News & views

The 90/10 Principle

From Stephen Covey – “Have you read this before? Discover the 90/10 Principle. It will change your life (at least the way you react to situations). What is this principle? 10% of life is made up of what happens to you. 90% of life is decided by how you react. What does this mean? We really have no control over 10% of what happens to us. We cannot stop the car from breaking down….” Read more […]

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Best practices not always best

October 22, 2010 from The Enterprise System Spectator – “…The term best practices has at least two major and totally different definitions, and second, in many areas of business, there is not generally agreement on what are the best practices…” Read more 180 View – This is good article that reflects our philosophy. The major vendors and consulting firms always pitch best practice to their prospects and clients and that they are the source for best practice. I often see proposals that are based on the assumption that best practices will be applied to an implementation. But some processes are […]

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How to negotiate software contracts

January 2011 from CAmagazine and written by Michael Burns – “A major acquisition such as an ERP system should be considered a lifetime investment. It’s not just a software purchase; it’s a contract that includes maintenance fees, which will exceed the cost of the software in four to five years. A good dose of due diligence is in order — not only in testing the software and assessing the vendor, but also in reading the contract… ” Read more […]

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Biggest ERP failures of 2010

December 28, 2010 from InfoWorld – “No year in the IT industry would be complete without a number of high-profile ERP (enterprise resource planning) project failures, ones that burn through mountains of cash, bring company operations to a standstill, generate bad publicity for vendors, and toss careers in the trash. There’s no one reason why ERP projects run off the rails. In fact, you can equate a typical project to a three-legged stool, with the customer, vendor, and systems integrator each serving as a leg. Customers have to plan well, budget enough money for training, and evolve their usual way […]

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Developing An Effective KPI Plan

November 29, 2010 from Dashboard Insight – “When looking at the BI landscape and available solutions, dashboards give the biggest bang for their buck. After all, with high levels of interactivity, strong data visualizations, and general capabilities that provide the quickest way to monitor performance and manage what is happening within the organization, it stands to reason that dashboard use would be gaining in popularity.  Despite the positive aspects of making BI and analytics easier to access and to interact with, the reality is that effective dashboards don’t design themselves. Simply implementing a dashboard and monitoring metrics does not mean […]

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Beyond budgeting

November 15, 2010 from FSN – ““The annual budget is an artifact rooted in managing feudal governments in agrarian societies,” declares Robert Kugel, analyst and research director for financial performance management at Ventana Research, and although many organisations are putting aside some of the assumptions that are usually associated with this (such as ever-increasing expenses) and ramping up the frequency of budgeting revisions and forecasts, the latter can prove problematic for the many more that are using inadequate, ineffective and inappropriate software and systems… Fortunately, the tools to make budgeting and planning more efficient are increasingly accessible – even for […]

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BENCHMARKING: Get the Gain

April 2008 from the Supply Chain Management Review – “…Another important reality is that benchmarking brings a necessary level of objectivity to performance evaluation. The subjective notion that “We think we’re pretty good” isn’t really good enough. That was the trap we fell into at Compaq when it came to order cycle time until the benchmarking told us otherwise. The reality is that self-opinion doesn’t truly matter to customers, who are comparing you against other suppliers… The biggest hurdle to benchmarking is coming up with standard ways to compare one company’s operations with another’s in order to make “like-for-like” comparisons…” […]

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Lost generation

A palindrome reads the same backwards as forward. This video reads the exact opposite backwards as forward. Not only does it read the opposite, the meaning is the exact opposite. This is only a 1 minute, 44 second video. Make sure you read as well as listen…forward and backward. Check it out […]

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