News and Articles - December 2004

2004 CRM Survey

December 2004 from CAmagazine - As you may know, we have published surveys of the leading Accounting and ERP Systems (September 2004), Business Intelligence (June 2004), and Professional Services Automamtion (March 2004). This time, it's CRM. We have detailed information on ACCPAC CRM, ACT, Clientele, CommenceRM, E.piphany E.6 CRM Suite, InterAction, Luxor CRM, Maximizer Enterprise, Microsoft Business Solution CRM, mySAP CRM, NetSuite, Oracle E-Business Suite, QuickBooks Customer/Client Manager, and SalesLogix. Our survey includes about 200 questions about cost, user base, target market, technology and CRM functionality. Check out the survey and the cover article written by Michael Burns by clicking here.

Business Process Improvement (BPI)

December 2004 from the Bottom Line - "In the past, BPI was called Business Process Re-engineering (BPR), which many people think is a euphemism for layoffs. BPR was also supposed to involve radical change. Today, you hear less about BPR and more about BPI because BPR has bad connotations. BPI is not about layoffs or radical change. BPI is about gradual improvement of business process. A business case should determine whether the change is warranted. BPI is not just for large organizations. There are opportunities for BPI everywhere in any sized organization. But often these opportunities are undetected or ignored. Why?... " For the article written by Michael Burns, click here.

Skype: Free phone calls over the internet

Thanks to my cousin Sol Matthews for suggesting that I give Skype a try. I did and thought it was great. Then, I did some research to see what others are saying.

October 12, 2004 from OS News - "I love Skype. The concept is nothing new, it is an Internet Telephony application: years have passed with people talking to each other for free over the Internet, and it has always been considered cool. However traditional telephones are on everyone's desk today as they were three decades ago, despite that most of these desks now feature PCs connected with fat pipes to the Web.

The problem: Internet Telephony has a hard life in today's Web. Most connected PCs are cowardly hidden behind firewalls, their ports blocked, and almost every company uses NAT, because IP addresses are a precious good. In short, because of this situation existing Internet Telephony systems do not "Just Work". Instead, Skype got almost everything right: I instructed my uncle how to install and use Skype the day after teaching him how to move that curious arrow with the “mouse”; I did not have to implore my megacorp’s Network Administrator to evoke his black magic with the company’s firewalls “just to chat with mummy”; and I did not feel left behind on my Linux box, since Skype runs natively on Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows..." Click here for the article. Click here for Skype.

First Look: Microsoft Office Small Business Accounting

November 5, 2004 from PC World - Richard Morochove writes "If you're keeping business books using Excel and Word, you'll be happy to learn there's a better way. Microsoft has announced Microsoft Office Small Business Accounting (Office SBA for short), aimed at making life easier for spreadsheet bookkeepers. Although it's still in beta, I had a chance to put the new software through its paces. I found that Office SBA plugs a yawning gap in Microsoft's product line that Intuit's QuickBooks has very successfully exploited. Office SBA is aimed at businesses that have outgrown Excel for spreadsheet-style books but aren't quite ready to move up to Microsoft's more capable Small Business Manager Accounting ($995 for a single user)..." Richard also mentiond Simply Accounting and Peachtree as competitors. "If you're happy using QuickBooks, I see no reason to switch to Office SBA. However, if you find Intuit's software counterintuitive or if you keep your current business records in assorted Word documents and Excel spreadsheets, then Office SBA could be just what you need." Click here for Richard's article.

My opinion is that Microsoft will have a very rought time competing with the existing Small Business products. Companies mostly switch systems because they have outgrown their existing system or it's no longer supported. I think Microsoft will need to look to companies without an accounting system for new customers. It will also be a while before Office SBA is as feature rich as the competitors. I don't see Microsoft dominating in this market, as they have done so well in others.

Another problem with Office SBA is that it is not likely a product that their existing Microsoft Business Solution (MBS) resellers will want to implement. MBS resellers now work with products that are more expensive and complex, offering higher margins and opportunity for more consulting fees. Office SBA may compete with the low end solutions offered by MBS resellers.

NetSuite announces major expansion in Canada

November 17, 2004 from IT Business - "A software firm founded by Larry Ellison wants to become as successful managing applications in the small and medium-sized enterprise as Oracle has become in the database market... NetSuite offers a Web-based product designed to manage customer relationship management (CRM), enterprise resource planning (ERP) and e-commerce processes on a single application. The current version, 10.0, includes a feature called Upsell Manager, which helps generate sales leads based on a customer's order history, and NetCommerce Analytics to monitor customers' activity on a firm's Web site... NeSuite will employ between 150 and 200 people in Mississauga before the end of next year...The company will be housed in a 40,000 sq.-ft. facility..." NetSuite takes an ASP (Application Service Provider) approach - you pay a monthly fee rather than buy the software. Click here for the article.

Oracle V. PeopleSoft Could Last Several More Months

November 27, 2004 from Information Week - Just in case you were wondering what is happeing between Oracle and PeopleSoft - "Although Oracle was able to grab 61% of PeopleSoft Inc.'s shares late last week, it's unlikely the database company will score any more victories in its acquisition battle before Thanksgiving, and possible that the two software companies will continue to wage war for several more months...

PeopleSoft continues to rebuff Oracle. And if, as some expect, the poison pill isn't eliminated, Oracle will have to fill seats on PeopleSoft's board with people who are more favorable to its position. Four seats are up for re-election at the next shareholders' meeting, which hasn't yet been scheduled. This year it was held on March 25. A PeopleSoft spokesman says Oracle has until Thursday to propose its line-up of directors for the shareholder vote. Control of the board would enable Oracle to eliminate the poison pill and approve the acquisition...

What Oracle really wants is to beat IBM and Microsoft in the infrastructure game, and if it has an opportunity to move PeopleSoft's customers onto its database architecture, it will gain ground. Software companies lacking an infrastructure product line to support their applications don't survive, according to Dale Kutnick, chairman and research director at Meta Group. "You can't sell someone an application package if you can't offer them security, communication, integration, and middleware, because it becomes isolated, and this is why the industry is consolidating," he says. " Click here for the article.

Innovation Performance Management - The New Frontier

November 13, 2004 from Intelligence Performance - "Innovation is hot (or "cool"), right? Innovation is the new business reengineering; it's focused on top-line revenue growth rather than bottom-line cost cutting. Glossy magazine stories laud current innovators. Governments are throwing money at innovation; states and regions are actively measuring their innovation capacity and capability; businesses are cooperating to create networks, which they hope will foster innovation; and everyone's patenting everything. HP, Microsoft, and Apple are among many vendors that don't want to be technology companies any more. They want people to perceive them as innovation factories. But even given this climate, is IPM a myth or a mandate? ..." Click here for the article.

Performance Management: Integrating a Suite of Proven Methodologies

November 5, 2004 from DM Direct- "Performance management (PM)1 is translating plans into results - execution. It is the process of managing your strategy. Strategy is of paramount importance and is senior management's number one responsibility. For commercial companies, strategy can be reduced to three major choices.

1. What products or service lines should we offer or not offer?
2. What markets should we serve or not serve?
3. How are we going to win?

Although PM provides insights to improve all three choices, its power is in achieving number three - winning - by adjusting and executing strategies. PM does this by aiding managers to sense earlier and respond more quickly to uncertain changes. It does this by driving accountability for executing the organization's strategy to the lowest possible organization levels. In contrast to the popular 1990s business process reengineering (BPR) approaches, where after radical redesign every single step and task were explicitly mapped, PM relies on the power of focusing on the pertinent and relevant. After determining the strategic objectives and the supporting projects, measures, and appropriate (not old-style) budgets to achieve these strategic objectives, the rest will naturally follow. That is, the work activities align to pursue strategy, often intensely customer-focused, as job number one"

The author stresses that "Employees can effectively implement a strategy only when they clearly understand the strategy and when they clearly see how they contribute to its achievement." Click here for the article. (requires free registration)

November 2004

Toronto Financial Technology Show on November 23, 2004

Michael Burns will conduct a seminar entitled "Independent Comparison of Accounting and ERP Systems" which will include a discussion of trends, product positioning and key differentiators by products that are being sponsored. Products sponsored include ACCPAC (Advantage and Simply Accounting), Best (MAS 90 and MAS 200 and MAS 500), Blue Link, Exact, Microsoft Business Solutions (Great Plains, Navision, and Solomon), Multiview, SAP Business One, SunSystems. For more about the seminar and the Toronto Financial Technology Show, click here.

What's new with QuickBooks?

November 2004 from CAmagazine - "QuickBooks has been one of the leading small business accounting systems for years. Originally, it was designed for small businesses with no accounting knowledge. But as Intuit’s flagship product, it has now been updated with several new features, such as contact management, loan management, cash flow projection and a revised help function. The new version, QuickBooks 2005, shipped on September 2, 2004..." For the article written by Michael Burns, click here.

Review of the Multiview Accounting System

October 2004 from CAmagazine - "You probably haven’t heard of the Multiview Accounting System – although you will recognize many companies that use it. Multiview Incorporated is a Canadian company based in Ottawa. It employs about 60 people and has more than 600 clients worldwide – mostly in the US. Only about 10% are in Canada. Multiview should definitely should be on your radar if you’re thinking about a new accounting system"... For the article written by Michael Burns, click here.

Web services the latest next big thing?

November 2004 from the Bottom Line - "Would you believe that Web Services is the most hyped technology on the planet? Would you believe that "48 percent of U.S. enterprises have already deployed Web Services, and another 39 percent are planning to do so in 2005" according to a recent study by the Yankee Group? This article is written for those accountants, who have either not heard of Web Services or don't understand what it means. Don't feel bad if you don't know what it means as there is a lot of confusion about this technology - even the terminology is confusing..." For the article written by Michael Burns, click here.

Minotaur Case Study at Pestell Group

Mid October 2004 from the Bottom Line - "Minotaur Software Ltd. (http://www.minotaursoftware.com) has been providing configured business management and ERP solutions since 1985. Their customers represent a wide range of industries and products including food, chemical, metal, plastics, and mining. Minotaur is located in Brampton, Ontario and has about 200 customers worldwide. Pestell implemented the Minotaur financial and distribution system, and has 28 employees on the system...." For the article written by Michael Burns, click here.

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) Primer

Mid-November 2004 from the Bottom Line - "Although it has been around for over 30 years Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) has climbed from relative obscurity to become one of today's most discussed retail technologies. When Wal-Mart announced, in June 2003, that it was going to require its top 100 suppliers to track shipments to them by using RFID technology-instead of bar codes-by January 1, 2005, it sent a shock wave through the retailing and logistics industries. Just as a bar-code scanner reads a label's universal product code (UPC), radio-frequency identification (RFID) readers get information from an electronic tag that transmits signals containing data about the product. But because the new system requires only proximity, not the line-of-sight accuracy of a bar-code scanner, palettes of products can cycle through warehouses and onto trucks faster...." For the article written by Michael Burns, click here.

New web site

We have optimized our site for keywords that could bring a lot more visitors. We also added a lot more content - see the menu to the left and hopefully, you will find something useful. Click here to tell us your first impressions.

Google: How Much Is Too Much?

November 5, 2004 from Business Week - "Back in August, as Google raced toward its initial public offering, many would-be investors felt its executives were a bit too cocksure. After the search-engine giant first predicted it would fetch between $108 and $135 per share, Wall Street dismissed the offering as far too expensive, forcing Google (GOOG ) to drop its asking price to $85. Today investors who passed on the stock at $85, or even $135, are no doubt kicking themselves. Less than three months after its IPO, Google's stock has rocketed to $187 per share -- 120% above its asking price and 52% above the midpoint of its first, seemingly inane prediction..." Click here for the article.

Google Desktop Search Launched

October 14, 2004 from SearchEngineWatch - "Google has released a new Google Desktop Search tool today that allows people to scan their computers for information in the same way they use Google to search the web. In particular, the tool indexes the full text of: Email within Outlook or Outlook Express (notes, contacts, journal and to do list items are not included, nor are emails in the Deleted Items folder) Microsoft Word, Excel & PowerPoint files AOL Instant Messenger chats Web pages viewed online in Internet Explorer or any HTML file saved to your computer Plain text files..." Click here for the article

October 14, 2004 from O'Reilly Network - "The Google Desktop is your own private little Google server. It sits in the background, slogging through your files and folders, indexing your incoming and outgoing email messages, listening in on your instant messenger chats, and browsing the Web right along with you. Just about anything you see and summarily forget, the Google Desktop sees and memorizes for you. And it operates in real time. Beyond the initial sweep, that is. When you first install Google Desktop, it makes use of any idle time to meander your filesystem, email application, instant messages, and browser cache. Imbued with a sense of politeness, the indexer shouldn't interfere at all with your use of your computer; it only springs into action when you step away, take a phonecall, or dose off for 30 seconds or more. Pick up the mouse or touch the keyboard, and the Google Desktop scuttles off into the corner, waiting patiently for its next opportunity to look around." Click here for the article

Click here to download Google Desktop. But caution is advised - Google Desktop is a Beta release, which means that you could encounter problems. If you could really use this product now, try it. If not, we suggest you wait for a while.

New Google Search Tool Poses Security Risk

October 19, 2004 from Information Week - "If you're the computer's only user, the software is helpful "as a photographic memory of everything you've seen on the computer," said Marissa Mayer, director of consumer Web products at Google Inc. The giant index remains on the computer and isn't shared with Google. The company can't access it remotely even if it gets a subpoena ordering it to do so, Mayer said. Where the privacy and security concerns arise is when the computer is shared. Type in "hotmail.com" and you'll get copies, or stored caches, of messages that previous users have seen. Enter an e-mail address and you can read all the messages sent to and from that address. Type "password" and get password reminders that were sent back via e-mail..." Click here for the article.

Google Toolbar Features

Google Toolbar has been available for a couple of years, and keeps getting better. You may not realize that there are many useful features available in Google's free toolbar including.

• Search site: for those sites that don't already provide a way to search their site for a keyword
• PageRank: PageRank is the importance Google assigns to a web page. Microsoft has a 10 out of 10. ACCPAC has a 6 out of 10. It helps to have higher ranked sites linked back to your site
• Backward Links: enables you to see which pages link to the current page
• Pop-up Blocker: Prevents most pop-up ads from being displayed by your browser
• AutoFill: Eliminates the need to type your personal information into web forms

Click here for more about Google Toolbar features and here to download Google Toolbar.

Microsoft starts its run at Google

November 10, 2004 from Information Week - "Microsoft will push its homegrown search software into beta tests Thursday, its first real move against Google, sources reported early Wednesday. At the moment, Microsoft's MSN Web portal uses Yahoo's search engine. Microsoft has promised that its search engine would have internally developed algorithms and an index built by its own spiders and that it would be live this year. Twice this year it has shown working versions on its Sandbox site, where visitors can test new technologies. Microsoft will be entering a field packed with extraordinary competition. "Microsoft's biggest challenge is gaining mind share," said Gary Price with SearchEngineWatch.com. "Google is so damn good at building and keeping mind share that Microsoft's technology could be wonderful and it'll still have a challenge getting people to look at it..." Click here for the article.

SAP continued its relentless move into the small-business market

October 18, 2004 from CRN - "SAP continued its relentless move into the small-business market last week with the latest version of its business management suite. SAP Business One 2004, like its predecessor, handles functions designed to be used by nearly everyone inside an organization. This new version also inserts material resource planning (MRP) functions in the middle of end-to-end business processes. As a result, light manufacturers can base production demand on their CRM reports, service engineers can view lot batches to pinpoint problems, and salespeople can see the production status of a customer's order..." Click here for the article.

Microsoft Updates Navision

October 19, 2004 from E-Business News - "Microsoft has released the 4.0 version of Navision, the enterprise resource planning (ERP) platform for small and medium-sized businesses that it acquired in 2002. This moves comes just two weeks after Microsoft updated Solomon, another SMB application platform picked up as part of Microsoft's Great Plains acquisition. Navision, which claims 35,000 customers in 50 countries, offers several specific updates in 4.0: sharper analytics (included customizable reports for sales orders and purchase budgets as well as KPIs for financials, supply chain, and CRM), automation of some previously complicated general ledger procedures, personalized interfaces and content for employees, rule-based alerts (e.g. triggered by late deliveries from vendors), and integration with Microsoft's most recent productivity applications and business servers..." Click here for the article.

Global ERP Challenge solved by Exact Software

October 19, 2004 from E-Business News - "Until recently, Alltech's branches across the world had their own systems, with more than 30 standalone accounting tools. That changed a year and a half ago, when Alltech decided to build a single data center and server farm in Nicholasville, KY. Corporate now runs, maintains, and troubleshoots applications for Alltech globally, giving the company better IT efficiency and visibility. Regional IT managers no longer have the burden of caring for systems; rather, they work with Alltech corporate to get specific processes (like country-specific tax laws or reporting regulations) into their instance of Alltech's Macola ERP system from Exact Software..."

It's fascinating that such a large ERP project has been accomplished with what Arthur calls "absolutely a mid-market product" from Exact. But it makes sense given the company's structure, he emphasizes. "We're 63 small fishes with a big fish problem." Macola serves each small fish more quickly, cheaply, and appropriately than a truly large enterprise-level ERP product would, and still gives the corporate "big fish" control of and visibility into every individual instance..."

We recently reviewed Exact Software for an analysis of differentiators for a presentation at the Financial Technology Show. Exact software includes Macola ERP, which is a back office solution that includes financials, distribution and discrete manufacturing. The Macola system was purchased by Exact in 2001. Exact software also includes e-Synergy, which is a front office solution that is integrated with the back office, is web based ( just need a browser), and includes CRM, HRM, Document/Knowledge Management, Project Management, Work Flow, Event Management, eCommerce, and Portals. It's not surprising to hear about Alltech's success with the Macola. Click here for the article.

NetSuite Debuts Version 10.0

October 14, 2004 from CRM Daily - "NetSuite has rolled out version 10.0 of its hosted business suite -- a version that incorporates new innovations in e-commerce, analytics , and advanced upsell and cross-sell capabilities. The release is a groundbreaker for the hosted space (although groundbreaking innovations happen on a regular basis among these vendors), according to Yankee Group analyst Sheryl Kingstone. "They are the first on-demand software vendor to truly embed analytics and e-commerce functionality throughout the application," she says. For example, one new feature in 10.0 is NetCommerce Analytics which provides not only aggregate analysis on the number of page hits or most popular pages, but also the same data on a customer-by-customer basis. "It is an incredibly valuable tool for the sales force," CEO Zach Nelson tells CRM Daily. "Using the click-stream data on an individual user, a rep can see what a prospect was looking at most recently..." Canadians have not heard much about NetSuite, but that will change. They have recently setup a Canadian office and will be attending the Toronto Financial Technology Show. Click here for the article.

The ABC's of ERP

October 5, 2004 from CFO.com - "Although ERP sales, which expanded at more than a 30 percent annual rate in the late 1990s, have flattened, companies spent a robust $20.7 billion on ERP packages last year, including about $6 billion in maintenance and support fees. So if there is widespread disenchantment, it hasn't dragged down sales, although it may have helped usher in a remarkable buyer's market: testimony during the Oracle-PeopleSoft antitrust trial revealed that some customers paid only a fraction of the software's list price.

Disasters aside, most companies of a certain size — generally $100 million and above, although simplified ERP software is often pitched to much smaller companies — find ERP virtually indispensable. ERP serves as an all-important information pipeline that links finance, manufacturing, logistics, sales, and other departments, with new functions being added continuously, further extending its presence in an organization. The "resource planning" that gave it its name is now just a very small part of the capabilities it brings to an enterprise.

How to avoid an embarrassing blurb about ERP in your next annual report? First, stay focused on why you're moving to, upgrading, or otherwise changing your approach to ERP. That way, you won't be misled into thinking of it as a technology project. "The benefits come from changing your business processes, not from installing ERP," says Bill Swanton, a vice president at AMR Research in Boston. Adds Buzz Adams, president of Peak Value Consulting, a Pasadena, California, consultancy that specializes in process improvement, "The technology will work the way you implement it, so what's important is how you improve the processes — the way you do things..." Click here for the article.

Customers Should Tap VARs (Value Added Resellers)

October 6, 2004 from TechWeb - "Observing that most small and medium businesses (SMBs) need technology expertise, Gilroy said they have no CIO or IT department. "So where do they go," he asked rhetorically? "To the channel. To small business owners, I say bring your local, trusted channel partner into your business planning in a deeper way..." This is an article based on a recent keynote address at TECHXNY show, in New York City. SMBs have used VARs to implement specific systems such as an accounting system. But there is the potential for VARs to do a lot more. Some of them have the expertise and the SMB has the need. However the VARs are not independent, and potentially stand to gain from any recommendation. Click here for the article.

PalmOne-Microsoft Deal Not Good For Good

October 5, 2004 from Forbes - "Microsoft and PalmOne today announced a partnership that will likely have a negative impact on Good Technology, a well-capitalized startup with eyes on a public offering. PalmOne said it has licensed Microsoft's Exchange Server ActiveSync technology, giving users of the Treo smartphone direct, wireless access to corporate e-mail without the need for third-party technology. Forthcoming versions of the Treo, due this fall, will have the technology built in. Until now, Good Technology had the market cornered. Its servers and software sit between a company's Exchange e-mail server and the Treo, and serve up corporate e-mail to the phone. Its system also automatically synchronizes a user's mobile e-mail and calendar with a desktop.

Four-year-old Good, which has raised more than $140 million in venture funding, is one of the more promising startups to emerge in recent years. It followed on the heels of a market created by Research in Motion, the Canadian company behind the wildly popular BlackBerry devices. According to Kevin Burden, an analyst at IDC, unit sales of BlackBerry devices through the first half of this year more than quadrupled over last year to 960,000. By year's end, RIM will introduce an add-on product for the Treo that gives users wireless access to e-mail, further watering down Good's advantage in that particular segment..."

Even a "Good" idea is not always enough to be successful. Click here for the article.

Mass E-Mail the Next Competitive Feature for Online CRM?

November 5, 2004 from CRM Daily - "For the most part, the online CRM vendors have achieved rough parity in their feature sets, with some excelling in one area over another. However there are still bits and pieces of functionality that are true competitive differentiators -- at least until the other vendors catch up. One such area appears to be mass e-mail marketing -- at least, again, until the other vendors catch up. "This is gearing up to be a big point of competition for hosted vendors," Yankee Group analyst Sheryl Kingstone tells CRM Daily. In general, she says, most of the major hosted CRM providers offer the capability -- but with significant limitations. "Either they cannot send out more than a thousand e-mails at a time, or they have to partner with another company to provide this feature..." The article focuses on hosted CRM, but it's also a differentiator for traditional on premise systems. There are differences in how to select the target contacts, in the server used to send the email, in performance and in history (what stored and where) of email sent. Click here for the article.

Escaping the Metrics Pit

October 2004 from cmo (a resource for marketing executives) - "In spite of your best efforts to gather meaningful data, there are days when you feel as if you are at the epicenter of insanity—doing the same thing over and over, yet expecting a different result. The results won't change, however, until your methods evolve. Here are four battle-tested tactics that organizations ranging from 10-person shops to Fortune 500 companies have used successfully to improve their marketing metrics..." The article recommends 1)Interview your CEO, 2) Shift the battle to one you can win, 3)Hire a metrics person, 4)Interview your current customers personally to reverse-engineer the sale. Although the article is written for the marketing department, it does bring out ideas that are applicable in other areas. Click here for the article.

ACT! Reacts to Barrage of Complaints

October 22, 2004 from CIO Today - "Many of the customer complaints center around bugs in the new application, lost data and other performance issues. Other users do not experience any trouble at all -- except that the system crashes eventually, and the user is required to reboot. Released in August, ACT! 2005 was essentially a complete overhaul of the company's previous CRM application. It replaced the old flat-file structure with a relational and was re-architected with Microsoft SQL Server 2000 in order to scale for larger workgroups..." Click here for the article.

October 2004

What happened to September's newsletter?

As you may know, I (Michael Burns) write our newsletter and was unable to do so in September. I have been recovering from back surgery. It has been a difficult time, but I am now feeling much better and the operation was successful.

The most important lesson learned is to appreciate the people that care. We all seem to take people around us for granted. We often dwell upon things that bug us about a person, which prevents us from seeing the big picture. Or we don’t have enough time to appreciate what we have. My advice to you – don’t wait to express your appreciation to your family and friends. The other major lesson is to smell the roses. We all know we should, but often don’t. We live in a paradise but are blind to the beauty all around us. And now back to reality...

Annual survey of accounting and ERP systems published in the September 2004 edition of CAmagazine

This year's survey is bigger and better than ever. We have added some significant products, including SAP, that were absent in previous years. We have 57 products grouped into five tiers according to their cost and target market. For the accompanying article and survey, click here.

Coss Case Study published in the Mid September 2004 edition of The Bottom Line

COSS provides manufacturing software to small and mid-sized manufacturing companies, and is tightly integrated with ACCPAC. The system was designed for make-to-order, make-to-stock, job shop and custom manufacturers, and supports mixed mode and production manufacturing. COSS functionality includes a configurator, estimating & quoting, work order, process planning, advanced shop floor scheduling, material planning, job tracking & costing, scrap tracking, data collection & bar coding, time & attendance, resource utilization, and preventative maintenance.

Aerospace Welding uses about 90% the functionality of the COSS system with 50 employees accessing it from workstations as well as 150 employees updating the system using COSS’s barcode software. For the case study, click here.

eWholesaler Case Study published in the September 2004 edition of The Bottom Line

Magic is a Toronto-based software developer that has been in business since 1989. Magic offers business solutions specifically designed to meet the needs of Importers and Exporters with Distribution and Light Manufacturing activities. eWholesaler is their banner product and includes multi-company, multi-branch, multi-warehouse, multi-currency and landed-cost functionality. Magic has about 100 customers mostly based in Canada. Innova has implemented all of Magic’s functionality with the exception of payroll. There are 12 users of the system. For the case study, click here.

Microsoft targets ACCPAC customers again

Microsoft is at it again in its fight with ACCPAC in Canada. For the second time this year, Microsoft is offering a migration promotion to ACCPAC customers. Until March 18, 2005, Microsoft will provide a discount to those customers who switch to Microsoft Business Solution's Navision, Great Plains, or Solomon. I have been advised by Microsoft that "the promotion offers a reduced user-based price of $1,999 per user, and this price includes core accounting functionality." Microsoft is also offering 0% financing options until December 17th, 2004. Click here for information about this from Microsoft and here about this promotion from one of Microsoft’s Business Solution resellers - Axentia.

Revisiting ERP Systems: Benefit Realization

From the 37th International Conference on System Sciences in 2004 - In a paper presented by professors from Victoria and Monash University in Australia - "Many companies initially implemented their ERP systems to solve Y2K and disparate systems issues. These same companies are now looking at a how to strategically leverage their investment in these systems through the implementation “second wave” functionality...

A survey of 800 U.S. companies showed that almost half of these companies had installed an ERP system and that these systems were commanding 43% of a company’s application budget. While research into U.S. Fortune 1000 companies found that over 60% have implemented an ERP system. The market penetration of ERP systems varies considerably from industry to industry. A report by Computer Economics Inc. stated that 76% of manufacturers, 35% of insurance and health care companies, and 24% of Federal Government agencies already have an ERP system or are in the process of installing one. The global market for ERP software, which was $16.6 billion in 1998, is expected to have a compound annual growth rate of 32%, reaching more than $66 billion in sales by 2003 and is estimated to have had 300 billion dollars spent over the last decade...

The results indicate that such implementations do not live up to their expectations and do not provide the expected range of benefits. IT cost and personnel reduction were two issues that had the greatest disparity between expected and actual benefits. People-related issues dominated the barriers to attaining expected benefits with change management issues ranking very high. Software, hardware or integration issues were not ranked highly. Lack of discipline, lack of training, lack of change management and poor project teams all point to organisations who do not understand the importance of change management practices. Although respondent organisations had all been through at least two ERP implementations, change management was signalled as a major problem." For the paper, click here.

Big Solutions For Small Business

September 2, 2004 from Forbes.com - "Microsoft Business Solutions (MBS) is the second smallest, by sales, of seven operating units at the $37 billion company. But Microsoft will spend $10 billion over the next five years in the hope that the division can grow by more than a factor of ten, to $10 billion, in less than ten years. There are plenty of opportunities for the unit, but Microsoft might be hoping for too much...

The market that Microsoft is targeting is small and mid-sized businesses with up to 1,000 employees. Consider that SAP (nyse: SAP - news - people ), the largest and most successful business applications company by far, has about 30,000 customers. Microsoft says it has over 350,000 small business customers now, and there are millions more in the universe that Microsoft is targeting...

Microsoft sells four overlapping sets of business applications, and some say there is no clear distinction between them. Lynne Stockstad, general manager of marketing strategy for MBS, acknowledges that "it's a little challenging to articulate" the distinction and benefits of each product. But she says MBS has all bases covered with what it says is its "embarrassment of riches."  MBS had an ambitious plan to fix the overlaps, but it has been put on the back burner. Project Green, which consumed hundreds of software developers, was to have replaced the source code base of the four applications with a new single source code base. But earlier this summer, Microsoft's Burgum said that the company was scaling back those plans because it realized it would take too long to get the work done. Also, the company was concerned about disrupting sales momentum of existing products. Most of the Project Green developers have been redeployed to other projects."  For the article, click here.

Microsoft was described as an ERP giant-killer. But its presence in enterprise applications has fallen short, so far

September 15, 2004 from CFO.com - "As part of its seemingly endless effort to acquire PeopleSoft Inc., Oracle Corp. responded to federal antitrust charges this summer by describing Microsoft Business Solutions (MBS) as a growing threat to its own enterprise-applications business. Oracle contends that Microsoft is intent on taking its relatively new unit, built largely through acquisitions, upmarket...In making its argument that Microsoft is moving upmarket, Oracle offered the court a list of larger companies in which it claims Microsoft challenged Oracle for ERP contracts. CFO IT contacted the companies on that list. Most refused to comment, but those that did made it clear that Microsoft couldn't meet their needs."

The article shows that Microsoft is not able to compete with the likes of SAP, PeopleSoft or Oracle. As well, "the universe of small and midsize businesses adopting financial and manufacturing software around the world is huge, fragmented, and largely untapped. Burgum recently told a conference of Microsoft partners that there are at least 12,000 SMB (small and mid-sized businesses) applications vendors addressing a market predicted to reach $35 billion by 2008." Microsoft has wisely targeted SMBs - that's were the action is. In fact, what's really going on is the opposite of what Oracle contends. SAP, PeopleSoft and Oracle are going down-market and are focusing their sights on SMBs. The article also contained the following chart to give you an idea of the revenues of the big ERP players:

For the article, click here.

ERP in Small and Midsize Businesses - The 2004 Benchmark Report

August 2004 by Aberdeen Research - "This Aberdeen report benchmarks the strategies, processes, and supporting technologies used in small and midsize companies to manage their enterprises...Data was gleaned from online survey research conducted in June 2004 and a series of interviews with companies whose revenues did not exceed $500 million. Companies represented by annual revenue were subdivided into three sections: less than $100 million, which included 84% of the respondents; $100 million to $249 million (10% of respondents); and $250 million to $499 million, which included 6% of the survey’s respondents. A total of 232 people participated in Aberdeen Group’s survey."

The report is 31 pages and is a professional piece of work, but which is unfortunately not very useful. One problem is whether to trust the findings based on 232 people. Others may find the data more meaningful. Here are some excerpts of what we considered some of the more interesting findings:

"The greatest buying interest is clearly in CRM applications; 37% of survey respondents indicated that they plan to spend more on CRM applications over the next two years than they have this year, and 16% said that they plan to spend significantly more in the next two years than they have this year...

"To date, no one ERP vendor has captured the hearts and minds of companies in the small and middle market. The fragmentation that has characterized the middle market is still pervasive. Multiple vendors and applications prevail. Little concept of “suite” or integrated applications exists, leading to a haphazard environment of mix-and-match applications, some self-developed and some purchased. And once a solution is installed, the smaller business is content with it, even when not entirely confident in its ability to meet all requirements." For the article, click here.

PeopleSoft, IBM in $1B Bundling Venture

September 21, 2004 from internet.com - "In its quest to thwart Oracle's $7.7 billion hostile bid and remain a standalone company, PeopleSoft (Quote, Chart) plans to partner with IBM (Quote, Chart) for its middleware support, CEO Craig Conway said today. During a company-sponsored conference here, the executive stood defiant of his ongoing battle with Oracle.. "This [deal with IBM] is one of the most significant enterprise applications alliance in history of the two companies." Under the terms of the deal, Big Blue and PeopleSoft will together spend $1 billion during the next five years in order to bundle WebSphere middleware in every future shipment of PeopleSoft products at no additional charge to PeopleSoft customers." For the article, click here.

Oracle brings SMB suite to North America

September 27, 2004 from InfoWorld - "Oracle is finally bringing to the North American market its Oracle E-Business Suite Special Edition, a midmarket-aimed package of pre-installed, preconfigured software from its 11i suite of business applications... The E-Business Suite Special Edition will be primarily sold through Oracle's channel, with partners setting the price and handling implementation. Oracle said licenses for the suite will allow a minimum of 10 users and a maximum of 50. Oracle will offer its financials, inventory, discrete manufacturing, order management, purchasing, telesales, teleservice, field sales and daily business intelligence applications in the bundle... Oracle defines its target market for the E-Business Suite Special Edition as companies with annual revenue of up to $250 million...

The software still won't come cheap: Customers can expect to spend close to six-figure sums on licensing and at least that much on deployment services. Oracle's first U.S. Special Edition customer, lighting systems seller Amerlux LLC in Fairfield, New Jersey, will spend nearly $500,000 this year to get up and running, according to director of operations Matt Glass. The total includes licensing, services work from Oracle partner Core Services Corp., maintenance and application hosting by Oracle." Doesn't sound like Oracle will be successful with SMBs (small and mid sized businesses) with this price tag. For the article, click here.

Deloitte Offers Guidance Manual for SOX Section 404

September 2, 2004 from accountingweb.com - "As the Sarbanes-Oxley Act marks its second anniversary, Deloitte & Touche LLP says many public companies are struggling to meet the upcoming compliance deadline for reporting on the effectiveness of internal control over financial reporting, as required under section 404 of the law. In a recent study released this month by the Center for Continuous Auditing at Texas A&M University shows that half of large U.S. companies polled are still less than 60 percent complete in meeting their Sarbanes-Oxley section 404 filing requirements. Anticipating this challenge, Deloitte & Touche released Taking Control, a comprehensive guide to section 404 compliance."  Don't expect to be able to provide SOX services from this guide. If anything, you will go running to Deloitte or a similar organization. For the guide, click here.

Insourcing? JPMorgan Reverses Outsourcing Deal With IBM

September 15, 2004 from InformationWeek - "JPMorgan Chase & Co. plans to undo a technology outsourcing deal with International Business Machines Corp., taking back about 4,000 employees and contractors from the computer giant. The bank's technology operations, including data centers, help desks, and telephone networks were fully outsourced to IBM in April 2003. The seven-year deal was valued at $5 billion when it was signed in December 2002, making it one of the largest outsourcing contracts ever. In a press release Wednesday, JPMorgan Chase said it will begin to transfer the workers back to the company in January." This could be a new trend or it may be based on a merger earlier this year between JPMorgan Chase and Bank One Corp. For the article, click here.

BI Vendor Selection: Smarter the Second Time

September 4, 2004 from intelligent integration - The article sounded like it could have some great ideas on how to do a better job in selecting a BI vendor. Here's an excerpt - "No matter how thoroughly your organization analyzed data volumes, response time, and other technical requirements when the original tools were selected, it's essential to completely reassess those requirements to establish a more current baseline. In the world of data warehousing, some reasons are obvious: You might have new data sources and an expanding user community. More subtle reasons could include the following:

Demand for deeper drill-down analysis

The need for longer duration trend analysis, which requires additional historical information

The organization wants to expand BI beyond after-the-fact reporting to include predictive analysis or operational, near real-time mission-critical functionality.

Security needs are another critical factor. Very often, first-generation BI environments were built and deployed with minimally acceptable security standards set by what any mainstream toolset could provide. After all, part of the purpose was to make data more accessible. Now, with organizations typically much smarter and more demanding about security, second-generation BI systems must be better. BI products vary considerably with respect to security models. Choose your new toolset based on today's and tomorrow's security needs, not yesterday's."

Does this help or is it really a clever way for you to come to realize that you need the expertise of the author. However, I did notice a number of good points in the article, the best being "Set up some portion of your Proof of Concept demonstrations to emphasize what it will take to convert from the current environment. Note that this step doesn't apply only to challengers but also to incumbents: Because today's vendors are bidding with their next-generation products to replace legacy tools (for example, Cognos ReportNet to replace Impromptu), conversion is important regarding all vendors."  For the article, click here.

The Dot-Com Era's Last Gasp: Commerce One

September 27, 2004 from NewsFactor - "If there were one company emblematic of the dot-com era it would be hard to argue against placing Commerce One in that spot. The company once enjoyed a stock price of US$1,655, but its shares are now worth about 18 cents...Commerce One -- once with a market cap of $20 billion at the height of the dot-com boom -- with $300,000 to its name...But many enterprises that tried online exchanges discovered they were not that efficient. "Once that realization set in, the market wasn't forced to adopt supply-chain software," he said. Unfortunately for Commerce One, Ariba , and other B2B companies, the realization coincided with an economic downturn..." For the article, click here.

An executive guide to Knowledge Management

From darwin - The article explains Knowledge Management (KM) and includes challenges of KM, buzz words, metrics, a case study, hot questions, and ROI data. Check it out by clicking here.

Using Key Performance Indicators to Maintain Strategic Focus

From BusinessIntelligence.com - "Key performance indicators (KPIs) allow a company to see in what areas it is executing well, and what areas require improvement. Before one can begin to measure performance, there must be an understanding of the company’s strategic focus. There are three general strategic focuses a company may employ and they are described as cost-, product- or customer-based. A cost-focused strategy emphasizes supplying a standard product that meets many customers’ needs without customization at the lowest cost possible. A product-focused strategy includes custom or niche products or specialized services delivered to its customers. Customer-focused companies place their emphasis on world-class customer service.

To effectively measure corporate performance corresponding to its strategic focus, KPIs should be created. These KPIs are metrics of how well the company is performing, and can be at the enterprise level or specific to departments. KPIs should contain both lagging and leading indicators as it is important for the business to know how well and in what areas it has performed in the past, while recognizing the significant value in understanding how business decisions today will impact performance in the future. Lagging measures indicate the state of the company today, such as balance sheet data, customer retention rate and market share. Leading measures forecast future performance, such as customer satisfaction, training budget and time to market. Each strategic focus has KPIs that are beneficial specifically to that type of focus." For the article, click here.

Watch out for the Terms and Conditions of a Maintenance Contract

September 28, 2004 from NewsFactor in an article titled "The CRM Money Pit" - There is a problem with maintenance contracts not just for CRM systems. "Much trickier are the negotiations for maintenance and other fees. In general, Disbrow says, most of these agreements are cloudy and provide little information as to what constitutes the support to be provided. "Most vendors don't call them 'agreements.' They call them 'policies,'" Disbrow says, "and they are vaguely worded as to what customers get for their money." In essence, the vendor does not commit to a specific service level or entitlement to the buyer. To Disbrow, that is the most frustrating aspect of it all. "Over a five-year period, the buyer will pay more for maintenance than for a license -- yet the vendor doesn't want to commit to anything in the agreement." In a recent research note, she highlights some very expensive pitfalls for buyers to be aware of when negotiating maintenance, support and other fees:

Maintenance and support that is automatically renewed at "then-current" prices.

No cap on maintenance increases, which means the vendor can increase fees much higher than the cost-of-living increases that normally are expected.

No provisions that allow the customer to drop support for any parts of the software being licensed.

Support policies that can be changed by the software vendor and that the customer is not entitled to contest. The result is that service can be reduced substantially, and the company must purchase more-expensive levels of maintenance. Vendors across the board have cut back from 24-hour support to 8 hours a day in this fashion.

A clause that allows the buyer to drop support only at the yearly renewal, which means the buyer is stuck paying for services it may not be using if it converts to another product.

For the article, click here.

August 2004

SAP Business One review published in the August 2004 edition of CAmagazine

These days the biggest accounting software battles are being waged over small and medium-sized businesses (SMB). You probably know Microsoft scooped up Great Plains and Navision, and has since become a major force in the SMB market. Best has also been on a buying spree, acquiring ACCPAC and BusinessVision. Microsoft and Best have plenty of good competitors out there, but none as fierce as the one that entered the Canadian SMB market in November 2003: namely, SAP.

SAP wants to shatter what they consider the SAP myth — i.e., that their systems are only for the largest of companies and are too complicated, too costly and take too long to implement. SAP Business One is meant for companies with revenue of $5 million to $100 million. SAP Business One is a not a light version of their existing mySAP system - it is a completely different solution based on an acquisition from an Israeli software company called TopManage Financial Solutions Ltd. in 2002. For the article, click here.

QAD Case Study published in the August 2004 edition of The Bottom Line

QAD is targeted to automotive, consumer goods, electronics, food and beverage, industrial and medical manufacturers. QAD solutions are designed for organizations spanning multiple sites, multiple currencies and multiple entities. The system is available in 26 languages and has been implemented in more than 80 countries with about 5,400 customers worldwide and about 200 in Canada.

According to Todd Eby, the Chief Financial Officer of Hood Flexible Packaging Corporation, technology is only about 15% of the solution. Look to your business processes for 35% and to your people for the other 50%. You will see in this case study that Hood made a significant investment in people and business processes to make MFG/PRO (QAD's ERP system) a successful implementation. Unfortunately the Bottom Line has not yet published the article electronically. For the case study, click here.

Article on Business Case published in the July 2004 edition of The Bottom Line

It wasn’t that long ago when companies invested in Information Technology (IT) just to remain competitive. From an IT textbook taught at a Canadian University today, you would find “Boards of directors have finally realized they have to bite the bullet and fund these huge multiyear projects just to remain competitive” Those days are over. Business is back in the driver’s seat. As IT projects have a bad reputation for being over budget, not on time and not generating the expected results, senior management is not going to proceed with IT projects unless there is a compelling business case. For the article, click here.

IT Audit

June 15, 2004 from CFO Magazine. This article says that "These days, audits are rarely a source of solace, but finance executives who find IT daunting may actually be relieved to know that IT audits are suddenly in vogue, and provide exactly the sort of big-picture view that most CFOs need. IT audits are not, as you may have guessed, a matter of pure accounting. The term covers a lot of ground, but in general it can be thought of as the processes by which organizations evaluate virtually any aspect of their technology controls, capabilities, and performance. While IT audits have been conducted by some companies for years, they're moving into the mainstream as regulatory compliance, risk management, and information security become higher corporate priorities.

If done properly, experts say, IT audits not only reveal weaknesses in compliance, security, and other areas but also help companies save money by finding ways to use IT hardware and software more efficiently and get a better handle on technology assets. Organizations can use IT audits to ensure that their technology initiatives are in sync with business goals and practices... internal system resources are used effectively and efficiently"

We agree with the article that IT audits are useful in evaluating controls, compliance and security, but don't think that an IT audit will do justice to efficiency and effectiveness. The people that do the IT audits are typically strong on technology and controls, but lack expertise on evaluating business processes in terms of efficiency and effectiveness. Business process reviews also requires a very different methodology compared to conducting an IT audit.

For the article from CFO Magazine, click here. The CICA has just published "IT Control Assessments in the context of CEO/CFO Certification". This white paper is a good source of information on conducting an IT audit. For the CICA white paper, click here.

Business Process Review and Evaluation

Many companies realize that they are not operating as efficiently and effectively as they could. However, these companies don’t fix the problems because of lack of time, lack of expertise, or lack of an independent source to evaluate the problems and potential solutions. Vendors will often suggest new technology, but the vendors may be biased as they have much to gain by their recommendations. 180 Systems can help. Click here if you're interested.

A guide to costing BI (Business Intelligence) and BPM (Business Performance Management) implementations

July 2004 from DM Review - The article makes a number of good points but misses the mark when it comes to costing the services required to implement a system. The article's perspective is - "In every vendor proposal, there is a section dedicated to services. For the most part, the vendors try to evaluate the required level of consulting support that will be necessary for a given implementation and will offer these services as an estimate of time at the present rates. Unfortunately, it is next to impossible to gather a thorough understanding of all of the business needs and technical issues during the sales process; therefore, this is the most difficult budget number to estimate. It is also the number that is most likely to change as the true level of effort is not usually uncovered until after the deal is signed and detailed requirements sessions uncover the final scope of work. Regardless of a company's relationship with a given vendor or sales representative, the proposed services number should always be increased by a moderate percentage to cover for the inevitable realization that the effort is greater than originally understood. It is typically easier to get project money approved up front than it is to go back to the well two months into the project."

We say shame on you if you sign an open ended deal without knowing the full scope of effort. There are good ways to define scope before committing to the implementation. Most vendors will demonstrate their solution in the sales cycle based on a script that includes key business processes. This is an excellent way to assess the scope of effort. If there are still questions, you can pay the vendors to perform a needs analysis prior to signing a deal. The deliverables of the needs analysis includes the costs of services with a maximum amount which will not be exceeded based on defined scope. For the article, click here.

Are accounting firms moving away from technology consulting?

July 2004 from Accounting Technology - This short article, containing quotes mostly from CPA firms, shows the trend is away from technology consulting. The reasons appear to be 1) lack of profits, 2) IT complexity, and 3) independence issues. As well, based on personal experience, many accounting firms don't have enough opportunities that originate from their own client base to sustain a technology practice. Therefore the technology practice needs to find clients outside the client base, but technology people are often not good at marketing, and the accounting firm's marketing activities are typically not helpful to the technology practice. All this is really good news for 180 Systems, which can complement an accounting firm and not pose a threat to an accounting firm's core business. For the article, click here.

Cycle Counting

June 2004 from APICS - "Cycle counting is an inventory accuracy audit technique that uses inventory organization developed through ABC classification (sorting a group of items in decreasing order of annual dollar volume into three classes: A, B, and C). This ongoing effort to physically count each item in inventory enables companies to compare the resulting numbers to the balances shown on stock records, reconcile the differences, and fix the problems that caused the variances. By developing a high regard for accuracy and adopting daily cycle counting, companies can eliminate most errors in inventory records.

It is estimated that material requirements planning (MRP) systems require stock records that are accurate to within ± 0.5 percent. Thus, cycle counting’s ultimate goal is to reduce inaccuracy of stock records to that very small percentage. To achieve this goal, a company first must identify any transactions that produce mistakes and then eliminate their causes. Essentially, this is done by making procedures as simple as possible and taking appropriate remedial actions to ensure the integrity of the inventory system." For more about cycle counting,  For the article, click here.

APICS, a good source of information on production and inventory control, also included another article in the same issue related to cycle counting, but it will cost you to get it. The article added some insights to cycle counting including "My experience is that, on the majority of errors you find during a cycle count, you will never successfully find what caused them. The upside for that is that, if you find one in ten, it will have enormous impact. Because whatever system that you uncover, that one part number, you can be assured that that defect is not only affecting that one part number. Any part number is affected the same way. So when you close that door where the “cows are getting out,” not only are you keeping the one cow in that you caught out there, you’re keeping all the other cows from getting out, also. So even a one in ten success rate in a cycle count analysis has enormous positive impact...

I don’t believe it does top management any good to emotionally commit themselves to a cycle count program unless they first commit themselves to plain old-fashioned inventory accuracy. Because regardless of how much money you put into a cycle counting program, if you don’t have the fundamental disciplines in place for inventory accuracy, you’re going to spin your wheels and get nowhere. The program simply is going to continually confirm how bad you are, and you’re not ever going to get better. The thing I recommend is to make people responsible for inventory accuracy, and they don’t want to do that...

So you make everybody accountable, and it works. First there’s animosity, but then, there’s teamwork. Initially we had people fighting in the parking lot, “You’re not gonna drag me down with you because you don’t want to write scrap tickets!” And at the end of the year, here’s how it went: Any supervisor who did not hit 95 percent accuracy on all the cycle counts of everything he touched, he was put on one-year probation. And the second year, he was fired...

But there was also a carrot on the other end of this stick, because if you hit that 95 percent, you got a bonus that was a 50 percent increase on your normal budgeted raise. And if every supervisor in the place hit 95 percent, then everybody got a double raise."

Microsoft Small Business Manager - alive or dead?

We don't have any news about Microsoft Small Business Manager - that's the problem. We don't hear anything about it. Although the Small Business Manager is still promoted on Microsoft's web site, you will not see it on the Microsoft agenda of the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference held in Toronto in July 2004. It did not seem to get any attention either at the Microsoft customers and partners "Convergence" conference held in Orlando in March 2004.

IBM Snaps Up BI (Business Intelligence) Vendor Alphablox

July 14, 2004 from BPM Today - We have another big BI competitor - "The acquisition was a strategic step for IBM, which has watched spending in the business-intelligence space continue to grow. It will be particularly relevant for the company's data-management efforts and its on-demand computing initiatives. The market opportunity for business-intelligence software is worth more than US$7 billion worldwide and is expected to double by 2006, according to research firm IDC." For more, click here.

Business Case Benefits

July 21, 2004 from gannthead.com - The author, Mark E. Mullaly (a highly regarded Project Management Professional), suggests ways to quantify intangible benefits. "While the benefit may be intangible, it may result in additional benefits that can be measured. As an example, more businesses than I can count claim that the benefit of doing a project is "improved customer service." Great claim, but how do you measure it? Assuming, for the sake of argument, that you actually measure customer satisfaction--whether through surveys, focus groups or market research--then you have a proxy that you can start to use. What's the increase in sales (actual products sold, net sales revenue, revenue per sale) when customer satisfaction increases? Every point increase in customer satisfaction will likely have a corresponding increase. And so, as customer service actually does go up, so does revenue." Mark also suggests "Identify the cost of the next-best-means of attaining a benefit."and "Identify the cost of not getting the benefit." For more from Mark, click here.

Collaborative Benchmarking

July 2004 from Business Finance - "CFOs wanting to know how their organization's performance stacks up in comparison with that of their industry peers and leading-edge organizations worldwide can access a valuable new resource. A group of large corporations, government organizations and consulting firms has joined forces with the American Productivity & Quality Center (APQC), a Houston-based nonprofit, to form the Open Standards Benchmarking Collaborative. The organization will create and promote a publicly accessible framework for defining business processes and measuring enterprise performance...

The initiative will provide a comprehensive, publicly accessible business-process taxonomy and a database of standardized metrics and benchmarks. "In the past, there have been many proprietary best-practices frameworks, but they have focused on particular functional areas -- for example, finance and accounting -- and none has reached critical mass," says Carla O'Dell, president of APQC. "This initiative aims to cover every major business process. It will provide an overall view of the enterprise, including where value is derived and costs are consumed, in a variety of business models."

Companies can contribute their performance data to APQC's online database and receive aggregated data from other participants with which to compare their performance, understand best practices and identify their weaknesses. "This is free, open data -- high-level, protected and aggregated," says O'Dell. The information will help businesses "accelerate the cycle of improvement," she adds. "Everyone will be able to help everyone else work faster and better." For the article (although there's not much more information), click here. For a link to APQC, click here.

We think that benchmarking is a great start to evaluating your business process, but caution is required. Benchmarks may indicate that you're over spending compared to other organizations, but perhaps the benefits outweigh the costs. Also, the participants may have a different way in calculating some of the numbers. If nothing else, APQC will give you some good ideas on what to measure.

SAP's Billion Dollar Bet

June 28, 2004 from InformationWeek - "SAP's future began on a cold February day in 2002 during the company's annual retreat at Sylt, an island in the North Sea just off the coast of Germany. There, dozens of SAP executives first saw a technology that ultimately will replace almost all the code and logic underscoring SAP's existing and extremely successful applications portfolio. The architect: Shai Agassi, a 36-year-old Israeli who's been with the company for just four years.

It's a future that looks markedly different from SAP's heritage as the company that defined the market for enterprise-resource-planning software. Though SAP is the world's third-largest software vendor, with more than 22,000 customers in 120 countries and $8.9 billion in revenue last year, the company is thinking bigger. It's remaking itself into a platform vendor that will sell everything from application servers to middleware to Web services. It will offer slivers of applications--called composite or "snap-on" apps built using services from other SAP apps--up to full-blown business-process sets such as cash management...

SAP's strategy in large part is riding on NetWeaver, the application and integration platform that's the result of a blueprint Agassi outlined on that freezing day two years ago. Unveiled in January 2003, NetWeaver now is the multipurpose engine inside most of SAP's mySAP Business Suite, which includes ERP software, supplier- and customer-relationship-management apps, and supply-chain and product-life-cycle-management software. Initially, SAP leaders thought NetWeaver, which incorporates Web services, would merely bridge SAP and non-SAP environments. But as Web services have grown in popularity, and as SAP has put its technology to the test, the vision has broadened. The technology now puts SAP "in the unique position to be the biggest player" in a new IT ecosystem, Agassi says, at the center of customers' jumbles of applications, services, business-process sets, and even other application and integration platforms, such as Microsoft's .Net and IBM's WebSphere." For more, click here.

The long view on Longhorn (Microsoft's next operating system)

July 16, 2004 from InfoWorld - "In its first preview at the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference last fall, Windows XP successor Longhorn was shown running a 20-year-old copy of Visicalc. Ancient DOS software won't be the lone occupant of the Longhorn compatibility box. Win32, the Web, and even WinForms -- the .Net era's first GUI framework -- are all legacy APIs from Longhorn's perspective. Their replacements, Microsoft says, will jointly deliver "the best of Windows and the best of the Web."

The article talks about Longhorn as unifying Windows and discusses its 3 pillars - Indigo (Communications), WinFS Windows File System) and Avalon (user interface). Indigo will use XML messaging to connect services, applications, people, and devices. WinFS will include a relational database to optimize searching and organizing information. Avalon will combine video, animation, 2-D and 3-D graphics, rich document display... For more on Longhorn, click here.

July 14, 2004 from ZDNet - "Speaking at the company's annual partner conference in Toronto on Tuesday, Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer argued that promising a delivery date for Longhorn that the company couldn't actually hit would be unfair for customers and partners and would make the whole Windows upgrade cycle even more painful. "We are going to be as transparent as we can be, but we are not promising a final ship date today," he said. Microsoft has been persistently vague on when the various server and desktop versions of Longhorn will ship, with the year 2007 the most precise estimate so far." For this article, click here.

Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference 2004 held in Toronto on July 11-13, 2004

July 12, 2004 from VARBusiness - "Velocity. That's the theme for this year's Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference 2004 in Toronto, July 11 to 13. Nearly a year into the rollout of its new partner program, Microsoft says it is now accelerating into a phase of tactical initiatives and investments that augment last year's wholesale program changes.

Many of the new programs are aimed at technical enablement, co-marketing and sales efforts, and ways to foster partner-to-partner business relationships. In all, Microsoft is increasing investment in partner initiatives by $200,000 in fiscal 2005, which started July 1, bringing the total to $1.7 billion. That money will be used to fund training and readiness programs, marketing toolsets and support, and to increase head count for 200 new partner technology specialists.

In addition, Microsoft plans to reallocate 35 percent of the local marketing dollars awarded to each Microsoft subsidiary globally to certified and gold-certified partners who participate in the company's go-to-market campaigns and have earned a sufficient number of points in the partner program."

We tried to find one article that seemed written by an independent observer of the conference that included an unbiased analysis of the event, but could not find a thing. Unfortunately, all we found were highlights that read as if they were written by Microsoft marketing people. For the article by VARBusiness, click here.

CRM leaders

July 8, 2004 from E-Business News - "AMR Research has issued a new study that brings good news for the customer relationship management (CRM) application area of e-business as a whole. But the point of central interest will be the revelation that Siebel, the vendor universally identified with CRM, is about to lose its leading global market share to enterprise applications provider SAP...

While SAP and Siebel sit atop the enterprise CRM segment, Microsoft is making rapid progress in the downstream market. Microsoft's CRM revenues were $148 million in 2003, compared to $71 million for Salesforce.com. Further, AMR expects Microsoft CRM revenues to grow 40 percent in 2004, compared to 21 percent for Salesforce.com. According to an AMR survey, the reasons for Microsoft's CRM growth have to do customer and prospect confidence in the company's long-term viability, integration with Outlook, and ease of use." For the article, click here.

Americans are from Mars, Canadians are from Venus

July 15, 2004 from PROFITguide.com - This is an interesting read from a Canadian perspective on the differences between Canada and the US, which has implications to doing business across the border.

"Most people presume Canadians are just unarmed Americans with parkas and that there really is no difference. It seems commonsensical — research shows that 90% of both Canadians and Americans think the family is the most important thing in their lives. Mind you, 90% of people in Iran think that too.

But looking at the structure of authority in the family, things are different. One of the aspects we use to monitor this is the statement that the "father of the family must be the authority in his house." What we find in Canada is that about 18% of us in the year 2000 believed this to be true, while in the U.S. it was 49%. Since 2000, these numbers have been increasing in the U.S and decreasing in Canada...

The American way is to have a strong father, a commander-in-chief, to whom you give all the power and say "lead us to the promised land" — whether that's in business