade servers have taken the IT world by storm. Virtual server use has grown over 50 percent, and blade servers account for 12.5 percent of all new servers. Can you incorporate them into your existing frameworks? Yes. Routers can scale server numbers with virtual interfaces, and with fibre channel storage area network (SAN) connectivity, you can reduce testing and development costs in VMware environments.
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Corporate e-mail usage is expected to jump 38 percent by 2009. Can our future data centers handle this load? By using QLogic’s fibre channel host bus adapters (HBAs) in the Microsoft Exchange environment, your data centers can handle the load without degrading overall performance—thus providing the bandwidth and throughput you’re going to need.
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The Solaris operating system has become the top choice for hosting data center applications. Sun Solaris platforms consistently exceed the reliability requirements of enterprise data centers while at the same time reducing total cost of ownership (TCO). QLogic fibre channel solutions are a perfect match for Solaris environments and successfully meet the input/output requirements of enterprise applications.
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IT managers know that choosing the Linux host bus adapter (HBA) for their data center infrastructures can impact the reliability of their systems. That is why Linux-based servers are being deployed in many enterprises. You can use the reliability of QLogic storage area networks (SANs) to drive more value from your SAN investments—giving your IT managers increased reliability and scalability in a hardware portfolio.
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Storage area networks (SANs) are key components in IT organizations, as they provide access to and protection of critical data. Managing data storage is becoming increasingly complex, with regulatory and corporate requirements dictating national disaster protection. Whether your company is near or far, remote SANs store your critical data, saving you and your company from losses in even the most dire of circumstances.
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Realize the benefits of storage area networks (SANs) by using public or private networks. The benefits of SANs include centralized data management, back up, and restoration of data, as well as remote archiving for disaster recovery and business continuity. Host bus adapters (HBAs), switches, and multiprotocol routers are the keys to the fibre channel network—and the high-quality of select remote sites.
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Most IT managers have proven, cost-effective ways to increase the return on investment (ROI) of existing infrastructures—that is, storage area networks (SANs). SANs provide high-availability storage to servers within corporate infrastructures. Connecting low-cost servers to SANs makes business sense, as it dramatically reduces the cost-per-server connection to well below $100 (USD).
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Server consolidation is the reason enterprises deploy server virtualization technologies across their data centers, improving server and processor use. As more virtual servers are consolidated onto a single server, demand is increased on the central processing unit (CPU) and host bus interfaces. However, you can do more with less by deploying a fibre channel host bus adapter, enhancing your server consolidation levels.
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Traditionally, utilities have leveraged robust meter, network, and customer service infrastructures. These technologies served the needs of largely regulated energy and utility markets characterized by price regulations, easy access to energy resources, and sufficient infrastructure capacity. There are few examples of "old" technologies that make such a compelling argument against replacement. All that’s about to change.
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Development and problem solving happens too often at the testing stage, once product prototypes have been built. This can be costly, both in terms of the time and the resources expended. Computer-aided design (CAD) and exercises (CAE) can address your concerns about product safety and performance, as well as augment your return on investment (ROI). Shift your product development paradigm with digital engineering tools.
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When government agencies use a customer relationship management (CRM) solution for e-service, they can deliver timely information, put citizens in control, and improve the agency’s communication with its constituents. Citizen satisfaction will improve while you save budget dollars. And with the proper tools and technology, you can create the loyalty bond you need between your agency and your constituents.
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Fibre channel storage area networks (SANs) used to be implemented in only high-end enterprise class data centers, but this is no longer the case. SANs have become more affordable and can be widely implemented without sacrificing performance. When you need to expand your frame-based computer network, consider stackable switches as a cost-effective solution for the infrastructure of a fibre channel SAN.
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Small to medium businesses (SMBs) must adapt to technology innovations as well as the demand-driven consumer market. The need for small computer system interfaces (SCSIs) on each server host, along with enhanced security needs have driven SMB costs upwards. Is there a solution? Yes. Storage area networks (SANs) built on stackable switches help reduce costs, and are a viable approach for SMBs.
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As clusters grow to address the problems of increasing application complexity, interconnect performance has become a key factor in overall application and clustered system performance. Finding the interconnect performance you need is a complex task— however, when compared with two other adapters, InfiniPath SDR Infiniband interconnected faster and scaled better on high-performance computing (HPC) applications.
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With 3-D computer-aided design (CAD) models taking on a broader and more significant role in the development of new products, CAD files must flow smoothly into downstream applications. Sometimes, however, errors do occur. An off-the-shelf software tool can detect problems in the design stage so they aren’t discovered at a crucial moment in the manufacturing process, when it may be costly—or even too late—to correct them.
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IT organizations today are faced with the constant pressure of reducing costs at the service desk, while at the same time ensuring optimal customer service. To accelerate their IT infrastructure library (ITIL) initiatives, many are implementing service resolution management (SRM) systems. With the addition of SRM, these organizations can address the core issues required to operate an efficient and strategic service desk.
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As products become more complex and customer expectations continue to rise, service and support become increasingly difficult. So how can service and support managers transcend these problems and use each customer interaction to build customer loyalty and drive service leveraged revenue? By empowering customers with Web 2.0 technology and enabling users to manage their own experiences. Find out how.
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Server and data center consolidation has never been more important. Issues such as server sprawl and increasing costs have made consolidation the number one priority among IT managers. New virtualization technologies, however, are helping data centers combat these problems. Learn about the factors that are driving consolidation initiatives today, and find out what best practices can be used for ensuring its success.
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As your business grows, so too does the complexity of your data center. Along with this complexity, there are problems such as the inflexibility caused by operating systems, applications, and associated data, which are bound to the hardware they are installed on. Discover eight ways to optimize the infrastructure in your data center using virtualization products designed to work with your current technologies.
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Today’s data centers are an increasingly complex mixture of server platforms, hardware, operating systems, data, and applications that have accumulated over time. So how do you take your data center from a tangled mess of suboptimal servers which may be hampering your service levels, to one that can maximize performance? With the use of virtualization technology, data center optimization can become a reality.
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Over the last 25 years, successful manufacturers have made dramatic improvements in the speed and efficiency of production. But with increasing global competition and time-to-market requirements, the need to continuously improve efficiency—and become lean—has never been more important. But these days, it’s difficult to imagine any enterprise software provider as being truly focused on efficiency for the customer.
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As a leader in x-ray analytical instrumentation and software, PANalytical’s global business was growing rapidly. But with that growth, complexity in its information and communication infrastructures had also grown—making it impossible to optimize and standardize its business processes. Since partnering with QAD, PANalytical has successfully consolidated two manufacturing sites, 31 sales offices, and 17 databases.
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Laird Technologies has been executing its global growth strategy since 2004. But in order to form a unified global enterprise with the 20 independent companies it acquired, Laird needed a new system—one that could address its needs in every country where it had manufacturing facilities. With QAD’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, 10 of those 20 sites were up and running in just nine months.
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As a global leader of products designed for use in the manufacturing process, TigerStop LLC realized that in order to remain competitive, it would need to invest in a customer relationship management (CRM) system. After purchasing a CRM solution from a leading software developer, it has realized many benefits, and at the same time empowered its field sales team with a system it can access while on the road.
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As management visionary and author Peter Drucker once said, “You can’t manage what you can’t measure.” No statement rings truer—especially when it comes to security risk reduction. By having an accurate depiction of your network, however, you can identify real-world security threats and learn how to evaluate your organization’s ability to respond to them. Find out how, with these seven essential steps.
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With the growing global epidemic of data theft, tougher regulations are being enforced by government bodies worldwide. As such, organizations need to work harder at proactive security. With the right technology, identifying network vulnerabilities and measuring overall security exposure becomes manageable. By using these eight steps as your guide, you can put an end to network security vulnerabilities once and for all.
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Worldwide, various standards have been created to provide some form of structure with respect to delivering products and services. Over time, however, the adoption of industry compliance guidelines has seen many pitfalls, specifically with the advent of technology. Developing a sound compliance strategy requires a unified solution—one that includes all the necessary components, but also keeps the business users in mind.
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Joshen Paper & Packaging needed to update its enterprise resource planning (ERP) distribution system. Joshen partnered with Vormittag Associates Inc. (VAI) and found a solution that consolidates its financial reporting and provides its sales team with real-time inventory information access. The result: faster inventory turnaround and order fulfillment—and to date, about 100 new clients in its customer base.
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Whether you’re a manufacturer, vendor, or customer service company, the increasing pressure to make sales and decrease service costs affects you. The key to its success is to look at your customer experiences as repeatable life cycles. Instead of viewing sales and service as independent challenges—solved by using disconnected software packages—an integrated solution that accelerates the total life cycle may be the answer.
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Knowledge management (KM) can mean different things to an organization depending upon the nature of the initiative. KM is not a technology or set of methodologies, but a practice or discipline that involves people, processes, and technology. If implemented correctly, a KM initiative can improve the productivity and efficiency of an entire organization. With these ten basic principles, your organization can learn how.
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Today’s support organizations often face the challenge of providing efficient and effective customer service. Without the right tools, it can become an uphill battle. To gain true scale and effectiveness in service and support, many organizations are now turning to knowledge management initiatives like knowledge-centered support (KCS)—a business process that directly addresses the root causes of support inefficiencies.
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Are you moving to call-center multisourcing to save money? Did you know that many multisourced agents use varied and unreliable systems? This leads to unavailable agents and, consequently, long waits for your customers. Are all call centers like this? No. Call centers using a common hosted platform share tools and unify agent management, resulting in answered calls and positive customer experiences
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Supplemental product or technical data is typically delivered separately from the information contained within portable document format (PDF) files. This can make it difficult for users to locate the additional content for download. With the CopyFILE plug-in application, however, companies can integrate supplemental product information by using links within a PDF file—thus allowing content to be easily distributed.
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To build or not to build—that is the question. Is building an enterprise application from scratch better than modifying existing application code? With a .NET framework, the answer is an emphatic yes. Building applications from scratch using only .NET code not only provides cost savings, it also allows software developers to extend applications to users via the Internet—without sacrificing functionality or security.
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Want even more connectivity options for your storage area network (SAN)? Need to boot your blade server up to iSCSI-based storage systems? Itching to offload iSCSI traffic from the host processor and allow your server to support boot from SAN configurations? This paper outlines how dynamic host configuration protocol (DHCP) can be adapted in several ways to automate and ease the configuration of your servers.
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Today, there is less clarity in wholesale, retail, and vertical sales operations than ever before. In a marketplace that dictates increasingly complex operations, distribution centers of all types need to ensure that their warehouse management systems keep up with customer demand. To keep your supply chain from exploding in your face, defuse complexity with a simple distribution indexing tool.
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Many manufacturers have already implemented enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. That’s why questions about the need for an additional system to track, analyze, and manage costs are no surprise. Does it replace the entire ERP system? Is there additional work for cost personnel? While each user of enterprise cost systems uses them differently, the road to success lies in using them in conjunction with ERP systems.
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Success in today s manufacturing sector requires disciplined approaches to all aspects of business strategy. For process improvement, companies implemented lean manufacturing programs. Data integration needs led to data warehouses and enterprise resource planning systems. Companies must now dedicate the same level of strategy and planning to developing a cost management process that drives results.
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Bridging the gap between an application’s problem domain and its code can be difficult, even for the best software engineers. Bridging these two diverse worlds—each with its own language—requires a finished application that creates an intersection between the two. By building a domain-specific modeling (DSM) language and generator using MetaEdit+, engineers close the gap and pave the way to better productivity.
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Stable revenue and stronger customer relationships are what software companies want, and more are turning to software as a service (SaaS) platforms to reach these goals. Building an SaaS infrastructure is complex, and you need operations and engineering experts to manage your infrastructures. Start by following a step-by-step process—thus helping to increase your revenue and strengthen your customer network.
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In today’s datacenter, management costs have eclipsed all others. Server management puts a huge strain on IT budgets and, as a result, solutions that reduce costs by simplifying IT infrastructures and automating management processes are in high demand. Thankfully, a Linux-hosted management tool delivers automation for key management process—allowing your IT talent to focus on real-time business needs.
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For independent software vendors (ISVs), software delivery creates big operational challenges. Integrating an application with the latest operating system and service pack causes headaches for customers and suppliers. However, pre-built server devices or appliances contain one convenient, ready-to-go system, minimizing configuration glitches and letting customers and suppliers step back while the appliance does the work.
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Businesses and security threats alike are evolving. Strong protection of client data is a necessity for any organization handling credit card information, especially if it’s subject to payment card industry (PCI) compliance. As a result, many businesses are looking for ways to ensure proper security controls. Thankfully, there are solutions adapted to the challenges of meeting PCI compliance—and staying secure.
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Reducing server management complexity and total cost of ownership (TCO) are key IT goals. There’s a new generation of automated management tools designed to enable provisioning, monitoring, and control of blade systems in infrastructure deployments. This means more work in less time, ensuring IT talent is responding to business needs—resulting in improved TCO metrics rather than time-consuming manual processes.
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In stark contrast to a few years ago, IT executives now rank power and cooling among their top concerns. As IT continues to support more servers, power and cooling have become limiting factors to the number of data center servers. However, there is a solution. Blade server thermal technology optimizes power and cooling while improving energy monitoring—real benefits that reduce the overall IT total cost of ownership (TCO).
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As a world class supplier of metal stampings, automated assemblies, lamination stamp¬ings, and die castings, Orchid International’s products can be found in virtually every home or automobile. Its challenge was to find a way—with an IT staff of three people—to run five manufacturing facilities operating varying manufacturing processes as a tier-one and tier-two supplier to demanding customers in a variety of industries.
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In the life sciences industry, marketing operations (in particular the packaging, labeling, and final steps of new product development) remain virtually untouched by the computerized systems integration pervading the rest of the sector. However, cost-effective approaches do exist for digital workflow and asset management software and services, and can provide you with a wealth of cost savings and operations efficiencies.
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For organizations deploying many servers, total cost of ownership (TCO) analyses favor blade over rack-optimized systems. Blade server systems—reducing both capital and operating expenses—exploit economies of scale when deploying servers in volume. Saving power, cooling, and space by more than 25 percent, the blade advantage is particularly relevant for servers working in conjunction with storage area networks (SANs).
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The world is focusing on environmental awareness, and reducing greenhouse gases is now an inevitable part of doing business. But how can you conform to compliance regulations and still remain competitive? Green-centric asset management implementations—valuable tools in resource conservation—are helping companies increase productivity and improve their bottom lines. Maybe getting greener isn’t so hard after all.
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Reducing inventory and satisfying customer demand are high priorities in manufacturing and distribution. Being able to fill orders on time and satisfy every customer is an integral part of order commitment—and a very attainable goal. Advanced planning and scheduling (APS) can help your company become responsive and accurate—and that’s what counts in today’s “demand and supply” environment.
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For chemical producers Akzo Nobel, managing a complex supply chain producing more than 2,000 chemical products was an extremely complex task. Akzo Nobel decided to implement a multi-user sales and operations planning (S&OP) system that would be available company wide. Increasing its forecast visibility raised awareness of critical issues earlier—thus reducing inventory and increasing productivity on a global scale.
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For thermosetting resins producer Hexion Specialty Chemicals, a portfolio of over 50,000 stock keeping units (SKUs) created unique supply chain efficiency challenges. Hexion needed better supply chain management—the key to sustaining growth and profits. In adopting Zemeter solutions, Hexion reduced inventory by more than 20 percent and increased margins—exactly what Hexion needed to stay competitive on a global scale
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For dried fruit producer Sunsweet, a spreadsheet-based planning system just wasn’t working. After reviewing several solutions, Sunsweet selected the Zemeter supply chain planning suite to eliminate the repetitive work involved in spreadsheet management. Zemeter’s accurate forecasting and planning process ended up saving Sunsweet money by increasing production line efficiency and reducing overruns by 18 percent.
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For cheese producer Mozzarella Fresca, producing multiple products was a scheduling challenge, and it needed a solution that could do more than Excel-based tools. The Zemeter Scheduler solution was able to add 15 percent capacity by optimizing scheduling processes. In fact, from molding to packaging, Zemeter Scheduler increased efficiency without Mozzarella Fresca needing to invest in new equipment.
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Forecasting and planning conventions dictate that planning far into the future is a necessity. But is long-term planning really the most productive way to organize your business? No, not really. Detailed forecasts and plans are needed only inside the “planning time fence”—a critical period for acquiring specific components and building certain products—and for many companies, only four to eight weeks into the future.
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Slowdowns, scalability issues, and security gaps hit Web applications where it hurts. Data center consolidations put distance between application servers and users—producing long round-trips and slow response times. Luckily, there is a solution. Deploying a wire-speed application system—in a unified single-platform design—boosts response times, improves infrastructure scalability, and safeguards against security threats.
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For businesses to respond quickly to customer demand, timely metrics need to be supported. Monthly metrics can provide guidance on modifying the planning process and tactical plan, but there’s more to it than that. By monitoring daily fluctuations, early warning signs can be detected to indicate possible performance issues. Combined, metrics and monitoring can help you effectively manage your supply chain—proactively.
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Many small companies have limited resources to devote to the implementation and maintenance of enterprise resource planning (ERP). Fortunately, the price performance of ERP and the underlying infrastructure supporting it have improved steadily and significantly over the past two decades. In fact, solutions that were once beyond the reach of these small companies are now well within their grasp.
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There is no single antivirus engine on the market today that is the fastest and most effective at identifying viruses, spam, or other threats. According to a recent survey, 97 percent of organizations have antivirus software installed, yet 65 percent have been infected at one time or another since. One way to reduce the chance of virus infection is to install multiple antivirus scanners at the mail server level.
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Is it beneficial to use multiple types of virtualization software together? The answer: yes. Combining complementary virtualization technologies provides a stronger, more robust solution that reduces costs, maximizes return on investment (ROI), and minimizes the number of servers to manage. By consolidating these technologies, organizations can get the most out of the application, hardware, and operating system (OS).
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Customers, employees, and partners are an integral part of any business—each playing an important role in its success. But how is it possible to share vital information between them? In order to access information, understand trends, and build better processes, a system that enables multi-user collaborative technologies is required. Without these collaboration tools, business process management (BPM) cannot be successful.
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As the digital era evolves, media content companies are faced with a number of new challenges. One such challenge is that they can no longer specialize in one communication format. The advertising market is now a dynamic and complex forum making it difficult to manage multiple channel revenues. A standard, integrated solution, however, can facilitate the management of advertising revenues while increasing customer satisfaction.
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There was a time when picking out a book meant going to a library and signing one out. Today, readers expect content to be available through a variety of distribution channels—in both print and digital formats. To be successful, publishers must be able to observe the intellectual property rights of authors for each format and channel of distribution they offer. With a digital publishing management solution, it’s possible.
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Today more than ever, retailers are faced with the challenges of selling locally while competing globally. To be successful, they must provide a shopping experience that inspires customer loyalty. Retailers that understand their customers’ shopping habits can build strategic global supply chains that anticipate demand. One way to achieve this is with a scalable technology platform based on industry standards.
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As the creator of performance apparel, Under Armour has become the fastest-growing designer and distributor of its category of apparel in the world. In 2005, to sustain growth and compete on a global scale, it needed a flexible IT landscape that could offer better visibility to data and scale over time. With an out-of–the-box scalable solution, Under Armour is on its way to reaching the $1 billion (USD) revenue mark.
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Just when you thought you had all your security measures figured out, along comes the portable storage device to make you question them all over again. With the popularity of portable consumer products—and their ever-increasing storage space—comes a greater risk of losing sensitive corporate data. To secure corporate data, companies must not only focus on perimeter security, but on internal security weaknesses as well.
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In 2004, there were 1.3 billion credit cards in circulation in the US. With fraud incidents on the rise, credit card companies are at constant risk of losing sensitive cardholder data. At the same time, strict payment card industry (PCI) requirements are forcing companies to put better systems in place to ensure clients are adequately protected. By implementing the right software tools, achieving compliance is possible.
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Benchmarking is a process where companies compare their performance over time against their competition. In doing so, they can identify where their strengths lie and where improvement may be needed. The point of benchmarking is to focus on areas that will yield the best return. For companies to succeed in their benchmarking efforts and gain a sustained competitive advantage, five key steps should be considered.
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Improving the supply chain is essential for any company that wants to gain or maintain a competitive edge. To do this, companies are adopting sales and operations planning (S&OP) strategies. Years ago—when the pace of market change was slow—S&OP was a nice-to-have; today it’s a business imperative! But it doesn’t have to happen overnight. By taking a five-step approach, companies can implement S&OP at their own pace.
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When it comes to disaster recovery (DR) software, companies should think of it as an insurance policy—not just software that recovers lost data. Being prepared for disaster makes good business sense, but oddly enough, few companies are. Because Linux distributions don’t include DR tools, companies must look to a file-based recovery solution that can recover the entire system and eliminate the need to rebuild.
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As pressure increases to reduce costs and improve customer service, many companies are outsourcing outside the US. Although India and Malaysia are the least expensive options, companies that want to build strong long-term partnerships with a call center—while taking quality, political climate, and cost into consideration—should look north of the border. Canada builds a solid case for any company’s outsourcing dollars.
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An increasing number of companies are turning to business process outsourcing (BPO) because of the many advantages it provides. In 2002, the outsourced call center industry reached $22 billion (USD) and is projected to increase to $25.7 billion (USD) over the next two years to serve the growing demand. For outsourcing to be a success, companies need an overall strategy. After that, it boils down to one question: where?
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To respond to an ever-changing environment, steel manufacturers are making investments to improve their systems. But over time, these modification dollars can add up! With an integrated and collaborative approach—combining the capabilities of a manufacturing execution system (MES) with the advantages of an advanced planning and schedule (APS) solution—manufacturers can realize considerable benefits without the added cost.
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The complexity of the metal manufacturing process often poses problems when it comes to planning and scheduling production. The sector’s many different processes often cause bottlenecks that slow down production—not only within plants, but throughout entire supply chains. With an industry-specific production planning and scheduling system, manufacturers can improve productivity, reduce lead times, and increase revenues.
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As with any hot market, point-to-point wireless is bait for the pathologically
opportunistic. In this atmosphere—often termed "anarchy"—trust can t be a matter of faith. To get in on the wireless opportunity without getting shafted, you need to know a few basic and incontrovertible facts concerning the difference between licensed and license-free wireless. In fact, a successful outcome depends on choosing the right one.
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"Wild West" is a metaphor often used to describe the wireless wide area network (WAN) business. But it s worse than that. In the Old West, everyone had a gun. In this business, customers are defenseless. What s going on? Well, for one, vendors are playing fast and loose with terminology that should mean something. Wireless is compelling, but how do you decide what s right for you—and who do you trust?
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Why do some customer relationship management (CRM) implementations fail? The answer: companies’ lack of understanding of their current CRM environments, and of what areas need modification or improvement. Companies with a clear understanding of what they need from a CRM solution—as well as of what CRM means to their business—are more likely to succeed. To clinch that success, some key elements should be assessed first.
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In business, planning plays a fundamental role in analyzing and forecasting key financial data. While forecasting future events is one benefit of planning, it can also be used to achieve a series of objectives, including regulatory compliance. In order to achieve these objectives, companies should consider implementing a unified customer performance management (CPM) solution—one that takes compliance into consideration.
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As a supplier to Wal-Mart, appliance manufacturer Haier America was required to implement a radio frequency identification (RFID) tagging system. To satisfy this requirement and to keep costs to a minimum, Haier needed a solution that would seamlessly integrate with its current enterprise resource planning (ERP) application. That’s why it turned to a custom-designed modification package. But was it enough for Wal-Mart?
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For most companies, e-mail is an integral part of the business workflow and a primary channel for communication. For these reasons, e-mails can be considered legal business documents and should be retained for a predefined period to satisfy government regulations. With an e-mail archiving system, message contents and attachments are stored in a read-only format, ensuring they are archived in their original state.
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Research shows that between 65 and 95 percent of all e-mail is considered spam. On an individual level, spam is an annoyance more than anything else, but on a company-wide basis, spam causes significant problems—and the cost to manage it is sizeable. Spammers are always one step ahead of antispam vendors, so to combat this persistent problem, companies need a single-source product that can eliminate spam for good.
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Over the past few years, vulnerabilities have exploded across all types of platforms—leaving IT security and operations teams scratching their heads. Today, many companies use the scan-and-patch method for managing vulnerabilities—a reactive security process that should be avoided. By combining assessment and remediation, companies create a vulnerability management program that can rapidly respond to emerging threats.
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Although layer-two networks are a viable, cost-effective alternative to traditional wide area network (WAN) services, they have some major security deficiencies. One of the key drawbacks of layer two is its inability to handle identity authentication—which creates serious theft and vulnerability problems. With a layer-two data protection solution, however, you can mitigate these types of security issues.
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Storage area networks (SANs) are complex structures that contain an infinite number of configuration possibilities—making the process of configuring the devices to be installed into the SAN a lengthy one. To simplify the process, QLogic’s configuration wizard provides users with some basic tools to guide them through common SAN tasks, enabling them to easily build stable and secure SAN fabrics for their storage solutions.
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The days of storage area networks (SANs) built with hubs and based on private, arbitrated loops are gone. Today’s fully public switches—which include a variety of switch features—make managing large SANs a lot easier. The key to a flexible SAN is the switch’s ability to create zones, which allows the SAN to be partitioned into various groupings and enables SAN managers to allocate storage where it makes the most sense.
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The first step to a successful storage area network (SAN) implementation is preplanning. Architecting a SAN not only helps solve issues of storage consolidation, it facilitates day-to-day data center support and maintenance. A SAN investment should save support dollars, not require additional support resources. With a sound implementation strategy, costly upgrades—and many headaches—can be avoided.
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Portable document format (PDF) files are used by businesses worldwide to streamline business processes and secure archives. In order to comply with ever-changing government rules and regulations, many companies have come to rely on the security and ease of use that PDF formats provide. With Print2PDF 7.0 Server Edition, documents are easily converted into secure, industry-standard PDF files that can be viewed by anyone.
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With data theft on the rise, many companies are forced to improve their network security. And although they spend millions of dollars every year on securing these networks, the focus has largely been on securing the access to the network rather than protecting the information itself. Secure information sharing (SIS) solutions integrate additional intelligence into the process—and protect your data without added overhead.
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Research shows that the occurrence of multivendor Internet protocol telephony (IPT) environments is on the rise. As such, an increasing number of companies are faced with the challenges of using multiple tools to manage these environments. With a single, specialized IPT management solution, companies gain a unified view across the entire voice infrastructure—which can significantly impact total cost of ownership (TCO).
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Now that you have planned and assessed your new system, it’s time to explore the next phase of the integration process: design and pre-deployment testing. Part 4 of this 4-part e-book series provides a basis for the exploration of network design. In addition, it includes a report card that will help you select the appropriate design and validation software tools for your Internet protocol telephony (IPT) system.
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When deploying any new system, preparation is key—and Internet protocol telephony (IPT) systems are no exception. Part 3 of this 4-part e-book series provides some basic steps you can take to successfully deploy voice and data network services. A complete capabilities inventory has been included to help you ensure that every feature of your current system will be considered for inclusion in your new system.
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By some estimates, there are over 8,000 sales taxing jurisdictions in the US—and they implement from 900 to more than 3,000 rate and tax-rule changes every year. Understandably, the accountants who try to guide small to medium businesses (SMBs) through the intricacies of tax compliance are having a hard time of it. However, solutions are emerging that are uniquely suited to SMB needs for sales tax compliance.
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Chapter 2 of this 4-part e-book explores the Internet protocol telephony (IPT) life cycle, and discusses how understanding the key phases of this packet-based system can increase implementation success. By harnessing your knowledge about this system's natural rhythms, you will begin to establish key concepts that you can put into action—facilitating the management of the system and reaping its long-term benefits.
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As the era of traditional telephony draws to a close, the doors to the next generation in communications open. Chapter 1 of this 4-part e-book discusses electronic human voice communication and its importance in business today. It documents the underlying beliefs, philosophies, and observations of the future of telephony, and provides the basic concepts readers will need to guide them through the rest of the series.
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Data loss can be damaging to a business—hurting short-term stock prices, impacting customer relationships, and reducing revenues. As more companies conduct business via network communication, the need to protect their customer data and intellectual property becomes greater. With a data protection solution, organizations can secure their data in motion—without introducing unmanageable cost and complexity into the network.
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When it comes to security architecture, choosing a system that’s scalable and applicable to a broad set of security needs is a wise move. New security services for Internet protocol (IP) networks are emerging that enable new levels of scalability and manageability—while remaining completely transparent to the network. By applying this type of system, you build an optimal framework for future security applications.
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Spam considerably lowers user productivity, as it delivers unwanted, irrelevant, or anonymous e-mail messages. The best way to manage the incidence of spam is to measure it. The Spam Index—a tool for measuring improvement in spam control systems and for comparing spam control performance with competitors—is a method used by businesses worldwide to achieve lower spam levels and improve business performance.
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E-mail is a powerful business tool that most enterprises can’t live without. Unfortunately, along with its capability of accelerating commerce, productivity, and social interactions, there are some drawbacks—such as spam! Companies that rely on e-mail to do business simply can’t afford the negative affects of spam. However, new technology is emerging that helps stop spam and allows users to get on with business.
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In this new era of corporate governance, risk avoidance, and responsibility, organizations are more than ever held accountable if their data is not properly protected. As such, many are finding new ways to address security risks, by developing multiple layers of defense to reduce points of weakness. Deploying data encryption technology is a good place to start—but the key is making the right choice.
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Heightened awareness of vulnerabilities in sensitive stored data has resulted in the increased application of encryption technology. To secure data at rest, a well-defined process for handling the keys used to encrypt data—as well as the keys used to safeguard the data encryption keys—is essential. With the proper key management controls in place, companies can ensure that data is effectively secured and recoverable.
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In order to stay competitive, growing organizations need technology that allows them to react quickly to changing industry. According to recent polls, nearly 40 percent of midsized businesses are getting that technology through customer relationship management (CRM). With a rapidly growing market of choices, it’s important to look within your company to assess its needs and goals—before you commit to a CRM solution.
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If you could have a 360-degree view of your business, wouldn’t you want to take a peek? Most companies would say yes, but no business could benefit more from this panoramic view than large enterprises. Today, they’re getting that view—and more, from customer relationship management (CRM) technology. For large enterprises, CRM represents a powerful opportunity for positive change—and you ignore it at your own risk.
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You can’t pick up a business or IT magazine today without seeing numerous articles about the growth of mobile and wireless technologies. Why are these technologies so trendy? The answer is simple: developments in mobile computing, wireless communication, bar codes, and other data collection and communications technologies help businesses extend visibility and control over the operations that really matter to them.
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It s hard to go anywhere these days and not see ads for mobile wireless carriers. But the technology is so confusing and the choices so overwhelming, it can be impossible to know which solution to choose. Before making the wrong choice, it’s best to have a basic understanding of mobile wireless communication—how it is currently being used in the industry, and how it can benefit your organization in the future.
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How can you establish a priority-based mobile networking system that provides workers access to company and customer records that they can manipulate from the field? By employing a total solution system that provides various methods of transmitting data. While this type of system may be more costly to implement than a stand-alone pager or cell phone, the benefits it offers can directly impact your bottom line.
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When it comes to two-dimensional (2D) symbologies, less is more. While 2D bar code symbols may be less costly to print, they are considerably more expensive to read, because of the complexity of developing decode algorithms. However, with the integration of public domain 2D symbologies into a range of application standards, solutions employing these codes are beginning to reach their full potential.
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For manufacturers, improving internal processes and supply chain responsiveness can help maintain profitability. That is why many are tuning into radio frequency identification (RFID) technology. With RFID, the benefits are immediate throughout the supply chain, and organizations that take the time to understand its capabilities and limitations can increase their inventory visibility while streamlining their operations.
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Radio frequency identification (RFID) technology has retailers talking. The reason: RFID helps reduce labor and improves the ability to gather data. Retailers can use this data to make positive changes to business processes, which can be tremendously advantageous for them. With careful planning, an RFID system can provide immediate benefits, as well as long-term competitive and total cost of ownership advantages.
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Imagine this scenario: an infected laptop within your company has accessed the network and is spreading malicious code to thousands of other devices. This incident could cripple any business, but with network access control (NAC) products, companies can rest a little easier. NAC’s ability to measure, enforce, and report on an array of security issues has gained it attention amongst security conscious organizations.
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As proprietary network hardware appliances become obsolete, unified network platforms (UNPs) are slowly gaining momentum. UNPs are the new paradigm for networking and security—operating on a single system that can be implemented on off-the-shelf hardware. With a UNP, organizations can design, build, manage, and maintain secure networks, without the limitations and expense of vendor proprietary hardware and software.
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Although small to midsized manufacturers employ more than half of all workers in the US, today’s demand-driven, global economy is challenging them to operate with the same agility as their larger counterparts. To stay competitive, it is essential that these manufacturers implement enterprise resource planning (ERP) technology. With the right ERP system, they can become mighty and thrive in the face of bigger competition.
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Consider the ideal manufacturing and distribution process—one that eliminates human error, improves speed and efficiency, and increases information availability; a process that offers high security and delivers data without a network connection. This is what a radio frequency identification (RFID) system can do to help solve logistical problems that may be affecting your manufacturing and distribution processes.
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Malicious hacking and illegal access are just a few of the reasons companies lose precious corporate data every year. As the number of network security breaches increase, companies must find ways to protect data beyond the perimeter of their businesses. But how do they build a data-defensible architecture that will protect data on an ever-evolving network? The answer: by first developing an in-depth defense strategy.
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The supply of multiprotocol label switching (MPLS) services and service providers has grown exponentially with the demand for Internet protocol (IP) and Ethernet services. But while MPLS enhances packet processing speed and network performance, it lacks in security. As government and industry compliance regulations increase, organizations must invest in tools that can ensure security without affecting network performance.
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Small to medium businesses (SMBs) often face the same challenges as large businesses—just on a smaller scale. One such challenge is finding a business solution that manages expansion and addresses complex reporting and compliance issues. Many SMBs are now adopting enterprise performance management (EPM) solutions—complete with tools to help them meet the current and future needs of their growing business.
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Wide area networks (WANs) are essential to the majority of businesses, enabling effective communications within the organization and with customers, partners, and suppliers. As more bandwidth-intensive applications are added to the mix, these networks are expected to handle the extra load—which can decrease its performance. Ensuring WAN usage is well-managed eliminates unwanted traffic and accelerates business activity.
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Small to medium businesses (SMBs) face the same challenges as large businesses when it comes to IT management—they have increasingly complex systems they rely on to drive their businesses and gain a competitive advantage. Operating and maintaining a complex IT infrastructure requires specific skills, but getting the right staff at an affordable price can be a problem. Outsourcing IT management may help to ease the strain.
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In any organization, people remain one of the largest sources of value when it comes to business processes. But providing them with tools that can be easily accessed and used has its challenges. As we move into the era of service-oriented architecture (SOA), portal and collaboration software now delivers the essential people-focused capabilities businesses need, while adding significant value to the organization.
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How can a budget administrator, burdened with the task of gathering data from hundreds of spreadsheets from all over the organization, manage this monumental undertaking? Additionally, how to avoid using a costly packaged budget application that doesn’t take the organization’s business rules into consideration? The solution: a spreadsheet automation tool that easily adapts to the organization’s unique corporate processes.
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Today, companies are looking to improve work processes, comply with legislation, and increase productivity—and they’re implementing electronic document management systems (EDMS) to help them effectively manage their information. By deploying EDMS—which are capable of capturing, storing, and retrieving records, files, and folders—these companies are achieving unprecedented levels of control, efficiency, and automation.
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Industry today demands more quality of manufacturers, and as such, ISO 9001—the yardstick by which quality products and services are measured—is forcing more and more companies to become ISO-certified. However, companies can use a browser-based tool to help bridge any information gaps they may encounter during the process—and to give them the head start they need to intelligently manage their ISO certification.
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What is compact, lightweight, ergonomic, and power-friendly? A microelectromechanical systems (MEMS)-based scan engine—an innovative scanning technology that provides outstanding reliability and performance. When it comes to supply chain laser scanning, the advantages MEMS scanners have over traditional lasers are unparalleled. While MEMS is not a new technology, it does provide a new option for bar code scanning.
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When it comes to workers’ safety, companies shouldn’t take any chances. The growing safety, security, and regulatory and reporting requirements are forcing many organizations to implement more sophisticated systems to monitor and manage their work environments. To help determine which mobile devices are approved and appropriate to use in your work environments, it’s important to have clear guidelines on what to look for.
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One of the first and seemingly simple questions that companies ask when making IT investments is “how much does it cost?” Many often find themselves wondering why—even after a successful implementation—their costs keep going up. When evaluating a mobile workforce automation project, companies should take the time to conduct a thorough total cost of ownership (TCO) analysis to detect hidden costs—and avoid nasty surprises.
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Radio frequency identification (RFID) technology can provide a strong return on investment (ROI) when combined with improved business processes that reduce labor and prevent errors. But mobile RFID systems, with forklift-mounted readers, can be implemented for a fraction of the cost of traditional infrastructure configurations. They can improve supply chain visibility, reduce capital expenditure, and slash labor costs.
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Scanning technology has changed dramatically over the years with new, more powerful, and reliable imaging scan engines now surpassing the laser scan engines of yesterday. Although both laser and imaging technologies continue to improve, there’s a debate on which technology is superior. When researching data capture equipment, you may be asking yourself, “How do I choose the best scanner for my application?” Here’s how.
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In the $1.8 billion market of document management services, only 10 percent is billed by dealers. So how can they increase their share of the managed print services trend? The dealer’s path to advantage lies in its service and supply organization. To make this transition, the dealer needs a tool that gathers knowledge of the client’s fleet and identifies where printing dollars can be saved.
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How do companies address the out-of-control costs associated with network printing? Many look to control them by outsourcing their managed printer services. The transition from basic dealer services to a holistic approach—where the dealer manages the print services for the entire organization—has its challenges. With printer fleet management tools, companies gain a competitive advantage and save on printing costs.
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Many companies believe their employees are their most important asset—and spend significant amounts of money every year on their training and development. But how can these companies quantify what this investment will do to their bottom line? With the right tools, decision makers can gain the critical business intelligence they’ll need to confidently invest in their human capital, and measure and report on its impact.
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To play any popular online computer game, all a user needs is a computer and an Internet connection. But there’s a lot more going on behind the scenes than this gamer may realize. In order to interact in a shared virtual environment, the system the user connects to requires technology capable of creating, operating, and modifying persistent, distributed, three-dimensional virtual worlds.
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For a lot of companies, making the decision to replace an existing business software system can be a difficult one. The process can be so unpleasant that many organizations may be reluctant to even get started, coming up with a number of reasons why they could probably get by with the systems they already have. If your company is struggling with this tough decision, you may want to ask yourself these ten basic questions.
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Choosing an enterprise resource planning (ERP) package that’s right for your business can be difficult and time consuming. Finding a software provider and discovering what doing business with them will be like is as important as the overall functionality of the software itself. Before committing to a long-term relationship with any potential software provider, there are some really tough questions you need to ask them.
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Carefully tracking components and assemblies throughout the manufacturing process can prevent costly production and sequencing errors, but executing these procedures can be difficult. While bar codes provide accurate, efficient product identification, they are not viable in many common industrial processes. Specialized RFID tags, however, are optimized for use on or around metal, and are an effective and viable alternative.
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Going mobile has become a growing trend, with many businesses reaching well beyond the use of cellular phones as their only lines of communication. Why? Because these businesses realize that linking the mobile workforce with the enterprise and its data resources—using mobile applications—is key to enhancing productivity, profitability, and customer satisfaction. Choosing the right devices, however, can be very challenging.
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Radio frequency identification (RFID) has been around for more than thirty years, and today’s manufacturers are using this technology to help connect trading partners and align supply chains. But just as businesses need to look beyond the manufacturing supply chain to see the benefits of investing in RFID, they need to look beyond the tag to understand how RFID will create value and provide a return on investment (ROI).
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Technology has fundamentally changed the way industrial and manufacturing companies manage their businesses. Sophisticated solutions like warehouse management and enterprise relationship management (ERP) systems—with their advanced data capture and wireless networking tools—enable companies to squeeze more efficiency out of their operations by providing real-time data to all interdependent parts of the supply chain.
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Your customers, service technicians, and equipment maintainers need an intelligent cataloging solution to help them find the parts they’re looking for. The ever-increasing amount of technical content and parts information is making an electronic one-stop-shop tool essential. An electronic parts catalog can help your company attain two critical business goals—an increase in customer satisfaction and aftermarket parts sales.
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In today’s global market, providing quality products and services is essential for any manufacturer’s continued growth—but maintaining a competitive edge is not always easy. For success, quality awareness must begin at the conception of the product and continue throughout the various stages of its development. To improve in this area, many manufacturers are now adopting the total quality management (TQM) approach.
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When considering any software solution, two things come to mind: flexibility and cost. With virtualization technology, multiple applications can now be hosted safely and securely on a single server, eliminating the overhead of running multiple operating systems (OS) per server. This capability can greatly reduce costs and help organizations deliver consistent service levels despite unpredictable workloads.
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Any organization that deploys multiple same-application servers with regularity could benefit from virtual appliances. Virtualization solutions eliminate the need to copy an operating system (OS) and application into each virtual environment, by creating a single, centrally installed master copy instead. It saves time on installation and enables greater levels of efficiency, manageability, flexibility, and resource use.
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Cox Communications, a leading cable provider, needed to find a way to centralize the IT requirements of its customer support team. With over a hundred users, its challenge was to move from single desktop applications to a centralized server which would offer many concurrent instances of the application—and minimize the cost. By deploying a virtualization solution, Cox realized a return on investment (ROI) of 300 percent.
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To be certain its materials management functions were up to par with industry best practices, a South African fertilizer plant obtained the services of an inventory optimization firm. In doing so, it was able to identify weak links in its inventory control processes, and achieved a savings of over $2 million (USD)—an impressive return on investment (ROI) considering it had invested less than 4 percent of that amount.
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An important question facing IT professionals today is how best to harness computing power to further improve automated business processes. This is especially critical in business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce. While service-oriented architecture (SOA) delivers the benefits of IT integration to business, it needs a programming language—such as Lisp—that can optimize its capabilities and scale in size and complexity.
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The computational complexity of problems faced by programmers today is growing exponentially. With accelerated changes brought on by the Internet, companies need to explore new methods of enabling their programmers to focus on these complex problems. When dealing with complex data, an object caching database system can alleviate the task of programming special code for persistent data while writing applications.
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New Star Asset Management was looking to maximize its existing sales channels and drive more information gathering via the Web. In order to achieve its aggressive targets, it needed to find a way to make better use of the Web, while reducing costs. Since integrating a Web content management system, New Star has seen a significant drop in Web-related expenditure—with cost savings of nearly 68 percent in the first year.
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The Web has become a vast potential business asset for many companies today. But while business users have the vision, it’s the IT department that actually creates and deploys the Web application. This often raises the question of Web site ownership. Empowering both parties with the right tools to match their respective skills can help address this question—and many others—for businesses in this confusing situation.
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One person’s freedom to pirate is another person’s loss of royalty revenue. Every day, millions of Internet users are downloading copyrighted materials—music, movies, TV shows, and more. Although this is illegal under most countries’ copyright laws, it doesn’t stop them. What’s worse is they don’t even see themselves as criminals. Piracy isn’t going away, and content owners and governments need to regain control.
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It’s no coincidence that the surge in counterfeiting over the past decade has coincided with a huge increase in Internet access around the world, and the more recent shift toward broadband connections. The Web provides a shop window to the world, yet it is impossible to police. New, intelligent, automated monitoring technologies are beginning to offer powerful solutions to this rampant online problem.
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C# is a modern object-oriented language for application development. In addition to object-oriented constructs, C# supports component-oriented programming with properties, methods, and events. WinA&D is a complete Unified Modeling Language (UML) tool enriched with C#-specific details used to generate source code. This white paper discusses how C# constructs are represented by UML—for forward and reverse engineering.
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Understanding how a system really works is the first step toward using, improving, automating, or explaining it to others. The basic concept of a system is that it is driven by cause and effect—but there is so much more to understanding its full complexity. The best place to start is by learning how causal loop diagrams (CLDs) are used to model dynamic systems by identifying variables and causal effects.
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Interactive web sites are event-driven. With each user click, a menu selection or keyboard action initiates a thread of execution that runs many lines of code. Many Web projects start as small code snippets gathered from open source sites, but as the web site grows, new developers are added to the mix. Without design and documentation tools, the project can become unmanageable, unreliable, insecure, and costly to expand.
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In 2004, Microsoft offered a midwestern-US-based financial services corporation a range of options to renew and replace its existing enterprise agreement. But without the right negotiating skills, how could it be certain Microsoft’s offer was the most cost-saving approach? The company engaged an independent consulting firm, and in less than three weeks recognized savings of 28 percent on a $3 million (USD) agreement.
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Counterfeit medicine is a major threat to the pharmaceutical industry. Seven percent of the medicine worldwide is counterfeit; however, advances in packaging and labeling technologies are coming to the industry’s aid. Pharmaceutical companies are using pilot projects to help labeling implementations throughout the supply chain to increase the availability of safe, licensed medicine and thwart the underground drug market.
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What’s the best way to know if your customers are satisfied? Simply ask them. Conducting customer surveys without the right tools, however, can demand a lot of staff time to manage and analyze the results. Indeed, response time can make the difference between keeping customers and losing them. One way to respond faster to customer issues—and save time and effort—is by investing in an automated customer feedback system.
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The clock is ticking for Canadian manufacturers to come up with a solution to the ongoing loss of knowledge capital. Natural employee attrition, such as departures or layoffs, inevitable retirement, and the brain drain are contributing to an exodus of knowledge. That’s why the best hope for Canadian manufacturers lies in introducing knowledge management strategies across the enterprise—before it’s too late.
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Industry analysts and retail executives agree that, although competitive prices are a must, “low price” as a leading strategy will no longer lead to long-term business success. To successfully compete, midsized retailers must carve out a niche based on creative strategies, including better and more localized product assortments, flawless price management and execution, and optimized inventory down to the store level.
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Traditional business intelligence (BI) solutions are becoming a thing of the past. Companies today are moving toward business solutions that can help maintain a competitive edge while empowering business executives across the enterprise. Operational BI is an approach that incorporates traditional BI best practices with the benefits of real-time information flow, resulting in more user-directed initiatives.
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Point of sale (POS) software was designed to speed up sales checkout processes. However, it has evolved to include many more features, and is now more commonly referred to as retail management systems (RMS). The benefits of implementing RMS are clear—they can help increase profits, improve marketing strategies, automate manual processes, manage inventory, and—most importantly—make the customer experience more memorable.
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Small to medium sized businesses (SMBs) encounter many of the same challenges as larger companies in unlocking information from the data they collect, yet they lack cost-effective solutions. Many must choose between expensive business intelligence solutions or complicated homegrown solutions. With many hosted reporting solutions now available, SMBs have an option that may meet their requirements—at a fraction of the cost.
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For many firms, continually moving people to new projects under different leaders is the only possible way to operate. The formal boss on the org chart may only rarely get a chance to observe employees in work situations. This isn’t normally a problem; direction is provided by whoever is leading the project. Where it is a problem is when it comes to performance appraisal—there is no one person who can do that appraisal.
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As a business employing IT, you may have encountered situations where the software application you purchased didn’t come with a help file. With no time to write complete documentation yourself and no budget to hire a professional technical writer to do it for you, what do you do? By applying the basic principles of cost-effective documentation, your business can develop impressive documentation quickly—for a minimal cost.
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Manufacturers of all sizes are more efficient, better managed, and more profitable because of lean—yet this improvement has plateaued at many companies. What’s holding up the progress of lean? The real problem is that as lean evolves and spreads beyond the plant floor, its conflict with traditional accounting is escalating—and becoming more dangerous to the financial health of manufacturers.
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Wisconsin Film & Bag, a leader in the flexible packaging industry, was set on expanding its business to the global market. The goal was simple: center its business model on superior customer service and quick turnaround. Since implementing an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system that could address its unique industry requirements, it has enhanced customer relationships and significantly reduced sales lead time.
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As a plastics molder, Dreco Inc. required an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system that could manage its sizeable inventory. The original application it had purchased ten years earlier delivered a minimum of manufacturing functionality at the greatest possible expense. What did Dreco do about it? It replaced the old system with an industry-specific ERP system, and is now realizing a significant return on investment.
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Chemtech Plastics Inc., an injection molding company founded in 1982, believed technology could help it obtain an edge over the competition—but the first generation software it was using had some limitations, and many of its processes were manual. By implementing an industry-specific enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, Chemtech has doubled its sales volume to more than $20 million (USD) in the last seven years.
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Corporate leaders know that revenues are made from “better data.” And when your data is at risk, so is the survival of your organization. That’s why it’s essential to protect your revenues with “safer data”—and it’s also why the common business language is now one of risk management. IT departments are now learning this in many of the same ways that business people have always had to—including the hard way.
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What happens between the time customers begin to research a product and the final purchase? They’re likely to check out your—and your competitors’—websites, retail stores, contact centers, and blogs. And each point of contact puts your company in a competitive situation. That’s why the most important issue is how your company tracks customer activity in today’s multichannel world.
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Tackling the transformation to lean production is high-priority in the aerospace industry. After all, lean manufacturing eliminates waste from essential manufacturing processes and helps you measure up to your competitors. But how can you attain true lean transformation—and what specific steps does your company need to take? Take a self-rating test and see where your company really stands.
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While the board has no business telling management which employee performance management (EPM) system to use, it does have the right to ensure an effective system is in place. EPM is one of the central tools for directing and monitoring activities right across an organization. Employing this system will ensure that any goals set out by management are clearly visible to everyone up the chain of command—including the CEO.
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As organizational storage allocation requirements multiply, the time required to back up file-based data also continues to increase. While software vendors continue making advancements in technology to speed up the disk fragmentation process, it continues to remain an issue—one that needs to be addressed at the file system level. Defragmenting the hard drive volume prior to performing the backup may be the answer.
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SANs, NAS devices, corporate servers, and high-end workstations all suffer the effects of fragmentation because of their multiple physical disk drives. This is attributed to the impact of fragmentation on the logical allocation of files and their physical distribution. The solution to this problem: implementing an automatic defragmentation software solution, together with intricate modern hardware technologies.
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Virtual worlds are created for a range of purposes, including support for various industries and applications. These worlds require a distributed client-server architecture allowing applications to scale from a single-user application to a large-scale environment. However, if your developers are going to concentrate on the application of virtual environments, the hard technology problems need to be solved in advance.
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The most effective project managers know that accounting for the effort, cost, and profitability of each person or project is the best way to succeed—and doing so is not as hard as you might think. The process will take you from where you probably are right now (the state we affectionately term “chaos”) to a prosperous state of order—and will also save your organization financial resources and valuable employee time.
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Founded in 2001, Playground is a destination resort sales and marketing company headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia (Canada). The worldwide success of Playground is based on intellectual property—including information about resorts, selling history, target markets, prospects, and past customers. How does it capture this information and use it—safely and securely—to help sell and market real estate?
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Founded in 1989 in Richmond Hill, Ontario (Canada), Kenilworth Publishing is a full-service media company that publishes consumer and business-to-business print magazines in diverse sectors. In 1993, Kenilworth executives decided that to continue to strengthen clients’ profiles within their respective industries, they needed to implement one of the two customer relationship management (CRM) solutions on their shortlist.
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Based in Vancouver, Washington (US), TigerStop LLC is the global leader in stop/gauge and pusher systems designed to improve the efficiency of manufacturing processes in the plastics, woodworking, and metal industries. Having experienced business-jeopardizing technical issues with the company’s initial customer relationship management (CRM) system, TigerStop went to the market in search of a viable CRM system.
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While service oriented architecture (SOA)-based systems are great for re-using the existing IT infrastructure to implement newer business processes, they only help IT professionals. Thus, an SOA-based system is a technical answer to a business challenge—but in order to help businesses react to business changes, existing business rules management system (BRMS) technology should be included in the mix.
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We’ve all heard the same story time and again: the project that started with such high expectations has turned out to be—like many others—mediocre at best. The product development team is asking questions—"Where did the project go wrong? Why didn’t we see the problems earlier?" Many companies are turning to product lifecycle management (PLM) for help.
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Research shows that companies implementing product portfolio management (PPM) solutions achieve greater success in profitability because of their ability to monitor product value throughout the product selection and development processes. With the ability to evaluate this information through PPM capabilities, companies can take corrective action to maximize product value during new development—or kill projects that won’t deliver sufficient returns.
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Products may fail to meet expectations for many reasons—most of which are self-inflicted wounds (such as unclear product definitions) by the company bringing them to market. What’s more, politics and inertia all too often win the day when it comes to making difficult product portfolio decisions. What actions can you take to rank among those companies which realize margin advantages of over 50 percent for new products?
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Enterprises are using business rules engines (BREs) as a means to reduce the costs of managing change. However, because these business rules are stored separately from the application code, many questions need to be answered: Can you track changes to policies? What risks are involved in having business policies outside of code? And how can you minimize these risks?
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Risk managers and compliance officials in banking institutions often face problems of how to measure and monitor risk and incorporate risk practices. Solutions to these problems must be linked to decision-making processes, but they also need to increase the speed at which institutions can react to market changes. Can new risk management solutions really deliver compliance in a verifiable, measurable, and timely manner?
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Your competitors are adopting business rules management solutions (BRMS) to achieve agility and reduce maintenance costs. With enhanced ability to store all business rules in one central location, enterprises have a unique opportunity to use non-conventional methods to test these rules, as well as their interactions with each other—without tying up their mission-critical software.
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At any given time, one in four mortgage providers is looking to upgrade its loan origination system. The reason: its current system provides low rates of automation—including some processing functions that are not automated at all. Using people to process loan applications decreases profitability of a company in several ways, but by automating more processes, profitability can be improved—and the hidden costs eliminated.
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Today, 70 to 80 percent of costs for processing loan applications are people-related. From a mortgage company’s perspective, this results in increased costs and decreased revenues. With ever-changing loan products, enterprises are forced to build or buy new loan origination systems periodically. And to meet these challenges, they’re choosing technology that focuses on solving business problems, not technical problems.
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A customer relationship management (CRM) solution is now a standard business requirement. With origins as a system for sales teams, CRM has clearly evolved into a mandatory tool for providing benefit to the entire organization. However, methodology and training play instrumental roles in successful CRM implementations; if designed well, these critical components will ultimately ensure user buy-in and success.
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Educational success depends on positive, productive relationships among teachers, students, parents, administrators, school boards, and the larger community. While computers cannot replace teachers, desktop computing and electronic networks can enhance learning by supporting social relationships and enabling rapid, accurate communication of stakeholder issues and needs. A formal deployment plan will help you deliver an environment consistent with those needs.
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Small to medium businesses (SMBs) like yours are the lifeblood of the economy. However, you may feel you need an operational boost—one that transforms your enterprise into a customer-focused business with the ability for future growth. An integrated suite of applications can give your business processes the depth and flexibility to achieve what a collection of stand-alone applications cannot.
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Poor customer experiences can happen at any touch point within your company. It could be employees responding to customers requesting information, placing an order, or trying to resolve a problem. It could be the inside sales team. Or it could be the collections department. But by deploying an advanced contact-handling application, you can improve customer satisfaction—at all touch points.
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The printed circuit board (PCB) industry is changing rapidly, and information technology (IT) is becoming an essential part of it. PCB manufacturers are challenged to reduce production costs and lead times, while improving profitability and product quality. So what steps can you take to identify solutions that decrease costs and time-to-market, all while providing you with up-to-the-minute business intelligence?
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Few printed circuit board (PCB) companies create dedicated engineering system, and even fewer are successful when they do. Some computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) suppliers promise the capability to customize their systems—but the task is usually left to overburdened engineering and IT staff. So how do you transform engineering from organizational bottleneck to a corporate asset?
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“Get this to me ASAP. I can’t afford any delays.” Your customer service representatives hear these statements every day. Your clients are demanding speed and quality at every touch point: the days when they’d accept tradeoffs between product quality and timeliness of service are over. Organizations need to adapt to this reality—before their customers defect to the competition.
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The earned value management system (EVMS) is a method of tracking cost and schedule performance using work breakdown structure/earned value (WBS/EV) techniques. Formerly called C/SCSC (Cost/Schedule Control Systems Criteria) by the contract industry, an understanding of WBS basics is essential for any US contractor wishing to be selected for new major systems contracts over a certain funding threshold.
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Whether you’re familiar with the world of accounting or not, understanding the basic concepts and principles of accounting functions can give you an essential edge in the competitive manufacturing sector. This in-depth guide, complete with glossary, takes you through the step-by-step process of cost accounting for manufacturers—from prototype manufacturing, shipping, and full production, through to financial reports.
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Most project-oriented businesses are faced with poorly designed, archaic computer systems that have inadequate project reporting and accounting structures. This can limit the information provided to project managers for project reporting. However, properly designed work breakdown structure (WBS) systems give cost and general accounting the ability to rely on a simpler chart of accounts, while providing more project management flexibility.
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Just as back-office automation became critical for competitive success in the last half of the twentieth century, customer relationship management (CRM) is today’s imperative for success. However, the key to creating business value with CRM is remembering that business strategy and technology strategy are linked. Companies that believe they can implement CRM capabilities based on technology alone will fail.
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Lean manufacturing is a management philosophy, enabled and supported by various techniques, to eliminate non-value adding activity. However, aerospace and defense (A&D) government regulations impose very different business practices from those followed in the commercial sector. Can lean manufacturing principles really work in A&D? The answer: it depends on the architecture of the enterprise resource planning (ERP) system.
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For many years, business intelligence (BI) has proven to be invaluable for enhancing database information in the retail and banking sectors. But to be truly useful in the manufacturing sector, the manufacturing environment’s existing technology information structure needs to continually inform the BI system. This can now be accomplished more efficiently by embedding BI into the enterprise software itself.
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The process of implementing a new enterprise solution is incredibly complex. This process can send your organization down a long road of beneficial—and sometimes painful—change. The good news, though, is that if the implementation is done right the first time, you won’t have to travel that road again. The key question: how do you do it right?
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For real estate companies, poor property management can be disastrous, increasing both costs and maintenance problems. The end result: dissatisfied customers—and poor competitive prospects. Communication is also integral to property management, so to keep its customers happy and to improve its maintenance practices, Inmobiliaria Colonial, a major Spanish real estate company, decided to implement an enterprise portal solution.
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Gruppo Tosinvest is by no means a single-process company. Beside a core focus on health care, it also runs businesses in the media, real estate, financial services, and engineering and construction sectors. With such an array of processes, controlling IT costs is of utmost importance. That’s why it decided to upgrade the enterprise software it had been running since 2001.
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Most metals companies are recognizing that it’s time to consider replacing their aging in-house developed information systems with a commercial enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution. There are many reasons why these companies should make the move to an industry-specific solution—the first being that the quality of their systems can be the limiting factor for growth in today’s competitive markets.
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As a wire and cable manufacturer, you probably already have a computer system in place that you couldn’t operate without. However, this system may be outdated, or may not provide the capabilities you need. But moving to a new enterprise-wide business system is an important step—one you can’t afford to take lightly. What, exactly, do you look for?
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Since 1985, TrailTech Inc. has provided the agriculture, construction, and transportation industries with state-of-the-art trailer equipment. However, inaccurate bills of materials (BOMs) were causing bottlenecks, missed delivery dates, and substandard productivity. After TrailTech implemented an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system that created real-time BOMs and eliminated bottlenecks, customer complaints of delinquent deliveries reduced dramatically, improving stress levels throughout the plant.
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Qualitel couldn’t keep up with the growing demand for its electronics. With revenues increasing 30 to 40 percent per year, its order entry and accounting systems were rapidly becoming obsolete. Qualitel needed a solution—and fast. Just one year later, after selecting and implementing an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, Qualitel’s revenue exploded 471 percent to $12.89 million (USD).
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External forces can knock your business off balance with no warning. Spikes in fuel prices, worker strikes, and shipping delays can significantly stress the supply chains of manufacturers, logistics providers, and retailers. To meet these external challenges, you need the capability to extend supply chain visibility, respond to changes in real time, and improve performance measurement across the entire chain.
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Small to medium businesses (SMBs) need technology to survive in a competitive business environment. However, regardless of the business type, size, or industry, incorporating technology into existing frameworks involves risk—to productivity, customer service, operations, and the bottom line! The key to reducing risk and increasing productivity is thus the selection of technologies that will accommodate change in your business.
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Within the manufacturing community, the arrival of the latest, greatest enterprise software technology is often met with skepticism. The right service-oriented architecture (SOA) application, however, can reverse such doubts, as SOA continues to emerge as the dominant technical platform for building next-generation business applications. Its potential to transform enterprise software applications is not only well hyped—it’s also well documented.
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In times of economic recession, many businesses take the opportunity to look inward and seek ways to streamline their operations. It’s no wonder that lean manufacturing has been such a hot topic across the manufacturing industry. Lean manufacturing helps manufacturers work smarter and more efficiently, and has become a refined version of traditional just-in-time (JIT) and demand flow manufacturing concepts.
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The indifference of software vendors to the industrial and commercial machinery manufacturing sector has limited this market’s progress in leveraging IT tools to their advantage. This indifference also affects the sector’s success in addressing key business issues. For these manufacturers—and the software vendors that serve them—recognition and response to these issues can no longer be delayed.
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.NET technology is a wake-up call, and some people are sleeping through it! Remaining competitive means mission-critical software systems, such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications, must be designed from the ground up for connectivity and integration. But software developers don’t advertise their shortcomings, and some ERP vendors—and by association, their customers—are being left behind.
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Engineer-to-order (ETO) and project-based companies look to information technology (IT) to improve processes and gain a competitive edge. However, building complex products to exact customer specifications requires unique software. But what exactly are the software requirements of ETO and project-based manufacturers? Remember, the wrong software can cost about the same as the right software—until you try to use it!
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Keeping track of your key business indicators is the difference between a thriving business concern and a business on life support. But even with this knowledge, one-third of chief executive officers (CEOs) feel they don’t spend enough time reviewing financial and operating numbers. But is spending more time agonizing over piles of data really the best solution?
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Customer-facing processes are challenging to manage because they are always changing. Conventional workflow automation and stand-alone business process management (BPM) technologies lack many critical components found in customer relationship management (CRM). However, converging BPM and CRM provides the responsiveness, cost-effectiveness, and manageability to achieve optimal results. The converged approach helps align priorities enterprise-wide, reduce risks, and unblock revenue growth potential.
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When businesses commit to implementing customer relationship management (CRM), they commit to realigning their entire organizations around the customer. More specifically, they commit to collecting the right data—and using it the right way at the right time. But if you’re the manager championing CRM in your organization, how do you create the CRM buzz and obtain executive buy-in?
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Customer process management (CPM)—the convergence of customer relationship management (CRM) and business process management (BPM)—can deliver significant gains in efficiency and standardization for insurance companies. Whether it’s providing real-time quotations for insurance policies, identifying cross-selling and renewal opportunities, or managing claims, CPM extends across the enterprise to ensure that each customer interaction becomes an opportunity for service excellence.
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As competition in the financial sector increases, many financial services providers are seeking ways to improve customer service and profitability through process efficiency. By developing rich integration between customer data and allowing that data to be managed by the business users, customer process management (CPM) enables financial services organizations to adapt to changing market demands and maximize their competitive edge.
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Choosing the right customer resource management (CRM) application involves looking at its ability to solve many business challenges—both expected and unexpected. Analyzing CRM applications for their problem-solving acumen can help your business successfully select a platform that improves the way you do business, drives profits, and reduces risk, while minimizing IT resource requirements.
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Customers are the lifeblood of any business, and receiving quality customer service is a major factor in their purchasing decisions. There are six key elements that can help distinguish your organization’s product or service from your competitors. By applying these key elements, you can unlock the lifetime value of your customers and build an outstanding referral platform for future growth.
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SpectraSite is in the business of making wireless and broadcast communications pervasive. One process it was looking to improve, however, was its in-building antenna approval. The current process was time-consuming, and its faxing technology inadequate. But by implementing a business process management (BPM) solution, SpectraSite dramatically reduced the process cycle, from almost sixty days to a maximum of ten days.
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In the past few years, the number of county employees at the Prince William County Government in Virginia (US) has grown significantly, but with few additions to the administrative staff. Prince William County needed a system that would help its agencies process personnel action forms (PAFs) more efficiently, reduce mistakes, limit paper use, and provide a central repository for PAFs.
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The road to implementing customer relationship management (CRM) systems is fraught with risk and littered with failure. Paradoxically, reams have been written by industry practitioners explaining why CRM projects fail, yet the same patterns and mistakes are repeated—over and over again. While there is no magic bullet, following some simple guidelines can help assure CRM success for your organization.
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Selecting a new enterprise customer relationship management (CRM) solution is an undertaking that requires careful planning and managed execution. And in fact, there are a number of common mistakes that organizations make. Failing to execute the selection process in an objective and structured fashion can be an expensive financial mistake—as well as a fatal hit to your professional reputation.
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We all know that computers, generally speaking, have not been as reliable as phones. And the fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) surrounding voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) has been, in some cases, justified. However, for VoIP the question now is not whether reliability can be achieved, but rather how much reliability you can expect from the options available to you.
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The average personal computer (PC) costs an enterprise $10,000 (USD) per year to own and maintain—five times the purchase price of the hardware and software! Is it possible to reduce the total cost of ownership (TCO) of technology platforms? Voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) manageability can be a crucial step in self-provisioning users and unburdening valuable network professionals.
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Enterprises of all sizes are adopting Internet protocol (IP) telephony for cost savings and productivity gains—but high quality voice service takes more than just buying the latest equipment. Is IP telephony right for your organization and your network? Get the straight facts from an industry leader—along with a 7-step assessment and deployment checklist for a successful implementation.
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La administración de un negocio familiar es más complicada que aquellos negocios cuyos dueños no tienen ningún parentesco, porque la familia dueña del negocio desempeña el rol central y dirige el negocio. La falta de una administración formal y efectiva es la mayor causa para problemas organizacionales.
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Not all integrated accounting and point of sale (POS) systems are created equal. If sales prices aren’t updated, or if on-hand stock isn’t managed properly, you will be at a major competitive disadvantage. Fully integrated accounting systems move information smoothly from one module to another—but what does integration as it applies to accounting and POS software really mean?
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All too often, fragmented IT landscapes make it difficult—and sometimes downright impossible—for wholesale distributors to improve processes, control costs, and create the efficiencies needed to succeed in a competitive industry. Nevertheless, enterprise technologies do have the potential to be powerful tools, quickly reacting to shifting market forces in a consolidating industry, and achieving operational excellence and solid growth.
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Channel partners are money-making sales and service arms for any vendor. Supporting partner leads can increase sales in difficult-to-reach markets, and expand customer bases in existing sectors as well. Greater revenues and larger market shares are vital to survival in today’s business world, but some simple tips can help maximize lead generation and open the door to closing more sales.
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In asset-intensive industries, the need for an overall equipment efficiency (OEE) system is driven by the need to capture real-time information. When equipment operation data is automatically collected and refined by the operator, the quality and quantity of data, and the ability to access and analyze it in a specific manner can greatly help to reduce costs and maximize productivity.
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The key to plant efficiency and profitability is open communication between those who design industrial facilities and those who operate and maintain them. Communication between these entities has long been lacking, however. Companies that use design, operate, and maintain (DOM) concepts can facilitate and standardize their proactive approaches to this open communication—whether collaboration takes place internally, or with outside designers. Learn more now.
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The US Bioterrorism Act aims to counter terrorist attacks on the nation’s food supply. But what does it mean for your company? Can your company access and present documentation within twenty-four hours of the FDA’s request for any set of records? If not, a fully integrated enterprise resource planning (ERP) system is mandatory unless you are the smallest of businesses.
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Business strategy execution requires the control and automation of complex processes, and the ability to quickly analyze data relevant to the enterprise. Companies have to address these processes in a responsive, flexible way. However, this cannot be achieved simply by optimizing local activities. Multiple activities from different departments must be synchronized, toward the overall goal of increasing organizational profitability.
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Effective communication uses many senses, but visual communication provides huge amounts of information, and can convey all sorts of meanings. Face to face, we can rely on visual cues; however, the amount of information transmitted via distant communication is limited by cost and complexity. And when the costs of transportation rise, broader use of remote visual communications becomes increasingly practical.
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There is a considerable need to understand how technical performance and the problems within the technical infrastructure impact the capabilities of the business itself. The majority of companies can only measure specific asset and application performance, whereas many issues within the infrastructure lie at the transport level, where packet switching can present both great opportunities and major issues.
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Information management, which includes both data and content management, is an essential element of service-oriented architecture (SOA). Taking a service-oriented approach to information data can thus help you achieve greater value from your information assets. Implementing master data management (MDM) services can provide a multiplier effect, by delivering high-value business services over and above information integration services.
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Predictions of the death of software are overstated. In reality, businesses are becoming more reliant on technology, not less. What’s changing, however, is the number of options available for managing, delivering, and paying for software applications. Many independent software vendors recognize the benefits of offering software as a service--a delivery alternative that can present long-term benefits for all parties.
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In today’s fast-paced, dynamic business environment, organizations need timely, accurate information to make critical decisions about their businesses, and to respond quickly to changes in operations, competition, and customer needs. However, many organizations that have adopted business intelligence (BI) tools to address their informational needs are faced with critical challenges in deriving benefit from these technologies.
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By automating financial, customer relationship, and supply chain processes, Microsoft Dynamics AX links people, processes, and information. This document consolidates the core features and functionality in the solution, and is intended for use as a tool for users to familiarize themselves with the full scope of the solution.
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Organizations that implement a customer relationship management (CRM) system should evaluate software with an eye to the must-have features of the application. However, choosing the right software is just part of the solution. Businesses that intend to grow and compete must create an environment that encourages people at all levels of a company to take customer service seriously.
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Workforce planning allows an organization to determine if it has the right capability to deliver on business objectives, and enables it to maximize return on talent investments. By deploying a structured workforce planning process, organizations gain new insights and metrics about present and future workforce gaps. This will transform the talent management approach from reactive to proactive.
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Performance reviews are an essential and productive use of employee and manager time. A well-defined competency model can discover insights into individual, workgroup, and even entire workforce performance, helping enterprises gain true business advantage in their industries and marketplaces. Employee consultations and reviews, appraisals, and developmental decisions no longer need to exist as isolated business functions.
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The role of human resources (HR) professionals has changed dramatically in recent years, as cost control and compliance measures vie for their time. Self-service intranet applications help employees and managers perform key HR activities themselves, reducing the need for HR professionals to get involved in routine minutiae—and allowing them to play a strategic role in their organizations.
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Traditional business intelligence (BI) software has not been available to line-of-business managers, frontline employees, or external stakeholders, but that is no longer the case. New BI solutions unite transactional and analytical worlds. Knowledge workers and executives can now analyze operational processes in real time. Decisions can be made and entered back into operational systems combining BI and performance management strategies.
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The Domain Name System (DNS) and Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) have become mission-critical services as the Internet and other Internet protocol (IP)-based networks become business necessities. Services like IP telephony are intolerant of down-time—they require “dial tone” reliability and a solution that enables them to remain available despite any of the unforeseen circumstances that can incapacitate a server.
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The greatest threat to the security of the modern network is complexity. Threats to network security almost always play on missed details in the design of a network or a piece of software. These overlooked details enable much larger and potentially devastating security breaches to occur. However, this threat can be countered with a well designed network and vigilant safeguards.
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Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) has been adopted as the dynamic protocol of choice for pain-free management of network resources. The integration of the Domain Name System (DNS) and DHCP into a single network helps overcome traditional barriers to effective resource allocation. Indeed, combining DNS and DHCP enhances information security, thus providing a solution your organization can grow with.
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The Domain Name System (DNS) plays an important role in providing the information used by the Windows Domain locator service to connect and authenticate with Active Directory. But how can organizations with existing configurations using the Berkeley Internet Name Domain (BIND)—the international DNS benchmark—be sure that migration to other server solutions will yield a dependable DNS solution?
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Domain name system (DNS) best practices are becoming more standardized. However, DNS services are often overlooked simply because they are so commonplace. The result is poorly configured services that are either not fully functional, or easily compromised. To ensure that the Internet remains a reliable medium for information and commerce, further implementation of secure and efficient DNS will be required.
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Small to medium businesses have typically built their own domain name system (DNS) and Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) services, used Windows DNS/DHCP, or turned to a hosted service provider for these services. This approach may appear to offer tremendous savings, but contains many hidden costs and risks that are not always apparent until a catastrophic loss of service occurs.
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When Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) was created, the Internet was still mainly a vehicle for scientific collaboration. Indeed, the need for security has grown out of the increased use of the Internet as a commercial medium. That’s why new DHCP issues have come to the forefront that were simply not explored in the early days of the Internet.
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To understand the power of cache poisoning and pharming, imagine that you’re logging on to your Internet banking service. The page looks a little odd, but the address is correct, and it has the same fields as usual. You might enter your credentials without thinking twice. Unfortunately, you’ve just provided a criminal syndicate with the contents of your bank account.
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Voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) technology has become a money-saving telecom option that brings the power of a computer to a user’s phone. VoIP devices, however, require more complicated configurations than the average network client. Indeed, without reliable and properly configured domain name system (DNS) and Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) services running on a network, VoIP services are impossible.
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Organizations deploying next-generation business and communications applications are looking for ways to rapidly increase the use of existing Internet and core network resources. These network environments demand new management frameworks to simplify network configuration and deployment changes. However, existing point-based solutions do little to address issues of scale, usability, security, and network availability at the Internet protocol (IP) level.
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Increased complexity, coupled with the adoption of voice over Internet protocol (VoIP), demands additional management overhead for enterprise- and carrier-class networks. This management need is compounded by requirement for corporations to implement IP version 6 (IPv6)-compatible networks to ensure capacity and service over the next decade. This transition will require careful planning, and naming systems will play a critical role.
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Today, in addition to their usual reporting and operational duties, human resources (HR) professionals are expected to bring value to the company in a number of significant respects, ranging from launching operational efficiency initiatives to providing strategic leadership. And now, compliance with the US Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) Act has imposed a new set of responsibilities on the HR organization.
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Wireless technology has become exceedingly popular and convenient in both residences and enterprises. Networks are now expected to aid IT support, government services, and public safety applications. That’s why the architectural strategies used to implement wireless mesh networks can have a profound impact on the performance and financial success of metro-scale and wide area wireless mesh deployments.
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Data entry and error correction are key roadblocks to return on investment (ROI) from customer relationship management (CRM) software. Manual data entry is time-consuming, and reduces staff effectiveness by taking them away from potential sales opportunities. Automating data entry is one way to reduce missed contacts and incorrect details, and to increase the volume and accuracy of contact entry.
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Organizational growth can come in many forms. It can be sheer increases in number of employees, customers, patients, members or constituents; it can involve launching new products, or entering new geographies; it can simply be increasing transaction levels. Regardless of form, managing growth confidently means relying not only on an organization’s people, but also on its business systems.
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Many businesses owe their very survival to improvements that would have been impossible without radical changes to business process systems. However, many of the promises implicit in these systems—dramatic increases in business success, with minimal negative impact—have proven to be overly optimistic for many, and flat-out fantasy for some.
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It’s common knowledge that asset downtime disrupts production and drives up both process and per-unit operating costs. However, executives often lose sight of this because they focus on output, not on the assets used to create it. The irony is that companies can use asset performance management not only to make more widgets, but to make each widget more profitably.
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If you’re like most small to midsized business executives, your primary focus is on growing revenue and controlling company spending. However, you probably use paper-based processes to deal with company expenses. Without an automated system, you have limited ability to actively manage spending—and can only hope that spending decisions remain within budget and in compliance with company policies.
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Demand planning applications can help manufacturers establish baseline sales forecasts and perform analysis to improve resource usage. They can also help manufacturers optimize pricing capabilities and better understand their markets. Yet to get the most out of these tools, manufacturers must be willing to reorganize their planning processes—and to share the resulting insights with supply chain partners and customers.
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Competitive pressures and increasing customer demands are driving most manufacturers to produce goods ever faster, at lower cost, and in compliance with more exacting quality, regulatory, and market requirements. However, technology can help manufacturers meet these challenges, increase operational efficiency, and step ahead of competitors with more proactive planning, greater shared visibility, and more profitable responses to change.
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The contact database sits at the heart of any successful customer relationship management (CRM) program. Indeed, most CRM efforts aim at improving revenues based on the contact database. But what about the information that never made it into the database at all? The investment in these leads will often be lost—and the sales may go straight to the competition.
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Fraenkel Company is an employee-owned manufacturing distributor of household furniture and related products and services. The company created a sophisticated in-house ERP system in the early 1990s. However, homegrown software can be unwieldy to maintain and difficult to upgrade. In 2001, Fraenkel saw a solution that offered more advanced capabilities, and implemented VAI’s S2K Enterprise Edition for Manufacturing.
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Today’s leading-edge business applications go beyond mere Web enablement, where publishing information to the Web is the primary motive (referred to nowadays as Web 1.0 applications). State-of-the-art enterprise software must also incorporate a single, integrated interface that links applications instantly to business processes and collaborative technologies. However, developing Web 2.0 applications is anything but trivial.
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Vormittag Associates, Inc. (VAI) provides enterprise resource planning software and associated services to clients in the manufacturing, wholesale, and retail industries. To facilitate everyday business processes, VAI began to consider a business portal. As a software provider, VAI was intimately familiar with a number of portal products, and decided that IBM Workplace Services Express was best suited for the company.
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There are seven core operational measures that can be leveraged to fine-tune a company’s business processes and achieve a higher return on capital employed (RoCE). Even modest gains in these measurements can spur a significant increase in RoCE. If the level of performance against each core operational measure rises by just one percentage point, for example, RoCE can nearly double.
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Finance executives must meet a growing number of challenges if their companies are to continue being profitable. So how can they deliver strong performance in every aspect of their businesses? The answer: by deploying a corporate financial management system that expands the capabilities of their core activities—a system that extends its reach to automate other processes within the enterprise.
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In times like these, when IT spending is increasingly subject to cutbacks, finding out how to get "more for less" is as crucial to a company’s IT department as making sure that applications run smoothly. In Rome, Italy, Gruppo Tosinvest managed to prove that this challenge—which keeps legions of IT managers awake at night—can be solved.
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There are several ways to virtualize the front office, with at least four different solution choices available. The soundest advice may be for companies to start the process, and evaluate the alternatives based on their ability to solve real business needs. It’s time that the personal computer (PC) find its place in the data center—not proliferated around the workplace.
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New developments in telephony solutions have left some small businesses reeling; smaller organizations incorrectly assume there’s a steep learning curve for new products. However, there is no real reason for any business to be left behind. One-size-fits-all telephony is a thing of the past, and new flexibility can level the playing field for any size of business.
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Acquiring and retaining customers is crucial to an organization’s long-term success and growth. Finding new customers is more expensive and labor-intensive than maintaining a current client base. Haphazard marketing plans can be costly and ineffective, but customer loyalty solutions don’t have to be expensive. There are customer retention tools that can help your marketing teams hold on to your existing customers.
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Administrative overload is a key problem in managing a human resources (HR) team. Health care rate hikes and not qualifying for high-end benefit packages are two serious concerns. Furthermore, missing filing deadlines can lead to legal fines and penalties. Outsourcing HR can be an effective way of providing high-quality HR services while avoiding risk, saving time, and protecting the bottom line.
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For today’s organizations, Internet access is a must-have. However, when they decide to open the door to the World Wide Web, the good—along with the bad—enters the network. Spyware and viruses can be distributed onto the network from untrustworthy web sites. In order to protect the best interests of the organization, an effective Web content filter is required.
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All organizations require the ability to create portable document format (PDF) files to maintain the interoperability, authenticity, and security of confidential information—while ensuring that the right person has access to this information. However, if your employees do not have an easy and intuitive way to do this, your organization may be at risk of violating compliance requirements.
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It has been estimated that two-thirds of all complex technology solutions, such as customer relationship management (CRM), enterprise resource planning (ERP), and performance management result in less than successful outcomes. Implementing a complex technology-enabled performance management solution is a worthwhile, but significant challenge. That’s why the implementation of technology must be a small part of a larger change effort.
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Setting up a performance management system can deliver immense value to your organization. But in order to successfully execute a performance management system, and to avoid critical missteps, you need to focus on the three important core processes that must be launched and navigated—before you launch the performance improvement process.
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Performance management systems have become an important tool in building an organizational culture of choice, and can deliver tremendous results. However, it’s not very common to have a comprehensive “road map” when embarking on a performance management system implementation—which can lead to serious mistakes in dealing with the people, process, and technology of performance management.
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Executives watch time slip away while they plod through payroll, benefits management, and other human resources (HR) tasks. This time is spent writing paychecks, negotiating with benefits providers, and updating employee records. But instead of squandering resources on "administrivia," executives can transform HR into a competitive advantage by outsourcing or streamlining non-strategic HR—thus providing increased focus on strategic HR.
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Mine business planning is a time-consuming and complex task involving many participants, systems, and separate processes. It is often extremely difficult to precisely replicate a planning process from budget to budget, or to trace the origin of figures in consolidated reports. However, a sensitively deployed and fully integrated end-to-end solution can go a long way toward solving these problems.
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Formalized risk management is underused in project management, where the focus is typically on schedule and budget. This affects most aspects of a project, including evaluation, selection, planning, execution, and control. How many project decisions are made without formally evaluating the potential consequences? When budgets are tight and competition is fierce, this question is more relevant than ever.
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We all know about the three monkeys: See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. But as project managers, we need to control our projects. In order to do this, we must ignore the advice of the three monkeys. We need to see the potential for cost overruns, hear about the risks, and speak about the likelihood of failure.
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Many companies find that traditional sales training methods have fallen short. The competitive levels of today's business environment demand new educational methods that can deliver advantage quickly and cost effectively. But how to cut through the clutter? Book learning, seminars, and lectures alone are too static! E-learning and web-based training are often irrelevant—or just plain boring. What to do?
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Accessing more real-time intelligence can give your company the flexibility and agility to win in the marketplace. However, multiple and disparate data systems, lengthy integration cycles, and isolated business processes may well be standing in your way. The question then becomes “What kind of IT platform is going to give me the kind of information I really need to have?”
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When it comes to US Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) compliance, the role of financial information systems simply cannot be overlooked. This was recently underscored by a study naming "financial systems and procedures" as the most common problem among companies disclosing material weaknesses. Indeed, this weakness has prompted organizations to take a deeper look at their business processes—and underlying financial systems.
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Mid-market companies can level the competitive playing field by using business integration technology. Integrated processes reduce costs by decreasing data entry errors, improving supply chain responsiveness, and increasing inventory accuracy—not to mention eliminating document processing fees and customer charge-backs. But how can mid-market companies leverage the capabilities of "high-end" integration solutions?
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Internet access is now mission-critical for many enterprises. Yet the unpredictable nature of Internet bandwidth can put important applications at risk. For converged networks with voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) and data running at the same time, redundancy is a must-have, as IT managers strive to achieve the same levels of reliability phone users have come to expect.
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The client: a US-based provider of reusable rack rental, recovery, and closed loop logistics management for bulk shipping and display of live goods, from nurseries to retailers. Faced with growing demand for its racks, the distributor required an enterprise-wide application that allowed flexibility for growth, while reducing operational complexity and maintaining the company’s excellent track record.
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A software consulting service provider needed to develop a web-based interface having touch screen functionality to provide instant schedule visibility, eliminate double bookings, and fully automate the reservation process—including sending attendee invitations, managing catering
orders, and reserving equipment. The service provider turned to Rishabh for development services.
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A leading application service provider of business applications needed to develop a replica of enterprise resource planning (ERP) for veterinary practice. The application required customer relationship management (CRM), supply chain management (SCM), a financial accounting system, human resource (HR) management, and medical records management. Rishabh Software developed the solution using EJB, XML, Java servlets, JSSE, JBoss, and J2ME technologies.
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A global marketing information firm was conducting paper- and telephone-based employee exit surveys. However, its manual process was time-consuming and costly. There was also the challenge of obtaining honest, accurate data from the employees in a completely confidential manner. Thus, the firm needed to automate its manual employee exit survey process, and replace it with a web-based application.
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High-profile cyber-attacks are imprinted in the enterprise security worldview, and for good reason. Enterprises without sound intrusion prevention strategies across the three threat dimensions—undesired access, malicious content, and rate-based attacks—are exposed to unacceptable risks, especially from hybrid attacks. However, a three-dimensional protection (3DP) approach provides protection for clients, servers, and network infrastructure, while maximizing bandwidth for mission-critical traffic.
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IT departments play a key role in complying with the US Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX). Without the right technological solutions to record and monitor access to networks, financial systems, and sensitive data, company management cannot ensure the integrity of the information in their financial reports. That’s why technology that helps with SOX compliance and internal control management is imperative.
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Grid infrastructure is maturing as an enterprise form of distributed computing—and with an increasingly wide range of applications able to make use of its high performance and lower cost, it’s not too late to invest in grid technology. However many “early adopter” investment banks now have multiple disparate grids, and face the problem of how to consolidate them.
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There is an ongoing arms race in the financial services industry to be competitive in electronic trading (e-trading) markets. Significant business risks exist, in terms of organizational reputation as well as the bottom line. The challenge is to minimize end-to-end latencies, and to ensure consistent performance levels, particularly in fast-moving markets—a challenge spanning both application and infrastructure teams.
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Many organizations use limited (restricted) users and system policies and group policies to ensure users cannot access certain areas of the computer or install most off-the-shelf software. However, these approaches require the network administrator to be very knowledgeable, and to spend large amounts of time setting and maintaining the policies. The alternative: a whitelist-based security solution.
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Typically, there are two approaches to managing public access and workplace workstations: the lock-down approach, and the reactionary approach. However, despite the variety of public access or corporate computer environments that exist, non-restrictive technology is applicable to all of them. With this technology in place, users can use workstations as they desire, but downtime and technical support costs are eliminated.
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Unfortunately, the portfolio management processes that experts have advocated for years—and that many organizations have implemented—often take the form of semi-annual or even annual meetings. However, this often raises balance or alignment issues only after millions of dollars have been spent. What’s needed is real-time information that can be used to conduct continuous, automated assessment of portfolio status.
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Business management solution users spend most of their time “heads down” in the business application, but they also need to use communication and desktop productivity tools. Thus, business solutions need familiar, easy-to-learn user interfaces. They need to be “process-centric” and role-based. And they need to provide a bridge between the worlds of structured business applications and unstructured desktop productivity software.
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Planning is a crucial management discipline that enables organizations to optimally allocate their finite resources, and achieve maximum potential. The more intelligently these resources are allocated in response to changing conditions and objectives, the better the business will perform. Indeed, improved business performance is why so many companies are aggressively evolving their planning processes and embracing planning best practices.
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Today’s business users require more from their business performance management systems. From dashboards to scorecards, production reporting, ad hoc analysis, financial applications, and key performance indicators, it’s clear that businesses need one system that offers broad, diverse functionality. They want the interface to be intuitive and easy to use, and they want the system to integrate with their productivity tools.
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Word processing software was introduced to improve employee performance, and has become an integral tool for every business. In much the same way, dashboards and
scorecards will become the tools for improving business performance management and strategy execution. That’s why its essential for managers to gain an overview of dashboards and scorecards, including their benefits, strengths, and integration.
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The UN Standard Products and Services Code (UNSPSC), the global product and services classification standard, has been revolutionizing purchasing and supply management across the world. Whether you’re deliberating on the need for a common product and classification standard for your company, or an advanced UNSPSC adopter, revisiting the basics can help you improve your purchasing and supply management processes.
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It’s only lately that people have been questioning the value of information they’re able to garner from within “spend data” warehouses. Why can t we leverage traditional tools to give the sourcing and purchasing community what they want? To understand the limitations of traditional data-cleansing technology, and why spend data necessitates special algorithms, we need to start with the basics.
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Software technologies can provide a single point of entry for prospects and health plan providers to educate new or renewing prospects on the full value of each offering. Behind the scenes, these technologies can also record all prospect preferences to allow sales, marketing, advertising, and product development to benefit from more targeted offerings and personalized messaging, at greatly reduced costs.
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The fundamentals of business are fairly simple. Customers have needs, and preferences about the products and services that will fill those needs. Businesses, on the other hand, have products or services with features that offer value. Win–win business transactions provide products or services with the features that best satisfy customer needs. This builds lasting relationships—and long-term organizational success.
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In the relentless search for ever-improving returns on investment and market competitiveness, some of the world’s biggest corporations are applying a model known as the supply chain operations reference (SCOR) model to maximize supply chain efficiency. Simply gathering SCOR metrics information is one thing—but how do you actually make this information available to allow optimal decision-making for your business?
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One of the biggest “time-wasters” in not-for-profit organizations is the constant reentry of data from one system to another. For example, many organizations must manually reenter information from their fundraising applications to their accounting systems. This is error-prone, costs valuable time, and delays important reporting. The solution lies in finding efficient ways to share information—across the organization.
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When it comes to electronic discovery, the process of producing digital information as part of a legal matter, ignorance is no longer bliss. An overarching requirement is the need for organizations, especially general counsel, to comprehend what information it has, and where. This insight can prove invaluable as parties negotiate conditions of discovery and prepare strategies in support of litigation.
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As with most new technologies, voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) brings new challenges along with benefits. The main challenge is VoIP’s extreme sensitivity to delay and packet loss compared with other network applications. However, a basic understanding of VoIP traffic and of the quality metrics provided by VoIP monitoring tools will help you keep your VoIP network running smoothly.
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Organizations with existing Internet protocol version 4 (IPv4) networks seeking to implement IPv6 face challenges in identifying impacts, planning the transition, and executing the migration. Given the common organizational reliance on external communications for partner links, home-based employees, and Internet access, an overall plan should be compiled addressing the current environment, users, and the controlled steps to IPv6 deployment.
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Effective IP management requires proper allocation of address space for adequate address capacity as needed, as well as accurate configuration of DHCP and DNS servers. Along with flawless configuration and management of each of these foundational elements of Internet protocol (IP) address management, address managers must also integrate these management functions into the broader IT network management environment.
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To meet regulatory requirements such as the US Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX), IT managers are now receiving the board-level visibility and budgets required to improve enterprise data security. For example, companies need secure and verifiable audit trails that track the activities of database administrators (DBAs) and other privileged insiders. But have you considered the seven essential elements of database security?
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Many companies are struggling to comply with a patchwork of regulations related to sensitive corporate information. As a result, companies are looking for new database security and auditing solutions to help prevent unauthorized access to confidential information—and to satisfy internal and external auditors—without the performance loss and insider security risk of traditional database management system (DBMS) logging approaches.
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The capacity for service-oriented architecture (SOA) to provide a framework for next-generation enterprise telecommunications services has become a reality through the maturing of Web services technology. Such communications services can now take their rightful place alongside collaborating business processes to allow enterprises to achieve a fully integrated SOA, an architecture that can grow with the business and grow with technology.
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Security is a vital consideration when evaluating enterprise Internet protocol (IP) telecommunications solutions. In addition to delivering business benefits, a voice over IP (VoIP) system may also become a target for unauthorized users, and must be secured against threats. Indeed, if threats and vulnerabilities are not addressed, the results can be devastating with respect to lost productivity, resources, and reputation.
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XML gateways, a new class of networking device, manage message-level security, service-level agreements (SLAs), and performance in service-oriented architectures (SOAs). XML gateways specialize in application-level protocols rendered within the XML or Web services message itself. With the ability to rapidly inspect and process XML messages, they can perform security, transformation, routing, and SLA operations at wire speed in the network.
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There’s no universal solution for Web services security. Sometimes, access lists programmed into the Web services themselves are sufficient. Other times, Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) may be more than adequate. However, when granular message processing and auditing is essential, dedicated extensible markup language (XML) and Web services security technology will prove necessary. Which options are right for you?
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Project portfolio management (PPM) is a tool-supported process for optimally managing an organization’s “portfolio” of projects. And although PPM can provide real value, many organizations are finding PPM implementations difficult. However, there are key approaches that can increase your likelihood of success, as well as an effective step-by-step process for implementing PPM within your organization.
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Client relationship management (CRM) technology can help capital-markets firms streamline investment banking activities, increase brokerage trade volume, and meet compliance challenges. As a nerve center for information about clients, prospects, institutions, syndicate partners, and other contacts, the right CRM system enables capital-markets firms to share intelligence, coordinate activities, and derive advantage from an integrated body of corporate knowledge and relationships.
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Images have long been part of e-mail communications—from corporate logos in signatures, to scanned documents, and more. But recently, spammers have started using a variety of techniques to embed unsolicited messages into images in order to bypass increasingly sophisticated spam filters used by companies and Internet service providers. The question is, what are you going to do about it?
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There are hundreds of anti-spam and anti-virus products designed to defend against unwanted e-mail. These solutions can take the form of software, appliances, or managed services. Managed filtering services are convenient and economical, and are also extremely effective in managing threats. In fact, most managed e-mail defense services block threats before they even reach the internal network.
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The US Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996 applies to health care providers, health plans, and clearing houses that electronically maintain or transmit health information. Among other things, these entities are required to have data backup plans, disaster recovery plans, and emergency mode operation plans. Fortunately, there is a way to meet these security and contingency requirements.
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Chemical manufacturers are faced with change at unprecedented levels. Some manufacturers are experiencing tremendous growth, while others are simply trying to keep their doors open. Regardless of current strengths and weaknesses, every company in the industry faces every type of operational pressure, and no company can afford to wait for the pace of change to slow before making key decisions.
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Most articles about the pitfalls of software implementation projects highlight the mistakes made during implementation. Examples include poor project management, scope creep, uncommitted users, or lack of an executive sponsor. All of these areas of focus are valid, but often we forget that before starting the implementation, somehow we had to choose a package and sign a contract.
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What manufacturers must realize is that through efforts to comply with regulatory standards, they can make their manufacturing operations more competitive. Indeed, compliance is transforming the companies that have taken the time to re-architect the many processes used for managing suppliers, channel partners, resellers, and customers. For manufacturers that ignore compliance, on the other hand, the costs can be steep.
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A process manufacturing company has several options in its approach to deploying a single integrated clinical supplies or commercial product supply chain system. However, rolling a project out in phases is the most attractive option for many firms because it reduces risk, breaks the project into manageable and affordable stages, and spreads out resource demands over time.
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Many companies are finding they must build project management capabilities in order to meet business challenges in the future. They also understand that project management processes should be implemented consistently across the organization, leading to efficiency and better, faster, cheaper project delivery. Given the need for consistent project management, the critical question is how best to implement this environment.
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As the web has evolved from being an information exchange medium to a medium of business transactions, it has become critical for businesses to ensure their web sites are available 24x7. And since the user experience is governed by how well site-associated application components perform, effective and proactive monitoring that drills down to the root cause of problems is imperative.
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Effective correlation and accurate root-cause diagnosis have been key challenges for network and systems management solutions for many years. Indeed, these challenges have increased with the growing complexity of the software applications and services operating on top of the Internet and intranets. But at the same time, customer expectations of service quality and guaranteed performance remain as stringent as ever.
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Today’s n-tier infrastructures make significant demands on the problem management process. Isolation of performance problems in these environments is difficult at best, and traditional monitoring tools are not equipped to deal with the multiple dependencies and complexities they present. Indeed, even effective problem management processes may not be sufficient without improved tools.
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The IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) provides a comprehensive and consistent set of best practices for IT service management (ITSM), promoting a quality approach to achieving business efficiency in the use of information systems. The key paradigm shift that ITIL s ITSM best-practices taxonomy seeks to achieve is the movement away from management of silos, towards management of services spanning multiple silos.
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As telecommunications networks grow in size and complexity, enterprises and service providers are faced with an increasing burden on operating expenses. In particular, the amount of power consumed and heat dissipated within even a single rack of communications servers is now a very real budget consideration. Clearly, lowering these numbers is the concern of all communication platform designers.
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Thanks to pressures in the telecom equipment manufacturing industry, application-ready platforms (ARPs) in Advanced Telecommunications Computing Architecture (ATCA) are increasingly indispensable. ARPs must provide standards-based platforms to support diverse sets of applications. The ATCA ARP provides such a platform, but in light of the ATCA specifications that define the basis for the platform, ARP implementations still present some interesting challenges.
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Storage is a vital part of enterprise IT infrastructure, with Internet protocol (IP) telephony storage leading the way as an effective technology. With the increased adoption of open standards-based architecture by the enterprise telephony market, IP telephony storage will gain acceptance as an entry-level storage tool and a viable low-cost alternative to Fibre Channel storage area networks (SANs).
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Monitoring the end-to-end performance of applications and services at all infrastructure tiers is the "holy grail" of IT organizations. But most companies use silo-based monitoring tools incapable of monitoring events and activities occurring elsewhere in the infrastructure. A "collaborative" approach for deploying such tools stands a greater chance of adoption than the typical top-down implementation method commonly used today.
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Chemical companies are living in a new, more complex world—one that calls for meeting demand through cooperating internally, opening processes to partners, suppliers, and customers, and developing newfound abilities to collaborate and change. In other words, the adaptive business network (ABN). But how do you create a successful ABN? And how does that translate into a competitive advantage?
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The history of the oil and gas industry is one of meeting relentless changes and overcoming obstacles. Traders are expanding into emerging markets in remote locations with high energy consumption demands. The complexities of meeting those demands has compounded the need to drive profitability with accurate forecasting, risk mitigation, and increased integration and visibility up and down the value chain.
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New product development and introduction (NPDI) is probably the most important process for many companies, but also one of the least understood. While NPDI is responsible for revenues, few companies assign an owner for the whole process. Instead, it is usually driven through a series of functional “silos,” causing delay—and the loss of the original market requirements.
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Founded in 1989, Plastic Components, Inc. (PCI) uses complete process automation to keep costs low and quality high. To support this vision, PCI adopted lean manufacturing principles, such as staffing for efficiency, investing in quality equipment and support systems, and pursuing process improvements. In 2002, with these goals in mind, PCI sought to replace its multiple databases and software packages.
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For over eighty years, the Edlund Company has been a leading supplier of stainless steel appliances and equipment to the food service industry—a highly competitive sector with lean operating margins. In 2003, to uphold quality standards and gain tighter control over its manufacturing process and customer service functions, Edlund decided to replace its material requirements planning (MRP) software system.
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How can you ensure that you make the right choice when purchasing enterprise resource planning (ERP) software? The answer: take all the critical components into consideration. ERP selection is not just about what different people in your organization want or don't want, it's about getting what you need for now and the future. Remember, you're not just buying software; you're buying into a vendor and its company culture.
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The most advanced business process management (BPM) applications bridge departmental and geographic boundaries, and manage the flow of documents and data according to sophisticated process rules. And while many would suggest that an on-demand BPM service offering would most benefit small businesses, a real case can be made that such offerings might be more valuable for medium and large businesses.
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Corporations share data with a variety of remote offices, trading partners, customers, and regulatory agencies. Sensitive data is transferred to and from entities around the world billions of times a day. Security breaches are frequently in the news, with reports of compromised customer data. However, business-to-business (B2B) workflow breakdowns are more likely to occur—and are potentially just as harmful.
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Certain lean initiatives can be hugely strengthened with a synergistic enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementation—and vice versa. In other cases, the two efforts should be viewed as separate initiatives. But it doesn’t depend on “what you want”: specific lean initiatives will fail if specific ERP aspects are neglected. However, other lean initiatives and ERP functionality have little in common.
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Typically, useful network documentation requires a significant investment in time and effort. But because enterprise networks are in constant flux, many companies do not document their network on a regular basis. However, by adopting a sole source, service-based solution for network shapes and stencils, organizations can perform mission-critical documentation more regularly—in ways that are simpler, faster and more effective.
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Industrial machinery and components (IM&C) manufacturers are challenged by global rivalry, industry consolidation, and shrinking margins. And with more manufacturers vying for business, customers are demanding customized products delivered on short lead times—all at lower costs. At the same time, manufacturers are struggling to extend their supply chains to incorporate offshore manufacturing. So where can they turn for help?
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For today’s medical device manufacturer, today’s world is complex. The convergence of technology and implanted medical devices has led to some of the most innovative and effective new medical therapies in history. Unfortunately, that convergence has created tremendous complexities in the development, manufacture, and implantation of those devices. One area that continues to undergo transformation is patient device tracking (PDT).
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How can a professional services firm grow profitably while providing clients with the services and project pricing they demand? The firm must rely on best-practice solutions to gain control over every aspect of business—from business development to resource planning to billing. Firms that plan and staff projects by relying on combinations of spreadsheets and management instinct will fall behind.
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Achieving both customer satisfaction and profitability is critical to the survival of your organization. Without customer satisfaction, the long-term prospects for your business are bleak. And without profitability, your business cannot exist. Profitable-to-promise (PTP) solutions allow you to determine the profitability of individual orders by integrating supply chain management (SCM) and customer relationship management (CRM) processes with your financial data.
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There was a time when companies went with one platform, and stuck with it, hiring IT staff with that technology in mind. That time has passed. Today, heterogeneity is the name of the game, with orga¬nizations having combinations of legacy software and distributed systems, across multiple platforms and applications. But while heterogeneity brings multiple benefits, it also involves serious risk.
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Reliability is the most critical aspect of a business phone system. However, there are different approaches to providing reliable voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) systems, which is why you need to consider the reliability of the underlying data network—and the challenges of implementing a virtually always-available system on an infrastructure that has a much lower availability rating.
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Everyone wants the biggest bang for their IT buck—the most functionality and ease of use, deployed to the widest audience, for the lowest cost. But for years, packaged software, despite high up-front and recurring costs, has been a must-have. However, business professionals are beginning to recognize a more efficient approach to their software needs: the smart client.
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Vulnerability assessment (VA) has become one of the hottest fields within computer security. VA tools are designed to detect and report on security holes within software applications, allowing organizations to take corrective action—before devastating attacks occur. Indeed, due to reduction in hacker “time to exploit,” along with intense regulatory pressures, the need for reliable VA has never been greater.
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As digital information has become more and more critical to businesses, firewalls—which once served as the walls of the fortress, have now become an archaic means of defense. Thus, as threats evolve, responses must change as well. Rather than focusing protection solely on perimeter security, it is imperative to look at protecting data at the source—inside the database.
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Workplace privacy issues are increasing dramatically, along with related employee complaints and litigation. As companies struggle to control health care costs, increase productivity, and maintain company confidentiality, they become concerned with how employees spend their time away from work. Meanwhile, employees naturally have a strong desire to limit “invasion” of their personal lives. Just where do you draw the line?
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Manufacturers and retailers are increasingly expecting more from logistics service providers. As a logistics company, you need to streamline operations and drive costs down. You need to be able to broaden your offerings and provide the services that customers want. Above all, you need to integrate your warehouse with your customers’ operations to provide detailed visibility into inventory and processes.
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You may have survived the slowdown of the last few years, but you must still find new growth opportunities to stay competitive. However, you can only cut so much. Midsize businesses in particular need to ask new questions: What strategies and practices are right for the company? And what are the best solutions for facilitating—and even improving them?
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High tech is the most brutally competitive of any manufacturing sector—which is why complacency can mean death for your company. How to secure lasting advantage without letting technology constrain your business processes? And how to prevail despite your partners’ legacy applications, the IT landscape of your recently acquired company, or the heterogeneous mix of your own IT landscape?
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Today, engineer-to-order (ETO) manufacturers—also known as project-based manufacturers—experience significant market pressure across their sales, engineering and manufacturing groups as they strive to win business and streamline end-to-end processes. But by capturing engineering knowledge and using it to automate key business processes, manufacturers can increase sales bid and win rates, decrease internal operating expenses, and shorten lead times.
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Quocirca conducted two surveys separated by twelve months that looked at the data management infrastructure of UK and Irish businesses, and how this was linked to their ability to respond to the whims of the regulators. In the year between the two surveys, a lot had changed.
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Since there are multiple vendors offering hosted customer relationship management (CRM) applications, the buyer’s toughest decision is finding a vendor that offers the many benefits that come from a workflow engine similar to those used in multimillion-dollar CRM deployments. Truth be told, CRM alone is not enough, as not all providers have a workflow engine which enables full process automation.
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Traditional document management systems are geared toward control, discipline, and orchestrated workflow. Contrast this with the untamed world of ad hoc processes that drive so many of our activities. In this environment, teams are dynamic and agile. Imposing structure and formal processes almost always results in confusion, resentment, and lost productivity. The needs of distributed teams require a different approach.
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Given ever-increasing regulatory pressures, document life cycle management is clearly an issue every enterprise must resolve. Until now, documents stored on local machines and e-mailed outside the organization have presented a particularly thorny challenge. Fortunately, new technologies make it possible to extend document life cycle management to the desktop and enforce document retention policies across every computer in the enterprise.
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Documents provide tangible evidence of decisions and agreements. They contain crucial intellectual capital. And they make key contributions to your brand. As a result, your organization invests significant resources to create processes for protecting critical documents and managing associated business risks. That’s why your document security services need to work within your environment to enhance existing security processes and technologies.
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To many executives, health insurance cost increases are as predictable as death and taxes. That’s why best-in-class organizations are embracing strategies which optimize benefit cost per employee. To succeed, these companies focus on wellness programs, clear communications about benefits choices, and benefits automation as part of an integrated system. And to compete effectively, other organizations will need to follow suit.
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Significant management issues posed by multisite manufacturing environments include optimizing resource use at each site and delivering the lowest possible cost for each stage in the product manufacturing cycle. To facilitate meaningful results in achieving these requirements, enterprise resource planning (ERP) software must thus provide the right tools for ensuring that multisite processes come up to “best-in-class” standards.
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In the past, the growing pains of voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) centered on voice quality. However, VoIP solutions are now attractive alternatives to conventional analog voice and the public switched telephone network (PSTN). As real-world VoIP rollouts continue, however, new sets of challenges are emerging; in particular, businesses are encountering unanticipated problems as they deploy VoIP to remote locations.
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Lean manufacturing strategies and ever-lower tolerance for late deliveries are putting pressure on manufacturers to ensure that facilities and equipment operate at peak performance. While some companies are struggling to execute preventive and predictive maintenance procedures, better performers have implemented holistic asset management strategies enabling them to proactively ensure the health of plants, factories, and equipment across global manufacturing networks.
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Even though the technology has been around in some form since World War II, chances are that you think of Wal-Mart’s supply chain initiative when you hear the words “radio frequency identification,” or “RFID.” Wal-Mart is already seeing a return on their 2005 investment. But does RFID technology make as much sense for asset management as for supply chain management?
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Industry observations indicate that few enterprises have been successful in implementing seamless networks to provide consistently updated customer information across multiple channels of access, including data stored and used within and outside contact center applications. There are several reasons for this lack of success—in particular the method by which these multichannel contact centers were developed in the first place.
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While the idea of enterprise-wide data management is conceptually simple, it is extremely difficult to implement in most organizations, due to differences between heterogeneous databases and applications. However, conventional integration software is not required to achieve consistent management of customer data. In fact, integration appliance technology can greatly simplify and reduce the cost of master data management (MDM).
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Many organizations have made enormous investments in enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications such as JDE, PeopleSoft, and SAP. Designed to manage the daily
operations critical to their businesses, these systems are not, however, optimized for business intelligence (BI). Accordingly, data must be moved to optimized BI solutions for robust analysis. But which strategies are most effective for extracting this data?
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The source code for mission-critical software products is almost never provided to users by the supplier. All the end-user has is a copy of the compiled source code—in other words, the object code that can only be read and executed by the computers concerned. That’s why professional escrow is becoming an essential component of operational risk management.
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Créée en 1991, Chief est le numéro un français sur le marché des gondoles réfrigérées. Son chiffre d’affaires s’élève à 40 millions d’euros et ses produits son distribués à partir de 3 sites de production. La complexité de son offre et la spécificité des besoins de ses clients – plusieurs centaines de milliers de configurations sont possibles pour chaque unité – ont rendu nécessaire le recours à une solution de configuration d’offres personnalisées.
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Established in 1991, Chief is the leading French supplier of cold-storage units. With revenues of €40 million (EUR), it distributes products from three production sites. Given the complexity of Chief’s operations and the specific nature of its customers’ requirements—including hundreds of thousands of possible combinations for each unit—Chief decided to deploy an interactive selling and product configuration solution.
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The global trade industry is changing faster than ever before. It’s now possible for importers to have a level of visibility into their business that was impossible a few years ago. Importers realize the profound effect this information will have on their ability to be profitable, and are eager to implement information solutions. So what’s the best application for you?
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As most people understand it, voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) is telephone calling over the Internet. Thus, switching to VoIP seems to be a fairly straightforward proposition. If you put a VoIP-capable phone on each desk and plug it into your local area network (LAN), the call goes out your wide area network (WAN), and voilà—IP telephony, right? Wrong.
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Today’s software developers face requirements that were previously unknown in the industry. Businesses now demand reduced time-to-market, lower costs, and greater stability. And although collaboration is key to addressing these issues, it’s not always as easy as it sounds. Thus, an automated change management system can help you increase the predictability, reliability, and speed of the software development cycle.
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Enterprise impact analysis is the heart of the incident management process. Unlike threat-based risk assessments, this analysis focuses on the business impacts, regardless of the cause. Delving into the functions of enterprise elements, the analysis evaluates how any interruption will affect normal functioning. It also provides a framework for determining what’s relevant—and what isn’t relevant—to managing the incident.
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For most companies, changing accounting software is a daunting challenge. Not only is transitioning the accounting function to a new software package tricky in itself, but it is usually catalyzed by one or more business challenges that are (hopefully) solved by the new system. Knowing that, how can you minimize the risks involved in selecting a new accounting application?
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In today’s competitive business environment, wholesale distributors face critical factors that directly affect customer satisfaction and profit margins. These challenges, combined with customer demands for product availability, can conflict with operational goals of increasing inventory turnover and minimizing costs. However, business automation software can deliver sophisticated distribution capabilities designed to help you with these important business issues.
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Your organization, like most others, is probably searching for ways to improve the capabilities of its telephone system, or to replace it altogether. But given the variety of telephony options, failing to research your choices means you’re at risk of stumbling over some of the most common pitfalls in telephony solution choices. The result: an inappropriate—and expensive—telephony purchase.
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The benefits of e-learning have been amply demonstrated and extensively documented. However, less attention has been paid to the business benefits of implementing learning management systems (LMS). The misconception is that LMS and e-learning are irrevocably linked. But that isn’t necessarily the case. In fact, an LMS can provide real benefits, in the broadest—and most critical—business sense.
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To respond to the demands of today’s highly competitive global environment, traditional linear supply chains are evolving into complex, global ecosystems. These “pull” (demand-driven) environments working in conjunction with traditional “push” environments are known as adaptive supply chain networks (ASCNs). ASCNs allow all supply chain stakeholders to share knowledge, make collaborative decisions, and sense and respond immediately to changing conditions.
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Vendors of electronic report distribution and content management solutions typically emphasize the paper and related printing cost savings their products provide. But in fact, the real value of these technologies far exceeds these savings. Maximum benefits from electronic document and report management technologies derive not only from cutting obvious costs, but also from enabling dramatic improvements in business processes.
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Rich Internet applications (RIAs) represent the next wave in the evolution of web applications, as they promise the richness, interactivity, and usability lacking in many of today’s web applications. However, as with any technological innovation, with the new opportunities come new challenges to be negotiated. What are the business benefits of adopting RIA, and what are the risks?
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Time was, information technology (IT) systems lasted much longer. Organizational restructuring was uncommon, as business did not really require it. However, with ever-shrinking business cycles, IT must now be capable of quickly adapting to changing business needs. That’s why present-day IT systems must be built to change—and services-oriented architecture (SOA) may just hold the key.
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The foremost concern of Hôpital du Sacré-Coeur de Montréal (HSCM) is to provide quality health care service. But it also knows that unless it operates an efficient business, it will not be around to provide that service. That’s why HSCM needed a comprehensive suite that covered not just the backbone needs of any business, but also health care industry specifics.
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In 1999, specialty chemicals manufacturer Rohm and Haas Company wanted to move to a new platform to simplify the complexity resulting from over 300 disparate information technology (IT) systems. First, Rohm and Haas wanted to adopt common global processes to increase efficiency, and implement smart sourcing strategies. Second, management needed a better way to see customer trends and evaluate competitors.
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Héma-Québec manages the collection and distribution of blood and blood products for the province of Quebec (Canada). As Héma-Québec worked to enhance availability and quality, company leaders identified a need to make changes in the organization’s information technology (IT) systems. In June 2001, the company decided to implement a new system for the procurement and distribution of fractionated blood products.
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The ability of BASF AG—a leader in the chemicals industry—to proactively manage unexpected situations is key to its competitiveness. With its complex supply network dealing with unanticipated events is all the more critical. To address this issue, BASF implemented the SAP Event Management application to monitor ocean-freight logistics, from receipt of initial orders to final delivery of products.
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When Luxembourg-based AZ Electronic Materials was carved out of Clariant International and sold to a private equity firm, the new company was given one year to wean itself off its parent’s information technology (IT) system. AZ beat the clock by three months, working with partner Accenture to roll out SAP business software across nine countries and six manufacturing plants.
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Recent changes in accounting standards and compliance, along with greater emphasis on managing risk and value, have introduced new key measures of bank performance and made it more important to coordinate the internal and external reporting of financials and risk. To meet these challenges, banks must do their utmost to more fully integrate their accounting data and processes.
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A decline in customer loyalty has put a great deal of pressure on financial institutions of late. Thus, as banks tailor products and services to meet customer demands, they must also boost revenue. That’s why it’s essential to target your most profitable customers with real-time insight that helps you drive revenue, increase profitability, and build long-term relationships with those customers.
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Banks face many challenges in today’s dynamic financial services marketplace. Banks must continuously enhance capabilities for risk and financial management to address market, credit, and regulatory environments that are increasingly complex. Thus, process support for your business strategies is crucial—which is why integrated tools are a must-have for financial accounting, cost controlling, risk management, asset-liability management, and profitability analysis.
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No matter how unique a project may be, project quality is always the top concern for both the software services providers and the clients—on time and within budget. Indeed, there’s a good chance the customer will be satisfied if these fundamental goals are met. Thus, successful projects are fostered through mutual trust and cooperation between outsourcer and client.
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Some four decades after early “data processing strategists” realized the importance of a comprehensive, manageable approach to truly integrated information, the typical organization is no closer to achieving those objectives. The question must be asked, then: will we ever achieve true, well-architected enterprise-scale information management? And if so, when? The answer (and the good news): probably—and soon.
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On any given day, your interactions with a few strategic customers will make a huge long-term difference. But which few customers? A new type of analytic application, customer value management (CVM), answers the need to identify, analyze, and predict customer behavior. Using CVM enables companies to shift from campaign-centric to customer-centric analysis, and develop more individualized and profitable customer relationships.
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As is generally the case with such issues as the US Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX), the quick fix is often too good to be true. Leading companies are thus using SOX as an opportunity to restructure the way they run their business. What’s more, they’re finding they already have much of what they need—including the right people, processes, and technology.
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Chances are that SAP applications play a role in your enterprise. SAP’s prowess at managing large volumes of transactional data has made it the leader in enterprise resource planning (ERP). As of January 2003, SAP claims more than 56,000 installations. Yet despite their popularity, SAP applications in many organizations remain semi-isolated and untapped for the business intelligence (BI) they contain.
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To realize the benefits of enterprise performance management (EPM), the focus needs to be on facilitating collaboration between senior management and business unit management. In practice, most organizations do not programmatically incorporate two-way communication into the planning process. Yet this is where many organizations find the greatest benefit in improving business performance—and the most difficulty in making the change.
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Can you deliver integrated and reliable information in a format that all users can understand? Are you able manage that from a single console that allows you to support your performance management, reporting, and query and analysis requirements? By extending the reach of knowledge within the organization, you can efficiently and effectively manage your operations through better visibility and transparency.
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Business intelligence (BI) is often an area of friction between information technology (IT) (who provide information) and the business users (who need it to do their jobs). By allowing you to connect goals, metrics, and people across the enterprise, an enterprise BI standard helps organizations manage and optimize information flows like other business processes, leading to improved alignment and transparency.
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Interactive Data Corporation is a provider of securities pricing, financial information, and analytic tools to institutional and individual investors. The company supplies time-sensitive pricing, dividend, corporate action, and descriptive information. However, as a result of global growth, Interactive Data faced the challenge of finding a forecasting and budgeting solution that would generate more comprehensive and less manually intensive performance reports.
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Awareness, demand, and education are often required to pull prospective clients to your organization. But in order to produce effective marketing materials and approaches within your go-to market, you must first understand the life cycle of your company in relation to product, market, and buyer. This will lead in turn to mastery of balanced revenue growth and life cycle alignment.
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Brady Corporation is a world leader in identification solutions that help companies improve safety and security. Founded in 1914, its divisions operate some twenty enterprise resource planning systems. However, even with Brady’s move to centralize about half its financial information on SAP R/3, serious data inconsistency issues were hampering reporting reliability. To resolve these issues, Brady turned to OutlookSoft Everest.
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Service-oriented architecture (SOA) is a driving force for future functional use within organizations. However, these functions must be viewed as being shared services for all processes. Functional re-use will be the main means of ensuring that organizations can respond rapidly and effectively to market dynamics, and that improvements to specific functions will have the optimum impact across the whole organization.
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Data centers are squeezed by a variety of pressures, such as power consumption, heating, ventilating, and air conditioning (HVAC) requirements, new servers, human error, patching, asset tracking, and more. On top of this, you have to keep up with dynamically changing business requirements. One of the key ways you can address these dilemmas, however, is through server consolidation using virtualization.
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When BellSouth and SBC merged to become Cingular Wireless in 2000, four issues concerned everyone: centralizing the storage of business information; improving access to, and reporting from, performance management processes; streamlining and standardizing analysis tools; and integrating data sources with different systems and platforms to create a "single version of the truth." The solution: OutlookSoft’s unified business process management application.
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A diverse company with multiple business units, US Sugar was looking for relief in the financial reporting and budgeting areas. Defining the related metrics and ensuring they were consistent enterprise-wide was thus a critical need. US Sugar required a comprehensive planning and performance management solution that would enable financial reporting, monthly forecasting, cost allocations, consolidations, actuals analysis, and strategic planning.
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There’s plenty of promise and potential for voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) technology to help companies address fundamental needs, such as increasing revenue, improving operations, and reducing costs, while still providing a communications foothold for the future. However, the technology can be both costly and complex. How do you decide if and when VoIP is right for your business?
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Hosted private branch exchange (PBX) phone solutions are changing how small to medium businesses (SMBs) serve their customers, grow their business, and support their employees. Delivering the professional phone system capabilities large businesses use at a lower cost, hosted PBX is helping SMBs save money while putting their customer services on a par with much larger organizations.
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During the past decade, organizations of all sizes have made significant investments in enterprise application software. Unfortunately, the level of integration between these systems has become less effective and more expensive than originally envisioned. The question is how to leverage the considerable investments organizations have made, in order to maximize the value of the information stored in these discrete infrastructures.
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Typically, the cost of feature-rich and scalable business phone systems prevents small businesses from purchasing these powerful tools in the initial stages of their growth. Thus, new companies generally choose standard business phone lines from their local phone company along with multi-line phones. With voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) technology, however, small businesses now have a cost-effective, feature-rich alternative.
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With so many different enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications on the market, selecting the right solution can be extremely time-consuming and daunting. In fact, according to a recent study, nearly three-quarters of manufacturers are dissatisfied with their current systems. However, following a clearly defined selection process—and learning from the mistakes of others—can drastically improve your chances of success.
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While optical technology has become the default removable storage medium on the desktop (CD and DVD), in enterprise storage the evidence of failure is unmistakable. After fifteen years, optical technologies in the enterprise storage market account for only a fraction of 1 percent of enterprise storage hardware spending. There is a dramatically different future, however, for some optical storage subsystems.
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Companies establishing a pure Internet protocol (IP) environment can benefit from the capabilities that are only supported by IP telephony, including a simplified cabling infrastructure; dynamic host configuration protocol (DHCP)-enabled IP telephones that provide easier moves, adds, and changes; and support for 802.11 wireless devices, as well as the support of unified messaging, unified management, and web-based call center applications.
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You’ve determined the business rationale for embracing Internet protocol (IP) telephony as a strategy. Now it’s worth investing time in the project definition phase, since this will result in a clear statement of requirements that are in line with your objectives. However, how you define the project will depend on the needs of your business and your plans for convergence.
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Analysis of the tasks and time in information technology (IT) projects invariably reveals the presence of a familiar recurring burden: testing—often still performed manually and inefficiently, yet accounting for a substantial proportion of the budget. Can some simple and effective focused measures have a dramatic and positive impact on the success of key projects? That depends on your approach.
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Professional services firms are not like other businesses. They have unique ways of working, unique challenges, and unique opportunities. While progressive project-based businesses have already embraced professional services automation (PSA)—achieving results and return on investment along the way—there are still many firms that have yet to fully automate their key business processes or integrate their knowledge base.
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Business process management (BPM) is ultimately about people, not technology. While technology enables BPM, it is people who lead, manage, and participate in business processes. However, BPM vendors have not traditionally focused on human-centric needs. A human-centric perspective can transform BPM from a cold automation system into an intuitive, user-friendly tool that eliminates redundancy and accelerates how work gets done.
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Business process management (BPM)—the discipline of modeling, automating, managing, and optimizing business processes—is one of the hottest market segments in the software industry today. Its rapid growth is driven by the increasing recognition that success is driven by the efficiency of your organization’s business processes. But what exactly is a business process—and how can BPM improve it?
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A full member of the Barclay’s Group, UK-based FIRSTPLUS Financial Group specializes in personal loans and loan refinancing. As with all businesses that experience rapid growth from the outset, its critical processes had evolved without much structured planning. That’s why FIRSTPLUS needed a strategic business process management (BPM) solution for structural process implementation and automation across different areas and functions.
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Bernstein AG, established in 1947 and headquartered in Porta Westfalica (Germany), builds and sells components and systems for industrial automation peripherals. In 2002, it began the task of selecting and implementing a flexible, web-based business process management (BPM) system. One of the most important technical requirements was the universal integration of the BPM suite into its existing IT infrastructure.
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The Biological and Biotechnological Research Council (BBSRC) is the UK’s principal public funder of basic bioscience research. BBSRC needed an automated business process management (BPM) system to handle grant application processes more efficiently. In particular, the chosen solution had to manage the complexities of the grant application and grant round processes, with 6000 applications within a 12-month period.
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To automate processes, business users and IT must work together as a team. The combination of technology infrastructure, process flow, and business requirements all needs to be translated into a process map to enable automation to occur. This process discovery effort, and adjusting the process map to manage change, is the most significant challenge of business process management (BPM) projects.
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Business process management (BPM) provides adaptability and agility to service-oriented architecture (SOA). The central nervous system in the architecture, it orchestrates the services provided by different applications that excel at what they do. And the more powerful the BPM solution used to manage these processes, the easier and more cost-effective it will be to adapt to unique business requirements.
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Any technology tied to the financial health of a business generates heated debate, and customer relationship management (CRM) is no exception. CRM has been bolstered, burned, praised, and maligned. One of the most animated arguments has centered on the “where” of CRM: whether to deploy the technologies in-house or “rent” them, outsourcing their implementation to an application service provider.
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Customer relationship management (CRM) applications have evolved from risky eighteen-month IT projects into productivity tools that any size of business can deploy. Indeed, many mid-market companies have chosen to roll out a “hosted” solution, whereby the solution is accessed over the Internet. However, going through the selection process has become more cumbersome recently, with more options available than ever before.
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There are many articles on customer relationship management (CRM) and its benefits. These articles are usually targeted towards large organizations, and don’t focus on the needs and objectives of small business owners. However, it’s essential for small business owners to know what CRM really is, and why and how CRM can help retain existing customers and help their business grow.
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Industrial equipment manufacturers have historically embraced shop floor improvements as a way of increasing efficiency and maintaining profitability. But in today’s radically altered industrial environment, there is a clear imperative to look beyond the shop floor. To hold down costs and compete against other low-cost companies, manufacturers must find areas of improvement in all aspects of business.
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Manufacturing analytics is fundamental to enabling an enterprise to run at peak performance. For management to achieve this condition, it needs to have an underlying data collection and management system that looks to the total enterprise. Data collected at the packaging line must be available and compatible with financial and operational data, so that maximum value can be achieved.
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The high capital costs of conventional application environments is a major problem for businesses. Some virtualization platforms provide a solution, but many data center resources that could benefit from dynamic management are simply not appropriate for virtualization. To address these issues, organizations need strategy that build on the capabilities of virtualization platforms as part of a comprehensive data center solution.
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As enterprise Java has become more and more pervasive, IT has used Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE) technologies to build many of its most mission-critical applications, typically over-provisioning hardware to guarantee performance—at an extremely high price. Hence, the goal of automation and virtualization software: to enable IT to provide applications at required service levels and reduced costs.
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An information-rich, well-published web site sells your products and services to potential clients around the world, 24x7. And multilingual content optimizes the effectiveness of your site by communicating with your customers in their language. However, many multilingual web sites are not as effective as they could be, simply because potential customers cannot find them through search engines.
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Installing software and patch updates can be frustrating and time-consuming for IT staff and users alike. But it's critical to update your computers regularly to keep security filters current. This need increases exponentially if your users are mobile and geographically dispersed. Should this continue to be the responsibility of your IT staff? Or should you outsource this function to a managed service provider (MSP)?
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Customizing third-party “vendor” source code is becoming increasingly common. But managing the incorporation of vendor application releases alongside customizations requires an additional layer of software configuration management (SCM) to integrate subsequent vendor releases. Traditional branch-based SCM tools require an unnecessarily complex branch-and-merge process. However, there is a more intuitive and efficient parallel development model for managing customizations to vendor code.
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Most software configuration management (SCM) systems rely on metadata annotations to support basic system operations, such as computing the contents of software configurations. With AccuRev, configurations are first-class objects called "streams," whose contents aren't defined in terms of metadata annotations at all. AccuRev relies on the chronology of SCM operations, enabling users to leverage the incremental nature of the process.
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With retailers trying to stem consumer migration, and consumer-packaged goods (CPG) manufacturers striving to achieve sustainable growth and profitability, retailer and manufacturer joint value propositions can increase inventory turns, improve cash flow, and increase revenue and profits. However, joint value propositions involve more than retailer-specific packaging or unique products. For ultimate success, a different way of doing business is required.
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Assumption: Call center turnover will always be higher than you want, no matter what you do. If this is true (and a mounting body of research suggests it is), you’ll need to complement rewards such as bonus pay, flex time, and public recognition with other means of getting the most productivity from your agents before they head for greener pastures.
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Retailers stand to gain significantly by implementing critical strategic changes to the promotional advertising aspects of their business. These changes can include integrating disparate promotions-related processes and merging existing data stores with creative systems, as well as creating expedited advertising in real time—thus extending the marketing reach of their promotions. The direct result: more efficient and effective promotions.
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Just behind fire and the wheel in a list of the world’s greatest inventions comes information lifecycle management (ILM). Without a doubt, ILM will revolutionize every facet of the computing landscape. And along the way, it will probably generate more hype than all the high-tech buzzwords of the past five years combined. But does it solve a real problem?
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A new trend is emerging in the world of storage management, and it’s called information lifecycle management (ILM). Just what it is, however, varies significantly from vendor to vendor. Generally, ILM is a strategy for policy-based information management. Its mandate: to provide centralized management of all information assets, aligning storage resources with the value of the data residing in them.
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While open innovation is a hot topic, capitalizing on opportunity requires a holistic strategy—not just increased collaboration. Companies must have repeatable, compliant, and responsive business processes. These processes must be supplemented by a global information infrastructure that provides a single source of the truth, along with alignment across departmental silos, and solutions that evolve without coding.
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The options available for mitigating e-mail spam in the enterprise are varied—as varied as the variety of actual spam definitions. These factors often lead to some confusion about what a particular anti-spam solution can or can’t do. In order to focus on the basics, you need to cut through the hype in the anti-spam market and its buzzwords.
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An Internet service provider (ISP) presents one of the most complex environments for managing spam, due to the sheer volume of e-mail, and the high service levels demanded by customers. The main challenge for ISPs seeking anti-spam solutions is thus to find products that provide the flexibility to suit a wide variety of users, and the preferences of those users.
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Product roadmaps can mean the difference between success and failure in product delivery. Done correctly, they can help win large customers, and guide strategic planning efforts. Unfortunately, most product roadmaps are created under pressure when company management makes a last-minute request. As a result, they don’t have the impact they should, and can be a source of product management misery.
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To function as a business partner, IT must deliver service at predictable levels—and also contribute to enterprise strategy, by planning for services that enable growth. That’s why IT needs end-to-end infrastructure views that reveal issues as they happen, and track trends that predict future needs. But how can IT create unified views of the environment without draining critical resources?
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Information technology (IT) executives are beginning to seriously re-evaluate their highly hyped, service-oriented architectures (SOA) strategies—and consequently, their IT outsourcing, hosting, and enterprise system management strategies. However, creating long-term strategies is complicated by the wide range of available service delivery models. That’s why it’s vital to uncover the important concepts—and decision points—relating to these different delivery models.
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A global telecommunications provider was mired in a hardware-centric architecture for its network applications. Even with a sizeable computing infrastructure investment, failure of server components was inevitable, and application failover schemes were risky. The provider needed a more cost-effective way to scale its operational support system (OSS) applications—without sacrificing dependability.
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By nature, outsourcing is highly imitative, with organizations attempting to duplicate the imperfectly observed successes of others. Indeed, the myths and simplistic beliefs revolving around outsourcing—along with the usual technological, organizational, and cultural barriers—seriously impediment the effectiveness of collaborative models. The key to successful collaborative teamwork in offshore outsourcing lies in understanding and leveraging project management best practices.
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Application software companies often find themselves in positions where their products and services depend heavily on software that they may not be equipped to optimally engineer. This typically results in misallocated resources, inferior products and services, and ultimately business decline. Companies need to know when to outsource critical integral design, development, and delivery requirements that they cannot effectively meet themselves.
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While it’s great to find ways to keep up with mountains of e-mail, organizations must remember that e-mail is not a lightweight communication tool anymore. For people and organizations swamped by critical information, throwing messages away is just not an answer. Increasingly, knowledge workers are turning to searching to manage the volume and value of information sitting in their in-boxes.
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Organizations often see a significant gap between their strategic plans and their ability to execute them, and many try to implement scorecards to solve precisely this problem. Unfortunately, most organizations look solely at the warning lights (how close are expenses and revenue to budget) rather than focusing on where they want to go—and how they’re going to get there.
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There is much discussion in the marketplace about outsourcing management and governance (OM/G). Many organizations mistakenly assume they understand the science of effective OM/G, but that’s often not the case. OM/G is a critical discipline enabling companies to achieve the intent of their outsourcing deal. In fact, without it, value leakage of 15 percent or greater is the typical result.
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Large-scale, complex outsourcing deals have produced equally complex management issues. Indeed, the leading cause of missed expectations in outsourcing is poor governance—after the deal is signed. For this reason, executives can benefit tremendously from outsourcing management tools, including third party vendors. Where and how do they work? And what is the cost in terms of time and money?
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Organizations undertaking information technology and business process outsourcing typically are very focused on "doing the deal." This involves assessing service providers, determining geographies from which to source services, developing contracts, defining service levels, and a myriad of other tasks. Yet arguably the hardest part of outsourcing occurs only after the deal is done—performing ongoing outsourcing management and governance.
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IT managers understand the difficulty of demonstrating returns on investment for technology projects. The issue is particularly acute for large multiphase deployments, such as IT infrastructure library (ITIL) implementations: massive projects which are hard to sell to management, and which promise returns many years in the future—after significant investment. So how do you get management to buy into your vision?
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Compliance with the US Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) is not a one-time project, but a sustained effort to gain visibility into processes affecting financial reporting accuracy. Most IT controls are manual, error-prone, and resource-intensive. However, there’s a new, radical solution: an automated IT control framework in which all the information required to verify compliance is available in a single reporting system.
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When Katrina hit in 2005, Murphy was among the many companies impacted by the devastation. Although its servers sustained no physical damage, they were inaccessible, and Murphy could not reach or use its data until the waters receded and the servers were moved. After retrieving the servers from New Orleans (US), the company went directly to Virtuozzo for an evaluation.
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Historically, IT administrators have provisioned new servers with every new application, resulting in a large number of servers with utilization rates of 10 to 15 percent or less, commonly known as server sprawl. Server sprawl is responsible for a range of costs, including infrastructure, hardware, software, and management costs. So why hasn’t hardware virtualization solved your server sprawl issues yet?
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Today’s information technology (IT) organizations are dealing with the consequences of exploding infrastructure complexity. At the root of the problem is uncontrolled server sprawl—servers provisioned to support a single application. Organizations that have implemented hardware virtualization have unwittingly created a new problem: operating system (OS) sprawl. IT organizations have to find ways to address this critical challenge—today.
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X1 Enterprise Edition lets users search enterprise data with desktop, mobile, or browser clients. Thus, when integrating X1 Enterprise Edition security with an existing Microsoft network installation, it’s important to understand how X1 security features are configured and deployed (including web server security), and how X1 and Microsoft Windows security layers work together at runtime.
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Knowledge workers by the millions are leveraging desktop search (DTS) tools. However, with change comes risk, and failing to proactively establish policies and lock down a centrally managed DTS solution can result in significant civil and criminal liabilities. But by following a few basic principles, companies can realize the full benefits of this new technology, while enhancing their information security.
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Today’s $12 billion (USD) knowledge management (KM) market provides comprehensive solutions to large organizations. However, implementing such solutions requires significant resources and depends on behavioral changes by employees. As a result, KM efforts often fall short of their goals. Shifting focus to end user features offers significant benefits to government organizations and their employees—and improves the odds of success.
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To date, the best option for discovering and extracting information from software applications has primarily been manual, with automation tools serving in support. These initiatives are tedious, long-term, and high-risk. Companies try to lower monetary cost by outsourcing such projects. However, the time to completion and risks remain unchanged at best. The solution? Automated documentation and transformation of software applications.
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Performance reviews are typically based on the definition of what an employee was originally hired to do. However, appraisal systems fail to address the fact that jobs change as the business environment evolves. Performance management systems should thus deal with critical focus areas rather than basic functions. Appraisal without these objectives in mind risks being a total waste of time.
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Project portfolio management (PPM) is a hot topic, and there’s no shortage of related advice. However, much of the current advice is incomplete—or flat-out wrong. Before purchasing a tool, buyers should familiarize themselves with established theories for valuing projects. Armed with understanding, they can avoid getting "burned" by the unsuitable PPM tools that are being pushed in the marketplace.
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AstraZeneca, one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies, undertook an initiative to integrate
demand flow technology in logistical operations, leading to a major supply chain management (SCM) project at its packaging plant in Wedel (Germany). With an existing SAP technology platform, AstraZeneca project leaders opted for the mySAP SCM solution and the SAP Advanced Planning & Optimization component.
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In the automotive industry, companies face an ongoing struggle for market share and constant pressure on margins. To differentiate themselves in this competitive environment, many companies focus on sales and service operations, which are key to providing a high-quality customer experience. With that in mind, companies must automate processes and leverage integrated information to increase efficiency throughout the value chain.
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Large or small, every company can profit from streamlined processes, insightful business intelligence, and systems that are flexible enough to grow with changing business needs. SAP Best Practices for Automotive comprise preconfigured business scenarios that cover the most important requirements of the automotive supplier industry, including enterprise resource planning (ERP), supplier relationship management (SRM), and a business information warehouse (BW).
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If you deal in goods, services, or intellectual property included in the US Munitions List, you must ensure that all related transactions conform to International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR). To answer this challenge, you need a solution that automates core ITAR processes—a solution that stores all your licenses and related documents where you can keep tabs on them.
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The airline industry is constantly undergoing change, and the ability to adjust swiftly is imperative. The need to improve safety while offering competitive prices is an ever-present challenge. That’s why the industry requires solutions in every crucial aspect of business—from accounting and finance, route profitability, human resources (HR), materials management, and enterprise management, to customer relationship management (CRM).
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For those who haven’t yet taken the plunge, the time has come: Predictive analysis will become a competitive necessity by the end of this decade. This is primarily thanks to its capacity for turning customer intelligence into actionable information for improving the accuracy and efficiency with which organizations target specific customers and prospects—effectively lowering the cost of marketing campaigns.
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The warehouse management system (WMS) concept has matured into a collection of time-tested technologies that reduce inventory costs and increase overall inventory management efficiencies. By implementing WMS technology, organizations can achieve a higher return on their software dollars and provide better service to their customers. A WMS can provide organizations with tangible benefits that improve warehouse operations without adding headcount.
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If you’ve worked for more than one manufacturing company, you know that each one is different. Different processes, systems, problems—all these variations mean you need a system tailored to your needs. And with so many available solutions, you could spend months looking at demos, and still not find it. However, you can start by asking yourself eight simple questions.
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The Gantry Group, a strategic advisory and market intelligence firm, conducted interviews with nine companies that have deployed Sage MAS 90, 200, or 500. While every company is involved in distribution, they represent a wide range of industries. The aim of Gantry Group: a comprehensive analysis of return on investment (ROI) for Sage MAS 90, 200, and 500.
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Today more than ever, companies are looking for near-term return on investment (ROI)—and the sooner, the better. That’s why successful solution vendors must now use a much more analytical approach to selling. Customers want assurances that an investment will pay for itself over an acceptable time period—either by increasing the top line, decreasing operating expenses, or both.
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The news certainly isn’t what it used to be. Today, rising costs, stagnating circulation figures, and falling advertising sales characterize the newspaper market. There is hardly any capacity for new magazines, while new media and changed consumer habits are fragmenting the market. Consequently, gaining the loyalty of your customers and increasing your company’s attractiveness is crucial—now more than ever.
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Book publishers and information service providers are facing numerous challenges—production costs are on the rise, revenue windows are shrinking, and successful authors are few and far between. Publishers need to keep track of intellectual property, make better use of it, and improve their marketing and sales activities. But doing all that requires accurate, up-to-the-minute information, across the entire organization.
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Procurement organizations have been running electronic reverse auctions for years. Nevertheless, the use of auctions has not yet reached full potential. We’ve all heard the objections—and every objection stems from valid concerns. However, if your goal is to conduct fair and open competition among your supply base, reverse auctions can be an effective tool for bringing transparency to sourcing.
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Gen-Probe Incorporated is a global leader in the development, manufacture, and marketing of nucleic acid tests, used primarily to diagnose diseases and screen donated blood. In 2004, thanks to rapid growth, it needed applications to support its customers’ ever-rising performance demands. In addition, it required advanced business applications for continued focus on product innovation and expansion into new geographic markets.
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Outsourcing is increasingly embraced by manufacturers seeking ways to reduce costs, increase agility, and enhance market competitiveness. Yet poorly managed distributed manufacturing operations compromise visibility and quality control, which in turn erodes execution, management effectiveness, and profitability. To truly optimize the value of outsourcing, business systems and procedures must be deployed that create a collaborative, transparent information environment for manufacturing.
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Rising costs, stagnating circulation figures, and ever-increasing competition for advertisers—times have never been tougher for newspaper and magazine publishers. It takes reliable, up-to-the-minute information to deliver the products and high-quality service your customers demand. But all too often, business processes span multiple departments and information technology (IT) systems, slowing responsiveness and impeding access to crucial facts and figures.
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The media industry is undergoing radical change, driven in large part by new technologies such as the Internet, online publishing, and digital broadcasting. And at the heart of the industry is intellectual property. As the number of media and delivery channels explodes, you need to know how to manage rights inventory, license revenue streams, and royalty payments—efficiently and profitably.
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Superior order management can provide you with a competitive edge across the board. To move closer to order perfection and a truly loyal customer base, you must cost-effectively eliminate the issues preventing on-time, accurate order fulfillment. This involves every process, including planning and forecasting, acquiring and creating accurate orders and contracts, handling order changes, and resolving fulfillment and post-delivery problems.
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Most chief executive officers (CEOs) have developed strategies that push their companies to achieve certain goals. So why are so many companies failing to achieve these goals? Because their twenty-first century vision is being held back by twentieth century processes and IT systems. The missing ingredient: information. And the key to facilitating the flow of information lies in integrated processes.
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Successful enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementations can force organizations to reevaluate their business practices and processes, create a higher understanding of the need for data accuracy, and enable a more effective data-sharing environment. However, such high-level benefits require a new approach to project implementation—one that applies the lessons of the past to reinvent the systems of the future.
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When business uncertainties are frequent and compliance with regulations is mandatory, it can be a challenge to keep information technology (IT) synchronized with strategy for maximum business value—while reducing IT cost. An IT portfolio management framework, coupled with an IT governance framework, can provide visibility into projects and IT assets, keeping them aligned to business objectives at all times.
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In construction and services, matching the right people to the right projects is mission-critical if those projects are to show actual profits. But determining profitability takes time—not a common commodity today. What’s needed are tools to track, identify, and report all contract and project activity—an integrated view of all job details, including the critical factors that determine profitability.
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The aerospace and defense (A&D) manufacturing industry is always changing. That’s why A&D manufacturers are constantly seeking better ways to manage complexity, cut costs, and boost productivity. In pursuit of these objectives, A&D manufacturers are looking beyond standard practices to new business strategies that promise solid business results. But which strategies and practices are right for your company?
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Knowledgeable users of enterprise applications can improve the efficiency of entire business processes, not just of their individual contributions. But first, employees must know how to use their enterprise software systems—and how their activities support larger processes. Effective workflow learning platforms address both needs, and ultimately enable users themselves to improve the processes that provide a competitive edge.
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More than any other factor, ineffective training is responsible for inflating total cost of ownership (TCO) for software investments. Ineffective training approaches include starting too late; assuming go-live is the completion of the project; and failing to teach users about the processes the software is designed to support. Successfully lowering TCO means embracing e-learning, blended training solutions, and web-based simulations.
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Customer relationship management (CRM) is more than a product—it’s a philosophy. That’s why, when it comes to CRM systems, it’s important to understand all the benefits of an integrated application before beginning the selection process. After all, just as a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, a CRM solution is only as good as its implementation.
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One of the most important aspects of any business management application, including CRM applications, is its underlying architecture. An application’s customizability, adaptability, portability, scalability, and extensibility are all functions of its architecture. A well-designed architecture will thus accommodate growth and adapt to business changes—without affecting the performance of the application or requiring an exhaustive re-implementation.
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The complexity of the global economy is a powerful motivation for companies to look for new ways to increase efficiency and productivity. That’s why companies must have the ability to transform information into meaningful, accurate insights. Most importantly, these insights must be systematically interconnected, to align business strategy with tactics through a seamless integration of analytical, transactional, and collaborative processes.
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Today’s manufacturers are feeling pressures from many directions. Dynamic market needs, increased compliance requirements, more distributed manufacturing operations, and the transition to new technology are all manifested on the plant floor and throughout the enterprise—often leading to pleas for technology solutions. Integration and data utilization are thus the key issues to address in order to improve responsiveness and performance.
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Since its inception in the 1980s, remote control software has come a long way—evolving into sophisticated tools that provide much more than just simple remote control. But with the wide range of remote control products on the market, it is important to know which features are truly beneficial, in order to separate the good from the bad.
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Only a handful of firms have undertaken the challenge of integrating their supply chain management (SCM) and customer relationship management (CRM) processes. A big reason for this is the practicalities of everyday business. But in today’s era of technology-fueled competition, leading companies in nearly every industry are seeking an edge by focusing on strategies enabling SCM and CRM to coalesce.
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Thanks to recent accounting scandals and an increasingly competitive environment, many chief financial officers and the finance organizations they lead have started to take on new roles within the enterprise. However, given the current state of the finance function in US companies, companies first need to understand the challenges to finance—and the road map to increasing its strategic capabilities.
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Today’s service-parts organizations, such as those in the aerospace and defense, automotive, agricultural, heavy equipment, and industrial machinery industries, are pursuing the service- and spare-parts market for revenue and profit growth. Increasing customer demands and a dynamic marketplace are forcing these organizations to operate at new levels of flexibility and responsiveness, to address customer requirements and attain targeted profit margins.
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Gaps between enterprise resource planning (ERP) functionality and best-of-breed applications are diminishing rapidly. Deciding between the two may thus come down to overall IT strategy. If it is already segmented, it makes sense to add best-of-breed applications for specific operational areas. However, if a more rationalized common operating platform is the strategy, there are compelling arguments for supply chain ERP.
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Installing a new enterprise resource planning (ERP) system is both challenging and exciting. Yet many organizations do not recognize that one of the largest threats to such a project is a failure to focus on process improvement. If process change is not seen as a necessary element of the project, it will never be as successful as it should be.
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You have convinced upper management that flow manufacturing will enable your company to leapfrog the competition. You have appointed a flow process leader, and selected a line for your flow pilot. Now it’s time to physically perform your first line implementation. The big question is, what exactly do you need to do to make the transition from discrete to flow?
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Photon Dynamics, a manufacturer of test, repair, and inspection equipment for flat-panel display manufacturing, was finding it difficult to track orders, materials, and finished goods. It considered abandoning its mid-tier enterprise resource planning system, in favor of a tier-one application. But to justify the cost, the company decided to first make sure that the system was, in fact, the problem.
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A group of serial entrepreneurs was look¬ing to jump-start business operations at a series of high technology startups by implementing advanced manufacturing software early in the business cycle. In implementing Expandable ERP at each of their startup companies, the entrepreneurs were able to minimize their risk by developing a repeatable methodology for establishing sound manufacturing operations.
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After receiving US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval for its ground-breaking product, medical technology startup Thermage, Inc., was looking to install manufacturing software that would fit a limited budget and meet its long-term needs. By going with Expandable ERP, Thermage was able to implement a full-featured manufacturing system that helped it ramp up production and maintain FDA compliance.
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With tight budgets and spending restrictions affecting education, there has been increased interest in using a tool that has achieved significant success in the business world—customer relationship management (CRM) for schools. This approach involves taking a "customer-concentric" view to develop strategic plans. The key, however, is to take advantage of these capabilities without creating additional "information technology" overhead.
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The success of Kentucky (US)-based First Federal Savings Bank can largely be attributed to its sophisticated review process. The bank conducts an annual 360 review for each of its employees. Besides rating themselves, employees are also evaluated by peers, subordinates, and supervisors. To conduct these reviews, the bank uses Blue/360, a web-based multi-rater application designed specifically for conducting 360 reviews.
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Whether you’re a niche-market start-up developing a single compound or a well-established global company with dozens of projects in the pipeline, the pressure to innovate in the life
sciences industry is unrelenting. That’s why you need a solution that can help monitor resources, prioritize projects, optimize the clinical trial supply chain, and maximize the overall value of your product portfolio.
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In the automotive industry, purchasing has become a critical business component. Some experts estimate that a 4 percent reduction in sourcing costs can add as much to profits as a 10 percent increase in sales. With intense global competition putting constant pressure on vehicle prices, many companies see improved sourcing and procurement as key to increasing margins, profits, and competitiveness.
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When enterprise architects first conceived and created enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions in the mid-1980s, their predictive genius was praised during successive dot-com eras as Nostradamus-like in reading the future market’s thirst for transactional-driven solutions. Today, those transactional systems look like aging athletes on steroids—over-bulked, over-paid, and with very real worry that they’ll be found out.
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Sermatech Manufacturing Group, a producer of precision components for the aerospace industry, was at a crossroads with its business management software. Its original 1980s software was outdated, and it needed a more robust system to guarantee company-wide access to real-time operations data. After researching numerous enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, Sermatech turned to Enhanced Systems & Services’ Finesse ERP system.
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The pressure to generate demand for consumer products is constantly increasing. Whether managing customer relationships, achieving increased sales, or introducing new products, the area of marketing expenditure is complex and prone to error. That’s why you need a solution drawing together all the activities needed to analyze, plan, sell, execute, validate, and evaluate your products in a closed-loop process.
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Enabling lean manufacturing and six sigma principles to improve operations requires a nontraditional approach. The old idea that lean manufacturing and six sigma principles don’t require IT isn’t valid anymore. Enterprise resource planning (ERP) and supply chain management (SCM) applications are critical for enabling holistic, lean manufacturing operations, and work hand-in-hand to better enable consumption—not forecasts—to drive replenishment.
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On the path toward global competitiveness, the benefits and basic principles of “Lean” are widely known. However, many organizations struggle to gain a foothold when embarking on the Lean journey. Or, perhaps more commonly, Lean initiatives stall and are sometimes eliminated due to a lack of understanding of what it takes to both make and sustain the Lean transformation.
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When selecting integration solutions, the only certainty is that there’s no way of telling what systems and databases will need to be integrated in the future. As your business becomes more dependent on electronic relationships with suppliers, customers, and partners, it becomes harder to impose your own best practices. That’s why you need the flexibility to adapt to any conditions.
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Warehousing processes are critical for the success of a distribution business. These processes are highly visible to your customers, and have a direct impact on their opinion of your company. If you cannot get the goods to your customers in the most efficient way, you risk losing their business. Your warehousing and logistics operations must translate into reliability and service.
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Increased global competition, pricing pressure, and the need to rationalize resources have made business and operational measurement vital on all organizational levels. That’s why business intelligence and data warehousing tools are no longer only for the exclusive use of financial controllers. Instead, they are everyday tools across company divisions, giving relevant and efficient information overviews of all areas of responsibility.
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To better understand record management (RM) challenges related to regulatory compliance in the financial services and health care industries, it is important to know why the laws and acts were written and codified. This knowledge will help organizations understand why the RM team is creating and maintaining new records, and how report management can ease RM compliance challenges.
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There continues to be a wide variety of different approaches to building a solid data management solution for your organization, and just as many consulting firms across the globe willing to help you build them. However, it’s imperative for each data management solution to specialize to the unique needs of your organization’s business users, across varying functional areas.
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Intuit recently identified a need to better serve larger and growing users within and outside the QuickBooks base. Thus, Enterprise Solutions 7.0 was designed with growing businesses in mind. For current users, Enterprise Solutions offers a way to support growth with a familiar interface. For those not currently using QuickBooks, it may be a viable alternative to their current solution.
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User provisioning manages the entire life cycle of user access to IT resources. Traditionally, the connection between provisioning and IT security administration has been unreliable, with too many processes connected to too many systems. A better approach is to leverage a single application for user administration across the IT infrastructure. This model reduces complexity, enhances reliability, and lowers costs.
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The multitude of messages and media in this interactive age contributes to a fragmented consumer goods market. Shorter product life cycles, mass product customization, and increasing supply chain complexity are all symptoms of the new project economy. The arrival of this new age must be recognized by business leaders, and the systems supporting business must change to accommodate this reality.
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Quaker Oats has been an icon in Cedar Rapids, Iowa (US) since 1901. In 1979, Quaker sought a system for the storeroom function and purchasing department, and selected CHAMPS. In 1991, the company implemented the CHAMPS maintenance management functionality. Its internal team interfaced CHAMPS with the existing accounts payable system, for seamless data transfer between the maintenance and accounting departments.
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When choosing a payroll software vendor, there are numerous considerations that must be taken into account when narrowing down the choices. Obviously, you have to decide on a software that meets your needs within budget. However, it’s just as important to consider the other factors that can make a huge impact on the overall success of your payroll software selection.
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Small and medium businesses (SMB) need to address inventory challenges by using a tightly integrated approach that reflects the dynamics of the extended supply chain. Data must also be available to other application modules within the enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. An inventory optimization solution allows companies to effectively fulfill demand and identify how to gain additional profits from their inventories.
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There is a common perception that supply chain automation has created an environment in which transactions move quickly and efficiently in industries such as the retail supply chain and high-tech manufacturing. However, this perception is challenged by a recent research study, based on interviews with 400 management representatives of medium to large organizations in the USA, UK, Germany, and France.
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A recent report by the European Commission noted that Europe is not investing in productivity-enhancing information technology and communications (ITC) as much as the US. The report also claimed that the situation is still worse for small to medium businesses (SMBs). Comparing the data from two recent Quocirca studies underlines the problem, and shows the price European SMBs are paying.
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Most organizations have already taken steps to extend IT access to employees in remote locations. The questions is, should they continue to extend this process—and how? Mobile technology benefits are often difficult to measure, but the costs of hardware, software, and services are often of such a magnitude that the benefits need to be tangible to justify the cost.
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Although short message service (SMS) messaging is a cheap and efficient communication channel, many enterprises are still reluctant to deploy it as a corporate tool. At issue is its lack of reliability and security while transmitting information. The enterprise SMS market thus has to evolve from the person-to-person infrastructure into a model that supplies businesses with secure and scalable messaging.
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Technology decision-making in larger organizations is about making existing IT platforms as efficient as possible. However, there are weaknesses in the day-to-day operation of such environments, particularly in storage and information management. Positioning information lifecycle management (ILM) in the context of infrastructure management provides an understanding of where we are today—and of how much further there is to go.
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The US Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) addresses the issues of corporate fiscal accountability, accounting standards and practices, and reporting, as well as investor confidence in publicly owned corporations. SOX thus presents challenges to satisfy regulatory requirements, as well as opportunities to improve processes. That's why SOX compliance can be aided by an integrated, automated enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution.
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For many organizations, there is a disconnect between strategy and day-to-day activities. Strategy, resources, and risks are discussed at the executive level, but day-to-day activities and performance metrics are not connected to them. As a result, organizations can measure performance, but can’t manage it. The key to breakthrough performance management is tying performance metrics, resources, and risks to strategic objectives.
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As companies demand more from their decision support systems, unified business performance management (BPM) will play an increasingly important role in planning and decision-making. Thus, predictive analytics, applied with BPM, bridges the gap between real-time activity monitoring and calculated execution. Before embracing predictive analytics, however, companies should know that only a unified solution can help capitalize on this promising technology.
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Integration projects that attempt to fuse processes with application and system interfaces are likely to fail. A more pragmatic approach involves service-oriented architecture (SOA), where integration is determined by business requirements rather than technology factors. However, SOA alone is insufficient. Composite adapter services provide a layer of abstraction between service requestors and service providers, enabling cost-effective and versatile enterprise integration.
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Bad data threatens the usefulness of the information you have about your customers. Poor data quality undermines customer communication and whittles away at profit margins. It can also create useless information in the form of inaccurate reports and market analyses. As companies come to rely more and more on their automated systems, data quality becomes an increasingly serious business issue.
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All organizations, across all industries, have one thing in common—a deluge of customer data idling somewhere waiting to be monetized. Most likely, the similarities end there. The accuracy, depth, and accessibility of data are as varied as the products and services offered by organizations. The use of this data is what separates successful organizations from those who go bankrupt.
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Organizations of all sizes are tasked with increasing efficiency and revenues in a timely manner. Naturally, this leads them to consider automation. The critical question then becomes: is it more beneficial to build a time and expense management solution or to buy one? Overwhelmingly, organizations have proven that buying a solution results in greater value and success.
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Having the right information in the right place at the right time is critical to the success of any business, but it can be difficult to achieve if you’re not using the right software tools. Together, Microsoft Dynamics GP and Microsoft Office form a tool that connects information with people—as well as with the processes organizations use every day.
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Dashboards are a popular means to deliver important information at a glance, but their potential is rarely realized. The best software in the world will not produce a useful dashboard without effective visual design. To better understand the concept of business intelligence dashboards in the first place, it is thus vital to understand the common pitfalls of dashboard design.
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IT today is often caught between a rock and a hard place: its budget has been reduced, while expectations remain undiminished. Moving beyond this paradox requires fresh approaches to IT management and governance. Today’s IT operations must remain aligned with strategic organizational priorities, deliver promised results with control and predictability, and transparently report problems in time to act on them.
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The ability to extract and present information meaningfully is vital for business management. Indeed, business intelligence tools enable companies to make better decisions, by providing the right information to the right people at the right time. Moreover, employees increasingly suffer from information overload, and require solutions that make informed decisions a more natural part of the everyday work experience.
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Pulse is a global leader in the design and manufacture of electronic components. With its far-flung design centers, manufacturing facilities, and customer care centers, Pulse sought to adopt a global supply chain management strategy, integrated with demand planning and manufacturing operations. The benefits, Pulse reasoned, would include faster order response time, lower inventory costs, and more intelligent planning and scheduling.
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Switzerland-based Firmenich has been researching, studying and creating fragrances and flavors for more than a century. As part of an ongoing project to cut cost and increase throughput and margins, Firmenich sought a supply chain management application to eliminate information silos and automatically address other issues such as excess inventory, load imbalances, customer service, forecasting, and other, potentially expensive inefficiencies.
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In 1988, Gulistan Carpet, one of America’s leading carpet producers, implemented a custom enterprise resource planning (ERP) system to understand its business planning issues. But management soon realized this was not enough, and wanted to find a way to link this information with actual plant floor production operations at its three main plants. For a solution, it turned to Adexa, Inc.
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The markets served by Hindustan Lever Limited (HLL), India’s largest consumer goods company, require flexible planning, production, and distribution scenarios on the manufacturing side of operations. In 2000, HLL identified improved supply chain management as a critical business priority. It sought a solution that would increase supplier and distributor responsiveness, reduce inventory buffers, and optimize planning and scheduling.
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Responding immediately to product availability requests with accurate delivery dates, and following through on commitments, is critical to serving the customer base. Improvement in this area will impact the bottom line through higher customer satisfaction, and decreased costs for goods sold. It is especially critical for enterprises to manage supply commitments to customers when products need to go on allocation.
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Despite its success and profitability, Samsung’s network division—operating in a rapidly changing, highly volatile sector of the technology industry—nonetheless faced a continuous series of internal manufacturing challenges. In 2000, recognizing that it faced multiple opportunities for improvement, Samsung initiated a strategic campaign to revamp its supply chain management efforts. It turned to Adexa for a solution.
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Customer relationship management (CRM) is the first and foremost strategy and corporate philosophy that puts the customer at the center of business operations so as to increase profits by improving customer acquisition and retention. It involves identifying high-value customers and automating processes so that sales, marketing, and service efforts will be more efficient and effective. However, to ensure the success of a CRM initiative, upper management must have a clear vision and establish a customer-focused culture.
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The client/server trend in multi-tiered computing has been made possible because of reductions in the cost of hardware and software components, as well as the availability of high-performance database engines. The utility of this technology is reflected in the Microsoft Dynamics AX application. Its three-tier client/server technology provides a solution that can be accessed through networks, even with limited bandwidth.
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In the UK, government IT has a poor track record. Too much money is wasted on complex projects which fail to deliver the anticipated benefits. However, it is possible to deliver IT projects successfully in the public sector if sensible business and technology strategies are combined within strong project management frameworks to promote a spirit of mutual understanding and respect.
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Executives in the life sciences industry work under tremendous competitive pressures. At the same time, they must meet regulatory guidelines and ensure that product safety remains a priority. Information must be meticulously tracked through all phases of a production cycle, which can slow production significantly. That’s why solutions for the industry must help streamline and simplify the regulatory compliance process.
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Pricing and revenue optimization is the process of improving business margins by either increasing unit prices or increasing gross revenues. This type of optimization is fast being recognized as having the capability to help businesses grow margins significantly. In fact, studies have shown that it can add a 15 to 50 percent incremental margin to the bottom line.
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Managing complexity while enhancing agility is a real challenge. To respond to customer needs, manufacturers must reduce their time to market and time to volume. And to respond to demand and supply shifts, they must be able to adapt to changing situations. To meet these challenges, companies require integrated solutions ensuring that manufacturing runs at the pace of their business.
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Adaptive manufacturing enables companies to produce goods efficiently and manage variability proactively. However, it must be managed as an end-to-end, closed-loop process with tight linkages between manufacturing applications, adjacent enterprise applications, and—most importantly—the technology behind these applications. Such integrated networks enable the process visibility and collaboration capabilities that, ultimately, are the key to building an adaptive manufacturing enterprise.
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Wholesale distribution operations are becoming more complex, with ever-changing customer requirements, global and electronic marketplaces, multiple distribution channels, and compliance initiatives adding to the perennial challenges of accurate delivery. Traditional warehouse management or enterprise resource planning solutions are simply not enough. Operational efficiency is the key to increasing inventory turns, improving order fulfillment rates, reducing cycle time, and eliminating charge-backs.
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Industrial equipment manufacturers have historically embraced shop floor improvements as a way of increasing efficiency and maintaining profitability. But in today’s radically altered industrial environment, there is a clear imperative to look beyond the shop floor. To hold down costs and compete against other low-cost companies, manufacturers must find areas of improvement in all aspects of business.
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Achieving operational excellence is fundamental for Yanacocha, the largest gold producer in South America. In 1999, Yanacocha decided it needed an online system linking its principal management areas (operations, maintenance, logistics, finance, and human resources), in order to optimize efficiency in administering its assets. It turned to Mincom Ellipse as its corporate management system, allowing standardization of its operations worldwide.
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Internet recruiting is a potentially powerful opportunity to augment existing recruitment practices. While the landscape is still dotted with a handful of household names, newer tools and technology will usher in newer entrants. Thus, the organizations willing to experiment and embrace this new technology will eventually win the race to the best talent on the Net.
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The move to radio frequency identification (RFID) integration may result in high costs, arising from the need to maintain multiple interfaces between RFID and other enterprise systems. This means implementing a software architecture that encompasses current and future technology, combined with a data architecture that enables you to manage massive amounts of data at a low total cost of ownership.
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E-mail is more important to companies than ever, since sensitive information is e-mailed both inside and outside the organization. However, growth in overall e-mail volume, driven by more sophisticated spamming attacks, as well the need to ensure content is suitable for purpose, means that we now must reconsider how we view e-mail management within the organization.
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Utilities have always held information about their assets, but traditionally this has been held in different parts of the business and not integrated into single coherent systems. Good asset management is increasingly about being able to feed information from business processes across the company into an asset management system, and using information from that system for financial and operational improvement.
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IT management and governance systems have entered the mainstream, joining enterprise resource planning, customer relationship management, human resources, and e-mail as part of the standard enterprise applications landscape. This has led to fundamental changes for leading chief information officers: their first consideration is now to make sure their own organization is systemically supported before systemically improving their customers’ organizations.
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Remote working is not new, but increasing dependence on instant IT access has led to increasing demands for mobile data services. Certainly, these services can be complex, and it is valuable to be insulated from the effects of rapid change. But ultimately, mobile access should be considered as just one aspect of IT usage, rather than as a separate entity.
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Many technology sales cycles get bogged down in the IT department. But while it is unlikely that a sale will get anywhere without IT management buy-in, IT approval is no guarantee of success. Getting a “yes” requires accessing and influencing other decision-makers, especially in the finance department. And along the way, there are plenty of others who can say “no.”
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Given the challenges facing governmental human resources (HR) departments, HR organizations need to take a hard look at their operations, and face the realities of what works—and what doesn’t. Shared services are the largely predominant organizational structure for delivering HR, and public sector HR executives must determine what must be done to take their organizations to the next level.
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Most research shows that offshoring and outsourcing are clearly the next wave of improvement initiatives for delivery of support services, but how do you decide whether outsourcing or offshoring are right for your organization? It may be helpful to examine the lessons learned from companies who have already made the internal build versus external outsource, and onshore versus offshore decisions.
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Adaptiveness in the manufacturing sector depends on being able to push decision
making to the shop floor. But that’s often easier said than done. However, manufacturing intelligence dashboards aggregate content from the full range of manufacturing systems into a single view of operations. These role-specific dashboards thus enable employees to manage manufacturing performance, and respond quickly to changes.
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Over 90 percent of human resources (HR) professionals rate employee performance management (EPM) as a top priority. Yet considerably fewer have EPM systems deployed within their organizations, mostly because of concerns about presenting a persuasive case for such projects to executive management. However, a structured approach to selecting, planning for, and implementing an EPM solution can help alleviate those concerns.
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Many manufacturers are seeking to deploy manufacturing technology to satisfy increasingly rigorous business demands. However, the prospect of traditional software implementations can be daunting. Furthermore, managers and executives often cannot wait for IT resources to become available to implement traditional installed software to address pressing manufacturing needs. Many companies are thus willing to consider a new alternative: on-demand manufacturing software.
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Do you spend all your time chasing new customers instead of taking care of the ones you already have? Most customer relationship management (CRM) projects focus on customer relationships but fail to address customer experience as a loyalty driver. In part two of a two-part series, learn about best practices recommended by customer experience management (CEM) experts, and how they can help you improve long-term loyalty.
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St. Marys Paper Ltd. is a pulp and paper mill located in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario (Canada). In 1989, it implemented a CHAMPS computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) to help reduce costs and improve efficiencies. In 1998, St. Marys decided to investigate potential vendors for a maintenance system upgrade. After reviewing several vendors, the mill again turned to CHAMPS.
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No longer are customers simply sideline participants. Organizations are empowering them with a wealth of knowledge to engage in more informed decision-making. A customer relationship management (CRM) solution that encompasses all aspects of your business gives customers unprecedented visibility into the actions that impact them. Ultimately, this leads to greater accountability within the organization, and greater satisfaction among customers.
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How you decide to deploy and implement new Internet provider (IP) telephony infrastructure, as well as new applications or services to end users, will vary greatly based on the scope of the project and the degree of complexity involved. However, whether you are deploying to small remote offices or to large core sites, it is vital to establish standardized procedures.
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Enterprises looking to understand their Internet provider (IP) telephony implementation costs must go beyond simple analyses of return on investment. A total cost of ownership (TCO) analysis is required to help drive the bigger picture, as it considers both tactical and strategic goals, including management of the overall IT budget (annual operational and capital expenditures), risk assessment, and strategic objectives.
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Conventional enterprise resource planning (ERP) falls short in a few areas: competitive pressures are making it clear that business is still in need of more effective solutions. ERP II, however, delivers on the original concept of ERP. No longer is corporate information isolated in departmental silos, but it is housed with all corporate information, used to benefit the entire organization.
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The importance of resource selection is undervalued in the software industry. But in fact, the resource selection process is directly related to software development mission success. The in-house interview process typically fails to achieve comprehensive in-depth skills assessment, and is not cost-effective. However, you can improve matters by integrating external technical skills assessment expertise into the hiring process.
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Located in Algona, Iowa (US), and founded in 1989, Sbemco is a world leader in custom safety floor matting. As business grew, however, the company needed to strengthen back-office systems to provide more visibility into the supply chain process. The company accomplished this by transitioning to Exact Macola ERP and integrating it with Exact e-Synergy, a web-based business management solution.
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When telecom operators interconect to send or receive different types of traffic, call detail records (CDRs) are generated at both ends. These CDRs need to be reconciled periodically to find errors, if any. While there are industry standards for resolving these errors, comprehensive reconciliation solutions do exist that focus on the issue from a billing perspective.
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Broadband Internet subscribers have a choice between DSL or cable systems. Providers of each system must meet the particular billing challenges raised when offering such services. Each system has areas of potential revenue loss, and billing system strategies must take these into account in order to reduce the risks.
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The medical marketing agency AlphaMedica, based in New York, New York (US), is a fast-growing business. It needed an accounting system that could keep up with a flurry of activity, generate quick payments and reports, and link smoothly to the in-house systems used to manage the more specialized aspects of its business. For help, it turned to QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions.
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Relationship marketing is about understanding customers’ needs and building a marketing strategy around them. The nurturing process helps businesses define the process of generating better leads through a clear set of principles, tactics, and related metrics for attracting new customers. Enterprise marketing management (EMM) has also emerged as part of this process, and is critical for marketing consistency and discipline.
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A typical manufacturing business today is faced with countless business challenges: domestic and global competition; high sensitivity to economic cycles; rising labor, materials and energy costs to name just a few. To combat today’s challenges manufacturers can easily and affordably leverage the web for internal efficiency gains, enhanced customer service, and increased sales.
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In the beginning, e-mail marketing was easy. But as e-mail lists have grown, so have Internet service provider (ISP) restrictions. Today, delivering your e-mail newsletter can be a real challenge, especially with a list of over 10,000 recipients. Instead of adopting one of several seductive but outdated solutions, a better alternative may be to use an e-mail service provider.
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The Internet industry is intensifying day by day as it becomes the basis of communication for businesses. With the introduction of voice over Internet protocol (VoIP), communication costs have been greatly reduced, and the Internet industry is thus introducing variant services to consumers that were unthought of before. One of these emerging ideas is direct inward dialing (DID).
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Current enterprise resource planning (ERP) system implementation methodologies give too much attention to the ”hard core” technical side of the project, and too little to the organizational change needed to complete the project successfully. Because of the complex nature of these projects, different experts are required—not only ERP or IT experts, but also experts in managing organizational change.
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Document and records management software has many benefits that can appreciably improve organizational efficiency. Since these applications are complex systems that represent a solid investment, organizations should carefully evaluate their current and future needs beforehand.
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Companies spend staggering investments to make and keep their offerings competitive. By providing a centralized location to store account history and detailed contact information for every buyer and automating what had been manual tasks, sales force automation (SFA) and customer relationship management (CRM) have begun to positively impact sales efforts.
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Customer relationship management (CRM) is growing in importance as a competitive tool. However, a successful CRM solution must consider many factors, including a well-defined implementation strategy, the people factor, and the need for integration with the incumbent enterprise resource planning solution. If these conditions are met, CRM can have a dramatic impact on internal processes, customer satisfaction, and company profitability.
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Customer churn rates are higher than ever: although businesses say they are devoted to loyalty, their management systems and budgets do not support that claim. But in a landscape of similar products, cutting down on defection—or churn—is vital. There are in fact four steps to improving loyalty and retention which, if focused on the appropriate customers, will improve profitability.
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Customer churn rates are higher than ever: although businesses say they are devoted to loyalty, their management systems and budgets do not support that claim. But in a landscape of similar products, cutting down on defection—or churn—is vital. There are in fact four steps to improving loyalty and retention which, if focused on the appropriate customers, will improve profitability.
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In today’s world, current and future customers are interested to know whether or not you have implemented a quality control system. Some customers will demand International Organization for Standards (ISO) certification, and others may just ask about it. Whatever their requirements, having a quality control system assures your customers that the products and services you offer are of high quality.
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Essai is a leading US manufacturer of semiconductor test products. But Essai needed a solution that could support rapid business growth, maintain stringent quality requirements, and support the development and design of high-mix products. Essai worked with Microsoft Certified Partner Oztera, which implemented Microsoft Dynamics NAV 3.7 and customized the solution to achieve complete automation of all business processes.
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Webcom Limited is a Canadian book manufacturer specializing in custom book production. Its heterogeneous IT infrastructure was resulting in discontinuous information flow, which impeded staffers’ abilities to collaborate throughout the steps of a book’s production. But when Webcom Limited migrated to an integrated Microsoft business management system, it saw a 33 percent improvement in the automation of job production workflow.
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The Yosemite Association is a US-based not-for-profit organization that was operating disparate financial systems that didn’t integrate data across the organization, resulting in data it could not trust. It chose to implement an integrated business management software solution based on Microsoft Dynamics NAV. The organization has now gained better management of its financial information, with access to reliable, real-time information.
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US-based Skarnes, Inc. distributes material handling products and provides warehouse storage and material handling solutions. Migrating from RealWorld to Microsoft Business Solutions-Navision provided Skarnes with improved reporting capabilities, the ability to track costs, and the ability to view work in process. Furthermore, elimination of redundant data entry provided a 40 percent reduction in accounting work time.
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Analysis and reporting services are an important part of the enterprise resource planning process. Microsoft Dynamics NAV has been designed to give users options for optimal analysis and reporting, and to leave room for partners to provide customized solutions. With the correct reporting tools and Microsoft Dynamics NAV, practical analysis and reporting is available and adaptable to individual users’ needs.
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Chemtech, a plastics injection molder, experienced doubled sales, achieved a 99.7 percent on-time delivery rate, and generated time savings and process efficiencies after implementing DTR Plastics ERP. In fact, after running this application for seven years, they were winning new clients as a result of being able to handle more demanding orders, and provide more comprehensive documentation.
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PEMCO Corporation, a manufacturer of high quality mining products for multinational original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), realized increased on-time delivery performance and reduced customer service costs while preventing product shortages through just-in-time material availability. The improved quality of information and improved flow of product through the plant has even resulted in revamped employee morale and job satisfaction.
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Jasper Seating, an Indiana (US)-based manufacturer of wood furniture products, faced intense pressure from Asian imports, rising raw material prices, and a shortage of skilled labor. But the company achieved significant business improvements after implementing the Made2Manage Enterprise Business System in 2003. These results included expansion into new markets, and a 25 percent increase in revenue over a two-year period.
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Based in Cleveland, Ohio (US), Fuserashi International Technology, Inc. is a manufacturer of precision nuts, bushings, inner metals, piston blanks, and specialty cold-formed steel products. The company achieved significant return on investment within the first two years of using the Made2Manage Enterprise Business System. In fact, as revenue climbed, F.I.T. made a name for itself as a quality benchmark leader.
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The concept of getting business requirements right sounds straightforward. However, flawed requirements trigger 70 percent of project failures. The larger the number of stakeholder groups involved, and the more complex the processes, the more likely a project will fail. Success in large projects is not just about completeness, but also about getting complete requirements information early in the development process.
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Chief information officers keen to introduce service-oriented architecture (SOA) into their organization must deal with the many legacy applications that are potential roadblocks. To move to an SOA-enabled future, organizations have to service legacy applications, and evaluate which legacy application would give the best return on investment if modernized. The solution may be a process-oriented approach to legacy system transformation.
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Veolia Transport required a locally supported yet highly capable financial product that could be tailored to suit its needs. With over 100 years of public transport operations experience in 25 countries, the company quickly understood that Greentree was exactly what they needed to help transform Auckland’s rail system into a modern, efficient, and integrated public transport service.
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Intuit recently identified a need to better serve larger and growing users within and outside the QuickBooks base. Thus, Enterprise Solutions was designed with growing businesses in mind. For current QuickBooks users, Enterprise Solutions offers a way to support growth with a familiar interface. For those not currently using QuickBooks, it may be an alternative to their current solution.
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The recent explosion of virtualization as a technology coincides with the trend of consolidating systems on to less, but more powerful, hardware. With more robust hardware, consolidation makes cost-effective sense. And given the reduced management overhead and more efficient hardware use, virtualization makes a great deal of sense indeed. However, it’s also important to be aware of its dangers.
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Like many health care providers, Wisconsin (US)-based Aurora faces pressures to improve care quality, while monitoring its bottom line. Asset optimization remains elusive for most such enterprises, but Aurora devised a plan to use a centralized service management call center to facilitate service requests, and dispatch resources. Aurora was thereby able to attain higher efficiency, and still strengthen service levels.
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In order to achieve success, all business software projects have to surmount requirements risk, technical risk, and planning risk. Many software developers have thus adopted an iterative delivery methodology, finishing first the essential features, and then those additional features which deliver the most value. Some fundamental insights will provide a better understanding of how to set up iterative delivery projects.
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Two models exist for implementing project portfolio management (PPM) systems: the engagement profitability model, and the budget alignment model. The former uses projects and programs as vehicles for managing revenue-generating engagements. The latter is an operational environment where project value varies, and project costs constitute an expense overhead. PPM can align these models to shorten engagements through standard implementation plans.
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When a project management office (PMO) operates well, the impact can be extraordinary. All too often, though, the PMO doesn’t become a clear asset. In order to avoid the worst-case scenario, PMO team members often become internal advisors with marginal impact and no authority. What can be done to avoid this? And what are the keys to successful PMO implementations?
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The most realistic and attainable approach to IT governance is a "lean" approach via project portfolio management (PPM). The lean approach requires a light footprint life cycle, rapid implementation of proven practices, and centralized data. It is based on simplicity and achievability, building on what works while establishing headroom for continuous improvement.
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We have all heard the phrase: “garbage in, garbage out.” When any company evaluates a customer relationship management (CRM) system, this is always one of the first expressions to come up. And yet we see company after company for which this is the exact problem. How can you make sure that this doesn’t happen to you?
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Making the leap to customer relationship management (CRM) doesn’t have to be a difficult process. But many companies have difficulty knowing how to get their CRM initiative off to the right start. There is, however, a simple, step-by-step process which will help guide your CRM implementation project in the right direction, even if you’ve never implemented a CRM system before.
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Your company has just selected a new customer relationship management (CRM) system for your company. Congratulations should be in order. However, your work has really just begun. You know that in order for your CRM initiative to be successful, you’ll need buy-in from your users. What steps do you need to take to ensure buy-in and achieve real implementation success?
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Washington Information Network 2-1-1 (WIN 211), was the non-profit organization tasked with implementing an integrated call center solution in the State of Washington (US). WIN 211’s challenge was to define system requirements, and select a vendor that could interconnect eight call centers into a single, cohesive information service system. For a solution, it turned to UCN inContact.
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It may come as a surprise to you, but every organization that brings a product to market already has a product lifecycle management (PLM) system in place. And the choices as to which software tools or system an organization should employ in its initiatives should be entirely based on the review and assessment of its current PLM system.
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In a world that’s constantly demanding better communication to improve the level of perfect orders, while optimising working capital and reducing supply costs, it is vital to provide an electronic trading network across all customers and trading partners quickly, easily, and at low cost. But how to go about establishing a single integrated electronic supply network for collaboration and trade?
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In order to support the requirements of voice deployments, next-generation networks must be capable of supporting a service equivalent to the existing public switched telephone network (PSTN), in terms of reliability. Furthermore, these networks must be capable of carrying voice services even under heavy load, while maintaining the integrity of the voice calls, under even the most extreme circumstances.
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The history of telecommunications management is rife with examples of good technology failing to meet business requirements. Historically, while business has needed management of service definitions, technology has focused on element management, leaving a gap between what is desired and what is possible. If operational expenses are to be lowered, this gap must be closed.
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With network operators facing eventual equipment obsolescence in their existing narrowband public switched telephone networks (PSTNs), the Multiservice Switching Forum (MSF) expects that end-to-end voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) solutions will necessarily replace PSTNs in the medium term. What are the primary issues that must be addressed to define a large-scale VoIP network capable of supporting full PSTN equivalence?
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As Internet and IP technologies are increasing service expectations, the number of resources available to create, deploy, and manage new services have reduced. The result is that expectations for new services are outpacing the ability to deliver them. We explore the limitations of traditional voice service architecture, and propose a new architectural solution to address these shortcomings.
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True multi-service, multi-vendor global networks are the future of the telecommunications industry. However, mazes of international standards and protocols can create barriers rather than solutions. For service providers and system suppliers alike, implementing standards for interoperability is far from simple. The MultiService Switching Forum (MSF) fills the void by developing implementation agreements that take standards from theory into practice.
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Widespread acceptance of the principles in the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) is nearing a level that would indicate the communications industry is close to reaching a de facto convergence architecture. We look at similarities and differences between the MultiService Forum R2 (physical) architecture and the 3GPP R6 Core IMS functional architecture.
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Bandwidth managers can provide the basis of a large-scale solution for a quality of service (QoS) that can support public switched telephone network (PSTN)-grade services. A key aspect of the solution is the ability to be integrated with multi-protocol label switching (MPLS) traffic engineering capabilities, to provide a highly scalable, resilient, and rigorous solution for end-to-end quality of service.
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End-to-end performance monitoring on signaling and bearer links, and on inter-networking between service and transport provider domains, are the most complicated and necessary areas of a new management networks paradigm. The testability of next-generation networks (NGNs) and their components should thus be addressed in the context of the performance and fault management functional areas of the telecommunication management network (TMN).
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Given the types of overload scenarios encountered within traditional networks, similar traffic principles requiring overload management will be required within (NGNs). What, then, are the characteristics of overload protection within real-time communications servers? And what types of overload management methods are available for optimizing server performance?
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Network-level behaviors can impact the determinism of call admission control decisions for a particular bandwidth management deployment. However, different network routing and forwarding models can have different impacts when used in conjunction with the bandwidth manager. We examine these models, considering their ability to provide the deterministic admission control capabilities available within the public switched telephone network (PSTN).
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Leveraging corporate knowledge and intellectual property (IP) across the organization is a complex challenge. But an IP management system can help cut through the complexity, capture inputs from all relevant sources, and offer control over the entire process. The solution should be comprehensive, while conferring the right mix of process control and flexibility. (Part Two of a two-part series.)
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A company’s IT assets account for the largest portion of its overall IT budget; properly managing and accounting for these assets is therefore crucial. By implementing an effective IT asset management program, companies can view every asset in their enterprise, allowing them to control and manage IT assets, eliminate waste and redundancy, and comply with ever-tightening government compliance regulations.
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Does your company have a simple way to publish and maintain internal documentation? If people are using workarounds instead of reading documents on the corporate intranet, it’s a warning sign that there’s no appropriate publishing system in place. But there are alternatives and practical tips that can help you choose a cost-effective solution, based on the familiar Lotus Domino platform.
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Implementing enterprise software solutions raises numerous obstacles, which can all be attributed to a single cause: users are unable to properly use the software. This is because users grapple with barrages of training methodologies and approaches for each new application. The solution may be a "universal adapter," a synchronized learning content development platform for a wide range of enterprise applications.
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The risks of enterprise resource planning (ERP) upgrades are clear. However, progress has been made, and this is especially true for SAP customers migrating to ECC 5.0. But what are the risks associated with SAP upgrades? And what are specific risk-mitigation approaches? SAP’s ASAP upgrade methodology can help answer these questions to maximize the value of an upgrade investment.
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Lean execution strategies within enterprises and across supply chains can dramatically reduce cycle times, improve quality, reduce waste, and improve bottom lines. In other words, lean is more than an advantage: it is a competitive necessity. Oracle’s Flow Manufacturing module capabilities in lean execution can enable the transition from a discrete, push-based manufacturing environment to a flow, pull-based one.
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In today’s manufacturing environment, suppliers and manufacturers alike need to be highly selective when choosing an enterprise resource planning vendor to support their product-specific Lean value-streams. Technology is a key element in the success of Lean manufacturing, and should be selected with an eye to the entire value-stream. Infor examines all elements of a Lean value-stream in this must-read white paper.
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Product lifecycle management (PLM) implementation strategies are in many cases unique from company to company. However, it is not uncommon for companies to encounter some of the same obstacles or pitfalls along the way. Understanding where these nasty little pitfalls lie will hopefully help you steer clear of them, and improve your chances for PLM success.
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In the converging network and security infrastructure, relating what is reported from security products to what is observed on the network is critical. Q1 Labs’ network security management product, QRadar, combines network behavioral analysis with vulnerability assessment and security event correlation into one platform. Ultimately, this convergence reduces IT acquisition and operations costs, and enhances responses to network security incidents.
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A major challenge for IT managers is that much of the data they need in Windows environments is stored in iSeries and Mainframe host systems. Traditionally, unlocking this data and making it available in Windows environments for further processing has involved major reprogram¬ming, and significant resource investments. There are, however, simple solutions that address the jump from host to Windows.
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When selecting or implementing a customer relationship management (CRM) solution, a mistake or error in judgment can be extremely costly. That’s why you should be aware of the ten basic steps to a successful CRM implementation. Even if you’ve already identified the reasons why your organization needs a CRM system, where do you go from there?
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Customer relationship management (CRM) solutions can range from simple contact managers (for a few hundred dollars) to multimillion-dollar enterprise applications that take years to implement. This is why over-buying a CRM system can be one of the most costly mistakes a company can make. But where should you start your research? And what steps should you take after that?
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Functionality comparisons for different enterprise resource planning (ERP) modules from different vendors often leads to unbalanced disparities among their approaches, which in turn makes it hard to properly evaluate the solution. On the other hand, a process-oriented ERP system is much easier to evaluate, and its degree of match with company needs is visible from the beginning.
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When Newport Corporation needed an integrated business system, it enlisted CSCG to help evaluate existing enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions. CSCG leveraged innovative software assessment tools to help make a selection decision at a savings of $50,000 in project costs, mitigating risk by delivering key reporting capabilities based on impartial data. This case study shows how it was done.
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In the future, companies will partner for competitive advantage, building supply chains excelling in every aspect of their operation. But companies excelling in their own fields may find themselves excluded from these supply chains if their technical foundations are incompatible with popular standards. Technological adaptability is paramount, and Lawson’s M3 Enterprise Management System was developed with this imperative in mind.
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Imperfect product data can erode your gross margin, frustrate both your customers and your employees, and slow new sales opportunities. The proven safeguards are automated data cleansing, systematic management of data processes, and margin optimization. Real dollars can be reclaimed in the supply chain by making certain that every byte of product information is accurate and synchronized, internally and externally.
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Too often, project-driven organizations are faced with a difficult choice: they can choose best-of-breed business applications and integrate them at great cost, or choose a fully integrated solution that lacks functional depth in key areas. Success management of your business and its projects requires integrated tools that also provide deep functionality.
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Retail software vendors face the challenge of how to provide an “out-of-the-box” solution that satisfies the unique requirements of a wide spectrum of organizations. So the real question retail IT executives face when making package selection decisions is this: do I change my business processes to fit the software solution, or change the software solution to fit my business processes?
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Organizations spend millions of dollars in developing custom solutions to plug the gap between the demands of the business user and the available features of their enterprise systems. For this reason, it’s worth examining how the Microsoft SharePoint Server environment can help organizations efficiently deliver focused business solutions on a common business platform with a familiar interface and development methodology.
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In order to meet new performance targets mandated at the federal and state levels, the Department of Human Services in Chemung County, New York (US), deployed Salient Performance Management, a performance management solution from Salient Corporation. This solution helped streamline operations, allowing caseworkers, units, and entire agencies to meet and exceed the targets.
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Sales and operations planning (S&OP) provides the visibility and agility to improve product management and promotional planning, minimize unnecessary buildups of inventory, and predict revenue more effectively. S&OP works because it develops a well-coordinated operating plan in support of your customer demand, your business plan, and your strategy. So what is S&OP exactly, and how does it work?
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Technology and process upgrades at forward-thinking companies confirm supply chain excellence as a more widely accepted element of overall business strategy. To remain successful, companies need organization-wide buy-in to supply chain excellence, with key trends in mind: demand planning as an imperative; globalization; increased competition and price pressures; outsourcing; shortened and more complex product life cycles; and collaboration between stakeholders.
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Implementing technology without the proper people and processes in place only means bad service is delivered faster. Indeed, the employee brain trust is critical to succeeding in today’s knowledge economy and customer-centric environment. Yet according to numerous industry analysts, a staggering 55 to 70 percent of customer relationship management (CRM) and contact center projects fail to meet their objectives. Why?
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There’s a buzz in the automotive industry around the concept of “strategic workforce management”—getting the right people, for the right job, at the right time, to improve overall business results. Strategic workforce management goes beyond the traditional role of human resources: it’s a strategic initiative and competitive weapon to help today’s automotive companies drive corporate goals and objectives.
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Every core business process and strategic initiative requires a human capital management (HMC) business strategy for execution; improvements made in HCM systems and processes can notably impact an organization’s bottom line. Mentoring programs and other models for integrating work and learning are exciting avenues for stimulating professional growth, career development, staff morale, and quality of care within the workplace.
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The US Sarbanes-Oxley Act has significantly impacted budgets, personnel allocation, business processes, and documentation. But leveraging a technology solution can smooth the overall compliance process. By investing in a content-centric business process management solution, organizations can automate and improve their compliance. This leads to an effort that is more effective and more efficient, and that ultimately saves money.
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The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) is the world’s largest financial services post-trade infrastructure organization, having cleared and settled more than $1.4 quadrillion (USD) worth of securities in 2005. In the highly competitive financial services industry, the secure processing of transactions is vital to DTCC's success, which is why DTCC integrated security testing into the application development processes.
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Corporations striving to comply with data security laws and regulatory initiatives must implement anti-spyware measures. Businesses who fail to take reasonable physical, administrative, and technical measures to prevent the unauthorized acquisition, alteration, or destruction of valuable information, risk costly and disruptive legal proceedings. And courts and responsible agencies will freely second-guess such decisions in the event of a data breach.
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It is sometimes difficult to quantify the scope of spyware problems within corporate environments. The least noticeable effect of spyware is to slow network and desktop processing by tiny increments. But even the slightest slowdown, multiplied across the enterprise, adds up to a serious bottom line impact in decreased automated processing and worker productivity.
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The threat of spyware has risen to epidemic levels for many information technology professionals trying to protect their users and network. In response, many security vendors are creating anti-spyware software to seek out spyware and eradicate it from the enterprise network. Webroot's Spy Sweeper Enterprise is just such a product.
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At first glance, spyware and computer viruses appear to have much in common. But in fact, spyware is a unique challenge. Unlike viruses, the motivation behind spyware is financial, which has driven rapid technical innovation and broad distribution. The first line of defense is education; understanding the unique threat spyware poses is the first step in a plan for protection.
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With the advent of the US Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), security is no longer optional for health care organizations. As spyware risks grow, they must ensure that data is protected from unauthorized disclosure, and that it is available when needed. Thus, implementing anti-spyware measures is both a good business practice and a move towards ensuring regulatory compliance.
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In less than six months, RxAmerica was able to respond to unprecedented call volume—primarily from seniors seeking information on the US Medicare prescription drug program—by increasing their service representative population by more than 500 percent, and by opening 6 new call centers. The cornerstone of their solution: a hosted call routing platform.
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Consider the case of two hypothetical companies—Company A and Company Z—each using an identical enterprise software package delivering identical core functionality. Company A has the same number of users, but the total cost of ownership (TCO) experienced by Company Z is about twice the TCO enjoyed by Company A. Why? We explain.
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Anyone even peripherally exposed to business media that touch on enterprise application technology has seen the term service-oriented architecture (SOA) bandied about in advertisements and articles. Given the central role of SOA in information technology, it is important to get beyond a buzzword level understanding. There are three key concepts surrounding SOA: granularity, Web services, and change management.
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Any enterprise suite will pay for itself faster if you work diligently to reduce the total cost of ownership (TCO). Those who interact with companies on implementing and maintaining their systems know that some project owners are very good at keeping the cost of their enterprise applications as low as possible. We’ll look at their TCO secrets.
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The evolution of global discrete manufacturing is ongoing. How executives at manufacturing companies answer questions and anticipate what will be the right answer six months, a year, or two years from now will determine the success of their company. Infor examines current industry trends and identifies what it believes to be the seven trends producing the greatest stress and change in discrete manufacturing today.
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If you’re evaluating customer relationship management or sales force automation software, this Forrester report is a must-read. Featuring ratings on eight leading vendors based on over 150 criteria, the report is valued at over $795 (USD). Get your free copy from Maximizer Software, top-ranked in Forrester’s “current offerings” in areas such as product functionality breadth, setup, usability, integration, and cost.
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Enterprises are facing escalating challenges to personalize interaction with their customers. Unlike approaches that centralize retail technology integration, which can stifle innovation at the customer level, retail solutions should be driven from the edge of the retail experience to better serve customers.
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By any measure, retailers are overwhelming small businesses. More than 95 percent of all retailers have only one store. Almost 90 percent have sales less than $2.5 million (USD), and more than 98 percent have fewer than 100 employees. To compete, small businesses need to be innovative, and understand both personalization and value, and how to execute best practices to build success.
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Most retailers can no longer compete on price alone; however, integrated retail solutions built on Microsoft SQL, and OPOS and ART Data Model standards offer a competitive advantage. They support holistic systems that integrate point of sale, enterprise, and even warehouse management functions, to deliver better service to customers.
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Retail departments enticed by software which promises to make them better and more accurate often fail to consider that they will need constant input and output of data in order for the software to work effectively. To improve the customer experience, a retail organization needs to fashion itself into an integrated enterprise that relies on a single database. But how?
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Banks can benefit enormously from understanding the various stages of the Basel II compliance program, as identified by i-flex. Banks today are discovering problems as they stumble along the path to compliance. However, if they can benchmark themselves on which stage they fall in along the continuum, and buckle themselves for the challenges that lie ahead, they will have greater success towards Basel II compliance, and enjoy the benefits of maintaining reduced capital.
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The current focus in operational risk management is on enterprise-wide data capture across loss events, key risk indicators and self-assessments, with follow-up actions based on triggers. A system should satisfy regulatory requirements, such as Basel II and the US Sarbanes Oxley Act, and be built in a manner that minimizes the impact of changing business management functionality.
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Banks endeavoring to comply with Basel II, which requires banks to commensurate their capital with underlying risk, can use the framework for strategic decisions, such as appropriate capital allocation, for various lines of business, risk-based pricing, and employee compensation. Basel II gives banks an opportunity to have a single system that can be used for compliance as well as risk management.
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Southern Pump & Tank Company (SPACTO), is a value-added distributor specializing in liquid handling equipment for the petroleum and industrial marketplaces. By using SAP Service Management to track equipment at its customers sites, receive incoming service calls, dispatch work, and track labor and materials, SPACTO was able to lower inventory by 28 percent, and reduce slow and non-moving items by 70 percent.
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Seeking a solution to compress lead times and better customer service, Schumacher Elevator Company, a manufacturer and installer of passenger and freight elevators, implemented a SAP enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution. In doing so, it enabled online ordering and customer service, and boosted its competitive advantage in just nine months.
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Fusion UV is the world s leading producer of ultraviolet curing equipment. Its outmoded legacy system couldn t handle the company s complex manufacturing system, and was threatening Fusion s ability to meet its promised delivery dates. By implementing FastTrack, a mySAP All-in-One partner solution, it improved accuracy in pricing, shipping, and purchase order processing.
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Endress+Hauser (e+h), an international group of specialists for measurement devices and automated solutions for industrial process engineering, implemented both mySAP CRM mobile sales and e-selling capabilities to reinforce its market- and customer-focused orientation. As a result, it saw a stronger field sales force and increased sales through the Internet.
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Universal Instruments Corporation, a leading capital equipment manufacturer, needed a flexible business solution to meet the challenges of globalization, and had to replace its legacy system. It used SAP for Industrial Machinery and Component, which is an integrated scalable solution and was able to enable global processes consistently throughout its geographical locations.
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This Business Engine white paper provides a technical account on the process behind scoring, selecting, and scheduling the technology portfolio. The document offers additional insight into weighting criteria that should be considered as part of the portfolio management and optimization process. The document further provides insight into considerations for alignment, and how to know if the portfolio is in fact properly aligned with business objectives.
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Implementing standard enterprise resource planning (ERP) products and other enterprise applications is risky. Industry statistics show that more than 60 percent of implementations fail. A common reason for failure is that the purchased software does not support one or more critical business processes. However, a change-on-demand system ensures that incomplete or changing business requirements are met through adjustments in the application model.
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Increased risk from unprotected user files and remote data is causing companies to re-evaluate their current remote backup processes. Managing remote data poses unique challenges, especially given the variability of networks, computing platforms, lack of trained IT staff at remote locations, and other issues. What are the issues, requirements, approaches, and best practices for effective remote data management?
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Human and intellectual capital management systems do not work in isolation. They need to be integrated with larger systems. Meta4 uses Internet and portal technology to integrate with Web and Internet standards. Learn how Meta4’s technology platform meets the execution, deployment, and integration requirements of different applications, and about Meta4’s development, maintenance, and upgrading cycles.
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Service oriented architecture (SOA) is a term that is still not well understood by many enterprise executives and managers; however, it requires direct interaction between these two areas. The relationship between enterprise resource management (ERP) and SOA is a meeting point for these areas. Business owners, executives, and managers can lead their enterprises to greater profitability and efficiency by understanding SOA.
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The globalization of discrete manufacturing is forever changing the notion of what a "small manufacturer" is. Even companies that are considered relatively small in revenue, employment, or client base, must now operate like the largest corporations when structuring and conducting their businesses. Infor examines how today's mid-market manufacturers are transforming themselves—focusing on business processes and employing ERP systems for their own operations.
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To comply with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX), businesses need to be forthcoming to shareholders. Earned value management system (EVMS) is a set of best business processes and tools for enterprise project planning and control. Early warning signals and reliable information from an EVMS helps management ensure that material changes in the financial condition or operations of projects are communicated as required by SOX.
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The lifeblood by which executives in professional services organizations (PSO) manage their businesses has traditionally centered on the concept of realization, measured through metrics. Predictive Service Execution enables firms to deliver consistent and timely services while maximizing cash flow, engagement profitability, and customer satisfaction.
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Project portfolio management (PPM) has become a critical component in the IT business lexicon. It provides structure and consistency to the process associated with the planning, prioritization, management, and control of project portfolios. By using PPM, IT departments can align their IT and business strategies and improve performance in project-based work, and enhanced corporate governance.
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The goal of any support function is to become a "partner" to customer-facing business units of the enterprise. A strategic project management office is an indispensable part of the planning team. It is crucial to mature your PMO, so it can support each area of the company including governance and portfolio management, and benefits and cost management.
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Technology changes have allowed an alternative to the client-server model to emerge, specifically the application service provider (ASP), in which the vendor hosts the software on its server and charges a monthly or annual fee per user. The growing acceptance of ASPs has accelerated the growth of professional services automation. This paper compares the client-server and ASP models and outline ths benefits that companies are realizing from PSAs.
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Project-driven organizations face numerous challenges, including increasing competition, more demanding clients, and changing regulatory requirements. Many organizations also face internal challenges that range from dispersed employees and partners to disconnected business processes and disparate information systems. This paper explores the best practices that project-driven businesses should consider.
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It is essential for users to be able to create and deliver secure, professional-looking e-mail communications which present a consistent corporate image. PDF software meets these needs. However, when considering PDF, users must determine if the solution enhances communications for all network users, and whether the solution integrates PDFs with other software packages, including e-mail, accounts, and customer relationship management systems.
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Many companies strive to effectively measure and analyze their service operations. But while management struggles to measure too many (or too few) metrics, they often overlook the basic measurement question: what to track, and how? By using the concept metric perspectives to define what data provides the most insight, you can move closer to a comprehensive metrics strategy.
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Information workers routinely generate huge amounts of useful information in their documents. However, because this information is unstructured, it cannot be used by other applications. Smart documents tie an XML-based document definition together with a set of custom actions. Smart training centers can thus leverage XML-based documentation to expand information and minimize worker training costs.
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The shift from traditional application design to service-oriented (SOA) principles utilizing XML and Web services promises increased IT agility and reduced technology costs. However, without effective production-caliber infrastructure, the benefits of SOA and Web services will go unrealized. A modular solution that ensures extreme, fine-grained control over XML message handling can deliver the effective performance and policy compliance for every message.
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One of the biggest challenges a project manager faces is the difficulty of tracking project progress once a project has been started. It can be difficult to keep track of each task and assignment as they are started, completed, or delayed. Fortunately, there are now new tools and methodologies, made available through PSNext 1.6, that help manage projects.
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North American Electric Motors needed an accounting software package that better met its growing needs. By implementing QuickBooks, the company was able to gain transparency into its warehouses and monitor inventory. Security controls enabled employees to process orders without access to sensitive information, and the company saved up to twelve hours a week when processing daily activities.
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Hiring and retaining top talent is the driving concern of human capital management (HCM) professionals today. This Aberdeen Group report, compliments of Lawson, reviews and analyzes data on human resources (HR) business pressures, technology directions, use of outsourcing and distinguishes the difference in workforce management strategies and their success levels.
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The high price and complexity of traditional, installed, on-premise enterprise software has left small and medium businesses (SMB) unable to obtain true integrated customer relationship management (CRM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) software. On-demand, software as a service is changing all that. The lower costs and the short implementation period for an on-demand customer relationship management solutions make it lucrative for smaller businesses.
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Choosing an on-demand customer relationship management (CRM) vendor can be a daunting task, especially for the price conscious consumer who lacks the budget for intensive research. A true CRM vendor should have pre-integrated sales, marketing, and customer support. Look for easy access to software free trials, and beware of hidden fees. Ultimately, researching the alternatives can save your company up to 50 percent of a solution’s total cost of ownership.
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Today, more has to be done with less, and IT infrastructures require flexibility to deliver differential value. Upgrades, customizations, and back-end integration fail to suffice; companies need the ability to build applications on an as-needed basis. Composite applications fulfill this objective by helping organizations leverage existing enterprise applications, drive down the cost of change, and increase the pace of innovation.
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Read how a mid-sized hospital immediately found savings of $43,500 a year by implementing a secure employee scheduling and human resource information system payroll solution. It was a cautious beginning, with an initial roll-out of just four of the many available with emPath®'s Employee Self-Service (ESS) features, but there is the promise of more dramatic savings to come.
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Because of new compliance and regulation, HealthSouth Corporation, one of the US largest providers of health care services, needed a comprehensive view of its security risks, automated reporting on compliance to ensure published security standards, and to prioritize the remediation of critical risks. Through Preventsys Security Risk Management System, HealthSouth was able to audit it facilities remotely, and reduce overhead costs.
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"Lean thinking" can cut down waste, enhance quality, and reduce lead time. This philosophy is part of an overall fitness campaign for the manufacturing sector. Businesses that are fitter are more flexible, responsive, and efficient. Navigating through the decisions required for Lean projects requires the decision support that only a well implemented enterprise resource planning system can provide.
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Alltech, a multinational biotechnology company providing natural solutions to the feed and food industries, needed to turn the data in its system into useful business information. Exact Business Analytics allowed Alltech to improve the management and distribution of business information. It eliminated approximately 1,200 different reports and turned Alltech’s 60 distinct databases into a valuable business asset.
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Due to the changing regulatory environment and the complexity of business today, organizations are facing increased accountability. Security risks, however, can often be difficult to measure and even more difficult to understand by people outside of the department. The key to demonstrating improvement is to translate security information in to business terms. Organizations must align, manage, and measure security around business operations.
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Using aggregated dashboard views and establishing metrics can help IT audit and governance professionals and IT security professionals implement policies that keep secure networks operational. Such tools can distill information to its essence, offer decision support, allow problems to be identified and isolated faster, and permit greater accountability. Ultimately, they allow more efficient and cost effective processes.
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Human resource management systems (HRMS) and payroll vendors are entering the software as a service (SaaS) market en masse. Though much as been written about the benefits of SaaS, only now are the short and long term ramifications of SaaS being discussed. As long as the purchaser is fully informed, then a decision can be made that best meets the needs of the enterprise.
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Enterprise software systems are critical elements of running a business. Unfortunately, they fall short when it comes to data access, analysis, and reporting. Business intelligence fills the gap. When looking at BI, start with a simple proposition: that everyone can do their job better if decisions are based on actual information rather than best guesses.
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To successfully obtain the budget and organizational support for an electronic documentation management systems (EDMS) and electronic records management system (ERMS) project you need to know the pain points of all the departments in your organization. By asking the right questions of each department you’ll be able to develop your business case and create a persuasive analysis on the cost benefit for EDMS/ERMS.
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Almost everything you know about human resources (HR) outsourcing is about to change. The future is about single-source integration, and there are key new technologies that herald this era: unified service for HR, time, payroll, and expense tracking; management dashboards; streamlined employee interfaces; synchronous data with a single database; and empowered reporting.
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There is a presumption that enterprise performance management and business intelligence initiatives must be supported by data warehouses. Conceptually, the data warehouse provides a central point where a copy of data from multiple locations is stored and optimized for reporting. In practice, however, it is possible to access powerful business intelligence, analytics, and reporting, without relying on a data warehouse.
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Alltech, a multinational biotechnology company providing
natural solutions to the feed and food industries, found itself with a disjointed, IT infrastructure with overlapping accounting systems. Using a powerful dashboard, users can view information from sixty-three databases to manage the business more proactively.
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As much as 80 percent of day-to-day business activity is taken up by digitally-based messaging. Integrating telecommunications with your messaging environment is crucial. Second generation IPT leverages data networks, and increases productivity through voice application integration. It integrates directly with customer relationship management or enterprise resource planning systems, Lotus Notes, and Outlook, Word, and Excel, to digitally capture information for compliance and traceability.
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Successful demand-driven fulfillment manufacturing, include optimal channel and customer relationships, informed on-line buying and selling, order fulfillment, and integrated operational infrastructures. Manufacturers need to overcome challenges to demand-driven fulfillment by implementing a system that supports flexibility, openness, visibility, planning, e-commerce, collaboration, and integration where the ultimate objective is to minimize waste and optimize resources.
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Almost $75 billion (USD) is spend on trade and promotion funds every year. Unfortunately most enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems are not equiped to handle the complexities of promotion causing false reports and inaccurate invoices. Small and medium businesses (SMB) have had limited choices, until now.
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Plastic suppliers require software systems that provide resources for multisite operations, including engineering, warehousing, and purchasing. However, most vendors solutions do not meet the specific needs of the plastics industry. IMPACT Encore solution gives plastics suppliers an encompassing solutoin that minimizes waste and streamlines process.
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The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) requires pharmaceuticals and medical device companies to comply with numerous standards. Medical device manufacturers have long embraced enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM), but primarily use them to achieve operational efficiencies. However these systems can play a significant role in their abilities to comply with strictly FDA regulations.
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Deploying voice self-service (VSS) is undeniably attractive to enterprises because it improves the speed, consistency, and convenience of information sent to customers, and decreases costs. Knowledge bases play a key role in helping enterprises achieve greater return on investment because they link web- and speech-based self-services together. In particular the emergence of VoiceXML has truly shifted speech and IVR platform hosting options.
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Changing business scenarios, collapsing traditional barriers, and globalization are creating new challenges. Furthermore, mergers, acquisitions, and changes mandated by regulatory compliance are driving business change. The current competitive environment demands collaboration in real time, and organizations need a service-oriented architecture (SOA) that adjusts business processes and applications according to market requirements. Standards and best practices for adoption are crucial for a functional SOA.
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When vendors sunset test automation scripting tools without providing a forward compatible path for replacement, companies are forced to pay for change with no benefit. Most enterprise business processes span both old and new applications, and cannot be effectively tested without changing tools. Companies need to create a future-proof strategy for assuring that these costs never have to be repeated.
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Internet-based supply chain management solution provides Mitsui with technology that connects its entire global supply chain - from a single desk-top location. This solution, SCM Live™, links Mitsui’s trading partners and customers - while saving hundreds of thousands of dollars.
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Business process management (BPM) is not another form of automation, or another rocket science, or a revolutionary new philosophy. It helps discover what we do, and then manages the lifecycle of improvement and optimization in a way that translates into operations. Based on a solid mathematical foundation, the BPM breakthrough is for business people.
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Leading retailers and manufacturers are dramatically improving sales and profits by embracing a new supply chain model built upon sharing point-of-sale demand data and closely collaborating on forecasts. Research conclusively demonstrates demand driven collaborative supply chain models drive more accurate forecasts, fewer out-of-stocks, higher sales, and higher operating margins. By following the best practices outlined in this white paper, you can also realize the financial benefits of this model.
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A dashboard is a vital tool for monitoring the daily health of your organization. From a single interface, decision makers have access to key performance indicators (KPI)—actionable information that can be used to effectively guide and track business performance. Successful implementation of a dashboard is complex and requires a step-by-step process using a methodology that considers all aspects of the project life cycle.
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Enterprises must collaborate or they will surely stagnate. Guarded proprietary information has given way to collaborative approaches where information is shared both inside and outside the enterprise’s walls. To survive, an enterprise must be flexible enough to collaborate externally with suppliers and partners while fostering the same environment with its employers.
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Adopting on-line payment systems can help businesses improve cash flow and save time and money. Inovium’s integrated, web-based account receivable management application for electronic invoice payment presentment is one such system.
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Many companies want to migrate to voice over Internet protocol (VoIP), but will not take any risk because their phone system is too critical to business. Openface presents a methodology for smoothly migrating to VoIP. Smooth Migration to VoIP is targeting companies that have a Legacy PBX in place (that is not IP-ready) and are interested in migrating to VoIP through a smooth transition process.
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Any company efficiency improvements are going to involve business process management (BPM). BPM ensures process consistency, optimizes business processes, and ensures compliance. The result is not only cuts in cost and time, but it adds a price value and creates a price advantage which helps companies enhance their competitive edge.
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For food and beverage manufacturers, the failure to meet demand peaks can result in poor customer service, lost revenue, stockouts, brand erosion, and—in extreme cases—being delisted by a major customer. However, with stock build optimization, manufacturers can minimize the time and total value of the stock being held, and realize higher profits and working capital.
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The Expert Hardware Industry System provides critical information whenever you need it, in addition to full support in handling and controlling your business, easily and quickly. This will help you to substantially cut processing times, reduce errors and, as a consequence, make your processes more effective. All interrelated process are linked with the Expert Hardware System, which means that when a process is carried out, it automatically affects another.
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A partir de este año las grandes cadenas comerciales “obligarán” a sus proveedores a que se les entregue sus compras mediante documentos electrónicos, a este documento se le ha llamado Factura Electrónica, que no es más que el documento original de la factura entregado por un medio electrónico en un formato basado en el estándar de Internet XML. Intelisis ya esta preparado tanto para emitir como recibir las facturas electrónicas y únicamente habrá que solicitar la instalación del servidor de impresión de estos documentos
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Vission XXI, S.A. de C.V. fue creada en el año de 1991 con el objetivo de ser la empresa líder nacional en venta y renta de soluciones con equipo audiovisual y de servicio. Es representante en México de los principales fabricantes de equipo audiovisual. La dirección de Grupo Vission requiere monitorear las
variables críticas de operación y realinear todos sus procesos en base a mejores prácticas y sus prioridades de negocio, a la vez, necesita integrar todos sus procesos para mejorar sus niveles de servicio, tanto en la matriz como en sus siete sucursales. Para esto Intelisis le ayudó
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Organización Papelera Tauro (OPT) es una organización cuyoprincipal enfoque está basado en cinco líneas de negocio:papelería, consumibles de cómputo, equipo de cómputo, cafetería y limpieza.Sus líneas de negocio han ido creciendo en paralelo al crecimiento de la organización,pero todo esto no hubiera sido posible sin el apoyo tecnológico de Intelisis. A raíz de la implantación de Intelisis ERP, OPT ha visto beneficios tangibles, tanto en su operación como en el mantenimiento de la solución.
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Cada módulo cuenta con múltiples funcionalidades que facilitan la operación de los procesos lo que permite su adecuado control y administración. Entre los módulos se encuentran: Punto de Venta, Activos Fijos, Asistencias, Warehouse Management System, auto transporte, Vales, Tesorería, Servicios, Servicios internos, Recursos Humanos, Producción, Proyectos, Precios y Costos, Planeador de Ordenes, Nómina y otros.
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By integrating data from disparate systems and delivering data in a management dashboard on a personal digital assistant (PDA) or cell phone, Persistent enabled service engineers to collect and update data related to tire usage. This solution seamlessly integrated approximately 1,000 dealers in more than 15 European countries to central data servers and a CRM solution. The result? Improved customer end acquisition and satisfaction.
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Safeway, the UK's fourth-largest supermarket, spends over £100 million (GBP) a year on their information technology (IT )operations. Five years ago, Safeway transferred its offshoring operations to Malta-based Crimsonwing. Since then, Crimsonwing has undertaken some 200 projects for Safeway, including a sales data warehouse, an intranet portal, and an integrated transport solution designed in conjunction with IBM.
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Assortment optimization, pricing decisions, and promotional activity fall flat if a product is not available for purchase. Out-of-stocks, overstocks, and markdowns drive down already strained profit margins. Replenishment, however, maximizes sales while minimizing inventory expense. By understanding replenishment, and planning and allocation, enterprise can determine the best strategies for addressing forecasting and inventory concerns, and improve profit margins.
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Despite intense price competition for its volume products, the electrical products industry remains healthy and dynamic. World-class companies are succeeding by marketing innovative products, scaling up and outsourcing production, expanding into new geographic areas, implementing more efficient business systems, and focusing on ever-closer relationships with suppliers, partners, and customers. This white paper explores the issues of manufacturers, wholesalers, and distributors and the current state and future of the industry. Industry specific technological are also discussed.
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Companies implement a customer relationship management (CRM) system to balance increasing revenue, decreasing costs, while enhancing the customer experience. However, many implementations fail to do this. Companies, however, can meet these goals by implementing a customer-centric CRM. In this system, all business processes throughout the extended enterprise are optimized around customer life cycle care, which builds stronger relationships.
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Although cost reduction, decreasing response time, and increased revenues are all standard corporate drivers, they are predicated on the changes and improvements of business processes. For companies to reach the next level of productivity and efficiency, and to meet the new wave of stricter government regulations, they urgently need to streamline business processes.
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Global manufacturers want an integrated view of the shop floor. In response, manufacturing execution systems (MES) have emerged as a powerful tool for integrating plant-floor data with information provided by applications, such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM). MES can connect the world, and it has an exciting future when combined with promising technologies such as business process management (BPM) and service oriented architecture (SOA).
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The benefits from enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems have been well documented. However, its return on investment (ROI) is rarely satisfactory. The failure of an ERP package can be disastrous, but by understanding how to deliver a positive ROI, and by following a business process and business technology optimization strategy, companies can reduce the total cost of ERP system ownership.
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Formed by a merger, Saint-Gobain Semiconductor Equipment decided to replace its dual systems with a single application that could handle many users, but be supported by just five people. Sage ERP X3 was chosen for its enterprise-wide capabilities, ability to interface with SAP general ledger software, and ability to accommodate a large concurrent user population on a single client/server system.
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Dropped by its application service provider, Onsrud Cutter, a router bit manufacturer, decided to replace its enterprise resource planning system with a scalable, flexible, quickly installed solution. Further narrowing down its requirements to include customized reports, real time information, and e-business capabilities, the company selected Sage ERP X3. The installation took less than five months.
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In 2002, Ganong, a midsize confectionery, selected Sage ERP X3 to fulfill its requirements for a software application with both batch and discrete capabilities for their mixed-mode manufacturing processes. Since the implementation, Ganong has reduced billing errors, and improved the accuracy and timeliness of production.
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Early adopters of radio frequency identification (RFID) are beginning to look at enterprise scale solution design and integration are emerging as key focus areas. Infosys has designed an optimal RFID architecture strategy based on lessons learnt from early adopters and Infosys experience in providing real time control and data acquisition solutions in the telecom and process control industries.
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One of the most neglected areas of the manufacturing and retail supply chain is the inbound logistics segment. Following best practices and creating a collaborative allows companies to save money and streamline operations.
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Quality data in the supply chain is essential in when information is automated and shared with internal and external customers. Dirty data is a huge impediment to businesses. In this article, learn about the four critical success factors to clean data: 1- scope, 2- team, 3- process, and 4- technology.
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The global automotive and wholesale distribution industry moves more than 50 million motor vehicles from factory floor to dealer to customer every year. Companies that operate in this market sector perform a difficult balancing act between the vehicle makers on the one side and the dealers and the consumers on the other. However by leveraging IT strategies, their goals are attainable.
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Lean supply chain management and lean sourcing strategies are relatively new to the apparel industry, generating more talk than broad implementation to date. In this the final paper of our “Lean Is Fashionable” thought leadership series, we define a lean supply chain action plan with five concrete steps for building a collaborative infrastructure between your company and other members of your supply network. These represent an eleven year culmination of our and our customers’ real world experiences in implementing lean supply chain strategies that are designed as a road map to achieving a more collaborative and profitable future.
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Persistent delivered web-based sales support and customer service solutions to a broadband data and VOIP provider. We helped our client rapidly build and deploy web front end systems for order entry, self-care, and customer care and also integrated these systems with their fulfillment, inventory, and billing systems using service oriented architecture (SOA). This resulted in improved end customer acquisition and satisfaction and improved time to market and significantly reduced total development costs.
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Aberdeen research shows that developing innovative products is a top priority for manufacturers today. Such manufacturers must understand how enterprise resource planning (ERP) and product lifecycle management (PLM) systems, like Arena Solutions, support innovation.
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Replenishment is an area within operations where retailers can find a competitive edge. Excelling at replenishment enables implementation of promotional, pricing, and assortment strategies. Also, profit can be gained by minimizing inventory levels and reducing lost sales. This increases time for analysis and special projects, as it’s no longer necessary to fight the fires of overstock and out of stocks.
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When raw materials providers, manufacturers, and retailers work together to calculate future order needs, they can all act on the best information available. Successful order forecast collaboration requires all members to share risks if forecasts vary, and to discuss issues as they arise. Accurate order forecasts drive sales increases, inventory decreases, and better decisions. With so many benefits across the entire demand chain, shouldn’t you look into order forecast collaboration with your partners?
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How can retailers maximize their return when investing in cutting-edge replenishment solutions? After all, if forecasting and purchasing decisions are driven by advanced math and logic, then surely there is little room for users to influence success? Actually, establishing a service-level goal strategy can blaze the path to profit for retailers looking to separate themselves from the competition.
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Contractors and subcontractors are both exposed to risk within a project. Thus, it is equally important to both parties that formalized risk management be carried out, not to eliminate project uncertainty, but to understand the potential impact of risk events and to plan risk responses.
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This white paper examines how Pertmaster can reduce exposure to project cost risk throughout the project lifecycle by using a combination of a high level cost estimate analysis and a detailed schedule-based cost risk analysis. Contingency and management reserve is also discussed.
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DNA Group, Inc. is the North American distributor for Defond Manufacturing Limited, Inc, a major supplier of switches and electronics to the appliance, marine,
transportation, power tools, white goods, lawn & garden, and consumer electronics industries. DNA Group serves the global marketplace by emphasizing responsiveness and the
ability to focus on the needs of each individual customer and project.
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Upgrading to CRM solution increases value of relationships for financial services firm. ScotiaMcLeod (www.scotiabank.com) is the investment arm of Scotiabank, one of Canada's largest financial organizations with over $280 billion in assets. ScotiaMcLeod's financial advisors specialize in helping individuals and small business customers plan financial solutions for trusts, estate planning, borrowing and banking services. ScotiaMcLeod has more than 800 financial advisors working in 84 branches across the country. According to Chris Carter, Associate Director and Branch Manager for ScotiaMcLeod's North Vancouver office, the financial services sector is a people-driven business where customer service is critical to success.
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Business intelligence (BI) capabilities transform vast amounts of data into relevant information that organizations rely on to make decisions and manage performance. Most companies have some form of BI, and most are familiar with its benefits. However, in order to extract maximum advantage from BI initiatives, it is necessary to be aware of—and avoid—their seven “fatal flaws.”
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If you don’t have a data warehouse, you’re probably considering drafting a request for proposal (RFP) to screen vendors and ensure that your receive satisfactory information about the features of various hardware and software and their price. Writing an effective RFP that is well structured and includes different metrics will ensure that you receive the information you need and will make you look good.
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A good business intelligence system should allow IT and business users to break through irrelevant data to find what matters. Users should be able to access all data and understand what happened and why. Learn how purpose-built Web services architecture, and Web-based development and deployment is used by Cognos 8 BI.
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One of the unforeseen ramifications of the competition among software suppliers for market leadership in the high volume automotive and electronics industries has been a lack of attention to the industrial and commercial machinery manufacturing sector.
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The notion of having disparate mediation systems in today’s service oriented telecommunications industry is no longer valid. The accurate and timely knowledge of customer information, such as usage patterns, preferences, spending habits and duration can provide competitive advantages to service providers. Learn about convergent mediation systems that can support multiple service types (voice, data, content) in this white paper.
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The competitive drivers of the twenty-first century are time and service (responsiveness and flexibility). Many small and medium enterprises (SME) have implemented enterprise resource planning (ERP) as one of the technology tools to improve their performance. This whitepaper on supply chain management (SCM) for SMEs highlight the crucial role and importance of supply chains to SMEs, and distinguishes the different roles of ERP and SCM.
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Spending money to save money makes sense in the context of large capital assets, including facilities, fleet, plant equipment, and even computers. A lack of preventative maintenance affects the shareholders of all companies. Aging assets and reactive maintenance can be financial drains. A complete preventative maintenance program consisting of better business practices and simple tools such as computerized maintenance management software (CMMS) or enterprise asset management (EAM), can help companies realize immediate savings and boost profits.
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As apparel and textile companies move to outsourcing production—relinquishing direct control in favor of a more cost-effective manufacturing model—a lean supply chain may appear to be the next logical step for further implementing cost and operational improvement. Not so, however. You can’t have a lean supply chain without lean manufacturing. Regardless of whether you or your partners engage in production, lean manufacturing is the lean engine that drives lean supply chain efficiencies. Accordingly, the business requirement for stability in a constantly changing demand environment motivates the fashion industry’s search for lean supply chain management principles and practices.
Intentia, in cooperation with industry experts, have written a series of thought leadership white papers on the concept of implementing lean supply chain in the fashion industry. The second of this series, From Lean Manufacturing to Lean Supply Chain explains how lean manufacturing relates to lean supply chain management and where it differs and sometimes conflicts.
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Does it really make sense to spend money to save money? The answer may surprise you when it comes to maintenance of large capital assets including Facilities, Fleet, Plant Equipment and yes, even computers. It makes even more sense when you consider that today more and more companies are adding a new line item in their financial statements called "Deferred Maintenance Revenue Write Down". A lack of preventive maintenance affects the shareholders of all companies due to aging assets and reactive maintenance practices.
A complete preventive maintenance program consisting of better business practices and a simple tool such as a Computerized Maintenance Management Software (CMMS) or Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) package can streamline the process and result in immediate savings in both time and money. So how do you justify the initial investment and where can the cost savings be seen across the enterprise?
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ECS Imaging, Inc., the world’s leading authorized value added reseller for LaserFiche, has been designing complex network and imaging systems since 1990. Specializing in LaserFiche’s industry-standard software, hardware, scanning services, on-site training and turnkey document imaging services selected by over 1,400 government agencies and 17,000 sites worldwide, ECS imaging helps organizations reduce costs and improve efficiency through cost-effective and innovative technological solutions.
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Business Bank of California, a subsidiary of Business Bancorp (NasdaqNM: BZBC), has served California businesses since 1984. With assets of more than $620 million, Business Bank of California is ranked fifth of 25 locally based banks in the Inland of Southern California and offers retail banking, commercial, construction, and SBA lending. Business Bank of California operates in 15 locations in California. The branches are strongly focused on providing high-quality, personalized services to small businesses, professionals and consumers.
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As innovation rates accelerate and product life cycles shorten, companies are increasingly looking for tools to make their supply chain more efficient. Technology, such as radio frequency identification (RFID) has enormously helped supply chain planner.
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Workflows can increase efficiency, standardize processes, reduce costs, and increase return on investment. The key is to understand your customer, your products and services and your business processes. Learn how easy-to-design workflows can help ensure that best practices are carried out consistently and efficiently. Streamline daily tasks and make learning new operations simpler. Workflows help you reduce churn, boost productivity and increase customer satisfaction.
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Maytag had set very aggressive inventory goals, and material manager, Richard Dix needed to find a solution to lower material related downtime, reduce airfreight bills, and reduce overall production costs.
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Just uttering the term "blade server" creates confusion and spawns many questions. That’s because the term is applied to a wide range of hardware and software products that can vary greatly in terms of value, functionality, and fit in the enterprise. This is akin to using the term "automobile" to describe everything from a three-cylinder compact car to an eight-passenger SUV. In this buying guide, we’ll sort out the confusion and provide you with a practical checklist for evaluating current market offerings. There is a place for blade servers in your enterprise, but not every enterprise needs every offering available.
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Abrica.net is a "software-as-service" collaboration solution that enables supply chain partners, of all sizes, to quickly, easily and inexpensively exchange business documents. To send a supply chain document, simply "print" it to the Abrica printer.
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There are compelling reasons to transform into an on-line corporation; more are surfacing daily. The common reason is the need to run the entire business under total, on-line, unified, synchronized operational and functional control. Learn how to monitor live action, and correlate and unify operations and finance to ensure the availability of instantaneous financial and operational performance insights.
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The biggest single issue in ERP is the failure of a successful implementation. It is mind-boggling to continually encounter companies who make major ERP gaffes in this day and age, especially since most of the trials and tribulations of MRPII implementation were suffered and
learned from in the early 1980's with alpha, beta and gamma releases.
The pertinent question is what are the main causes of ERP failure and what can be done to prevent this from happening to you? There are twelve major reasons for why companies get bogged down or fail in implementing ERP. This white paper addresses them.
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As international competition becomes more intense and as national barriers for trade gradually reduce, the era of global business is here to stay. Increasingly the difference between success and failure in the global marketplace will be determined not by the sophistication
of product technology or marketing communication, but by the way in which the global supply chain is controlled and managed.A global supply chain has to be agile and flexible enough to cope with differences in customer requirements
and yet should be able to reap the benefits of focused manufacturing in terms of economies of scale.
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Packaged enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems can be expensive and resource-intensive to implement, but they are critical to business. Disruptions due to application failures, performance problems, or unavailability come at a high price. ERP systems are highly change-oriented and must adapt; as a result, ERP teams are struggling to keep up. This white paper focuses on the issues surrounding the automation of the application life cycle for ERP systems. IDC conducted in-depth interviews with fifteen large PeopleSoft customers to better understand their challenges and needs.
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Effective planning is integral to the success of a bank. It helps define and ensure the achievement of the organization’s objectives. Understanding and implementing the planning cycle, which leverages forecasting, operational metrics, and multidimensional analyses can help management determine the feasibility of a strategy. An enterprise-wide, integrated planning and forecasting environment that reaches business units, products, customer segments, and geographies can align non-financial performance targets with high-level financial targets and help banks meet their goals.
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Companies invest in information technology (IT) because they believe it will maximize their performance. The more a company knows about its customers, markets, supply chains, and internal operations, the more effectively it can pursue growth and profitability while avoiding risk and regulatory exposure. Unifying disparate systems with business intelligence (BI) systems, however, is not enough. For companies to truly differentiate themselves, they need to transform BI into business performance management (BPM) systems to leverage information discovered by BI and use it externally.
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Fashion companies need to respond quickly and strategically to major changes occurring in today’s global supply chains.
Implementing a lean supply chain management strategy can enable cost savings and more efficient operations by realigning process according to a demand-driven model.
Lean supply chain management uses Web-based technologies to create and maintain dynamic supplier networks. Such networks are able to deliver the highest customer value at the lowest cost. It also lays the groundwork for the next level of hands-free, wireless radio frequency identification-enabled processes.
Intentia, in cooperation with industry experts, have written a series of thought leadership white papers on the concept of implementing lean supply chain in the fashion industry. The first of this series, “Lean Is Fashionable”, explores the impact of lean practices in the fashion and apparel industry during a period of momentous change.
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The term "business intelligence" (BI) has emerged over the last ten years as a catch-all for a wide range of financial, analytical, and reporting systems that companies use to steer their business toward higher profitability and sustainable competitive advantage. Fewer and fewer companies deny the need for BI in today’s ever more competitive world, and numerous, increasingly sophisticated technologies have emerged to support this trend. Yet, despite the technological advances, failed BI implementations litter the landscape. What steps can companies take to insure the successful integration of effective BI into the daily management of their operations?
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The transition to IP A wireless carrier s national or regional next generation core network will be an all-IP network in the sense that IP will be the network layer (L3) protocol. MPLS (Multiprotocol Label Switching) will be the transport protocol for all IP-based services, applications, and control and management traffic in the network. Learn more in this white paper.
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This document provides a general overview of multiprotocol label switching (MPLS), detailing the architecture and technology benefits of implementation. MPLS greatly enhances the performance of internet protocol (IP) network traffic by allowing operators to engineer their IP backbones based on their unique data and voice transport requirements for improved network performance and sustainable profitability for packetbased services.
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The Internet has an important role to play in marketing campaigns. Learn the three basic steps to build a successful web strategy that will leverage and optimize the power of the World Wide Web.
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Companies typically manage their proposal generation efforts using word processing documents, e-mail, and spreadsheets. However, more efficient and effective ways now exist that enable companies to collaborate with all interested parties. Online collaboration with a knowledge-based application streamlines processes, improves quality, and saves time, eliminating error-prone manual processes and redundancies.
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Availl, Inc, the leading solution provider of sales, supply chain management, and logistic services for the aviation industry. Learn how it used Click Commerce Service Parts Optimization solutions to extend its inventory planning capabilities, enable comprehensive demand forecasting, and provide Web-based visibility into global inventories.
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Delta is the world’s second largest airline in terms of passengers carried and the leading US carrier across the Atlantic, offering daily flights to 502 destinations in 88 countries. With $1 billion (USD) worth of parts inventory at one time, Delta needed a supply chain system to aid the company’s maintenance, repair, and operations (MRO) activities. Learn how Delta implemented a full MRO technology suite from Click Commerce, that focuses on supply chain management, configuration management, technical documentation, planning, and execution.
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Jabil Global Services, a subsidiary of Jabil Circuit provides repair and warranty solutions to companies in computers, communications, medical equipment. To meet the demand for next day and same day returns, it needed to replace its in-house operations management system with a scalable and robust system. Learn how it used Click Commerce’s reverse logistics and depot repair solutions to manage its advanced exchanges and warehouse fulfillment, and credit receiving processes.
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Microsoft’s US Partner group manages relationships between the company and its 12,000 Microsoft Certified Partners. It needed an integrated solution for partner relationship management to reduce redundancy and replace the personal spreadsheets and custom tools its account managers were using. Learn how Microsoft deployed PartnerCentral by Click Commerce and implemented a single tool to manage all aspects of Microsoft’s partner relationships.
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Unfortunately, many enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions are “hard wired” to naturally flow with someone else’s assumptions about how your enterprise works. If an ERP system doesn’t suit the needs of your business you will find yourself looking for a new ERP solution sooner. By following some practical suggestions, you can chart a winning course in selecting your next generation of integrated enterprise application and deployment platform solution.
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In today’s hypercompetitive markets, process manufacturers and distributors face extremely challenging opportunities that require revisiting what were once thought of as basics in their industry. Two major components that can make or break a typical process company are in the areas of materials and machine and equipment management. Learn about the drivers that are specific to process manufacturing and distribution and how to satisfy them with an appropriately fitting ERP.
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New technology in enterprise asset management (EAM) is changing the way multinational companies manage joint venture operations. With new growth opportunities in China, many corporations are looking at how to best take advantage of the low cost base and enterprising labor force. Learn how an American and Chinese joint venture at the Daning Coal Mine used Trans-lingual EAM to remove the language barriers to protect their $84 million (USD) investment.
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Tellabs is a $1.3 billion (US) corporation that designs, manufactures, markets, and services optical networking, broadband access and voice quality enhancement. Tellabs was faced with a high volume and high cost product returns process. Improper documentation, lengthy processing times, and insufficient returns documentation was affecting customer service and limiting profitability. It worked with Click Commerce to implement their product returns application. The solution provides an efficient and transparent process, which allowed the business to be realigned for significant savings and improved customer satisfaction. The savings include reducing in-transit inventory by $1.76 million (USD) per month and reducing spare parts stocking levels from $7.5million to $1.9 million (USD).
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Dillen Products, Inc. is a major supplier of plastic planters and trays to the grower segment of the horticultural market. Dillen needed a better way to manage its increasingly diverse inventory, meet the labeling and distribution demands of its major retailers, and integrate its warehouse management system (WMS) quickly and seamlessly into existing supply chain and financial systems. Dillen implemented Click Commerce’s WMS to offer customers a stable and reliable solution that is easy to install and support, while providing the flexibility and scalability necessary for future growth without the risk of major future investment.
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Arrow Electronics, Inc., a leading distributor of electronic components and computer products, supports more than 600 suppliers and 150,000 OEM and commercial customers with 200 sales offices and 18 distribution centers in 41 countries. Employees at Arrow were using spreadsheets and manual processes which made it difficult to support its large original equipment manufacturer (OEM) partners (HP, IBM, EMC, Sun) and 1,500 member reseller network. Arrow worked with Click Commerce to build and implement Information Support Services, a centralized, easy-to-use platform that creates a company-wide view for Arrow to manage multiple channels and business units. It also enables OEM and reseller partners to work together on customer solutions.
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Invacare is the leader in the manufacturing and distribution of innovative home and long-term care medical products. For Invacare, warehouse management was a complex program, involving thousands of pieces moving through distribution centers, controlled by manual business processes. A typical customer order could vary greatly, ranging from a single carton to 4,000 cartons. The company needed to implement a new system that could handle orders equally well, regardless of size. Invacare implemented Click Commerce’s Warehouse Management Solution to meet the unique requirements of its warehouse operations.
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Organizations are overwhelmed with how to begin implementing identity and access management (IAM)
solutions. They are scratching their heads and asking, "Where do I start?" Even after implementation, security and information protection must be continually improved while ensuring compliance with regulations. Auditors continue to ask: "Are the right controls in place?" "Are they effective?" Download this white paper to learn more about defining the steps necessary to understanding and deploying IAM, giving enterprises a roadmap to an effective IAM program.
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Rapid market fluctuations; changing customer and channel requirements; pressures from shareholders, executives, and partners; and continued competition are forcing high-tech companies to re-examine not only what products and services they sell, but also their processes and tools for developing, deploying, monitoring, and managing products and services. To deal with these challenges, product managers need to leverage product management processes and tools. This white paper introduces the concept of enterprise product management and the process of requirements gathering automation; the product management continuum; and the creation of a collaborative environment.
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This paper discusses best practices observed from the most successful inbound logistics programs of manufacturing organizations in the automotive industry and among consumer packaged goods manufacturers. It also discusses the role of third-party logistics (3PL) service providers in terms of transportation and warehousing.
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Over the past 30–40 years, manufacturers have made dramatic leaps in improving their businesses by using lean manufacturing and Six Sigma techniques. The systems these businesses use, however, have changed relatively little in comparison. The ERP systems manufacturing companies rely on to run their business are greatly at odds with the strategy and processes lean manufacturers use to maintain their competitive advantage.
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Production based on the principles of lean manufacturing combined with Movex APP has been the key to significant improvements since the end of the 1990s at pump manufacturer APV Products in Horsens, Denmark. “By streamlining the many workflows, we have been able to cut out all the redundant processes. Thus we have seen an amazing reduction of delivery time, from twenty-five days to only a couple of days. At the same time our inventory turnover has increased, which means that our inventory has been reduced to a third. And last but not least, our productivity is higher.” Bjorn Sommer, Product Line Manager, APV Products.
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Every corporation needs to make decisions about the selection and implementation if new IT solutions on a regular basis. However, an industrial manufacturer or retailer cannot see this as being one of their core competencies. In most cases such a selection process is seen as a necessary evil rather than a challenge that uncovers new potentials within the company. Only the ones that are able to fully understand and control this process in conjunction with all internally and externally involved parties will be more successful then others. The implementation of new IT solutions can be a chance to increase efficiency, but only if the right goals are defined, the right solutions and partners selected, and results are being monitored on a continual basis. This white paper was designed to deliver you many hints on what to consider and help you reach your goals in your IT selection process faster.
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Extending supply lines overseas brings new commercial and operational challenges that are far more complex than ever before. Enterprises are exposed to an entirely new universe of costs and liabilities, operations, and resource and management needs. Next generation global cost control systems can help organizations overcome these challenges. These systems help enterprises understand the real time cost impacts and financial liabilities of global sourcing initiatives--while protecting profits.
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Disintermediation is the process of removing redundant intermediaries from a systems management infrastructure. Once vital to systems monitoring, proprietary agents are now made largely redundant by native management tools, emerging standards and agentless monitoring architectures. Centauri makes disintermediation possible by providing a low-cost event management solution that unifies performance data and event messages under a common umbrella. This paper describes how you can take advantage of the disintermediation opportunity and minimize the risks of migrating from working proprietary data collectors to a new native-agent based solution.
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There are potential benefits of operating business process management (BPM) side-by-side with business service management (BSM). BPM and BSM are emerging technologies: BPM is concerned with the orchestration and management of effective business processes, while BSM focuses on the operational effectiveness of the enabling IT services. These technologies are mutually beneficial to one another. This white paper is intended for managers interested in implementing robust BPM solutions in IT-dependent business scenarios or managers looking to lay down a basic foundation for effective on-demand utility computing. It addresses the partnership between Fuego and Proxima Technology, vendors in BPM and BSM solutions.
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A balanced scorecard is a measurement system for management that provides real insight into the status of a business or some part of it. Developed by Kaplan and Norton in the early 1990s, balanced scorecards provide a control system that helps ensure the right balance between different, and often times conflicting, perspectives. For example, an insurance company may increase profitability by offering incentives to claims assessors for taking a tough stance on payout, but will soon find dissatisfaction among its clients that may lead to lost business. Scorecards help ensure this balance and are an improvement over more traditional single dimension approaches that tend to be based purely on expense management and business growth.
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As more business processes exist in an electronic universe, the need to manage the IT services that enable these processes increases. Business service management does this and achieves the IT alignment with the business necessary to ensure service improvement activities are prioritized with business objectives. Business service management applies the adage that if you improve IT, you improve the business. This paper presents an overview of business service management concepts and describes how Proxima Centauri provides a solution for this. It also describes how Six Sigma can be used as an underlying quality improvement process to eliminate the associated costs of poor quality.
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An overview for CIOs of the provision and management of IT services at a level that addresses the risk management issues raised by the Basel Committee's New Capital Accord expected to become effective during 2006. Because of the dependence financial institutions have on IT services, the accord requires adequate provision to assure the availability of these services. Centauri Business Service Manager is presented as the solution: one that allows a CIO to assess current risk levels, measure ongoing risk and support a process of ongoing improvement to reduce this risk. Furthermore, Centauri provides the financial institution with a cost-effective balanced scorecard to improve decision-making.
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Industry analysts, Enterprise Management Associates (EMA), recently conducted research to understand how widespread the acceptance of Six Sigma is for managing IT service quality. This research, which was targeted primarily at enterprises, showed that 65 percent of those surveyed acknowledge the relevance of Six Sigma for IT-based service management. While many IT organizations have yet to adopt Six Sigma for service management, 80 percent stated that they have plans to do so. This research suggests there is a growing interest in Six Sigma.
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Core business processes must be at the center of go-to-market strategies if a company is to attain its revenue objectives. Sales configuration and pricing are a lethal combination—and an overlooked process. Learn how leading companies are using technology to successfully leverage this combination.
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Manufacturers everywhere are turning to “lean manufacturing” to help them combat competition from low-cost countries and meet the increasing demands from customers for shorter lead times, more product variety and smaller orders. Lean manufacturing is a philosophy that focuses on customer value-adding activities, elimination of waste and continuous improvement in order to meet pull-driven customer demand.
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The decision to use external resources on a project of any size or focus can be a tough one for a company facing the need to look outside its trusted staff to make something happen. "Can the appropriate skills be found at an acceptable cost?" is the first question. Indeed, defining your service needs, and then developing and maintaining a proper relationship with the provider you've hired is one of the most important things you can do to increase your success potential.
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Today, entrepreneurs running small-to-medium sized businesses face daunting tasks that just a few years ago were not existent. The complexities of the business world have created new risks, a myriad of regulations, and complex reporting requirements that can overwhelm any organization. Owners and managers of all enterprises, even smaller private businesses, need to be cognizant of both the spirit and the letter of the law. How does a smaller organization, with limited resources, cope with all of this? How do they stay abreast of the additional changes that are on the way? In this guide, Pete Russo of the Entrepreneurial Management Institute at the Boston University School of Management outlines the pitfalls and steps, but also looks at effective solutions for private companies.
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Active Execution Management captures radio frequency identification (RFID) and electronic product code (EPC) data and integrates it into the supply chain business process. AXM associates individual EPC events (the observation of an EPC tag at an RFID reader) with the supply chain transaction that is currently being executed and then determines if that supply chain transaction is executing as planned. AXM is able to make this determination by comparing key performance indicators of the supply chain transaction with the characteristics of the EPC event. The paper describes multiple business cases, such as promotions management, deductions management, complex international shipments, and spoilage management, and shows how RFID data can be leveraged to improve supply chain performance.
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The Internet is having an identity crisis. Long regarded as a powerful tool for cost reduction and service enhancement, the Internet is falling short of its promise because of the real and perceived threat of identity theft. Financial losses and insurance costs are mounting, as organizations struggle to protect their information perimeters and improve the strength of their authentication systems to ensure that the authorized user is present during the sign-in process. The widespread use and misuse of passwords as authentication tokens is generally cited as a cause of the accelerating erosion of user confidence and the increasing incidence of identity theft. It is generally agreed that passwords are not enough. Much has been lost, however, in the race toward person-present authentication systems. While the application of passwords is fraught with risk, the introduction of complex authentication infrastructures and cumbersome end user technology has eroded usability and increased the cost of security dramatically. This paper describes a new authentication approach that retains the simplicity and low cost of passwords, while gracefully introducing as much person-present assurance as is required by the application.
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Ignoring the warning signs of missing metadata? Gramm-Bliley-Leach, Sarbanes Oxley (also known as “SOX” and “Sarbox”) and the Patriot Act are forerunners of the regulatory trend that has elevated the need for metadata.
Increasing consumer demand for privacy and fallout from corporate accounting scandals are spurring regulatory agencies to putting better teeth into regulations; compliance increasingly depends on an ability to “prove it”—not just by certifying content, but also by demonstrating the process by which the information was developed and managed—and metadata is the key to traceability.
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The past decade saw the emergence of the storage area network as a way to centralize, consolidate, and virtualize deployment and management of storage resources. This architecture was developed to address complex problems that arose as storage moved from a central point (the mainframe-based data center) to a distributed model due to growth in departmental systems and applications.
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Server consolidation is a hot topic. As a supplier of enterprise-class servers, Egenera has participated in many consolidation projects, with both customers and prospects. This paper summarizes what we’ve learned about consolidation, and provides a roadmap for driving consolidation in your organization. We answer the question most often asked by our customers: How do we get started?
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Data integration is a key enabler for supply chain modernization. Competition is driving increased integration of the supply chain, both due to direct cost pressures and to increased globalization. There can be little doubt that well implemented supply chain integration saves labor costs and improves inventory control. This has often been a complex and costly proposition. Standards, improved products and a common understanding of best practices for distributed systems are reducing the price of entry to supply chain automation. This will, in turn drive broader integration of manufacturing and distribution endpoints.
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Maintaining a competitive advantage is paramount, no matter what business you operate within. Engineer-to-order (ETO) companies that produce complex products, usually in low volumes, and with project control techniques, are no exception. A lean enterprise involves the reduction or elimination of any activity that does not add value to a customer. In order to effectively utilize lean, lean concepts must be taken from the manufacturing floor and used thorough the ETO enterprise. This paper demonstrates how IFS applications supports the principles of developing a lean enterprise for ETO organizations. It demonstrates how process improvements apply equally to office-based functions, manufacturing, installation, and service activities.
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Manufacturers of capital equipment and highly engineered products face design, production, and delivery obstacles. The most challenging of these activities is scheduling projects and resource demand in a concurrent engineering environment. Learn about a resource scheduling tool that can allow you to put demand on materials, work-centers, and labor as soon as it is known—so you can deliver projects on time and on budget.
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Here's the dilemma. Your largest customer has mandated that, to continue doing business with you, product shipped to their distribution centers must be encoded and labeled with RFID tags. None of your other customers have expressed a need for this requirement in the near term future. You can't afford to lose the business and revenue; nor can you justify a full-blown RFID implementation costing several hundreds of thousands of dollars. This is not a business nightmare. This is reality. This white paper looks at a compromise position offered by 3i Infotech and its warehouse management solution, ORION™ Enterprise WMS. This position is aptly described in the industry as the slap'n'ship approach to the RFID dilemma. This paper looks at the advantages and disadvantages of slap'n'ship and how ORION™ Enterprise WMS can preserve and maximize your initial foray into RFID.
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With product lifecycles accelerating and pricing pressures increasing, organizations must focus on delivering unique customer experiences to differentiate themselves from the competition. Customer relationship management and enterprise resource planning technologies play a critical enabling role.
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Application Service Provision (ASP).There has been a trend in recent years towards the use of remote software services through application service providers. These are companies who make software applications available via the
Internet to users who, rather than buying software, pay rental fees for it. The software does not have to be installed locally, the application being available through any web browser, and all support and maintenance is handled by the service provider. CMMS vendors are not the only ones offering these solutions. CAD modelling, engineering design, finance packages, purchasing, ERP
and even your company Intranet can now be rented. This is an expanding sector and the signs are that major growth is about to take place. Earlier problems with slow data
transfer speeds, communication costs and data security have largely been eliminated and this has made ASP a very attractive proposition. This is clearly illustrated by the
proliferation of systems that have become available over the last three or four years with most of the major CMMS vendors now offering an ASP option.
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Unwanted pop-up ads are intrusive Internet advertisements that are displayed when you access web pages. This white paper provides information about different type of pop-up ads, losses they cause, how they work, and suggests key features that a good pop-up ad filter software should have.
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The Internet access you have provided in the office costs money. You wish to see it used as a productive tool and increase business. It also provides the best way to appear busy. Employees can open multiple pages, a few of them related to legitimate work, while the others cater to their "personal" interests. It takes a single mouse click or Alt+Tab to navigate between pages, when a supervisor appears. This white paper provides details of how Internet access can be abused and how organisation can keep a tab on its employees.
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When The Clientele Group of Epicor Software Corporation was faced with scalability and performance limits in their CRM software, they redesigned their application around the Microsoft® .NET Framework. A server architecture based on SQL Server™ 2000 and XML Web services removes their scalability limits, and supports multiple client applications. A smart client built with Windows® Forms gives customer support personnel a responsive application that is easy to deploy and update. A Web portal built with ASP.NET Web Forms gives authorized customers access to the same records as customer support sees internally. The new architecture can support 500 users on a single dual-CPU server, and offers many ways to scale up and out.
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SKF (AB Svenska Kullagerfabriken) was founded in 1907, with headquarters and a laboratory in Gothenburg, Sweden, and an R&D center in the Netherlands. SKF is the leading global supplier in its field, offering products, customer solutions, and services for rolling bearings, seals and specialty steel, claiming 20% of the world market share. SKF has 80 manufacturing sites employing about 40,000, and an additional 20,000 distributors in 130 countries worldwide. Revenue in 2001 reached 24.6 billion U.S. dollars, and for the first 9 months of 2002, SKF Group’s revenue showed 25.3 billion, grossing 2.04 billion.
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Following the general tendency in the metallurgy industry -knowing very well your product costs - Ductil Steel "alloyed" with Epicor iScala 2.2, the enterprise
resource planning (ERP) system provided by Epicor Scala in Romania, in order to maintain its leading position in manufacturing wires and wire products," said Gellu Brotan, CIO of Ductil Steel Romania.
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Customer service is more than a department; it's an essential strategy for growing a business. No one knows that better than TruServ Corporation, an organization formed in 1997 by the merger of Cotter & Company and ServiStar Coast to Coast. Today, the $2.2 billion Chicago-based cooperative supports over 6,400 independent retailers worldwide working under identities like True Value, Taylor Rental Center and Home & Garden Showplace.
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The company had been using a homegrown software system that was limited in functionality and flexibility and hindered productivity for users company-wide. Joyce McNemar, chief technology officer for MEDEX, formed a multi-departmental task force that, after eight months of detailed evaluation, chose Epicor’s Clientele CRM.NET software over two other vendors. "Clientele offers MEDEX a very competitively-priced system that can be customized to our unique business requirements," said McNemar.
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Tal como sucede con todas las empresas que mantienen una evolución y crecimiento constantes, hace un par de años Spring Air se enfrentaba con el grave problema de que la información se encontraba en diferentes sistemas que, en la mayoría de los casos, no estaban entrelazados
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Daniel Mourand, CEO, chose Microsoft Great Plains sofware and, today, he does not regret his decision.
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Learn how JE Mondou Ltd., a 33-store, Montreal-based pet food and accessory chain updated its retail IT system with a cost-effective, end-to-end ERP solution from Microsoft.
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When it comes to marketing, sales and customer service there’s no question that the second approach delivers higher value—especially in an age when companies are combating unprecedented competition while being forced to do more with less. The reality is this: choose the second example or risk being second best.
This white paper explores why actionable business intelligence is so critical in today’s business environment and how Maximizer Software’s customer relationship management (CRM) solution can be used to deliver actionable intelligence when and where it’s needed most.
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This CRM spotlight will help you understand specific ways your organization can adopt a four-phase approach based on sales effectiveness best practices that can be automated using Maximizer Software’s customer relationship management (CRM) solution to boost your bottom line and remain competitive year after year.
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Orezone strikes gold with Microsoft Business Solutions - Great Plains. Orezone is a Canadian mining company that needed a more efficient means to track and store data sent from its African mines to its Canadian offices. Learn how it used MBS Great Plains to boost efficiency.
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Metro Canada Logistics, a third party provider of warehousing, transporatation, and related logistics services streamlines accounting processes with the help of Microsoft Business Solutions Great Plains.
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Decison support systems range from simple electronic filing cabinets to complex data intensive and analytically sophisticated executive information systems. This primer provides an overview with real case studies.
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Start with a simple proposition - that everyone in your company can do their job better if they make decisions based on actual information rather than best guesses or how-we-did-it-last-year.
What if you could have everything that ERP, CRM and now BI vendors have promised you? Immediate access to all your data, with digital dashboards that show you the Key Performance Indicators that you need to run your business.
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To store its wealth of transactional data, Trail Operations employs an ERP solution comprised of JDEdwards, Process Data Historian (PDH) and EtQ systems. To ensure proactive rather than reactive business decisions, it is imperative that management at Trail Operations have reliable and timely access to this data. While their ERP solution met all of management’s data capture requirements, its cumbersome reporting capabilities proved inhibitive to providing the key performance indicator (KPI) information necessary for quickly recognizing trends and driving improvements.
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A growing company with a challenging payroll environment
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Hearing confusing messages from your customer resource management (CRM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) vendors? You may be dealing with dozens of software vendors and system integrators, each one praising the benefits of his solution. Among these proposals, one claims not only to efficiently manage the entire customer life cycle, but also to take full advantage of your previous technology investments. Your incumbent ERP system vendor also has a CRM solution, and praises the benefits of the tight integration of both systems. The question then is, how do you know whether this solution is the best for you? Request your copy of Integrating CRM with ERP compliments of Baseline Consulting. The report gives you the criteria to use when formulating your strategy of integrating CRM with ERP, best practices of CRM implementation, dealing with ERP integration, and how to integrate CRM with ERP impacts the value chain.
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This paper examines key issues for CFOs and CEOs in managing ERP systems in the new world of SOX, IFRS, Basle II. While most IT management attention seems to be on document retention, reporting quality, and security, there are broader issues to be considered toward ensuring good governance and compliance with regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley, IFRS and Basle II.
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Companies everywhere have realized the need for greater efficiency and improved quality within the enterprise to stay productive and competitive in today's business environment. In order to obtain these efficiencies, corporations have turned to the successful model used by manufacturers for years known as lean, just-in-time (JIT), or kaizen. The fundamental goal of lean manufacturing includes the reduction of waste increase in productivity and improved quality. Most manufacturers launch their lean initiatives in order to maximize work flow and obtain dramatic improvements in performance.
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Tighten and speed up the manufacturing supply chain to better align raw Materials inventory levels with production plans, and reduce inventory and administrative costs.
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Provide suppliers with simple, motivational tools that help them proactively improve their own performance, and engage in collaborative work processes to jointly resolve issues as they arise.
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The process of outsourcing software development offshore has come a long way since the mid-to-late 1990s, the heyday of Y2K remediation. Offshore vendors who cut their teeth on Y2K and legacy applications developed best-in-class quality processes and evolved to look more like the large US-based systems integrators. At the same time, thousands of new services firms entered the market to serve the needs of specific industries, address particular business processes, or offer specialized technical skills.
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GNX Supplier Performance Management is a web-based application that enables companies to establish, track and report performance metrics for a large supplier base, with a collaborative platform to proactively resolve and avoid problems.
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GNX ProductVine is an enterprise software suite that enables retailers with private brand food programs to seamlessly integrate and manage all elements of brand integrity, regulatory and food safety compliance, and new product development and introduction, with an automated, web-based process.
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Implementing the proper business system can be as strategic and important to your bottomline as expanding your warehouse or bringing on new product lines. However, implementing the wrong solution or choosing an inexperienced solution provider can have serious negative effects on your business—-from lost opportunities and late orders to bankruptcy in some extreme cases. Consequently, it is imperative that wholesale distributors take time to clearly define their business processes and objectives before they start their search for new business software. This guide is designed to help wholesale distributors manage the entire software evaluation cycle, from needs analysis and budget planning through software selection and implementation.
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Private label product sales have increased significantly over recent years, with the level of penetration and sophistication varying by country and retailer strategy. By owning the brand, the retailer must deal with complexities and issues more traditionally associated with the consumer packaged goods (CPG) brand manufacturer. Failure to establish adequate processes and systems to support the brand can have severe economic implications. Learn about the brand integrity strategies used today by some of the most successful private label retailers.
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Corporate governance concerns, exacerbated by a weak global economy, have driven shareholder value to drop sharply in recent years. Boards of directors have intensified their pressure on CEOs to create execution-centric organizations and restore shareholders’ and analysts’ confidence. In this era, CEOs are looking to their information technology organization (ITO) to strategically and efficiently deploy technology solutions that enable business process innovation, resulting in world-class products and services on planned costs and release dates. Find out how your organization can develop skilled IT architects deliver total business solutions.
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In today’s hyper-competitive markets, the process manufacturer/distributor faces extremely challenging opportunities that require re-visiting the once-thought basics in their industry. Global competition, with information technology riding on a backbone of totally new communications infrastructure can return great rewards for the early adoptors, users, and masters. We will explore the set of economic drivers specific to process manufacturing/distribution and how important that they be satisfied for an appropriately fitting ERP solution. We are not discussing common process/discrete ERP features or functionalities, only the major ones needed for process manufacturer and distributors.
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thawte's Code Signing certificate confirms publisher details and content integrity of downloadable code. It is strongly recommended for any publisher who plans to distribute code or content over the Internet or corporate extranets. Find out how your signature is verified and how customers can confidently and safely download applets, plug-ins, or macros from your site.
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thawte's new SGC SuperCert now automatically steps up to 128-bit encryption for certain end users with the Windows 2000 operating system who, in the past, would not receive 128-bit encryption irrespective of the version of Internet Explorer used. The systems affected are those that shipped prior to about March 2001 and did not subsequently have Microsoft's High Encryption pack or Service Pack 2 installed. thawte's SGC SuperCert ensures that all these site visitors enjoy the protection of the strongest SSL encryption available. Find out how you can ensure that you are providing the best possible encryption for each and every visitor to your web site.
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The pharmaceutical industry is highly competitive, regulated, and in a permanent state of change. Customers demand instant attention, while suppliers require comprehensive leading edge services with regard to their products. Regulatory authorities require that the industry keep up to date with regulations, following them to the letter. Competitors are always inventing new ways to gain market share, while e-business presents new opportunities and challenges. All the while the pressure to reduce prices and to shorten order cycles is high. Pharmaceutical wholesalers comprise the lifeline within the pharmaceutical industry, providing continuity of supply and facilities for storage. They also offer a range of supporting services, such as information technology systems and product withdrawal notifications, which form an essential part of the total healthcare package. These companies and institutions all operate in an environment where speed and efficiency may mean the difference between life and death. However, the industry has a number of specific requirements that are critical for achieving success in the distribution sector.
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When your company’s ERP is implemented and running smooth (or maybe not) it’s now time to give your c-level management a bird’s eye view of how their company is running. C-managers are often not at ease with even the simplest use of computers. But in this information age those that don’t USE and LEARN from their corporate data put themselves, and worse, their company’s livelihood at risk because they may not know the pulse or health of their business.
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The government of Mesa County, Colorado, had been using an in-house, nonintegrated HR and payroll solution that was slow in processing reports and required manual reconciliation of workforce data. The solution also lacked the sophistication needed to manage the government’s payroll and reporting demands. The organization recognized that a change was necessary to improve the workforce-related information that upper-level management had at its disposal.
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With 10 remote office locations spread across nine states, Amerisure was in need of a communications platform that would enable the company to enhance the distribution of information to employees. Employees located in satellite offices, with no direct access to the home office, can feel disconnected from corporate headquarters’ operations and activities. Amerisure needed to communicate to employees in a timely manner that would allow the flow of accurate, important information, whether that data be employee-specific, such as salary, job, or benefit information, or company news and updates. In addition to a centralized communication platform, the company wanted heightened management of its workforce through the use of business intelligence tools that would allow it to track trends and have improved monitoring capabilities for each location.
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With a focus on marketing, sales, and distribution of the company’s interactive entertainment products, Nintendo of America’s 180 “managers of image” market Nintendo’s games throughout the United States and parts of Canada. Because these managers spend the bulk of their time visiting retail operations to successfully brand the Nintendo product, the company was searching for a way to communicate detailed information to them, as well as to the rest of the company’s workforce. Nintendo also wanted to simplify the benefits enrollment process for employees and allow them to change their personal data on their own and at their convenience, without contacting the HR department.
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Sainsbury’s Supermarkets has several ongoing collaboration programs with suppliers,having recognized early on that supply chain optimization benefits the end consumer by
ensuring the right product on the shelf at the right time and lowest cost. The UK grocer had already been sharing performance information along with several other forms of supply chain data with suppliers for several years, but found that suppliers had difficulty dealing with performance data that was buried in the mass of information being presented. In addition, suppliers had no formal channel for responding to, or improving, any performance issues that were identified.
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An enterprise resource planning (ERP) system is a significant investment for any enterprise. A functional ERP system that benefits a company should contain the following essential components: A to Z modular functionality, high value proposition, your way of doing business, leverage technology; and proof with a configured demo. Learn the basics about these components and how they can benefit your enterprise.
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You can blame your sales people all you want, but if the lead data is bad, they’re not going to bring in business. You can blame your product managers for ineffective promotions, but if the target lists are redundant, the pitches fall on deaf ears. You can blame your customer service representatives for low satisfaction scores, but if customer data is missing, then no wonder the complaint resolution pipeline is backed up. Think it’s your customer resource management (CRM) system? Think again. It’s bad data, and it’s costing you millions. Request your copy of The Bottom Line on Bad Customer Data that delivers detailed advice from Jill Dyche, partner and co-founder of Baseline Consulting, about what you can do to address the impact of bad data on your company. The report gives you insight into how bad data is impacting your company and what you can do about it. How to identify where the bad data is and quantify its impact, and different approaches to determine the sources and causes of bad data are all offered in this paper.
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When it comes to software implementations, organizations large and small share the common goal of rapid deployment and return on investment. Small and medium businesses (SMB) however, face unique issues and challenges that might not be satisfied by vendors that typically serve the Fortune 1000 or tier one community. Such vendors may tout specialized "SMB solutions", but many times they are nothing more than scaled-down versions of the larger enterprise suites that do not take into account SMB concerns. By following some fundamental concepts, smaller companies can make their technology investments pay off, with little disruption to the business. This paper discusses nine steps to easier ERP implementations and better profits.
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When flexibility and speed are requisites for success, it’s the lean organization that leads the race. World-class manufacturing organizations know the value of focusing on the lean fundamentals: eliminating waste, simplifying processes, and continuously improving. By pursuing lean strategies—optimizing inventory and streamlining manufacturing processes—they can reduce inefficiencies and costs in their production processes, and improve customer responsiveness.
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US companies spend approximately $300 billion (USD) annually on asset maintenance and operations, with 80 percent going to fixing asset failures. This situation can now be drastically improved with the advent of enterprise asset management (EAM) solutions that incorporate closed-loop diagnostics. This best-of-breed maintenance functionality extends the boundaries of traditional software by providing specialized failure analysis features that are fully integrated with core business processes. This paper examines how EAM solutions can support closed-loop diagnostics to provide a number of significant benefits.
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This workbook is designed to help firms that are in the process of investigating their need for more advanced business management and accounting software. Companies have a wide variety of potential software and system needs based on their size and industry. Determining exactly where a company stands in terms of needs and current technology will be necessary for deciding the exact approach it should take toward upgrading. This document has two types of information designed to make this process easier: interactive self-assessment tools and educational text based on IDC research covering the small and medium business (SMB) and enterprise applications markets.
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This white paper reviews the need for broader financial management solutions that enable the finance function to deliver greater transparency and visibility of business information. It also covers the growing requirement to improve both the efficiency of financial management and reporting processes, whilst at the same time maximizing the effectiveness of corporate performance activities.
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Think SAP's Industrial Manufacturing Solutions are too big, too difficult, and too expensive? Our 30,000 midsize customers beg to differ. Companies like yours get powerful, proven solutions that are developed with industry specific functionality, live in as little as sixteen weeks, and delivered with fixed, affordable pricing. Smart solutions that save you time and money. That's no myth. With more than 30,000 companies under $1 billion and over 80 percent of the Fortune 100 as our customers, nobody knows how to support your business objectives better than SAP. Two-thirds of our customers are midsize companies like yours ... and the other third used to be.
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The task of managing and maintaining today’s IT infrastructure has become vastly more complicated and complex as IT has become more critical to business success. The response from a technology perspective has been the introduction of services oriented architectures that enable IT to be responsive to the business needs but also live within their economic constraints. But the very technologies fueling this success create significant problems. Even small changes can cause major disruptions in today’s highly interactive and interdependent applications. Unfortunately, the pace of change means traditional testing architectures with lengthy development and testing will not work. But the testing must be done. Worksoft’s Certify is discussed as the test management repository and framework solution to this testing problem for XML-based applications.
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The requirement that enterprise software vendors deliver a measurable return on investment (ROI) has never been greater than right now. Customers are demanding that ROI analysis be a critical factor in their decisions to acquire new enterprise software. Without a demonstrable return, few customers are willing to invest scarce capital and human resources in new enterprirse software. A more complete analysis of return can be had by looking at the overall payback that enterprise software can offer to a company. Enterprise software payback includes not only quantifiable improvements in bottom and top line functionality, but also more qualitative measures-—such as new business opportunities, improved customer and partner relations, and improved time to market—-that contribute significantly to the success of a company's enterprise software implementation and use.
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The challenges that face the manufacturing industry today are also opportunities. Manufacturing is being revolutionized in its processes, routines, and ways of doing business through the growing emergence of order driven production methods. This shift towards demand driven manufacturing is emerging in tandem with the larger currents caused by globalization. This cross industry brief focuses on the manufacturing industry from the standpoint of a demand driven IT solution and is aimed at manufacturing and distribution businesses. It describes some major market trends and issues, provides an overview of IBS supply chain solution, and offers details on how the IBS solution for demand driven manufacturing can address current needs of the industry.
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thawte Technologies is a Certification Authority (CA) which issues SSL Web Server Certificates to organizations and individuals worldwide. thawte verifies that the company ordering the certificate is a registered organization and that the person in the company who ordered the certificate is authorized to do so. thawte also checks that the company in question owns the relevant domain. thawte digital certificates interoperate smoothly with Apache and the latest software from Microsoft and Netscape, so you can rest assured that you purchase of a thawte digital certificate will give your customers confidence in your system and integrity—they will feel secure about transacting on-line. Information is a critical asset to your business. To ensure the integrity and safety of your information, it is important to identify with whom you are dealing and the data you are receiving is trustworthy.
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Since our research-driven beginnings, Johnson & Johnson Advanced Sterilization Products (ASP) has continually improved the new product development (NPD) process. Detailed process mapping has revealed three tiers of business metrics, starting with drivers and moving up through execution metrics to business performance metrics. When driver metrics improves, so does business performance. Six Sigma tools helps identify specific metrics at all tiers and the causality linkages among them. Each NPD process step at ASP results in a deliverable, and each deliverable relates to a trade-off triangle (cost-time-resources) and, ultimately, to investment dollars. To track performance, ASP calculates how actual NPD decisions and what-if scenarios affect deliverables, alter investment triangles, and thereby influence business results. ASP uses similar process and tools, including the investment triangles and Six Sigma QFD, to make idea management decisions. The IDweb real-time software environment enables both the NPD and idea management processes at ASP. By deploying the strategic planning, idea management, portfolio and pipeline management, process management, and resource management modules of IDweb, ASP has increased throughput by 20 percent and reduced cycle time by 40 percent.
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SAP's manufacturing solutions are based on thirty years' experience of the processes that drive your business. When you choose SAP, you're assured of powerful, best-in-class solutions designed specifically for midsize manufacturing companies like yours. All from a single provider. SAP provides mission-critical solutions to more than 1,400 industrial manufacturing customers around the world. If fact, we're currently the market leader, with a commanding 54 percent share of the global market, compared to just 13 percent for our next closes competitor. Gain greater visibility across your enterprise, get closer to your customers, and reduce inefficiencies.
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Risk, risk mitigation, and accountability are at the center of several key industry regulations and are factored into all forms of financial and operational metrics. Learn how enterprise software can be used to develop strong models using balanced planning to mitigate risk.
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Radio frequency identification (RFID) technology is fast replacing ScanCode technology in asset tracking and inventory management. Traditionally, asset tracking and inventory management in retail supply chain or manufacturing or service units depended heavily on manual scanning of bar code printed on each item at every strategic point. This white paper focuses on details of RFID technology and how you can automate asset tracking and inventory management of your enterprise using it. The white paper takes aid of a case study on how FicusSoft has developed and successfully implemented RFID integrated asset tracking and inventory management solutions for a reputed manufacturer of ultra-sensitive instruments used in the field of biotechnology and pharmaceutical research.
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Recent legislation has bought about unparalleled emphasis on corporate governance and regulatory compliance. In the United States, the Enron and Worldcom affairs have led to a new law Sarbannes-Oxley. In Europe, the EU parliament has decided that all countries must streamline the laws for financial reporting in accordance with IFRS rules from IASC. Bringing organizations into compliance with new demands for corporate governance is having immediate and long-term effects. In this paper we discuss the current business environment, those facets of legislation impacting manufacturers and how QAD enterprise suite of applications can assist you in achieving corporate governance and regulatory compliance quickly, efficiently, and cost-effectively.
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Read about how QAD JIT Sequencing (JIT/S) is helping automotive suppliers execute JIT delivery of custom configured products to their customers. Results: reduced inventory levels, improved order management and cost avoidance caused by expediting activities in the supply chain.
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No matter how sophisticated your ERP solution may be, the most critical factor in its success will be how well it handles exceptions--the seemingly quixotic mission of planning for the unplanned. These issues outside your established operational parameters can include supply, operational and demand exceptions, and can have a "butterfy effect" on your enterprise--impacting customer service, purchasing, plant scheduling, shipping and accounting. How well you respond depends on four critical factors: The speed at which you identify these exceptions; how thoroughly you communicate them within your enterprise, the business rules you have in place to handle these exceptions and how responsive your ERP system is to handling the above four factors. In this white paper, we will explore how you can manage these four factors in planning for exceptions in your enterprise.
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There is a real cost associated with buying and using a customer relationship management (CRM) software system. Licensing, implementation, integration, and adminstration, are just some of the challenges companies face. Learn the secrets of twenty-one experts in CRM, IT, business and management consulting on getting real value from CRM software.
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It’s all of these, plus more. Read this new white paper, Any Color Including Black: A New Guide to Demand-Driven Manufacturing, to find out how successful manufacturers—enterprises of all sizes, in industries as varied as consumer goods, industrial, life sciences, high-tech, and process manufacturing—-are using principles of demand-driven manufacturing to successfully compete again low-cost competitors.
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In this guide you will find out how to test, purchase, install, and use a thawte Digital Certificate on your Microsoft Internet Information Services (MS IIS) web server. Throughout, best practices for set-up are highlighted to help you ensure efficient ongoing management of your encryption keys and digital certificates. We will also touch on the role of thawte as a trusted third party and how using a thawte digital certificate can benefit your business by addressing unique on-line security issues to build customer confidence.
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In the relentless pursuit of profitability and competitiveness, more and more companies are turning to lean manufacturing to reduce or eliminate waste in their production processes. Once confined to the automotive industry, lean principles are becoming standard operating procedure in many industries today. The reason is simple: When implemented with a good performance management system, lean principles have a proven track record of operational and strategic success, which ultimately translates into increased value to the end customer. This paper illustrates how IFS Applications supports lean principles, particularly in the many manufacturing environments that require both rate-based (takt-driven) and order-based shop-floor execution.
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In the present context of business, it is becoming essential for the business world to provide electronic commerce in addition to their good old business model. An electronic commerce application adds lot of value to business models and helps overall growth in the different areas of business, business management, tracking, and customer support. Customers find it’s much easier to access the products and services of a corporation through an e-commerce application and corporations find it easier to reach their customers.
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For a distributor to be successful in today’s competitive market, inventory-carrying costs must be minimized and accurately tracked. One way of accomplishing this in many industries is by assembling finished goods to meet customer orders. This is particularly true when numerous items are sold containing the same base components, but have minor modifications that make them unique.
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Food giants and technology providers work together to improve the efficiency of food processing, and storage and distribution operations, so that food products can be harvested, stored, and moved to the dinner table quickly and at less cost. This vertical brief focuses on specific issues within today's food distribution industry, explaining how IT solutions can help food distributors improve efficiency and reduce overall costs that drive up profits in an extremely competitive, low margin business.
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Customer demand has pushed customer relationship management (CRM) business solutions to higher levels of technological innovation and integration resulting in more user-friendly and cost-effective solutions that deliver measurable results to both the users and the organization. In this paper we outline how CRM has matured both technologically and as a strategic business initiative to deliver organizational CRM success supported by real ROI.
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Current manufacturing practices have been made cumbersome by the imposition of data recording activities required by manufacturing systems through the release, issuing, and expediting of the infamous work order. An integrated lean system utilizes full containers to signal the completion of product and backflushes the component material within the ERP system. Additionally, the integrated lean system (pull) can work simultaneously and in harmony with your MRP planning (push) to schedule your shop floor bottlenecks so that the bottleneck becomes the heartbeat (pull) for the remainder of the plant. Although originally scheduled, the bottleneck may use the integrated lean backflush routines as well! This white paper defines the integrated lean environment.
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Continuous process simplification of inherently complex enterprise applications should be the primary goal. Apptricity believes that the primary focus for business-
technology managers should be on achieving a rapid application integration and deployment to guarantee measurable return on investment (ROI). Business technology and business managers should not have to constantly recalibrate solution delivery objectives or re-scope project deliverables with reduced functionality because of finger pointing or other rationalized justifications. How can ROI be assured and achieved more rapidly? What are the major decisions faced by organizations relative to their information technology (IT) strategy, and how does this impact ROI? And why would a company choose an (application suite) versus extending in-house legacy systems?
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Component event management promises an answer. Component event management is a methodology to systematically detect and resolve component events in the most timely and efficient manner possible. This paper will introduce the philosophy of component event management and introduce a new category of software that is being developed to help implement this concept and improve business performance.
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Companies are going global because the risk of not doing so greatly outweighs the comfort that staying domestic brings. According to a World Trade Organization (WTO) report issued in October 2004, "Despite the rise in oil prices the volume of world trade is likely to grow by 8.5% in real terms by the end of 2004." The liberalization of trade, the reduction of tariffs, the elimination of quotas, the continued rise in China as an industrial force, and the rise of outsourcing as a cost reduction opportunity, all create an environment that is full of opportunity and fraught with hazards. The ability to effectively manage global commerce will be a key strategic competitive differentiator. Global commerce management (GCM) is what is required by companies to win in this tougher, more competitive environment.
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Client processes and risk control contextualization can be greatly improved through investigation process design, process execution, and file management issues. Learn how BPS Server uses process templating concepts, separates fact management activities, and uses COSO centric mechanisms to accomplish this. This the second part to Risk, Risk Mitigation, and Functional Requirements in Dynamic Compliance Environments. This is part two of a two part white paper. Part One Risk Mitigation and Functional Requirements in Dynamic Compliance Environments.
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A lot of organizations work very hard to do a good job of the wrong things, or get blindsided by what they overlooked. Many business experts have pointed out that the real issue is not how to do things right, but how to find the right things to do. There has been a lot of talk about the need to align system solutions to the business. However, if the organization has not done a good job of identifying the right things to do, then system solutions are hindered in their ability to help the organization be successful. This paper provides a framework for identifying the right things to do. IT can use this framework to help the organization establish the right focus for the business and supporting system solutions.
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A decade ago, process manufacturing excellence was defined by long runs, high capacity utilization, and low production costs. Today, excellence is determined by a company’s ability to respond to customer and market demand. In this report, Aberdeen and Ross explore winning strategies leveraged by world class manufacturers to achieve process manufacturing excellence.
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Productization of services is accomplished by associating tangible features with intangible service offerings. Tangible features may take the form of personnel, collateral, methodologies, pricing, facilities, or other attributes. Automation tools like enterprise service automation, database, and project management tools serve as enablers to service productization. By associating tangible features with intangible services, the professional services firm can build client confidence.
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To survive in today economy, every enterprise must put the reins on spending across every location and category. Rogue spending infiltrates even the most disciplined distributors, and is even more apparent in organizations with remote locations and employees. Vendor lists grow like weeds. There is confusion over who manages what service area, and manual approval procedures for requisitions and invoices are cumbersome. The ability for an enterprise to effectively source, procure, and manage its spend must keep pace with the demand for promptness and compliance in supplier relationship management (SRM).
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Successful implementation of an extended ERP system is the result of knowledgeable and dedicated people working together. It entails company-wide commitment, openness to change, good planning and experienced guidance. Three primary criteria determine the probability of recognizing significant return on investment (ROI) from an ERP system. Using these criteria as guidelines during the system selection process and subsequent implementation can ensure that the chosen system will support and enable the business improvements envisioned. That’s ROI.
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Howard Johnson’s Enterprises, Inc. (HJE) is a provider of lawn and garden fertilizer products whose discrete manufacturing package assumed a discrete process. It took ProcessPro eight months to implement a new enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution that worked to address HJE’s unique needs.
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Strem Chemicals, which manufactures and distributes specialty chemicals, implemented ProcessPro’s Warehouse Management Solution (WMS). The solution helped them streamline their processes and reduce operational costs, by reducing their overall shipping errors, eliminating the label planning function, and eliminating the dual recording of a majority of their inventory transactions.
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Customer relationship management (CRM) is more than just software or a set of processes--it's a business culture solidly focused on winning and keeping the right customers. A good CRM solution builds value to your business. Learn about the value of an integrated CRM suite.
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NexPress Solutions, Inc., a midsize production printing company, needed to improve its internal processes and to coordinate with both its parent companies. A SAP software implementation based on SAP best practices for industrial machinery and components (IM&C) reduced operating costs by more than $1 million (USD) in sixteen weeks.
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This document describes how SAP’s mySAP supply chain management (SCM) software can help a company transform its sequential supply chain into an adaptive supply chain network to remain competitive and successful.
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SAP Business One is a new offering from the largest business application software company in the world. It offers tremendous potential synergy for buyers of mid-market enterprise resource planning (ERP) software by combining state-of-the-art technology and first class business consultants with companies who are serious about building a highly tailored ERP system that can organically evolve no matter what future challenges their businesses may face.
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Learn how Altman Lighting Inc., a family-owned and operated international manufacturer of architectural and theater lighting fixtures overcame isolated customer information and business records by replacing their paper-based order processing system. Read how they improved productivity, centralized data, and gained real-time access to customer information and critical business information.
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Learn how PADI Americas, an international recreational company that develops and encourages public interest in scuba and snorkel diving worldwide, maximized employee knowledge and improved customer service by integrating multiple departments to promote seamless knowledge sharing, and collaboration on one platform.
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Business process management (BPM) is a term used by many organizations to refer to the procedures that tie diverse operations together. However, as technology vendors come up with BPM solutions, they often fail to focus on the entire organization, leaving certain segments of the enterprise fragmented and fending for themselves. So how can you bring the employees and processes living outside the system back into the fold?
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Companies are moving away from the linear production path of the supply chain to embrace value cycle management (VCM). VCM is the optimization of supply chain functions across all levels of suppliers, partners, and customers through the integration, collaboration, and synchronization of technology, data, and people-centric processes. Learn how companies can employ VCM to make business processes smoother, more productive, and more profitable.
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Lean manufacturing, which focuses on eliminating waste in the production process, has been called the production system of the twenty-first century. Learn how IFS’ lean manufacturing solution gives you the technology platform you need to make your lean initiative a success—and your business more profitable.
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Vantage 8.0 is the next generation manufacturing solution developed by Epicor Software Corporation. It builds on the successes of the Vista, Vantage, Avanté and other associated discrete manufacturing product lines by introducing a total manufacturing solution for the midmarket. It is built to leverage the Microsoft® .NET Framework™ and Progressreg® OpenEdge™ Business Platform in order to provide a leading-edge technological solution that offers Epicor’s manufacturing customers a framework that will support their business needs now and in the future.
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Companies in virtually every industry today are striving to meet the ever-increasing demands of their customers. The issues of innovation, price, quality, and delivery have never been greater. Customers want what they want, when they want it, and how they want it. To give customers what they truly want, manufacturers need to have a deeper understanding of the detailed attributes of the products that meet customer needs. Winning companies, those who will prosper now and well into the future, will need to manage the use of this knowledge with advanced information technology as their key competitive strategy.
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This case study shows how U.S. Tsubaki, a major producer and supplier of roller chain, engineering class chain, and other drive components, adopted the QAD MFG/PRO enterprise solution to address the ever increasing complexity of it’s inventory and supply chain.
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To keep pace in today's automotive industry, suppliers must be able to move information swiftly through and beyond their organizations. With manufacturing sites increasingly scattered across the globe, the ability to exchange information rapidly is key to staying in the competitive race. Learn about the growing need for interoperability and how to overcome its challenges.
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The MMOG was a self-assessment process developed by the Automotive Industry Action Group (AIAG) to provide consistent methodology for evaluating supplier performance, identifying weaknesses, and focusing improvement efforts. The Global MMOG/LE incorporates the Odette Logistics Evaluation (OLE), developed by AIAG’s European counterpart, to provide a single global standard for self-assessment. The MMOG is a proven tool for supplier development and provides a recognized industry standard for suppliers who have been asked by customers to complete a self-assessment. Although it was developed by the automotive industry, QAD believes it can be a helpful benchmark tool for customers across many verticals.
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This case study shows how Cephalon, a biopharmaceutical company, adopted the QAD MFG/PRO enterprise solution to address the management problems for their global spread manufacturing sites, packaging site, and workers. Read how it improved visibility and synchronization across global operations, improved inventory tracking, and better leveraged knowledge of enterprise assets.
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Today's cost conscious automotive environment requires that information technology (IT) projects be implemented rapidly, be delivered on time and on budget, and meet or exceed expected return on investment (ROI) projections. Learn how Cascade Engineering increased its efficiency and eliminated waste in virtually every aspect of its business, and saw cost savings of $500,000 per year as a result of business process improvement.
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When a global high tech manufacturer of desktop and portable PCs sought to reduce their inbound supply chain lead-time and costs, they came to Optum for help improving their visibility to, and coordination with, inbound suppliers, and contract manufacturers. Learn how it integrated partners and its system into the supply chain to achieve its competitive advantage.
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This UltiPro Workforce Management technology white paper offers an overview of UltiPro’s technical architecture, and is primarily intended for information technology executives and professionals who want to better understand UltiPro’s technology advantages. After reading this white paper, the reader should have a clear understanding of the modular design and underlying technology of the UltiPro Workforce Management solution and the key benefits to the information technology (IT) organization.
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This document provides system administrators and technical professionals an overview of how Surado SCM SQL Enterprise CRM Solution can be used in a High Availability Environment. This document assumes that you are planning on installing the Surado SCM SQL System on Windows NT 4.0 or Windows 2000 Advanced Server and will be using Microsoft's SQL Server as the primary database.
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This white paper introduces customer self-service and how using Surado Web Self-Service can increase customer satisfaction, reduce costs, and increase return on investments (ROI). The key is to understand your customer, your products and services, and the tools available to deliver service to maximize customer satisfaction and reduce customer service costs. This paper will discuss the various self-service options available, how to utilize best practices, delivery technology and how customer self-service is tied to the "big picture" of customer relationship management (CRM).
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Small to medium businesses (SMB) want to stay competitive, increase revenue, and remain profitable at the same time. This can be a challenge. Whether companies find this challenging because of a slow economy, market saturation, or other reasons, many companies are re-evaluating business strategies and internal processes to overcome these obstacles. For many successful companies, creating a customer-focused business strategy was the first step. Learn how leadership and customer relationship management software can help breed corporate success.
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Contemporary firms must recognize a fundamental shift in the management of distribution activities as a strategic driver of their competitive success. Instead of the traditional focus on pushing products to customers through distribution channels, there is a need to migrate toward adaptive distribution networks. Such networks focus on managing the flow orders from customers by providing them with high levels of convenience while preserving attention to responsiveness and total distribution costs.
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Innovative companies improve efficiencies by integrating logistics and transportation functions with critical operating processes. By factoring transportation constraints into the planning and execution of warehousing, production and fulfillment, these companies are outperforming their competition.
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Dynamic efficiencies can help companies combat margin erosion and cope with compressed product lifecycles. By shifting from advanced planning to adaptive planning, enterprises can increase their top and bottom line. Integrating the demand planning network, optimizing the supply chain network, and strengthening execution planning will help this move to adaptive planning and eliminate pockets of waste.
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CustomerFirst contains the service support, help desk, problem resolution, and call center functionalities of the CustomerFirst Enterprise Software Suite. It manages the flow of work through the organization from the time a request or issue is reported, until it is completed or resolved. CustomerFirst also allows you to track the history of every touch point that you have with your customer.
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SalesFirst is the sales force and marketing automation component of the CustomerFirst Enterprise Suite. SalesFirst provides functionality that manages the marketing and sales process within your organization. It also allows you to track information about your prospects and gives a complete 360-degree view of each potential and existing client.
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Enterprise applications can't provide value unless they work within the realities of the business they are trying to support. The current generation of enterprise architecture, while reflecting the best thinking at the time they were designed, does not address key realities of business and does not address the support gap their absences generate. In this paper, we introduce the concept of The Three Realities of Enterprise Solutions, which are fundamental truths about the way that businesses use enterprise solutions.
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The new reality for manufacturing CIOs is that budgets are far less than what they used to be and the ability to provide business intelligence to front line users in a simple and workable format is a new measure of information technology (IT) performance.
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Primarily due to rapid development of technology in the past thirty years, the market structure throughout the world has changed considerably. Local markets have become accessible to foreign manufacturers, who are able to perform well in their newly established territories in part due to their superior application of technology. In this light, most companies, including small and medium size, have embedded globalization in their expansion strategies, consistently seeking for new markets abroad. Consequently, local manufacturing companies are facing global competition, forcing them to adopt new concepts with respect to people, process and technologies. This document describes these approaches to production planning in detail as well outlines a software solution. The software solution (Production/3) combines both pull and push techniques and enables small to medium size organizations to fully automate their production system while retaining their investment in their legacy enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems.
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Asset life cycle management is an increasingly important strategic initiative for asset-intensive industries to explore. Innovative organizations can use their assets for competitive advantage and thereby improve the profitability of their business. Learn how advanced asset life cycle management strategies can contribute to organizational agility, security, and flexibility, and improve responsiveness in a demanding marketplace.
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Computers were meant to simplify common, tedious tasks. Patching multiple systems together is a band-aid approach to the critical issue of resource management. Should your limited information technology (IT) staff be maintaining a series of interfaces, over several servers and applications? Or should they focus first on delivering quality information to those who need it most? What if a system could deliver world class functionality, be simple to maintain, yet still be affordable and robust enough for the most demanding environments?
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Nearly half of all new products do not justify the resources it takes to launch them—they fail in the marketplace. Product lifecycle management (PLM)—a powerful IBM e-business on-demand enabler—is a strategic approach to creating and managing a company. Learn how to improve supply chain communication and business process, and innovation by linking technology islands together and break down the barriers between function silos.
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Without strong system controls in place, job shop and make-to-order manufacturing environments can be extremely challenging. So where do you begin to make improvements? The Sales and Profit Growth Strategies report will help you evaluate your business and make that determination.
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What differentiates highly successful companies from the ones that struggle, or worse yet, don’t make it? What do companies like Microsoft and Boeing have that ensures that they maintain their market leader status? They deliver their products, services, and images differently, but consistently. They have spent a great deal of money, research, and effort to determine their optimal business flow, and they follow business best practices that put in place “systems” that guarantee their success. Small businesses can also gain the competitive advantage by implementing best practices. Learn how Advantage can model, facilitate, and enforce those best business practices for small businesses.
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Every day you make decisions that affect the short and long term success of your company, regardless of role. Exact Software has developed Macola Enterprise Suite (ES). Macola ES was developed based on three simple, though sometimes elusive, criteria: innovation, speed, and user-friendliness. Learn how ES can benefit the customer service, purchasing, plant management, and controller departments.
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E-mail marketing is experiencing dramatic growth as marketers in virtually every industry begin to take advantage of this power technique that helps to increase revenues and reduce sales costs. Learn how to take full advantage of this high-response, low cost marketing technique by learning the characteristics of this unique medium through proper management to generate metrics and facilitate future successes.
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In this document, we will explore the power of online self-service and how it contributes to healthy customer relationships and delivers viable cost savings. We will also address how technology from Epicor Software Corporation, a leader in the CRM space, can help deliver successful self-service.
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When a company is selecting any piece of enterprise software, there is invariably someone assigned to "look under the hood" and evaluate the application's architecture. While this is a critical step, many organizations do not have a clear understanding of how their short and long term application needs can be directly impacted by an underlying architecture. This white paper serves as the foundation for understanding how Clientele's next generation application architecture shatters traditional enterprise software boundaries.
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Product lifecycle management (PLM) enables companies to manage all information regarding a product, from the initial design and engineering through to manufacturing, sourcing, support, and run down. Traditionally, enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions have successfully managed manufacturing-related information, but have at best, limited integration to the engineering systems such as product data management (PDM). Learn how the Vantage manufacturing solution offers a complete end-to-end solution that manages all aspects of a product's life.
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An enterprise resource planning (ERP) system is your information backbone, reaching into all areas of your business and value chain. That’s why replacing it can open unlimited business opportunities. The cornerstone of this effort is finding the right partner. And since your long-term business strategy will shape your selection, it’s critical that your ERP provider be part of your vision.
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Enterprise performance management (EPM) is the validation of perceptions. It is the ability to analyze business conditions and provide visibility into day-to-day operations to enable more effective and timely decision-making. Learn how to link strategy and execution to encourage the continuous improvement with your enterprise resource planning (ERP) system.
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Whatever the reasons for pursuing a lead-time reduction strategy, time compression across all company processes is critical to growth, and in some cases means survival for today's manufacturers. Learn about the complementary nature of enterprise resource planning (ERP), value chain exceleration, and quick response manufacturing (QRM).
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Successful implementation of an extended enterprise resource planning system (ERP) is the result of knowledgeable and dedicated people working together. It entails company-wide commitment, openness to change, good planning, and experienced guidance. Learn about the three primary criteria of recognizing return on investment (ROI) from an ERP system and how using them during the system selection process and subsequent implementation can ensure that the chosen system will support and enable the business improvements envisioned.
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Midmarket service organizations face challenges in administration, project management, and business management. Learn how Australia's NATA reduced expenditures and increased return on investment (ROI) and how FMC improved customer visibility with Epicor's integrated solutions and enterprise systems architecture (ESA).
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When researching the right manufacturing software for your business, it is important to realize there is a difference between process and discrete software. A discrete software solution for a process manufacturing company will inevitably fall short, but after you identify your manufacturing operation and requirements, what is the next step? Learn about what guidelines to follow when viewing manufacturing software to ensure your company needs are addressed.
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So-called best-of-breed software solutions may not always actually be the best. Sometimes less heralded niche products more closely aligned with a company's requirements make a better choice. Learn how Tinnerman Palnut Engineered Products, LLC used a feature-rich, enterprise resource planning (ERP) system to get a highly efficient system for its over 15,000 products.
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Simulation can remedy one time and ongoing problems in the warehouse. Learn about the technology of computer stimulation and how it can benefit senior management in the logistics, distribution, and warehousing industries. This paper will describe the benefits of simulation as an analytical tool and the industrial lessons learned from failed simulation projects.
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Radio frequency identification (RFID) is the most rapidly growing segment in today's automatic identification industry. The creation of the Auto-ID Electronic Product Code (EPC) Standard coupled with affordable RFID tag costs, and Wal-Mart's mandated adoption of the standard for all its suppliers, will drive rapid deployment. Learn how RFID will evolve as the cost and capability of deploying the system becomes more operationally feasible and economical, and of the benefits it will bring.
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As retailers strive to reduce inventories and manage working capital more effectively, they need to streamline processes throughout the supply chain to provide goods when needed and to maintain their tight margins. Learn how event-driven optimization (EDO) can overcome unexpected disruptions to the flow of goods.
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National Equipment Services (NES), a leader in the equipment rental industry, experienced the concomitant growing pains associated with 47 acquisitions spanning an 18 month period beginning in 1998. In this case study, learn how NES saved $250,000 annually in payroll and administration costs.
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To ensure the integrity of the Tohono O’odham Indian Nation, the gaming authority is held accountable to the Native American Tribal Government. The gaming authority is required to provide detailed reports to its governing bodies regarding employee ethnicity and budgets. This information ensures that the gaming authority is acting in accordance with tribal regulations. Payroll processing and benefit tracking in this casino environment are fraught with many complexities. As a hospitality-based company, most of Tohono O’odham’s employees receive tips that need to be recognized as income. The company treats accruals and benefits in a unique fashion as it allows employees to carry over benefits from year to year and even receive accruals for accruals.
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The Container Store’s growing employee base rendered communications with employees, updating manuals, managing paperwork, and obtaining relevant benefits reports more time consuming and complex. Ultimate Software’s UltiPro Workforce Management solution streamlined the management of payroll and benefits, while reducing administration.
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This case study describes the complexity of human resource management systems (HRMS)/payroll management when merging two organizations and how Ultimate Software’s UltiPro Workforce Management software helped solve the new challenges arisen from the merger.
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This case study shows how Morrison Bowmore Distillers (MBD), a fast growing Scotch whisky industry, used SSI’s Tropos enterprise resource planning (ERP) system to future-proof its business and replace its inadequate system and packaged software application. Learn how it saved hundreds of thousands on inventory and headcount, and enhanced financial management and its ability to support expansion.
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Lincolnshire pie and sausage producer George Adams Pork Products is looking to its new enterprise resource planning (ERP) system to underpin future growth through tighter control of the production process. Learn how it implemented SSI’s TROPOS system across its supply chain and received more accurate forecasting, improved production planning and process control, and enhanced yields, costs, and profitability.
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Eastern Foods, Inc. produces fresh goods for one of the most widely dispersed populations in the world. The leading supplier of salad dressings to airlines, Amtrak, and the cruise ship industry, Eastern is nationally known for Naturally Fresh dressings as well as premiere meat sauces and dips sold in stores and distributed to the food service industry. The job has never been easy – but it has been made easier in recent years with the implementation of Ross Systems’ iRenaissance suite of business applications for both front and back office operations. The flow of information, necessary to make critical decisions and ensure high levels of service, now travels quicker than the fast-paced industry it serves. The plant scheduler has been able to reduce the number of daily individual production jobs by as much as 20%, as well as reduce the number of changeovers, resulting in higher capacity utilization and throughput. Visibility to the forecast and orders allows for better management of the scheduled cycle of product runs, which must be closely coordinated with inventory to ensure supply is both adequate and fresh. Cycle schedule compliance has improved from 88% to 95%.
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When Stryker Corporation acquired Howmedica, it had only one year to integrate the new business and completely replace its information technology (IT) infrastructure. Learn how Stryker improved its rapid time to benefit, global capabilities, lowered cost of ownership, and achieved standardized business processes to provide world class service.
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With a turnover of CHF 85 billion and 470 sites, Nestle is the world's largest food group. Learn how Nestle is able to plan its production and to accommodate finite capacity calculations in terms of manpower and material resources, strategic material availability, and through the significant production constraints of Nestle's different production environments.
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In the mid-1990s Heinz was managing their product specifications, formulas, and quality information in the same manner as most companies. Their product information was stored in a variety of disparate systems, spreadsheets, text documents, and paper forms. Learn how it was able to continually leverage product information across the entire life cycle.
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Wilden began to investigate several customer relationship management (CRM) packages in the market including: Maximizer Enterprise, PeopleSoft, Siebel, Pivotal and Oracle. The Company knew it would require some customization assistance from the vendor but it also wanted the capability to manage the new technology in-house. Maximizer Enterprise was the only one that was flexible enough-it fit their sales channel model and had the knowledgeable Professional Services staff that the Wilden team felt comfortable with - along with the overall package to fit within their budget.
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Since they implemented Maximizer Enterprise, the sales people have found it easy to learn, and the marketing department has taken advantage of its flexibility to customize it to their business and marketing needs. Having recently upgraded to Maximizer Enterprise 7 with the implementation, installation, and training services of Certified Multiactive Business Partner, Wintec Group, the users and administrators have seen increased reliability and speed in the daily use of its customer database.
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Stockgroup includes accountability, integrity and open communication, within its set of core values, to achieve its objectives of being a financially strong and profitable business. That's why when it came time to replacing its CRM system to better manage accounts, schedules, sales forecasting, and marketing, Stockgroup selected Maximizer Enterprise as its CRM solution of choice - an easier to use system with a lower TCO.
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Before purchasing a complete CRM solution, StemCell's, sales and marketing managers met with the sales team and support staff to discuss their requirements and to gain insight into what information each department needed, how they wanted to work, and how their working styles impacted each others departments.
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With the assistance of a Maximizer Business Partner, Senior Flexonics deployed Maximizer Enterprise to its global sales force to manage the distribution of leads and collaboration on complex sales opportunities. Today, it collectively manages over 2500 ongoing opportunities at a time, each with a sales cycle of three hours to five years, amongst four or more sales districts and over 300 different sales teams.
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With the help of On-Line CRM Solutions, a Certified Maximizer Business Partner, GrowthWorks upgraded from Maximizer to Maximizer Enterprise 7 running on a SQL database. This enabled the company to integrate the customer database with the transaction database.
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Cash Converters was utilizing an earlier version of Maximizer to track contact details, basic phone notes and other communications. With its small team of sales, marketing, accounting and operations managers that managed the day-to-day operations of the business and its franchisees, the team began working out of the office more and more often. To assist them with this, they needed a solution that worked seamlessly with their business structure and processes, allowing them to work with updated information whether they were working at the office, at home or on the road.
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This case study covers why a sporting goods and apparel manufacturer's selection team chose to purchase and implement the Made2Manage® Enterprise Business System from Made2Manage Systems.
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In 1999, Qualitel Corporation, an electronics manufacturer, earned $2.85 million (USD) in revenue. Just one year later, after implementing a new business model and the Intuitive enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, Qualitel's revenue exploded 471 percent to $12.89 million (USD). By modernizing its operations, Qualitel decreased lead times and increased on-time delivery from 30 to 90 percent.
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Learn how Fabcon, once a small manufacturing company and now the premier sheet metal shop in Southern California catapulted its 55 percent on-time rate in 1993 to a 97 percent on-time rate a year later through business vertical integration and the help of Global Shop Solutions enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions.
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As Wiltshire Precision has grown, it has faced challenges common to manufacturers—controlling costs, constant efficiency improvements, competition from abroad, and expansion of customer base and shop space. After implementing an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, Wiltshire’s newly automated processes resulted in greater efficiency—and a near-perfect quality rating. Discover the ERP solution’s other benefits.
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In 1996, Davis Controls, a licensed assembler of instrumentation and control products, implemented Exact Software’s Macola Progression solution. The subsequent 50 percent increase in their sales convinced the company to deploy Macola Enterprise Suite (ES). Macola ES’s integrated business process management (BPM) tools have led to improved productivity.
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Learn how SunGard Treasury Systems, a provider of Internet-based treasury management solutions to global corporate, government, and financial services organizations, consolidated its disparate databases into one centralized database for company and customer information.
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Learn how Boeing Autometric, a software and technical solutions provider for modeling, visualization, simulation, and analysis to customers in the defense, telecommunications, and commercial mapping industries, implemented a solution to manage customer communication and information.
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Learn how Viewpoint Construction Software used Clientele to combine its different databases into one common customer database that is customized to fit the unique needs of the company.
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Learn how InVision Technologies Inc., a leading provider of explosives detection systems (EDS) for airports, implemented a flexible support system that gives real-time visibility into customer issues.
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Learn how Mid-West Spring Mfg. Co., a spring manufacturing and stamping wire forming company, improved inventory accuracy by nearly 100 percent, streamlined operations, enhanced customer service, and improved intelligent analysis.
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Learn how Eastern Plastics, a small precision plastic machining, design, and assembly company, implemented an integrated solution and document management system to aid in its growing, international business.
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Learn how Harvey Vogel Manufacturing Co., a metal stamping and value-added assembly company, improved job costing and reporting.
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Learn how three small and medium businesses (SMB), ITW Wilsonart Canada, Neutronics, and Polk Audio, respectively employed an enterprise system to improve operation, visibility, and performance.
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Learn how Manitowoc Beverage Equipment, a leading designer and manufacturer of ice and beverage systems equipment, streamlined its new product introduction and engineering change order processing.
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Learn how Oetiker Inc, the foremost manufacturer and distributor of quality clamps, rings, and couplings improved customer satisfaction, shipping accuracy, and on-time delivery.
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Learn how AVCOM Technologies, a provider of comprehensive information technology (IT) products and suites to high-growth middle market companies, integrated its business processes with Microsoft .NET Framework and "e by Epicor" suite.
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Learn how Swiss-American Inc., a leading manufacturer of medical products, improved the accuracy of its inventory levels by adopting a new manufacturing system complete lot traceability, manufacturing resource planning (MRP), purchasing, and manufacturing projections.
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Learn how Cubic Defense Systems improved their overall product quality and government compliance, while conforming to support mission-critical processes by using Cincom's integrated quality management solution.
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Learn how Sony Music used real-time radio frequency (RF)-based packages to handle their high volume environment for both raw materials and finished goods and how this system interfaced with corporate systems, various automated material handing equipment, and other complementary third-party systems.
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Learn how Saks Inc. leveraged flow-through operations in its distribution center to move 90 percent of its goods automatically, without human intervention to get merchandise to its stores faster, while taking inventory out of the system.
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Learn how Boeing Aircraft and Missile Systems reduced its manufacturing costs and increased production, while decreasing its warehouse footprint, and keeping all of its current staff in place.
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Many manufacturing companies have adopted or are considering the adoption of a demand-driven strategy. However, if you want to be demand-driven, you aren’t going to achieve it without adopting many of the tools, techniques, and principles that commonly reside within all of them. Some philosophies require a more intense re-engineering of processes and products than others. This paper addresses the various components and strategies for becoming a demand-driven organization, and how Cincom’s solutions can help you achieve that goal.
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