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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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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Business intelligence (BI) efforts can only result in a truly intelligent, agile business if they are driven by business goals—comprehensively deployed and adopted; and managed in ways that produce meaningful, measurable and credible results. Discover five BI trends to watch out for in 2010, and learn how to develop an approach to BI that’s effective, and tailored to your organization’s unique needs and goals.
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The Internet creates new opportunities for mischief—and new challenges for managers. How do you balance individual access with the overall good of the business? What’s the right balance between monitoring and blocking? Learn about a Web security solution that can allow you to monitor and enforce your Internet usage policies, bringing site monitoring and filtering together with anti-virus and anti-spyware protection.
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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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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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As companies try to escape the effects of the 2009 recession, a barrier to business growth is maintaining profitable long-term relationships with customers. This Aberdeen Analyst Insight explores how top-performing companies are capturing, integrating, managing, measuring, and acting on customer data throughout the customer life cycle in order to maximize customer loyalty and achieve best-in-class bottom-line results.
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Today’s manufacturers face rising costs, increased competition, and changing customer requirements. If their enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions are not up to par, these companies face dizzying levels of complexity, duplicated effort, and poor product quality and customer service. Learn how to tell whether your ERP system is killing your business, and how a new approach to business systems can help you thrive.
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For IT departments drowning in complex and expensive software maintenance chores, the software-as-a-service (SaaS) model can ease the burden. SaaS reduces complexity by outsourcing most of the infrastructure needed to run software applications, and reduces costs by charging only for what is consumed. But you can also adopt a hybrid SaaS model, in which some systems are outsourced and others are kept in-house. Learn more.
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Survey data shows that companies want to improve their strategic business partnerships. Reflecting on lessons learned from past business relationships, 60 percent of respondents say that in future they’ll place more emphasis on developing personal relationships and setting expectations with business partners. Find out how these companies are creating collaborative networks that include business partners and consumers.
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The success of direct marketing, measured in terms of qualified leads that generate sales, depends on accurately identifying prospects. Ensuring data accuracy and data quality can be a big challenge if you have up to 10 million prospect records in your customer relationship management (CRM) system. How can you ensure you select the right prospects? Find out how an enterprise information management (EIM) system can help.
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Before adopting any applications for key business functions, executives should perform a thorough total cost of ownership (TCO) analysis. Unfortunately, apples-to-apples comparisons can prove challenging. While it may be tempting to compare the initial license price of on-premises software to the annual subscription fees for cloud computing, this methodology fails to account for the ongoing internal operating costs for the on-premises software. Beyond direct software and hardware purchase and implementation costs, it’s also important for organizations to consider additional business drivers, including infrastructure and resource overhead, maintenance costs, ongoing operations, flexibility, and risk. Download this paper to learn more about how you can estimate the true TCO of cloud applications versus traditional on-premise software.
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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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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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It’s no secret that winning and retaining customers is the key to growth and success. But that’s no small feat, with ever-increasing customer demands, as well as the difficulty of implementing and enforcing processes to support your interactions with prospects, customers, and partners. Eight proven customer relationship management (CRM) best practices can help you create a customer retention strategy. Learn more.
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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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An unsettled economy needs a different approach to managing revenues. Companies must identify their most profitable customers and the most effective marketing and sales vehicle for reaching them—with a shrinking budget. And shifts in customer spending demand a fresh look at the value proposition of your current products and services. Find out how you can stay close to your customers as their needs change.
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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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When the term “enterprise resource planning” (ERP) was introduced, it applied primarily to the planning and management of resources needed to manufacture goods. Today, however, most business decision makers realize that their enterprises rely upon resources, and that planning is essential to optimize how those resources are acquired, allocated, and used. Learn how the definition of ERP has evolved, and what it means today.
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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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