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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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 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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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 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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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“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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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 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 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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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“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 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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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