Outsourcing’s in the news these days, what with the US presidential election and all, but it’s usually covered from an “is it good for us” angle—where “us” is the American people or the national economy.

But how about you? Is it good for your organization? Read the rest of this entry »

Part I of this blog post analyzed the white paper entitled “Manufacturing Outsourcing: Seven Common Pitfalls to Avoid” , authored by Symphony Consulting and Arena Solutions. It also established an intrinsic connection with product lifecycle management (PLM) software technology as a global sourcing collaboration enabler.

Indeed, several macroeconomic trends seem to be helping the PLM market, starting with the rampant offshoring of facilities and/or expansion of outsourcing and contract manufacturing overseas. There are also escalating mergers and acquisitions (M&As) within multiple business sectors and the inexorable spate of regulatory and compliance mandates within many industries and geographic regions.

This dovetails into the relentless pressure for companies to innovate and bring ever more functional (if not even “ever-cooler”) products, that have ever-shorter lifecycles, ever more quickly get to the market, and thus differentiate, especially in the electronics/high-tech and consumable packaged goods (CPG) sectors. Read the rest of this entry »

Traditional Japanese Decision-making, or Ringi

The decision-making process in North American companies operates within a centralized system, and generally takes a top-down approach. In Japanese companies, however, the approach to making decisions is the opposite: it is bottom-up. This traditional and formal decision-making process, which is even now employed in Japanese governmental offices as well as companies, is called the ringi system.

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This week BMC announced it had secured the purchase of ITM Software, a business management provider. BMC is a publically traded data center automation company that competes directly with CA Inc, HP, and IBM. It’s clients include DELL, Home Depot, and Toyota. Over the past two years, BMC has been busy snapping up different IT companies, such as Proactive Net (June 2007), RealOps (July 2007), and Emprisa Networks (October 2007). It’s wholly-owned subsidiary, Bengal Acquisition Corporation acquired 96.7% interest in BladeLogic. Read the rest of this entry »

TEC analyst Alex Hankewicz was positively purring after his certification of the IFS Applications EAM functionality a couple of weeks ago, thanks to what he called its comprehensive functionality and well thought-out and scalable architecture.

He’s not normally very effusive, so when he described it as “one of the best I’ve seen,” I thought it was time to offer readers a walkthrough of TEC’s EAM Evaluation Center, which you can use to generate a free shortlist of EAM solutions.

Read the rest of this entry »

As recent media reports suggest, the dreaded “R” word—recession—is looming large across the horizon of most western and global economies. Many organizations have had to scale back their spending and reduce costs. Due to the cyclical nature of our economy, certain industries will fare better than others. Read the rest of this entry »

A number of TEC blog posts have discussed benefits but also the inevitable caveats of white papers (including all too common vendors’ self-serving marketing fluff and buzzword verbiage), and about their (un)intended audiences. These posts have even caused some heated debates with other blogging sites and experts on white papers, and I am going to stay away from all that here.

My intention here is rather to acknowledge that, as part of my daily routine of doing research on vendors and their strategies and offerings, I’ve read a ton of white papers in the last decade or so. And yes, these have ranged from vendors’ blatant bragging about their capabilities (a la the “Every man thinks his own geese swans” proverb) to some exceptional ones that were quite educational and established someone’s expertise in something.

One latter example would be the white paper entitled “Manufacturing Outsourcing: Seven Common Pitfalls to Avoid” and authored by Symphony Consulting and Arena Solutions. Why? Read the rest of this entry »

In the ERP world, discrete, process, and mixed-mode manufacturing is at the core of how manufacturing is done. Without an ERP system, manufacturing becomes a daunting task.

There are three main types of manufacturing: discrete, where parts can be disassembled (such as automotive manufacturing); process manufacturing, which is an ingredients-based manufacturing (industries include coatings/paints, oil and gas, pharmaceutical, and food & beverage); and mixed-mode, where manufacturing firms do both types of processes to produce a final product. An example of this would be clothing: the materials are constructed through process manufacturing and assembled by a discrete process.

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No, I’m not about to launch into a Paula Abdul cover (I won’t even dignify that with a link).

Lead generation is a process that uses information to create interest in an enterprise’s products or services. It’s end objective is to generate sales.

Several steps are involved in this marketing process. Before a company begins, it needs to define the market that its product or service caters too, segment that market, and then identify its most profitable areas. Once this is done, the leads generation process begins. The leads generation process involves prospecting, preapproach, approach, and close. As a prospect moves through the leads cycle, information is being created and filtered. Sensibly, a business should use this information to follow up with its customers to see if they were satisfied with the service or product, and then generate leads metrics which will be used to further refine the leads generation and sales process. 

The leads generation process gathers a lot of information and involves a lot of tracking, and it should generate dialogue not only between the company and customers, but within the company between sales and marketing in particular. A leads management solution uses different methodologies and practices to govern this information and distribute it to the appropriate people within an organization. Read the rest of this entry »

When we talk about the benefits of learning management systems (LMS), training and employee competency usually come to mind. For that reason, LMS is often considered a less-than vital business activity (since it doesn’t address “core” business issues). Add to that the fact that nobody really enjoys training, and you’ve got a recipe for, well, no LMS.

However, when it comes to compliance issues—that bugbear of service industries—you may find you haven’t got much of a choice. Learning management systems are favored by regulated industries (for example, financial services and biopharmaceuticals) where compliance training is essential.

Compliance issues, of course, come in several shades:

• regulatory compliance (financial services industry, legal, accounting, other professional services)
• industry compliance (such as certification and licensing requirements in the insurance services)
• good ethical practices

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We’re seeking a couple research analysts to join our team in Montreal (our headquarters).

Essentially we’d like additional research analysts for enterprise software subjects such as BI, asset management, ERP, etc. Candidates must be able to apply critical thinking skills to all aspects of their research.

If the following job description interests you, please contact us.

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Things continue to be busy for both Microsoft and HP as they try and make headway in the ever-competitive IT industry.?
Not abandoning it’s pursuit of the lucrative online advertising market, Microsoft has made a deal with HP to make Internet Explorer the default browser on HP PCs. Read the rest of this entry »

Lost in Translation
If your organization was a celebutante, who would it be? Well, comely or not, let’s hope that when it comes to BI, you’re not a bemused, glassy-eyed Scarlett Johansson à la Lost in Translation http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0335266. If so, there’s a cure and it’s not acting lessons.
It’s a lesson in collaboration; ensuring that both your IT and business teams are speaking the same language so that technology is aligned with your core objectives, versus a “smile and nod” approach to organizational change and growth via BI. And oh, what a lot of complicated language to describe all things business intelligence. Terminology abounds: dashboards, data marts, data integration, data architecture, enterprise analytics, enterprise architecture, master data management, data governance, blah blah blah.
But wading through the jargon and the necessary complexities can be daunting.

So, how can mid-market companies put the obvious benefits of BI to good use? One way is to make sure all stakeholders are speaking the same language when looking at a BI selection or implementation.

BI is soooo hot right now Read the rest of this entry »

Part I of this blog post introduced the burning issues of food safety and the ensuing need for traceability. To the end of providing entire food supply chain traceability and information visibility, mid-March, during its CUE 2008 annual user conference, Lawson Software announced the availability of Lawson M3 Trace Engine 3.0, the first version offered within the US market.

The application is designed to help companies in the food and beverage (F&B) industries improve product quality and help prevent and manage potential food safety and quality risks. It specifically helps companies strengthen and simplify the process of tracking ingredients and finished products through complex global food supply chains. Read the rest of this entry »