Most organisations are sitting on IT equipment that is not supporting the business optimally, yet the received wisdom is to sweat the assets to gain as much perceived lifetime value from them as possible. However, IT assets have inherent value which can change significantly through each asset’s lifecycle—whether this is through its hard resale value or just through its scrap value. By applying a full IT lifecycle management (ITLM) approach to the complete IT platform, a business-optimised platform can be created—one where business value overrides the embedded concept of sweating assets.
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This paper highlights the environmental impact of printing and discusses how a managed print service can support an organization's sustainability goals, while also lowering costs and driving business efficiency.
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With mobile device use fast growing, 2012 seems to be the ‘year of the mobile.’ As companies embrace mobility, a key issue is the mobile versus app debate, and whether there is an argument for producing a mobile application over a mobile site. This white paper looks at the pros and cons of both native apps and mobile Web, and dives into the things that companies should consider before making a choice between mobile app and Web.
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To realize a competitive advantage, small-business leaders must address five common obstacles: inefficient operations, inability to support rapid growth or new markets, disjointed business processes, lack of visibility into daily operations, and limited resources. Read this white paper to learn how to overcoming these challenges and gain valuable insights into your business.
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Lean manufacturing initiatives and strategies can also be effectively applied toward a business’s largest controllable expense: its workforce. This paper examines lean manufacturing workforce management initiatives, the opportunities and benefits they provide, and the enterprise applications available to manage and support them.
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While new technology trends are invading the business intelligence (BI) space, technology shifts and hype do not necessarily equate to the ability to exploit the best tools for enhancing business performance. To select a best-fit BI solution, an organization needs to be able to realistically assess the maturity of its BI infrastructure. This allows them to discover where they are, what their BI requirements are, and how to determine the best BI solution or strategy. Download the full report now.
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Outsourcing of developmental activities is not new. However, the outsourcing of research activities remains relatively unexplored. Recent trends indicate greater research and development (R&D) outsourcing, with customers open to handing over complete product lifecycle responsibilities to vendors. The chief reason for this change is that companies are realizing that the benefits of R&D outsourcing extend beyond cost arbitration. Rather, it facilitates the creation of global collaborative development skills of both the provider’s and buyer’s employees through exposure to new research tools, methodologies and best practices. Learn more now.
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Organizations usually rely on historical data and transactions to determine their pricing strategy. However, this data is typically insufficient to arrive at a competitive price. Moreover, customers these days are well informed about the value of products they want to purchase. That's why organizations need to arrive at their pricing strategy only after taking into consideration external intelligence and competitive data. E-procurement systems and price comparison websites have put customers in the bargaining position with the availability of real-time information. This is the type and speed of data organizations need to obtain. Leveraging such information can help an organization counter the threats of new entrants, competitive rivalry, and substitutes with a strong pricing strategy.
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The Toyota production system has been on one of the most important schools of thought in operations, and has spawned several spin-offs. All these approaches are based on similar principles that are collectively referred to as “lean” ideas. While a lean approach to manufacturing and services is straightforward, applying lean to knowledge work can be challenging. Find out why, and what you can do about it.
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The scope of business process outsourcing (BPO) has moved beyond back-office functions. Outsourcing is increasingly being seen as a partnering tool for the generation of revenue and not just cost savings. In this white paper, Manish Dugar, Senior Vice President, Wipro BPO, talks to Outsourcing Center about how BPOs can transform themselves into revenue enablers and help organizations do business better.
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As a company in the financial sector, you place extremely high demands on your call center. The complicated and sensitive nature of the calls requires an agent who is highly trained and experienced. This leads to a high cost per call. At the same time, sacrificing caller satisfaction is not an option. This creates a tough challenge: How do you decrease the cost per call, while improving the customer experience? Download this white paper to find out.
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The Proximity Hotel in Greensboro, North Carolina, is the first hotel in the US to receive Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification at the platinum level from the U.S. Green Building Council. Combining luxury with energy efficiency and environmental sustainability, the hotel places the highest priority on guest comfort. The owner's goal is a sustainable, energy-efficient hotel that never compromises guest comfort. Learn more now.
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Most manufacturing businesses have invested in technology to combat some of their challenges, but primarily to increase efficiency and productivity. However, many have not yet discovered the value of a Web presence—or they use the Web in a very limited way. More than simply serving a marketing role, a Web presence can boost internal efficiency, enhance customer service, and increase sales. Download this white paper to learn more.
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When you know that a new content management system (CMS) is needed for your organization, how do you decide which one to implement? Do you decide based on size, price, ease of use, or something else? Finding the best CMS for your needs can be a challenging task. In this white paper, you'll get an inside look into the CMS selection process, including an overview of the CMS landscape, the proper approach to selecting a CMS, how to narrow and define your selection process, and additional CMS features to consider.
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Over the past decade, the art of doing business has changed. Companies are re-shaping strategies to innovate and compete globally. “Growth Strategies for 2012 and Beyond”, a survey research by Forbes Insights, in association with Wipro Technologies, analyzes changing growth strategies through an exclusive survey of more than 300 CEOs and other C-level executives at global enterprises. Download now to see the results.
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Oil and gas companies have numerous information systems, each churning through vast amounts of data to support business decisions. Successful management of these information systems is not simply a case of keeping the systems running and providing suitable backup mechanisms. It also includes the adoption of professional data management practices. Download this report to learn about effective practices for addressing data management challenges.
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The growing adoption of laptops and other portable devices is changing the foundation of traveling and telecommuting. Laptops have overtaken desktops as the computer of choice for business users. While endpoint protection has been traditionally associated with solutions like antivirus and firewalls, these technologies don’t adequately protect data against theft, loss or unauthorized access. Learn more. Download this white paper now.
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There is an increasing trend among employees toward using their personal mobile device for fulfilment of their work commitments. While this appears to bring many benefits for the employee while, on the face of it, reducing upfront costs for employers, it does introduce significant on-going costs and risks for the organisation. However, with many appealing mobile consumer devices being offered, the trend is likely to increase. Organizations need to work out suitable strategies and policies to manage this complex and hybrid situation in the best interests of both themselves and their employees.
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In this white paper, you’ll learn the ten most important things to consider before you embark on organizational alignment project, how to position HR in the process and what role HR professionals should play and best practices for avoiding common pitfalls, such as planning a multi-tiered rollout to help goals work their way down an organization.
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The world is out of IPv4 addresses and the time of IPv6 is at hand. This paper explores existing file transfer technology used for bulk data exchange under the lens of IPv6 and highlights issues to consider during strategic or tactical planning. Summary results from a series of IPv6 interoperability tests involving 5 clients, 3 browsers, and 6 servers illuminate the findings and recommendations.
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Freight costs can represent a significant component of your supply chain—often around 5-7 percent of sales for manufacturing, retail, and wholesale/distribution companies. For many firms, this responsibility is not managed as well as it could be. This white paper shares 10 best practices in transportation management, with valuable insights from industry professionals.
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By developing, communicating, and implementing an actionable yet flexible enterprise mobility strategy, an organization can unlock new business value from its investments. Having a mobility strategy enables the organization to quickly adopt state-of-the-art, innovative mobile technologies and transform itself into a “mobile enterprise” in a sustainable and secure manner—now and in the increasingly mobile future.
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Too many organizations are still thinking small about mobility, just extending a few processes to their road warriors. But all the pieces needed to turn an enterprise into a mobile force are now available, including powerful mobile operating systems, flexible mobile solutions, and end-user demand. Find out how customers can take advantage of this mobile inflection point and truly transform their enterprises.
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The short list of what retailers need from first-generation mobile capabilities is surprisingly long, spanning deep product information, ratings and reviews, scanning capabilities, full commerce, and more. Download this white paper to learn more about the state of consumer mobile in retail today, as well as the mobile use cases that retailers have currently deployed. Download now.
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When buying a new business phone system you are faced with a wide variety of phone features to choose from. Before you buy, make sure you don’t overlook these commonly forgotten features. This guide details such features as conferencing, auto attendant, mobile extensions, and many other valuable features.
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Promoting band image, improving overall business performance, and keeping customers happy is a main concern of many businesses. This paper demonstrates how the Extended Enterprise platform can help specific verticals to promote and sell their products to external audiences. Know the value of the Extended Enterprise solution in financial services, insurance, government, retail, manufacturing, healthcare, and associations.
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The administration and management of printing can be time-consuming, often relying on manual processes. Many businesses are rethinking their approach to managing the print environment, by either adopting a managed service or implementing centralized print management tools. This can ensure the high availability, reliability and manageability of printing resources, while leaving IT staff free to focus on core activities.
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Computing infrastructure today though versatile must be used wisely. Intelligent workload management (IWM) allows for efficient consumption of computing resources while ensuring business tasks are supported by all needed resources—and that this is all done securely. IWM tools support the building, management, monitoring, and securing of workloads. See how to run your cloud computing system with leading-edge technology.
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Whether starting a business, setting up new office locations, or supporting employees while on the road, hosted voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) can help each situation by setting up “virtual offices.” This white paper will show examples of how a business can lower costs and increase flexibility with a new hosted VoIP solution by creating a virtual office environment.
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To effectively transform succession planning from a manual, paper-based process to one that is systematic and technology-enabled, CEOs must focus on laying a solid foundation supported by strong executive leadership. Read this CEO guide to get five key tips to jump-start your succession planning efforts to better manage risk and ensure business continuity and to know how a strong succession strategy can impact your company.
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This report focuses on how cloud infrastructures are being used by sales and marketing, finance, and operations in professional service organizations (PSOs). It outlines the benefits of using a cloud infrastructure to manage enterprise resource planning (ERP) and other enterprise systems. With the right solutions in place, globally dispersed project teams have unlimited accessibility to secure and reliable information.
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Successful enterprise resource planning (ERP) deployment demands a focused examination of the professional services provided by your organization, and the most efficient infrastructure required to support them. You must provide your most important asset—your people—with effective tools that can be accessed remotely, securely, and immediately. Professional service organizations that understand this will be in a strong position to determine the best cloud-based solution for their needs.
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Universities and other higher education establishments have to address the need for savings across the board. One area is expenses from faculty members and other associated with faculty. The complex mix of expense types needs a flexible yet solid means of managing spend as close as possible to the point of expense that encourages the individual to participate in the process without it being seen as an imposition. Know how.
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Balancing employee requests for keeping mobile channels open, while getting the right level of work and commitment from them, should not be left to chance. All organizations need to fully understand their employees’ mobile usage and behaviors to be able to put appropriate policies in place to ensure business requirements are met while acceptable personal use is still enabled. Read this white paper to know how to do this.
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The case company is rolling out new professional service concepts, addressing the customer need for services fitting the information technology infrastructure library (ITIL) framework. A centrally located team needed ITIL service knowledge and certification before training service development, consulting, and sales. Implement applied the Foundation Fasttrack concept—fast-paced, flexible learning in a familiar environment.
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To establish optimal service and support conditions, the case company, Naviair, chose to adapt and implement information technology infrastructure library (ITIL) service support processes. During the process, Implement Consulting Group assisted with facilitation, ITIL input, and lean competences and tools. The existing procedures and instructions were combined with ITIL’s different service support areas.
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The case company decided to carry out an information technology infrastructure library (ITIL) implementation, and in so doing hoped to make production in IT more visible, increase customer satisfaction, and maintain or increase employee satisfaction in IT. Implement Consulting Group facilitated the process selection and design and managed the requirement collection, selection, and implementation phases of the project.
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The case company implemented an information technology services management (ITSM) system to support information technology infrastructure library (ITIL)–inspired processes. Implement Consulting Group had the project management responsibility during the entire process—from the preliminary requirement collection to selection and implementation to testing and go-live.
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This article focuses on the development of strategic agility as a capability that is built into the design of an architecture. The capabilities, the article argues, are matured through six stages that offer different levels of strategic agility. Strategic agility, once capitalized through modular architectures, enables a company to achieve greater speed and flexibility in information technology (IT) deliveries.
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The managed print services (MPS) market continues to evolve as vendors expand their service offerings beyond the office print environment. Today the business agenda is broader, and MPS must provide a route to business transformation as well as cost efficiency. Businesses thus must place their transformational goals on the agenda at the start of an MPS engagement. See what major MPS providers have to offer to your business.
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Leveraging integrated human capital processes to optimize organizational success. Having a complete view of the entire employee lifecycle—enabled with a centralized, integrated HCM platform—provides executives the information and the tools they need to ensure that they have the most efficient teams in place to achieve success.
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Are you in the market for a business phone system? With the broad array of features available in phone systems today and the full spectrum of providers who sell them, purchasing a new phone system for your business can be a daunting task. Read these condensed best practices to get the right information and ask phone system vendors specific, detailed questions to make the optimal decision to meet your communication needs.
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Operations executives are closest to the processes along the value chain, and as a result are best positioned to drive operational excellence initiatives. Collaboration with other functions is essential, but ultimately, it is the operations function that needs to be responsible for implementation. Find out what senior executives from around the world think about how to achieve operational excellence.
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Spurred on by the increased availability of high-speed data services and wide array of smartphones, many organizations see mobile applications as a way to improve organizational efficiency, increase collaboration, and raise the speed at which business gets done. To get the most out of mobility, organizations need to rethink the technologies, the people, and the processes involved in creating a truly mobile enterprise.
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IT is feeling the pressure to allow users to access sensitive corporate data via their personal mobile phones. Employees want the flexibility to use applications such as enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), e-mail and instant messaging not only from within the workplace, but at any time from any device. Yet, with network security and customer privacy at stake, IT has been slow to bow.
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According to The Nielsen Company, some 150 million people in the US will be using smartphones by mid-2011 to view twitter feeds, conduct searches, consult maps and more. People are increasingly using smartphones to get work done too. As long as it’s governed appropriately, workplace use of consumer-oriented smartphones can lower spending, heighten morale and help employees get more done.
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Not too long ago, business support of mobile workers centered on managing the use of a limited number of Windows-based laptops and BlackBerry smartphones. Today mobile phones are ubiquitous for most employees, and IT departments are being asked to provide broad access to networks, databases and critical enterprise applications while they manage, support and figure out how to protect data from theft and security breaches.
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This paper presents a more holistic approach to software quality management. It advocates systematic monitoring and ongoing analysis with an efficient business intelligence (BI) tool instead of occasional audits, which are time-consuming and selective by nature.
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Rich internet application (RIA) technologies in general and Adobe Flex in particular promise richness, usability and productivity exceeding those of today’s Web applications. However, little public information is available on measured results and savings achieved. This paper fills this much needed gap by providing results achieved by Verax Systems in real-life projects and is intended to provide real data.
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Mature sales and operations planning (S&OP) is more than a sales forecasting or tactical planning tool. S&OP is a decision-making mechanism for aligning strategic plans with sales, operational, and financial plans. Download this TEC executive brief for pointers on selecting an S&OP system, information about how mature S&OP processes can help tackle critical business issues, and key S&OP system capabilities to look for.
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As you evaluate conferencing solutions for your organization, an important selection consideration should be the overall cost of the solution; both initial and on-going. It is necessary to evaluate the cost of your current conferencing solution as well as whether an on-premise alternative will pay for itself in a reasonable amount of time. Find out how.
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Digital Britain is the UK government’s strategic plan for the UK’s digital economy. While social inclusion and rights protection are major themes, the plan will also have a significant impact on businesses—encouraging the distribution and virtualization of business functions, and interconnectivity between companies, customers, suppliers, and employees. Learn how to minimize any harmful impact on your business.
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Every day, companies around the world use instant messaging (IM) and document collaboration systems to solve problems quickly, and maintain real-time connectivity between employees. This kind of instant communication and collaboration can be crucial to a company’s success. Learn about enterprise-level IM systems, and find out which features and functions are most important for corporate and business users.
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For managed services providers (MSPs) aiming to serve small and medium-sized businesses, the ability to capture and retain lasting customer relationships is a determining factor for long-term profitability. Only by clearly and consistently communicating your value to your customer can you hope to attain the role of trusted advisor—a position that will help protect you from losing business to lower-priced competitors. Learn how an integrated, offline reporting solution can help ensure that your customers perceive your value in the ways that matter most to all managers within the customer organization.
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A business' success delivering managed services depends on its ability to improve the delivery of effective and efficient services to its customer base. Learn about ways that managed services providers (MSPs) can develop a higher-value business by improving their ability to attract and retain high-quality customers and provide IT services in an effective manner.
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Service companies that want to thrive need to find a better way to deliver services and run their business. Automating IT services is the answer, and it should be the immediate goal of any company that aims to stay in business as market pressures increase. Looking beyond basic automation, becoming a managed services provider (MSP) should be the long-term goal. Discover ways to ensure your service company's survival in today’s competitive IT services market.
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For IT departments drowning in complex and expensive software maintenance chores, the software-as-a-service (SaaS) model can ease the burden. SaaS reduces complexity by outsourcing most of the infrastructure needed to run software applications, and reduces costs by charging only for what is consumed. But you can also adopt a hybrid SaaS model, in which some systems are outsourced and others are kept in-house. Learn more.
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As you begin a customer relationship management (CRM) initiative, software selection is only one facet of a successful project. You may consider implementing your new CRM system with internal resources. But even in providing a simple CRM solution in your company, a number of steps need to take place, including requirements gathering, configuration, and more. Discover the benefits of selecting a CRM implementation partner.
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Most companies want to use customer relationship management (CRM) applications to “supercharge” their sales forces. They want to gain some advantage with customer retention and acquisition, to manage the sales pipeline, and to have better market insight. But few companies realize these goals, often because of the way CRM is implemented. Find out where a CRM implementation can get off track—and how to ensure CRM success.
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Sole-sourcing business intelligence (BI) software from enterprise resource planning (ERP) vendors is an alluring option for many companies. But in addition to the benefits, there are drawbacks. A study of 100 enterprises from the United States and the European Union that have deployed BI and ERP from the same vendor investigates whether customers are experiencing what sole-sourcing promised to deliver. Learn more.
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The small to midsize market for enterprise applications is already growing. Small to midsize businesses (SMBs) are looking for practical solutions that offer full capabilities at a quick return on investment (ROI). Vendors responding to SMB requirements now offer solutions with rapid implementation, Microsoft Office integration, and mobile support. Find out more about what enterprise application vendors are offering—and what you should be looking for.
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The global march toward making products and services more sustainable is gaining breadth and speed. No manufacturer will be left untouched by this phenomenon. To thrive in this new low-carbon world, you need to have a deeper and more sophisticated understanding of your products’ environmental footprint—from raw materials to manufacturing to distribution to end of life. Learn about life cycle methodologies that can help.
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To reduce time to market and realize the full value of its intellectual property, Cadbury plc needed to ensure compliance with government regulations. The company launched a long-term data management strategy, which included storing all data in a central repository—a product lifecycle management (PLM) system. Find out how Cadbury not only ensured compliance but also improved its response to consumer and customer queries.
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Process manufacturers can no longer rely on purely reactive strategies to product safety. Now, reactive strategies such as lot tracking need to be incorporated into holistic strategies that include proactive measures to assess risk and prevent costly quality assurance (QA) events like product recalls. Learn how you can develop a product safety master plan that reduces risk, protects products, and improves profitability.
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Financial pressures can strain even the most efficient and lean company. So forward-thinking companies should now turn to the chief financial officer (CFO). The strategic CFO is equipped with the tools, plans, and fiscal philosophy that can transform the CFO’s role into a strategic business asset. Discover the processes that allow the CFO to break away from the old paradigm toward better financial and risk management.
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Most document security companies concern themselves solely with the prevention of unauthorized access to content. Online publishers, on the other hand, struggle to find a balance between document security and a satisfactory reader experience. A new approach to document security can give online content publishers the ability to protect their content without adding unnecessary complexity to document access. Learn more.
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Sales and use tax compliance is serious business. To reduce your risk of facing a costly audit, you need to invest time and effort up-front by formulating a transaction tax policy. Responding effectively to audits involves knowing about your company, your operations, and your resources. Find out why a tax policy is important to your organization and how to make it part of your business process and procedures.
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IT departments rarely have the luxury of spare capacity or sufficient knowledge of all the products and technologies that the rest of the organization expects. However, IT is an integral part of most companies, and supporting diverse or specialized technologies and understanding their impact on the business is necessary. Organizations not only need third parties—they need them to be focused and cost-effective. Learn more.
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Do you understand the differences between open source and closed source (proprietary) software? To make an informed decision when choosing between them, you need to know the advantages and disadvantages of each. The main issues in the debate include cost, service and support, innovation, usability, and security. Get a closer look at open source and closed source software solutions so you know what’s right for your needs.
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Retaining good IT staff for clients is no easy task. They face issues regarding competitive rates, contracts, benefits, liabilities, and more. So how do companies determine if they have the right model of retained staff? Or how much of a firm’s IT should be outsourced? What are the typical billing models used by service providers? Get help with these and other questions, addressed from the service provider’s perspective.
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Currently, India’s population is approximately 1.0009 billion. The middle class is large and still growing; wages were low, but now are some of the best in various industries; many workers are well educated and speak English; and investors are optimistic and local stocks are up. Despite political turmoil, the country presses on with economic reforms. But for potential investors, there’s still cause for worry—find out why.
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The debate over climate change is quickly coming to a close and will soon be replaced by a new debate about policy alternatives. These policies will affect business in striking ways, through end-use efficiency standards, increased energy costs, and increased prices of raw materials and components. Take the most important action: analyze and understand your direct and supply chain emissions of greenhouse gases. Learn more.
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You can take two approaches to inventory management: assume it’s a necessary evil and implement an inventory reduction program when cash gets tight, or put an active inventory management process in place, and continually improve the business results. Learn how to view inventory as cash that can be invested in other ways: move from reactive inventory management to lean and active inventory management in six easy steps.
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Automation of human resources (HR) processes and integration across various functions can provide visibility into and analysis of the workforce. Having a single reliable source of information is key to enabling this visibility, which in turn can enable your company to align skills with business objectives. Learn more about how you can optimize your HR systems to meet your current—and future—human capital management needs.
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Strong evidence supports the notion that a well-groomed insider is a key to sustained company performance. In an analysis of 1,800 successions, company performance was significantly better when insiders succeeded to the job of chief executive officer (CEO). Learn why CEO choice matters—and how you can work toward better corporate succession planning by choosing a high-potential executive from within your company.
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The concepts of return on investment (ROI) and total cost of ownership (TCO) have been used for decades in enterprise evaluations of IT investments, including enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. However, with the emergence of important new technological advances, executives are now expanding these traditional formulas to account for new opportunities. Learn more about their new methods for measuring ERP value.
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Survey data shows that companies want to improve their strategic business partnerships. Reflecting on lessons learned from past business relationships, 60 percent of respondents say that in future they’ll place more emphasis on developing personal relationships and setting expectations with business partners. Find out how these companies are creating collaborative networks that include business partners and consumers.
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IT has long been one of the best ways to address business challenges. Yet significant obstacles at the level of IT infrastructure stand in the way. Siloed IT operations and rigid IT management processes can impede business agility. When IT partners with the business to act less as a technology provider and more as a service provider, business objectives can be achieved more efficiently and cost-effectively. Find out how.
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For years, utilities have seen a growing need to enable a smarter electric grid, promote cleaner power sources, and replace aging structures. These issues came into sharper focus when US President Obama signed into law the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). This legislation provides funding for many energy initiatives—however, strict compliance guidelines come with the stimulus plan. Find out more.
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You needn’t be a seer or sage to perceive risk—it’s as predictable and devastating as a Florida hurricane and as far-reaching as a corporate scandal. But you do need to be a visionary to see the underside of the risk coin. This side represents opportunity, competitiveness, and growth. Find out why insight into managing two types of risk, rewarded and unrewarded, can help you explore opportunities for growth and profit.
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The old approaches for collecting, assimilating, and delivering business intelligence (BI) data have not kept pace with today’s increasing demand for rapid decision making. Many companies use static reports and ad hoc queries, but fewer companies use dashboards and portals—which often lack the interactivity required for navigation and visualization of business data. Learn how a next-generation dashboard solution can help.
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Given the dramatic events in the capital markets, everyone is wondering what will happen next—and what the implications are for the wider economy. Learn about the crisis both in the capital markets and the wider economy; explore likely future economic scenarios and the challenges facing companies outside the financial sector—and discover the actions your company should take in order to respond to these challenges.
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Driving sustainable growth requires profitability-focused planning and performance management. Most companies have some type of profitability reporting—but many are investing a lot of effort to produce this information. And the limitations to the information companies currently compile may have a significant impact on decision making. Learn how automating profitability reporting can help your company improve decisions.
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The current global economic instability means firms have to quickly adapt to business conditions. This uncertainty may increase companies’ reliance on business alliances to provide as-needed skills, services, and products. To optimize these alliances, finance should enter the discussion as early as possible. Find out where finance’s true value lies when realigning strategic objectives to include business collaboration.
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Do you know what evaluation criteria you should consider when making a customer relationship management (CRM) purchase? Before embarking on the process of making this critical business decision, learn more about the 10 fundamental functional areas to consider, including acquiring new sales, improving customer satisfaction, getting a consistent view of the customer, and improving renewal, up-sell, and cross-sell.
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Often, enterprise applications such as document management software (DMS) don’t gain wide use within a company or provide full return on investment. For these elements to be realized, you must complete the puzzle by integrating with third-party applications such as accounting, personnel management, or other software products. Discover some integration points and the value-add of integrating business applications with DMS.
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Many business intelligence (BI) tools are designed for professional analysts and not business users. As a result, executives find they still don’t have the information they need to make decisions quickly and effectively. In order to maximize your potential in BI, you must embed it into the daily routine of your entire company. Find out about a BI solution that can help you, with functionality like interactive reporting.
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The key to enterprise performance management is to identity a company’s value drivers, focus on them, and align the company to drive results. But there are many management methodologies—such as the balanced scorecard, performance prism, and five forces. What is the right framework for your business? Find out about six management processes and the tools that can help you asses which metrics framework will work for you.
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IT spending is often an issue for companies, but in difficult economic times it’s even more important to see what benefit IT can bring to the business. But IT investments are most effective when they improve business performance. Find out the degree to which organizations in the United Kingdom (UK) understand what IT is doing for their businesses, and in particular how some companies measure this and benefit from it.
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Monitoring, measuring, and reporting on the financial health of a company is a basic need that requires effective tools and processes to optimize the end result. Underpinning this is the requirement for planning capabilities, using scenario and what-if analysis with simulations and other forward-looking capabilities. The new primary research presented in this report shows that most organizations still have much to do.
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The automation of traditional paper-based processes with technology can lead to unnecessary complexity. This leads to increased costs and other challenges which can be avoided if solutions are simple and fit closely to the business task in hand.
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As global economies become more uncertain, companies face increasing pressure to remain competitive. While an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system can help, it’s only as effective as the effort placed in the implementation. By being aware of the reasons implementations fail and knowing what best practices to use to help ensure success, you can save valuable time and money—and have a higher return on investment (ROI).
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For a company that has grown to the point where an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system is the logical next step, there are enormous benefits to be realized, such as centralizing key business data. ERP helps to alleviate pressures on the company by integrating all data and processes. Find out about the critical components of selecting and implementing an ERP system, so you can get the data management tools you need.
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In hard economic times, IT organizations can maintain operational excellence and sustain service quality while still reducing costs. Achieving this objective involves at least three aspects of application management: managing change, managing technical performance, and managing user performance. Learn more about managing the change process in your PeopleSoft environment, and the value of an integrated change solution.
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Automating finance processes—such as closing the books, reporting, and other labor-intensive processes—reduces finance costs. By streamlining financial processes, you can spend more time on higher-value responsibilities and help ensure your company has a competitive advantage. Find out about the financial solutions many financial managers are implementing to automate their financial processes and financial transactions.
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Despite the consensus that warehouse management systems (WMS) offer many benefits, getting approval for a new system is challenging. You need to get key decision makers in operations, IT, and finance—as well as the executive team and the board of directors—to see value in the proposed WMS. But how can you improve your chances of getting management approval? Discover five strategies for information-gathering and approval.
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Server-based computing has been seen at best as a way to provide those within highly task-based environments with a controlled desktop environment. However, changes in software, hardware, security, and management systems are driving the shift toward server-based computing being suitable for a larger proportion of a company’s user base. Learn how client-side computing can be more tightly controlled yet provide flexibility.
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Network-centric operations (NCO) provide the ability to leverage information networks to generate a more dynamic and agile decision-making space. A fundamental enabler is service-orientated architecture (SOA). The use of industry-standard IT architectures helps ensure that systems can be provisioned rapidly, shared as appropriate, and give the flexibility and response times needed within such challenging environments.
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Given today’s economic climate, companies are looking to create more value by reducing risk and saving costs. As companies increasingly rely on data networks encompassing an ever-growing range and number of internet protocol (IP)-enabled devices and applications, they need to more effectively administer and manage these assets—they can no longer take the management of their IP networks for granted.
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The question constantly being asked by Microsoft® customers is, “How can Microsoft® help our company save money?” Customers want an integrated, adaptable business management solution that works well with, and is similar to, familiar Microsoft® software. Find out about the solutions Microsoft® believes are the best for helping its customers save money, to gain a competitive advantage and fuel business productivity.
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Data center electrical efficiency is rarely planned or managed. The unfortunate result is that most data centers waste substantial amounts of electricity. Today, it is both possible and prudent to plan and measure data center efficiency. In addition to reducing electrical consumption, efficiency improvements can bring higher IT power densities. Learn how to describe, measure, and evaluate data center efficiency.
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In today’s Web-connected era of business, the quest for new ideas that boost competitive edge and deliver new sources of profitability is no longer a solitary activity. The Web has become a source of breakthrough innovation—enterprises no longer have to invest in expensive tools and skills to spark and manage innovation. Get tips on how you can best deploy the Web for better innovation management and profit enhancement.
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Swiss financial services company Global Refund needed to replace its antiquated customer relationship management (CRM) system. To find a mobile-enabled, user-friendly solution that could handle the company’s 15 million yearly transactions, Global Refund turned to TEC. Learn how TEC helped Global Refund turn its long-list of 40 vendors into a short-list of four, and shave two months off the selection process.
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Today’s rigorous reporting requirements suggest there’s a crisis of trust among companies’ stakeholders. But scrambling reactively to implement one-off responses to each new set of compliance regulations won’t rebuild stakeholder trust—such short-sighted solutions just cost a lot of money. An integrated approach to governance, risk management, and compliance (GRC) offers a path to better decision making. Learn how.
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Chief financial officers (CFOs) are under greater pressure, scrutiny, and accountability at companies large and small. An ideal CFO is a steward of decision-support information, cost controller, and more. With data supplied by some of the world’s most successful CFOs, get insight into what CFO responsibilities should be today to achieve extraordinary results, and how they should change to meet future challenges.
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Decision making is at the core of all business activity, as executives set strategy and manage operations by weighing a vast array of factors to arrive at the desired balance of risk and reward. But enormous growth in a company’s size and operations adds complexity to decision-making processes. Learn about the five ingredients of good decision making, according to the responses of 154 executives in a global survey.
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Because sustaining a strong relationship with customers is essential for future growth, the most successful companies work hard to ensure that their customers don’t feel shortchanged. But the benefits of customer satisfaction extend beyond gaining more business with a single account. Find out how to get a better understanding of your customer information, such as customer spending, for more reliable sales growth.
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Best practices in technology can help manufacturers of complex products and equipment get their offerings to market more quickly and profitably by enabling them to become more cost effective and efficient. But there are still challenges to be overcome, due to product life cycle complexity. Discover the best practices that can help you make the product and make it right, on time, and within budget—while making a profit.
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Because business processes are often communicated in an ad hoc and unregulated manner, it can be difficult to standardize processes across organizations, particularly larger ones. TEC analyst PJ Jakovljevic takes you on a guided tour through workflow automation—or business process management (BPM)—and shows how these solutions can help ensure standardized adoption of processes, with highlights on several key BPM vendors.
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In the corporate world, the word “excellence” is used a lot, but what does it really mean? One way to answer that question is to examine what companies that are considered to be excellent have in common. Learn the common characteristics that allow excellent companies to lead in their markets while continuing to innovate, and find out how your company can measure, achieve, and sustain organizational excellence.
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In today's market, companies need to make investments that really count. In this webcast, you will learn why investing in the right technologies and gaining more value out of IT assets already in place should be an important focus for small and midsized companies.
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By automating and optimizing business processes, companies gain the efficiency, clarity, and flexibility they need to support the creative development of products and services. Employees in such an environment spend less time on mundane business tasks, focusing instead on generating new ideas and innovative products. Learn how integrated software solutions can help you invest and innovate to sustain your company’s growth.
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Many organizations do a poor job of measuring the business value of their IT investments. Simple financial metrics are not good enough. But there are a number of consistent, repeatable, and credible measurement methodologies that hold both business users and IT departments accountable. Compare four methodologies, and learn how adding one of them to your overall governance framework can improve your IT investment returns.
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No doubt you’ve heard of such tongue-in-cheek expressions as "Keep it simple, stupid!" and "It’s the economy, stupid!" However, today, the appropriate mantra for those who belong to social networks should be, "Virtual organize it, stupid!" Find out how you can apply the principles and best practices of virtual organization management to any level of organizational structure, in combination with social networking tools.
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Data center commissioning requires tight coordination between vendors, facilities, IT departments, engineers, the commissioning agent, and others. Managed properly, commissioning can deliver an unbiased evaluation of whether a new data center will succeed or not. Managed poorly, it can lead to problematic data center performance issues. Learn 10 common data center commissioning mistakes, and find out how to avoid them.
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The need to share information is greater than ever, with increasingly complex company-wide processes. The movement of digital data, both within a company and across its porous boundaries, carries more and more risk as regulations for data protection and personal privacy are tightened. Discover how to stay ahead of the competition by putting the technology in place that allows you to share content widely, but safely.
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Companies initiating layoffs in response to market problems tend to focus on retaining “high-potential” people. Unfortunately, human resources (HR) departments’ definition of “high-potential” often leaves out a company’s best problem solvers. A better approach is to put your most talented employees to work solving the problems facing your company. Find out how to identify your best problem solvers and help them thrive.
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This white paper highlights the key challenges facing the financial services industry, and discusses how the 2007 Microsoft® Office system can help financial institutions affect business performance with innovative and powerful enterprise capabilities that extend far beyond improving personal productivity.
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When Microsoft researched nearly 200 companies with more than 250 PCs using applications in the Microsoft Dynamics line of business management solutions, the common issue was the need for modern systems. These companies wanted to avoid mistakes caused by manual processes, integration problems with other systems, and more. Explore these companies’ experience with using Microsoft Dynamics to update business processes.
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IT groups aspire to standardize on common integration platforms, but the pressure to integrate with business partners quickly often forces companies to favor expediency over strategy. With so many technology choices, it’s important to understand the role each can play when building an overall business-to-business (B2B) strategy. Learn about the four points you should consider when evaluating vendors and service providers.
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E-mail marketing is one of the most cost-effective ways of reaching audiences. But it’s only effective if it reaches inboxes. As Internet service providers (ISPs) develop increasingly stringent rules to fight spam, spoofing, and phishing, many legitimate messages are getting blocked. Find out how to cope with the constantly changing deliverability landscape and learn key strategies for improving e-mail marketing results.
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Midsize companies seeking high annual growth rates rarely have the resources to pursue risky new businesses or markets. Instead, they must start by protecting their existing businesses and further penetrating existing markets, while keeping an eye out for possible product diversification or extension into new markets. Find out how your company can avoid disaster by properly preparing for new products and markets.
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Organizations preparing to meet globalization head on face a complex set of business and technology challenges—from the supply chain complexity of entering new markets to the need for global visibility and standardized business processes. Learn how globally implemented enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems and integrated business processes are helping companies exploit new markets and lower manufacturing costs.
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With products increasingly becoming commodities, chief executive officers (CEOs) recognize that first-rate customer service is key to enhancing customer satisfaction. While revenue is flattening for many product businesses, service income is increasing. Find out how integrating business processes and customer relationship management (CRM) data can help you deliver new service offerings and improve the customer experience.
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Chief financial officers (CFOs) are moving beyond administrative and transactional tasks and becoming catalysts to improve business performance. In collaboration with business units, they are developing the metrics and data required to track and meet business goals. Find out how they’re capturing and disseminating the information needed to make operating and management decisions, and provide decision support to finance.
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As financial resources become scarcer, maximizing return on assets (ROA) is becoming a key corporate strategy. Unfortunately, metrics governing asset performance are not always available in real time, and are often of low or mixed reliability. Improving visibility into asset performance can help management streamline processes and make better decisions that can ultimately deliver superior corporate results. Find out more.
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With the frenetic pace of global mergers and acquisitions (M&A) showing no sign of abating, nearly every chief information officer (CIO) today must at some point grapple with the enormous challenges of integrating acquired companies. But too often success eludes the merged companies—with IT getting part of the blame. Find out how to avoid common M&A pitfalls and achieve rapid, highly effective post-merger integration.
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In today’s economy, competitive advantage can be short-lived. Companies recognize that continued investments in IT infrastructure are required to stay ahead. Executives in all industries must understand how IT drives value and competitive advantage. Explore the relationship between IT investment and gains in performance and productivity, and find out how leading companies are maximizing their returns on IT investments.
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One of the riskiest moves company stakeholders can make is to acquire and merge with another company or to divest themselves of company assets. Despite the best of intentions, many mergers, acquisitions, and divestitures produce results far below expectations. Learn why failure happens, and how to prevent it by following the overriding best practice in successful acquisitions, mergers, and divestitures: preparedness.
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Companies can reduce operating costs and improve the ways they do business by using customer relationship management (CRM) systems that support real-time decision making. But you must ensure you deploy applications that can leverage industry best practices while retaining the competitive differentiation from a well-honed business process and strategy. Learn about the benefits of using CRM with industry best practices.
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Since the last recession in 2001, customer relationship management (CRM) systems have gained greater acceptance. Though CRM systems haven’t been widely tested under adverse business conditions, results achieved by CRM strategies indicate that businesses with an effective CRM approach will have a vital competitive advantage in recessionary conditions. Discover three key strategies to using CRM as a tool against a recession.
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As companies come to grips with current fiscal realities, choices may result more from reaction than the use of sound judgment. Removing vital resources and reducing services can create an even lower return on investment (ROI) than existed before downsizing. Outsourcing may offer a solution. Learn about the effects that the present financial situation will have on the outsourcing community, including buyers and suppliers.
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Whatever you offer as a service provider, success depends on how well you manage key accounts to ensure long-term relationships and the highest possible margins. But with today’s challenges, it’s difficult to maintain market share, let alone grow. SAP’s All-in-One fast-start program offers a solution that can help you maximize client and service-line profitability by supporting industry best practices. Learn more.
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A failed software implementation can cost companies millions in wasted time and money. To ensure your software selection project isn’t a sorry statistic, use the right metrics to gauge your success. Time, budget, and functionality aren’t enough--focus your efforts on requirements analysis and definition. Take measures to ensure your software meets your needs, and discover how to perform accurate requirements analysis.
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The network of devices used for information, security, and daily transactions is now ubiquitous, and everyone now relies on it even if they don’t acknowledge it. But network failure can cause widespread disruption, unhappy customers, unproductive employees, and lost business. Ensuring network availability, security, and efficiency is a job for experts who need powerful tools to carry out these tasks. Learn more.
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Many companies consider customer relationship management (CRM) the new frontier in marketing. But many are also trying to adapt new CRM applications, or to choose systems that best align with their business needs. But some companies have stumbled and been forced to re-evaluate their strategies to avoid repeat mistakes. Read about six problem areas in CRM software strategy and learn from others’ mistakes, not your own.
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Recent EquaTerra market research finds a consensus among western business leaders that increased globalization is inevitable—and that it will generally be beneficial. Quickly and efficiently leveraging opportunities created by globalization is the best way to avoid being overwhelmed by its challenges. Learn how to compare buyer and service provider data and get insight into developing a responsive global strategy.
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Here's an all-too typical scenario. Management at a multinational company decides to implement a standardized enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution. Everyone expects to cut costs and improve core end-to-end processes. But 13 months later, vital key performance indicators (KPIs) don’t improve as planned. Discover how a company focused on user performance to bring its ERP reality back into alignment with its vision.
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The constant launch of new telecommunications products creates stiff competition, and to manage increasingly complex product portfolios, you should ensure your processes are optimized, your data is accurate, and your solutions are integrated. The first business area you should focus on is order management. Find out how you can better address the challenges of the order-to-cash cycle, decomposition, provisioning, and more.
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Ping Identity provides software for the computer security and identity management industry. Ping wanted to facilitate rapid, high-end development and accelerate time to market for its leading Web security product. When its first outsourcing choice didn’t offer enough Agile development expertise, Ping found another solution that helped reduce costs by 46 percent and doubled in-house performance in key areas. Learn more.
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The one thing you can count on today in business is change, whether it’s customers, business models, or the pace of business. To manage change, companies rely on technology. But the most effective management control and optimization of company performance can be achieved only if you have the right systems. Discover how an integrated system can help you manage data and make better decisions, for a more successful company.
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Making a robust business case to convince management how a software solution can make a valuable contribution to your business isn’t easy. To build a successful case, you need a set of practical examples of what the software does and the benefits it can provide. Examine the strategies and problems associated with achieving your manufacturing objectives, and what the Lighthouse Systems’ solution can do to address them.
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Before you talk to a payroll services provider, you need to ask yourself several important questions about the current situation of your organization, and to consider its budget, expected growth, and more. Here’s a checklist of some of those questions so you can make the most of your consultation with potential services providers. Get organized and know your requirements before you commit to buying a payroll solution.
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Emerging technologies promise the possibility of big benefits. But real success comes only when a technology’s strengths outweigh its limitations. In the field of learning management, this often means user support must be among the solution’s strengths if it is to thrive. Discover how users have influenced today’s top five e-learning learning trends, and how you can use them to unlock your organization’s full potential.
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In today’s changing, competitive world, companies must adopt a continuous improvement methodology to support sustainable and profitable business models. Processes must be seen as a lever for analyzing and optimizing the way firms works. Before you initiate any project involving process automation and management, discover five key points that can help you make continuous improvements in the life cycles of your processes.
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IT organizations struggle with the challenges of shrinking budgets, ever-changing technology, compliance pressures, and more. For greater efficiency, many IT organizations are turning to information technology service management (ITSM) to help improve processes. But there’s still too much focus on technology and not enough on business outcomes. Learn key strategies for changing your approach to delivering IT services.
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Corporate leaders must look carefully at how their companies are organized and staffed, and keep the “right” people. But who must be kept and who can you afford to let go? If you don’t know how to re-engineer your staff, you might not be saving as much as you think. Discover methods and technologies that can help you avoid the pitfalls inherent in any reduction in workforce—to save money while you retain the best talent.
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Managers of learning and talent already know a learning management system (LMS) can help companies cut costs or improve profits. But how do you show that return on investment (ROI) to others? Learn more about the benefits, as well as how to assess the ways an LMS can positively effect your business and to calculate an LMS’s real cost of ownership, whether as a software-as-a-service solution or a traditional purchase model.
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Nucleus Research reports that NetSuite, a leading integrated Web-based business software suite, can deliver a positive return on investment (ROI) in fewer than nine months, by automating processes, boosting sales, increasing productivity, reducing or avoiding headcount, increasing data visibility, and retiring costly legacy systems. Learn how NetSuite business management software provides a positive ROI to businesses.
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Many companies don’t place a high enough value on the importance of learning and development. How can you convince the rest of your organization to get on board? You need to build a business case that involves more than a return on investment (ROI) document or static business plan. Find out ten steps that can help you address immediate problems, build alliances throughout the company, and make a successful business case.
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Small and medium businesses (SMBs) often don’t know how to engage and manage outsourcing initiatives. Both outsourcing provider and seeker should together address several questions when starting a project to outsource business or technology processes. What’s the cost benefit? What are the risks involved? Find out the customer and the vendor perspectives, and how to achieve cost savings and service-level improvements.
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Software-as-a-service (SaaS), also called on-demand software, can be a convenient and profitable business model for vendors. And for clients, SaaS can provide greater processing efficiencies than a company’s own internal systems. As a result, human resources, customer relationship management, or accounting process costs decrease when handled by an SaaS vendor. Learn about the benefits—but also the challenges—of SaaS.
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For many companies, a challenging business event or critical business pain precipitates a conversation about business intelligence (BI). But don’t wait until you introduce new products, upgrade your IT environment, or notice that your inventory is increasing but not your sales. Find out how to build a return on investment (ROI) for your BI applications and projects, so you can leverage your own data before it’s too late.
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Why bother measuring your recruiting performance? The simple answer is, if you don’t measure it, you can’t improve it. Unfortunately, human resources (HR) is great at working with people, but not always so successful at driving strategic value. Turn touchy-feely comments like “our hiring managers are very happy” into hard metrics, and accurately measure your recruiting performance by following a simple six-step process.
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Internet protocol (IP) and voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) systems allow inexpensive transport, cheap phone calls, and simple management of a single network. But the true value is in the new applications IP enables, such as unified communications (UC). How can you use UC to further decrease costs, enhance productivity, and improve customer service? Learn how to go beyond messaging for real-time call control and more.
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To stay ahead of the competition, medical device manufacturers must find ways to speed product development, create manufacturing efficiencies, and increase the effectiveness of sales and marketing investments—while addressing product safety and regulatory compliance. Read about a solution that incorporates best practices while maintaining the flexibility to support the evolving needs of your growing medical device company.
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Efficient procurement and sourcing. Storing and moving inventories. Attracting and retaining customers. Such challenges have an impact on wholesale distributors’ revenues, competitiveness, and profits. To make timely and informed decisions that can impact your business, you need answers to questions like “How can I offer value-added services to improve customer loyalty?” Get the answers to this and other key questions.
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Web 2.0 and social networking tools and trends are having a huge impact on business today. But to realize the benefits of social networking, you need to understand the roles and expectations of your customers, and how to use those tools to position your company appropriately. Get tips on how to empower your customer engagement with Web 2.0 and customer relationship management (CRM) 2.0 social networking tools.
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Statistics show that nearly one-fifth of IT projects make it to the finish line—so project planners need to be aware of the primary factors that can ruin a project, and how to prevent them from happening. One of the biggest obstacles is poor team communication, even when you have the best talent and a good work environment. Learn about the top three techniques that can help you get your people working together as a team.
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According to a major IT research firm, less than 20 percent of IT projects are completed on time and on budget. Project management (PM) experts agree that internal resistance is one of the factors that can ruin a project. What does it take to get your people to say “yea” instead of “nay”? Find out other common causes of project failure, and how to encourage your team members to embrace change and communicate better.
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Simulation software can give you valuable insights into the forecasted outcomes of your business processes and decision making. But if you don’t have the type of simulation software than can develop and analyze the types of models made for your particular industry or service offering, you won’t get insights that really help. With this concise list, learn about the functions of three types of computer simulation software.
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Three problems are common to most complex environmental modeling efforts: they’re uncertain, multifaceted, and hard to communicate. Overcoming these challenges is especially important when modeling the performance of proposed and existing radioactive waste management facilities. Graphical simulation tools can help represent uncertainties, integrate all aspects of the system, and ease the presentation of complex models.
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Identifying and managing the risks associated with water resource projects is a challenge due to the variables of water systems. To overcome this challenge, you need to compile all available information into a framework that can be used to predict the outcome of alternatives. Find out how a computer simulation model can help water resource engineers improve the financial and environmental performance of their operations.
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According to an IAG survey, 70 percent of companies lack the fundamental competencies within business requirements discovery to consistently bring in projects on time and on budget. Why do so many fall short in properly diagnosing their requirements failures? Discover how placing a greater focus on the combined aspects of business requirements—people, process, and tools—can provide better project outcomes.
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Most businesses recognize the strategic importance of customer relationship management (CRM), but some small to medium businesses (SMBs) continue to use basic contact managers or simple spreadsheets to track customers, manage leads, and collaborate on sales. Achieving great results requires more than just installing CRM software. Learn how assessing your business’s CRM maturity level can help build your road map to success.
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Some managers have concluded that strategic planning is nothing more than an exercise in futility, to be taken out and dusted off at annual meetings. However, strategic planning can still help direct your company and improve earnings. The trick is strategizing well—which means having all the information you need, when you need it. Find out how to hone your competitive edge with integrated business planning capabilities.
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Over 80 percent of consultants in service organizations consider spreadsheet-based business plan modeling inadequate. Weak client–partner relationships reflect this inadequacy. An integrated business planning and modeling platform can provide deeper insight into a range of strategic and operational issues. Find out how this can result in enhanced decision making and optimized long-term client engagement and satisfaction.
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Although information technology service management (ITSM) is not a new discipline, many organizations have yet to adopt it as a part of their IT service improvement strategy. To be successful, businesses must start by building a custom road map. Read about how focusing on long-term, strategic objectives—including a realized return on investment (ROI)—can greatly improve your IT service delivery and support.
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In the public sector, where it’s often more about process than the business case, recompeting a current outsourcing relationship doesn’t always make the most sense for ensuring continued value. Due to the cost and time investment in the recompete process, it can often cause more problems than solutions. In many cases, outsourcing agreements simply need to be updated to meet changing business requirements. Find out how.
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In the past 10 years, business process and IT outsourcing markets have become globalized, raising some key issues for outsourcing buyers. How can you develop a service delivery model for your business that fully exploits global sourcing opportunities while supporting overall corporate strategies, goals, and principles? By developing a set of integrated capabilities and processes as part of your core competency.
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Empirical evidence demonstrates that the benefits of a distributed IT services model are considerable—yet many companies still resist the change. If IT professionals took the time to fully understand the positive impact of distributed services models on both cost and value, they’d be better equipped to fight organizational resistance and develop a road map for successful change. Find out how you can build yours today.
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A contact center is a mission-critical component of any organization’s operations—regardless of who they service. Yet stakeholders often remain dissatisfied with its performance. In the past, contact centers benefited from advances in information and technologies, yet many companies struggled to determine how they could take advantage of these benefits. Find out how embracing both old and new technologies today can work.
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For many organizations, undertaking IT and business process outsourcing involves everything from finding and assessing providers, to selecting locations, to determining which services are required. But the hardest part of outsourcing occurs after the deal is done. To help businesses ensure consistency in outsourcing governance, there are nine critical factors to keep in mind that can help guarantee its success.
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Senior finance executives in all industries recognize the long-term benefits of transaction-processing automation on resource allocation. Transaction automation frees time and resources that can be allocated for decision support and financial planning and analysis. The result: sustained, profitable top-line growth and risk reduction. Find out other benefits of improving your back-office processes through automation.
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With the number of vehicles worldwide expected to triple in the next few decades, the toll collection market will need to adapt to meet demand. Increasing traffic will make the use of conventional toll plazas unfeasible. Electronic toll collection (ETC) systems can help by supporting multilane, free-flow tolling that can be tailored to specific standards and processes. Find out what you need to know, before ETC passes you by.
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In today’s Internet-connected global economy, the market doesn’t allow for companies to sit back and relax into a comfortable niche. Customer loyalty is ever harder to maintain, and you risk losing your business to competition if you can’t respond quickly to market change. Before you lose any more ground, find out how to replace your disconnected, redundant business processes with flexible and efficient ones integrated by IT.
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To make timely, well-informed decisions, you need just that: time and information. This means having fast access to accurate information from every department in your company, and time away from fighting fires to focus on priorities, problem solving, and marketing strategy. We examine how you can gain reliable, accessible information from efficient, integrated IT systems—and use that information to make faster, smarter decisions.
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Developing business acumen isn’t easy, but it is fundamental to business alignment. What does that mean exactly? It means understanding what it takes for a business to make money, and it involves the financial literacy of how strategies, decisions, and actions impact the bottom line. Through classroom-based training, your managers and employees can learn how these connections are made to the business. Find out more.
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The rules for success in today’s fiercely competitive market are constantly changing. Through service delivery innovation, a company can differentiate itself. But how do you change your service delivery methods to keep existing clients and entice new ones? A networked organization is one of six characteristics of successful service delivery innovation. Find out how you can put them into practice and attain the benefits.
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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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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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Although enterprise resource planning (ERP) software industry consolidation is nothing new, the constantly changing market dynamic affects product lifecycles, supportability, and ERP return on investment. In fact, you could say that it both creates new potential and contributes to old problems. Get a handle on what this changing market means for you, with this overview of industry consolidation pros and cons.
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The US energy sector has experienced recent loss of counterparty confidence. To offset this, managing credit risk has become paramount. Knowing what the risks are is just the start—risk mitigation methods must be used to reduce overall credit risk exposure and to free up capital resources. Find out three key ways to mitigate risk, and how a clearing, novation, and release agreement (CNRA) can help guarantee collateral.
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Production lines and distribution centers have optimum target levels for leanness, but reaching these levels can be difficult. By implementing LeadTime Technology (LTT), manufacturers benefit from leaner inventories, greater customer service levels, and increased economic profit. Find out what the five most important points on LLT and lean operations are and how applying these tools can work to your advantage.
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A business phone system is only as effective as its implementation. Despite its streamlined architecture, installing a voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) telephone system can present some challenges. The key to a successful rollout is a well-planned, phased approach. Following these 10 steps can help you lay the foundation for a system overhaul as well as streamline your business communications for many years to come.
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Construction companies often use a combination of outdated, paper-based, and software tools to manage their projects—which puts them at a severe disadvantage. Online project management, however, can provide you with a more efficient method to manage projects. Find out why these businesses are shifting to owner-centric solutions, and discover what main factors you should consider before implementing a web-based tool.
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It’s an inescapable, undisputable fact that most organizations have conflict between IT security and IT operations. Having been given two distinctive—yet potentially contradictory—goals, in a sense they were destined to be at odds with one another. What does it take to bridge the gap between these two teams to achieve compliance? Can standardized processes and software tools help (or hinder) this effort? Find out here.
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With the growing significance of services to the bottom line, it’s never been more important to effectively monitor, measure, and manage your services business. Knowing which key performance indicators (KPI) can help drive success and contribute to your bottom line is essential. But with over 150 KPIs available, where do you start? Discover how these few small key improvements can help your service business performance.
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For a decade, IndustryWeek and the Manufacturing Performance Institute (MPI) Census of Manufacturers have provided data to US manufacturers. This year, MPI fielded a similar survey in Canada, offering an intriguing look into the differences between the Canadian and US manufacturing landscapes. This executive summary presents combined data from these surveys, aimed at helping manufacturers meet future challenges.
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Why choose on-demand when there are so many integrated software solutions on the market? Because on-demand packages provide a number of benefits that can help IT focus on innovation and creating true business value, rather than dealing with network headaches. But along with the benefits there are a number of challenges. Read more about these challenges and how you can manage your on-demand implementation project.
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In today’s business environment, companies that used to compete with each other routinely form alliances to attain their business objectives. Find out how PMOLink, a business consulting firm, managed an enterprise resource planning (ERP) selection project for a client by joining forces with Technology Evaluation Centers (TEC). The end result: a best-match ERP system for the client—nine months ahead of schedule.
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Soudronic AG’s incoming order confirmations were getting out of hand and finding misfiled critical documents was increasingly laborious. Before implementing OCR for AnyDoc, documents were printed and filed in binders, together with supporting documentation. With AnyDoc’s optical character recognition solution, Soudronic can retrieve its documents more quickly, and its labor and storage costs have been reduced.
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The nature of software is that it constantly evolves, requiring regular updates throughout its lifetime as new features are introduced. But managing and implementing these changes is often left to experienced administrators who are often overwhelmed with other projects. Find out how moving to a delegated administration model can help your business improve its administrative productivity, system availability, and security.
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Increasing user productivity is an ongoing challenge for many companies. While an abundance of online information and applications is available to them, facilitating fast and secure access to the information can be a complex task. An integrated provisioning and single sign-on (SSO) solution provides secure access to the network from the moment an employee starts the job—enabling full productivity from day one.
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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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Have you ever received a call from your existing long-distance phone company asking you to switch to its service and wondered why they are calling? Chances are the integrity of its data is so poor that the company has no idea who many of its customers are. The fact is, many businesses suffer from this same problem. The solution: implement a master data management (MDM) system that uses an accurate data matching process.
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Kelly-Moore Paints, the largest employee-owned paint company in the US, was looking to consolidate all business activities into one company-wide platform. The challenge: it had only 10 months in which to complete the project—including requirements-gathering, evaluation and selection, and implementation. Find out how Technology Evaluation Centers (TEC) helped Kelly-Moore take control of its software selection project.
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Businesses today are increasingly committed to Web-enabled applications as a cost-effective way of delivering critical business solutions. But as more and more businesses follow suit, it becomes increasingly apparent that better performance and availability across the Internet must be realized by the early movers in order to maintain their lead. With the deployment of advanced products and services, this can be achieved.
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Blade computing is a new computing architecture that provides a highly dense, scalable, and powerful flexible platform to support businesses’ software needs. Blade architecture was once used for simple server consolidation, but it has now become a way of managing IT assets, which provides significant business benefits. Find out how a blade system can benefit your company while optimizing your existing infrastructure.
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Explosive data growth, shrinking backup windows, and unreliable restores are just a few of the issues you have to manage on a daily basis—especially if you’re using a legacy tape backup application system. But you can still use your legacy system by extending its life and enhancing its reliability with a hardware-based disk compression solution. Find out how, and considerably reduce your backup and recovery times.
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Eight years ago, architect Kevin Harris, like many other architects, found it difficult to accurately charge clients for his services. But after attending courses to learn the proper methods for tracking time and costs, he realized that what he really needed was an integrated system. Since implementing BillQuick time billing and project management solution, Kevin has been able to easily and accurately manage billing.
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Accounting firm Fox and Fiorino P.A. knew there had to be a better way to take care of billing. With most of its billing being entered manually, no real-time reporting was available to ensure accuracy. So in 2003, the company implemented BillQuick. With this automated time-keeping and billing solution, Fox and Fiorino has improved the quality of its information, reduced overtime, and increased revenues and cash flow.
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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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With the recent amendments made to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP), businesses must take a closer look at how they manage their electronic data. Recent studies have shown that many companies are not prepared for how these changes will affect their business. To improve their governance procedures to meet these new requirements, businesses must invest in technology that can adequately preserve electronic data.
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Wi-Fi has become the access method of choice for users at the office, at home, and on the road. According to research, nearly 200 million Wi-Fi chipsets were sold in 2006 alone. But can Wi-Fi work effectively in a wireless local area network (WLAN) environment? Yes it can. To deliver Wi-Fi more reliably to increasingly diverse devices requires a self-configuring platform that covers larger areas and higher user densities.
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Today, dozens of independent operating companies and international carriers offer Internet protocol TV (IPTV) services to homes around the world. But IPTV for in-home distribution has been a weak link in the IPTV delivery chain—until now. Ruckus Wireless multimedia systems can help overcome current Wi-Fi limitations and enhance subscriber experience by uniquely enabling a whole-home network for video, voice, and data.
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Corporate governance encompasses the processes and systems by which organizations operate—and it affects every business. To effectively participate in governance processes, businesses should consider closed-loop service oriented architecture (SOA). Although stand-alone applications for governance, management, and security exist, find out why they do not enable the demand and value management that closed-loop SOA offers.
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Corporate IT departments and independent software vendors (ISV) alike are faced with a number of similar business challenges. One such challenge is the problem of how to derive additional value from their existing Windows and UNIX software applications and create advantage with Web-enabled solutions. Discover the pros and cons of Web-based and Web-enabled applications—and learn about the solutions that lead the pack.
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Linux operating systems are taking the world by storm, and have seen double-digit growth rates for seven consecutive quarters. With its promise of higher performance and better stability and security, Linux has become the alternative to traditional Windows-based servers. By deploying Linux in key strategic areas and taking advantage of application publishing solutions, you can lower your costs and speed time-to-market.
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Nearly half of all US companies have serious data quality issues. The problem is that most are not thinking about their business data as being valuable. But in reality data has become—in some cases—just as valuable as inventory. The solution to most organizational data challenges today is to combine a strong data quality program with a master data management (MDM) program, helping businesses leverage data as an asset.
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Despite the defensive efforts of firewalls, intrusion detection, antivirus solutions, and the like, criminals, careless employees, and contractors have exposed more than 158 million digital records of consumers personally identifiable information since 2005. With this critical need for stronger network security, Qualys has developed an on-demand solution that effectively manages these vulnerabilities.
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While most information vulnerabilities stem from external intrusion and theft of data, there remains a greater potential for information to be lost, stolen, or accidentally erased by internal sources—the employees. Don’t let this be the case with your business! Information vulnerability management (IVM) is a corporate issue—one that needs addressing. To learn how you can reduce your exposure, download this white paper.
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As 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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To keep your growing business competitive, your data center must be secure, protected against disaster, and available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. But if managing IT is not your core competence, what are your options? A managed service provider (MSP) can help. Learn about the benefits of outsourcing data center management, and make sure your crucial business applications are always available when you need them.
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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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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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Any geographically distributed business with three or more remote sites has likely dealt with tape-based backup systems. If this sounds like your business, then you certainly understand the complexities involved with managing growing data—not to mention the risks. The good new is that an agentless, multisite backup and recovery software solution is available that can offer a high-speed alternative to tape-based systems.
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Today’s IT professionals are often challenged by unrelenting changes in the enterprise, increased data growth and compliance regulations, and geographic distribution of assets, to name a few. Keyboard/video/mouse (KVM) over Internet protocol (IP) can help by providing an effective tool that can remotely manage servers—regardless of their physical location. When looking for a KVM over IP solution, you should consider some basic requirements first.
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For many years, the various departments at Walker Foods worked independently of one another, which seriously impeded the flow of data throughout the enterprise. It was clear that an integrated system was in order, and after a few initial upgrades, the company decided on AppFinity’s WebCustomer overall online solution. Since its implementation, Walker Foods has increased order accuracy and significantly reduced expenses.
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An estimated 55 percent of users of business critical applications work in remote locations. With so many users working remotely, networks become congested and user productivity suffers. Until now, wide area network (WAN) monitoring and shaping has required special appliances, but there’s a new alternative software-based solution available that leverages the power of the user’s PC—providing unprecedented traffic control.
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Is it possible to easily migrate from legacy tape devices to encrypting tape drives and still keep costs to a minimum? The answer is yes. With a comprehensive key management storage security system, a manageable and affordable migration process is achievable with a simple 3-step process. This process includes many benefits, such as a complete feature set that enhances system auditability and minimizes operational costs.
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What’s all this hype about wikis anyway? According to Gartner’s Hype Cycle, wikis are descending from the crest of a hype wave and coasting into areas where real business value can be recognized. Why? Because their ability to allow corporate users to collaborate on any number of internal projects in an online environment where everyone is given an equal voice is not only empowering, but speeds the process of innovation.
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What can a managed Subversion solution do to help .NET businesses solve their integration problems? Subversion meets the challenge of software development by allowing teams to use branching and tagging methods that help them work better with their QA organizations. It also saves .NET businesses a lot of money over setting up and maintaining a development infrastructure in house, which keeps the cost of ownership manageable.
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What does Visibility’s .NET enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution have that others don’t? .NET technology. And because it contains no legacy code, it provides a system that’s accessible using a web-browser and has a user interface equal in functionality to a client-server application. In fact, any client PC with Internet Explorer 5.5 or later can operate it—without compromising the quality of the user experience.
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Creating a give-and-take relationship with a software vendor will help you get the most from any application. If your organization does not use a request for proposal (RFP) tool, use this checklist to help you with your software selection process. Make this solution-provider checklist work for you: your best-fit vendor and the software tailored to your business needs are easier to find than you think.
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In their efforts to accelerate time to market and improve business process efficiency, many marketing organizations adopt customer relationship management (CRM). But CRM often falls short in exploiting the exponential growth of content associated with product and brand marketing. By using a digital asset management (DAM) solution, however, you can increase productivity and achieve a favorable return on investment (ROI).
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In today’s business world, heightened privacy concerns and tightened regulations such as the US Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) Act have forced organizations to improve their workflow and archival and records management processes. That's why many results-oriented organizations are now using workflow software—bringing together people, processes, and documents to improve efficiency, reduce costs, and meet compliance requirements.
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Today’s complex enterprise networks present unique challenges to those whose task it is to manage and secure them. Existing security measures that worked yesterday may not be sufficient tomorrow. But by combining Configuresoft’s Enterprise Configuration Manager (ECM) with Microsoft’s System Center 2007, businesses can secure their data, protect their bottom lines from costly downtime, and meet regulatory standards.
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IT is often characterized as distinct groups pursuing individual agendas and launching disconnected initiatives to increase operational efficiencies. To overcome this, organizations need a set of capabilities that can help improve coordination between IT and the rest of the business while facilitating effective service management. Adopting foundational technologies and a best-practice benchmark is a good place to start.
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Most businesses today depend on their own IT departments to satisfy corporate governance objectives and meet increasing customer demand. Unfortunately, many have failed to clearly demonstrate to themselves—and to their customers—that they are truly managing their business. Only when the IT department understands what the business wants can it benchmark itself and build continual improvement plans that can meet these demands.
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Manufacturers’ business needs have changed significantly over the past few years, evolving the roles that technology plays within the manufacturing process. Two key technologies—enterprise resource planning (ERP) and product lifecycle management (PLM)—have developed into key success factors for manufacturers and when combined, provide a collaborative environment that adds value and helps in maintaining a competitive edge.
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Developing a good disaster recovery plan (DRP) in today’s business world is a must. In fact, downplaying the importance of a DRP can be costly—especially if you’re a small to medium business (SMB) that is slow in adopting DRP. Recent studies have shown that 40 percent of businesses that have encountered a disaster close their doors within the following five years. To stay afloat, here are ten steps that should be taken.
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Organizations of all sizes face similar challenges when managing storage—not enough capacity or protection. Help has arrived with Internet small computer system interface storage area networks (iSCSI SANs)—and they're steadily gaining momentum. With iSCSI SANs, businesses can effectively manage their storage needs, while lowering costs and increasing security. Find out why many industry leaders are choosing iSCSI today.
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Today’s extensive use of data collection tools coupled with the easy access to communication networks has woven more devices and systems into the fabric of our daily lives. As the scale of integration and complexity grows, so does the need for the appropriate paradigm to address it. In order to scale, system software architecture must be organized around a common-shared information model that can span multiple systems.
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Information lifecycle management (ILM) is rapidly gaining acceptance as a process crucial to the success of many IT initiatives. The reason for this is the importance of managing data. With the growing demand for ILM comes a variety of solutions that follow a disjointed, point product approach. By choosing an ILM software designed to scale to its needs, a business can benefit from software built on a unified platform.
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Every day, sensitive business information finds its way into the wrong hands—through external breaches or internal theft. Such data is highly regulated, and any risks of exposure can result in stiff penalties and legal liabilities. Many of these security risks lie in the test/dev environments, and as such require a solution that protects data application clones from unauthorized access without jeopardizing its integrity.
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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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For automotive manufacturers and their suppliers, consumer demands are high and global competition is fierce. To compete successfully, manufacturers must meet expectations and still generate an acceptable profit margin. By using QAD’s Just-in-time (JIT) Sequencing process together with its Manufacturing Execution Workbench (MEW) tools, automotive manufacturers will have the foundation needed to meet these challenges.
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Three strikes—your out; that’s what lockout management does. But employees often forget the many passwords needed to access information. What ensues is a flood of calls to the help desk that, over time, can become a huge administrative burden. Adopting a strong password policy is critical. By implementing a lockout management strategy via automated management solutions, businesses enhance security and improve workflow.
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When Naghi Group’s annual revenue began to soar, it realized that running core business operations on multiple systems was no longer feasible; its current solution lacked the integration capabilities necessary to communicate with its distribution and manufacturing departments. After only a few months since integrating VAI’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution, Naghi has already realized its many benefits.
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Financial service institutions spend thousands of dollars every year on securing their networks from external breaches, but often fail to think about possible internal threats. Employee fraud has become a growing problem in the financial sector—one that many institutions are not fully prepared to handle. Implementing automated detection technologies, however, can be their first line of defense to eradicating this problem.
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While virtualization technology can simplify server management and reduce operating costs, in production environments it presents a disaster-recovery challenge. The problem: simply backing up a host server doesn’t always ensure that data within virtual machines is recoverable. With Acronis’s True Image, IT managers can rest assured their data, settings, applications, and operating systems are protected against disaster.
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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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Today’s business environment is more mobile than ever. With more employees traveling—using laptops, personal digital assistants (PDAs), and home computers to conduct business—vulnerabilities increase. Companies are now protecting their digital assets with full disk encryption (FDE). Recent advances in FDE allow businesses to protect data stored on users’ mobile devices, without jeopardizing intellectual property.
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Protecting your company’s data is not only wise, but often legally necessary. In order to beef up their data security programs, more companies are implementing full disk encryption (FDE). In the past, FDE was software based, which left it open to greater security risks. With the advent of new technology, however, it is now possible to migrate from software- to hardware-based FDE while still protecting your existing systems.
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Why is Vyatta’s open source networking approach so successful? Because it is in touch with today’s users needs. By eliminating the reliance on specialized hardware, Vyatta’s open source, Linux-based approach to networking is changing the way networks are being purchased and deployed. With its strong community of users, Vyatta is challenging even proprietary networking vendors like Cisco. We challenge you to find out more.
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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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As products become more complex and customer expectations continue to rise, service and support become increasingly difficult. So how can service and support managers transcend these problems and use each customer interaction to build customer loyalty and drive service leveraged revenue? By empowering customers with Web 2.0 technology and enabling users to manage their own experiences. Find out how.
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Server and data center consolidation has never been more important. Issues such as server sprawl and increasing costs have made consolidation the number one priority among IT managers. New virtualization technologies, however, are helping data centers combat these problems. Learn about the factors that are driving consolidation initiatives today, and find out what best practices can be used for ensuring its success.
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As your business grows, so too does the complexity of your data center. Along with this complexity, there are problems such as the inflexibility caused by operating systems, applications, and associated data, which are bound to the hardware they are installed on. Discover eight ways to optimize the infrastructure in your data center using virtualization products designed to work with your current technologies.
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Today’s data centers are an increasingly complex mixture of server platforms, hardware, operating systems, data, and applications that have accumulated over time. So how do you take your data center from a tangled mess of suboptimal servers which may be hampering your service levels, to one that can maximize performance? With the use of virtualization technology, data center optimization can become a reality.
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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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Supplemental product or technical data is typically delivered separately from the information contained within portable document format (PDF) files. This can make it difficult for users to locate the additional content for download. With the CopyFILE plug-in application, however, companies can integrate supplemental product information by using links within a PDF file—thus allowing content to be easily distributed.
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To build or not to build—that is the question. Is building an enterprise application from scratch better than modifying existing application code? With a .NET framework, the answer is an emphatic yes. Building applications from scratch using only .NET code not only provides cost savings, it also allows software developers to extend applications to users via the Internet—without sacrificing functionality or security.
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If you base your selection of an outsourcing partner on a service provider’s strengths, it can be difficult to make an apples-to-apples comparison among the various models. The best way to make a comparison in a thoughtful and effective manner is to develop individual specifications matching buyer needs with service provider strengths in order to make an enduring match. Find out how.
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Bridging the gap between an application’s problem domain and its code can be difficult, even for the best software engineers. Bridging these two diverse worlds—each with its own language—requires a finished application that creates an intersection between the two. By building a domain-specific modeling (DSM) language and generator using MetaEdit+, engineers close the gap and pave the way to better productivity.
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Out of 100 IT projects, 94 will start over again at least once. Before your company launches its next package implementation or upgrade, make sure you don’t cripple the project from the start. Make sure your company has a clear understanding of how important the requirements definition stage is, and carries it out properly. Most importantly, find out about tools and ideas you can put into practice immediately.
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There is a high demand for economical and efficient enterprise applications. The Internet and open source software are creating opportunities for software vendors to deliver their software as a service. By transforming your own applications, you give your clients access to your solutions on the Web, on a per-use, per-project, or subscription basis—giving them the inexpensive, accessible service they want.
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Implementing IT solutions that fulfill all corporate requirements requires exhaustive research and analysis. But the reality is that most organizations have neither the time nor the resources to do all this. Indeed, such an approach is largely impractical, since by the time you’ve built your perfect solution, it may already be out of date. So what are your real options? Three words: Business. Process. Integration.
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Many small companies have limited resources to devote to the implementation and maintenance of enterprise resource planning (ERP). Fortunately, the price performance of ERP and the underlying infrastructure supporting it have improved steadily and significantly over the past two decades. In fact, solutions that were once beyond the reach of these small companies are now well within their grasp.
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There is no single antivirus engine on the market today that is the fastest and most effective at identifying viruses, spam, or other threats. According to a recent survey, 97 percent of organizations have antivirus software installed, yet 65 percent have been infected at one time or another since. One way to reduce the chance of virus infection is to install multiple antivirus scanners at the mail server level.
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Is it beneficial to use multiple types of virtualization software together? The answer: yes. Combining complementary virtualization technologies provides a stronger, more robust solution that reduces costs, maximizes return on investment (ROI), and minimizes the number of servers to manage. By consolidating these technologies, organizations can get the most out of the application, hardware, and operating system (OS).
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Customers, employees, and partners are an integral part of any business—each playing an important role in its success. But how is it possible to share vital information between them? In order to access information, understand trends, and build better processes, a system that enables multi-user collaborative technologies is required. Without these collaboration tools, business process management (BPM) cannot be successful.
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Today more than ever, retailers are faced with the challenges of selling locally while competing globally. To be successful, they must provide a shopping experience that inspires customer loyalty. Retailers that understand their customers’ shopping habits can build strategic global supply chains that anticipate demand. One way to achieve this is with a scalable technology platform based on industry standards.
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As the creator of performance apparel, Under Armour has become the fastest-growing designer and distributor of its category of apparel in the world. In 2005, to sustain growth and compete on a global scale, it needed a flexible IT landscape that could offer better visibility to data and scale over time. With an out-of–the-box scalable solution, Under Armour is on its way to reaching the $1 billion (USD) revenue mark.
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Just when you thought you had all your security measures figured out, along comes the portable storage device to make you question them all over again. With the popularity of portable consumer products—and their ever-increasing storage space—comes a greater risk of losing sensitive corporate data. To secure corporate data, companies must not only focus on perimeter security, but on internal security weaknesses as well.
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Benchmarking is a process where companies compare their performance over time against their competition. In doing so, they can identify where their strengths lie and where improvement may be needed. The point of benchmarking is to focus on areas that will yield the best return. For companies to succeed in their benchmarking efforts and gain a sustained competitive advantage, five key steps should be considered.
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Improving the supply chain is essential for any company that wants to gain or maintain a competitive edge. To do this, companies are adopting sales and operations planning (S&OP) strategies. Years ago—when the pace of market change was slow—S&OP was a nice-to-have; today it’s a business imperative! But it doesn’t have to happen overnight. By taking a five-step approach, companies can implement S&OP at their own pace.
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As with any hot market, point-to-point wireless is bait for the pathologically
opportunistic. In this atmosphere—often termed "anarchy"—trust can t be a matter of faith. To get in on the wireless opportunity without getting shafted, you need to know a few basic and incontrovertible facts concerning the difference between licensed and license-free wireless. In fact, a successful outcome depends on choosing the right one.
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"Wild West" is a metaphor often used to describe the wireless wide area network (WAN) business. But it s worse than that. In the Old West, everyone had a gun. In this business, customers are defenseless. What s going on? Well, for one, vendors are playing fast and loose with terminology that should mean something. Wireless is compelling, but how do you decide what s right for you—and who do you trust?
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Why do some customer relationship management (CRM) implementations fail? The answer: companies’ lack of understanding of their current CRM environments, and of what areas need modification or improvement. Companies with a clear understanding of what they need from a CRM solution—as well as of what CRM means to their business—are more likely to succeed. To clinch that success, some key elements should be assessed first.
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In business, planning plays a fundamental role in analyzing and forecasting key financial data. While forecasting future events is one benefit of planning, it can also be used to achieve a series of objectives, including regulatory compliance. In order to achieve these objectives, companies should consider implementing a unified customer performance management (CPM) solution—one that takes compliance into consideration.
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For most companies, e-mail is an integral part of the business workflow and a primary channel for communication. For these reasons, e-mails can be considered legal business documents and should be retained for a predefined period to satisfy government regulations. With an e-mail archiving system, message contents and attachments are stored in a read-only format, ensuring they are archived in their original state.
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Research shows that between 65 and 95 percent of all e-mail is considered spam. On an individual level, spam is an annoyance more than anything else, but on a company-wide basis, spam causes significant problems—and the cost to manage it is sizeable. Spammers are always one step ahead of antispam vendors, so to combat this persistent problem, companies need a single-source product that can eliminate spam for good.
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Over the past few years, vulnerabilities have exploded across all types of platforms—leaving IT security and operations teams scratching their heads. Today, many companies use the scan-and-patch method for managing vulnerabilities—a reactive security process that should be avoided. By combining assessment and remediation, companies create a vulnerability management program that can rapidly respond to emerging threats.
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The days of storage area networks (SANs) built with hubs and based on private, arbitrated loops are gone. Today’s fully public switches—which include a variety of switch features—make managing large SANs a lot easier. The key to a flexible SAN is the switch’s ability to create zones, which allows the SAN to be partitioned into various groupings and enables SAN managers to allocate storage where it makes the most sense.
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The first step to a successful storage area network (SAN) implementation is preplanning. Architecting a SAN not only helps solve issues of storage consolidation, it facilitates day-to-day data center support and maintenance. A SAN investment should save support dollars, not require additional support resources. With a sound implementation strategy, costly upgrades—and many headaches—can be avoided.
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Now that you have planned and assessed your new system, it’s time to explore the next phase of the integration process: design and pre-deployment testing. Part 4 of this 4-part e-book series provides a basis for the exploration of network design. In addition, it includes a report card that will help you select the appropriate design and validation software tools for your Internet protocol telephony (IPT) system.
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When deploying any new system, preparation is key—and Internet protocol telephony (IPT) systems are no exception. Part 3 of this 4-part e-book series provides some basic steps you can take to successfully deploy voice and data network services. A complete capabilities inventory has been included to help you ensure that every feature of your current system will be considered for inclusion in your new system.
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By some estimates, there are over 8,000 sales taxing jurisdictions in the US—and they implement from 900 to more than 3,000 rate and tax-rule changes every year. Understandably, the accountants who try to guide small to medium businesses (SMBs) through the intricacies of tax compliance are having a hard time of it. However, solutions are emerging that are uniquely suited to SMB needs for sales tax compliance.
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Chapter 2 of this 4-part e-book explores the Internet protocol telephony (IPT) life cycle, and discusses how understanding the key phases of this packet-based system can increase implementation success. By harnessing your knowledge about this system's natural rhythms, you will begin to establish key concepts that you can put into action—facilitating the management of the system and reaping its long-term benefits.
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As the era of traditional telephony draws to a close, the doors to the next generation in communications open. Chapter 1 of this 4-part e-book discusses electronic human voice communication and its importance in business today. It documents the underlying beliefs, philosophies, and observations of the future of telephony, and provides the basic concepts readers will need to guide them through the rest of the series.
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Data loss can be damaging to a business—hurting short-term stock prices, impacting customer relationships, and reducing revenues. As more companies conduct business via network communication, the need to protect their customer data and intellectual property becomes greater. With a data protection solution, organizations can secure their data in motion—without introducing unmanageable cost and complexity into the network.
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When it comes to security architecture, choosing a system that’s scalable and applicable to a broad set of security needs is a wise move. New security services for Internet protocol (IP) networks are emerging that enable new levels of scalability and manageability—while remaining completely transparent to the network. By applying this type of system, you build an optimal framework for future security applications.
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Spam considerably lowers user productivity, as it delivers unwanted, irrelevant, or anonymous e-mail messages. The best way to manage the incidence of spam is to measure it. The Spam Index—a tool for measuring improvement in spam control systems and for comparing spam control performance with competitors—is a method used by businesses worldwide to achieve lower spam levels and improve business performance.
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E-mail is a powerful business tool that most enterprises can’t live without. Unfortunately, along with its capability of accelerating commerce, productivity, and social interactions, there are some drawbacks—such as spam! Companies that rely on e-mail to do business simply can’t afford the negative affects of spam. However, new technology is emerging that helps stop spam and allows users to get on with business.
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In this new era of corporate governance, risk avoidance, and responsibility, organizations are more than ever held accountable if their data is not properly protected. As such, many are finding new ways to address security risks, by developing multiple layers of defense to reduce points of weakness. Deploying data encryption technology is a good place to start—but the key is making the right choice.
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Heightened awareness of vulnerabilities in sensitive stored data has resulted in the increased application of encryption technology. To secure data at rest, a well-defined process for handling the keys used to encrypt data—as well as the keys used to safeguard the data encryption keys—is essential. With the proper key management controls in place, companies can ensure that data is effectively secured and recoverable.
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In order to stay competitive, growing organizations need technology that allows them to react quickly to changing industry. According to recent polls, nearly 40 percent of midsized businesses are getting that technology through customer relationship management (CRM). With a rapidly growing market of choices, it’s important to look within your company to assess its needs and goals—before you commit to a CRM solution.
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If you could have a 360-degree view of your business, wouldn’t you want to take a peek? Most companies would say yes, but no business could benefit more from this panoramic view than large enterprises. Today, they’re getting that view—and more, from customer relationship management (CRM) technology. For large enterprises, CRM represents a powerful opportunity for positive change—and you ignore it at your own risk.
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You can’t pick up a business or IT magazine today without seeing numerous articles about the growth of mobile and wireless technologies. Why are these technologies so trendy? The answer is simple: developments in mobile computing, wireless communication, bar codes, and other data collection and communications technologies help businesses extend visibility and control over the operations that really matter to them.
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It s hard to go anywhere these days and not see ads for mobile wireless carriers. But the technology is so confusing and the choices so overwhelming, it can be impossible to know which solution to choose. Before making the wrong choice, it’s best to have a basic understanding of mobile wireless communication—how it is currently being used in the industry, and how it can benefit your organization in the future.
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How can you establish a priority-based mobile networking system that provides workers access to company and customer records that they can manipulate from the field? By employing a total solution system that provides various methods of transmitting data. While this type of system may be more costly to implement than a stand-alone pager or cell phone, the benefits it offers can directly impact your bottom line.
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When it comes to two-dimensional (2D) symbologies, less is more. While 2D bar code symbols may be less costly to print, they are considerably more expensive to read, because of the complexity of developing decode algorithms. However, with the integration of public domain 2D symbologies into a range of application standards, solutions employing these codes are beginning to reach their full potential.
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For manufacturers, improving internal processes and supply chain responsiveness can help maintain profitability. That is why many are tuning into radio frequency identification (RFID) technology. With RFID, the benefits are immediate throughout the supply chain, and organizations that take the time to understand its capabilities and limitations can increase their inventory visibility while streamlining their operations.
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Radio frequency identification (RFID) technology has retailers talking. The reason: RFID helps reduce labor and improves the ability to gather data. Retailers can use this data to make positive changes to business processes, which can be tremendously advantageous for them. With careful planning, an RFID system can provide immediate benefits, as well as long-term competitive and total cost of ownership advantages.
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Imagine this scenario: an infected laptop within your company has accessed the network and is spreading malicious code to thousands of other devices. This incident could cripple any business, but with network access control (NAC) products, companies can rest a little easier. NAC’s ability to measure, enforce, and report on an array of security issues has gained it attention amongst security conscious organizations.
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As proprietary network hardware appliances become obsolete, unified network platforms (UNPs) are slowly gaining momentum. UNPs are the new paradigm for networking and security—operating on a single system that can be implemented on off-the-shelf hardware. With a UNP, organizations can design, build, manage, and maintain secure networks, without the limitations and expense of vendor proprietary hardware and software.
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The supply of multiprotocol label switching (MPLS) services and service providers has grown exponentially with the demand for Internet protocol (IP) and Ethernet services. But while MPLS enhances packet processing speed and network performance, it lacks in security. As government and industry compliance regulations increase, organizations must invest in tools that can ensure security without affecting network performance.
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Small to medium businesses (SMBs) often face the same challenges as large businesses—just on a smaller scale. One such challenge is finding a business solution that manages expansion and addresses complex reporting and compliance issues. Many SMBs are now adopting enterprise performance management (EPM) solutions—complete with tools to help them meet the current and future needs of their growing business.
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Wide area networks (WANs) are essential to the majority of businesses, enabling effective communications within the organization and with customers, partners, and suppliers. As more bandwidth-intensive applications are added to the mix, these networks are expected to handle the extra load—which can decrease its performance. Ensuring WAN usage is well-managed eliminates unwanted traffic and accelerates business activity.
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In any organization, people remain one of the largest sources of value when it comes to business processes. But providing them with tools that can be easily accessed and used has its challenges. As we move into the era of service-oriented architecture (SOA), portal and collaboration software now delivers the essential people-focused capabilities businesses need, while adding significant value to the organization.
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How can a budget administrator, burdened with the task of gathering data from hundreds of spreadsheets from all over the organization, manage this monumental undertaking? Additionally, how to avoid using a costly packaged budget application that doesn’t take the organization’s business rules into consideration? The solution: a spreadsheet automation tool that easily adapts to the organization’s unique corporate processes.
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Today, companies are looking to improve work processes, comply with legislation, and increase productivity—and they’re implementing electronic document management systems (EDMS) to help them effectively manage their information. By deploying EDMS—which are capable of capturing, storing, and retrieving records, files, and folders—these companies are achieving unprecedented levels of control, efficiency, and automation.
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What is compact, lightweight, ergonomic, and power-friendly? A microelectromechanical systems (MEMS)-based scan engine—an innovative scanning technology that provides outstanding reliability and performance. When it comes to supply chain laser scanning, the advantages MEMS scanners have over traditional lasers are unparalleled. While MEMS is not a new technology, it does provide a new option for bar code scanning.
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When it comes to workers’ safety, companies shouldn’t take any chances. The growing safety, security, and regulatory and reporting requirements are forcing many organizations to implement more sophisticated systems to monitor and manage their work environments. To help determine which mobile devices are approved and appropriate to use in your work environments, it’s important to have clear guidelines on what to look for.
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One of the first and seemingly simple questions that companies ask when making IT investments is “how much does it cost?” Many often find themselves wondering why—even after a successful implementation—their costs keep going up. When evaluating a mobile workforce automation project, companies should take the time to conduct a thorough total cost of ownership (TCO) analysis to detect hidden costs—and avoid nasty surprises.
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Radio frequency identification (RFID) technology can provide a strong return on investment (ROI) when combined with improved business processes that reduce labor and prevent errors. But mobile RFID systems, with forklift-mounted readers, can be implemented for a fraction of the cost of traditional infrastructure configurations. They can improve supply chain visibility, reduce capital expenditure, and slash labor costs.
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Scanning technology has changed dramatically over the years with new, more powerful, and reliable imaging scan engines now surpassing the laser scan engines of yesterday. Although both laser and imaging technologies continue to improve, there’s a debate on which technology is superior. When researching data capture equipment, you may be asking yourself, “How do I choose the best scanner for my application?” Here’s how.
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In the $1.8 billion market of document management services, only 10 percent is billed by dealers. So how can they increase their share of the managed print services trend? The dealer’s path to advantage lies in its service and supply organization. To make this transition, the dealer needs a tool that gathers knowledge of the client’s fleet and identifies where printing dollars can be saved.
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How do companies address the out-of-control costs associated with network printing? Many look to control them by outsourcing their managed printer services. The transition from basic dealer services to a holistic approach—where the dealer manages the print services for the entire organization—has its challenges. With printer fleet management tools, companies gain a competitive advantage and save on printing costs.
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Many companies believe their employees are their most important asset—and spend significant amounts of money every year on their training and development. But how can these companies quantify what this investment will do to their bottom line? With the right tools, decision makers can gain the critical business intelligence they’ll need to confidently invest in their human capital, and measure and report on its impact.
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To play any popular online computer game, all a user needs is a computer and an Internet connection. But there’s a lot more going on behind the scenes than this gamer may realize. In order to interact in a shared virtual environment, the system the user connects to requires technology capable of creating, operating, and modifying persistent, distributed, three-dimensional virtual worlds.
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For a lot of companies, making the decision to replace an existing business software system can be a difficult one. The process can be so unpleasant that many organizations may be reluctant to even get started, coming up with a number of reasons why they could probably get by with the systems they already have. If your company is struggling with this tough decision, you may want to ask yourself these ten basic questions.
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Choosing an enterprise resource planning (ERP) package that’s right for your business can be difficult and time consuming. Finding a software provider and discovering what doing business with them will be like is as important as the overall functionality of the software itself. Before committing to a long-term relationship with any potential software provider, there are some really tough questions you need to ask them.
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Carefully tracking components and assemblies throughout the manufacturing process can prevent costly production and sequencing errors, but executing these procedures can be difficult. While bar codes provide accurate, efficient product identification, they are not viable in many common industrial processes. Specialized RFID tags, however, are optimized for use on or around metal, and are an effective and viable alternative.
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Going mobile has become a growing trend, with many businesses reaching well beyond the use of cellular phones as their only lines of communication. Why? Because these businesses realize that linking the mobile workforce with the enterprise and its data resources—using mobile applications—is key to enhancing productivity, profitability, and customer satisfaction. Choosing the right devices, however, can be very challenging.
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Radio frequency identification (RFID) has been around for more than thirty years, and today’s manufacturers are using this technology to help connect trading partners and align supply chains. But just as businesses need to look beyond the manufacturing supply chain to see the benefits of investing in RFID, they need to look beyond the tag to understand how RFID will create value and provide a return on investment (ROI).
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Technology has fundamentally changed the way industrial and manufacturing companies manage their businesses. Sophisticated solutions like warehouse management and enterprise relationship management (ERP) systems—with their advanced data capture and wireless networking tools—enable companies to squeeze more efficiency out of their operations by providing real-time data to all interdependent parts of the supply chain.
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When considering any software solution, two things come to mind: flexibility and cost. With virtualization technology, multiple applications can now be hosted safely and securely on a single server, eliminating the overhead of running multiple operating systems (OS) per server. This capability can greatly reduce costs and help organizations deliver consistent service levels despite unpredictable workloads.
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Any organization that deploys multiple same-application servers with regularity could benefit from virtual appliances. Virtualization solutions eliminate the need to copy an operating system (OS) and application into each virtual environment, by creating a single, centrally installed master copy instead. It saves time on installation and enables greater levels of efficiency, manageability, flexibility, and resource use.
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Cox Communications, a leading cable provider, needed to find a way to centralize the IT requirements of its customer support team. With over a hundred users, its challenge was to move from single desktop applications to a centralized server which would offer many concurrent instances of the application—and minimize the cost. By deploying a virtualization solution, Cox realized a return on investment (ROI) of 300 percent.
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C# is a modern object-oriented language for application development. In addition to object-oriented constructs, C# supports component-oriented programming with properties, methods, and events. WinA&D is a complete Unified Modeling Language (UML) tool enriched with C#-specific details used to generate source code. This white paper discusses how C# constructs are represented by UML—for forward and reverse engineering.
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Understanding how a system really works is the first step toward using, improving, automating, or explaining it to others. The basic concept of a system is that it is driven by cause and effect—but there is so much more to understanding its full complexity. The best place to start is by learning how causal loop diagrams (CLDs) are used to model dynamic systems by identifying variables and causal effects.
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Interactive web sites are event-driven. With each user click, a menu selection or keyboard action initiates a thread of execution that runs many lines of code. Many Web projects start as small code snippets gathered from open source sites, but as the web site grows, new developers are added to the mix. Without design and documentation tools, the project can become unmanageable, unreliable, insecure, and costly to expand.
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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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Keeping track of your key business indicators is the difference between a thriving business concern and a business on life support. But even with this knowledge, one-third of chief executive officers (CEOs) feel they don’t spend enough time reviewing financial and operating numbers. But is spending more time agonizing over piles of data really the best solution?
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When businesses commit to implementing customer relationship management (CRM), they commit to realigning their entire organizations around the customer. More specifically, they commit to collecting the right data—and using it the right way at the right time. But if you’re the manager championing CRM in your organization, how do you create the CRM buzz and obtain executive buy-in?
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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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It can be a real problem keeping prices competitive when manufacturing costs are soaring. Over-pack and giveaway can be a huge drain on company profits. However, real-time weight control software can pay tremendous dividends if implemented properly. Integrating a weight control database into an existing system can reduce errors, “fool-proof” data collection, and shift the system from reactive to proactive.
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Understanding process variation is vital—not only in manufacturing industries, but in transactional environments as well. That’s why the tools you use to understand the root cause of common cause variations need to be both powerful and easy to use, whether you’re measuring variations in sales performance, wait times in hospital emergency rooms, or cycle times for order fulfillment.
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Most people recognize that a robust control phase is the key practice separating Six Sigma from other process control methodologies. Unfortunately, many Six Sigma programs do not practice a robust control phase—with the result that old habits take over, and improvements gradually degrade. Worse, nobody even knows it happened! Why would well-intentioned people allow this to happen?
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How can you ensure that you make the right choice when purchasing enterprise resource planning (ERP) software? The answer: take all the critical components into consideration. ERP selection is not just about what different people in your organization want or don't want, it's about getting what you need for now and the future. Remember, you're not just buying software; you're buying into a vendor and its company culture.
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The benefits of e-learning have been amply demonstrated and extensively documented. However, less attention has been paid to the business benefits of implementing learning management systems (LMS). The misconception is that LMS and e-learning are irrevocably linked. But that isn’t necessarily the case. In fact, an LMS can provide real benefits, in the broadest—and most critical—business sense.
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La abstracción es el ejercicio de comprender una serie de problemas a la vista heterogéneos y darles comprensión homogénea. Una de las principales abstracciones del mercado actual de las entidades es la administración, motivo por el cual se anunció el Microsoft Business Framework, el cual afectará el ERP clásico de las supuestas Best Practices.
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The importance of resource selection is undervalued in the software industry. But in fact, the resource selection process is directly related to software development mission success. The in-house interview process typically fails to achieve comprehensive in-depth skills assessment, and is not cost-effective. However, you can improve matters by integrating external technical skills assessment expertise into the hiring process.
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To simplify and greatly improve their BI shortlist selection processes, companies should focus on the business value and ongoing expenses that different solutions create—measured across a few key variables. This paper outlines key criteria that companies should consider when creating their business intelligence shortlists—and when making their ultimate selections.
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NexPress, a mid-sized company specializing in print solutions and services, needed to integrate its business processes across its supply chain. It also wanted to increase inventory visibility, and control and eliminate redundant data maintenance. By implementing mySAP and SAP SI s MaxValu, it reduced its operating costs by more than $1 million (USD) in just sixteen weeks.
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Universal Instruments Corporation, a leading capital equipment manufacturer, needed a flexible business solution to meet the challenges of globalization, and had to replace its legacy system. It used SAP for Industrial Machinery and Component, which is an integrated scalable solution and was able to enable global processes consistently throughout its geographical locations.
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