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Monday, July 30, 2012

Manufacturing the Cloud: The Scheduling Myth

You can have the most sophisticated, elegant, multi-dimensional scheduling system in the world with drag-and-drop drum buffer ropes, but if the list of open work orders and operations isn’t up to date then you are asking it to schedule work that has already been completed. Ponder the following (rhetorical) question:

What is the most important element of scheduling?

a)    Drag and Drop

b)    Forward and Backward Finite Scheduling

c)    Accurate and Timely Data Collection

Here's a clue – it’s not a) or b)

Read more on the Cloud NetSuite blog...


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Friday, July 27, 2012

Patience Rewarded for Distributors as Manufacturing Returns to the U.S.

What do you think about the resurgence of American manufacturing?    
  1. We expected the rebound.
  2. We’re a little surprised – but very excited about it!
  3. We feel it’s a statistical aberration that isn’t real.
In this article from I.B.I.S., read about the three major trends affecting wholesale distributors who depend on manufacturing customers for much of their livelihood. The movements are industrial vending, electronic commerce, and the return of manufacturing to America.

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Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Too Busy For The Software Search?

Does this story sound familiar? You're the CEO/President/VP of Operations/CFO, and are extremely busy. Maybe you work for, or own, a small business and are involved in many aspects of daily operations. You understand the importance of keeping the business running smoothly but at times you are too busy fighting fires to make changes necessary to maintain efficiency. On a Saturday afternoon you find an hour of spare time between helping your children with their homework and finishing up work for a client meeting to turn your mind towards finding new software. Then, your head starts spinning, you determine you cannot continue the process because you are too busy, and you move it aside for another time. You continue with the status quo, knowing that your current software compounds the daily problems that keep you pre-occupied. Does this story sound familiar? The good news is that, as a small business, there is a way to get around how busy you are – implementing new software!
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Monday, July 23, 2012

IT Analysts Praise Sage X3 Software

Sage North America today announced Sage ERP X3, Sage SalesLogix and Sage CRM have been listed as Champions by Info-Tech Research Group in the firm’s Mid-Market ERP, Large Enterprise CRM and Small Enterprise CRM vendor evaluations respectively.

Info-Tech Research Group Vendor Landscape reports recognize outstanding vendors in the technology marketplace. Assessing vendors by the strength of their offering and their strategy for the enterprise, Info-Tech Research Group Vendor Landscapes pay tribute to the contribution of exceptional vendors in a particular category.

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Friday, July 20, 2012

Kaman Implements Infor10 Distribution Business

Kaman Corporation is one of the new companies that has recently made the move to Infor10 Distribution Business (SXenterprise). Kaman Industrial Technologies is the 3rd largest distribution company serving North America. Kaman is a leading distributor of industrial parts, and operates more than 200 customer service centers and five distribution centers across North America. Kaman offers more than four million items including bearings, mechanical power transmission, electrical, material handling, motion control, fluid power, automation and MRO supplies to customers in virtually every industry.

The new Infor10 Distribution Business system will consolidate seven existing ERP systems, some of which are losing vendor support, into one system. This will provide consistency across the organization, lower maintenance costs and support their three product platforms. Read more in this article from the Wall Street Journal's Market Watch.


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Disaster Recovery and HR

June marked the official beginning of the hurricane season in the Atlantic—a good reason to check your kits to ensure that adequate supplies are on hand in case of a major storm.

What is needed is an effective disaster-recovery plan, a set of guidelines and procedures used by an organization for the recovery of data lost due to severe forces of nature like earthquakes, fires, tornadoes, floods or hurricanes.

Strategic HR leaders will prepare by working through scenarios to deal with issues that may arise in the wake of a disaster that affects both personnel and systems.

Read more on the Epicor blog for a series of articles highlighting the cloud as a means of improving business continuity in the face of catastrophic risk.

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Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Yogi Berra and the Wholesale Distribution Industry

“Ninety percent of the game is mental—the other half is physical.” - Yogi Berra

The physical movement of goods from manufacturers to warehouses to retailers and 3PL providers and end customers is a big part of the wholesale distribution business. But physical movement isn’t what makes or breaks wholesale distribution success. The differentiator for wholesale distribution excellence is mental—or, you could say strategic.

Simply marking up goods 5% or 10% no longer cuts it with wholesale distributors under increasing pressure from direct-to-consumer business, i.e., manufacturers selling directly to end customers at lower prices than wholesale distributors can support. Adapting to this competitive environment requires a strategic focus on four key requirements—1) efficiency and integration 2) inventory optimization 3) customer centricity and 4) innovation.

Read more on the Cloud NetSuite blog...


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Monday, July 16, 2012

Mitigating Common Cloud Risks

Although many vendors are willing to present cloud computing as the perfect solution to all problems (real and imagined), as with all new service delivery mechanisms, it comes along with potential risks that need to be mitigated. If you are evaluating cloud computing for use in your organization, here are some of the most common risks that people fail to identify, assess or mitigate.

Read more on the SAP on the Cloud blog...


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Monday, July 9, 2012

The Value Of Tightly Managing Subsidiary Ecosystems

From Manufacturing Business Technology
Mike Morel, Senior Director of Marketing, SAP 

Large enterprises need to increase the velocity and efficiency of their order-to-cash cycle within their subsidiary network, which can each reach a count in excess of 1,000 subsidiaries for Fortune 500 companies. These subsidiaries include international and local sales and distribution offices, small operating divisions, customer service units, and joint ventures. While most large manufacturing enterprises have implemented ERP systems at corporate and larger divisions/operations, a vast majority of subsidiaries in these companies still use manual or legacy systems to manage their operations.

Every day that these organizations wait to streamline the order-to-cash processes at their subsidiaries, they are bleeding cash that to the tune of millions of dollars.  According to Aberdeen Group’s 2011 research, best-in-class corporations have 71% lower past due accounts receivables (A/R) and payment time to clear the A/R ledger 80% faster when compared to corporations that are not best-in-class (see Figure 1). These organizations achieve best-in-class metrics by automating major steps in their order-to-cash process at 2.9 times as often as all others. 

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Friday, July 6, 2012

Top-Level Support Key for ERP Investments

A recent study by Gartner and the Financial Executives Research Foundation indicates that chief financial officers are becoming increasingly influential in the decisions regarding technology investments for many organizations. The study shows that the CFO's role in technology decision making has increased in the last year, with 44 percent of CFOs stating that their influence over IT investment has increased since 2010.

Enterprise organizations are being challenged to adapt as technologies intersect (e.g., social, mobile, cloud, information) and the data that result from their adoption and deployment (within and beyond the enterprise) expand exponentially.

In this environment, ERP remains a core tool for leveraging data, one that CEOs and CFOs as well as CIOs must attend to. We are seeing this in increased executive participation, from funding to implementation to ongoing operation and maintenance.

Read more on the Epicor blog...


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Wednesday, July 4, 2012

Paradigm Cloud ERP and Acumatica Liberate Customers from Legacy ERP Systems

Paradigm Cloud ERP and Acumatica, a provider of Cloud ERP and financial software, have announced a new cloud software offering that targets users of legacy ERP systems. 

Paradigm’s new product offering is designed for mid-market customers who want an easy-to-use and easy-to-learn alternative to client-server systems, which currently account for over 85 percent of today’s installations. Paradigm created the offer to liberate legacy ERP customers from client-server systems with high maintenance fees, slow performance, and lack of a future vision for cloud and mobile technologies.

Acumatica’s Cloud ERP was selected as the software to power this offering because it works in any browser and contains a complete set of enterprise-class business management tools. The integrated solution delivers manufacturing, accounting, inventory, sales, purchasing, project accounting, inter-company accounting, and CRM tools.

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Monday, July 2, 2012

NetSuite Offers the SPI 2012 Professional Services Maturity Benchmark Report

The mid-year is a great time to step back and assess how your professional services organization is performing towards your annual goals while you still have time to impact them. To help with this, NetSuite offers the “SPI 2012 Professional Services Maturity Benchmark Report” filled with over 750 metrics used by many PS organizations as KPIs. With many metrics reported for verticals, like IT services, software, consulting and marketing firms, you’ll probably find data that will give you a sense of how your organization’s performance compares to others.  This report also discusses steps that professional organizations can take to move to higher levels of maturity and performance.

Read more and download the report here...


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