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
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.
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 »
A brief journey of what functionality ERP engineer-to-order systems must support.
Just like the mythical character in the film E.T., who was far from home in an unfamiliar environment, companies that have years of experience working with a discrete ERP system sometimes feel that they are out of this world in trying to adapt the system to the unique elements in the engineer-to-order (ETO) world. Read the rest of this entry »
I’m often asked about the “Vendor Shootout” event that appears on the TEC website and marketing calendar.
While the term ‘shootout’ may conjure up images of a Wild West scenario - vigilante cowboys taking shots at each other from the shattered windows and tumbleweed strewn, empty streets of a deserted Midwest town - a group of likeminded ERP Value Added Resellers (VARs) in the mid to south East USA are redefining it. Read the rest of this entry »
I recently sat in on a demonstration of the Bitam Artus business intelligence (BI) suite, now at generation 6.
Emerging Trends in the Logistics and Distribution Knowledge Areas
1. RFID
RFID technology is the hardware used to communicate information (typically bar code information) to computer software systems that gather and use the data (such as a WMS). The manufacturing of RF equipment is dominated by several market leaders that typically go to market through various distribution channels, including resellers.
It is important to recognize that RF technology provides the backbone—but not the nerve center—of a physical operation.In other words, RF provides the ability to gather data, but not necessarily to make use of it. RF and bar coding technologies need to be implemented in conjunction with software systems that not only gather the data, but that also respond to it in real time or in batch mode. Read the rest of this entry »
As managing editor for TEC’s white paper site, I receive a wide variety of reader comments, ranging from lost password requests to queries about white papers on particular (sometimes very particular) subjects.
The other day I received this e-mail, titled “Meaningless White Papers”:
TEC has just released the second generation of its flagship software comparison tool, eBestMatch, which allows users to compare enterprise software side-by-side, down to the minutest level of detail.
This version (see below to find out how to snag a free trial) provides immediate user responsiveness, giving you the feeling you’re leveraging a slick desktop app rather than a Web page. Read the rest of this entry »
Here’s an update on new TEC vendor ratings and certifications. If you’re currently evaluating or researching ERP, business process management (BPM), or product lifecycle management (PLM) systems, here’s what we have new for you. Reports are available as well as in-depth rating evaluations in the evaluation centers. Here are the new items.
TEC published up-to-date information for version 4 of Omnify’s Empower PLM. Some areas in which the product’s functionality focuses help to integrate product design changes with the production process, product data vaulting and management, and configuration management.
Polymita’s BPM Suite joined our business process management knowledge base. The product focuses in part on modeling, workflow, and security functionality.
If you’re researching ERP solutions for discrete, process, or mixed-mode industries, I’d like to announce that TEC analysts recently certified the Logo Business Solutions’ Unity system.
Finally, to continue on the different variants of ERP systems, a new name recently entered the enterprise software space, Solarsoft. Its products however, have a history represented in the merger of vendors CMS and XKO Software. We’re offering six different reports on these products.
If you’ve ever been involved in selecting a business software solution, you know how tricky it can be. Today’s software systems are quite complex, and it can be very difficult to tell which vendor has the solution best suited for the special needs and business processes of your organization. One way to help avoid making a bad choice is to have a complete list of software functions to refer to.
Let’s say you’re going to be choosing a new ERP system. With a list in hand of all the functions an ERP system can perform, you could flag all the functions your organization requires, prioritize them, and then submit them to vendors to see if, and how well, each vendor supports them.
Creating this prioritized list of functional requirements and submitting it to vendors would not only help make sure that no functionalities important to your organization are forgotten or overlooked, it would also help you eliminate those vendors who don’t support, or only poorly support, the functionalities your organization requires. You would be taking a giant step toward making sure you don’t end up with a software system that isn’t designed to do what you want it to. Read the rest of this entry »
Here at TEC, our most popular feature is something we call a Vendor Showdown. We take two or three vendors who market the same type of solution (ERP or CRM or business process management, or HR, etc.), and compare their functionalities head on. The results are based on the most recent RFI information we gather from the vendors.
As a quick example, our discrete ERP RFI contains a list of 3,690 feature functions. The vendors fill out the RFI by indicating whether or not they support each of the 3,690 feature functions, and if they do, how. For each feature function, the choice of vendor responses are: supported out of the box, not supported, supported via 3rd party solution, supported by modification, supported by customization, or not yet rated by the vendor. All we do then is run all the responses through our decision support engine and write an article discussing the results, illustrated by some graphs. Read the rest of this entry »
Do you still read tech/business industry e-mail newsletters? In the early days of the Web, I remember going to a conference talking about the importance of developing an e-mail newsletter to communicate with customers. Now, many people simply mark the newsletters they receive as spam. A lot of e-mail services automatically mark legitimate newsletters as spam too. Are e-mail newsletters no longer useful as communication or news formats?
To publish a successful e-mail newsletter, I think you’ve got to provide something that people feel is worth subscribing to. Once you’ve accomplished that, you have to get it to them, which isn’t as simple as firing off a message from your e-mail program. Among many technical considerations, it has to get through a gauntlet of spam filtering systems that could incorrectly flag you, the sender, as a spammer.
Today, we launched a new format for the TEC Newsletter. It’s our attempt to see if we can make our newsletter more valuable to those reading it. I’d like to mention a few of the changes we made and find out whether people think we’re on the right track. Read the rest of this entry »
Newly published TEC ratings are available for a number of software vendors. Individual reports are available for purchase, or you can review the ratings in-depth using the evaluation centers. Here’s a quick rundown of the updates.
Take note if you’re in the process of evaluating any of the following systems.
- enterprise resource planning (ERP) for process manufacturing industries
- customer relationship management (CRM)
- enterprise financial software
Our public data on the BatchMaster ERP system is now up-to-date as of version 8.10, which targets medium enterprises in pharmaceutical, chemical, paint, food and beverage industries.
Version 2.0 of Vertical Marketing’s crmEZ.net covers a range of features, in particular account and contact management and opportunity management.
Following up on the financial system updates from last week, we have two more updates, this time from Infor. Our financial system knowledge base now holds the latest data on both Infor Masterpiece (previously SSA Global) and FMS SunSystems eXFM products (previously Systems Union).
You may have noticed that we’re steadily adding new content to our Evaluation Center pages (check out our CRM page to see what I’m talking about). We’ll be giving them a new look soon, but for now we’re focusing on refreshing the text for each page. Read the rest of this entry »
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