I’m happy to announce the beta launch of our new tool to help people start their research and evaluations of enterprise software systems. Think of it as the doorway to our TEC Advisor online evaluation and comparison application (accessible from our evaluation centers). In the following, I’ll explain what it is and how it works.

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Part 1 of this series expanded on some of TEC’s earlier articles about companies’ need for better pricing management and optimization practices. This series, which focuses on the complexity of pricing and promotions in retailing, was inspired by JDA Software’s recent “edu-nouncement” on leading retailers consumer-centric pricing and promotions strategies, and by Revionics’ recent (and still ongoing) educational series of Web-seminars.

Part 2 analyzed some common retailers’ practices and explained the frequently used vernacular terms. Then the post went into the building blocks of pricing optimization, starting with setting optimal initial (everyday) prices.

Part 3 analyzed the other two building blocks of pricing optimization: promotions and markdowns. Then, the post went into the next generation of pricing optimization according to JDA: Lifecycle Pricing.

Part 4 continued the series by analyzing the pricing optimization vendor landscape, and featured the next-generation pricing optimization approaches of two on-demand software specialists, Revionics and DemandTec. Coming at the heels of the National Retail Federation’s (NRF) BIG Show 2010, Part 5 will conclude the blog series by further analyzing the retail pricing optimization vendor landscape and other vendors’ approaches to the next generation of pricing optimization solutions. 

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Some previous TEC blog posts have discussed the benefits (but also the inevitable caveats) of white papers, including the all-too-common vendors’ self-serving marketing fluff and buzzword verbiage, and about their (un)intended audiences. 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 blatant and flamboyant bragging about a vendor’s capabilities (a la the “Every man thinks his own geese are swans” proverb) to some exceptional ones that were quite educational and established someone’s expertise in something. Read the rest of this entry »

Half a year ago, I wrote about the need to include customer input in the design process in What Brings Customers Closer to Your Product Development? Recently, two pieces of Web content caught my attention and made me revisit this topic.

The first one, The Path to Successful New Products, from the recent issue of McKinsey Quarterly, outlined three principles of making product development more successful, amongst which the degree of “[talking] to the customer” is one of the differentiators that separate top performers from the rest. The second one, a press release from First Insight on January 10, 2010, announced the availability of a software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution that allows retailers and brands to have better visibility of consumers’ voices through social media marketing and sales channels. Read the rest of this entry »

The landscape of the supply chain has changed drastically over the past five years. It went from local to global in manufacturing, procurement, sourcing, logistics, and customers. As such, there are some major challenges in the supply chain network: Read the rest of this entry »

Every now and then, I’ll examine the data from TEC’s past software selection projects, and explore the choices users have made. The information below is based on a real-life CRM selection project, but I have modified some of the data in order to respect confidentiality agreements still in place.

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Part I of this blog series tried to analyze not only the opportunity but also the many related strings attached stemming from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), a.k.a. the Economic Stimulus Plan. The inspiration came from my attendance of the Deltek Insight 2009 user conference last May, where Deltek decided to fill a market need by convening a separate “track” that was entitled “Stimulus & Beyond (Navigating the Brave New World).” 

The conclusion of the keynote session was that while public sector organizations stand a fair opportunity to receive unprecedented amounts of economic stimulus funds, the catch is that they need to provide unprecedented transparency and accountability into how those funds are spent while measuring the achievements of those programs. Indeed, many of the “lucky” recipients of funds from the ARRA must meet legal requirements to publish timely and accurate accounting, allocation, and results data for every dollar received.

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A couple of weeks ago, I viewed a webinar about Sage SalesLogix v7.5.2. I usually see a few webinars every month but I particularly liked this one. The presenter—Jason Askelson, Director of Professional Services—did a very good job at showing the highlights of the new release, providing a comparison between the previous version and the new one, giving an overview of the mobile version, and of how to ensure a successful upgrade and/or migration.

Highlights of Version 7.5.2

Here are some of the options available in the new version:
• unicode support for fields (multiple languages can be used in the same screen)
• availability of updated technical documentation for the product
• enhanced e-mail attachment handling
• new Web client features for activities, calendaring, sales orders, and sales  libraries Read the rest of this entry »

After talking about Dassault Systèmes in Part 2 of this blog series, I’d like to move to another prominent player in the product lifecycle management (PLM) field—Siemens PLM Software. In this blog post, I will give my personal interpretations about the major relevancies between Siemens PLM’s offerings and lean product development (LPD).

My first impression of Siemens PLM is the comprehensiveness of its product offerings. The company provides both PLM tools (e.g., computer-aided design [CAD], digital manufacturing, and simulation) and PLM (i.e., collaborative Product Definition management [cPDm]). Also, Teamcenter is one of the few PLM solutions that provide the broadest functionality coverage I have seen. In addition, Some Teamcenter capabilities (such as sourcing and maintenance) show the company’s attempt to expand support to a wider range of business processes. A broader functional coverage of a PLM system allows more parties in an organization to be involved within one system thus provides a possibility to increase the efficiency of the product development processes. Besides this general impression, the following two elements are the most significant ones that relate Siemens PLM to LPD. Read the rest of this entry »

Part 1 of this blog series outlined Oracle’s recent (and seemingly genuine) change of heart and approach towards partnering and catering enterprise applications to small and medium enterprises (SMEs). The analysis then moved onto the Oracle Accelerate program, which was launched about three years ago to allow partners to sell more of smaller projects in a fixed time and price manner.

Oracle Accelerate is not only a partner program but also Oracle’s go-to-market approach to provide business software solutions to midsize organizations. Part 1 described the main constituent parts of the approach, while Part 2 talked about the program’s current state of affairs. Part 3 of this blog series analyzed the program’s latest partner-enablement developments as well as the inevitable room for improvements.

This final part will analyze the offering that Oracle Accelerate is most likely to face in the market, which is SAP Business All-in-One. The series will end with analyzing mid-market enterprise resource planning (ERP) incumbents with an innate industry focus (i.e., without the need for templates and pre-configured approaches) as well as with general conclusions and recommendations. 

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Last year, I had the pleasure of attending a Canadian retail conference where I was incredibly impressed by the presentation of Dr. Gerd Wolfram, the Managing Director of Metro Group Information Technology GmbH, IT service provider of the German retail giant Metro AG.

Information technologies have a huge impact on retail business performance. This “magic” in IT technology was fantastic 15 to 20 years ago—and now it has become a regular staple and commonness in retail organizations. Read the rest of this entry »

Part 1 of this blog series talked about my attendance of the APICS 2009 international conference in Toronto, Canada in early October. I attended few education sessions, as my conference visit focused more on exploring the expo floor and talking to the exhibitors.

My overwhelming impression from the conference’s expo floor was that its main value proposition this year revolved around the flavors of demand management, most notably Sales & Operations Planning (S&OP). Part 2 analyzed the traditional shortcomings and the reasons for the S&OP concept’s (and accompanying software solutions’) current renaissance in light of its existence of a few decades.

Part 3 then analyzed the key success factors of deploying S&OP solutions and approaches, while Part 4 analyzed the role of top management in deploying S&OP solutions, as well as the strategic nature of S&OP. Part 5 will conclude by analyzing the S&OP solution from JDA Software as another product that arguably deserves to be in the S&OP Top 5.

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Presenting data and results is one of the fundamental stages of every business intelligence (BI) or business performance (BPM) deployment. Data is also important when adopting a new solution, and for the overall success of a BI project—even when the project stage does not represent any major technical challenge. Read the rest of this entry »

As 2009 comes to a close, we look forward to the New Year and everything trendy that it will bring. Today, TEC’s Research Analyst Round Table discusses the outlook in technology for 2010. We will touch on:

•    Social Networking
•    Social Product Development
•    Business Intelligence (BI) for the Masses
•    Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)
•    Software Integration vs. Niche Players
•    Mobile Commerce (M-commerce)

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It would not be far off the mark to say that social media, user-generated content (UGC), and online collaboration all hit the mainstream in 2009, at least in the realm of business-to-consumers (B2C) commerce. According to Forrester, 63 percent of online retailers will make social e-commerce a top priority in 2010, with The Limited brands leading the way.

As consumers and individuals, most of us have been effectively using Facebook, Twitter, Yelp, Flickr, YouTube, and LinkedIn for various personal and professional purposes. The Web 2.0 tools and technologies have certainly leveled the playing field, similar to what the advent of the Internet and e-commerce did in the late 1990s (i.e., by further enlarging the so-called “global village”).

Consumers are increasingly turning to each other to harness the “wisdom of the crowd” to empower themselves with useful info and facts to keep sellers honest. “Consumers are so good at detecting when people are lying to us; we know very easily when people are telling the truth and when they’re not,” says Chris Brogan, co-author of the “Trust Agents” book.

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