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| Error: "Data does not appear on report" |
By Business Objects Inc
When opening a report that has a dataset and table in the main report with the same name as a dataset and table in the subreport, one of the following error messages appear: "Data does not appear on report."
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| BI Tools: Future of Eclipse Open Source? |
By Paul Krill and Ephraim Schwartz
Actuate' s use of open source to enhance its own closed-source wares is fair play, according to Keith Gile, principal analyst at Forrester Research. "If all a developer wants is BIRT, then that is available for download with no strings attached."
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| BI systems - make your next move count |
By Adam Gifford
Too many business decisions are based on ‘gut feel,’ according to recent surveys, but to get a clear picture of how your company is performing you need a Business Intelligence System. Adam Gifford reports...
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| Call Center? That's So 2004 |
By Manjeet Kripalani, Louise Lee and Nichola Saminather
Americans, it seems, hate calling a help desk or customer service number to find an Indian on the line. Well, guess what, America? India doesn't particularly want to talk to you, either. As India's top companies get more sophisticated at taking over outsourced work from U.S. and European multinationals, they're finding that the lowest end of the business -- call centers -- just doesn' t pay anymore. "Call centers have become commoditized," says B. Ramalinga Raju, chairman of Satyam Computer Services Ltd.
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| Convergys 2Q profit rises 56 percent |
| Convergys Corp., which provides customer care, human resources and billing services, said Thursday its second-quarter profit rose by more than half, percent due to revenue growth in its customer care, international information management and employee care segments.
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| Art Technology Group swings to 2Q profit |
| Art Technology Group Inc., an e-commerce, marketing and customer care software company, said Tuesday it swung to a profit in the second quarter due to improved sales in both its product license and services divisions.
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| CDC withdraws buyout offer for Onyx |
| CDC Corp., a Chinese technology company based in Hong Kong, said Tuesday it is withdrawing its $5 per share cash offer for Onyx Software Corp., which makes customer relationship management software
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| Hyperion And Informatica Corporation Forms OEM Partnership |
| A global OEM partnership has been formed between Informatica Corporation (Nasdaq:INFA), a provider of enterprise data integration software and services, and Hyperion (Nasdaq:HYSL) a Business Performance Management (BPM) software company.
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| Nontraditional Users Gain Easier Access to BI Technology |
By Erika Morphy
"Typically Web data has been carried separately from customer data. Yes, it includes information about customers, but it is so low level and difficult to work with, few companies have been able to use it in an extensive customer analysis," said Colin Shearer, senior vice president of market strategy for SSPS.
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| Onyx says proxy firm recommends M2M deal |
| Onyx Software Corp., a provider of customer relationship management software, said Friday that an independent proxy advisory firm has recommended shareholders vote for its $92 million acquisition by holding company M2M Holdings Inc. at a special shareholders meeting on Aug. 1.
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| SAP Reports 43 Percent Profit Jump |
| Business software maker SAP AG said Thursday its net profit rose 43 percent in the second quarter on higher U.S. revenues and better margins
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| Spurned suitor CDC sues Onyx Software |
By DAN RICHMANP-I REPORTER
Bellevue's Onyx Software Corp. triggered a lawsuit from suitor CDC Corp. Monday after its board urged shareholders to reject CDC' s hostile tender offer of $5 per share.
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| Wireless: Hot or Not? |
by Marshall Lager
It may be misleading to say that this article is about hot wireless technologies, since many sources think nothing is particularly new in the industry. Whether or not that' s true, the space itself is hot. Mobile technologies are experiencing a groundswell of market interest and growth. One of the reasons for this is the next-frontier nature of wireless--just as the notebook PC started as an inferior-but-portable younger sibling to the desktop, wireless devices are coming into their own as full-featured business tools after an apprenticeship as a piece of extra kit.
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| SAP Takes Another Hard Look at the GIS Market |
By Joe Francica
SAP has offered geospatial solutions in collaboration with ESRI for a number of years. SAP management believes, however, that the fundamentals of the market have changed. According to Oliver Mainka, SAP's GIS program manager, the company has taken the last 18 months to reevaluate the solutions that it brings to its substantial existing customer base. This self-analysis comes at a time when SAP' s main competitor, Oracle, has an established clientele, a mature technology, and an appetite for purchasing companies in market segments designed to displace SAP. In the fiercely competitive arena of enterprise applications, such as customer relationship management (CRM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) and the systems integration services that may accompany them, SAP and Oracle have nearly equal market share with approximately 20% each
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| SugarCRM to unveil commercial portal in July |
By China Martens
Open-source CRM (customer relationship management) software vendor SugarCRM Inc. said Monday that it plans to officially launch its commercial portal, SugarExchange, in early July.
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| A Case Study in 21st Century Marketing |
| Overall, the marketing pilot described in this article bore out the original thesis that a campaign architecture bringing together improved targeting techniques with customized, highly personalized messages and offers would deliver response rates far in excess of those typically generated by orthodox direct campaigns.
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| New Bidder Courts CRM Specialist Onyx |
| Customer relationship management (CRM) pioneer Onyx Software is the subject of a new acquisition bid, this time by CDC Software, which owns Onyx' s old rival Pivotal.
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| Microsoft Picking Up CRM Customers from Its Rivals |
| ...they have an excellent new version that' s finally there." The integration with Microsoft applications prompted Wilson Language Training Corp. in Oxford, Mass., to replace its Siebel 6.0 CRM software with Microsoft CRM 1.2 in January 2005, said Brian Kretchman, technical development manager at the provider of teacher training resources. Despite the cost of the ...
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| Oracle Acquires Telephony at Work |
| With the addition of Telephony at Work, Oracle will be able to unify contact center technology and CRM software, reducing the cost and complexity of integrating disparate contact center and CRM data, and offering a range of deployment options. "Traditionally, CRM applications and telephony components have been delivered as separate, stand-alone applications requiring extensive computer-telephony integrations between ...
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| Telephony@Work purchase to extend Oracle's CRM software |
By Jeremy Kirk
Oracle executives sought to allay customer concerns on Tuesday over its product road map, saying it won' t force them off older products brought into its arms after its buying spree of CRM (customer relationship management) vendors.
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| Beyond E-Commerce Is R-Commerce |
| name. He was part of the family. Your customers want someone who can help them in their specific requests and make technology personable. Use data mining, CRM (customer relationship management) software and data collection technology to get to know your customer. Then use that information for their good. Think like Sam Drucker
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| It's Hard Out Here For a Manager |
by Marshall Lager
It seems like I've been in something of a rut with this column lately, focusing on what not to do, on who doesn't need CRM, and that sort of thing. Let's recap: January was New Year' s resolutions for slacker businesses. March detailed outsourcing plans for the ethically challenged. April ripped into tax accountants and the IRS--fortunately my taxes were done before that issue hit desks. And May hailed a businessman who had absolutely no need for the CRM goodness we usually preach. Do you see a pattern emerging here?
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| Kintera Launches Social CRM System |
| of belonging, instant gratification, emotional release, and sense of social impact, according to the company. Delivered via the Kintera Sphere software as a service platform, Kintera CRM is the foundation of the social CRM system and enables nonprofits to centrally record and manage the most important aspects of their relationships to provide constituents with an improved
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| Oracle Unveils CRM OnDemand |
| ...Systems Inc. The new version marks the first use of the Oracle moniker on the Siebel offering. The database company completed its acquisition of the hosted CRM vendor in January. Oracle CRM OnDemand Release 10 offers updated customization capabilities, improved sales and service features, and enhancements targeting the life sciences and financial services ...
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| Microsoft to deliver CRM in China |
By Steven Schwankert
Microsoft is joining with channel partner CDC to deliver various applications in China using the software-as-a-service model, Microsoft announced Wednesday.
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| Lotus Notes and SAP R/3 Integration: A review of the LSX environment ,By Mark Huffman and Damien O'Neill |
| The LSX environment provides easy access to SAP R/3 via remote function calls and standard transactions. This functionality will appeal to many SAP sites that already have a substantial investment in a Notes infrastructure. There will be intense internal debates about the relative merits and development effort for new "front-end" applications. There will also be ample opportunities for development teams to combine the strengths of the ABAP/4 Workbench with those of Lotus Script. Paradoxically, sites that have yet to go live with SAP may well have the most to gain in terms of user acceptance, if they can provide access to the new SAP system from an already familiar Notes environment.
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| Small-Business CRM: Hosted or In-House? |
| ...deploying software by merely attaching a connection to the vendor providing the service. What' s more, some analysts see a trend developing in which employees more readily use CRM features when access is hosted. Traditionally, one of the drawbacks of CRM software has been a reluctance by staff to use sales-automation programs. But the use of hosted services ...
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| Gate Methodology |
| Everyone has heard the horror stories of cost overruns on SAP programmes. While there are a few factors which are outside the control of the programme managers (e.g. business change, funding withdrawn) the majority of the responsibility lies at their door.
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| Connecting with Your Customers |
| ...an off-the-shelf package. This provider should also be able to add in stages as a client's needs grow or budget becomes available." CRM that works well is CRM that works the way people already do, says Microsoft's Green. "It' s essential that CRM solutions are easy to use and adaptable." Microsoft CRM 3.0, launched in ...
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| Cisco Updates Joint CRM System |
| ...and midsize businesses in mind, integrating it with an improved version of Microsoft's Dynamics CRM and bringing it to the screens of Cisco IP phones. Cisco' s Unified CRM Connector works with Dynamics CRM to streamline contact-center functions. The software creates automatic screen pop-ups with caller information, provides click-to-dial capability, captures call information and creates customer records. It ...
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| Are Customers Happier as a Result of CRM? |
| ... While Truss' comments relate more to self-service CRM tools -- think Web sites that allow you to pay your own bills or automated telephony systems -- and CRM is a wider process than that, CRM software vendors are prepared to admit Truss has a point. And they' re not being overly generous -- if ...
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| How to Drive the Right Customer Management Software |
by Syed Ali
More companies wanting to leverage their sales and marketing strategies, strengthen their workforce, and use the best tools available as they battle to win new customers and keep current ones are making CRM software choices. The question is: Which choice is right?
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| Market Focus: Systems Integrators: VARs Vary in Customer Care |
| The hero of most CRM implementation stories is usually the integrator that recommends the best course of action, installs and customizes the applications, and trains personnel in their use. So, what happens when the integrator is the one with the problem? It happens a lot more often than you might think.
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| SAP Brings Marketing to Hosted CRM |
| At its annual Sapphire user conference in Orlando, SAP AG demonstrated a new SAP marketing component that has been added to its SAP CRM On-Demand service. SAP officials said the company also plans to update users on the status of its service-oriented architecture platform, Enterprise Services Architecture (ESA), and its ...
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| Six Simple Rules For Successful Self-Service |
| Chances are it's been about 20 years since you' ve stood in line at your bank to get cash from a teller. ATMs offer such convenience—and are so much more efficient for banks—that no one can fathom going back to the old days. Ever since then, companies have been eager to tap into the free labor pool of customers who can be convinced to help themselves. Through self-service, organizations have been able to reduce labor costs, increase revenue from orders of out-of-stock items or increase the loyalty of customers who appreciate speedier service.
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| Salesforce.com Takes CRM on the Road |
| ...Salesforce.com' s purchase this week of mobile-application specialist Sendia created a great deal of buzz in the enterprise-applications world. While other companies have attempted to take customer-relationship management CRM tools to the mobile world -- to help workers on the road access and update their customer databases remotely -- Salesforce.com is seen as a market leader whose moves ...
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| NetSuite Introduces New On-Demand CRM Tools |
By Jack M. Germain
Zach Nelson, CEO of NetSuite, said the trend toward switching to on-demand software for business applications is already in progress across an array of industries. "Most people believe SaaS is a CRM-only phenomenon, and while NetSuite' s CRM deployments have been widely reported, the truth is that almost all applications will be delivered as a service," he said.
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| Pitfalls To Avoid When Choosing CRM Software |
| What is customer relationship management software, exactly? The answer to that question is different depending on whom you ask. For many companies, CRM equals sales force automation (SFA). Others use the term CRM to describe customer support management, field service, contact center, or marketing automation. Confusion or miscommunication
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| Saratoga Announces Saratoga CRM 6.5 |
| Saratoga Systems, a provider of CRM solutions, has released Saratoga CRM 6.5, the company's latest version of Saratoga Systems' Customer Relationship Management CRM software (formerly iAvenue). The new release includes several enhancements and more powerful integration ...
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| Get Your CRM to Work the Way You Do, Not The Other Way Around |
| In his book, CRM at the Speed of Light, Paul Greenberg faces the question, how do you avoid lagging and ultimately the loss of customers when they are moving lightning fast, demanding constant changes in the speed required to complete their transactions? The answer, Customer Relationship Management (CRM). Most businesses and business owners are familiar with the potential functionality of this solution-the challenge is getting your team to use it.
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| Wikis, Blogs and Other Points of Failure |
| I hate to be the one to throw cold water on the latest cool thing, but wikis and blogs — and all the other unwashed, untethered, so-called "new information" sources proliferating across the enterprise — are, all too often, just a lot of bunk masquerading as information
Joshua Greenbaum is a principal at Enterprise Applications Consulting
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| Bringing Clarity to your Supply Chain Decisions |
| Insight provides value by transforming data into useful information and presenting it in meaningful ways to the right person. It takes an objective-driven approach by providing profiles that allow a person to view only the information they need to achieve a specific objective.
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| Bringing Clarity to your Supply Chain Decisions - Part One |
| Software vendors often market their applications using a wide array of buzzwords and acronyms. Even in a relatively focused area such as Supply Chain Management (SCM), there are literally dozens of terms used to describe an application without really helping a potential customer understand what it does. Part One of this featured guest article from Randy Marble of Blue Sky Logistics
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| ERP landscape: A year in (p)review |
| What did your ERP provider achieve last year, and what are its plans for 2006? Find out the answers to these questions and more in iStart’s review/preview of 2005/2006...
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| Microsoft tweaks CRM to improve hosting |
By China Martens
Microsoft is due to improve the hosting capabilities of its customer relationship management application with the global release of a new version of its Dynamics CRM 3.0 software Monday.
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| Microsoft Unveils Hosted CRM Software |
By Elizabeth Millard
"Many hosted providers do a lot of handwaving about customization and verticalization, but then customers find out that some of the software may actually be more horizontal," said Brad Wilson, general manager of Microsoft CRM. "With our model, it has the maximum amount of customization, much more than in a typical hosted CRM environment."
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| Company Sued Over Selling E-Mail Addresses |
| New York' s attorney general sued an Internet company Thursday over the selling of e-mail addresses in what authorities say may be the biggest deliberate breach of Internet privacy ever.
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| Plaxo Scales Back Automatic E-Mail Feature |
| Veteran e-mail users probably recall getting a message - or several - from someone they hardly know asking for updated contact information. These messages, derided by some as spam, helped Plaxo Inc.
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| British Airways to Close 4 Call Centers |
| ST. JOHN' S, Antigua - British Airways PLC will close its four call centers in the Caribbean due to reduced demand for the services and to the growth of the Internet, a company official said Wednesday
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| SSA Global Extends ERP, PLM Data Integration |
| Looking to keep its ERP software in sync with the evolving distributed design chain, SSA Global recently updated its product lifecycle management (PLM) offering to help harmonize product engineering and configuration processes with planning, purchasing and financial management activities.
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| Don't Miss the Opportunity To Create a WOW! Experience |
| Many people seem to have just discovered customer experience, as if it's something new. It isn' t. Every time a customer deals with you, he or she is having an experience. It may not be a WOW! experience, but it is an experience
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| Hosted Contact Center Subsector Growing Fast |
By Erika Morphy
Last year was a tipping point for the hosted CRM industry in that many more companies, including enterprise-sized firms, became comfortable enough with the delivery model to make substantial investments in the technology.
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| SAP Mobile Engine Introduction |
| Information is the lifeblood of business in today’s increasingly interconnected world. The flow of Information across the physical confines of an enterprise is being driven by technological developments resulting in "true mobility" for its stakeholders. Businesses embracing this idea are reinventing themselves as boundaryless organizations, where access and interaction can be instant.
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| It May Cost More Than You Think |
by Jim Dickie
This year CSO Insights started tracking a number of new metrics related to how sales forces are leveraging technology to optimize the performance of their sales teams. The effort is part of our 12th annual Sales Effectiveness Research project, and at this article' s deadline we had responses from more than 775 companies. A couple of red flags were raised during a preliminary review of the data that are worth passing on to CRM project teams. The most pressing issue pertains to accepting claims from CRM technology solution providers about how long it will take to get the systems up and running, and how much it will cost. When vendors and solution providers speak about costs and implementation times you should trust, but verify.
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| Avoid embarrassments get business intelligence |
By Michael Foreman
The embarrassing about-turn in recommendation by the independent directors of Carter Holt Harvey that shareholders now accept Graeme Hart’s takeover bid is a lesson to all business managers in the importance of good reporting. As Michael Foreman finds out, there are business intelligence solutions out there to support the growth of any size organisation...
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| Microsoft CRM 3.0 Aims for SMB Market |
| With the rollout of Microsoft CRM 3.0 now underway, expectations are running high that this is the version that will finally push Microsoft far into the small and medium-sized CRM vendors' turf. "This is the first time Microsoft CRM is ready for prime time," Yacov Wrocherinski, president and CEO of Infinity told CRM Buyer
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| Salesforce profit rises on subscriptions |
| Salesforce.com has posted a higher quarterly profit as subscribers for the company' s Web-based sales and customer service software surged 76 percent from a year ago.
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| The Open Source Business Intelligence Tools Are Coming! |
| More than two decades after the launch of the GNU’s Not Unix (GNU) software project—and almost a decade after the term “open source” was first used to describe GNU and other open software licenses—open-source software is an established model that’s every bit as legitimate as its closed-source counterparts.
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| Microsoft sweetens license model with SugarCRM |
By Elizabeth Montalbano
Microsoft has signed up the first commercial open-source vendor for its Shared Source licensing program, the company is expected to announce Tuesday at the Open Source Business Conference in San Francisco.
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| Salesnet moves closer to full CRM suite functionality |
China Martens
Hosted application vendor Salesnet is moving closer towards offering a full CRM (customer relationship management software) suite with the latest version of its software, released Monday. Salesnet 25, the new release, expands the focus of the software to include the automation of marketing functionality along with its long-standing sales process management capabilities.
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| IBM's Bob Sutor sees interest in open-source mounting |
| IBM’s vice president of standards and open-source, sees 2006 as the year when a number of industries will move to embrace open-source software -- and he expects IBM to play a role in many of those efforts. Sutor, who spoke with Computerworld last week, also weighed in on the role of Linux and offered his thoughts on Massachusetts’ OpenDocument plans. Excerpts from the interview follow:
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| SAP merges North and South American sales |
| Business application vendor SAP AG is merging its North American and Latin American business operations into one organization in a move aimed at increasing sales and market share.
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| Microsoft Partner Rolls Out .Net SCM for SMBs |
| Microsoft partner ODS Software on Monday rolled out a .Net Framework-enabled supply chain application first created for Fortune 100 customer Weyerhaeuser Inc. as a commercial product for small and midsize businesses.
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| Vendors Unveil New Supply Chain Software |
| Oracle Corp., Lawson Software Inc. and i2 Technologies Inc. all have either shipped an updated supply chain management (SCM) system or plan to ship one over the next month.
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| RFID and Supply Chain Visibility |
| AutoID Labs, the successor to the Auto-ID Center, centered at MIT and other locations worldwide, works to create a global system for tracking goods using a single numbering system called the Electronic Product Code. The project is supported by many major cpg and retail companies, along with technology providers.
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| Starting a Trucking Company |
| One of the most popular types of logistics company to start is a trucking company.
The first decision is really about scale, do you want to be a single owner operator with your own rig? Or do you want to set up a larger operation where you organize a number of owner operators into a larger trucking firm?
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| Introduction to Logistics and Supply Chain Management |
| Logistics Gains Prominence
Logistics became a topic for discussion in the Business World in the 1960's and 1970's and rose to prominence in the 1980's. It was truly in the 1990' s; however, that Logistics began to garner the appreciation it deserved. In the twenty-first century and beyond, the creation of a sleek, flexible and effective supply and value chains will no less than define the success or failure of organizations and perhaps even entire business types
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| Compliance, SCM Driving Renewed Master Data Management Market, Says IDC |
| A renewed focus on information governance should push the market for master data management to $10.4 billion by 2009, according to IDC market research. Master data management software and services support business goals such as compliance and supply chain efficiency. It is a set of processes that create and maintain a single view of products, customers, accounts or locations across the enterprise -- or across enterprises -- through a physical or logical hub.
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| i2 Technologies Moves Into SCM |
| A company most recognized for its integration capabilities, i2 Technologies is moving into the SCM (supply-chain management) arena. The company announced Tuesday its namesake Supply Collaboration/Lean Replenishment module designed to help companies better manage supplier interactions
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| Edge Dynamics Targets Pharma Supply Chains |
| Edge Dynamics, an SCM (supply chain management) vendor specializing in the pharmaceutical space, on Monday launched CCM (Channel Commerce Management) 3.0, a new edition of its software for regulatory compliance and transaction management among manufacturers, distributors, retailers and other trading partners.
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| i2 Technologies Moves into Next Gen SCM |
| i2 Technologies is releasing another piece of its next generation supply chain management suite. The company announced Tuesday its namesake Supply Collaboration/Lean Replenishment module designed to help companies better manage supplier interactions.
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| Leveraging Location into Business Intelligence |
| Think retail. A store' s location impacts sales performance more than any other factor. Great managers, great marketing programs and even great products—often none of these matter as much as a great location, reports ZDNet news
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| Operational BI Application Deployment Practices |
| Research on the deployment of business intelligence into business operations indicates the need for specific practices for delivering operational information. Various factors now drive enterprises away from static report-based information delivery to ad-hoc reporting and interactive query-based applications
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| The Maturing of Federal Business Intelligence Practices |
| Each year the e-Gov Knowledge Management Conference provides us business intelligence (BI) mavens with the opportunity to take the pulse of business intelligence in the Federal government. I have chaired this event from its inception—we held the very first one in April of 2000—and just last month we celebrated the sixth consecutive one
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| Designing Executive Dashboards: Part 2 |
| In part one of this series we covered the basic requirements of a corporate dashboard solution and went on to discuss the first steps of the dashboard design process. The two main areas covered were determining the appropriate key performance indicators (KPIs) and how to design a dashboard with the five most common KPI visualizations: alert icons, traffic lights, trend icons, progress bars, and gauges. In this article we complete the design process and cover visualization of supporting analytics and the layout techniques used to create a visually efficient and compelling design
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| Being Prepared for the Unknown |
| During the prior thirty-plus years the CFO has endured such events as the stock market rising and falling, our country going to war, and evolution of the technology industry. The CFO participated in the creation of a global market place, helped Accounting Departments go from green ledger sheets to digital imaging, and endured having the rules of the game changed numerous times. But no matter how you look at it the last five years have proven to be the most turbulent in CFO history
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| You Only Have One Supply Chain? |
| Here, two supply chains were indeed better than one. The company needed one supply chain for its bulky, inexpensive traditional products, and a second, completely different one, for its small, valuable electronic components.
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| Making mergers matter |
| From a company that started out on the path of consolidation much earlier than its counterparts, here's a piece of advice from enterprise resource planing vendor SSA Global Technologies Inc.: "Don' t consolidate for the sake of consolidating."
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| Fundamentals of Supporting ERP-Linked Databases |
| On average, the majority of ERP systems rely on three or more databases to complete their tasks. Keeping these integration points scalable as transactions increase (in an order management system, for example) takes forethought and planning. Exacerbating this problem is the need to show audit trails during Sarbanes-Oxley audits. Louis Columbus examines the integration points that merit special attention.
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| Designing Executive Dashboards, Part 1 |
| Corporate dashboards are becoming the “must have” business intelligence technology for executives and business users across corporate America. Dashboard solutions have been around for over a decade, but have recently seen a resurgence in popularity due to the advance of enabling business intelligence and integration technologies.
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| Designing Executive Dashboards, Part 2 |
| In part one of this series we covered the basic requirements of a corporate dashboard solution and went on to discuss the first steps of the dashboard design process. The two main areas covered were determining the appropriate key performance indicators (KPIs) and how to design a dashboard with the five most common KPI visualizations: alert icons, traffic lights, trend icons, progress bars, and gauges. In this article we complete the design process and cover visualization of supporting analytics and the layout techniques used to create a visually efficient and compelling design.
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| The Challenges of CDI: Data Quality |
| When I consider how difficult it’s been for companies to integrate customer data I remember the story of the two bulls on the hill. As they both gaze down at a herd of cows, the young bull says to the old bull, “Hey, let’s run down there and get ourselves a couple of those cows!” The old bull replies, “No, let’s walk down and get the whole herd.”
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| The Maturing of Federal Business Intelligence Practices |
| Each year the e-Gov Knowledge Management Conference provides us business intelligence (BI) mavens with the opportunity to take the pulse of business intelligence in the Federal government. I have chaired this event from its inception—we held the very first one in April of 2000—and just last month we celebrated the sixth consecutive one
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| Power ECM And ERP Integration |
| This VAR built a nationwide business selling software that integrates content management platforms with ERP (enterprise resource planning) systems
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| ERP Versus BoB |
| In the past two years, ERP providers have made increasingly aggressive efforts to boost their presence in the SCM software applications market, traditionally dominated by the best of breed providers.
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| Automation For Information |
| "Making chips" is a common-enough expression for describing production metalworking, but chips are not the only byproduct of production. Another byproduct is information. In addition to making chips, you're also making data. And today, it' s possible to put that data to use.
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| ERP Boosts Productivity And Paves Way For Horizontal Milling Center |
| When T. C. Scott Machining Inc. (Wilsonville, Oregon), a 15-person prototype shop, experienced a dramatic increase in business volume last year, a potential crisis loomed. The small company had 200 customers and 60 active jobs, many of them multi-component prototyping jobs with tight turnaround. The increase in business was leading to unpredictability and potential problems.
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| How CFOs Prepare Their Finance Organization for the Challenges of the Future |
| The role of the chief financial officer in an enterprise has been undergoing a radical change for some time now. What do today' s CEOs expect from their CFOs? How does this impact on the role of CFOs and the finance organization? What "finance transformation" strategies do they apply to enable finance to meet the challenges of the future?
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| Attracting the 'Passive Candidate' |
| The passive candidate has long held a certain mystic among hiring managers; difficult to identify and even more difficult to recruit, these professionals are considered by many to be the “Holy Grail” of job candidates for two primary reasons:
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| Software Helps Shop Automate Quality System |
| For Apex Design Technology (Anaheim, California), a comprehensive quality system is imperative because its customers—which include Boeing, Lockheed, BAE Systems and NASA—all require extensive paper trails. Two years ago, the company realized it needed to replace its time-intensive paper-based system with an automated online system.
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| The Impact of Demand-Driven Technology in the SCM Market: IBS |
| The Sweden-based enterprise resource planning (ERP) and supply chain management (SCM) provider International Business Systems (IBS) (XSSE IBS B), while currently not a uniformly well-known mid-market global vendor, seems to be poised to change that situation. As the ERP and SCM markets suffered throughout the dismal last several years, IBS also felt a pinch of flat revenues at nearly $350 million (USD), but remained mostly profitable. This was a notable feat, especially with its ambitious product development effort is combined with the difficult competitive sales situation...
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| Truth and Trust: They Go Together |
| Q: We' ve lost trust. How do I regain the trust of my employees after six rounds of layoffs? How does my organization regain the trust of the community after we dumped toxic waste and covered it up? How does my management team regain trust of each other after a nasty political battle?
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| A calculated attempt to calculate CRM |
| A software integrator working with the open source application SugarCRM, a rival of Salesforce.com, has come up with an online calculator that compares the costs of the two CRM software offerings.
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| King County ready to restart ERP effort |
| After spending $39 million on an ERP system that failed to meet management' s goals for the project, King County in Washington would like to have another crack at succeeding.
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| BI Megatrends |
| What' s accelerating BI innovation? Companies are finally breaking down departmental data silos to improve customer insight and profitability.
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| Flying High With BI |
| With business intelligence suites finally getting in sync with broad user needs, the software is poised to enter the mainstream and elevate operational decision-making.
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| Beyond Quick-and-Dirty RFID |
| Mandates from the likes of Wal-Mart, Target and the Department of Defense have led to crude, slap-and-ship deployments of radio frequency identification technology.
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| Supply Chain Innovation |
| What Is A Supply Chain?
The term supply chain represents the sequence of processes and activities involved in the complete manufacturing and distribution cycle - this could include everything from product design through materials and component ordering through manufacturing and assembly and onto warehousing and distribution until the finished product is in the possession of the final owner.
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| Achieving Supply Chain Productivity |
| What' s the biggest problem in supply chain management today?
It is that all too often, the mission of the supply chain organization is defined much too narrowly. In most companies, many of the most important elements of supply chain management actually lie outside the supply chain organization. They are managed by other departments or, more often, not managed at all
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| The Power of Effective Procurement and Strategic Suppliers |
| Senior financial officers are paying more attention to procurement costs—and with good reason. Because of challenging economic times, the intense focus on fiscal responsibility, and supplier contracts averaging $2 million and higher for a large portion of Fortune 500 companies, more and more companies are putting their procurement process under the microscope. While the purchasing function was once considered a back-office operation, it has steadily become as important as generating revenue.
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| Demand Chain Strategy - The Missing Link? |
| In recent years supply chain management has moved up the corporate agenda and is increasingly being cited as a reason for corporate success or failure. Poor on-shelf availability of products that consumers want, and excessive stocks of those they do not - have plagued high street names such as M&S, Mothercare, Boots The Chemists and, more recently, Sainsbury’s. As a result, supply chain management is now seen as a major competitive weapon. The complete alignment of sales and marketing, supply chain and process enablers is the key to success, argues Janet Godsell.
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| Route-to-Market Knowledge Builders |
| The past year might turn out to be a watershed one for supply chain analytics in the distribution market, certainly if RONA’s ambitious move is anything to go by. The hardware, home improvement and gardening distributor and retailer took its financials to a new level by introducing and integrating value chain analytics (VCA) software and activity-based management (ABM) software to create route-to-market cost modeling for its substantial supplier base. Such a system takes cost efficiencies to a new level, and it’s a model that will likely be adopted quickly by other companies that want to see their costs properly allocated and better accounted for.
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| Let CRM Drive Your Supply Chain |
| As Russ Hill, worldwide director of retail, consumer products, and distribution industry marketing at business intelligence provider Business Objects, says, "As retailers spend every day in 'survival mode,' the competition to gain insight that helps them understand who their customers are is increasingly intense.
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| Integrate Data From Business Process Outsourcing |
| Over the last five years, corporate America has increasingly turned to outsourcing and offshoring to gain efficiency. Companies assumed that outsourcers could integrate people, processes and systems more efficiently and cost-effectively than they could achieve this integration on their own. In retrospect, however, many of these companies discovered that they didn' t fully consider the risks of these relationships, even if they put stringent service-level agreements (SLAs) in place.
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| Lucrative but "Risky" Aftermarket Business—Service and Replacement Parts SCM |
| Growing pressure to improve customer responsiveness and profits has lately changed the traditional role of service management for spare and replacement parts. As competitive pressures push more products to a commodity-like business model, many manufacturing companies are increasingly relying on customer service to retain or establish a competitive advantage. Many manufacturers and distributors are also beginning to recognize that there are significant revenue stream and ways to increase customer satisfaction in the aftermarket once their product has been sold...
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| RFID middleware market evolving |
| RFID middleware spending is growing steadily, but mostly for pilots, and the software remains immature, with potentially serious weaknesses, according to a story by Frontline Solutions, citing data from recent reports by Frost & Sullivan and AMR Research.
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