Analyzing MAPICS' Further Steps After Frontstep Part Three: Market Impact

Analyzing MAPICS' Further Steps After Frontstep Part Three: Market Impact

For the last several months MAPICS has shown both the signs of significant changes and the persistence of a number of its historically recognizable invariant tenets of operation. Following the acquisition of its former competitor, Frontstep, (see MAPICS To Leap Forward In A Frontstep Way), MAPICS, Inc. (NASDAQ: MAPX) became possibly the largest global provider of extended enterprise applications for solving the challenges of discrete manufacturers.

MAPICS has never departed from its conservative approach of delivering practical innovations and bulletproof applications for its customers, nor from its proverbial fiscal discipline. The Frontstep acquisition has obviously provided MAPICS with a boost in terms of product choice, having solutions on both leading platforms—Microsoft and IBM. With MAPICS SyteLine 7, the vendor now boasts a notable application built on a .NET architecture. However, the loyal AS/400 install base should rest assured of MAPICS' continued support for the platform. The big news on the MAPICS ERP for iSeries product side is that version 7.3, which is slated for December, will feature Double Bytes support, and expanded Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE)-based client technology.

Other developments detailed in this note are:

* MAPICS Field Service and Support (covered in Part One)

* A Global Partnership with Systems Union (covered in Part One)

* Primus Knowledge Solution Results
* Certified Partner Program

* Pacejet Logistics, Inc. is a Certified Partner

* A Revised Sales Strategy
As already sensed so far, much has changed, while also much has remained the same at MAPICS during 2003. First of all, with the February finalization of the Frontstep acquisition, MAPICS has become quite a large enterprise applications provider, with projected revenues of more than $210 million, and with over 800 employees across the globe, more than 10,000 manufacturing sites in 70 countries, and nearly 150 worldwide affiliates offering product service and support. The acquisition of Frontstep has positioned the vendor near (if not at) the top among vendors that focus on the mid-size discrete manufacturing market.

Moreover, the Frontstep acquisition also provided MAPICS with a much-enhanced choice of products. MAPICS ERP for iSeries (formerly MAPICS XA) has long been the company's sole ERP system for the IBM iSeries (formerly AS/400) platform. Thus, in the second half of the exuberant 1990s, MAPICS had already earned veteran status in the market, but its former IBM AS/400 platform confinement and its inability to rejuvenate its own mature product had given it a real negative "old and unexciting" perception. To make things worse, its attention to the bottom line during times of flat revenues often came at the expense of cutting into resellers' margins, which made some channel partners at least consider exploring other options.

Although the company had long sought to embrace new technologies while at the same time providing a smooth migration path for existing customers, it had suffered from continually being perceived as late to market with its new technology forays. Its protracted inability to deliver an all-the-rage Windows NT platform-based product made it struggle to sustain momentum in the then booming mid-market, which was increasingly intrigued with the low-cost and pervasive Microsoft technology. To that end, owing to the acquisition of its former struggling competitor Pivotpoint (see How Has MAPICS Been Extending?), MAPICS had delivered since early 2000 a number of new e-business modules and expanded its platform reach from its solely IBM iSeries and DB2 platforms to include Microsoft Windows NT, UNIX, and Linux operating systems and the Oracle database platform.

However, while expanding its offering and platform support bundled with the functionally strong former Pivotpoint Point.Man ERP product for high-tech industries, the company had also been burdened with an immense task of blending different corporate cultures (i.e., the less formal Pivotpoint's versus the more rigid and conservative MAPICS one) and with the inherited problems of Pivotpoint, which at the time of the acquisition was in a state of a flux—it had poor financial viability, channel erosion, employee exodus, and a poor service and support record. The management of dual flagship product lines had also initially and long after been awkward for MAPICS and its affiliate channel. One is to expect that, three years later, MAPICS will have learned important lessons, which it will have leveraged in the case of Frontstep's acquisition as another attempt at harnessing Microsoft's technology.

More importantly however, with the Frontstep acquisition MAPICS has inherited a technologically advanced and functionally strong product. Frontstep solved a big piece of its long-plaguing predicament of developing a next generation product and then migrating its large user base. Thus, newly enlarged MAPICS logically has become an active dual (i.e., both J2EE and Microsoft .NET compliant) platform vendor. To that end, the company will continue to sell and enhance its traditional breadwinning product for the IBM iSeries platform within that IBM world where the iSeries, J2EE, and WebSphere are important to users and prospects, along with the MAPICS SyteLine 7 product, which was relatively recently, albeit immediately before the Frontstep acquisition, completely rearchitected on Microsoft .NET (see Frontstep Ups The .NET Ante)
Consequently, MAPICS initially ended up with three key ERP offerings: 1) MAPICS SyteLine (formerly Frontstep SyteLine and Symix SyteLine), 2) MAPICS ERP for iSeries (the original venerable flagship MAPICS XA AS/400-based offering) and 3) MAPICS ERP for Extended Systems (derived from the acquired Point.Man).

Since its inception in 1978, the MAPICS ERP for iSeries product has evolved into a broad range of functionality for discrete manufacturing enterprises. Its strength remains largely in the discrete manufacturing arena, and until not long ago, its sweet spot has been within single plant installations. With features such as rate-based planning, serial number traceability, and product data management (PDM), the product can handle make-to-stock (MTS), assemble-to-order (ATO) and less intricate engineer-to-order (ETO) manufacturing environments. With the addition of its International Financial Management (IFM) module a few product releases back in the mid 1990s, its corporate financial management functionality became even more competitive. A payroll module has long been available, which always represents an attractive extra for its target market. The MAPICS focus has also long been on embedding workflow functionality designed to support business processes across many functional areas. MAPICS first delivered this capability for design and engineering functions, and recently expanded workflow throughout the entire product.

On the other hand, MAPICS ERP for Extended Systems has stronger MTS and repetitive manufacturing capabilities, including "pay point" processing, with the ability to report material, labor, and overhead costs from individual operations within the entire routing sequence. An important differentiator should be the product's ability to support virtual manufacturing enterprises that outsource manufacturing operations to third party subcontractors. An engineering change management (ECM) capability and actual costing have also been available. Contrary to its iSeries counterpart, the Extended Systems product (as the name suggests) has also long offered multisite interdependent functions, centralized sales, and purchase order management, but it has partnered with niche specialists to harness forecasting, quotation, payroll, tooling, and preventive maintenance functionality. Its financial modules are capable of consolidation and drill-down functions across multiple entities, although they have been best used and proven in US-based enterprises.

Like its new parent MAPICS, with its recently enhanced functionality to natively deliver solid SCM and CRM modules (see Mid-Market ERP Vendors Doing CRM & SCM In A DIY Fashion), former Frontstep had also positioned itself as a primary business systems provider that offers comprehensive enterprise solutions with integrated CRM and SCM capabilities, on top of a strong discrete manufacturing ERP capability and experience rather than as a mere ERP vendor. In that regard, the MAPICS SyteLine suite for mid-sized manufacturers, by and large offers support for customer service, order processing, inventory control and purchasing, manufacturing production management, production planning and scheduling, cost management, project control and financials, sophisticated product configuration for sales order management and manufacturing, advanced planning and scheduling (APS), business intelligence (BI), workflow automation, with business process definition and execution, and advanced forms. The traditional shortcomings in terms of multinational financial management modules will supposedly be overcome with the alliance with SunSystems.

As Microsoft-centric technology and the .NET initiative have become mainstream in the business applications mid-market, MAPICS has had to get over its traditional IBM platform preference and sentimental hang-ups, and to bow to its prospects' preference for Microsoft solutions that incorporate .NET and the SQL Server database technologies. To that end, SyteLine 7 is a solid solution for those Microsoft-oriented customers and prospects. Further, while the rearchitecture to .NET is important, it is the combination with new functional capabilities in areas like APS, flexible multi-site deployment, and flexible business process automation that position the product better going forward, particularly now as a part of a larger entity with a strong balance sheet and market clout.

User database preference was another driving factor for MAPICS in deciding which one of the two Microsoft-centric suites to actively market to Microsoft-oriented shops. MAPICS' products had long been deployed to a very narrow set of databases, i.e. former MAPICS XA could only run on an IBM DB2 database, whereas former Point.Man could only run on an Oracle database. Not providing support for Microsoft SQL Server has resulted in a number of missed opportunities within the cost conscious mid-market segment of MAPICS' focus. While SyteLine has had a long history of supporting both Windows and the UNIX OS, and Progress Software's database, the 7 release in 2002 solely took advantage of Microsoft technologies, as well as Microsoft's SQL Server database. Having surveyed the MAPICS ERP for Extended Systems users, MAPICS claims to have heard back from them that what they wanted were .NET and SQL Server-based solutions. Hence, MAPICS made a crucial decision to do that by providing a smooth migration path and conversion tools to SyteLine 7, rather than to embark on redevelopment of the Extended Systems product.
The Extended Systems suite will nevertheless continue to be supported for users that choose to stay on it. MAPICS maintains its product development teams have already mapped the functionality of the two products and the unique features of Extended Systems will be added to SyteLine during forthcoming future releases, which will be fleshed out shortly. Thereafter, the vendor pledges to work with customers in those industries to help them transition to SyteLine only when they are ready to make the change. Otherwise, SyteLine offers almost everything that the Extended Systems product has to offer, and more in both functional depth and breadth, so that one should anticipate incentives for users to migrate. At least, Frontstep should solve MAPICS ERP for Extended Systems' shortcomings in terms of limited multinational features and in terms of its dichotomy of running only on a higher-end of the market amenable Oracle database, while providing the functional features for the lower-end of the market.

Thus, given its highest prosperity in the market, the SyteLine product release schedule is the busiest amongst all the other products in the family. In June, the SyteLine 7.02 release, which includes the UK localization and translation toolset, was made available in the US, Canada, and the UK. The current release has 120 total implementations, whereby over 65 percent of these are the customers coming from North American affiliates, and over 20 percent are from the international markets. Then, the SyteLine 7.03 release that will feature the generic financial interface, and the updated Planner module based on additional APS capabilities, an update to core SyteLine for additional planning parameters, workflow security and data management enhancements, international enhancements, several new reports and report enhancements, complete FASB 52 compliance, and improved upgrade and custom code management, should "hit" China, Southeast Asia, Australia, and New Zealand in late 2003 (and still works for the US, UK, and Canada).

With dates yet to be determined (at the moment only projected for summer 2004), the SyteLine 7.04 release, featuring integrated SyteLine Enterprise Financials, more complete additions to the APS Planner and Scheduler functions, international enhancements including additional tax enhancements, final country packs for Mexico, Japan, and France, more workflow enhancements, user interface (UI) tuning and enhancements, and projects to support selected verticals and to support MAPICS ERP for Extended Systems to SyteLine conversions, will be released in Mexico, France, and Japan (and the other countries already mentioned). Finally, Germany, Italy, and Russia will only see the SyteLine 7.05 release some time in 2005. The release should complete the internationalization process; will have final country packs for Germany, Italy, and Russia; should complete the planner and scheduler functional improvements; and the integration of the ntelligent Sourcer, as well as the gap projects to support the selected verticals.

The integration between SyteLine 7.04 and SunSystems is planned for 2004 against the SyteLine 7.04 intended availability. The SyteLine Enterprise Financials module that leverages SunSystems is currently available in a stand alone mode (e.g. professional service level of integration) within the following modules: foundation, accounting, fixed assets, allocations, connect, etc. Two customers have reportedly purchased SyteLine Advanced Financials this way—Krone and Dornier Medtech. This should alleviate the conundrum for penetrating the higher-end of the market since MAPICS (and the former Frontstep alike) has never been at the forefront of providing native multinational financials/consolidation, budgeting, project accounting/management, and human resources (HR) functionality. Without these in hand, it is a tall order for any like vendor to penetrate the corporate management level competing against the likes of Oracle, SAP, and PeopleSoft. Production management remains MAPICS' strongest spot, and thus it has often been implemented only in manufacturing divisions of large global organizations that use a tier one ERP product for corporate financials or HR applications.

READ MORE - Analyzing MAPICS' Further Steps After Frontstep Part Three: Market Impact

Analyzing MAPICS' Further Steps After Frontstep

Analyzing MAPICS' Further Steps After Frontstep

For the last several months, MAPICS, Inc. (NASDAQ: MAPX), possibly the largest global provider of extended enterprise applications for solving the challenges of discrete manufacturers following the acquisition of its former competitor Frontstep (see MAPICS To Leap Forward In A Frontstep Way), has shown both the signs of significant changes but also a persistence of a number of its historically recognizable invariant tenets of operation. The former steadfast IBM iSeries (formerly IBM AS/400)-based ERP supplier to mid-market manufacturing companies, MAPICS, has since indeed become quite a larger vendor and with a wider choice of products, having recently acquired a Microsoft .NET-based competitor. However, as the customers from both camps have been uncertain of their provider's strategy, given that bigger size brings about the need to rationalize multiple products in the same marketplace, after a few months period of buried heads and brainstorming sessions, MAPICS has lately been engaged in explaining its rationale, as to set many customers' minds at ease.

At the same time, the vendor has continued with a painstaking process of producing a strategy going forward that would pragmatically blend the company's traditional values and success factors with new approaches to stay in tune with market trends. The process had started well before the Frontstep's acquisition, during which time in early 2002 the company was energized with a new functional structure and an expanded executive management team. During the same period of time, MAPICS had evolved its marketing and revamped its solutions to focus on business issues and specific discrete manufacturing verticals and to thereby appeal to existing and prospective customers. Pre-Frontstep MAPICS, indeed, had not been sitting still, as the company had made every effort to avert the relegation to legacy Atlantis' as often speculated by some, and it has therefore lately rebuilt its technologies, reviewed its implementation partners, and thus shored up a notable customer base, and retained profitability and security while doing so (see MAPICS Moving On Pragmatically).

Therefore, MAPICS has never departed from its conservative approach of delivering practical innovations and bulletproof applications for its customers, and from its proverbial fiscal discipline. To that end, on July 31, MAPICS reported GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Practice) net income for its third fiscal quarter ended June 30, 2003, of $3.0 million, including an income tax benefit and restructuring costs, compared with GAAP net income of $7.5 million, for the same period in fiscal 2002. More importantly, this was the first quarter that included Frontstep revenues and costs, in which case the return to profitability and reduced and stabilized expenses bear even higher magnitude. Moreover, total revenue for Q3 2003 increased by 51% to $47.1 million versus $31.3 million a year ago, while license revenue was $13.6 million, up 44% from $9.4 million in Q3 2002 (see Figure 1). This was in a sharp contrast to previous MAPICS' quarterly reports featuring flat or often depressed revenues (see Figure 2).

* Primarily represents a goodwill write down of the PivotPoint acquisition

While the majority of revenue continues to come from the loyal existing customers, the vendor has processed nearly 400 license transaction during the quarter, which is threefold the average volume for MAPICS without Frontstep over its last four quarters. Nearly 60 new MAPICS SyteLine (formerly Frontstep SyteLine) customers have reportedly contributed $2.8 million in license revenues. The company still has a comfortable cash amount of nearly $22.6 million, and maintains its acquisitive stance.

The Frontstep acquisition has obviously provided MAPICS with a boost in terms of product choice, having solutions on both leading platforms -- Microsoft and IBM. With MAPICS SyteLine 7, the vendor now boasts a notable application built on a .NET architecture. However, the loyal AS/400 install base should rest assured of MAPICS' continued support for the platform. The big news on the MAPICS ERP for iSeries product side is that the version 7.3, which is slated for December, will feature Double Byte support, and expanded Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE)-based client technology.

Other developments detailed in this note are:

* MAPICS Field Service & Support
* A global partnership with Systems Union
* Primus Knowledge Solution Results (to be covered in Part Two)
* Certified Partner Program (to be covered in Part Two)
* Pacejet Logistics, Inc is Certified Partner (to be covered in Part Two)
* A revised sales strategy (to be covered in Part Two)

Further proving its commitment to delivery of enhancements, in August, MAPICS announced the general availability of its new, integrated MAPICS Field Service & Support solution, aimed at helping manufacturers better manage after-market services personnel, materials, and information, as well as offer customers post-sale support that increases customer loyalty and retention. The new field service solution relies on critical business information resident in MAPICS ERP for iSeries to ensure that users have access to the single master source for order, product and customer information. Integrated to the MAPICS ERP for iSeries solution, Field Service & Support users should benefit from the current business processes associated with materials, resources, contracts, and financial information. The MAPICS Field Service & Support solution consolidates the management of service contracts, warranty claims, task assignment, technician scheduling, Return Material Authorizations (RMA), and service variance analysis.

Hence, this new offering extends the capabilities of the core MAPICS application suite, to encompass manufactured products throughout their life. MAPICS' new Field Service & Support solution creates a comprehensive after-sales service infrastructure to handle a number of service and customer management tasks with inherent benefits, including:

* Automating the administration of service contracts and warranty claims.

* Tracking time and materials contracts for equipment repair not under warranty or service contracts, providing more accurate data for invoicing.

* Integrating service-related material management, financial management, and billing processes, translating into faster service to the customer and maximized uptime on their equipment as well as better-cost control and analysis capabilities for the service provider.

* Providing integrated incident tracking, tech support, and RMA management, improving service efficiency for the customer and at the same time providing data to manufacturing engineering to drive product and process quality improvements.

* Initiating easy remote access capabilities to manage work order information flow to and from remote work locations, speeding repairs.

* Consolidating management of the services resources; people, tooling and parts, to speed the completion of work in the field.

As for bolstering the other part of its bifurcated offering going forward, in June, MAPICS announced a global partnership with Systems Union, provider of SunSystems, one of the leading international financial and business management solutions. The partnership will enable MAPICS to leverage SunSystems' infrastructure to integrate exclusively with the MAPICS SyteLine ERP solution, which should facilitate increasing global access to valuable financial information. SunSystems is the core product range of the Systems Union Group plc, which is quoted on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM) of the London Stock Exchange. The company is one of the largest business software houses in the world, with 21 offices worldwide and some 200 Channel Partners in 76 countries. Products within the SunSystems range are available in 30 languages with over 18,000 customer sites, and 250,000 customer seats in some 194 countries. The software solutions are used extensively by multinationals, whose offices worldwide require an international product with global support infrastructure.

MAPICS and Systems Union plan to integrate their technologies to deliver enhanced global financial management solutions for manufacturers in industries such as industrial equipment, electronics, fabricated metals, automotive, and furniture & fixtures. The integrated enterprise offering this partnership provides should allow MAPICS to better address the ever-increasing financial issues that large multi-national manufacturers face, while continuing to solve their complex manufacturing requirements.

Financial data flow throughout an organization is the livelihood of a company's success and has a direct effect on the bottom line. Large, multi-site and multi-national enterprises that capture financial data using SunSystems have reportedly been better able to make more informed decisions based on immediate access to information. Thus, integrating with SunSytems should allow MAPICS to add commonality and higher value to financial management processes such as accounting, corporate collections, invoicing, reporting and budget management across a manufacturers global operation, through the use of a single tightly integrated solution.

READ MORE - Analyzing MAPICS' Further Steps After Frontstep

Deltek Remains the Master of Its Selected Few Domains

Deltek Remains the Master of Its Selected Few Domains

Deltek Systems, Inc. (www.deltek.com ), the leading provider of enterprise software and solutions for project-based businesses and professional services firms, remains committed to a potentially unique, high level of investment in product development as compared to other software companies. According to Kenneth E. deLaski, Deltek President and CEO, the average public software company only invests approximately 14.5 percent of its revenue in product development and, at 24 percent, Deltek customers should take this as a strong sign that the vendor is deeply committed to continued investment and improvement of each of its product suites for project businesses and professional services firms. Deltek also announced that, once again, it achieved strong profitability and cash flow for fiscal 2002, which reportedly marked the 18th consecutive year of profitability for the company. In addition, the company added more than 300 new customers during the year in a variety of industries including aerospace, construction, engineering, IT services, consulting, architecture, and project-based manufacturing.
Within its marketing and proposal automation product, Deltek has an emerging CRM derivative known as client relationship management, which should help firms (such as accounting practices and law offices), other professional service companies; technical services; and, project-based organizations track client relationships in a more sophisticated manner than referrals or word-of-mouth, which were appropriate during the start-up phases of such companies. Subsequently accessing a client's record in Deltek Vision will also list the client's employees and former employers via hyperlink, enabling users to keep tabs on industry movement and turnover.

In a project-based business, there are no dedicated sales teams on the road chasing and securing new business since most senior partners and project managers bring in their own business and look after their own client portfolio. Consequently, traditional sales calls or consumer internet storefront ordering approaches become inappropriate in these situations. Therefore, the critical element of the client relationship process is to secure new business through proposal development. However, trying to recall the details of relevant past jobs and those who worked on them plus gathering the hard copies of such information from different people can be a nightmare. To that end, Deltek proposal management system allows a contractor to organize projects by various categories such as people, projects, designs, and expertise allowing appropriate information (e.g., resumes, document boilerplates, etc.) to become easily retrievable in the preparation of new proposals. Users can then track the progress of a proposal, share the information with other team members, review similar proposals, and analyze awarded jobs through a product that offers both government and customized commercial proposal generators

READ MORE - Deltek Remains the Master of Its Selected Few Domains

Progressive IT Management Strategies: The IT manager’s 360-degree view of business

Todays arch advice administrator (CIO) not alone has to be abreast about technology, but frequently, the CIO is alleged aloft to adjust the cardinal goals of arch administration in accession to managing on-going, circadian technology issuesthe technology that provides afterimage in the controlling process.According to the IBM assay Expanding the Innovation Horizon: The All-around CEO Study 2006, of 765 all-around arch controlling admiral (CEOs), a lot of are award there is a gap in the affiliation of their business and their technology, which hinders chump achievement as able-bodied as acceleration and adaptability in managing the business.A assay sponsored by the Gartner Group, Cost Cutting in IT, states that 2008 represents an important year in the transformation of ITs role. Controlling expectations for IT will advance appear greater abutment for solutions that attract, engage, and absorb customers. Notwithstanding the advance fabricated in the breadth of adjustment business requirements with IT skills, the gap has still not narrowed significantly, as a generational about-face has occurred: IT advisers in their mid to backward 30s accept alone anytime formed in IT, and they may accept not had the befalling to abound inother areas aural the organization. Abounding babyish boomers, on the added hand, accept been accepted in one alignment for a amount of years, and possibly in a amount of positions aural several aggregation facilities.

The IT Executive: The Best Seat in the House

Due to the fast clip of change in technology and in agreement of new business regulations and bazaar altitude globalization, the US Sarbanes-Oxley Act [SOX], etc.), the IT administration has had to be configured to accommodate the aggregation with the accoutrement to abduction the arising trends accompanying to article and bill amount valuations. In addition, these professionals accept been accepted to be able to arrange systems that are appropriately active in the breadth of tracking adjustment status. The adeptness to use analytic accoutrement to advance strategies in an ever-changing business mural requires that the IT administration be beneath of a anatomic role and added of a specialist aural the company.

IT Accoutrement That Impact Organizational Performance

Given the IT departments role as agents for change aural an organization, conceivably one of the accoutrement that is a lot of basic for organizations to abide aggressive is business intelligence (BI). The appellation business intelligence refers to technologies, applications, and practices for the collection, integration, analysis, and presentation of BI, and sometimes to the advice itself as well. The purpose of BI is to abutment bigger business accommodation making.

As businesses began automating their processes and added abstracts became available, the claiming became how to deliver that abstracts to the actual channels for controlling purposes. Prior to BI, abounding key business decisions were fabricated intuitively. BI generally uses key achievement indicators (KPIs) to appraise the present accompaniment of a business and to advance a advance of action. To do this, BI uses analytics (a aggregate of statistical assay and abstracts mining) to appraise trends or capacity that abatement alfresco of the user-defined, benchmarked parameters.

To added your ability of BI and key vendors of BI solutions, I advance you appointment www.technologyevaluation.com. Select the bell-ringer advertise to analysis the complete account of vendors and to access white affidavit and allegory reports.

Being IT Savvy

The appellation IT savvy was coined in the mid-90s by a researcher at the Massachusettes Institute of Technology (MIT) to alarm how organizations can advance in specific IT ability abject areas, and accept a acknowledgment on that investment in assessable after-effects in that class (see Generating Premium Returns on Your IT Investments):

Characteristics of IT Adeptness Companies

IT for communicationhigh use of cyberbanking channels, such as e-mail, intranets, and wireless devices, for centralized and alien communications and plan practices.

Digital transactionsa top amount of digitization of a firms repetitive transactions,

particularly sales, chump interaction, and purchasing.

Internet usemore use of Internet architectures for key processes, such as sales force management, agent achievement measurement, training, and post-sales chump support.

Firm-wide IT skillshigh adequacy of all advisers to use IT effectively. There are able abstruse and business abilities a part of IT staff, able IT abilities a part of business staff, and an able bazaar accumulation of awful accomplished IT staff.

Business administration involvementstrong arch administration charge and advancement of IT initiatives. There is aswell able business assemblage captivation in IT decisions, consistent in a affiliation amid IT agents and businessunits to accomplish amount from IT investments.

IT Professionals Will Require Business Savvy

Due to such alien factors as bread-and-butter recession, globalization, and backward babyish boomers, earlier IT specialistswill be replaced by individuals accepting a approved ability of such key business areas as finance, accumulation alternation management, and so on.

According to a UK-based web website for IT contractors, www.contractoruk.com (CUK), one US outsourcer told CUK that the alarm for business-savvy IT professionals was loudest a part of all-embracing apparel gluttonous software programmers or reliable third-party suppliers. In my experience, firms are advancement contractors and abiding workers who are business adeptness and apperceive how software connects to their business, said Parasoft CEO, Dr. Adam Kolawa.

All IT professionals who ambition to cartilage up on their compassionate of IT technology and business applications should appointment TECs web site.

READ MORE - Progressive IT Management Strategies: The IT manager’s 360-degree view of business

Customer Relationship Management Strategies Part Three: Achieving and Maintaining the Competitive Edge

Once you have decided to modify your approach towards customer interactions, you will once again have to take a step back and look at your company from a market perspective. In this section we will discuss strategies on how to achieve and maintain a competitive advantage.

If your company has been in business for any significant amount of time, you know who your competitors are, what their strengths and weaknesses are, and how you typically sell against them. Believe it or not, most times this information comes from sales representatives, personal contacts, industry trade publications, trade shows, word of mouth, customer complaints, rumors, and many other informal channels of communication. Many companies do not have an organized means of tracking this information, let alone a means of using it to achieve a continuing competitive advantage. Price wars, "knee jerk" reactions, and other hit or miss strategies are usually employed to compete in the market.

This is Part Three of a four-part note.

Part One discussed new approaches to CRM implementation.

Part Two discussed implementation strategies.

Part Four will conclude with specific CRM strategies and a hypothetical case study.

One of the main business objectives to be met through the utilization of your customer relationship management (CRM) system should be to achieve and maintain a competitive advantage in your marketplace. In order to achieve this goal you have to ensure that your customers are constantly made aware of the following:

* Your company produces better products than the competition

* The products provide better value to the customer (not necessarily at the lowest price, unless you are in a commodity marketplace)

* Your sales teams consistently provide more and better information and sales service to you customers

* Your customer service organization provides the best response time and response quality in the industry

* You continue to improve your products, are innovative in the development of new products and consistently beat your competitors to market with those innovations and new products

* Your organization is focused on solving your customers' problems as opposed to just "making the sale"

* You have the ability and tools to assist your customers to increase their revenues and margins to gain competitive advantage in their marketplace.

The list above outlines the most critical items to be addressed when attempting to strategize on increasing your competitive advantage. Although the list is short, it represents a significant amount of informmation to be gathered, managed, and distributed. Without a systematic approach and automated tools, the task is almost impossible.

The good news is that your CRM system has a combination of applications that will assist you with easily managing the CRM business cycle (CRMBC) process and the information. A combination of marketing, sales, service, and customer satisfaction management applications will help your company address all of the areas outlined above. Once you establish a continuous feedback loop in these four process areas you will be moving towards your goal.

There are four major steps that you can take to achieve the goal of increasing your competitive advantage in the marketplace.

1. Develop a serious commitment to focusing the organization on the goal.

Once competitive advantage becomes a stated goal and is continuously reinforced by management, your company will shift towards increased market share and all of the related downstream benefits. Most organizations attempt to achieve this advantage in different areas, but few have a well thought-out, systematized strategy for achieving the desired results. However, by using the CRMBC to manage the process and organize your efforts and communications, and by communicating its message throughout your organization and to your customers, the downstream benefits will become a reality.

2. Structure your internal business processes to support your goal.

Before you install and implement your CRM system, have an idea about how your internal business processes will change. Think through the complete CRMBC cycle from marketing to sales, to service through to customer satisfaction management. Although you may focus more specifically in one area than others, you must consider the complete cycle when implementing your system. For example, even if you don't have an "official" service center, someone within your organization is still performing that function. Even if it is the sales representatives that field the customer calls, they should be tracking the results of the calls and follow up by documenting the results. After that, they should be part of the customer satisfaction measurement process.

3. Accommodate those processes.

Each of the four CRMBC areas in your new system will have an associated application (or module). These modules will have configuration options that will allow you to tailor the module to your process flows. As you set these options, always keep in mind the ultimate goal: achieving competitive advantage.

4. Use the CRMBC continuous feedback loop to make sure that the cycle is complete.

Once you map out a strategy for configuring your applications, you must establish measurement mechanisms, known as metrics, that will help you manage towards your goal. Metrics are simply criteria that are established in each CRMBC area to assess the effectiveness of your progress towards your goals.

In many situations the same metric can help you measure progress towards several goals. The key to effective use of metrics is to select a manageable set for each of the four components of the CRMBC. If you set up a relatively easy mechanism to capture data and convert it into the appropriate metrics, the results will become a byproduct of your regular daily operations.

Once you have data for the metrics, you will need to establish standards and alert mechanisms to make sense of the results. Once again, the key here is manageability. Volumes of data that are difficult to manage and interpret will provide little value and even less actionable items. Some that you may wish to consider when measuring your progress towards achieving a competitive advantage are

Product quality control metrics

* Product returns
* Warranty service requests
* Initial service calls
* Customer complaints
* Sales force communication effectiveness
* Accuracy of forecasting
* Timely identification of competitor price changes
* Identification of new customers entering the market
* Capturing of competitive sales activities
* Identification of customer defections both to and from your company
* Identification of competitors' marketing campaigns and strategies

Customer Service metrics

* Customers' call in response time
* Identification of competitive service offerings and performance
* Continuous ownership of customer contacts until issue is resolved

Product innovation

* Identification of new competitive products entering the market
* Identification of potential new markets for existing products
* Tracking investment in new product development by your competitors
* Continuous measurement of customer satisfaction
* Gather feedback on your customers' experiences with each department in your company
* Identify your level of penetration into your customers' product line
* Track customers' satisfaction with sales interaction
* Measurement of your products' impact on your customers' profitability
* Understanding of your competitors' impact on your customers' profitability

Capturing Information

Capturing information to monitor some of the metrics outlined above may not be as difficult as you first imagine. In many cases the information already exists within your organization. The challenge will be to find out where and how the data is captured (informal conversations, e-mails, sales notes, competitors brochures, published market surveys, internal operational statistics, Internet research, etc.).

Once you identify the metrics that your company will use to achieve your competitive advantage, make sure that they are communicated throughout the organization. Sales, call center staff, executive management, suppliers, and customers are all valuable sources of information. Your task will be to specifically identify the appropriate source(s) of data for each metric and then implement a recurring method for capturing the data such as meetings, sales call reports, call center logs, e-mail logs, supplier surveys, regular Internet research, customer inquiries, and informal discussions.

We can't stress enough how important it is to spend time before jumping into your CRM implementation to establish goals, objectives, metrics, and measurement techniques that will help you obtain and achieve a competitive advantage in the marketplace. Taking this approach will entail some additional "upfront" work but will pay significant dividends down the road. Not many of your competitors will be taking such a systematic approach to continuous evaluation of their place in the market. Your efforts will prepare you for effectively developing marketing strategies and campaigns that are targeted towards meeting specific goals that will ultimately increase the profitability of your company.

READ MORE - Customer Relationship Management Strategies Part Three: Achieving and Maintaining the Competitive Edge

Advantages of ITIL/Disadvantages of ITIL

Advantages of ITIL

There are several benefits for using the Information Technology Infrastructure Library for many of your IT business needs and one main benefit is that through the guidelines and best practices that are taught in the library, your business can save a tremendous amount of money once implemented.

Another advantage of ITIL is that it will help your IT department organize and manage many different disciplines using one comprehensive volume. ITIL is the leader in IT guidelines and best practice publications; it has been tested in real world environments for over a decade and is proven to work.

Disadvantages of ITIL

While the advantages usually far outweigh the disadvantages, there are a couple of criticisms that are worth noting including the idea that most IT professionals consider ITIL a holistic approach to IT management. While ITIL is comprehensive, even the publication itself does not consider itself a holistic approach to IT management.
In addition, there are also accusations by some IT professionals that following only the ITIL due to its acceptance by many IT managers as the authoritative source has actually led to many businesses to skip pragmatic solutions for their specific business needs. Finally, another criticism of ITIL is that while some topics are covered extensively and are of high value, other topics may not receive enough emphasis with quality being uneven in certain publications.

READ MORE - Advantages of ITIL/Disadvantages of ITIL

What is Sarbanes-Oxley?

What is Sarbanes-Oxley?

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act was signed into law on July 30, 2002 by President Bush, and was approved by the House by a vote of 423-3 and by the Senate 99-0. Sarbanes-Oxley is considered the most significant change to federal securities laws in the United States since the New Deal. Officially titled the Public Company Accounting Reform and Investor Protection Act of 2002, and commonly called SOX and Sarbox, it was named after sponsors Senator Paul Sarbanes (D-MD) and Representative Michael G. Oxley (R-OH) and came as result of a series of corporate financial scandals.

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act is designed to review dated legislative audit requirements to protect investors by improving the accuracy and reliability of corporate disclosures, covering issues such as establishing a public company accounting oversight board, corporate responsibility, auditor independence, and enhanced financial disclosure. The act's major provisions mention that we can name the prohibition on insider trades during pension fund blackout periods, the certification of financial reports by CEOs and CFOs, the public reporting of CEO and CFO compensation and profits, accelerated reporting of trades by insiders, and ban personal loans to any Executive Officer and Director. Basically, the act requires full disclosure on just about everything.

Sarbanes-Oxley requires additional disclosure as well as criminal and civil penalties for securities violations and significantly longer jail sentences and larger fines for corporate executives who knowingly and willfully misstate financial statements. The act also notes the prohibition on audit firms providing extra "value-added" services to their clients, including actuarial services, legal and extra services such as consulting or unrelated to their audit work. The Sarbanes Oxley Act also requires that publicly traded companies furnish independent annual audit reports on the existence and condition of internal controls as they relate to financial reporting.

Other provisions included mention that US companies are now obliged to have an internal audit function, which must be certified by external auditors. The act also grants auditor independence, including outright bans on certain types of work and pre-certification by the company's Audit Committee of all other non-audit work. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act list also requires that information on how significant transactions are initiated, authorized, supported, processed, and reported must be disclosed if this information is requested at any time.

Sarbanes-Oxley allows enough information about the flow of transactions to identify where material misstatements due to error or fraud could occur. There is also information and other implementations and controls designed to prevent or detect fraud, including who performs the controls and the regulated segregation of duties. This act also states how the period-end financial reporting process and controls over safeguarding of assets, reporting the results of management's testing and evaluation must be handled.

The future of The Sarbanes-Oxley Act will depend on businesses' ability to respond to those areas already mentioned by making it a part of every-day business. Deloitte and Touche LLP has released a new publication called "Under Control" where some points on this matter are exposed, such as education and training to reinforce the control environment, clearly articulated roles and responsibilities and assigned accountability, effective and efficient processes for evaluating testing, remediating, monitoring, and reporting on controls, technology to enable compliance, adaptability and flexibility to respond to organizational and regulatory change, and integrated financial and internal control processes. It's clear that the act may need refining in the future, but presently it serves as a protection to investors against those that do not or mistakenly fail to report accurately.

READ MORE - What is Sarbanes-Oxley?

Integration is Key to ERP

Integration is Key to ERP

Integration is an extremely important part to ERP's. ERP's main goal is to integrate data and processes from all areas of an organization and unify it for easy access and work flow. ERP's usually accomplish integration by creating one single database that employs multiple software modules providing different areas of an organization with various business functions.

Although the ideal configuration would be one ERP system for an entire organization, many larger organizations usually create and ERP system and then build upon the system and external interface for other stand alone systems which might be more powerful and perform better in fulfilling an organizations needs. Usually this type of configuration can be time consuming and does require lots of labor hours.

READ MORE - Integration is Key to ERP

The Ideal ERP System

An ideal ERP system is when a single database is utilized and contains all data for various software modules. These software modules can include:

Manufacturing: Some of the functions include; engineering, capacity, workflow management, quality control, bills of material, manufacturing process, etc.

Financials: Accounts payable, accounts receivable, fixed assets, general ledger and cash management, etc.

Human Resources: Benefits, training, payroll, time and attendance, etc

Supply Chain Management: Inventory, supply chain planning, supplier scheduling, claim processing, order entry, purchasing, etc.

Projects: Costing, billing, activity management, time and expense, etc.

Customer Relationship Management: sales and marketing, service, commissions, customer contact, calls center support, etc.

Data Warehouse: Usually this is a module that can be accessed by an organizations customers, suppliers and employees.

READ MORE - The Ideal ERP System

ERP Improves Productivity

Before ERP systems, each department in an organization would most likely have their own computer system, data and database. Unfortunately, many of these systems would not be able to communicate with one another or need to store or rewrite data to make it possible for cross computer system communication. For instance, the financials of a company were on a separate computer system than the HR system, making it more intensive and complicated to process certain functions.

Once an ERP system is in place, usually all aspects of an organization can work in harmony instead of every single system needing to be compatible with each other. For large organizations, increased productivity and less types of software are a result.

READ MORE - ERP Improves Productivity

Implementation of an ERP System

Implementing an ERP system is not an easy task to achieve, in fact it takes lots of planning, consulting and in most cases 3 months to 1 year +. ERP systems are extraordinary wide in scope and for many larger organizations can be extremely complex. Implementing an ERP system will ultimately require significant changes on staff and work practices. While it may seem reasonable for an in house IT staff to head the project, it is widely advised that ERP implementation consultants be used, due to the fact that consultants are usually more cost effective and are specifically trained in implementing these types of systems.

One of the most important traits that an organization should have when implementing an ERP system is ownership of the project. Because so many changes take place and its broad effect on almost every individual in the organization, it is important to make sure that everyone is on board and will help make the project and using the new ERP system a success.

Usually organizations use ERP vendors or consulting companies to implement their customized ERP system. There are three types of professional services that are provided when implementing an ERP system, they are Consulting, Customization and Support.

Consulting Services - usually consulting services are responsible for the initial stages of ERP implementation, they help an organization go live with their new system, with product training, workflow, improve ERP's use in the specific organization, etc.

Customization Services - Customization services work by extending the use of the new ERP system or changing its use by creating customized interfaces and/or underlying application code. While ERP systems are made for many core routines, there are still some needs that need to be built or customized for an organization.

Support Services- Support services include both support and maintenance of ERP systems. For instance, trouble shooting and assistance with ERP issues.

READ MORE - Implementation of an ERP System

Implementation of an ERP System

Implementing an ERP system is not an easy task to achieve, in fact it takes lots of planning, consulting and in most cases 3 months to 1 year +. ERP systems are extraordinary wide in scope and for many larger organizations can be extremely complex. Implementing an ERP system will ultimately require significant changes on staff and work practices. While it may seem reasonable for an in house IT staff to head the project, it is widely advised that ERP implementation consultants be used, due to the fact that consultants are usually more cost effective and are specifically trained in implementing these types of systems.

One of the most important traits that an organization should have when implementing an ERP system is ownership of the project. Because so many changes take place and its broad effect on almost every individual in the organization, it is important to make sure that everyone is on board and will help make the project and using the new ERP system a success.

Usually organizations use ERP vendors or consulting companies to implement their customized ERP system. There are three types of professional services that are provided when implementing an ERP system, they are Consulting, Customization and Support.

Consulting Services - usually consulting services are responsible for the initial stages of ERP implementation, they help an organization go live with their new system, with product training, workflow, improve ERP's use in the specific organization, etc.

Customization Services - Customization services work by extending the use of the new ERP system or changing its use by creating customized interfaces and/or underlying application code. While ERP systems are made for many core routines, there are still some needs that need to be built or customized for an organization.

Support Services- Support services include both support and maintenance of ERP systems. For instance, trouble shooting and assistance with ERP issues.

READ MORE - Implementation of an ERP System

Advantages of ERP Systems\Disadvantages of ERP Systems

Advantages of ERP Systems

There are many advantages of implementing an EPR system; here are a few of them:

• A totally integrated system
• The ability to streamline different processes and workflows
• The ability to easily share data across various departments in an organization
• Improved efficiency and productivity levels
• Better tracking and forecasting
• Lower costs
• Improved customer service

Disadvantages of ERP Systems

While advantages usually outweigh disadvantages for most organizations implementing an ERP system, here are some of the most common obstacles experienced:

Usually many obstacles can be prevented if adequate investment is made and adequate training is involved, however, success does depend on skills and the experience of the workforce to quickly adapt to the new system.

• Customization in many situations is limited
• The need to reengineer business processes
• ERP systems can be cost prohibitive to install and run
• Technical support can be shoddy
• ERP's may be too rigid for specific organizations that are either new or want to move in a new direction in the near future.

READ MORE - Advantages of ERP Systems\Disadvantages of ERP Systems