News and Articles - December 2005

Second Annual CRM Survey

December 2005 from CAmagazine and written by Michael Burns - "A lot has happened since last year’s customer relationship management survey. The biggest news is Oracle Corp.'s US$5.85-billion buyout of Siebel Systems Inc. The purchase makes sense, since Siebel has been very successful with larger companies over the past 10 years, but has had a tough time lately competing for new business. For Oracle, this new move comes on top of its acquisition of PeopleSoft in December 2004 for US$10.5 billion. Siebel adds 4,000 customers and 3,400,000 CRM users to the company’s customer base.

Oracle is just one of the 15 CRM vendors in the survey chart. Others include ACT!, Chordiant, Clientele, CommenceRM, Exact e-Synergy, GEM-CRM, Legrand CRM, Microsoft CRM, NetSuite, Oracle E-Business Suite, Sage CRM, SalesLogix, and Salesnet. " For the rest of the article and the CRM comparison chart, click here.

Some Advice for 2006

The following words of wisdom circulated the internet in 2005 and reportedly originated from The Dalai Lama:

1. Take into account that great love and great achievements involve great risk.
2. When you lose, don't lose the lesson.
3. Follow the three R's: 1) Respect for self, 2) Respect for others and 3) Responsibility for all your actions.
4. Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck.
5. Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
6. Don't let a little dispute injure a great relationship.
7. When you realize you've made a mistake, take immediate steps to correct it.
8. Spend some time alone every day.
9. Open your arms to change, but don't let go of your values.
10. Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer.
11. Live a good, honorable life. Then when you get older and think back, you'll be able to enjoy it a second time.
12. A loving atmosphere in your home is the foundation for your life.
13. In disagreements with loved ones, deal only with the current situation. Don't bring up the past.
14. Share your knowledge. It is a way to achieve immortality.
15. Be gentle with the earth.
16. Once a year, go someplace you've never been before.
17. Remember that the best relationship is one in which your love for each other exceeds your need for each other.
18. Judge your success by what you had to give up in order to get it.
19. Approach love and cooking with reckless abandon.

November 2005

Toronto Financial Technology Show on November 22, 2005

Michael Burns will present a seminar entitled "Independent Comparison of Accounting and ERP Systems". During the 1st half of the seminar, Michael will discuss key differentiators of some of the systems exhibiting at the show including ACCPAC, Blue Link, BusinessVision, Exact, Great Plains, Multiview, Navision, NetSuite, QuickBooks, SAP Business One, Simply Accounting, SunSystems and SYSPRO. The second 1/2 will be an interactive panel discussion with the vendors on the hot seat. Michael will ask them some tough questions and then will invite the audience to ask their questions directly to the panel. For more about the seminar and the Toronto Financial Technology Show, click here.

Business Cases - Are they worth the paper they are printed on?

November 2005 from CAmagazine and written by Michael Burns - "Chartered accountants have a vital role to play in building business cases for IT investments, whether they be for ERP systems or new networks. Unfortunately, most business cases are not built by CAs, but by IT people who often lack the know-how and independence to do them right. A business case is a tool that supports planning and decision-making for both operational and investment decisions. A good business case includes the methods and rationale that were used to quantify benefits and costs. It shows expected profit impact and/or cash flow consequences over a period of time.

Some progress has been made in IT investments over the past five years. Before the dot.com meltdown, companies shelled out for IT just to outdo the competition or because they were mesmerized by the hype. Today, you at least need a business case before making an IT investment. Sadly, it’s often not worth the price of the paper it was printed on.

One of the big problems with business cases is that they are written by the same people who want to be funded for a particular IT project. These people have a vested interest and typically find a way to make their case with numbers. It gets worse when organizations rely on vendors to help with their business case. The vendors may have some slick material and may be able to offer a few ideas for people who don’t have a clue, but caveat emptor.

Business cases often come complete with calculation errors, convoluted formulas and missing explanations. It’s easy to say a new system will improve efficiency by a small percentage, but it’s a lot harder to provide evidence to support that percentage. Direct observation is the best choice, followed (in descending order of credibility) by corporate statistics, surveys, case studies, benchmark data, educated guesses based on respected managers, educated guesses based on external expert opinions, uneducated guesses and vendor-supplied ROI information. A good way to determine the potential savings in improving operational efficiency is to conduct a survey on the time employees spend on all non-value-added activities such as rekeying information or reconciling data between systems. The survey should be confidential and conducted by an external party to reduce the risk that employees will avoid telling the truth. But be careful with the potential savings identified by eliminating non-value-added activities. It can become a big morale problem if employees think their jobs are at risk. Often, the answer is to involve them in more useful activities such as analysis or talking to customers.

Sometimes the most compelling business case is that you have no choice — for example, your existing ERP system may no longer be supported or your business may have changed. Still, there could be a big spread between the low- and high-end solutions. You should have a business case to justify the higher-end solution if you think it’s the best option for the company.

So let’s say the business case was done properly and the IT investment was made. Typically, the file is put away, never to see the light of the day again unless something goes wrong. But a business case should act as a beacon throughout the entire process. It should include measurements for determining whether the investment was successful. The measurements should be used to motivate all employees involved in the project.

Accountants have the number-crunching skills and business knowledge needed to build better business cases. It’s time they took charge of the process."

ERP vs Best of Breed

October 2005 from The Bottom Line and written by Michael Burns - "ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) systems are defined as systems that can automate all business processes throughout an organization. Best of breed (BoB) systems provide solutions to a specific businesses process or requirement within an organization such as Point of Sale (POS) or Customer Relationship Management (CRM). Which one is better?

ERP vendors will tell you that the total cost of ownership is much better with ERP as you don't need to worry about integration. Integration is an on-going problem as the two systems evolve. Integration is not just about transferring transactions from one system to another. What about synchronization of master files such as customers and suppliers? Is it 2-way synchronization? Does it happen in real-time? Should only some of the data be updated by the other system? ERP also gives you one user interface to learn and one number to call if there are problems.

BoB proponents will talk about their deep functionality as well as knowledgeable people dedicated to a particular industry. BoB license costs may also be lower than the ERP equivalent. Consider a large company with a small division with limited retail requirements. Their ERP solution could very well be overkill for the retail division.

BoB may also make sense for situations when an organization has multiple ERP systems and wants one solution for a specific requirement such as CRM. A BoB CRM system may already be integrated with several ERP systems. And believe it or not, even the biggest ERP systems will have some gaps in their offering and it will be necessary to use third party or BoB solutions.

Technology is on the way that will help the BoB argument. By now you should have heard of Web Services and XML (eXtensible Markup Language). XML is a component of Web Services. XML will allow companies to share data using standards. For example, a purchase order can be issued electronically to a supplier that is using a completely different system and is able to read and process the purchase order using XML. XML should help with transactions such as Purchase Orders. However, XML may not be able to solve synchronization issues. All the major vendors are working together to define the standards for XML and Web Services, but it's likely going to be a few years before this technology is readily available.

ERP systems used to be considered a back end solution for functionality that includes financials, distribution and manufacturing. ERP systems initially did not include front end solutions such as CRM, and as a consequence we have a wide range of CRM vendors offering their BoB solution.

ERP systems are very good at generating lots of data but were not great at turning the data into information useful to make decisions. ERP was considered data rich and information poor. We also have a wide range of vendors offering their BoB Business Intelligence solutions. However, the trend today is for ERP to offer end to end solutions that include the back end, the front end and Business Intelligence.

Supply Chain Management (SCM) is an application that has been traditionally available through BoB vendors. SCM connects different organizations in the supply chain. For example retailers are connected with distributors who are connected to manufacturers who are connected with their suppliers. In recent years, ERP vendors have developed broader suites that provide integrated support across supply chain processes, such as linking inventory replenishment and transportation management.

So the battle between BoB continues on many fronts. There is no right answer as whether ERP or BoB is better. As my professor of Information Systems told me a long time ago, it depends."

Microsoft Dynamics GP (Great Plains) 9.0 Product Launch

November 16, 2005 - I attended the launch of the latest Great Plains' product (version 9.0), now known as Microsoft Dynamics GP 9.0 from Microsoft on November 16. For those of you not yet familiar with Microsoft Dynamics, Microsoft recently re-branded the Microsoft Business Solutions products to Microsoft Dynamics - which includes a logo with the Microsoft colours used in other Microsoft brands. The event was held in Toronto and attracted about 200 Microsoft business partners and industry analysts. Let there be no doubt that Microsoft is solidly behind Microsoft Dynamics GP and the its other business solutions including Navision, Solomon, Axapta and CRM. Moving forward, Microsoft is heading down a path that will lead to a convergence of its business solutions in about 3-4 years. In the meantime, Microsoft is making significant enhancements with the existing products.

Microsoft Dynamics GP is doing a lot better financially with a 21 per cent growth in licenses last quarter. Microsoft has deep pockets and will continue to invest in its business solutions including Microsoft Dynamics GP 9.0, as it sees huge potential in the future of the business. The biggest area for opportunity is primarily a blending of Microsoft Office with Microsoft Dynamics solutions. With version 9.0, Microsoft Dynamics GP now looks like Microsoft Outlook and is tightly integrated with Microsoft Office. Microsoft sees a natural progression from Microsoft Office to Microsoft Dynamics.

Other important enhancements in Microsoft Dynamics 9.0 include role-based computing, improved business intelligence and web services integration. Role based computing provides a personalized view and access to information and tasks based on an employee’s role starting with the home page (what opens when signing onto the system). Business intelligence enhancements include analysis cubes for Microsoft Excel and key performance indicators. With web services, any integration work is protected with new releases, which will support integration with web services.

Another important Microsoft Dynamics strategy is to focus on verticals. You will soon be able to find a Microsoft representative that focuses on your specific industry.

The troops are charged up, and in the minds of Microsoft management, there is no reason to lose to the competition.

For a short article from ITBusiness on the product launch, click here.

Coming From Microsoft: 'Hosted Everything'

October 26, 2005 from Information Week - "However Microsoft proceeds, the company knows it must explore new software and service delivery modes. Microsoft faces rising competition from vendors like Salesforce.com and NetSuite on the CRM/ERP front, yet by moving ahead with hosting Microsoft also could end up taking on longtime partners that host Microsoft software. Microsoft officials have told partners that the company’s hosting offerings will be "revenue-neutral" to them. Presumably, that means partners would sell and even customize applications for customers that could run on Microsoft servers." For the rest of the article, click here.

Web based user interfaces

October 17, 2005 from InfoWorld - There is a debate about whether a pure web based product can compete in functionality and performance with the traditional client/server systems. Things are changing. "It's easy to see why AJAX (asynchronous JavaScript and XML) has captured the imaginations of so many Web developers. For the first time, browser-based UIs are rich and full-featured enough to do away with so-called thick-client desktop applications." For the rest of the article, click here.

Google Offers Web Analytics For Free

November 13, 2005 from InformationWeek - "In March, Google acquired San Diego-based Urchin Software Corp. and promptly lowered the monthly cost of the company's hosted Web-analytics service, Urchin On Demand, from $495 to $199. Today, the search company is re-branding Urchin under the name Google Analytics and making it available to everyone for nothing...

Web analytics is the analysis of the data generated by visitors to Web sites -- the pages they visit, the ads they click on, and various related metrics -- for the purpose of marketing and content optimization." For the rest of the article, click here. Why give it away you ask. It's one great way of gathering business intelligence.

Market Analysis: Business Intelligence

October 7, 2005 from Network Computing - "Companies also want a standardized platform from which to analyze their business data, and they want this platform to work across the organization, not just at the departmental level. This single view of the enterprise is crucial for letting business users stay on top of trends and make decisions in real time using up-to-date data, and IT pros know it. CIOs surveyed by Gartner identified BI as their No. 2 technology priority this year, up from No. 10 in 2004. Not surprisingly, the market for BI reporting and analysis tools is on the rise. Forrester Research predicts it will reach $7.3 billion by 2008, up from $5.5 billion last year." For the rest of the article, click here.

E-commerce fraud will cost businesses $2.8B this year

November 10, 2005 from ComputerWorld - "Merchants are set to lose $2.8 billion this year because of online fraud, according to a survey released by CyberSource Corp., a provider of electronic payment and risk management products in Mountain View, Calif. The $2.8 billion figure is 8% higher than last year, CyberSource said. The survey, conducted by Austin-based Mindwave Research Inc., found that companies with online revenues of between $5 million and $25 million annually are being hit the hardest. Those companies saw online fraud losses rise from 1.5% of their revenue in 2004 to 1.8% of their revenue this year...

Part of the problem is that while merchants are reviewing more orders manually this year to catch fraudulent orders, they’re doing so without hiring more employees, according to CyberSource spokesman Bruce Frymire. In fact, midsize merchants said they reviewed one quarter of their orders this year, up from 21% of orders in 2004, he said. Most merchants are so far relying on two basic means of fighting fraud: address verification systems, which compare the address on file at the card issuer to the billing address provided by the card holder, and checks of the card verification number -- the additional digits printed on the credit cards, according to the survey. Over half the merchants who took part in the survey said that they are currently using or intend to use MasterCard’s SecureCode or Visa’s Verified by Visa payer authentication systems before the end of 2006, Frymire said." For the article, click here.

Forrester's Top ERP Vendors

November 14, 2005 from destinationCRM - "Forrester has released its latest evaluation of the top ERP vendors, examining how they address customers' desires for them to provide licenses that incorporate more flexibility and better software life cycle support. "The Forrester Wave: Enterprise Applications Software Licensing, Q4 2005" shows Oracle leads the pack in accommodating business complexity, while SAP takes the top spot when it comes to delivering simplified license metrics and flexible licensing policies...

The wave evaluates nine vendors, all of which have core ERP suites and significant market presence, and have revenues above $200 million. In its evaluation of complex offerings, Forrester assessed the maximum number of options each vendor provided in license metrics and upfront life cycle policies. Those with the most options fared best. Oracle is the winner in this other category. Epicor Software, IFS, Microsoft Business Solutions (MBS), QAD, SAP, and SSA Global are the other leaders, while Intentia and Lawson are named strong performers...

Many ERP systems were initially installed pre-Y2K and are now coming up on replacement. Enterprises have learned harsh lessons, as they have paid for maintenance of unused licenses, suffered undefined maintenance fee increases, and lost functionality credit for future releases. As companies begin their vendor selection processes, they do not want to repeat the same mistakes." For the article, click here.

Deltek Systems Acquires Wind2 Software

October 4, 2005 from The Washington Post - "Both Deltek and Wind2 are examples of PSA (Professional Services Automations) systems. "Most of Deltek's 8,000 customers, including Bechtel Corp. and CACI International Inc., are federal contactors or engineering, architecture or construction firms, but Parker hopes to expand the client list to include consulting and information technology companies. Wind2 has 3,000 customers, most of them small and medium-size engineering, architecture and contracting firms. The addition of Wind2's 85 employees brings Deltek's headcount to about 800...Last year, Deltek generated $123 million in revenue, and the new chief executive said he expects that figure to grow by 20 percent for 2005." We expect to hear more from Deltek in the future. For the article, click here.

Old friends collide in online software showdown

October 28, 2005 from CNEWS - "Now, Ellison is straddling another set of fractured friendships in a drama unfolding around Salesforce.com Inc. and NetSuite Inc. The pioneering upstarts -- conceived by a younger generation of Ellison's corporate progeny -- have been helping steer the business software industry in a new direction with applications that are accessed directly over the Internet.

Once considered a crazy idea, the concept of online, or "on-demand," software has turned into a hot market as thousands of companies decide they would rather lease applications monthly than pay an upfront licensing fee and then deal with the costs -- and headaches -- of installation, maintenance and the inevitable software upgrades. Earlier this year, the research firm IDC estimated spending on "software as a service" -- another euphemism for over-the-Internet corporate computing -- will double during the next five years, totaling $10.7 billion in 2009.

The rise of on-demand software already contributed to Siebel's downfall, driving the distressed company into Oracle's arms in a $5.85 billion sale expected to be completed early next year. Siebel boasted a $50 billion market value in early 2001 before its deep sales slide. Ellison knows the on-demand market well. He invested early in Salesforce.com and NetSuite in a show of faith in Marc Benioff and Evan Goldberg, former protégés who started their own companies during the dot-com boom of the late 1990s.

Although smaller than Salesforce.com, NetSuite is starting to attract more attention. Unlike its rival, NetSuite has always tried to be a one-stop shop for online applications, aiming for growing businesses with fewer than 500 employees.

The approach appears to be catching on. With 2004 revenue of $41 million, NetSuite ranked as the nation's second-fastest growing technology company during the past five years, according to recent study by Deloitte. NetSuite expects to book about $70 million in revenue this year, putting it on track for a 2006 IPO." For the rest of the article. click here.

Google Wants to Dominate Madison Avenue, Too

October 30, 2005 from The New York Times - "Those little ads - 12 word snippets of text, linked to topics that users are actually interested in - have turned Google into one of the biggest advertising vehicles the world has ever seen. This year, Google will sell $6.1 billion in ads, nearly double what it sold last year, according to Anthony Noto, an analyst at Goldman Sachs. That is more advertising than is sold by any newspaper chain, magazine publisher or television network. By next year, Mr. Noto said, he expects Google to have advertising revenue of $9.5 billion. That would place it fourth among American media companies in total ad sales after Viacom, the News Corporation and the Walt Disney Company, but ahead of giants including NBC Universal and Time Warner." For the rest of the article, click here.

October 2005

Corporate Performance Management (CPM) - It's ready - Are You?

2005 White Paper written by Michael Burns for SunSystems - "Imagine driving a car without an instrument panel? Or the speedometer shows your speed from 5 minutes ago. You run the risk of getting a ticket, or much worse getting into an accident. Or maybe you will be late because you're being overly cautious. Now imagine you're the CEO of a company without an instrument panel - that's one of the reasons for CPM. But you need more than an instrument panel; you also need a map especially if you're trying to get somewhere you have not been before. To the CEO, the map is similar to a company's strategy map - another component of CPM.

Now consider that there are passengers in the car, and they all have different objectives. The child in the back wants to stop frequently or the grandmother wants to take the scenic route. This is not a big problem in a car as the driver can ignore the conflicts. But this is much harder in an organization where each department has its own objectives. Ensuring alignment to corporate objectives using scorecards is another key element of CPM.

Initially coined by Gartner, a research and advisory firm, CPM is an umbrella term that describes all of the processes, methodologies, metrics and systems needed to measure and manage the performance of an organization. One problem with CPM is that it's hard to find a common definition of exactly what it is and what functionality is included. Another problem with the definition is that it includes not just applications, but also processes and methodologies. CPM is on shaky ground if it depends on processes and methodologies to be considered CPM. Sure you need processes and methodologies to make it work as is the case with any technology. But would you dismiss an ERP system that lacked processes and methodologies?

However, the consensus is that CPM does include:
1. Strategic planning
2. Scorecarding
3. Budgeting and Forecasting
4. Consolidation
5. Business intelligence.

For the rest of the White Paper on CPM, click here.

Business Process Review Revisited

Mid September 2005 from The Bottom Line and written by Michael Burns - "Business processes evolve over time and the reasons for the way things were originally designed may no longer apply. Most organizations are organized by department or function such as Accounts Payable and Purchasing. Business processes are often optimized for a specific department at the expense of other departments. There could be bottlenecks that delay the process or too many people doing something that could be better done by one person. Each step in the business process should add value. A good way to document business process is by using what is called swimlane diagrams. Swimlane diagrams are drawn so the activities performed by each business function, department, or location are in different horizontal rectangles, or lanes-giving rise to the swimlane name." For the article and an example of a Swimlane diagram, click here.

BI (Business Intelligence) and the SMB (Small and Mid Sized Business)

September 20, 2005 from ITBusiness.ca - We were asked to answer this questions for the readers of SMB Extra "What does business intelligence mean to an SMB, and how do I take advantage of it to work smarter?" Our answer - "This question cannot be answered without a definition of business intelligence (BI), which simply means turning your data into information that is useful to make decisions.

SMBs, just like larger companies, need BI. Most organizations don't get the information they want from their existing computer systems without going through hoops, and these hoops are usually Excel spreadsheets. Spreadsheets are inefficient and unreliable; errors can creep in anytime through re-keying or calculation mistakes. There is no audit trail on changes, so errors may go undetected. To make matters worse, spreadsheets are not updated as things change in the real world, so decisions are sometimes made based on old data." For the rest of our answer, click here.

Dynacom Software Review

October 2005 from CAmagazine and written by Michael Burns - "Although little known outside Quebec, Dynacom is one of the province’s leading suppliers of accounting systems, with a reported 75,000 customers. The Laval-based company has also done very well outside Canada, with 250,000 customers worldwide — mostly in the US.

Dynacom started operations 15 years ago and now has 40 people working from its head office. The system, which comes in English and French versions, is sold in retail stores throughout the US and directly or through partners elsewhere. Although initially designed for small businesses, it is now aimed at mid-sized companies as well." For the article, click here.

Infreon Case Study at CA firm

October 2005 from The Bottom Line and written by Michael Burns - "Over the past fifty years, Gaviller & Company LLP has grown into a regional chartered accounting firm with offices in Owen Sound, Walkerton, Collingwood and Meaford. Today, the firm's support staff of over 50 individuals is made up of Chartered Accountants (CA's), Certified Management Accountants (CMA's), Certified General Accountants (CGA's), Certified Financial Planners (CFP's) and other individuals specializing in various areas of business service.

A few years ago, the Collingwood office needed to update their computer server, and one of the partners, Sue Martin, just happened to come across Infreon at a conference she was attending. Infreon offered a very different approach to computers. Infreon looks after the computer networks for about a dozen CA firms in Ontario. Their clients still purchase their own computers and software, but the servers are maintained in Infreon's data centre." For the article, click here.

Hosted CRM vs. In-House: Which Direction Should Your Company Take?

September 2005 from CRMindustry.com - ""There’s a huge interest in hosting,” says Esteban Kolsky, an analyst at Gartner. Beyond the usual drivers, he says, on-demand models are attracting adherents who got burned by costly in-house CRM projects that didn’t deliver the expected results. Hosting is particularly attractive, he says, if companies are looking for more tactical, point applications, such as campaign management, pipeline management, and email management.

What CRM model businesses choose, of course, depends largely on their individual needs and circumstances. Do they have an IT department? Do they need highly customized applications, and if so, do they have skilled developers? Is their workforce distributed or mobile? Do they have key back-office systems that need to be integrated with new front-office functionality? What are their security restrictions? The answers to these and other pertinent questions should dictate approach, say experts." For the article, click here.

eBay Acquiring Skype

September 12, 2005 from eWeek - "eBay will acquire Internet telephony provider Skype Technologies for $2.6 billion in cash and stock, and as much as an additional $1.5 billion in future performance-based payments, both companies announced Monday. Skype's VOIP (voice-over-IP) telephony software will help eBay drive existing and new e-commerce on the popular online auction site, said eBay Inc. officials. Skype SA, which has about 53 million registered users, provides software to let users talk for free over the Internet or pay to send and receive calls from landline or cellular phones. For the article. click here.

September 13, 2005 from eWeek - "eBay's acquisition of Skype could be worth up to $4.1 billion to investors in the Internet telephony start-up, but it is getting mixed reviews from Skype's fervent supporters. It was the hard-core Skype fans whose word-of-mouth advertising helped it become the world's largest voice over Internet protocol (VOIP) provider without spending a penny on marketing. It has some 54 million registered users and usually has more than 3.5 million people online.

But the sale to eBay could signal the end of the evangelical zeal from users that drove Skype's rapid growth. Its software—which offers free computer-to-computer calls between Skype users—has spread in classic viral fashion, as each new user convinces friends and family to sign up. In a poll on the forums, 69 percent of users said the acquisition is not a good thing, compared with 23 percent in favor of the deal. "In my opinion, the takeover by eBay means to me possibly and probably the end of free Skype services. I anticipate a very bad future for us here but I sincerely hope I am wrong," the Skype user Alan2 wrote on Monday." For the article. click here.

SAP to buy Toronto software developer for retailers

September 20, 2005 from Globe and Mail - "International software giant SAP AG is expanding its Canadian presence by buying Triversity Inc., a privately owned Toronto company specializing in transaction-processing software for retailers. The deal is the German company's first acquisition in Canada, where it already has 600 employees, including a fast-growing research and development operation in Montreal." For the article, click here.

Change Management

From Peter de Jager - I recently attended a seminar by Peter and liked what I heard. Here's a sample of his writing in a review of Jim Collin’s book , “Good to Great - "Why do most companies encounter resistance to change? And how do a handful of companies, get to the point where the concept of “resistance to change” has no meaning?

In a way, Collin’s entire book is an attempt to provide an answer to this question, but there’s one of his findings in particular which I think points most forcefully towards the answer. On page 79 Collins, within the context of a tiny section titled “Lead with questions, not answers” writes;

Leading from good-to-great does not mean coming up with the answers and then motivating everyone to follow your messianic vision. It means having the humility to grasp the fact that you do not yet understand enough to have the answers and then to ask the questions that will lead to the best possible insights.

This flies in the face of the whole notion of “buy-in”. Everything about the term “buy-in” screams that management has the answer, management and only management knows the correct path, management know what’s best for the company and if only the employees would buy management’s solution, then all management’s problems would go away." For more, click here.

Small Business CRM: Pitfalls and Mishaps

September 21, 2005 from CRMDaily.com - "CRM products are but one tool in developing and maintaining customer relations. It should not be used in isolation. Thinking technology is the end-all and be-all goes hand-in-hand with the third pitfall: buying an application before understanding what the true CRM requirements for a particular business are...

As Yankee Group's Kingstone advised, "Think small steps and keep it simple. Ensure that the application empowers the end user with few clicks to enter information and an easy way to find the right information at the right time." For the article, click here.

Microsoft merges units to tackle changing markets

September 21, 2005 from Computer Business Review - "Microsoft will consolidate its seven business units into just three to better prepare itself for its next set of corporate challenges as software-as-services take off and the line between the network and the computer continues to blur...

Microsoft will also combine the $11bn-a-year Information Worker division with the $800m Microsoft Business Solutions services division into the new Business Division. Information Worker was mainly Office sales, with some collaborative server software thrown in, while MBS was Microsoft's smaller, younger enterprise software division, comprising business intelligence, ERP and CRM suites." For the article, click here.

From our prespective, it looks like MBS just got swallowed up by a division with a completely different business model. We predict MBS will re-emerge after a difficult year as their own division again.

10+ things you should know about troubleshooting a slow PC

September 28, 2005 from TechRepublic - "User complaints are minimal when new PCs are rolled out. They start up quick, and programs seem to open in a snap. But over time, users begin to notice that their system is slow or that it hangs up often. While the possibilities for system slowdown are endless, I have identified 10 common troubleshooting areas you should examine first before you suggest to management that it's time for an upgrade." For the article, click here.

XML Is Taking Over the World

September 23, 2005 from CIO Today - "XML is taking over the world as we know it, having become the foundation of almost all of today's Web services and most service-oriented architectures. XML is not a technology per se; it's a programming language that supports developers devising their own custom tags for Web information. This allows that information to be shared by XML-aware applications that can interpret the tags and organize the data accordingly.

Recently we've seen a spate of watershed XML-related events: 1 ) Microsoft announced the next version of Microsoft Office, code-named Office 12, will have XML as its native file format. Say goodbye to .ppt, .doc and .xls. These "default" XML file formats are designed as an extension of the WordprocessingML and SpreadsheetML schemas and will be interoperable with the binary formats of Office 2000 and later." For more, click here.

Google builds an empire to rival Microsoft

September 21, 2005 from ZDNet News - "Google already has plenty of influence. It handles nearly half of the world's Web searches...But what's next? Author Stephen Arnold has closely analyzed Google patents, engineering documents and technology and has concluded that Google has a grand ambition--to push the information age off the desktop and onto the Internet. Google, he argues, is aiming to be the network computer platform for delivering so-called "virtual" applications, or software that allows a user to perform a task on any device with an Internet connection.

For all of its wild success, about 99 percent of Google's revenue still comes from advertising, mostly from Internet keyword searches. Certainly, it has built on the core business, adding everything from the Gmail free Web-based e-mail service to Google Earth, a satellite mapping service. And it has plenty of cash to spend on new technology--nearly $7 billion in cash, $4 billion alone from a secondary stock offering on Sept. 14." For more, click here.

Beyond ROI: Enterprise Payback

2005 from Enterprise Applications Consulting - "While most vendors have been able to construct comprehensive ROI models for their products, these models largely fall short in their ability to accurately measure the total value of an enterprise software investment. This is due to the fact that most ROI models are focused on quantifiable measures of return. While this is a useful and often necessary function, the focus on purely quantifiable measures leaves little room for a discussion of more qualitative success factors that are often difficult to fit into a fixed economic model. A more complete analysis of return can be had by looking at the overall payback that enterprise software can offer to a company. Enterprise software payback includes not only quantifiable improvements in bottom and top line functionality, but also more qualitative measures – such as new business opportunities, improved customer and partner relations, and improved time to market – that contribute significantly to the success of a company’s enterprise software implementation and use. Enterprise software buyers who understand the overall payback that a given product suite can offer their company will be able to make more informed choices that lead to success not just in software deployment but in overall business functionality." For more, click here.

September 2005

Annual ERP Survey

September 2005 from CAmagazine and written by Michael Burns - Our seventh annual survey of accounting and ERP systems now includes new or updated responses for 55 systems and covers the entire spectrum - from QuickBooks and Simply Accounting to mid-market systems from Sage and Microsoft and high-end products from SAP and Oracle. The accompanying article includes our methodology for classification of systems into tiers as well as ERP trends. For the article, click here.

Magstar Case Study at Fields Stores

September 2005 from The Bottom Line and written by Michael Burns - "Fields Stores is a division of Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) with 105 locations across Western Canada. Fields stores are on average 7,000 square feet and stocks general merchandise and apparel goods with about 2 registers per store. Fields generates $75 to $100 Million in annual revenues, and will have about 800 employees by the end of this year.

Like many other companies, Fields replaced their existing systems because of Y2K. They considered using HBC's system, but that seemed like overkill for their stores. After a thorough evaluation, Fields selected the Magstar system which had most of the required functionality at a reasonable price." For the rest of the article, click here.

Case Studies for Publication

Are you interested in having your system implementation or IT project published in a popular Canadian accounting or technology magazine? It's a painless process without any cost to you. We are just looking for interesting stories. Please email Michael Burns at mburns@180systems.com if you are interested. Thanks

Why Thick Monthly Reports to Management are Going the Way of the Five-Year Plan.

August 31, 2005 from CFO.com - "When Frans Spaargaren arrived at Gemplus, an €865 million ($1.041 billion) Geneva-based maker of smart cards, it didn't take him long to realize that not everything about the company was smart. Internally, managers and executives were drowning in data. The finance team foisted reams of information on them every month, churning out huge reports stuffed with rows and columns of numbers. "It was a data dump," says Spaargaren, who took up the Gemplus CFO job in June 2004 after three years running joint ventures at Philips, the Dutch electronics giant. "We basically reported everything, giving them 40 PowerPoint slides full of tables — thousands of numbers in total — and expecting them to pick out key messages and key information. It was much too much to take on board."

Spaargaren spent the bulk of his early months overhauling the internal reporting process, stripping out "irrelevant" details to focus on "what really drives the business." A year later, his corporate analysis team produces a slim booklet, half the size of the former report. The data found inside is more focused, more graphical and more colorful, with major deviations against budgeted targets marked in green and red ink. He has also pumped up the non-financial data, and reports now include metrics on operational efficiency and customer satisfaction, along with progress updates on groupwide initiatives such as the implementation of customer relationship management (CRM) software and supply chain rationalization, among other things." For the article, click here.

Nothing to do with Technology / Improve your Listening Skills

From The Wall Steet Journal - Forget everything else but listen to this "Good listening is crucial to effective communication and career success. Studies show, however, that only about 10% of us listen properly. Most of us don't know how to listen intelligently, systematically and purposefully. Think about your most recent conversations at work. If you remember what you said better than what you heard, you've probably developed some bad listening habits. Instead of really listening, you let your mind wander while others were talking. You were thinking about what you were going to say before the others had finished." For ways to improve your listening skills, click here.

Oracle to buy Siebel Systems for $5.85B

September 12, 2005 from ComputerWorld - "Oracle Corp. has agreed to acquire business applications software vendor Siebel Systems Inc. in a deal valued at approximately $5.85 billion... The deal marks Oracle's latest step in its bid to remake itself as a global business applications powerhouse, following the closure of its $10.3 billion acquisition of PeopleSoft Inc. at the start of the year....Buying Siebel would push Oracle past SAP AG as the world's largest vendor of CRM software, Oracle said, bringing it 4,000 customers and 3.4 million individual CRM software seats." For the article, click here.

CRM Gains Ground as Management Tool

September 7, 2005 from ComputerWorld- "Customer relationship management is gaining importance as a management tool among executives globally, according to a recent study by Bain & Co. Survey respondents ranked CRM second to strategic planning among 25 of the most popular management tools and techniques.

CRM was used by 75% of the 960 executives responding to the latest Bain "Management Tools & Trends" survey, a massive study tracking the usage of various management techniques over the past dozen years. That's a sharp increase from the 35% usage reported in 2000 -- the first time Bain asked about CRM. The popularity of CRM reflects two trends, according to Bain: an increased focus on customers and better knowledge of how to do CRM right. Because CRM requires sophisticated software and massive amounts of data, companies take some time to learn how to succeed with the practice." For the article, click here.

Never Heard of MySpace?

August 28,2005 from The New York Times - "Although many people over 30 have never heard of MySpace, it has about 27 million members, a nearly 400 percent growth since the start of the year. It passed Google in April in hits, the number of pages viewed monthly, according to comScore MediaMetrix, a company that tracks Web traffic. (MySpace members often cycle through dozens of pages each time they log on, checking up on friends' pages.) According to Nielsen/NetRatings, users spend an average of an hour and 43 minutes on the site each month, compared with 34 minutes for facebook.com and 25 minutes for Friendster.

"They've just come out of nowhere, and they're huge," David Card, a senior analyst with Jupiter Research, said of MySpace. "They've done a number of things that were really smart. One was blogging. People have been doing personal home pages for as long as the Internet's been around, but they were one of the first social networks to jump on that. They've also jumped on music, and there's a lot of traffic surrounding that." For the article, click here.

Interview with Bill Gates on Microsoft Business Solutions

Sept 7, 2005 from InformationWeek:

Re Role based computing - "Now, some of those new so-called seats will have to be very low-cost seats, but we are trying to extend ourselves out to, say, the person with the handheld computer in the warehouse that in the past would have had a clipboard and paper. Now they're carrying a PDA-type device around with them to do the pick list or to report back that something is out of inventory. So we need to bring those in at very low cost with even greater simplicity than the other seats have been, but you want everybody to be connected up to the information that drives their job. The complexity and cost meant certain roles in the company end up not working in the software but rather working with paper, and that means you have a boundary there of information."

Re Distinguishing the product lines - "In most countries, we only have two product lines that we're really pushing super-heavily. We'll have Axapta and then, depending on the country, either Navision or Great Plains as the big push. In some vertical markets we have Solomon, but that's a very focused product line in terms of who it's appropriate for. Each of our partners decides whether they are selling to the Solomon type customers, or whether they are selling to the higher end customers where Axapta tends to come in." For the article, click here.

I don't think Bill did a very good job in distinguishing between product lines especially with respect to Great Plains and Navision. It sounds like Microsoft will recommend Great Plains or Navision based on country. This is not our experience in Canada and the US where Microsoft is pushing both Great Plains and Navision to the same company.

More news from Microsoft Business Solutions

September 7, 2005 from InformatioWeek - "Microsoft's new roles-based apps are part of a broader midmarket push being unveiled today that will include a future Windows server package, code-named Centro, that combines the Longhorn version of Window server with forthcoming versions of Exchange and SQL Server in a no-frills platform designed to be run by the IT generalists common in the companies with under 1,000 employees...

The company is rebranding its four ERP lines--Axapta, Great Plains, Navision, and Solomon--as Microsoft Dynamics. New versions of the Dynamics products will incorporate new search technology Microsoft is building, as well as integrate data analysis and report-writing functions from its SQL Server database. Microsoft will unveil new licensing and financing options for midsize companies, and new incentives for them to enroll in its Software Assurance maintenance agreement. And the company released a new lower-priced accounting package, Small Business Accounting 2006, to attack Intuit Inc.'s QuickBooks software.

Microsoft Business Solutions remains a money loser, and sales growth has been relatively modest for the past few quarters—up 5.8% last year, to $803 million in revenue, with a loss of $201 million. Microsoft officials hope the roles-based application strategy will bring some spark to the business." For the article, click here.

It seems to me that Microsoft is putting a lot of faith in the role based approach. They claim "Role-based user interfaces really make the application easier to learn." However, you can already do somethign similar by defining user-defined menus. But it should be a plus to have pricing based on role - and you thought pricing was complex now.

An eBay For Business Software

September 2005 from BusinessWeek - "Benioff (CEO of salesforce.com) introduced a technology, named Multiforce, that he calls an operating system for the Internet. Customers and software makers can create applications for Multiforce that can be used over the Web like Salesforce's own software. In essence, he turned Salesforce.com into a platform for others to build upon -- much like Microsoft Corp.'s (MSFT ) Windows.

Now, Benioff is planning an even more sweeping initiative. On Sept. 12, he's scheduled to unveil something called AppExchange, which he envisions as nothing less than the eBay (EBAY ) of corporate software. It's an online marketplace where software makers and customers can swap and sell applications they develop. Companies interested in new software capabilities can search through a menu of applications. When they find something they're interested in, they can read reviews by others, try it out for free, and buy it with a few clicks." Click here for the article.

Multiforce also sounds good but beware of integration, different user interface and support issues. AppExchange sounds good, but enterprise software requires expertise to implement.

XBRL - International Financial Reporting Standard

August 29, 2005 from AccountingWEB.com - "Labeling XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language) as “the universal business information translator,” Harding compared XBRL to the UPC code now replacing cashiers, which was certainly unforeseen in the UPC’s infancy. He also likened it to the railroad industry and the necessary standardization that resulted, enabling business and civilization to develop and progress faster than previously known.

XBRL will, indeed, impact us in ways we cannot possibly foresee in 2005. If the CPA industry can help drive this change to XBRL … wow! Just think of how dynamic and proactive our industry can be! XBRL will lead to cost savings, superior benchmarking and comparative analysis. As Harding put it, “as information becomes easier to use it will be used more.” For the article, click here.

August 2005

Exact Software Review

August 2005 from CAmagazine and written by Michael Burns - "Exact Software is a leading player in the European mid-market ERP space, and has recently been gaining momentum in North America. Exact entered the North American market with the purchase of a number of ERP systems including Macola, JobBOSS, MAX, and Alliance/MFG. Exact Software is headquartered in the Netherlands operating in over 60 countries, including Canada, with more than 180,000 customers and over 2,000 employees worldwide and approximately 450 employees across North America.

Exact Software has taken a different approach than many of its competitors with the release of their e-Synergy product a couple of years ago. e-Synergy is a Web-based system which runs on Microsoft Internet Explorer and includes Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Human Resource Management, Document/Knowledge Management, Project Management, Workflow Management, Event Management, eCommerce, and Portals. These applications are often referred to as front-office applications, while financials, distribution and production are referred to as back-office. What makes e-Synergy so interesting is that it is a powerful CRM system in its own right, and it is tightly integrated with Exact's back-office systems. The front-office and back-office systems share a single, unified database (Microsoft SQL Server), which means you don't have any integration issues, and all your information is up to the second (real-time)." For the article, click here.

NetSuite Case Study at Clean-Mark

July 2005 from The Bottom Line and written by Michael Burns - "For over 30 years, Clean-Mark Service Group has been providing corporate housekeeping services including janitorial service and maintenance programs for large facilities. Clean-Mark's head office is in Toronto with customers across North America through fifteen operating groups and 300 services providers.

Clean-Mark's accounting needs were being served adequately by QuickBooks, but they lacked a solution for managing leads and customers - Customer Relationship Management (CRM). They made the decision a few years ago to implement Siebel's CRM system, but quickly realized that it was not the right solution for them. They returned everything and went back to the drawing board. Clean-Mark was close to selecting salesforce.com when they stumbled across NetSuite, which could automate both the front end (CRM) and the back end (accounting). There were many advantages to using 1 system for everything, and in the summer of 2004, selected NetSuite." For the rest of the article, click here.

Three CRM user pitfalls

July 19, 2005 from ITBusiness.ca - This article was written by Adam Pletsch based on an interview with Michael Burns.

"Don't believe (all) the hype
People get sucked into believing CRM technology is in some way magical. CRM got a lot of attention four or five years ago but unfortunately people jumped on the bandwagon and implemented it for technology reasons. That's a big mistake, says Michael Burns, president of Toronto's 180 Systems, a firm offering technology consulting to mid-size businesses. Burns says companies who thought the software was going to solve all their customer issues didn't stop to figure out what those issues were. "They'd get on board without really having a clear idea of what the business case of this technology was," he says. And if SMBs don't understand how CRM can benefit their company, how will they know whether their implementation has been successful? Burns says one of the tasks he recommends before any implementation -- CRM or not -- is determining a company's measurements of success. "You can spend a lot of money, but what other measurements are there? You need a business reason for going ahead with this," he says. Fortunately, these problems were more prevalent when the technology was newer and less well-known. And large companies were often the culprits, tarnishing the technology's image with their mistakes and lack of preparation. "Lately there's a general trend toward business being back in the driver's seat," Burns says.

Understand the scope and recognize the workload
Many CRM implementers don't recognize the effort that will be required to link their back office and front office applications (the front office being primarily CRM and the back office being things like accounting, distribution and manufacturing). "I'd heard many stories about trying to plug in Great Plains and Siebel, for example, even a few years ago, when Microsoft had said Siebel was a partner. That was crazy. There was tons of work involved. And there's still a lot of work involved." Integration can mean getting information to the CRM system from an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, an accounting system, wherever customer data is held. Luckily, says Burns, many more "end-to-end" products are emerging that include CRM as part of the product from Day 1. "For smaller guys, we're starting to see products coming out (in which) there's no difference between the front office and the back office. They're both there at any time. So you don't have to worry about the integration work."

Try an attitude check
While it has very little to do with technology, to make successful use of CRM, staffs have to want to share customer information with their colleagues. Sadly, to some, knowledge is power. "Why do I want to share my knowledge of this customer and give away my reason for power?" they ask. It's an attitude that goes way beyond technology, Burns says. But if instead everyone shares what they know about customers, other team members won't make (or repeat) mistakes when dealing with them. Sometimes time is a factor. Staff members are running as fast as they can and now they've got to spend time updating some system, says Burns. To be fair, he adds, there's something to be said for the frustration that comes from spending time putting in reams of detail that nobody's ever going to look at. The company must have a policy that says what and how much information is required, so that data in the CRM system is valuable and worthwhile. The bottom line is that management has to be clear as to what goes in and what comes out. It's supposed to save time and generate more business, not waste time and generate more work. " For the article (although you have now read it all), click here.

Microsoft previews next-generation CRM

July 5, 2005 from CNET news - "Among the functional upgrades promised in the 3.0 package is the introduction of a set of marketing automation tools, an established element of most CRM systems that had been lacking in Microsoft's first attempt at the applications. The software includes tools for managing client lists, tracking advertising and marketing campaigns, and for sorting customer responses to those initiatives.

Other additions pledged in 3.0 include increased support for the development of specialized applications for niche markets to be used with the CRM system. The package also boasts expanded customization alternatives for use with specific business processes. In addition, the offering promises more powerful scheduling tools linked directly to the calendar section of Microsoft's Outlook e-mail software.

Perhaps the most significant addition to Microsoft's CRM package, at least from a competitive standpoint, may be its move to make the tools available as an on-demand offering. The company had previously allowed some of its resellers to market a hosted version of the software whereby the applications were run off-site and accessed online, but the expanded on-demand strategy will offer customers subscription-style pricing for the applications and a version of the tools built with Web-based delivery in mind." Click here for the article.

Intuit and Microsoft are going head to head in the lower-end accounting software market

August 2005 from webCPA - "Intuit, makers of the market-commanding QuickBooks, is about to face competition from Microsoft, arguably the mightiest computing company ever. The competing releases are due out shortly, and the resulting battle could change the arena of lower-end accounting software forever.

Intuit plans a significant launch of a new lower-end product about the same time as Microsoft plans its release. Both computing giants claim the near-simultaneous releases of products for the same market is coincidental.

MS's Office Small Business Accounting will be available in September as a standalone and as part of the Office Small Business Management Edition 2006 bundle, which will include Business Contact Manager Update and the 2003 editions of Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Publisher and Access. In addition to fueling interest with MS's Professional Accountants Network, which will offer technical support, CPE training, and network resources aimed at CPAs, Microsoft also is offering CPAs free copies.

"Accountants are key. QuickBooks gets 37 percent of its referrals from accountants," notes Ted Humphreville, of Los Angeles-based Edward T. Humphreville CPA.

"There are 24 million small businesses in the U.S. alone. QuickBooks claims 2.5 million active users. That leaves over 21 million businesses as prospects for Microsoft," notes Shafat Qazi, CEO of BQE Software.

"There's plenty of room for people like Microsoft and us because there's a big market that we call 'non-consumption' that don't use accounting software, what accountants refer to as the 'shoe-box crowd,'" Brad Smith, senior vice president and GM for the QuickBooks Group, points out regarding the market...

Other details of the MS product are an always-on audit trail, and that it's built on the Sequel Desktop Engine (MSDE) database, which MS claims means no limits to the number of inventory items, transactions, customers, vendors or any other type of important information. "This database will allow your clients to store up to 2GB of data," Bates adds....

Wayne Brasch, Dallas, Ga.-based accountant and business consultant who beta-tested Microsoft's upcoming accounting program, believes the integration with Office is one of the release's greatest features...

Intuit released few details of its QuickBooks 2006 fall-release product, saying only that it will be the result of a "multi-year" development effort, and promising that the 2006 release will be "the single biggest leap forward in simplicity and ease of use" in the history of the lower-end accounting giant. One feature revealed is a "super-navigator" home page that displays vendor, customer, employee, and company views on a single dashboard screen." For the article, click here.

Lean Manufacturing Case Study

June 10, 2005 from Baseline - If you're intersted in lean manufacturing, kanban or how to develop ROI, read on. "One of the first U.S. devotees of the lean manufacturing concepts pioneered by Toyota, Danaher doesn't trust the reordering of parts for its factory floor to the projections of a manufacturing resource planning (MRP) system. Instead, it uses the Japanese "kanban" method of factory floor control, in which an almost-empty parts bin triggers a just-in-time replenishment order.

"Our operations have been divorced from technology intentionally," Mathis says, because one of the first things kanban experts tell factory operators to do is "unplug the MRP system." In fact, the controls division uses an MRP system, Mapics, but more to track inventory and orders than to drive the process, on the theory that a computer projection will never be as accurate as a measure of actual consumption...

Traditionally, when a bin of nuts, bolts, plugs or LED displays was depleted from a factory floor cell, a worker known as a "pacer" retrieved a paper kanban card from the bin. The pacer would then deliver stacks of these cards to the factory's materials buyers, who would use the supplier, part number and quantity information printed on the card to reorder each item. That's a lot of work, given that each of the division's factories uses 30,000 to 40,000 parts.

In the electronic kanban system Mathis decided to move to, the inventory database would go online. The kanban card would provide the bar code used to look up a computerized record. Instead of the card being carried to the purchasing office, the card could stay on the shop floor and the order would be created electronically...

For this project, the major task would be to make Mapics exchange data with SupplyWorks. The inventory database would become more important, since the data printed on the kanban cards was being reduced to a bar-code label. But the benefit of that change was that cards wouldn't have to be reprinted when details like the part supplier or the quantity to be kept in each bin changed. The new information would be updated directly in the database.

Just eliminating the time spent updating kanban cards and replacing lost ones would free up 28 minutes per day for Gurnee's staff, Mathis determined. For the pilot project, he developed a series of these measures of "non-productive time," which added up to 105 hours per week or 90% of their time. Through automation, he aimed to reduce the time spent on routine tasks and expand the time available for strategic efforts. The SupplyWorks pilot in Gurnee was limited to a portion of the parts inventory, but results were encouraging. In a January 2004 Webcast presentation for SupplyWorks, Mathis cited a 75.6% reduction in the time buyers spent on the "waste" activities he had identified. Click here for the article.

Characteristics/Attributes of a Lean Operation

From Tefen, an international operations consulting firm - "Just what does a lean operation look like? How do we determine how far we have come in our lean journey? The following list is intended to address these fundamental questions.

Fundamentals in Place

• There is a designated place for everything and everything is in its place. No time is wasted while looking for things. The organization looks clean and everyone is required, encouraged and motivated to keeping it organized.
• The distance traveled by operator(s) and/or a specific part is less than the perimeter of the facility.
• There are on-going reports easily assessable to everyone that provides timely feedback for individuals and groups.
• Quality is achieved by controlling the process, not by checking parts. Rework and quality returns are rare occurrences.
  

Evident Flow

• Everyone is aware of the status of the subsequent operation/step.
• There is a clearly visible, easy to follow path through all steps.
• External set-up time has been eliminated and everyone follows consistent set-up procedures.
  

Balanced Lines/Processes

• Everyone is aware of and executes to takt time (pace of production required to match demand from the next operation/step).
• To handle mix issues, the schedule is properly leveled to minimize the impact of both inventory and set up time. In addition, the required pitch (i.e. increments of work) is regularly determined for the pace maker operation/step.
  

Pull vs. Push

• There is one single point for scheduling (i.e. pace maker) – scheduling is not done at multiple or at every operation/step.
• There is no or limited number of batch processes – whenever possible, a continuous flow. One key clue to look for is presence of inventory.
• In spots where batching is necessary, FIFO pull system is in place with proper inventory levels. The amount of overall inventory (in equivalent number of days) should be approximately or slightly higher than the average of lead time (in days). Any discrepancy results in excess inventory and/or part shortage (which in turn impacts customer service level).
• Customer service level is not directly impacted by forecast accuracy. There are no official “expeditors.”

Organization Alignment

• There is an acceptance for trying new ideas and concepts. Desire for continuous improvement is very strong. Maintaining status quo is not an option.
• There is constant communication channel between workforce and the management. Award and recognition are based identifying, implementing and sustaining improvements (on time, quality, customer service and/or cost).
• The workforce is empowered and motivated to self-direct daily operations/tasks with minimum input from management.
• There are clear, proper, objective and timely measurements available for everyone to view. Any degradation is identified and addressed immediately.

Simply put, in a truly lean organization, each step in the entire value chain processes only what the subsequent step requires – this is done at the right time, in high quality and at the lowest cost possible. All seven types of waste have been identified and eliminated – the only remaining work should be those that are needed to change form/fit and/or function a customer is willing to pay for."

For the article which has been reproduced in its entirety, click here.

Customer self-service is finally catching on with consumers — and saving businesses a bundle in the process

July 1, 2005 from CFO Magazine - "Customer self-service is quietly and steadily gaining acceptance with consumers. Some of that acceptance stems from a change in demographics, with younger customers preferring to do for themselves. Mostly, though, the sea change in C-service stems from a dramatic improvement in the self-service technologies themselves. Voice-response systems, the onetime bane of banking customers, have improved so dramatically that many patrons now prefer them to live customer service representatives. And intelligent instant messaging (IM) "'bots" — computer programs that "chat" with users — can provide real-time responses to even complicated questions.

The result? Self-service is beginning to fulfill its initial promise of providing easy and personalized customer interaction while substantially cutting support costs. Says Laura Preslan, vice president for CRM at AMR Research, a technology research company located in Boston: "Self-service is one of the highest-reward, lowest-risk investments across the entire customer management spectrum." Click here for the article.

BI research

July 11, 2005 from InfoWorld - Based on research from IDG Research "It’s not surprising that nearly two-thirds of respondents rated BI as a high-to-critical priority during the next few years. Most BI packages are implemented for internal use, of course, but some 60 percent of companies make their BI data available to customers, too — about one-third to suppliers and nearly one-quarter to government regulators.

As for which features are used most widely, the ability to drill down into information topped the list, with 78 percent of respondents rating it as highly important. Sorting and filtering, a consistent GUI, and the ability to visualize data also ranked highly.

Companies seem particularly enamored with BI’s predictive analytic capability. This feature is used predominantly by the financial folks (with a 64 percent response rate among firms) but is also used by sales (53 percent), marketing (50 percent), and customer service (40 percent), among others.

When asked to identify the needs that have driven them to use or consider BI, 47 percent cite the desire to achieve better quality of data. But other technological challenges loom as well. For example, 39 percent want to integrate BI software with their existing infrastructure, and 32 percent need it for security and user rights management.

The main factor holding back the growth of BI is a familiar one: money. Some 49 percent of respondents say budget constraints limit their ability to roll out BI; another 40 percent worry about the time required to implement a BI project. On the matter of user interface, whereas some respondents like graphical dashboards, more than a third said the UI of their current BI solution is not appropriate for all potential users, and slightly more than half expressed support for a UI that resembles a simple search engine. Click here for the article.

Sarbanes-Oxley White Paper

2005 from the IT Compliance Institute - "The Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) was passed in 2002. Most public companies must comply by June 15, 2004; smaller U.S. businesses and foreign companies must comply by April 2005. By providing strict guidelines for publicly traded company corporate governance, this act addresses several aspects regarding:
• Security and controls of accounting and auditing processes.
• Oversight of accounting and audit practices.
• Financial record retention.

The most important parts of SOX for IT revolve around sections 302 and 404, which require organizations to disclose their internal financial reporting controls as well as an assessment of how well those controls are working. But what that actually means for IT isn’t well understood. As recently as January 2004 one of the “Law, Public Policy and Standards Experts” at SearchSecurity.com was asked what this all means for an IT infrastructure. In an overly vague answer, he stated that the “wise IT administrator would implement as many best practices as possible,” and then named several IT security frameworks (NIST, ISO 17799, NSA Gold Standard) that could be used as guidance. Other “experts” are just as in the dark about what to do relating to internal control objectives. Why is that so?

The answer lies in the broad-term verbiage that the SOX act uses to define internal controls, the somewhat less broad-term verbiage that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) as well as the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB, the folks who watch the auditors who watch the companies) uses, and the fact that they all point to a set of massive tomes that serve as security frameworks, such as:
• COSO (Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission), which released the Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) framework that provides information on enterprise risk management for all organizations. The framework also identifes the interrelationships between enterprise risk management and internal control.
• CobiT (Control Objectives for Information and Related Technology), published by the IT Governance Institute and the Information Systems Audit and Control Association (ISACA), which provides an in-depth governance model for IT operations.
• ISO-17799, which provides a framework for implementing an information security program through its de.nition of a variety of security controls and risk management approach."

For the rest of this 35 page white paper, click here. (requires free registration)

Can Small Companies Benefit From Sarbanes-Oxley?

July 26, 2005 from darwin - "What can small businesses learn from Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX)? And how can we apply the lessons learned by public companies to our smaller, privately-held companies? The Sarbanes-Oxley Act was designed, in the wake of Enron, Arthur Anderson and WorldCom, to protect investors by improving the accuracy and reliability of corporate disclosures. The Act itself is really about strong processes, auditor independence and corporate responsibility...

Here are a few key areas where private companies can benefit from a system of strong internal controls:

Build it in on the front end: If you've developed best practices, how do you know they are being implemented and followed? The best way is to build controls as critical parts of processes. Regular audits, whether performed informally or formally (by an internal auditor an outside audit firm) ensure that procedures you've developed are followed. Jason Claycomb, president of INARMA, a controls consulting firm, advises business owners to "make sure the controls are part of the process." As examples, he says, "all accounts payable checks should be matched against invoices and approved by the appropriate person inside the company. Another example is to make sure only authorized employees can make changes in the payroll system so that you know you are paying the right amount to employees.

Seek objectivity. Checks and balances are important to every business, advises Larry Rieger, an executive in charge of risk and Sarbanes-Oxley consulting for Crowe Chizek, a national accounting and consulting firm. "Sarbanes-Oxley stresses the importance of objectivity from your service providers," said Rieger. "In other words, don't hire the same firm for audit as you would for IT security. You don't ever want to create a situation where a vendor is auditing itself."
Network security makes you stronger. According to Patti Suarez, a Global Information Security Manager with the Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company, "network security is about more than just viruses - it means you are taking time to think about the things your business values and building processes to protect those things. It doesn't matter if you are a big or a small company. What matters most is that your processes instill confidence with your employees, vendors and customers."

Get real advisors. Don't shortchange the idea of a real board of advisors - a group of people you respect that will tell you what you don't necessarily want to hear. "No employee wants to tell the emperor that he has no clothes," says Maryann Correnti, a risk management practice leader for American Express Tax and Business Advisory Services, "Building a strong outside advisory board, a group of peers, people that you trust, not a committee that rubber-stamps all your decisions can help you improve controls and grow your business."

For the article, click here.

Canadian banks moving towards Basel II compliance

July 26, 2005 from ITBusiness.ca - "Banks the world over are getting ready for Basel II, a framework that requires them to and store credit data such as ratings decisions, borrower histories, and probabilities of default and rating migration for at least three years. Basel II is the work of The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, a Switzerland-based committee of central banks and bank supervisors and regulators from more than a dozen countries, including Canada. Banks should be in a test phase for Basel II in 2006 with production-ready compliance in 2007." Click here for the article.

Software as a Service

June 22, 2005 from CFO.com - "In total, worldwide spending on SaaS (software as a service) exceeded $4 billion last year and is expected to grow to $10.7 billion by 2009, according to IDC. In an IT environment where many vendors are learning to live with single-digit growth, that's an eye-popping CAGR of 21 percent, a figure that leaps to 40 percent when looking at major services companies such as IBM...

SaaS comes in two basic flavors. "Net-native" or "Web-native" companies develop their own applications and design them to be run via the Web for a multitude of clients. Other companies don't develop their own programs, but simply take over the management of applications that customers have already licensed from traditional vendors. The latter approach is how most ASPs operate today; customers still buy software outright, but arrange to have it run from remote data centers, saving on infrastructure, manpower, and other support costs. Currently, the market is divided about equally between vendors that have developed their software expressly for the Net and those that simply host standard programs in their own data centers, according to IDC analyst Amy Konary. But she believes the Web-native approach will eventually win out.

Whether developed specifically for remote hosting or simply hosted to eliminate the cost of acquiring and managing infrastructure, the appeal of on-demand software lies in its speedy deployment, low up-front costs, and overall promise of savings. When a customer licenses software for on-premises use, it pays an up-front fee, along with ongoing yearly maintenance costs that typically run to 15 percent or more of the initial licensing fee. Additionally, the customer must acquire the hardware and supporting systems (such as a database) to run the application, and will most likely need to employ pricey consultants to get things up and running. That makes for hefty overhead, but companies have usually been willing to pay it because they feel it buys them maximum control...

But the SaaS model does face some major hurdles — technology, for one. As Andy Stern, CEO of USi, explains, software written expressly for the Web has thus far appealed chiefly to small and midsize businesses. "Today, most of the Net-native products aren't fully capable enough for a billion-dollar company," he says, adding that they tend to lack the rich feature sets and customization capabilities that large enterprise customers often require. They can also be difficult or impossible to integrate with other applications and to modify as internal business processes change. And the programs aren't dubbed "Net-native" for nothing: while the Internet is a very low-cost way to provide access and essentially share one program among many customers, it also creates a host of security concerns. "This is an issue for us," says Kim Perdikou, CIO at Juniper Networks, which does subscribe to some SaaS services. "I'm concerned about the security of customer and company data, that it not be copied or interfered with or compromised in any way"...

The remote hosting of software applications offers users many benefits. These include lower up-front costs, speedy deployment, free maintenance and upgrades, and perhaps best of all, no need for pricey know-it-all consultants. But there are risks in embracing software as a service (SaaS). Here are three key considerations that can't be overlooked:

Service-level agreements. What level of uptime will a remote host guarantee, and how quickly will it respond to a problem? Many customers insist on negotiating guaranteed uptime. If a provider, for example, falls short of 99.9 percent (or some other agreed-on level of) uptime, there should be some negotiated penalty to compensate the customer.

Data security. Although SaaS vendors invariably emphasize the resources they devote to security, many customers remain uncomfortable with their employee and customer data flying over the Internet, not to mention potentially residing on the same data-center server as their rivals'. "Look at security. Do the due diligence. Make sure the vendor has the right premises and that protecting your data is its top concern," counsels David Brooks, director of CRM at Magma Design. Juniper Networks CIO Kim Perdikou insists on modifying SaaS contracts so that she has the right to do periodic security audits.

Customization capabilities. Does your changing business process require more tweaking of the software than a remote host can — or is willing to — provide? Or do you need (or plan) to integrate the capabilities of the software with in-house applications or other software that you may subscribe to? Either one of those can be a deal-breaker. For the article, click here.

The Developing Electronic Invoicing Market

2005 from gtnews.com - "Electronic invoicing (e-invoicing) is not a new phenomenon - it has been around for over a decade but has not yet reached the point of market penetration that makes it an ubiquitous technology. The benefits of e-invoicing are well-touted. For the buyer receiving e-invoices, benefits include cost reductions (through improved efficiency in the back office); more accurate financial reporting and forecasting; improved cash flow management; support for corporate governance initiatives; and faster VAT reclamation. The supplier sending invoices enjoys advantages such as assured invoice delivery, faster invoice processing and fewer disputes.

Beyond these commercial motivations, governments across Europe have also been keen to promote e-invoicing. The EU Invoicing Directive, which came into effect in January 2004, stipulates that all member states must accept the use of e-invoices (legislation previously required paper invoices). From a government's perspective, e-invoicing is a way to promote commerce, reduce the costs of doing business, improve the efficiency of collection and reclamation of tax, as well as improve public sector purchase-to-pay operations themselves.

Despite the obvious business case for e-invoicing, the majority of the 18 billion invoices processed in Europe are still printed on paper and sent by post, while the same is true for 22 billion paper invoices in the US. Are finance departments happy to continue to deal with paper invoices in a well-established legal and operational environment or are there barriers in the market preventing further widespread adoption of e-invoicing? This report looks at the opportunity for e-invoicing, the dynamics of the market and how it is developing." For more including electronic invoicing solutions, click here. (requires free registration)

Introduction to SQL Server Report Builder

From developer.com - "By now you probably know that there are a lot of fancy new high-end features coming in Microsoft SQL Server 2005. But in its quest to conquer the data center, Microsoft hasn't forgotten the end user. In fact, there are more new features for desktop users and business analysts than ever before. One good example of these features is Report Builder. For the first time, SQL Server is shipping with an end-user reporting tool right in the box. After a little setup by the DBA, your end users can create their own attractive and informative browser-based SQL Server reports (assuming you've installed the Reporting Services component of SQL Server). There was nothing comparable in previous versions of SQL Server, and the new capability looks likely to be a big hit." For the article, click here.

Vista (successor to Windows XP)

July 18, 2005 from MicrosoftWatch - "For the past several years, Microsoft has been promising that Longhorn (now called Vista) would deliver some substantial security, reliability and performance improvements. But until the worldwide partner conference in Minneapolis in mid-July, company officials had not quantified the benefits that Longhorn — the version of the Windows client operating system, due in 2006 — would deliver...Stephan told conference attendees that Longhorn will:

• launch applications 15 percent faster than Windows XP does
• boot PCs 50 percent faster than they boot currently and will allow PCs to resume from standby in two seconds
• allow users to patch systems with 50 percent fewer reboots required. For the article, click here.

July 22, 2005 from ZDNet News - "Longhorn's new name: Windows Vista". For the article, click here.

July 27, 2005 from PC Magazine - For a review of the Beta release of Vista, click here.

Podcasting

July 14, 2005 from PROFITguide - "If you haven't already heard about podcasting, or even if you have, get ready to hear a lot more in coming weeks and months. It's white-hot, and is poised to become the next great business tool.

An amalgam of "iPod" and "broadcasting," podcasting allows anyone to create their own "radio show" by posting MP3 audio files to the Net. Listeners who subscribe to your show, usually for free, receive new episodes as soon as they're released. These are loaded onto mobile devices such as an iPod, another MP3 player or even a cellphone so subscribers can listen whenever and wherever they'd like...

Podcasting emerged from the world of blogging, and while it's still largely the domain of geeks and early adopters, the buzz is spreading exponentially. Googling "podcast"—a word that didn't even exist a year ago—now generates more than 7.3 million results. Research firm Cambridge, Mass.-based Forrester Research forecasts that 12.3 million U.S. households (with more than 30 million people) will use an MP3 player to listen to podcasts by the end of the decade. And Plano, Tex.-based The Diffusion Group, a research consultancy on "the connected consumer," is even more bullish, predicting a U.S. audience of 57 million people by 2010. What's more, Apple CEO Steve Jobs recently announced that impending versions of iPod devices and iTunes music software will build in the ability for users to search for, subscribe to and download podcasts. Click here for the article.

July 28, 2005 from New York Times -"EVER since Steven P. Jobs returned to Apple Computer in 1997 after a 12-year absence, his company has thrived by executing the same essential formula over and over: Find an exciting new technology whose complexity and cost keep it out of the average person's life. Streamline it, mainstream it, strip away the geeky options. Take the credit.

So far, Apple has worked this kind of magic on digital video editing, wireless networking, online music selling, R.S.S. feeds (a kind of Web site subscription) and other technologies. Its latest attempt, however, will be music to an awful lot of ears. With its release of the free iTunes 4.9 software for Mac and Windows, Apple has just mainstreamed podcasting.

A podcast, as anyone under 25 can tell you, is an audio recording posted online, much like a short radio show. ("Podcasting" is a pun on "broadcasting," implying, of course, that you listen to it on your iPod or another music player.) The beauty of a podcast is that it's free and you listen to it whenever you like. And there are more than 7,000 podcasts "on the air" right now, on every conceivable topic. Their quantity and variety already dwarf what you can find on regular radio...

Overnight, iTunes 4.9 has already become the most popular podcast-management software on earth; Apple says that within 48 hours of its release, Pod people had subscribed to more than a million podcasts. Pockets of the populace may not enjoy the transformation of podcasting into a commercial, pop-culture phenomenon, but it's too late now. The people have spoken - or, rather, listened." For the article, click here.

Security in a web services world

2005 from Evaluation Centre - "Industry is now on the edge of a transformation, where web services will change the way companies do e-business, allowing easy, efficient, automatic web-based transactions between buyers and sellers. But for IT security people, this represents a real headache. Web services will expose the core business systems that most companies have spent the last 20 years or so trying to keep behind high walls. Also, the traditional firewalls that have served organisations well up until now will no longer be able to filter out the rogue transactions from the good ones.

As companies wrestle with this real security problem, they are finding that web services standards are only just being agreed and established. As a result, there is a danger of getting confused by different views of the security requirements, and the different terminology used to describe the new security solutions that are arriving on the market. So what is the real security requirement – and what’s the best approach for those developing web services solutions and evaluating the solutions that are coming onto the market?" For the article, click here.

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Wikipedia is an encyclopedia written collaboratively by its readers. The site is a Wiki, meaning that anyone, including you, can edit almost any article. Wikipedia contains a huge amount of information on all sorts of subjects ranging from politics, science, history, music, religion, pop culture, and sports to everything and anything in between. Check it out by by clicking here.

Thanks to my good friend Harold Raxlen for this tip.

Web site search

July 1, 2005 from InformationWeek - "You've got a Web site and you want to let visitors search its contents, just like they can when they visit the big-deal corporate sites. But you don't have a big-deal corporate budget. Not to worry. Does free work for you? You can add a third-party search engine to your site for a total cost of zero. The visitors who use it will see some ads, but all you have to do is add some HTML code to your site, and wait for the search provider to spider your site. I've used three search engines for my Web site that have proven their worth, Atomz.com, PicoSearch, and FreeFind. I'd like to choose a clear winner. But the contenders are so close in capabilities that I can't." Click here for the article.

July 2005

Streamline Case Study at Alliance Corporation

July 2005 from The Bottom Line and written by Michael Burns - "Established in 1993, Alliance Corporation has been serving the global Wireless Communications and Broadband market. Alliance is a multi company operation in Canada and the US with about 50 employees and an inventory of about 15,000 parts. There are multiple offices and warehouses across North America.

A few years ago, Alliance decided that their existing accounting system had run out of steam for them. It was a good accounting system, but did not handle Alliance's operational requirements. They conducted a thorough examination including issuing an RFP, and narrowed it down to three systems. In the end, they chose Streamline as it offered them the functionality they required at an affordable price point. They came across Streamline based on word of mouth." Click here for the article.

Business Cases: What, Why and How

June 13, 2005 from Computerworld - "Business cases are essential to good business decisions and IT success. They provide the foundation for informed decisions about what to fund, what to cut and how to set IT priorities. Moreover, they help set corporate expectations by accurately stating the benefits that will result from new programs.

Many IT organizations resist building business cases. A familiar excuse is that they are just too much work. Developing and using business cases requires significant time and effort. Bruce J. Rogow of Vivaldi Odyssey and Advisory estimates that a comprehensive business case costs between one quarter and three quarters of 1% of a project's total development cost. Although this may appear to be expensive, it's much cheaper than taking a massive write-off down the road.

Some organizations argue that business cases aren't applicable to their industries. In fact, business cases are crucial to every industry, including government and the nonprofit sector. Every organization needs a consistent way to evaluate potential investments on the basis of data and reason, rather than on passion alone. Business cases come in various shapes and sizes. At minimum, an effective business case does the following:

• Defines the problem and the proposed program's objectives and scope.
• Describes business and technical assumptions and alternatives considered.
• Provides estimates for resources, scheduling and costs.
• Describes major development and operating risks.
• Quantifies tangible benefits and describes intangible benefits.
• Predicts financial return."

Click here for the rest of the article.

The Worst Thing About Best Practices

June 21, 2005 from MarketingProfs.com - "The problem with best practices is this: That approach lulls people into thinking that a best practice really exists that can be successfully transplanted. Starting any project with a canned solution stifles the innovation customers expect from their suppliers. When you import best practices, the team's thinking immediately focuses on how to do the work, rather than first addressing what should be done and why. If you start with a predetermined solution, it's easy to gloss over more innovative approaches. Granted, best practices can jog your thoughts and maybe even inspire you. But as a tool for guiding strategic initiatives, it's a real loser. One company's best practice can too easily become another company's sunk cost.

Here are four reasons you should dump best practices:

1. They rarely work. A company's best practices work in the context of its business processes, culture, systems and people. Plucking a best practice and trying to graft it onto another organization will produce unpredictable results. In one instance, a company forced its entrepreneurial salespeople to adopt a tightly controlled sales process, with automated tools for all large accounts. The company mandated the new process and system because it was touted as a best practice in sales force management. After a year of trial and error, the company's salespeople dumped the tool, complaining about declining sales productivity. For the company, it was a multimillion-dollar mistake.

2. It's a follower's strategy. In an era of demands for innovative products and services, why give your customers recycled answers? A company that really wants a customer order process that looks like everyone else's is likely to lose the battle of market differentiation. Relying on best practices will doom your customers to mediocrity in the long run, and hurt your reputation as well.

3. Change comes from within. People rarely respond well to implementing some other company's ideas. In fact, having best practices come down from on high usually causes resentment. Let people create their own solutions using their in-depth knowledge of the company's customers, suppliers, employees and processes. That will result in ownership of the ideas and determination to get results.

4. They don't come with a manual. Business books and benchmark reports are full of snippets about best practices, yet they rarely explain what to do with them. You may have read that it's a best practice to process a customer product return in 24 hours, but there's little guidance for meeting that objective. It's also quite possible that the organizational change necessary for your customer to achieve the goal isn't even remotely feasible."
   

Click here for the article. Finally somebody who agrees with us about Best Practices. See our article on Best Practices by clicking here.

Total Cost of Ownership comparison between MAS90/SalesLogix compared to NetSuite

June 1, 2005 from the Yankee Group - "For this example, we evaluated a solution that provides a broad range of functionality for the mid-market user’s front- and back-office needs. We evaluated an on-demand solution versus an on-premises licensed solution.

NetSuite offers the combined functionality of MAS90 and SalesLogix Advanced from Best Software, and it’s available as an on-demand delivered solution. Because the two solutions offer similar features and functions, we evaluated a 20-user and a 100-user solution for companies with 20 to 99 and 100 to 1,000 employees, respectively, during a 5-year modeling period.

IT systems and applications support people account for as much as 30% to 60% of the total 5-year costs. The TCO for NetSuite is about half that of Best Software. Although the 5-year software and maintenance costs for Best are lower than NetSuite, the support costs for Best (the cost for IT infrastructure and application support resources to install, integrate and update the applications) is three times the amount for NetSuite. These ongoing support costs, which account for 86% of Best’s 5-year costs, eclipse the costs of the software and maintenance...

A more detailed TCO analysis should include company growth projections and a comparison of the overall value of the on-demand solution as compared to on-premises solutions. As the number of users increases, IT infrastructure and IT support costs may not increase proportionally. Also, if the application vendor has user block pricing, where the price per user drops significantly as the number of users significantly increases, the on-premises solutions could yield a lower TCO during a 3- to 5-year period." For the article, click here.

Oracle And SAP Continue To Duke It Out

June 15, 2005 from InformationWeek - "Oracle's program will offer SAP R/3 customers up to a 100% license credit if they move to its platform. Oracle Consulting is offering a free SAP Migration Insight program, which includes a workshop about the migration process and a financing plan...

While many enterprise-resource-planning vendors struggled in 2004, SAP increased overall revenue by 17% and license revenue by 20%, not including acquisitions, according to numbers released Wednesday by AMR Research. SAP's ERP market share increased to more than 40%. The research firm says Oracle nearly doubled the size of its application business through its PeopleSoft Inc. acquisition last year but it expects SAP to finish with more than twice the revenue and market share of the combined Oracle-PeopleSoft.

Oracle claims it has had 40 customers in the last year switch from SAP to Oracle, including Group Voyagers and Usina Nova America. SAP revealed that it has lured away luggage manufacturer Samsonite. Samsonite switched vendors under Sap's Safe Passage program introduced earlier this year. The North American-centric program offers a 75% credit for PeopleSoft and J.D. Edwards licenses for switching." Click here for the article.

The Elephant Has Left The Building - (The End of ERP?)

July 1, 2005 from intelligent enterprise - "The long reign of lumbering, monolithic enterprise applications is coming to an end. What will make the new royalty--composite applications built on service-oriented architecture (SOA)--deliver the agility all businesses seek?...

In application-centric paradigms, architects and developers focus on building specific applications and factoring them into logical tiers. Usually, developers expect to create an entire application. SOA demands that developers focus on building reusable services and then assembling those services into composite applications that implement a business process. A given service may show up in any number of applications. Developers should write only as much code as is necessary to orchestrate the business process.

Our opinion is that the elephant will evolve to take advantage of new technologies and that SOA sounds good on paper/electronically, but may be more of a pipe dream than anything else. For this article, click here.

Bell Business Solutions buys ERP firm

June 8, 2005 from IT Business.ca - "Be