To achieve success in today’s retail industry, retailers that are small to midsize businesses (SMBs) need to effectively meet their customers’ needs on time, with the right price, in the right quantity—and at the right place, with the right promotions. All of these things can be very overwhelming for a retailer. To get them, retailers require tools that support effective and precise operations. In this volatile global economy, every retailer is trying to beat the competition and win over the customer base. The winners in this race are the retailers that can provide customers the supreme (winning) combination of product, price, and customer service, and do it without affecting profitability. Read the rest of this entry »

Product lifecycle management (PLM) originated decades ago in the discrete manufacturing area, and for quite a long period of time remained mainly as a solution for the upscale market in industries such as aerospace and automotive. However, recently PLM has become more approachable for smaller-sized businesses in more industries. It is not difficult to have this impression when you see increasing versions of PLM solutions targeting small and medium business (SMB) and mushrooming solutions such as PLM for consumer packaged goods (CPG), PLM for fashion, PLM for retail, and so on.

On the user side, based on statistics from TEC’s PLM Evaluation Center, it seems that users are willing to take the same direction – compared with 2007, more smaller-sized business users are considering PLM in 2008. At the same time, more potential users are from industries that traditional PLM doesn’t fit well.

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The role of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in society cannot be underestimated—indeed, many think SMEs are the most important sector of a nation’s economy due to their  creative and innovative abilities, as well as the flexibility they execute in order to survive in our competitive world.  Yet, as editor Ruth Hillary explains in the collection of essays in Small and Medium-sized Enterprises and the Environment, their day-to-day activities aren’t always positive. Read the rest of this entry »

Part 1 of this blog series went through the first three generations of the Microsoft Dynamics NAV product, which at the time was called Navision and was owned by the formerly independent namesake company. How has new parent Microsoft treated the product since acquiring it in 2002? Read the rest of this entry »

When speaking to our smaller customers, they are continuously expressing how they are evaluating their options in establishing the best type of relationship with their solution provider as trusted advisors to facilitate the success of their software projects. Buyers in the SMB arena are looking for the right mix between industry expertise, local support and pre-defined product capabilities. The question remains whether this can be delivered directly by a software vendor or through its indirect partner channel.  Read the rest of this entry »

The first week of February 2009 was marked by two notable product launches, from vendors touting their respective simplified, more flexible, and intuitive products as exactly “what the doctor ordered” for the current economic malaise. While the unveiling of SAP Business Suite 7 has caused a flurry of media articles and blog posts like the ones from Ray Wang and Brian Sommer  (and one of mine might still come down the track when all the dust settles), it is interesting that the North American launch of Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009 a day later went with comparably much less buzz.

There were related Dynamics NAV 2009 events in some other world regions, but I cannot say much about their attendance and noise level. Despite the Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009 launch in the US proceeding somewhat quietly (the replay of the event can be seen here), I think it might have as much future impact in the market as SAP’s mega-counterpart.

Namely, the clout SAP Business Suite [evaluate this product] has in the upper end of the enterprise resource planning (ERP) market, Microsoft Dynamics NAV (formerly called Navision and Attain) [evaluate this product] has in the lower end of the market. Read the rest of this entry »

Project portfolio management (PPM) is a process to obtain project management information of all resources, time, budget, and labor skills in order to align, manage, and review these elements–and to ensure deliverables are being met in terms of project milestones, in accordance with the work breakdown schedule.

In a time of economic and business uncertainty, PPM may be the prescription to obtain successful IT project management results. However, IT departments in many organizations are viewed by some in senior management circles as a huge money pit, a kind of necessary evil that generates little in terms of ongoing business development or growth.

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Recently I attended a product lifecycle management (PLM) seminar hosted by PTC and its North American Windchill Partner of the Year award-winner BRT Solutions. The main topic of this seminar was about how small & medium businesses (SMBs) can start and advance their PLM practices. After the seminar, I kept thinking about what the PLM industry can offer for SMBs. PLM used to be a luxury for large enterprises. Is the PLM industry ready to accommodate the increasing demands from SMBs?

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How many of you have walked into a store with the expectation that the product you purchase will probably not work? How many industries do you think can get away with product defects and incompatible components?

For almost three decades, the software industry has convinced consumers that “Bugs” (product defects) and “System Integration” (incompatible components) is a cost of doing business. Granted… enterprise software can comprise of millions of lines of code performing very complex operations. Moreover, today’s complex global economy made possible by the internet has complicated things further with businesses required to support the multiple languages, government regulations, and consumer demands of its customer base. Read the rest of this entry »

Part I of this blog topic introduced SYSPRO and its traditional vertical solutions. It also analyzed the vendor’s PragmaVision strategy to provide to pragmatic (yet visionary) technology buyers’ need.

Towards the end of offering proven technology to pragmatists, SYSPRO’s fully-integrated solution suite [evaluate this product] connects to disparate systems via Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) technologies. All the above-mentioned modules are based on standard Extensible Markup Language (XML) formats for information exchange, and Web service technologies for enhanced interoperability between disparate systems and for collaborative commerce. SYSPRO’s thoughtful approach to adopting new technology, such as Web services and SOA platforms, again reflects the desires of its sensible buyers, who are driven by business needs rather than by the latest headlines. Read the rest of this entry »

The recent marketing push to integrate both small and medium sized businesses by large IT hardware and software vendors makes strategic sense. Both business groups are plagued with similar issues including small IT budgets and limited technical resources. Frequently SMBs target their IT acquisitions either in the hope of lowering costs or solving problems. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve seen a lot of press about the open source telephony system, Asterisk. Although I haven’t worked in the telephony world for some time, I remember what it was like administering those systems years ago in a midsize company that handled large event ticket sales.

We ran some systems on OS/2 and for larger ACD call center requirements, Unix. These were not inexpensive systems. If I go to AsteriskNOW.org, now I can download a specialized Linux distribution that installs as an easy-to-set-up PBX system. Since TEC’s current newsletter issue is focusing on telephony issues, I figured I’d post a bit about the open source side.

The Asterisk project originates with a company called Digium, which looks like the center of a whirlwind of related activity. IP telephony vendors claim that one of the benefits they offer is a reduction in costs that would normally be incurred from toll services, and this message is frequently targeted toward small and medium businesses. So if you combine that with some of the other common open source advantages, you get an interesting product to consider. Read the rest of this entry »