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Epicor To Give All Its Applications More Than A Pretty Facelift

2010-08-17T22:57:00.001-07:00

Event Summary

The enterprise applications market continues to experience a shake up where the number of independent software vendors (ISV) is decreasing, and one, true global mid-market incumbent vendor Epicor Software Corporation (NASDAQ: EPIC), has been benefiting. Epicor, which conducts business in over 140 countries and 32 languages, has had a healthy financial performance (see Figure 1 & 2) aided through acquisitions which began with Clarus at the end of 2002. It was followed by ROI Systems and TDC Solutions mid-2003, and Scala in 2004 (for more information, see Epicor Picks Clarus' Bargain At The Software Flea Market and Epicor Conducts Its Own ROI Acquisition Rationale and Epicor's Mid-Market Pitch Becomes Higher For (One) Scala).

At the end of August, the vendor announced its revised unified portal strategy that is envisioned to provide rich portal content to all its customers through a more secure and standardized portal platform. In developing Epicor Portal 8.2 (which is scheduled for general availability in late 2005), Epicor is leveraging its platform strategy of Microsoft .NET across all product families—Epicor Enterprise, Epicor Manufacturing, and Epicor iScala. In addition, Epicor Portal will reportedly deliver data exploration and collaboration using Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services (which technology provides basic on-line collaboration and content management capability) and Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003 (which uses a directory to aggregate multiple SharePoint Web sites and then allows documents and other content to pass between them). Currently, Epicor's portal products do not include on-line discussion or document management features, whereas the upcoming SharePoint-based Epicor Portal will include those features—as well as a search capability—consistently across all Epicor's product lines.

The bottom line of Epicor's portal strategy is to leverage the leading portal infrastructure, Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies, and to provide a more secure and collaborative portal environment. Thus, Epicor Portal will reportedly handle user roles, access, security, and personalization by leveraging the SharePoint portal framework. In turn, Epicor will provide rich, industry-specific content like workflows, performance indicators, and reports via server-based .NET control programs called SharePoint Web Parts with role-based security and straightforward end user authoring. With its expertise in creating targeted industry-specific content, combined with the extensible portal framework provided by SharePoint Portal Server 2003, Epicor will strive to provide a feature-rich resource of information that is distributed from a central, secure point of access.

This is Part One of a two-part note.

Part Two will analyze the market impact, discuss challenges, and make user recommendations.

Figure 1

Figure 2

Epicor Portal Strategy

Epicor Portal's value proposition lies within empowering users and ending the usual unproductive game of relying on the information technology (IT) department to anticipate, interpret, and provide valuable business insight within an on-line portal infrastructure. Rather, the solution is designed to put these controls in the hands of the people who find value in the information they seek. To that end, the end users will have data visualization facilities, without requiring knowledge of the database or querying language, which should enable swift information exchange for employees, trading partners, and consumers. That is to say that by using SharePoint Products And Technologies, Epicor Portal will incorporate collaborative tools for multiple audiences. Collaborative user workspaces that combine documents, business data queries, announcements, tasks, and more will then be used by project teams, work groups, departments or should act as a communications tool for the entire organization. Collaboration should also extend to customers, partners, and the suppliers to increase communication, further supply chain visibility and foster greater business transparency.

With the release of Epicor Portal, each of the Epicor product families will eventually leverage a single, consistent portal strategy and platform—Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies—with the idea to have one portal product with one implementation process regardless of industry or region. The convergence of Epicor's product families through the new portal strategy is in line with the company's commitment to continue to support and enhance its existing products. At the same time, Epicor will leverage opportunities to provide standard infrastructures and features where possible.

Basically, the new Microsoft SharePoint-based portal will replace a collection of different portal products the vendor had previously developed for its enterprise resource planning (ERP) product lines. For instance, Epicor currently sells several Web-based access products for its Vantage manufacturing ERP product, such as Customer Connect, Sales Connect, and Buyer Connect. Additionally, the vendor sells a separate but similar product called Enterprise Information Portal (EIP), for the Epicor Enterprise ERP suite. However, a true portal add-on is not currently available for the Epicor iScala product line, where the opportunity seems to be the most apparent.

Epicor also hopes that basing its portal products on the widely-used and trendy SharePoint technologies will increase the number of ERP customers using Epicor's portal offerings. SharePoint has become a near portal commodity with estimated over 40 million users. Its growth has been so large, that some of competitors have, with a heavy heart, resigned themselves to the fact that SharePoint has "sprung up like weeds" across IT departments. As a result, Epicor should eliminate unnecessary and costly multiple portal infrastructure requirements, because the technology fits the needs of the mid-market, offering reasonably rapid deployment, ease of use, and lower cost of entry and total cost of ownership (TCO).

To that end, Epicor hopes to provide the best possible out-of-the-box experience for the user. Both Microsoft SharePoint and Epicor Portal can be installed in under an hour to provide a functional Web site with search, topics, news, document management, and other pertinent capabilities. Also, users will reportedly be able to immediately add Epicor Web Parts without administrative or development resources, and the availability of automatic integration with Microsoft Office 2003 goes without saying.

The move by Epicor to embrace the SharePoint portal technology is also consistent with the company's strategy of becoming more aligned with Microsoft. With respect to technology, mid-sized companies are practical consumers, typically selecting affordable, proven solutions, especially in light of the recent and ongoing dramatic decrease in IT costs. This ,coupled with a simultaneous increase in computing power, has made several key new technologies accessible to this cost-conscious market. Microsoft has, to that end, leveraged these increased computing capabilities to develop Microsoft BackOffice (now the Microsoft Windows Server family), a network operating system (OS) and scaleable relational database management system (RDBMS) that provides smaller businesses with a technology infrastructure previously accessible only to Global 1000 corporations.

Epicor Technology Strategy

The development of cost-effective infrastructures has reportedly increased medium companies' investments in enterprise applications, and Epicor's product offerings, product development efforts, and services are focused on meeting the enterprise business application needs of these growing mid-sized businesses. As a group, mid-sized companies face tremendous global competitive pressures as they compete for business against larger corporations, other mid-sized competitors, and smaller start-ups.

They have to remain close to their customers and suppliers, and to make the most effective use of relatively limited resources. Yet, these prospective user companies demand a quick return on technology investments and require that solutions be affordable not only to acquire and implement, but also to maintain and support throughout the solution's entire operational life span. To that end, with more than 40 million instances of SharePoint Portal Server have been sold since its release, SharePoint Products and Technologies have been offering rapid deployment. It has also been implemented with limited or no support, and presents a competitive price point—which are all critical features for mid-market companies. For more information, see What Do Users Want and Need?.

Consequently, Epicor's technology strategy has been, for some time, to develop enterprise software applications using industry-standard tools where possible, and to take advantage of leading third-party, industry-standard technologies for database management systems, operating systems, user interfaces (UI), infrastructure, and connectivity (including Internet, intranet, and extranet access). For businesses to compete in today's increasingly real time world, they need to adopt an infrastructure that can integrate the Internet, wireless, mobile, voice response, and personal digital assistants (PDA) to support "anytime, anywhere" business. Computing architectures like Microsoft .NET have allowed Epicor enterprise solutions to continue to transition to service oriented architectures (SOAs), and support commerce in a distributed computing world.

The vendor has increasingly been using Web services, which support the integration of computing and communication paradigms as one across multiple devices. It also enables its solutions to be integrated with other applications more easily and supports the increased need for collaboration in today's Internet-based world. Web services are software components that allow the creation of applications that can be programmed and published over the Web. Since Web services are portable and interoperable and because they are not vendor specific, they are rapidly becoming a standard for integrating disparate systems and applications (see Understanding SOA, Web Services, BPM, BPEL, and More).

Epicor has standardized its Web services development on the Microsoft .NET Framework, and the Epicor Clientele CRM.NET, Epicor for Service Enterprises, iScala, Vantage, and Vista product suites have been architected for Web services to more easily integrate and securely share information throughout the enterprise and with trading partners. As a matter of fact, Epicor has embraced .NET even more zealously than its creator Microsoft, often leaving Microsoft staffers in their development labs astonished (if not envious). As a good example, over two years ago, the vendor released Clientele CRM .NET as a pure .NET-based product (see Epicor Claims The Forefront Of CRM.NET-ification).

Hence, at the company level, Epicor's standardized technology direction currently embraces the Microsoft .NET Platform for extensible markup language-based (XML) Web services. Through .NET, which is the next generation of Microsoft's Distributed interNet Applications Architecture (DNA) and Component Object Model (COM), the vendor hopes to be able to provide comprehensive support for Web services deployment and enterprise application integration (EAI). This technology strategy has enabled Epicor's still diverse development teams to leverage Microsoft technology, while allowing each product group to continue to use the individual databases and development tools appropriate to the requirements of each product's target market.

The vendor has also incorporated numerous features into its UIs to simplify the operation of and access to its products. All of the product lines incorporate the popular Microsoft Windows graphical user interface (GUI) metaphor that includes the tools like industry-standard field controls, pull-down menus, tool bars, and tab menus that facilitate the use of the software. The products also incorporate the latest and modern GUI features such as process wizards, cue cards, advanced on-line help and on-line documentation. The UIs are based upon today's single document interface (SDI) standards, while, as the model for distributed computing continues to evolve through the advent of Internet technologies, Epicor offers additional client deployment models, including thin-client, smart-client, browser-based, and mobile client access.

Epicor Portal should bring further guided discovery and business insight to end users who will be able to add filters and prompts to focus on information important to them. They will be able to arrange and title the information for their understanding. Moreover, they should be able to simply pick what data they want to view, without having to know where or how the data is formed. Additionally creating personal views of business or a key performance indicators (KPI) are touted as a simple step-by-step wizard-driven process.

SOURCE:
http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/articles/epicor-to-give-all-its-applications-more-than-a-pretty-facelift-18198/

PeopleSoft: Giving Fervent Hope To The Market And Jitters To The Competition. Part 1: The News

2010-08-17T22:56:00.001-07:00

Event Summary

PeopleSoft is seeking to make bigger strides in the CRM, SCM and B2B software markets with its recent spate of product releases. The rhetoric and hype aside, the fact is that PeopleSoft has become a fearsome enterprise applications provider. PeopleSoft has joined the elite group of vendors that can deliver a majority of the components of a complete e-business framework. If one considers all aspects of a CRM or SCM evaluation, PeopleSoft has earned the license to be evaluated along with market leaders. Possibly more encouraging is PeopleSoft's upbeat prediction for the rest of the year, optimism only a few of its competitors can currently exhibit.

While Wall Street praises the vendor's new product initiatives and its strong first quarter results and optimism for the future, its direct competitors are far from feeling easy.

About this Article: This is a two part note, the first part discusses the news from PeopleSoft about new products and its first Quarter results. Part two discusses the Market Impact of this news and how it affects Users.

Product Bonanza

Recently, PeopleSoft (NASDAQ: PSFT), one of the largest business applications providers, launched a spate of new product releases with an idea to bolster its foray into customer relationship management (CRM), supply chain management (SCM) and business-to-business (B2B) collaboration areas and to give a pause to respective leading software vendors. PeopleSoft is seeking to make a bigger brand name in these markets where it traditionally had low market recognition.

Customer Relationship Management

On June 4, PeopleSoft 8 CRM, a comprehensive Internet-based solution, made its debut at the PeopleSoft Leadership Summit 2001 in Las Vegas. PeopleSoft cites that its pure Internet architecture, embedded analytics and seamless integration of enterprise data and business processes will change the paradigm of CRM and propel it to the forefront of the industry. PeopleSoft 8 CRM's pure Internet technology should allow for universal access from any Web device, anywhere in the world, at any time, while the embedded business analytics should provide real-time insight into critical business processes. The support for multiple platforms brings a true collaborative spirit to the enterprise, integrating business processes between applications inside and outside enterprise boundaries. Connecting marketing, sales, and customer service to supply chain, financials and human capital management systems, PeopleSoft 8 CRM might be able not only to fulfill customer requests, but to also anticipate customer expectations.

"Today, we have delivered on our promise to bring a complete, pure Internet CRM solution to market," said Craig Conway, PeopleSoft president and CEO. "We completely re-architected our existing CRM applications to create a best-of-breed CRM solution based entirely on pure Internet architecture. No other vendor can offer customers this level of access and collaboration in a CRM solution."

PeopleSoft 8 CRM has long been aggressively announced and eagerly anticipated and, as a result, it already has the following key strategic alliances in place:

* Cap Gemini Ernst & Young is extending its offerings within the PeopleSoft practice to provide business consulting and implementation services for PeopleSoft 8 CRM.

* KPMG Consulting revealed its role in the launch of PeopleSoft 8 CRM for Communications, a billing-integration solution exclusively for the communications market. KPMG will be providing implementation and support services for the software.

* PeopleSoft 8 CRM on it primary IBM DB2 database software is available across all PeopleSoft-supported operating systems. As a result, PeopleSoft 8 CRM on DB2 is available on IBM AIX, zOS, OS/390, Sun Solaris, HP-UX and Windows NT.

* Deloitte Consulting will leverage its CRM business process experience with its PeopleSoft implementation skills and methodologies to help customers maximize the return on their PeopleSoft 8 CRM investment.

Generally available on June 29, the PeopleSoft 8 CRM suite includes Sales, Marketing, Field Service, Help Desk, Interaction Management and Support applications. PeopleSoft currently expects to deliver the following 10 languages within thirty days of general availability: French, French Canadian, German, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Japanese, Brazilian Portuguese, traditional Chinese (Taiwan) and Swedish. While IBM DB2 is the primary development platform for PeopleSoft 8, it will also support Microsoft SQL Server and Oracle databases on IBM mainframe, UNIX and Windows NT platforms.

E-Procurement

On May 30, PeopleSoft announced new functionality for PeopleSoft 8 eProcurement that will automate the entire purchasing process from requisition to payment, giving employees self-service capabilities to purchase goods and services. Business intelligence (analytics) will enable purchasing managers to strategically evaluate every aspect of the procurement cycle, including their spend by category, the value of their suppliers, and the effectiveness of their workflow. Based on information provided by the analytics, organizations should be able to quickly renegotiate deals with key suppliers, driving bottom-line savings. In addition, organizations might be able to modify procurement methods in real-time to improve operational efficiency.

Supplier Relationship Management

The PeopleSoft 8 Supplier Relationship Management (SRM) suite, which should allow business partners to communicate their inventory, design and buying plans over the Web through a roles-based, collaborative portal, was announced generally available on May 29. As a follow up to this product, PeopleSoft plans the release in Q1 2002 of new sourcing application, which should let buyers search for suppliers and buy direct materials online over the Web. Embedded analytics should again help organizations evaluate the strategic value of their suppliers by providing insight into key supplier performance metrics.

With the ability to access critical performance indicators almost instantaneously, companies could continuously monitor their business processes ensuring effective management of supplier relationships across the enterprise. PeopleSoft 8 SRM utilizes PeopleSoft's advanced portal technology, bringing an organization's customers, suppliers, and employees directly into critical day-to-day business processes. Possible benefits of real-time interaction could be: reduced costs in product design; improved time to market; and faster response to changes in customer demand.

SkillsVillage Acquisition

On May 1, PeopleSoft acquired services procurement vendor SkillsVillage for $32 million in stock and cash. The company hopes that adding SkillsVillage's system for locating and hiring services and contingent staff will be a strong enhancement of its proverbially strong human resource (HR) product. The addition of the SkillsVillage functionality should provide PeopleSoft with the opportunity to offer an end-to-end system for the sourcing, selection, administration, and management of enterprise services.

SOURCE:
http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/articles/peoplesoft-giving-fervent-hope-to-the-market-and-jitters-to-the-competition-part-1-the-news-16407/

Enterprise Content Management Solution Creates the Ultimate Customer Experience

2010-08-17T22:55:00.002-07:00

Introduction

Customers are demanding more from organizations. The client wants to receive personalized information, on any device, at any time. Currently, clients receive incorrect, outdated, and poor-quality information, through brochures, the Internet, e-mails, and advertisements.

Business processes are not automated—or not automated correctly—to provide targeted information through the right media at the right time. Enterprise content management (ECM) vendors are trying to provide solutions to help organizations succeed in providing a full "customer experience" to their customers. Organizations aim at strengthening the customer's loyalty, improve brand recognition and corporate image, and optimize processes, including acceleration of time-to-market. Organizations should therefore focus on delivering personalized and relevant content, combined with consistency.

Interwoven is the first vendor to provide a full end-to-end solution for this customer experience. Headquartered in Sunnyvale, California (US), the vendor is a provider of ECM solutions. It was founded in 1995, and currently has more than 750 employees across 15 countries. Interwoven provides solutions for a wide variety of industries, but is extremely strong in the legal and financial industries. The vendor categorizes its main focus as being in customer experience, professional services, and financial services solutions.

Interwoven began as a web content management (WCM) vendor, providing a solution for document management, as well as the ability to publish this content to different web sites. Throughout the last five years, Interwoven has acquired companies in digital asset management (DAM), records management, and collaborative document management, and has integrated these solutions with its existing software to offer a full range of functionality in ECM.

Interwoven has struggled financially in the past. In 2001 and 2002, with the downfall of the internet market, Interwoven experienced a decline in revenue, along with a net loss of $47.5 million (USD) in 2003 and a $23.7 million (USD) net loss in 2004. The losses were associated with the acquisition of iManage, among others. But during the last two years, Interwoven has improved its situation, with a 9 percent increase in revenue in 2005 to $175 million (USD), and $130 million (USD) debt-free in cash. Interwoven's current base is over 3,450 customers, which represents a 14 percent increase from 2005. Interwoven had a boost in 2005 as well, when it generated an operating margin of 8 percent (non-generally accepted accounting principles [GAAP]), an increase of 167 percent over 2004.

Interwoven's Solution
Interwoven provides a full ECM solution, covering the main ECM functionalities (document management, WCM, records management, imaging, collaboration, and workflow). See Enterprise Content Management: It Is More than Just Web Content Management. This is in addition to more specific functionality such as e-mail management and DAM (see Document Management and Digital Asset Management: Is There a Difference and What Might It Be?). Interwoven offers these core components in the six products we'll examine next.

TeamSite for Web Content Management
TeamSite remains one of Interwoven's leading products for managing intranets, internal portals and public web sites, dealer portals, and extranets. In addition, Interwoven's LiveSite Content Publishing Server, brings a new interface and presentation to the business user.

Clients using a pre-6.0 version of TeamSite mention that it is less user friendly because TeamSite uses its own interface, and is not available through a browser. Currently, TeamSite has portal interfaces to BEA, IBM, and SAP—and with LiveSite, a fully browser-based interface.

WorkSite for Document Management and Collaboration
Interwoven WorkSite is an inheritance of the acquisition of iManage in 2003. WorkSite revenue mainly stems from the professional services market (legal, accounting, and management consulting), and covers core document-handling features, including check-in/check-out, version control, full-text and metadata search, and document-level security and permissions. WorkSite is offered for both the .Net and Java 2 platforms and is actively supported and developed. Interwoven is aggressively focusing on the financial services market with its WorkSite MP product ("MP" standing for "management platform").

WorkSite also addresses Interwoven's e-mail management functionality. WorkSite can route incoming and outgoing e-mail messages (which reduces the overload of the e-mail servers), and place the e-mails in the appropriate folders of the WorkSite Communication Server. This makes it possible to share the information within the e-mails across the organization.

Interwoven made a smart move by adding e-mail management to their product suite with respect to current compliances and regulations. See Managing the Overflow of E-mails.

MediaBin for Digital Asset Management
Interwoven's MediaBin provides one of the leading DAM solutions. Interwoven acquired MediaBin in June 2003. As a result, there are more customers combining TeamSite with MediaBin in their solution suite to leverage Interwoven's capabilities. With the new development of functionalities for MediaBin, Interwoven is focusing on marketing departments by enabling Microsoft PowerPoint management capabilities to MediaBin.

In the DAM market, Interwoven competes with niche players such as Chuckwalla and ClearStory Systems, as well as other ECM vendors such as EMC/Documentum, and Open Text, which acquired Artesia in August 2004 (Artesia was the market leader at that time).

Records Manager for Records Management
In August 2004, Interwoven acquired Software Intelligence, a pure-play vendor for records management. As this product mainly focuses on the legal industry, Interwoven integrated this solution with WorkSite, providing management of paper, electronic documents, and e-mail, in a single solution. Currently, Interwoven offers a single interface for document and records management, and has extended the integration to all Interwoven repositories, including third-party content repositories, based on a service-oriented architecture (SOA).

MetaTagger for Content Intelligence

Interwoven MetaTagger Studio and MetaTagger Server provide the ability to categorize content in a structured way to ensure accuracy in delivery of content for presentation, search, and navigation of information.

Even though Interwoven offers its solution as a suite of products, Interwoven should focus on creating a suite that uses one repository and server application. Other leading ECM vendors have already made this transition. Through the features of the Content Integration Server, Interwoven has created an interim strategy to improve this integration.

The Content Integration Server provides the ability to leverage and re-use content stored in repositories and file systems throughout the enterprise. This presents the ability to search for content in various repositories, aggregate that content into TeamSite, and re-use this content for deployment.

Enterprise Application Connector Suite
The Interwoven Enterprise Application Connector Suite ensures that team members throughout the enterprise collaborate, share, and manage knowledge through everyday business portals.

Lastly, Interwoven offers its developers the Interwoven Developer Suite. The Interwoven Developer Suite provides a set of tools that assist the development, customization, and integration of applications with Interwoven solutions and products.

Besides the products Interwoven has itself, there are certain features it covers that can be essential for ECM clients, such as imaging. Interwoven has a partner network for scanning and image capture integrations, that integrate with WorkSite, including companies such as Kofax and eCopy. The ability to use imaging in an ECM suite becomes essential for legal documents, contract management, and regulations compliance. However, Interwoven should continue to enhance these features to stay competitive in the ECM market.

The Customer Experience
Interwoven's main focus is to try to create what it calls the "customer experience." Interwoven defines customer experience as the degree to which customers feel that content interactions meet their needs. Interwoven's suite of products, as explained above, provides the client the ability to improve brand recognition and consistency, accelerate the time-to-market, and improve and personalize customer interactions.

Interwoven's suite delivers this customer experience, and the vendor keeps improving the product suite to provide the customer experience to its clients. For example, Interwoven supports integration with the BlackBerry product for document management, which provides professional services organizations with higher mobility and client service. Interwoven also partnered up with SDL, a leading company in global information management solutions for translations, localization, and globalization. Finally, Interwoven announced an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) agreement with Ericsson, whereby Ericsson will be using Interwoven technology as an infrastructure for delivering media and content services (ring tones, videos, and so on) to mobile network operators.

Product Strengths
With its latest acquisitions, Interwoven has positioned itself as a full ECM vendor with all the core capabilities. Most products integrate well with each other. The ECM market recognizes Interwoven as the leading vendor in such areas as WCM, DAM, and scalability. Even though the Dutch WCM vendor Tridion is strong in Europe, it cannot compete with the scalability of Interwoven's solution, as Tridion's solution is less robust. The robustness of Interwoven's solution gives larger enterprises a product with the capability of handling its transactions and workload.

Interwoven developed its solution for the Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) platform as well. It built the product using an SOA with the latest standards, in supporting the Java Portlet Specification (JSR) 268, JSR 170, and Web Services for Remote Portlets (WSRP) standards.

In the last years and a half, Interwoven has worked hard on the ease of use of its solution, as well as on integration towards customer-specific applications. Interwoven integrates with Microsoft SharePoint well, which benefits Microsoft users.

Challenges and Vendor Recommendations

Even though the products integrate with each other, back-end integration still requires substantial work. The different repositories for the different applications remain an area that Interwoven should address. Interwoven mentioned that this feature would be available in 2006.

Interwoven does provide e-mail management capabilities, but should improve these features with respect to e-mail protection and compliance, to be more competitive in this area—especially because of its contract management focus and strong presence in the legal market.

Other leading companies such as IBM, EMC, and Microsoft are expanding the scope of ECM with respect to functionality. Interwoven is making the right choice by focusing on developing new functionality based on its existing customers and the strengths of its product, including data integration, search capabilities, and captive imaging.

Another focus point for Interwoven should be the ability to link into other databases and operating systems, such as IBM, Microsoft, and Oracle; and the integration of Interwoven's content management solution with the storage capabilities of companies such as EMC.

Interwoven develops its solution for the .Net, J2EE, and Linux platforms. Even though it currently succeeds in these developments, to keep up with the latest developments for all platforms will be a daunting task. Clients and prospects will have to review Interwoven's development strategies when making platform decisions or changes with Interwoven's solution.

Rafiq Mohammadi, Interwoven's chief technology officer (CTO), mentioned that the vendor will focus on some complex problems in 2006 and 2007:

* dealing with the rapid explosion of content;
* driving wide adoptability of enterprise risk mitigation policies;
* linking the software with customer communication strategies;
* expanding support to other professional service processes;
* integrating financial service applications with Interwoven's repositories; and
* improving the architecture and development.

These focus points, and their successful execution, will help Interwoven improve its position as

SOURCE:
http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/articles/enterprise-content-management-solution-creates-the-ultimate-customer-experience-18661/

A Supply Chain Applications Vendor Expands Beyond Its Roots

2010-08-17T22:55:00.001-07:00

is a thriving provider of on-demand supply chain management (SCM) solutions for a variety of worldwide industries. The vendor has evolved beyond its roots, into a provider of much more comprehensive on-demand supply and demand chain management software, consulting, hosting, and related services that should enable users throughout the world to collaborate (that is, to work jointly with others), in near real time, and conduct commerce (exchange ideas, opinions, sentiments, products, etc.) with business partners across an extended enterprise.

Part Two of the series Will a Tool Manufacturer and a Supply Chain Software Vendor "Click" in Matrimony?

For example, Click Commerce Supply Chain Management (SCM) solutions were acquired in February 2005 via Optum, a former warehouse management systems (WMS) vendor (which in 2004 had acquired V3 Systems and WorldChain, providers of software for supplier management and vendor managed inventory [VMI], respectively). These solutions provide supply chain execution (SCE) and WMS solutions for multi-tiered supply chains, and include a radio frequency identification (RFID)-ready demand fulfillment solution. These solutions also enable supply network communications, coordinate business processes and services, and optimize supply chain functions (see Who Needs Warehousing Management and How Much Thereof?).

With this technology, Click Commerce clients can receive orders and other information from customers who have implemented RFID initiatives, and can run their warehouse and fulfillment operations using the same RFID information that their customers use in their retail operations. The solutions are designed to function independently of one another, or in tandem for tailored enterprise network environments, although each solution includes Click Commerce's integration platform, best business practice methods, and a supply chain intelligence dashboard. Supported supply chain business processes include supplier enablement; fulfillment coordination; service logistics; shipment execution; and warehouse management.

In May 2006, Click Commerce released MOVE version 8.1 of its WMS software, which aims at enabling user companies to offer more value-added services, and provides support for RFID- and voice-enabled operations in the warehouse. MOVE 8.1's value-added services allow companies to offer such services as customer personalization, complex final assembly and light manufacturing operations, and support for reverse logistics requirements in the service supply chain. The release also provides RFID capabilities integrated with basic warehouse operations, such as receiving, put-away, picking, and shipping. In partnership with Vue Technology, the leading provider of item-level RFID, the RFID-integrated solution should increase productivity and inventory accuracy in the warehouse. It should also provide the ability to pull inventory through the supply chain network based on real-time demand to avoid stock-outs, and thus likely deliver increased customer service levels and lower supply chain costs (see RFID—A New Technology Set to Explode?).

In addition, the release further enhances MOVE's voice functionality, which creates a dialogue between warehouse employees and the WMS. MOVE 8.1 uses a voice-directed interface that allows warehouse employees to use a headset to communicate vital warehouse information about inventory operations, rather than inputting the information into a cumbersome handheld device. The solution, which includes technology from Vocollect, should result in increased labor productivity, improved inventory accuracy, and better safety for the company's warehouse workers.

The new release integrates with the Click Commerce Enterprise Service Bus (ESB), which enables extensible markup language (XML), electronic data interchange (EDI), or flat file communications between the WMS and external systems, as opposed to requiring a costly middleware provider. With the Click Commerce ESB, companies can integrate MOVE 8.1 with other applications, since the solution is based on open standards and uses service-oriented architecture (SOA), enabling composite applications to be tailored to users' business processes, instead of having to work in a predefined framework. The ESB integrates Click Commerce applications to work as a suite of products by leveraging Web services and business process execution language (BPEL) to orchestrate the flow of information between disparate applications (see Understanding SOA, Web Services, BPM, and BPEL).

More Acquisition-based Expansions

The Click Commerce Service Parts Planning and Optimization (SPP&O) solutions, which were acquired in May 2005 via former Xelus, are designed to improve the performance of customers' service and repair activities, and their investments in spare parts inventories. These solutions are particularly important for companies in the aerospace and defense (A&D), automotive, and high-technology industries, where maintaining and repairing complex equipment is critical (see Lucrative but 'Risky' Aftermarket Business—Service and Replacement Parts SCM). These products are designed to help optimize the procurement and distribution of spare parts inventories, the deployment of parts to optimal stocking locations, and the flow and disposition of inventory through the repair loop (and back into usable stock).

The SPP&O applications have a broad view of the service network, and provide strong planning capabilities coupled with an integrated tool for bridging the information gaps between partners. Embedded algorithms identify and address issues related to a user company's service parts supply chain, and help companies determine disposition and routing at each step: return, receipt, repair, and restock. Owing to Xelus' forays in leveraging RFID in tracking and analyzing service parts, Click Commerce has broadened its footprint with the service parts planning and reverse logistics expertise of Xelus. This should help them to eventually manage the entire gamut from ordering, moving, and fulfillment of parts (in other words, from raw materials), to subassemblies and finished goods, to aftermarket spare parts. Supported service supply chain business processes include parts planning optimization; product acquisition; reverse logistics; inspection and testing; reconditioning and repair; and distribution and sales.

To further expand its portfolio, in November 2005, Click Commerce acquired Requisite Technology, Inc., which enhanced Click Commerce's catalog offering by adding a master data management (MDM) capability that enables collaborative commerce and RFID programs (see Customer Data Integration: A Primer and SAP Bolsters NetWeaver's MDM Capabilities). Requisite's MDM software, which transforms disorganized plant, material, and finished product data into consistent information repositories, is currently embedded in some of the world's largest enterprise resource planning (ERP) provider's solutions, with approximately 400 of these customers actively using elements of the Requisite solution. The solution had already been in use on a software as a service (SaaS) basis (see What Is Software as a Service?), with various leading business process outsourcing (BPO) providers using the applications to support their procurement operations. Also, Requisite had delivered infrastructure and services (directly and through its global service partners, including Atos Origin) that made manufacturers' MDM and related cost reduction projects successful.

In addition to providing MDM capabilities, the acquisition added patented technology and increased Click Commerce's presence in Europe with additional sales and support staff in key markets. This provided the vendor with additional opportunities to deliver its demand, supply, and service chain collaborative commerce solutions (see Will a Tool Manufacturer and a Supply Chain Software Vendor "Click" in Matrimony? for more information). The acquisition also broadened Click Commerce's solutions portfolio to include Requisite's Bugseye patented search engine, Content Workstation content cleansing, alignment and validation tools, and eMerge content aggregation and workflow management tools. It also provided a framework for using data across many different levels (industries, regions, companies, and departments). Requisite provided software to many different industries and end users, including the A&D, commercial aviation, consumer goods, contract repair, high-tech, telecommunications, petrochemical, and transportation industries. Some of Requisite's leading customers include BASF, Eastman Kodak, Graybar, Marathon Ashland Petroleum, and Union Bank of California.

Mastering Data Management and Synchronization

These Click Commerce solutions enable companies to manage information about any type of item, including finished goods for resale; direct materials used in manufacturing; and indirect materials used in maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) operations. These solutions also enable companies to create, collect, align, and enhance data to provide a uniform version of information, regardless of catalog needs. The search capabilities allow users to search aggregated information to find relevant results, and to have access to item details and images. Consequently, the solution suite, re-branded as Click Commerce Master Data Management (MDM), now consolidates and manages widely distributed master product data within an enterprise. Its solutions provide a single, consolidated version of this information, which should improve the accuracy of dependent systems, and reduce errors arising from data duplication and inaccuracy.

The product suite is intended to address problems caused when a user company maintains its master data in raw or "native" form in multiple, disconnected ERP and other enterprise systems, while lacking the detailed descriptions, product attributes, and classification structures which permit corporate-wide analysis and visibility into cost and performance. Customers thus use MDM solutions to deliver core services and infrastructure to turn raw master data into more readily available product information that can be acted upon to cut costs, deliver products faster, and boost competitiveness. Supported MDM business processes include cleansing and normalizing existing data; organizing and mapping data to internal structures; integrating to MDM or ERP legacy systems; and conducting master data maintenance. The Click Commerce MDM solution does not replace enterprise applications or the data contained therein, but rather enhances the existing ERP system, thereby helping to reduce customer costs by integrating its solution with tools and processes already deployed throughout an organization.

The strategic intent behind these numerous acquisitions might be best shown by the fact that Click Commerce's global data synchronization (GDS) and secure communications solutions (acquired in 2004 via bTrade) complement its MDM capabilities by allowing companies to communicate normalized master data with their trading partner community via the Internet. Data synchronization is an industry-wide retail initiative that requires manufacturers and suppliers to "sync" product information with their retailer customers, and Click Commerce has identified GDS as one of the building blocks for an RFID-enabled supply chain. Conveniently, bTrade was one of the top five solution providers in data synchronization (along with UCCNet and other major standard-setting bodies). UCCNet had previously selected bTrade software to handle communications with the trading partners, and retail supplier on-boarding in North America. Today, this software handles communications for the global registry for the worldwide retailer industry. Furthermore, bTrade had early relationships with leading retailers like Wal-Mart, SUPERVALU, and Home Depot, and was well on its way to establishing itself as one of only ten data pools in the world.

Service Contract Management

Additionally, in February 2006 Click Commerce acquired substantially all of the operating assets of Elance, Inc., based in Mountain View, California (US). This provided on-demand e-commerce solutions for contractor management services business, with capabilities enabling companies to find, evaluate, purchase, manage, and pay contractors and third party service providers. After the sale of the services and contractor management business, Elance concentrated on its Internet business and the growth of its online service for small business outsourcing.

As manufacturing companies outsource more and more of their operations, buying and managing third party services and service providers becomes a real challenge. Click Commerce believes the addition of services and contractor management capabilities creates significant cross-selling opportunities in the A&D and contract manufacturing verticals, as well as in its core markets of high-tech, financial services, and institutional research. Click Commerce has continued to offer Elance outsourcing management software as a service to many other industries, including the energy, manufacturing, transportation, and utilities industries. Elance reportedly estimated that in 2005 its customers used its solutions to manage over $7 billion (USD) of their services and contractor spending on information technology (IT), contingent labor, operations, management consulting, marketing, print, and other service projects. The customers of this Elance business include a number of existing Click Commerce customers, such as FedEx and Motorola, as well as other well-known companies, like American Express and British Petroleum (BP). The acquisition also included two foreign Elance subsidiaries, which expanded Click Commerce internationally by increasing its European presence with additional sales and support staff in the UK, and by adding a small software development facility in India.

In 2006, Click Commerce expects the acquired Elance business to recognize approximately $7.5 million (USD) in recurring revenues from its customers' purchasing maintenance, hosting, and services. The majority of employees from this Elance business unit have become Click Commerce employees since the transaction. Consequently, the on-demand e-commerce solutions for service businesses (re-branded into Click Commerce Contract and Service Management products) should enable customers to manage their services and contractor management life cycles. To that end, customers can use these solutions to find, evaluate, purchase, manage, and pay for a wide variety of outsourcing and professional services, and other services. The solutions handle multiple types of services contracts and payment structures, such as time and materials, retained relationships, milestones, blanket orders, service level-based payments, and volume-based contracts. With these solutions, the customers might also realize the benefits of compliance with key policies, laws, and controls for corporate reporting, including the US Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX). The solution can also help them manage labor and staffing, and provide visibility into spend volumes, supplier performance, and efficiency.

Helping Health Care Research

Last but not least (although this is somewhat unrelated to the other offerings), Click Commerce eResearch and Healthcare solutions help health care and higher education institutions improve response time and accuracy of approval processes by connecting research departments through administrative extranets. The software automates labor-intensive review and approval processes into flexible, more easily navigated sequences of workflows. Supported research and health care business processes include grant and contract management; institutional animal care and use committee (IACUC) review; clinical trials discovery; incident reporting; conflict of interest reporting; and institutional review board (IRB) review. An IRB is a committee of physicians, statisticians, researchers, community advocates, and others who ensure that research studies involving human subjects are ethical and that the rights of study participants are protected. All studies involving human subjects in the US must be approved by an IRB before they begin. Click Commerce IRB extranet provides institutions with an Internet submission system for IRB applications that simplifies application creation, eliminates routine errors, and alerts research teams of approaching deadlines. An IACUC, for its part, is a committee charged with reviewing animal welfare issues and approving all research involving use of animal subjects per US federal guidelines. Click Commerce IACUC extranet provides institutions with an Internet submission system for IACUC applications that simplifies application creation, eliminates routine errors, and alerts research teams of approaching deadlines.

In late 2005, Click Commerce released Research Extranet version 5.5, designed for use in the health care and higher education industry. This solution provides new applications and tools that can lead to improved efficiency in complicated human and animal subject research procedures. Leading universities and research institutions such as Mayo Clinic, Johns Hopkins University, Northwestern University, the University of Michigan, and the University of Washington currently use Click Commerce's extranet solutions. It is expected that with the new Research Extranet 5.5, these institutions will be able to develop and deploy customized research procedures more efficiently, and improve their ability to share important research data across the organization.

Research Extranet 5.5 includes Process Studio, which should allow institutions to more easily manage the creation of research processes. It should also enable them to launch these applications more quickly, since with its addition, institutions can take more effective advantage of the Research Extranet and potentially increase productivity immediately. Additionally, the release provides support for Web services, which facilitates easy integration with external applications. The release also added important functionality for users of the Click Commerce IRB Extranet and the IACUC solution. Namely, IRB and IACUC administrators can leverage a new comprehensive reviewer notes feature, which allows review committees to make comments directly in the system, potentially streamlining the research approval process. This new feature also provides the ability to more quickly identify changes in modifications submitted by researchers. The Click IACUC Extranet is currently in use by five institutions to manage animal research compliance requirements, and provides access to pre-award grants, bio-safety committees, and conflict of interest reporting applications.

SOURCE:
http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/articles/a-supply-chain-applications-vendor-expands-beyond-its-roots-18806/

The Many Faces of PLM Part Two: The Future of the PLM Suite

2010-08-17T22:54:00.001-07:00

The Future of the PLM Suite

The future of the PLM Suite will include more applications that cover product-related functionality and further expand the benefits available. As the PLM Suite matures, companies will benefit from increased functionality and increased integration between business processes. The ultimate expression of this more mature solution will result in a broad suite of focused, integrated applications that leverage a core of unified, structured product data the PLM Platform.

In order to understand the future of the PLM Suite, it is important to understand how suites become suites. If we take what we now call ERP as an example, it has evolved over time. The suite started with Inventory Control systems, then became Material Requirements Planning (MRP), then evolved to MRPII which included extensions to MRP including order management, then transitioned to ERP which firmly included non-manufacturing concerns such as Financials and Human Resources.

What happened with ERP is that the definition of the core system extended as complementary functionality was combined with it. As the footprint expanded, it deserved a new name. This is similar to what has happened with Supply Chain Management (SCM) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) suites. In the final analysis, PDM will probably be to PLM the same thing that Sales Force Automation (SFA) was to CRM. SFA is still a core component within the overall suite of CRM products, and it also served as the catalyst that got the market moving.

PLM seems to be following the same pattern. Software suites naturally grow as suite providers add new products to their offerings, and specialty vendors with complementary value propositions look to take advantage of the marketing awareness that the suite offers. As suites expand, the level of pre-packaged integration typically grows making more functionality available to users. There is a lot of room to grow in the PLM footprint, and as a suite of solutions PLM will probably be as broad as CRM or SCM are today. PLM will continue to expand, as we have seen from the growth strategy of companies like Agile Software. Agile has aggressively expanded their product suite through acquisition, with more than 5 acquisitions announced in less than two years, see "Has Consolidation Made The PLM Market More Agile?"

This is Part Two of a two-part article.

Part One discussed the current state of the PLM Suite and provided insight into how application suites develop.

New Additions to the PLM Suite

What new application areas belong in the PLM footprint? There are many valid opinions, and time will tell which functional areas will be most rewarding to the companies that adopt PLM systems. Today, PLM is being leveraged as the source of consolidated, uniform product information. This provides a platform to serve many other purposes. One such area is the publication, or syndication, of product catalogs and product data. Several leading consumer goods companies, for example, have used solutions from MatrixOne and Prodika to link with exchanges such as Transora and become UCCnet compliant.

Another area that has been regularly included in PLM conversations, that again leverages the single source of focused product data, is Regulatory and Compliance. Vendors such as Advanced Software Design (ASD), a sponsor at the PDMA conference, and Atrion provide regulatory focus in the process industries, for example. Sopheon highlighted the need for regulatory compliance by introducing their capabilities to support FDA 21 CFR Part 11, an important requirement in the Life Sciences industry. This focus is increasingly important as new regulations are being unfurled, such as WEEE (Waste Electronic and Electrical Equipment) and the TREAD (Transportation Recall Enhancement, Accountability, and Documentation), whose requirements span large segments of the product lifecycle. PLM focus on regulatory and compliance issues is not entirely new, as SAP has long included Environmental Health and Safety in the definition of their PLM offerings and vendors like Formation Systems support many regulatory requirements for the process industries.

There are additional areas that are moving into the PLM footprint as well. Component Event Management, for example, focuses on managing the disruption that component obsolescence and change place on products that rely on electronic components. This application, from vendors such as PCNalert, provides complementary value in the product lifecycle. Another area that overlaps considerably with PLM is product configuration. While Configuration Management has clearly been included in the PLM footprint, product configurators are just beginning to be looked at as PLM. As more product-related information is included in the PLM application, configuration information in PLM will likely expand from the current design-centric solutions such as PTC's Dynamic Design Link and RuleStream, to include more sales-related information like what is found in solutions from BigMachines, Cincom, Firepond, TDCI and Trilogy. For more information see "Customization Drives Complexity Why It's Hard to Design, Sell and Produce Simple' Products."

Another area that seems destined to collide is Computer Aided Process Planning, or CAPP. CAPP manages and captures the processes by which complex assemblies are produced and maintained. This product-related information is currently addressed by applications from companies like HMS Software and iBASEt, and is more tightly aligned with Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) than with PLM.

Where is the logical end to the expansion of the footprint and the consolidation of markets into PLM? One could argue that there will be continuous innovation in the software industry and that new solution areas will continue to be identified. The inevitable result will, of course, be an overlap with other solution areas in the same way the CRM and SCM collide with functionality in ERP suites today. This natural evolution will continue to provide more pre-integrated functionality, and will make the trade-offs between integration and best of breed functionality more important, requiring more detailed and overlapping product selection criteria. For more information on the tradeoff between PLM functionality and integration, see "Can ERP Speak PLM?"

The PLM Platform

Is every software application that focuses on products really a part of PLM? If you take a broad definition of PLM, such as "a suite of applications that focus on leveraging product information to improve product profitability", the answer is yes. More important than a simple answer to this question is recognition that application "spaces" are artificial boundaries, and that PLM is still a relatively immature market (see" The Different Evolutionary Stages of ERP And PLM"). The most valuable reason to expand an application suite is when integration between business processes spans applications in a way that a lack of integration makes the overall process less effective. Advances in integration technology have greatly improved the ability to pull together disparate applications into coherent processes, (see What's Wrong With Application Software? Business Processes Cross Application Boundaries), but companies still value pre-defined integration and business processes when they are available. Companies would ideally prefer an approach that builds off of a common architecture and data model that can support the related business processes of PLM. This integrated view of the PLM Suite is sometimes referred to as a "PLM Platform".

The PLM Platform provides a central location for product related information and processes. This approach provides for consolidation of product information and processes into a common system. The common system promotes higher levels of data cleanliness because it is focused solely on being the source of product information, as opposed to simply providing enough product information to fulfill a particular function. By naming one system as the core system of record, companies will have a much clearer answer to where they should source product information for other activities and other applications. The common platform also promotes integrated business processes and provides for greater product intelligence and analysis.

Companies that are developing a long-term strategy will need to weigh a vendor's vision to provide an integrated PLM Platform vs. best of breed functionality, and may need to make short-term tradeoffs between integration and functionality. Companies that have stated a strong direction towards a PLM Platform are Agile, PTC, and MatrixOne. The architecture of the PLM Platform must be very flexible to support varying types of information and processes and must provide strong capabilities for information visibility and collaboration.

Don't Forget The PLM Program

More important than what applications belong in the PLM application suite, is what applications can provide increased value for the companies that use them. Manufacturers today are facing a dilemma with PLM. They understand and need the benefits that the PLM value proposition offers, but are also confused about which part of PLM will provide the benefits. There is no single answer to that question that works for every company. There is not even a single answer for every company within a particular industry, although industry does play a critical role in identifying PLM needs and potential solutions. For more information on the impact of industry on the requirements for a PLM solution, see "PLM is an Industry Affair Or Is It".

In order to achieve the value of PLM, manufacturers must carefully prioritize their needs and implement a series of initiatives that not only lead to the long-term value of PLM, but also provide tangible short-term ROI that pays for the program incrementally along the path. The priorities identified will lead to a series of inter-related requirements that should be considered in selecting the appropriate software partner, or partners, for the manufacturer. For more information on selecting the appropriate software partners, see "Selecting a PLM Vendor".

Adding to the confusion for manufacturers is that the same benefits are often touted for different aspects of PLM. For example, faster new product introduction is a common strategic goal for companies starting a PLM initiative. There are multiple paths to improving time to market, all of which may be valid. In fact, the best answer may be a combination of approaches. For example, better project management and the introduction of stage gate processes might help to speed projects along. Reducing the clutter of competing projects through better project selection and portfolio management techniques could help. Design related approaches such as design reuse, parametric search tools and design collaboration can compress the development time. If time to production volume is as important as time to market, then speeding up the handoffs between R&D and manufacturing might help, particularly if outsourced manufacturers are involved. The following table highlights some typical goals in PLM programs, some different approaches to attaining the value, and then some of the tools or solutions that can be used to help. This is not an exhaustive list, but a quick example of how the PLM value proposition overlaps.

SOURCE:
http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/articles/the-many-faces-of-plm-part-two-the-future-of-the-plm-suite-17146/

Major Vendors Adapting to User Requirements

2010-08-17T22:53:00.002-07:00

SAP and Microsoft Meet Halfway in Mendocino

It is small wonder that the market leaders and largest players have recently had a sudden epiphany concerning user requirements. They have finally realized that they will increasingly be evaluated by how well their products interconnect and interoperate, how intuitive their user interfaces are, and how easily new enterprise-wide business processes (workflows) can change to meet the needs of ever changing working environments. For more information on these user requirements, see Driving Factors in the Enterprise Applications Market.

The prominent and recently announced partnership between SAP and Microsoft for their joint product Mendocino (the name of the town halfway between the companies' US headquarters) promises to deliver familiar Microsoft Office desktop management and productivity tools as the facade for heavy-duty SAP enterprise application processes. At about the same time this announcement was made, Microsoft also announced that it would begin using Microsoft Office open extensible markup language (XML) formats for its Word, Excel, and PowerPoint applications, under the codename Office 12, which should provide better data interoperability, improved security, and reduced file sizes, all with the idea of further blurring the lines between business applications and office productivity tools. This is an attempt to mitigate the current predicament whereby, on the one hand, today's knowledge workers have information overload, but on the other hand, they often still cannot access the pertinent information at the right time.

Mendocino, recently released to fifty pilot customers before going to generally available (GA) release by mid-2006, aims at disseminating useful SAP data among knowledge workers outside its traditionally limited user dispatch list, and to gauge the potential for early composite application development and adoption. It was devised to help workers who spend most of their time in the Office suite but who also need to be in touch with SAP sessions.

To that end, Mendocino tries to eliminate the intermittent (and wasteful) system-to-system steps, since SAP functionality can then automatically be invoked from Microsoft Outlook, for example, with the workflow being completed in SAP. This resembles a composite application modus operandi (MO), since when using Mendocino, corporate data in traditionally pesky SAP business format can be automatically sent to a user's Outlook e-mail inbox, for instance, where any modifications to reports can be made and then sent back to the main SAP data repository. This can all be done without the user having to leave a familiar data processing environment, and reduces the amount of time it takes to modify important business data. The Mendocino 1.0 release will require the latest version of the Microsoft Office suite, Microsoft Office 2003, and will also work with the forthcoming Office 12 suite, which will be available towards the end of 2006.

Microsoft's Approach

Microsoft is citing research indicating that users spend up to 35 percent of their valuable time searching for information needed to do their job, and can miss key information entirely. This is because up to 85 percent of business information is located on desktops, both as structured data and unstructured content. The result is the frequent need to re-key substantial amounts of information, leading to duplicate work, inaccuracies, and a negative impact on the ability of a company to respond, with the net result of lost time and suboptimal performance.

Along the same lines, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates said in a recent executive e-mail memo, "The software challenges that lie ahead are less about getting access to the information people need and more about making sense of the information they have—giving them the ability to focus, prioritize and apply their expertise, visualize and understand key data, and reduce the amount of time they spend dealing with the complexity of an information-rich environment."

For these reasons, Microsoft has also begun to deliver roles-based Mendocino-like features, with the familiar Windows look and feel. These features are geared towards a slew of business applications that were recently re-branded under the Microsoft Dynamics umbrella brand, the research and development (R&D) roadmap formerly known as Project Green. Again, the idea is to provide users with a more integrated and contextual working environment (see What Do Users Want and Need?).

Maybe the best example of this is the recently launched Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 product, featuring a native Outlook interface and thus an instantly familiar experience. Also notable in this respect are a slew of reporting and analytic products using the Excel metaphor (see Vendors Harness Excel (and Office) to Win the Lower-end of Business Intelligence Market).

Microsoft Dynamics Snap

Most recently, on February 20, Microsoft announced the release of Microsoft Dynamics Snap, a collection of software programs that, well, snap in to Microsoft Office 2003. Like Mendocino, these four new programs aim for easier data coordination and management for certain Microsoft Dynamics business management solutions, via the familiar Microsoft Office 2003 interface. These applications also have the potential to improve worker performance by allowing direct access and use of business processes and data from business management solutions back-end applications like Microsoft Dynamics AX 3.0 (formerly Microsoft Business Solutions-Axapta) and Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0, all from within certain Microsoft Office applications.

Microsoft points to this as another example of its strategy of delivering business management solutions that fit with customers' existing information technology (IT) systems. As recently reported, the Microsoft Dynamics vision involves at least two series of releases. One of the most important goals of the first series is to deliver a user experience that is integrated with Microsoft Office, by using a roles-based approach. The release of Microsoft Dynamics Snap should be instrumental in evaluating the progress towards that goal. The first four Snap-Ins announced include:

1. Timesheet Management Snap-In, developed for Microsoft Dynamics AX 3.0, to allow users to use Microsoft Outlook to view or submit time entries for recurring tasks. This solution links Microsoft Dynamics AX time entries to Outlook appointments and meetings, automatically filling in the data and helping track changes made to linked appointments or meetings. This should help save the time and trouble of correlating those tasks, and reduce errors as a result of users having to transpose data from one program to another. This might be useful for Microsoft Dynamics AX customers in service industries, or who have a requirement for employees to track how time is allocated across internal projects;

2. Vacation Management Snap-In, also developed for Microsoft Dynamics AX 3.0, to allow users to submit vacation requests using Microsoft Outlook. This action then triggers an e-mail to the request approver, who can view details of the request along with the requestor's vacation history, and approve or reject the request. The vacation time entry is then automatically updated into the Microsoft Dynamics time and attendance (T&A) module;

3. Business Data Lookup Snap-In, developed for Microsoft Dynamics AX, to allow business workers to use the Microsoft Dynamics AX task pane to search and browse Microsoft Dynamics AX data using Microsoft Office Word, Microsoft Office Excel or Outlook, and to copy selected data into Office 2003 documents, or to attach the Office documents to Microsoft Dynamics AX records. One of the uses for this includes sending order status e-mails to customers.

4. Business Data Lookup Snap-In, developed for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0, to allow searching and browsing of customer relations management (CRM) data within the familiar Microsoft Word, Excel, and Outlook Office 2003 environments. Using a CRM task pane, it is possible to copy data into Microsoft Office documents, or to attach the Microsoft Office documents to CRM records.

These programs try to make manipulation of business management data less complicated and intimidating, by giving users access to data and business processes from within the familiar Microsoft Office 2003 environment. It's easier to do this without opening two or more programs, pushing data around, or having to master the full complexity of all of the software in a company just because they want, for example, to accurately allocate the amount of time they spend working on a particular assignment. At the macroscopic level, pundits may describe this as "bridging the worlds of business productivity and personal productivity." More fundamentally, it comes down to the fact that software should work the way people really work. To that end, Microsoft and SAP have made significant steps towards delivering a better user experience in a roles-based manner.

The Microsoft Dynamics Snap collection is available for free download under the Microsoft Permissive License, as a Code Gallery project called Microsoft Dynamics Snap on GotDotNet.com, a site where a community of developers and IT professionals can share, evaluate, and build evolving Microsoft .NET applications, code, ideas, and technical documents. Microsoft also pledges to provide the source code for these solutions from the linked web site. This should allow the partners, other independent software vendors (ISVs), and customers to modify and distribute these programs. It should then be possible to enhance or customize the shipped solutions or to use them as examples of how to build new composite applications.

Inherent Challenges

Ideally, overlaying composite applications should be instantly usable in a user's native work environment, and also unite analytics, transactions and collaboration into a single process flow. Further, they must easily be added onto the existing applications, and they must be model-based (ideally visually) for the sake of process flexibility. Some will rightfully notice that Mendocino and Snap-Ins are somewhat limited in scope because they currently only enable four self-service SAP processes, with little in the way of deeper workflow- or process-based integration (which would naturally require a significantly higher investment level from both vendors).

Currently, Mendocino product development is focused on integrating Microsoft's e-mail and calendar programs with SAP's back-office business applications, giving employees a more familiar user interface when accessing and manipulating business data in the following four scenarios:

1. A budget monitoring scenario, purporting to provide managers with access to the financial data they need for budget planning, monitoring, cost analysis, and reconciliation. The functionality includes receiving (as a graphic in an e-mail attachment) budgets, posting alerts, monitoring budgets, transferring budgets, and requesting posting adjustments.

2. A time management scenario, which should enable employees to record and review hours spent on a certain project (within a drop-down list) in the context of the Outlook calendar. The system then posts the update in SAP's Cross-Application Time Sheets (CATS).

3. A leave management scenario, whereby employees can request leave in their Outlook calendar, and then receive managerial approval or disapproval via Outlook mail.

4. An organization management scenario, which incorporates administrative and planning tasks related to human resources (HR) into an Outlook Contact File. Based on authorizations established within mySAP HR, HR managers would then be able to perform self-service functions, such as viewing employee salary information or performance reviews, and suggesting proportional increases, all within Outlook.

Pricing, integration complexity (which depends on the degree of software customization currently in place), and the need for a joint support structure, leave many wondering when more involved processes will be delivered. Such composite applications would be layered on top of Office or mySAP Business Suite, and would also handle both structured and unstructured information. Examples might include complex (but potentially rewarding) business processes to support global trade management (GTM), sales and operations planning (S&OP), market campaign management, or consignment and vendor-managed inventory (VMI). Vertical functionality should then be easier to build, because users and partners could create new types of data objects, and also create relationships between them. In terms of management, users and partners could create the objects, while the master enterprise application would create and manage the metadata (i.e., data about data).

SOURCE:
http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/articles/major-vendors-adapting-to-user-requirements-18472/

A Single Software Solution That Enables Business Process Management

2010-08-17T22:53:00.001-07:00

Exact e-Synergy as a BPM Enabler

Exact has focused its development on making sure that any user company can significantly benefit from data stored in different places within the organization. Accordingly, it has developed a platform that keeps all departmental data in one central information store, accessible, in near real-time, over the Web, to make sure everyone within the organization works with the same information.

Part three of the Exact Software Continues with Its Share of Judicious Acquisitions series.

For instance, every customer-related phone call can be logged into e-Synergy, whereas faxes and Web site requests can be automatically merged into the system. As a result, every customer touch point should be available through e-Synergy allowing sales staff to know the latest service or credit issues. Likewise, people in customer service and finance can see the latest sales interactions. When the user enterprise has a full history of the interactions, it can better serve the customer, and employees will spend less frustrating time shouting across the office to find out who spoke to whom, and what was said. By focusing on improving and optimizing processes instead of just the departments, any user company should be better aligned and prepared to take on the challenges ahead.

Right now, the traditional enterprise resource planning (ERP) mid-market for standard business software remains sluggish and fragmented. Pricing pressures continue to increase on products and services, but a back-office ERP, per se, does not give the same competitive advantage it use to. However, due to globalization and Internet usage within businesses, users are increasingly seeking collaborative and Web-based solutions to find supply chain cost efficiencies and to better organize content.

An example of agility includes how prospects respond to an e-mail and enter personal information. The system should automatically update the contact database, and users can check for duplicates and add or merge the information. A workflow request can then be sent to the appropriate people for follow-up. When a customer places an order, the pricing used in the back-office system should also appear on the Web site or user screen. Finally, the system should offer a centralized view of all customers and their activities, including workflow, financial transactions, support issues, etc. from anywhere, and at any time. Customers, suppliers, and partners should also manage their accounts through secure portals.

Exact's quintessential solution consists of two fully integrated (working from the same central information store) products: Exact Globe and Exact e-Synergy. Both are built on Microsoft technology and open standards and should connect to any application users may have with relative ease. To get to the next level of competitiveness, users should build their ERP investments while reducing the steps it takes to execute key business processes. They should also manage by exception through lean manufacturing concepts. Exact touts e-Synergy as a means of managing by exception and tying together processes, documents, and people. It is a Web-based collaboration platform with portal views, workflow, document, customer relationship, and human resources management (HRM). e-Synergy also integrates office productivity tools such as Microsoft Excel and Outlook.

Exact has integrated e-Synergy with most of its local ERP packages. It has only been available in North American for a couple of years, yet, the product is used by over 400 customers in North America. Exact cites this as evidence of user interest in business process management (BPM) capabilities that layer over back-office ERP solutions. The product is also supportive of the US Sarbanes Oxley Act (SOX) owing to its workflow and document management capabilities, and it meets the electronic signature requirements under the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) "Part 11" rules. The vendor expects standard business applications to drive efficiency by connecting to mobile devices, which is in demand by new generation of users that want better and faster access to more accurate and useful data.

For background information on Exact Software see Exact Software Continues with Its Share of Judicious Acquisitions.

This is Part Three of a multipart note. This series will explore Exact's strategic groups and global aspirations; its BPM strategy and products; and its acquisition of Vanguard. It will also present challenges and make user recommendations.

Exact e-Synergy as the Collaboration Solution

Exact e-Synergy is primarily the collaboration solution, and as the name indicates, it is designed to provide synergy within the user organization. It gives all employees Web-access to instantaneous information from one central information source allowing them to plan, track, and initiate collaboration, and search and retrieve content, documents, and transactional data. By making Exact e-Synergy the platform of communication and collaboration, no data should (in principle) ever be lost at the organization, because information is stored for quick retrieval. Because of its ability to align employees, information, and processes across the enterprise, users of Exact e-Synergy should be able to view the health of the entire value chain, help employees manage time more effectively and execute business processes more efficiently. Key strengths of Exact e-Synergy are

* It integrates all company information by recording data at one time and in context. It links that data to all the relevant people, products, customers, workflow, and financial transactions.

* It encourages collaboration by providing structure and context and by accommodating Web sites and portals creation (see Portals: Necessary But Not Self-sufficient ).

* It supports mobile connectivity and allows on-line add-ons for portal digital assistant (PDA) devices.

* It increases transparency by managing all business processes through electronic workflow. The workflow integrates with Outlook, which is used for external communication (since calendars and contacts can be synchronized, e-mails can be sent to contacts from within the e-Synergy contact database). The system also integrates with Microsoft Office and Exchange.

* It gives access (search and retrieval) to all information and processes, including existing back-office ERP data and non-structured content for the entire organization, since the browser-based system has a "Google box"-type feature that makes it fairly easy to look up records by using multiple parameters.

* It reduces implementation and training costs by using a common Web browser to input and access data.

* It also leverages investments in ERP systems by enabling access to this information for the entire workforce.

The Web user interface (UI) is familiar to users and provides an easy means of navigation. Consequently, Exact e-Synergy is completely built on Microsoft Active Server Pages (ASP) 3.0 and runs on top of Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS), both on Windows 2000 and Windows 2003 platforms. All data is stored in the Microsoft SQL Server 2000 database, whereas all supported client platforms are Windows versions that support Internet Explorer (IE) 5.01 or better (i.e., Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000 and Windows XP). The product also provides support for other devices, including PDAs (such as HP Ipaq) and smart phones.

e-Synergy has a broad rather than deep functional scope that is difficult to pigeonhole into a single enterprise software category. It also represents an enterprise relationship management (ERM) solution that integrates the functionality of traditional front-office applications in a single solution, providing employees, customers, and partners with virtually an immediate view of activity across an entire organization. Front-office activities (such as customer resource management [CRM], e-commerce, and portals); back-office activities (including financials, HRM projects, distribution, and production); and their workflow, event, document, knowledge management modules share one database, Microsoft SQL Server. As a result, users have no integration issues and all of their information is kept current and can be viewed using only Internet Explorer.

E-Synergy Modules

Exact touts that because e-Synergy automatically brings together the CRM solution with the financial database and other back-office databases, users should have a level of visibility into all of the processes that govern the business. Everyone from an administrative assistant to the chief executive officer (CEO) should have access to the information they need to make informed business decisions. This access is given through the features and functionality from the modules described below. Security and administration can take place both at the system level and in each module.

e-HRM has traditional HRM features, including job postings on the company Web site, budgeting, and hiring. However, it also has a module that handles on-line employee management, including task delegation, management of workflows, absence tracking, expenses, special compensation, etc. This allows a user company to maintain roles (jobs) and security levels related to employees and information. The module is actually a core component for managing security levels throughout the organization because it manages roles within an organization. Through the use of security levels and roles, e-HRM allows businesses to establish the rights and tasks an employee has and what information she or he can access. The hiring workflow provides a good model of e-Synergy's workflow and electronic BPM capabilities, since one has to follow the logical steps of associating a job requisition to a role within an organization. This job is then associated to a candidate who had applied for it via the Web (and, in the process, can save an HR manager the trouble of filling out employee record information).

e-Logistics, which is a combination product management tool and supplier management system, takes care of a company's product, catalog, and price management data. It enables users to share this information through an intranet system as well as the Internet.

e-CRM centralizes access to information about customers and prospects that is traditionally spread across the complete ERP system. This information includes contracts, invoices, financial transactions, and meeting reports. A business can thus integrate customers into its service, sales, product, and financial organization to provide a true 360-degree overview of its customer base. The information on the customer card is linked to all the relevant documents and information, such as contracts, invoices, financial transactions, sales sheets, meeting and visit or call reports, customer inquiries and complaints (including the status), and value added reseller (VAR) or distributor information. Inherent portal capabilities across the entire suite, including secure, role-based portal access with a single sign-on, can be supplemented with other security mechanisms like hardware keys or biometric ID, cater to customer self-service needs.

e-Workflow, in addition to offering traditional request functions, ensures electronic management of all of an organization's internal and external business processes. It is a tool that easily creates and manages the rules and procedures associated with specific business tasks, especially vital within the e-HRM and e-CRM modules. The workflow engine has a good set of tools for building workflows and forms in the framework of the application, and existing workflows can easily be repurposed for new ones. While the module is built-in across all e-Synergy modules and includes rules for routing transactions, alerts are also available by integrating with Exact Event Manager. This is an optional module and one that places Exact in the nascent area of business activity monitoring (BAM), a software category that triggers alerts and exception reports on both events and non-events, and both within and outside the four-walls of the enterprise (see Business Activity Monitoring— Watching The Store for You).

Actionable information is the key to success for (near) real time enterprises, which share up-to-date information with employees, customers, and partners in real time. This entails not only accessing data, but also pushing it to the right person and ensuring that person knows what to do about real time, "sizzling hot" information.

e-Documents stores and manages all information and existing artifacts centrally in one database, creating the basis for storing a company's data electronically. For example, while the e-HRM module tracks applicants, delegates tasks, counts absences and expenses, links to payroll, etc., the document management capability stores employees' resumes or skill sets, which eliminates shuffling through stacks of paper. Further, as Microsoft Word documents and other files from all over the business are "published" to the e-Synergy archive. e-Synergy categorizes and tags them as belonging with other documents for cross-referencing. This feature has obvious uses in terms of information retrieval, but can be even more useful in the context of engineering change control (ECC).

e-Project manages most of an organization's project related activities and views an organization's performance from a matrix point of view, including contract information, time inputs, budgets, and people and asset allocation schedules. Although the legacy Progression Series has had built-in job tracking and project accounting capabilities, such as setting up a project job, budgeting against it, and tracking transactions versus the budget, the Macola ES/e-Synergy combination offers a far better project oversight that includes scheduling, document management, and workflow tracking. e-Project is suitable for both internal and external projects, and for creating cost and revenue forecasts and project-based reports (e.g., availability of people and assets, contract information, requests and their status, time input and budgets, etc.).

e-Financials automates data collection at the transaction level using the Internet or an intranet. User organizations can analyze its key performance indicators (KPI) on-line from a consolidated level down to the transaction level with a few clicks of the mouse. The standard e-Financials UI is an organization chart, where the user can specify which KPIs should be shown and at what level of detail. Users can drill-down to individual transactions. While the module provides budgeting, an executive view, and reporting tools for consolidated company financials, the actual accounting transactions must be managed in an external application. The data must also be imported through native connectors or through an XML connector for Exact Software accounting applications (e-Synergy natively supports other Exact Software back-end accounting systems). Otherwise, the system supports connections to accounting and other back-office applications through a World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) compliant-XML interface, which also controls data exchange with client applications such as Microsoft Word and Outlook.

Although it admittedly is not as deep as some of the individual, best-of-breed CRM, HRM, professional services automation (PSA), or BPM products in the market, e-Synergy offers most of the nifty functionality a small or medium enterprise may need without the superfluous integration headaches. Its inherent workflow is the application's glue, and the suite furthermore often becomes bigger than the sum of its parts. It starts by being able to create and manage the customer's Web site to include the buy side and the sell side of e-business, document management, and logistics functionality.

SOURCE:
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Intentia and Dash Associates Team Up

2010-08-17T22:52:00.000-07:00

Event Summary

Stockholm-based Intentia, the third largest enterprise software vendor in Europe, and UK-based Dash Associates have teamed up to enhance the capabilities of Intentia's optimizer by the incorporation of XPRESS-MP modeler and optimizer components. The collaboration aims at providing highly accurate solutions to complex, real-world planning problems in the shortest possible times. Intentia plans to have integrated XPRESS-MP into its supply chain management functionality as early as the end of 1999 (70% probability).

Market Impact

The Intentia-Dash collaboration mirrors a long-standing trend in the enterprise marketplace in which vendors with broad-featured product suites partner with best-of-breed technology shops in order to impart a degree of depth to one or more aspects of their suites. A more familiar example is SAP's 1998 investment in ILOG S.A., in which the ERP giant acquired a 5% stake in return for the use of ILOG's advanced algorithms in its APO supply chain suite. Companies like Dash and ILOG have created a market in licensing advanced algorithms to larger ERP and SCM (Supply Chain Management) vendors. The interaction is symbiotic in that:

1.

Intentia gains best-of-breed optimization functionality to complement its Movex supply chain management and APP (Advanced Production Planner) applications and improves its marketability. Well-known in Europe, Intentia may become more attractive to North American companies provided that the integration is successful; optimization tends to be a strong differentiator among enterprise software vendors.
2.

Dash Associates obtains additional capital for pursuing acquisitions of its own and/or funding internal development projects.

SOURCE:
http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/articles/intentia-and-dash-associates-team-up-15541/

DoubleClick Takes Bath, Throws in Towel

2010-08-17T22:51:00.002-07:00

Event Summary

In an attempt to stem the flood of criticism that has been leveled at his company since its acquisition of Abacus Direct, CEO Kevin O'Connor announced that DoubleClick (NASDAQ:DCLK) had "made a mistake by planning to merge names with anonymous user activity in the absence of government and industry privacy standards."

The statement came after partners AltaVista and Kozmo.com announced that they were shocked, yes shocked, at the possible violations of user privacy resulting from DoubleClick's plans. DoubleClick's stock price has dipped from $135 at the start of the year to $79 after the announcement by the two web sites.

Abacus Direct is a direct marketing company that collects information from catalog companies. DoubleClick planned to merge information from that source with the anonymous surfing behavior that the company collects by dropping cookies on the machines of users when ads are served to them. This would provide much more information that the company could use to target ads to individuals.

DoubleClick's plan to merge the two data streams, once announced in its privacy statement, drew the ire of consumer groups, caused one California woman to file a class action lawsuit, and launched a Federal Trade Commission investigation of the uses of consumer information collected over the Internet. Also it is possible that the popular search engine HOTBOT was hacked to protest the DoubleClick action. For at least two days a search for DoubleClick brought up as the first entry the DoubleClick home page with a tag line identifying it as "The (in)famous DoubleClick Company." DoubleClick did not answer TEC's queries about this strangely deprecating text.

Market Impact

DoubleClick has not abandoned its plans, as Mr. O'Connor's statement made clear. In fact, as revealed by CNET, the company hired a political strategist, Josh Isay, as Director of Public Policy and Government Affairs to manage its lobbying efforts. With advertisers demanding more return on their dollars, DoubleClick will not give up on this issue without a fight.

However, the outcry may well cause the FTC investigators to develop a creative and workable proposal that allows tracking while giving consumers meaningful and workable ways to opt out. Such a proposal has not yet surfaced. (Here's one offered by TEC, gratis: any ad that might have a connection to personal identification could have an identifying mark, such as a red spyglass, in one corner. As rich media technology becomes more prevalent in ads, this mark could actually be made clickable, to take users to an opt-out page.)

It will be interesting to see how DoubleClick's main rival, Engage (NASDAQ: ENGA), reacts to these investigations. Although Engage has been at pains to point out that their targeting methods do not involve the use of personal information, the company must have concerns that a higher level of targeting may be necessary in the future to meet advertisers' requirements.

We certainly won't suggest that AltaVista's high profile announcement had anything to do with the fact that AltaVista is now owned by CMGI (NASDAQ: CMGI), the power behind Engage. If AltaVista was seeing signs of an impact on its own business as a result of this imbroglio, that would be news. Even though the story reached the mainstream press, most consumers have little idea which agency serves the ads that get on the web pages they see.

SOURCE:
http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/articles/doubleclick-takes-bath-throws-in-towel-15590/

Microsoft Great Plains Procures eProcure At Last

2010-08-17T22:51:00.001-07:00

Event Summary

On July 10, Microsoft Great Plains Business Solutions, a business applications division of Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT), announced a strategic relationship with Clarus Corporation (NASDAQ: CLRS) to deliver a customized Internet-based procurement solution for direct and indirect products and services, providing real-time purchase-order creation, approval workflow and order processing. Microsoft Great Plains Business Solutions will OEM Clarus Corporation's eProcurement product. The joint solution, named Microsoft Great Plains eProcure, will also include Clarus' Fusion integration toolkit and its View analytics product. Envisioned as a seamless integration with Microsoft Great Plains' financials, payables management, fixed assets and reporting solutions, eProcure should result in a complete, end-to-end purchasing solution.

eProcure can be deployed in-house or hosted through a Microsoft Great Plains certified Application Service Provider (ASP). eProcure will be delivered exclusively by authorized channel partners within Microsoft Great Plains' extensive global network of more than 2,200 channel partners. eProcure will be fully integrated with Microsoft Great Plains' eEnterprise, Solomon and Dynamics products operating on Microsoft SQL Server and is scheduled to be available in the fourth calendar quarter of 2001.

The company believes eProcure will provide significant cost savings and fast delivery for small and midsize customers requiring a more streamlined, Web-based purchasing and approval process. The combination of eProcure and Microsoft Great Plains supply chain, distribution, e-commerce and customer relationship management (CRM) applications could potentially provide a complete, end-to-end e-business solution for small and midsize companies, with functionality matching or exceeding solutions that cost much more.

"Common procurement processes are costly and inefficient as a result of bottlenecks, maverick spending and time-consuming paper-based processes," said Lynne Stockstad, VP of e-business at Microsoft Great Plains. "With eProcure, organizations can reduce costs by gaining control of interacting with and purchasing from a multitude of suppliers and enhancing productivity by defining purchasing standards, taking the guesswork out of procurement."

eProcure could reduce significantly the costs of goods and services by enabling supplier performance analysis and tracking and cost analysis and directing purchasing to more profitable sources. eProcure also enables search capabilities internally and externally to both online marketplaces and directly to suppliers for more strategic product selection and pricing. Integration with an online marketplace enables organizations to conduct auctions, reverse auctions and comparison shop, ensuring a competitive price. eProcure features an architecture that can be configured to mirror almost any organization's operating structure, by using strong mapping capabilities for unlimited levels of approval. Purchase orders can be routed according to price, category, job classification or a number of other attributes.

Market Impact

Microsoft Great Plains is possibly the leading provider of enterprise applications to small-to-medium enterprises (Tier 2 and Tier 3) companies with fiscal year 2001 sales at the level of $300 million. Currently, it has one of the largest customer bases in the market segment, but primarily in North America. Owing to a number of acquisitions in 2000, especially these of a report writing vendor FRx, its reseller PWA, and the direct accounting software competitor Solomon, enabled Great Plains to post 54% annual growth, with estimated 10% organic growth.

Some companies with similar histories and/or products that are also its fierce competitors include Epicor, Sage, Navision, and Kewill. To date, Great Plains has been more successful than most of these at addressing the needs of Tier 2 and Tier 3 companies, but mainly in accounting and back-office functions and only occasionally within the discrete manufacturing sector, which has become the company's focus since the end of 2000 (for more information, see How Great Is Great Plains' Manufacturing Offering (Did Somebody Say Microsoft)?). The second strategic focus global expansion, particularly in Europe and Asia/Pacific.

In a slew of advantages of becoming part of Microsoft in 2001, one possible downside would be prolonged decision-making most likely owing to the approval process now having to be routed through the 'big brother' that also has to satisfy the bCentral business community needs. TEC was aware over a year ago of then independent Great Plains' intentions of striking an alliance for an e-procurement product, in the wake of Epicor's partnership agreement with Clarus in 2000. Although the decision was sidetracked by more urgent acquisition issues, which likely gave Epicor a significant lead in offering e-procurement, the delay does not seem to be that grave given that other competitors have yet to make similar announcements.

The partnership should be mutually beneficial. Clarus seems to be a slick e-procurement product for small to medium enterprises (SME) rather than an overkill application with unneeded, complex functionality demanded by trading exchanges. Clarus' Microsoft-centric product architecture, the support for many languages and alliances with trading exchanges that do not charge transaction fees should be additional attraction for the intended customers.

The alliance has possibly greater meaning for the recently struggling Clarus, which should gain access to Microsoft Great Plains' global network of over 2,200 channel partners. Clarus has long desired to host its e-procurement application and to sell it through large channel partners, something it was not able to do because of its reputation as a generalist ASP. Microsoft Great Plains, on the other hand, has a successful certified ASP partner channel.

Nevertheless, the job of gaining traction will by no means be easy for the alliance. The competition will be fierce, primarily from IBM that, on top of an attractive hosted e-procurement offering alliance with Ariba called Leveraged Procurement Services, also features the group-buying contracts functionality generally lacking in most mid-market e-procurement products. One should not discount the Oracle's recent aggressive online offerings for small business either (see, Oracle Claims The Worst Is Over And Turns To KISS For A Boost).

Furthermore, Although Microsoft Great Plains has an impressive track record of integrating partners' products with its products (see, Siebel: Great Plans for Great Plains and Great Plains Supply Chain Series To Be Powered By Logility), integrating the eProcure application to all major back office products, as well as to a broader set of trading services such as content management, suppliers' integration, procurement cards, and payment settlement services, remains a major undertaking. However, the company has been there many times, witness the challenge of training the affiliate channel in the new application for the Siebel and/or Logility modules.

SOURCE:
http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/articles/microsoft-great-plains-procures-eprocure-at-last-16441/

Portals: Necessary But Not Self-sufficient

2010-08-17T22:50:00.000-07:00

Portals: Necessary But Not Self-Sufficient

Previously, portals were merely Web "super-sites" offering a broad array of resources and services, such as (free) e-mail, forums/discussion groups, search engines, on-line shopping malls, news, white and yellow pages directories, and links to other sites. Now they are pervasive in the business world and used at the departmental and corporate levels. The major, general-purpose Web portals are still Yahoo!, Excite, MSN, and America On-Line (AOL) and are the Web equivalent of the original, pre-Web on-line services such as CompuServe and AOL, which initially was only an Internet provider. Now most of these traditional search engines have transformed themselves into Web portals to attract and keep a larger audience.

However, one should differentiate between a public portal, which is a high-traffic Web site with a wide range of content, services, and vendor links; and an enterprise or corporate portal, which is a Web-based presentation and interaction interface for users of enterprise applications and resources. In other words, a corporate portal is an internal Web site (intranet) that provides proprietary, enterprise-wide information to company employees, selected trading partners, and selected public and vertical-market Web sites. It typically includes a search engine for internal documents and the ability to customize the portal page for different user groups and individuals. It is the internal equivalent of the general-purpose portal on a company's corporate Web site.

Aptly named, portals open a window of communication between enterprise applications and communities of customers, partners, content providers, advertisers, and, in most cases, the general public. Furthermore, enterprise information portals (EIP) provide windows into enterprise information, applications, and processes Leading enterprise applications vendors have made moves to adopt Internet portal strategies. The basic goal is to create a virtual workplace and marketplace for users, where enterprise applications, disparate back-end systems, and external content and services (catalogs, directories, travel services, benefits administration, etc.) can be seamlessly and transparently accessed by users via the Web. From this emerges the term business intelligence (BI) portal, which is a corporate portal that enables users to query and produce reports on enterprise-wide databases.

By personalizing, profiling, and presenting information, business applications, and inter-organizational interfaces in the context of roles and work processes, an enterprise portal provides a thin-client, Web-based link to work-based resources within the enterprise. On the Web, personalization means returning a page that has been customized for the user, taking into consideration that person's habits and preferences. Customization may be done by the user, appear on the Web site, or both and may be aimed at the general public or at company employees.

Portals are a natural result of increased global competition, the need for better and faster customer support, and the Internet phenomenon. If nothing else, they also afford technology-challenged suppliers a low cost, low risk entry into the Internet marketplace ("the global village"). Portals also allow software vendors to reach a greater number of power and casual users alike, which increases system usage and creates the opportunity for higher license revenues.

However, while there has been a cornucopia of portal applications (including Web-based interfaces into any number of enterprise-level applications) within any given enterprise, there has been a tendency for tying all the necessary capabilities within a single framework. Namely, this is seen in customer- and consumer-facing portals, where usability focuses on developers and features like personalization come notably into play. This differs from employee- or supplier-facing portals, where usability focuses on end users, with their need for collaboration, search, and content management features. In other words, the higher one goes in the hierarchy of portal architecture, the fewer vendors will offer a single portal framework accommodating most of these capabilities. As satisfied as they may have been with the particular standalone portal applications, over time users begin to seek fewer vendors and gravitate toward those with the firmest strategic position and long-term viability.

Evolution of the Portal Market

At its peak, the portal market had around 30 portal start-ups and full-fledged independent software vendors (ISV), and attracted larger information technology (IT) players like Sybase, SAP, IBM, Computer Associates, Oracle, Vignette, and Hummingbird (some of which once even took the daring step of reinventing themselves as portal companies only to make u-turns soon thereafter). However, because customers were looking for established vendors, the portal markets has reached the end of its life as a standalone market, which was symbolically marked by BEA Systems' recent acquisition of the last standing portal vendor Plumtree, which pioneered portal software that connects workgroups, computer systems, and multi-channel processes back in 1996. Given the earlier disappearance of portal pure-player like Epicentric and Corechange, many now recognize that portal technology should be included as part of infrastructure— specifically application servers that bundle together different software programs in order to work with each other.

Having moved beyond its original role as a standalone presentation layer to become a part of a larger technology stack, the portal is now considered part of a larger offering, be it in collaboration, vertical-specific applications, or application infrastructure and middleware. Even the recent, much talked about composite applications have promoted the portal as kind of lightweight integration layer for people, data, and processes.

Yet, niche portal vendors have had difficulties with the best example being Plumtreee. Despite fine-tuning its product strategy towards syndicated portal services, the enterprise web, activity management, and composite applications development, Plumtree has struggled to sustain momentum and growth in the market. It found itself squeezed by the strategic infrastructure aspect of portal frameworks, which the likes of Microsoft and IBM tend to dominate. It also had to contend with enterprise application portal heavy-weights, such as SAP and Oracle, being ill-able to make the same types of investments in development. However, even SAP, with its vast install base and research and development (R&D) resources, still hasd to resort to acquiring TopTier, a specialist vendor, in order to deliver SAP Enterprise Portal (see SAP Acquires TopTier to Further Broaden Its Horizons).

These developments have been in tune with the continual blurring of the traditional lines and layers which have demarked middleware applications and their underlying infrastructure. This has created the so-called "appli-structure" (see SOA-based Applications and Infrastructure--The Next Frontier?). The middleware stack is being squeezed, and application integration and configuration management is becoming rooted in both the application and infrastructure layers. Also, in most existing and prospective user enterprises, application vendors own business relationships, while infrastructure providers have IT relationships. But these large vendors cover both bases and will naturally have the most influence during the selection and implementation of applications and middleware/infrastructure.

Partner Rather Than Compete for the Portal Commodity?

Thus it is only logical to see many mid-market enterprise applications vendors ally with the providers of the highest-level portal framework, rather than to waste precious and scarce resources on "reinventing the wheel". This approach should help their bid to increase the use of Web-based portals among their enterprise customers while, at the same time, make more efficient and pointed use of their own R&D resources. In addition, some acquisitive ERP vendors with multiple product lines should be able to make new features and, at the same, improve the "look-and-feel" of their assorted ERP product lines faster and concurrently.

Given the "commoditization of technology" (which is not a disparaging term for the likes of IBM and especially Microsoft, which has been thriving on high-volume software sales), vendors that sell Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) or Microsoft .NET-based applications to a J2EE or Microsoft shop will pragmatically begin accommodating IBM WebSphere or Microsoft SharePoint Portal frameworks, respectively.

Enterprise applications vendors SSA Global and Epicor Software have recently debuted new versions of their portals for their primarily mid-market customers. Respectively, these vendors are working with IBM and Microsoft so that portal adopters can benefit from WebSphere's and SharePoint's models and access other enterprise data. At the same time, customers can continue to approach diverse applications, such as SSA Global and Epicor through individual SSA Global or Epicor portals. This should appeal to existing IBM and Microsoft shops that are thinking of adopting these vendors' applications for their particular industry fit, it may also be a bonus for existing customers that are loath to unnecessarily "graft" an unproven proprietary n application-centric portal onto a well-known portal framework they may already have in place.

For example, soon after Epicor introduced its own portal applications in 1999, nearly half of Epicor ERP accounts jumped at the opportunity and licensed the portals. Yet, more recently, that number has dropped significantly to less than 15 percent of user companies licensing portals for their initial deployments. The vendor hopes to reverse this negative trend by piggybacking on Microsoft's uncontested popularity on the desktop-side (see The Technology Choices), and use its high, mid-market popularity on the server-side.

In general, portal server is an application that is used to develop, deliver, and maintain a Web portal, which typically includes a variety of tools and functions, including user authentication, identity management, personalization, a search facility, and content aggregation capabilities. To that end, the Epicor Portal Server component of Epicor Portal will leverage Microsoft SharePortal's commoditized features to provide secure role-based access to Epicor and other business applications. It will also provide self-guided discovery and data visualization, targeted content through personalization, Web-query access for application integration, and schemas for the Epicor Enterprise, Manufacturing, and iScala products.

Although Epicor increasingly competes with Microsoft Business Solutions' (MBS) mid-market ERP products, such as Great Plains, Navision, and Axapta (recently renamed into Microsoft Dynamics GP, Dynamics NAV, and Dynamics AX, respectively), there is no severe risk of Epicor closely tying its portal strategy with Microsoft. This is really another case of "co-opetition," where competitors come together for a particular product or concept, yet still remain competitive in the market. Such practices have become common in the industry, and are not particular to Microsoft, especially given Oracle's foray in the database, middleware, and applications markets, and IBM's presence everywhere except for applications. It would be detrimental (if not foolish) for any underlying technology provider (however powerful it might be) to sabotage a partner-competitor applications vendor.

Microsoft should be a winner in this race, even if its applications do not win a particular selection gig against Epicor; Microsoft Information Worker and Server & Platform divisions will still benefit indirectly from every instance of Epicor's deployment. After all, MBS is only a minor (however important) part of Microsoft, with still fledgling revenues compared to its sister divisions. Certainly, Microsoft would not want to alienate its ISV partners and push them into the embrace of IBM, BEA, or Oracle.

Ironically, like in the case of embracing .NET, Epicor will likely offer a more complete implementation of SharePoint technologies across its business application products than Microsoft offers, given that Microsoft Axapta product does not yet leverage SharePoint portal technologies. The win-win situation extends to Epicor too, as it will still have its hands full to populate the Epicor Portal Content component with pre-packaged workflows, key performance indicators (KPI), strategic operations for specific industries, process flows, and organizational structures. Multiple, diverse audience targets have to be provided with collaborative workspaces and document management solutions. There is also a significant opportunity (but also impending development work) to provide composite applications that link Epicor Web parts (transactional portlets), multiple Epicor BI, Web parts (for online analytic processing [OLAP] cube analysis), and various Epicor and third-party applications, with reporting, SharePoint discussions, and other pertinent components, in a best-of-breed fashion.

To put it into context, portlet is a mechanism used to more readily integrate content, applications, and processes into portals via providing a low-level, point-to-point integration approach by accessing application programming interfaces (API), structured query language (SQL) statements, Web services, and more. Web services and Java provide mechanisms for enabling portlets written for one vendor's portal to run unchanged in another vendor's portal. Emerging standards that promise to enable this portlet interoperability include Java Specification Request (JSR) 168 and Web Services for Remote Portlets (WSRP). JSR 168 is a specification from the Java Community Process (JCP) organization designed to enable interoperability between portals and portlets. It defines a set of APIs for portal computing, addressing areas such as aggregation, personalization, presentation, and security. On the other hand, WSRP is a specification designed to establish a common means for portals to obtain and display information reaped from Web services, and it was approved as a standard of the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) in 2003. By embracing these facilities, Epicor (and SSA Global from the IBM/J2EE camp) might actually remain as mainstream portal technology where its products should become more attractive for environments with diverse systems.

Much like Epicor, SSA Global's mission for its portal solutions is to increase productivity and effectiveness by providing every employee, customer, supplier, and partner with easy access to all the information and tools they need to do their jobs. The strategy is to

* Improve productivity by providing each person with immediate access to aggregated content from their most relevant SSA Global application pages

* Improve alignment by highlighting the most important business information, including KPIs, for each user role

* Improve responsiveness by enabling end users to drill into information and take action

* Improve agility by enabling customers and end users to easily personalize their portals

* Increase institutional knowledge by facilitating collaboration

The vendor's portal solutions are service-oriented composite applications that should enable customers to combine their existing IT assets in new ways to better support their changing business processes. SSA Global's most recent portal solution is a financial management portal that provides a near optimal user experience for seventeen different financial user roles ranging from chief financial officer (CFO) to billing clerk. The vendor's product roadmap calls for a steady stream of portal solutions being released every quarter. Next up are a human capital management (HCM) portal and an industry-oriented portal for the consumer packaged goods (CPG) industry. SSA Global also has a strategic partnership with IBM and leverages the renowned IBM WebSphere Portal server for its solutions.

SOURCE:
http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/articles/portals-necessary-but-not-self-sufficient-18186/

What Does Having a Paperless Office Really Mean?

2010-08-17T22:49:00.002-07:00

What Does Having a Paperless Office Really Mean?

Like anything else, making the change from a paper-oriented office environment to a paperless office has both advantages and disadvantages (please see the first part of this series So, You're Considering a Paperless Office?). However, if armed with a thorough understanding of its operations and a solid implementation plan, an organization can make the switch to a paperless office less painful.

I once read an article on the Internet that said to have a paperless office is about as realistic as having paperless toilet paper. Obviously, this person doesn't understand the power of water. Having a paperless office is possible provided an organization's expectations are realistic. But before we jump into that, let me clear up one common misconception about the term “paperless office.” Having a paperless office does not mean a company will never have or use paper. Rather, it means a leveraging of technology to reduce a company's dependency on paper; it does not to eliminate the use of paper altogether.

A wise person once said, “It is possible to change without improving—it is impossible to improve without change.” Most (if not all) organizations constantly strive to better serve both their internal clients (that is, its employees) and external clients. Without a doubt, going paperless requires change, and for some organizations, making this change is a daunting, if not impossible, task. As with any change, organizations should prepare themselves by reviewing the various possible outcomes (both positive and negative) that could result from going paperless.

In other words, organizations should ask the question: will this change have a profound effect on the way we do business?

Knowing Your Operations

An organization's first step when implementing a paperless office is to know its operations—not just its physical processes (although this is very important too, and must be taken into account), but its clients' and staff's attitudes toward this type of change as well. Are clients prepared for a paperless system? Will it change the way the organization interacts with them? Will office personnel now receive those 100-page reports electronically instead of as hard copies? Do they have the technological means to support this change, and are they willing to accept this new way of working?

Here's an example to illustrate my point. My wife has led change management programs for several large organizations, including a Fortune 500 company. Her work involved guiding companies through the process of changing the way they do business and interact with new technology. In the majority of cases, she would inevitably find herself “cleaning up” (correcting) management's errors caused by having made changes without analyzing the effects those changes would have on internal and external clients. Too often, management's focus was exclusively on physical processes. This single-mindedness proved to be very costly for these organizations.

Furthermore, an organization must be aware of the types of documents it is required by law to keep in hard copy. I emphasize “by law” because you would be surprised at the difference between what people believe, based on their personal experience, is meant by this, and what is actually meant by the stipulation “by law.”

To understand how to transform itself into a paperless office, an organization must first recognize the several hurdles that it will need to deal with, and then take the appropriate steps to overcome them. For a smooth transition to a paperless office, an organization should take the following measures:

* Know its external customers. Will the change to a paperless office be transparent to them? If so, will they feel the change immediately?
* Know its internal customers. Are employees aware of the intended changes? What training will they receive?
* Identify the physical processes that will change. Remember, it is not necessary—or even realistic—to be 100 percent paperless.

Once an organization has answered these questions and addressed these issues, it will have successfully cleared the hurdles to moving toward a paperless office, with a clear set of realistic goals. The next big step is to find the right paperless office system for the organization's particular situation.

So what should you expect from your new system? Of course, the price should be right, but apart from that, there are some other extremely important factors to consider.

How Easy Is the New System to Learn?

Implementing a system that is low-cost but harder to learn than advanced quantum physics is useless. After all, a new system needs to be picked up quickly (learned within a couple of hours) by all office personnel. Generally speaking, a system that builds upon the current knowledge of basic Windows functions is one that is easy to learn.

If the vendor of the paperless office system offers a free trial, take it and see if everyone can understand the system without a training session. A training session should supplement everybody's understanding. In other words, the system should be easy enough to learn so that office staff can easily understand how it works; a training session should simply be a reinforcement of that understanding.

How Strong Is Customer Support?

Incorporating a paperless office system is a big decision that will have a major impact on an organization's operations. Therefore, it is crucial that the company selling the system offers a well-defined support plan included in the purchasing price of the system. With so many choices of systems, an organization shouldn't have to pay extra for premium customer support. Questions organizations should ask include

* How does the provider offer this support?
* Is support accessible by e-mail only, or can a number be called to speak to a person?
* How fast does customer support respond to a call?
* Will the organization have a designated trainer? If so, is this trainer the one who sold the system, or are questions passed on to another department?

Many organizations separate their sales and the training departments. The problem with doing this is that these two departments have different motives. A salesperson separates himself from the client once the client's money is received, leaving the training and support department to defend any discrepancies between what the salesperson said the system can do and what the system actually does. However, if the salesperson is also the trainer, this problem is eliminated because of the continued contact between the seller and buyer.

What Happens When You Find System Errors?

Don't be fooled. No system is 100 percent error proof, and that includes a paperless office system. Don't let a salesperson try to convince you otherwise. Even Microsoft, with all its resources, still experiences problems with its Office products, so why would your paperless office system be any different? Be sure to ask the following two questions: How quickly will the vendor correct a problem once one is discovered? Will you have to wait until other clients find issues, or will these problems be fixed quickly and re-sent to you?

Know Your Office's Core Needs and Your Vendor

It is important to understand your company's needs. One way of doing this is to create what is known as a decision matrix. A decision matrix is a fast and easy tool commonly used by consulting companies and the US military to add up values in order to quantify a particular decision.

For example, let's say your organization is considering a paperless office system, and the two core reasons for wanting one are a) to have the ability to protect the organization's information from unauthorized users, and b) to be able to quickly search for data. A decision matrix allows you to quantify each paperless office system option in order to determine which is the best fit for your organization. Table 1 is a sample decision matrix for an organization wanting a paperless office system that has strong security and search capabilities.
Feature Importance Paperless Office System A Paperless Office System B
Security 3 2 (6) 1 (3)
Search 2 2 (4) 1 (2)
PDF compatible 1 1 (1) 2 (2)
Total (11) (7)

Table 1. Sample decision matrix

In the column labeled Feature, you list the features you want in a paperless office system. The next column, labeled Importance, is where you assign a weight of importance to each feature listed in the first column. The higher the value, the more important the feature is to your organization.

In this example, the paperless office system's security features are more important than search capabilities, and search is more important than having a system that is PDF compatible. The next step is to decide which system performs a better job for each feature listed, and to assign a “2” (standing for “most”) or a “1” (standing for “least”).

In this example, the organization has decided that Paperless Office System A has better security features than Paperless Office System B. The same comparison is then performed for the other features. The bracketed numbers are a multiplication of the numbers listed in column one by the ranking of the office systems for that feature. This multiplication provides a weighted value of how each system compares to each other for a specified feature. The Total row simply sums up the columns of the multiplied values. The results from this simplified example show that Paperless Office System A is the better choice, based on a quantifiable approach.

However, it is important to understand that this is simply a tool to use when making a decision—one that should be part of a larger, comprehensive evaluation process.

Lastly, it is recommended that an organization avoid a system that uses a proprietary format to secure its data. This way, should the vendor of your system go out of business, no difficulties in integrating the paperless office system you purchased with another system in the organization will be encountered.

In Conclusion

The decision to change over to a paperless office should be approached in a systematic and logical manner. It is extremely important that an organization considers exactly why it wants to move toward a paperless office, and to have a clear understanding of the benefits it can expect from such a system. Since paper has been around for centuries and has many favorable traits that have allowed it to become entrenched in our society, organizations should be prepared to face some strong resistance from its employees and management when introducing the paperless office concept.

Remember, a 100-percent paperless environment is not only unrealistic, it's unnecessary. The goal is to find an ideal mix of paper-based operations you want remaining as such and the ones you want migrated into the paperless environment. The best way to accomplish this is to understand your workplace environment and operations, and to consider the skill set of the employees that will be most affected by this change. Once you have cleared this hurdle, finding the right paperless office system is a matter of identifying what features are most important in achieving the desired benefits. A decision matrix tool can go a long way in helping to decide which system to pick, but this tool should be a part of a much larger evaluation plan.

While finding the right paperless office system for your organization may appear to be an overwhelming task, a solid plan that is properly executed makes the process fairly simple, and the benefits from implementing such a system can be very rewarding financially. Processes that maximize your employees' time on other revenue-generating activities gives your company the power to use existing resources to take on more clients and to better serve existing ones, leading to greater customer satisfaction. The paperless office can play an important role in making this a reality.

SOURCE:
http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/articles/what-does-having-a-paperless-office-really-mean-19153/

Bolstering the Call Center with Service Resolution Management Processes

2010-08-17T22:49:00.001-07:00

To accommodate increasing customer demand for company and product information and for quick issue resolution, companies are now considering the benefits of online self-service systems. Knowledge management (KM) software is the key to such systems, as well as to integrating customer relationship management (CRM) and service resolution management (SRM).

For more background, please see Integrating Customer Relationship Management and Service Resolution Management and Knowledge Management: The Core of Service Resolution Management.

Bolstering Call Center (and Other CRM) Processes

The trend of customer service enablement and the nurturing of customer relationships (which have traditionally been the forgotten stepchildren of CRM) may be overtaking customer acquisition as a main driver of recent CRM deployments. Customer service has historically been provided primarily in person or over the telephone, with limited reference materials available for the customer service representative (CSR). This emerging business model assumes that companies that provide customer service over the telephone will find value in aggregating company knowledge by using the appropriate software, and will be willing to access the content over other channels, especially the Internet. The business model also assumes that companies will find value in providing some of their customer service over the Internet instead of by telephone.

In the past, customers would show a preference for a certain channel of communication with a company, but this is no longer the case. Customers now use several different channels available to ask for support and service and about upgrade issues, or to inquire about or request new products and services. And they expect to receive accurate, consistent information, regardless of the channel they are using. Service that does not meet these expectations is considered a waste of time, and a reason for the customer to seek out competitive offerings elsewhere.

The use of multiple channels for customer service and support, as well as the importance of consistent, accurate, and swift answers, is expected to only increase in the future. Companies are thus realizing that what their customers are seeking is knowledge (which is likely stored somewhere in the company, but more likely, scattered all over the company), and that these customers want it regardless of the channel they choose, be it telephone, Web self-service, e-mail, retail kiosk, or chat.

The logical question a company should ask itself is how it can provide customers with direct access to the knowledge they are looking for when that data may be residing in a variety of places. For example, product specifications, technical support, billing questions, and pricing and policy information can all be found in any number of places, such as CRM databases; legacy KM systems; frequently asked questions (FAQ) lists; intranets; content management systems; billing systems; or an automated response system. The goal here is to analyze the customer's problem, retrieve the information needed to solve that problem, and to do so in whichever contact channel the customer chooses. This process should not only minimize customer frustration and lower the cost of the support transaction, but it should also leave the customer delighted.

Although computer-telephony integration (CTI) systems do a great job at automating call routing and case management, Web sites have become ever glossier and animated, and CRM systems do a decent job of handling customer contacts (and possibly preferences) and product information, something is still missing to enable cohesive customer service. The plethora of new self-service technologies, such as natural language search engines, knowledge bases, guided navigation, user forums, collaboration, personalization, multichannel (e-mail, instant messenger [IM], integrated voice response [IVR], call centers), and so on, lead us to the emerging part of CRM software applications, specifically applications that enable customer service organizations to more effectively resolve service requests and answer questions.

What Service Resolution Management Offers

Built on KM and search technologies, SRM (not to be confused with supplier relationship management) applications optimize the resolution process across multiple service channels, including contact centers, self-service Web sites, help desks, e-mail, and chat.

An SRM system creates a knowledge backbone for the seller company by creating a single interface that pulls vital information and knowledge from wherever it is stored, whether it is in the CRM system, legacy support systems, search engine, Web site, document libraries, etc. It allows the company, as a business leader, to evaluate what processes are taking place in its support environment and to then determine how it would like those processes to be handled. With this, the company can guide users step by step through the process of answering their questions, applying the right process to each inquiry to drive the outcome it wants.

Service resolution systems enable the company to harness all the tools and knowledge it has already acquired to solve customers' issues, regardless of what channel they use to tell the seller company about their issue. These SRM applications have to complement, integrate with, and enhance traditional CRM areas like sales force automation (SFA), marketing automation, contact center, and help desk applications by providing knowledge-based solutions that improve service delivery. Although still an emerging software category, existing SRM customers include some of the largest companies in the world, and SRM products have reportedly enabled these companies to reduce operating and service delivery costs, improve customer satisfaction, and increase revenues.

Here is an illustration: A service call (customer inquiry, complaint, etc.) comes in, and the agent fields it by performing a search. A technical bulletin, written by a product manager and stored on a network drive, comes up in the query results because the knowledge base searches both structured and unstructured knowledge. This very issue has been documented, and a resolution has been built to ensure that an answer can be provided. A wizard pops up and prompts the technical support agent to walk the customer through a setup process. The new product can then be used successfully, resulting in a happy customer.

This is the type of service the customer wants and what support systems are really trying to provide—seamless service resolution, which can only be provided by effectively using and managing corporate knowledge (i.e., the knowledge of products and services; diagnostic troubleshooting; information stored in all documents on the network drives, intranets, and e-mail systems; and, most important, the knowledge of the customers and support agents).

Trend Analysis

The markets for KM and SRM solutions are still emerging, and it is difficult to predict how large or how quickly they will grow, if at all. Some companies have found that the productivity of customer service personnel initially drops while CSRs are becoming accustomed to using the software.

Self-service can cause conflicts, since it contributes to a general shift of control and resources away from the call center. Also, exposing some information can be risky. For example, logging complaints into the system and then displaying them on the customer portal can cause some users to regard giving out sensitive information as “hanging themselves." Resistance to the software by customer service personnel and inadequate development and maintenance of the system's knowledge resources, business rules, and other configurations have in some cases made it even more difficult to attract new customers and retain old ones.

Competition in the fragmented SRM marketplace is rapidly evolving and intense, and one should expect competition to further intensify in the future as current competitors expand their product offerings and as new competitors enter the market. One should also expect that competition will increase as a result of industry consolidation, which comes from the need for newer models of customer service, in which a single vendor provides solutions for both internal and external service, technical support, and search.

User Recommendations

In general, it makes economic sense for companies to pursue an SRM strategy, since in the all-too-common scenario of using disparate KM, CRM, and search applications, despite all of the resources at hand, the customer is hardly ever provided with any resolution, except to take a look at the competitive offering (in disgust). Conversely, the scenarios in which an SRM approach is taken should enable the contact center agent to satisfy the customer's needs and increase the economic value of that customer to the organization.

By using advanced KM technologies, users can create a cross-channel approach to help automate service resolution in the enterprise, so that all of the valuable information in all of those disparate systems is tied together in one common knowledge platform, which is then made available to the agents, customers, and the enterprise. Indeed, it should not matter if a customer query comes in at the call center or at the help desk, or via e-mail, phone, or the web site, since the correct answer to the query should be accurate and consistent across all channels, and it should reflect the outcome that the selling company desires.

However, while the potential for self-service and SRM to reduce costs and improve service quality is indisputable, it is an extremely complex model to deliver, since self-service capabilities usually require multiple layers of technology across each service channel. Companies do best when implementing it in a step-wise fashion, starting with something as simple as providing answers to FAQs, and moving up to allowing customers to execute complex transactions (like changing preferences for a service) on their own.

Standardizing on a set of packaged CRM applications helps when integrating self-service and SRM across channels. Yet most companies will still need to buy best-of-breed "e-service" products to provide live chat, e-mail response management, customer search, and other key features needed for self-service over the Web. User companies must be prepared to make a reasonable investment in their transaction architecture in order to facilitate self-service and to handle the higher volume of interactions with customers.

Companies must also identify the metrics they will need to measure their self-service efforts. Though a service center is still largely viewed as a cost center, many traditional metrics are not appropriate any longer. A multitude of factors can impact a call center's key performance indicators (KPIs), and this is before any attempt is made to implement and deploy the multichannel call center agent concept.

Therefore, KPIs, such as average wait-time, first call closure rates, cost per call, and average call duration, must be closely monitored as the program is rolled out. These should all drop as the call center agents begin to successfully and uniformly manage multiple channels. For Internet-based systems, the proper KPI might be the number of transactions completed without a customer having to pick up the phone, while for an IVR system, it could be the number of customer calls completed without human assistance.

Ultimately, companies need to know if customers have found what they needed and if they have gone away happy. But answering these simple questions can often mean wading through a disparate mix of click stream data, e-service usage logs, CRM analytics, analytic reporting, and more.

Well-designed applications that are consistent with other self-service channels and that are integrated with assisted-service channels as required, such as the telephone or a live chat feature, are critical, not only for self-service adoption, but also for overall customer satisfaction marks. Self-service fails when it tries to anticipate as many calls as possible but ends up delivering hundreds of nuanced responses to the customer, none of which is quite right.

If customers choose self-service, they need to find it quick and easy to use, and their first experience should be positive, whereas the information available through self-help systems must be consistent, accurate, and up to date. If customers see an inconsistency between the answers on the self-help solution and the service they are trying to use, they will lose all confidence in the self-help approach, and will want live, human interaction (if the company is lucky enough not to have lost the customer).

Besides providing “handholding” assurances to customers, assisted service is a major source of valuable customer feedback, and no company should want to eliminate that opportunity for communication entirely.

SOURCE:
http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/articles/bolstering-the-call-center-with-service-resolution-management-processes-19935/

The Web-Enabled Sales Process

2010-08-17T22:48:00.002-07:00

I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore! Things have got to change . 1976 movie NETWORK

Today, nearly every business to business (B2B) information technology company I talk to is mad that its attempts to increase new account sales have failed. This has grown into a huge problem—to the point where a significant number of companies have decided that they are not going to take it any more, and have totally abandoned new account growth strategies. However, by leveraging new technology, understanding the buy cycle value chain and enabling today's self-directed buyer, sales organizations can significantly increase revenue and reduce costs.

Since the tech bust that followed Y2K, technology companies have become more and more frustrated by their attempts to win new business. Sales departments across the industry have tried all the traditional sales strategies: improving the quality of the sales force by replacing non-performers with proven professionals; improving staff knowledge by conducting sales training programs; and reorganizing into specialized industry verticals. They have expanded market coverage through reseller programs; created dedicated telemarketing teams to generate more leads; and implemented customer relationship management (CRM) systems to improve relationships with prospects and customers. Yet with each initiative, the cost of sales has escalated, and with each quarter end new account revenue results have been more and more disappointing.

Consequently, sales management teams have been under intense pressure to keep their attention focused on the final act of closing the deal. The problem is that the sales department has spent too much time repairing the symptoms of the sales problem and has avoided dealing with its root cause: regaining the ability to influence the purchasing decision process. To effectively influence the purchasing process, sales must find new ways to identify buyers earlier; to collect buyer information; to gain buyer access; and to provide added value. Yet, this task is particularly daunting for business to business (B2B) enterprise system providers where decision processes span months. Sales tactics that worked well in the past to identify, access, and influence decision makers are no longer effective.

Early Access via the On-line Channel

In the past, salespeople controlled the sales cycle by managing the flow of information. Today the information available on the Internet has empowered buyers to structure their own buying cycle. This shift is comparable to the days when the automobile engine replaced the horse as our primary source of transportation power. The horse couldn't compete with the speed, convenience and low cost of the automobile. The same can be said for the Internet, which has given buyers shopping tools and conveniences that didn't exist a few years ago. The time has come to completely reengineer the go-to-market strategy to make it compatible with the buyer's preferred mode of communication. Buyers will always be attracted to the least risky, most convenient, and lowest cost information outlet. The Internet fits these criteria and has become the primary channel that buyers use to complete many of their early stage buying tasks, and it continues to be an important channel of influence throughout the entire process. As a result, yesterday's successful consultative salesperson is being excluded from much of today's buying process.

I'm not suggesting that the Internet will make the salesperson obsolete. Personal selling will always play a vital role in managing the overall enterprise relationship whether it is conducted via the mail, on the phone, in person or across the Internet. What I am suggesting is that sales department personnel should think twice before they dial the phone or pack their bags to visit a client, and instead should consider clicking a mouse to deliver more effective support to prospects evaluating solutions on-line.

The prominence of the Internet has grown exponentially in a few short years. According to the PEW Internet & American Life Project, between 1999 and 2000 the Web became the "new normal" way of life. Back then few of us realized how easy it would be to shop on-line. Now we can simply log-on, search a few ideas, review product features, compare prices, select a vendor, and have a product arrive at our door the next day. As we enter 2006 over 70 percent of us enjoy a rich media experience from our home, which is driving an on-line shopping growth rate of over 30 percent a year. Life in the on-demand world, as characterized by the iPod, allows us to tune-in to our interests and tune-out everything else. We have all learned to screen phone calls, to skip commercials, and to block spam so we can tune-in to exactly what we want, when we want it.

Each morning when we arrive at work we bring these newly acquired habits and expectations with us. Is buying big, complex enterprise level systems really that different from personal shopping? It can be compared to the process of buying a major capital item, such as a house or a car. There is an old auto industry adage that the busiest day of the week on a car dealer's lot was Sunday, the day the dealership was closed. Has the Internet become the modern equivalent of visiting the dealer's lot on Sunday? According to a ZDNet Research statistic "in 2003, 94% of US consumers shopping for a car went on-line to do research, get quotes from dealers and to order brochures. This compared to 67% who actually visited a dealership when making a decision on which car to buy." While eventually the buyer will go to the car lot to test drive and buy the car, the preliminary research to create a shortlist is being done on-line.

Buyers Avoid Sales Contact

It's human nature to avoid unsolicited sales contact. People are very uncomfortable with the emotional aspect of the buyer-salesperson relationship. It is not high-pressure sales tactics that are the source of this anxiety. The problem is that a person's sense of obligation grows as a personal relationship develops, and so to does the pending dread that all but one of these relationships will have to be broken. As the song goes, "breaking-up is hard to do", and we know that salespeople don't accept no easily. In the past, buyers sacrificed service and drove to the dealer's lot on Sunday to avoid these awkward situations. Today, buyers are avoiding the fear of relationships by simply going on-line, and are getting access to better information than what salespeople ever provided. In nearly a third of car buying situations the buyer's decision is already made before he or she arrives at the dealership. The same applies for decision-makers who are seeking enterprise level solutions. As a result, many salespeople will never get the opportunity to position their solution, and a lucky few will not get their opportunity until much later in the buying process.

So who's qualifying who these days? When salespeople get a lead, they instinctively make the qualifying phone call to determine the prospect's pain, power, vision, value, and control. Qualification is the first step in the old sales cycle because a time consuming and expensive discovery or needs assessment engagement is assumed to be next. However, today's buyers don't want a vendor's assistance at this early stage. With the help of on-line information sources, buyers would rather research and complete their own unbiased needs assessment study. The irony with the old qualifying call is that by the time a salesperson qualifies an opportunity, he or she will be too late to have a significant influence on the purchasing process. According to a 2004 lead qualification study by KnowledgeStorm, traditional qualification parameters are missing a significant market opportunity. The study estimated that 40 percent of early stage buyers were disqualified by sales because they hadn't determined the answers to the qualifying questions yet, and the study estimated that another 40 percent refused to answer these questions just to avoid sales contact. As a result, salespeople are missing the opportunity to influence 80 percent of today's buyers during the most impressionable stage of a project. Would salespeople dare consider the possibility that they can do more selling without being there? The eureka moment struck me, when I realized that the more a buyer can do without personal sales assistance the better.

The Buy Cycle Value Chain

Many marketing and sales departments think in terms of the "end game" of the value proposition of their solution. All too often they forget that the winner is always the team that scores the most points at each play of the game. A selling approach designed around the buyer's information consumption process keeps salespeople focused on earning value points throughout the buy cycle. For example, a buyer's end game problem may be solved by your supply chain optimization product, but right now, the buyer just needs to schedule a realistic project plan. If your competition has a better plan to offer than you do, then it just scored an influence point. As the saying goes, "it takes a lot more than a better mouse trap to win a deal". In other words, salespeople need to follow the buy cycle and fulfill the buyer's needs at each consumption point along the way.

The decision process for an enterprise level system is defined by the corporate project life cycle within which the purchase falls. As with any business initiative, these projects can germinate from a variety of sources, but once sponsored as an official project it follows a relatively predictable decision process. To stay focused on the customer's buy cycle we use the PURCHASE acronym to designate eight separate purchase decision-making stages. The following is a brief description of each stage along with a few appropriate value offers that sales can provide:

1. Problem. In a pre-contemplation mode individuals search the Web to gain an awareness of the latest problem solving innovations, industry issues and business trends. These education seekers are willing to register an e-mail address to gain access to interesting on-line information. Marketing departments are currently doing a good job of providing business issue white papers, customer case studies, and product brochures. However, sales qualification resources are being wasted on the inquiry registrations that are generated from this segment. Automated follow-up offers should be sent to these inquiries to determine their interest level with an option to subscribe to a newsletter or register for preferred access to additional information.

2. Understanding. In this contemplation mode, a group of individuals unite within an organization to understand a specific problem in an effort to propose a possible solution strategy. They continue to search and gather the information necessary to build the business case required to establish an official corporate initiative with executive sponsorship. The sales strategy for this stage is similar to the problem stage with an additional element. Data mining will analyze buyer web site activity by organization to identify suspect accounts with increased activity levels for sales to research and possibly target offline as a high probability suspect.

3. Research. In a preparation mode a project team works to formalize a project structure to deliver a solution to the organization. The group's psychology immediately transitions to that of a more pragmatic early adopter mindset. The focus shifts from understanding the problem to creating the vision and charting a path to a solution. Since this is new ground for the organization, the team searches the Internet for project enablers such as evaluation roadmaps, third party reviews, budget calculators, needs assessment templates, and project plans. While today's self-directed buyer may be keeping the salesperson physically out of the process, they are happy to use their project-enabling resource downloads. Smart sales organizations are transferring their value propositions into the working documents of project teams in the form of needs assessment spread sheets, return on investment (ROI) calculators, and other project templates. High quality project enabling materials can provide a valid business opportunity to engage earlier than the competition to begin building a trusted personal relationship.

4. Comparison. The project team transitions into the evaluation phase with a clear vision, and a shortlist of qualified vendor organizations. Salespeople are engaged to visit for the first time to continue selling where their on-line sales collateral ended. At this point the buying team knows exactly what they want to see to complete their final evaluation. The concept of a "non-disclosure level" evaluation portal should be introduced by the salesperson at this stage. Salespeople should empower the project team with access to a standard array of high quality e-collateral portal content (presentation, demonstration, and testimonials) designed to address the standard evaluation issues so they can focus on solving the prospect's higher value business problems. By creating a collaborative environment with an empowered project team, project members can become an inside sales force motivated to get the organization's buy-in for their project. By monitoring portal activity, sales can evaluate its competitive position based on each contact's individual activity level.

5. Homework. Preparation for authorization is a very active internal stage when key project team members work to justify a recommended action plan and preferred solution. They prepare the detailed capital authorization documents, and begin planning the implementation. Often the salesperson is told he or she is one of two finalists, just to keep them honest through negotiation. But truth be known, there is a third alternative, a "no-decision." A delay or no-decision is the typical outcome when the project team submits a weak business case to management. By offering expert help with the use of the project enablers transferred in the Research stage, the sales team can earn the opportunity to collaborate on the internal business case.

6. Authorization. This is an internal sales activity where the project team has to sell its business case to a very conservative, risk-adverse executive group that is emotionally disconnected from the project. Given the amount of senior management scrutiny, project team members are highly motivated to win approval for their project. While this phase may drag on longer that expected, sales organizations have three primary objectives; to monitor their competitive position, to maintain team member enthusiasm, and to defend against competitive attacks. By linking the business case to portal based e-collateral, sales can monitor approval activity levels. By offering pre-implementation e-learning materials an enthusiastic project team can get a head start on the next phase of the project which will also distract members from having the time to listen to competitive attaches.

7. Signing. This stage begins as the buyer prepares to negotiate the deal and continues until the first payment is received. Pre-negotiation posturing has been going on for a while as buyers focus on mitigating risk issues and threaten sellers with the other viable alternative. Buyer information is invaluable at this stage. The project team members are instructed to be very vague as the buying negotiator "holds his cards very close to his chest". By maintaining engaging installation and pre-implementation content in the evaluation portal, sales can monitor buyer usage activity to determine their level of commitment. Nice words from the buyer that is not accompanied with corresponding activity is an early indication of a serious sales problem, while tough talk and a high activity level are indicators of a strong position.

8. Expansion. Once the solution is successfully implemented the organization looks to leverage the solution's success across other areas of the business. At this point the new customer is transferred to a customer support portal which would include an evaluation capability for additional products and services.

Understanding the different stages of the buy cycle and finding the appropriate value offers is only half the job. The next challenge is getting access to the right people and collecting the right information to deliver the best value. Let's think about this for a minute. The people you want to access are those visiting your web site. They are right there registering for exactly what they want. The golden opportunity lies with the visitor on your web site: you have the access, they have the need, and they are willing to provide information, if you can deliver immediate value.

Tomorrow: A more detailed review of the early stages of a web-enabled sales process; new qualification metrics, give-to-get communication, and how to capitalize on each golden opportunity to influence the buying process.

2006 The Holt Group

SOURCE:
http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/articles/the-web-enabled-sales-process-18476/

Software for Real People Part Two: Competition and User Recommendations

2010-08-17T22:48:00.001-07:00

Introduction

The problem is that creativity is a function of the mind and the mind works very differently than the software tools and applications that we use to enslave it. The mind is a neural network that has evolved over hundreds of millions of years to be an incredibly efficient network pattern graphics processor. Unfortunately the tools and applications we have developed to help improve productivity, such as enterprise resource planning (ERP), business productivity management (BPM), customer resource management (CRM), project planning, and word processing, are basically linear processes that primarily rely on textual or numeric structure.

Since the tools are inflexible, but important for the operation and management of the enterprise, we require the user to adapt to the tool rather than the tool supporting the user. Like the old saying, "If all you have is a hammer, then everything looks like a nail", as silly as it seems, we are trying to make the creative mind a nail so we can hit it with a hammer. There must be a better way, and there is. It's called MindManager X5, from Mindjet Corporation. (http://c.technologyevaluation.com/?u=/cp/TEC_article_20050201_1_al.asp&cl=1&i=746&c=205&l=1)

This is Part Two of a two-part note.

Part One discussed the features and functions of MindManager X5.

Competition

Alternatives and competitors to Mindmanager can be grouped into the following three application categories:

1. Task and project management
2. Visualization
3. Mind mapping

The first category, task and project management, is characterized by programs such as Microsoft Project and Outlook in addition to the personal productivity suites available from Franklin Covey, DayRunner, and TimeDesign. Each of these applications do an excellent job of helping the individual manage tasks and calendar dates after the creative process and planning has been completed. While very focused and powerful, these programs were not designed to tap into and leverage the creative process of the mind. This is why MindManager should be viewed as the creative front-end to any of these management tools, and why MindManager provides bi-directional integration with the Microsoft Office suite and a robust API for integration with other applications.

The best example of the second category, visualization, is Microsoft's Visio. This widely used, almost ubiquitous application is extremely powerful and virtually indispensable in large project management. Unfortunately, the key to the power of visual programs like Visio is a result of the boundary definitions of the abstraction. These boundaries were necessary for the application programmers to develop Visio's rich feature set. These same boundaries or constraints, however, make the application unwieldy and tedious to use for brainstorming and planning sessions. Diagramming applications such as Visio are more appropriately utilized after the up-front creative process. Of the entire Microsoft Office Suite, Visio is the only application to which MindManager has not yet provided seamless integration.

The third and last category is mind mapping software that directly competes with MindManager. Mind mapping was popularized in the 1960s by British researcher and memory expert Tony Buzan. Since then, many firms have created and market mind mapping software. In many ways, mind mapping has become an active subculture supported by a mind mapping application clearing-house at http://c.technologyevaluation.com/?u=/cp/TEC_article_20050201_1_al.asp&cl=1&i=746&c=205&l=2. A recent visit to the site found fifteen mind mapping application vendors for the PC. A Google search (relevancy listing) to narrow the search and find the top three competitors to MindManager resulted in two commercial applications and one Java open-source freeware product.

The top two listed commercial products are

1. MindMapper by SimTech Systems, Inc. (http://c.technologyevaluation.com/?u=/cp/TEC_article_20050201_1_al.asp&cl=1&i=746&c=205&l=3)
2. Visual Mind by Mind Technologies AS. (http://c.technologyevaluation.com/?u=/cp/TEC_article_20050201_1_al.asp&cl=1&i=746&c=205&l=4)

Since mind mapping has been around since the 1960s, it was not surprising to find the two competitive commercial applications had very similar functionality to MindManager. Since mind mapping is primarily a visual association graphics canvas, it was also unremarkable to find that the user interfaces were also very similar. So much so, that a user of one application can easily move to an alternative without hesitation.

Both competitive products support import and export integration with Word, Excel, Outlook, and Powerpoint, but only MindMapper had documented integration with Microsoft Project. For those who do not require the power of Microsoft Project, MindMapper includes its own integrated project management-resource scheduling. (and, unlike the current version of MindManager, its own internal Gantt charting functionality). Hyperlinking support for files, documents, web site and e-mail integration are also supported by each of the application.

From the standpoint of classic mind mapping features and functionality, all three of the commercial applications, MindManager, MindMapper, and Visual Mind, do a great job and will increase the productivity of any organization. Differentiation between the products becomes apparent when you consider the underlying architecture. MindManager's unique XML architecture and open-object model makes this application more extensible than the alternatives. Mindjet, which develops MindManager, is the only company actively using XML to integrate its mapping technology into other core business processes. To date, the company has released a Preview Edition of MindManager for salesforce.com as well as a MindManager Accelerator Solution for CommerceQuest s TRAXION EnterpriseBPMS, used for business process modeling.

MindManager also features a fully documented and supported XML-based API and object model, which permits third-party companies and users to more fully integrate and extend the application to better fit their unique business needs. Also, there is an active and well-supported MindManager development community.

The published prices of the three commercial applications are all very modest. In the author's opinion, investment in any of the three would be returned within a matter of days. Even with such immediate ROI, there is a freeware application that deserves mention. Freemind (http://c.technologyevaluation.com/?u=/cp/TEC_article_20050201_1_al.asp&cl=1&i=746&c=205&l=5) is a JAVA-based open source freeware mind mapping application that is available for most computing platforms. Freemind contains most of the standard mind mapping functionality of the commercial applications, but lacks Microsoft Office application integration. However, if your needs are modest and you do not require Microsoft integration for documentation, communication, and project management, or if you just want to get started and enjoy the power of mind mapping, then Freemind is a great no-cost alternative.

SOURCE:
http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/articles/software-for-real-people-part-two-competition-and-user-recommendations-17759/

The 2006 ECM West Conference: A Trial from AIIM

2010-08-17T22:47:00.000-07:00

The Association for Information and Image Management (AIIM) hosted its first enterprise content management (ECM) West conference this year in San Jose, California (US) to educate organizations on the latest technologies in content and information management and to provide a forum where vendors and peers can interact. This conference is a trial for AIIM, as in previous years the association organized two major trade shows—one on the east coast of the US and one in Europe, but never on the west coast of the US. AIIM established an agenda aimed to encourage both niche and major vendors alike to exhibit during this conference, but mostly AIIM tried to attract a variety of users interested in both how to capture content as well as mastering the content and the current technology standards that are used in the industry. This article will examine the key topics and the success of the AIIM West conference.

AIIM background

The association was founded in 1943 as the National Microfilm Association, and later in the 1960s became the Association for Information and Image Management. AIIM defines ECM as "the tools and technologies used to capture, to manage, to store, to preserve, and to deliver content and documents related to organizational processes. ECM enables four key business drivers: continuity, collaboration, compliance, and costs." These business drivers support organizations in strategy planning the life cycle of their content. Today AIIM is considered a global, independent representative of the ECM industry for users, vendors, resellers, and consulting companies, as it remains impartial and objective and educates participants in content and information management. AIIM supports its members through market education, professional development, and industry advocacy.

AIIM delivers market education through events and information services that provide users with information on how to specify, to select, and to deploy ECM solutions. Examples of these services are

* AIIM E-DOC Magazine, a monthly, printed publication containing articles, case studies, and lessons-learned, and with over 30,000 subscribers in North America;
* wall posters on a variety of topics such as records management, compliance, and more;
* AIIM webinars providing educational sessions on key issues and trends;
* online Solution Centers that provide online visitors with articles, presentations, research studies, etc.

AIIM primarily focuses on ECM, and over the last sixty years has helped users and organizations understand the issues and challenges of managing content, particularly documents and records related to business processes. Through its education programs, AIIM increases organizations' knowledge about the challenges they must deal with, and by providing this service, improves the success rate of ECM implementations.

Through its professional development platform, AIIM provides an educational roadmap for the industry that includes several programs such as an ECM & enterprise records management (ERM) certificate program, the AIIM Expo and Conference, and ECM solutions seminars. These events assist in developing standards within the industry, creating a clearer overview for clients to recognize knowledgeable consultants and implementers, and providing a more detailed market education.

AIIM creates peer networking opportunities through AIIM Chapters and AIIM Partners. These forums provide opportunities for attendees (users, vendors, and consultants) to share experiences with one another, to learn from each others' mistakes, and to increase the awareness and success rate of projects within the market. AIIM Chapters is a network of thirty-nine chapters in North America providing educational and networking opportunities at the local level for AIIM members, while AIIM Partners is a global network of organizations similar to AIIM in their commitment to help grow the knowledge and success of the industry.

By creating standards in the industry and writing research reports on user trends and perceptions throughout the year, AIIM serves as an industry advocate for the ECM industry. The association is an American National Standards Institute (ANSI)-accredited, standards development organization. AIIM also holds the secretariat for the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) committee, which focuses on information management compliance issues, TC171.

ECM West conference

ECM has become a compound product suite on which AIIM tries to shed light during its conferences. The ECM West Conference & Expo (which took place from November 6 8 in San Jose, California [US] this past year), just as its east coast equivalent, the AIIM Conference and Expo, introduced attendees to state of the art technology in data capture, storage, and management. AIIM did an excellent job in creating a schedule of presentations that educated the audience on a variety of topics, from compliance and standards to information integration, convenience, and accessibility within the increasingly broad and complex universe of ECM. Unfortunately, attendance fell below the expected numbers.

The ECM West conference emphasized key elements within ECM, such as digital imaging, digital asset management, and storage and preservation of content. As the market for vendors' full ECM suite offerings is consolidating, vendors need to be able to distinguish themselves through these niche areas. Best-of-breed solutions are emerging in the market. These viable niche players such as Kofax, docHarbor or Crownpeak can join efforts to provide all the ECM functionality clients will need to compete with such giants as EMC/Documentum, IBM/FileNet, and Interwoven. John Mancini, president of AIIM and one of the keynote speakers of the conference, confirmed these phenomena when he discussed the future of ECM and the feeling of vertigo as the ECM industry morphs and changes once again. Moreover, most ECM suite vendors consist of a combination of acquisitions and mergers of smaller players, and often the integration among the various products and solutions has not been completed, or the products do not work as smoothly as these vendors intended. Consequently, user organizations are considering best-of-breed solution providers, and are either undertaking the integration themselves or hiring third parties.

With respect to content and functionality, the evolution of the Internet is still at its early stages. People might think that the Internet has come far in the last decade, but the capabilities and opportunities still seem endless. Organizations and users will have much more opportunity to benefit from the Internet in the future, both socially and economically. John Patrick, president of Attitude LLC and former vice president of IBM's Internet Technology, echoed this in his keynote address how current Internet technology seems primitive compared to the rapid evolution that the Internet is about to make. In anticipation of these changes, organizations should invest in ECM technologies to meet the technological and societal changes that are underway as the Internet becomes increasingly "on-demand", meeting users' expectations and enhancing the customer experience, all of which could result in higher revenues and profits for the savvy.

Online search mechanisms are no longer the last place people go to find information, but rather the first. Matthew Glotzback of Google Enterprise explained that the concept of "search", in both organizations and in users' personal lives, has increased in importance. Because of this shift, organizations should reorganize how they store content, breaking down the silos of enterprise content to enable broader search capabilities. A good example is Oracle, with its revolutionary concept of providing the ability to store all content, including metadata, in one database instead of storing content in separate repositories (as most ECM vendors still do). This enables more efficient and intuitive search capabilities. These new technologies will improve search results and make search even more prominent in the near future.

The ECM West Exhibit Hall reinforced the topics investigated during the different tracks. As the presentations during the tracks delved into such topics as backfile conversion, storage and retrieval, optical character recognition (OCR), and search and compliance issues, the attendees received hands-on experience on how the technology enabled these subjects through demonstrations and by talking to vendors. Overall, the Exhibit Hall provided an excellent opportunity for users to compare, to contrast, and to evaluate ECM solutions.

Conference Tracks

ECM West featured a variety of conference sessions, bringing different content areas to the attention of its audience. The tracks offered attendees an overview of different industry trends, case studies, and best practices. The program offered sessions across seven information-rich tracks:

1. The Basics,
2. Compliance,
3. Search & Information Access,
4. Business Process Management,
5. Master Data Management & Integration,
6. E-mail Management, and
7. Standards.

Two tracks that stood apart from the others were the Compliance track and the Search & Information Access track. Each had good presentations and addressed the issues that currently arise in the market.

The popularity of the compliance track demonstrates that organizations are still concerned about such regulatory legislation as the US Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX), Health Insurance Profitability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), or Design Criteria Standard for Electronic Records Management Software Applications (DoD 5015.2-STD). Failure to comply still poses the threat of lawsuits for organizations and termination for employees. During the compliance tracks, the importance of records management for organizations became clear. Records management focuses on indexing, classifications, and discovery, especially with respect to search capabilities. The preservation and access control of content will help organizations in their efforts to comply with the regulations.

The Search & Information Access track showed the priority that organizations and individuals place on finding the right information. Whether looking internally for documents or externally on the Internet for a topic, most users begin with individual searches. The fact that search becomes users' initial action indicates the importance search has for organizations and vendors. Moreover, organizations face the problem of information overload without having the right knowledge available. Search optimization and data classification on both structured and unstructured data represents a critical vehicle to improve the information life cycle management. The presentations did not address the issue of slowdowns in productivity by not being able to find the right information quickly and the resulting loss of revenue. Such a discussion would have not only benefited attendees, but also the senior executives of their organizations.

SOURCE:
http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/articles/the-2006-ecm-west-conference-a-trial-from-aiim-18852/

Why Database-agnostic Enterprise Applications Are on the Way Out

2010-08-17T22:46:00.002-07:00

The shift to a service-oriented architecture (SOA) by many software vendors has changed the focus of application architecture. Although it is a given that it is best to separate an application into layers, the question remains whether the application should be tightly integrated with the database. The traditional approach, known as database agnosticism, allows the user to select an application and a database independently. While this approach may sound good at first, it sacrifices system performance and flexibility.

The reason for this is that to support multiple databases, the software vendor must pick the lowest-common-denominator set of database features for the application to use. Often this results in less than optimal design, user experience, and performance. Focusing on a particular database product enables developers to take maximum advantage of the database's feature set. This allows the application to offer additional capabilities not available in a database-agnostic application, resulting in richer functionality. Tight application and database integration also lowers database management costs because the application itself can automate these ongoing management tasks, eliminating much of the work required of a database administrator (DBA).

This article presents the case for applications that are integrated tightly with the database platform on which they operate. This method of application development increases functionality, improves system performance, and lowers both development and maintenance costs. In the past, databases were the integration point where applications connected to communicate with each other. But in the twenty-first century, the middleware layer is the integration point. Companies are investing more in middleware acquisition and in building the competence to manage that middleware than in investing in database technology and expertise. To achieve cost efficiencies, companies are using a single middleware layer for all their applications and are choosing the middleware themselves rather than being forced to accept what their application vendors dictate. In other words, they are turning away from database-agnostic applications in favor of middleware-agnostic solutions.

More Than a Storage Bin

Today, database applications have become more than devices with which to store and retrieve data. Significant query functionality and data management tools are packaged with the database itself. As enterprise application vendors work to add Google-like enterprise search features, development organizations that rely on the text indexing and query functions of their underlying databases will find it easier to bring this functionality to market. However, database-agnostic applications must be developed and then redeveloped to adjust to each database. This adds cost that customers must absorb through increased license fees and makes the applications more complex and expensive for vendors to support and upgrade.

Furthermore, operating these search capabilities is database-intensive. If you can rely on the database to perform these functions, you are spared the stress on system resources that would result from pulling this information out of the database and performing the search function. Similarly, rich media, such as video and audio, can be handled much more easily if they can be accessed within the database itself rather than by pulling a large, unwieldy file out of the table in which it resides.

Apart from enterprise search, database-specific applications can more easily deliver business intelligence (BI) and data-mining functions. BI tools such as online business analytical processing (OLAP) cubes can be built right into the application at the database tier, and this is where this type of functionality should naturally reside—as close to the actual data as possible.

Database-agnostic applications often require different management tools and processes for the database layer than for the application layer. An application that is database-specific can lower costs by unifying the tool set and management time for both layers, thereby reducing or eliminating the need to retain the services of a DBA and cutting application management costs.

Also, a database-agnostic application has very different performance characteristics depending on the database on which an instance of the application is running. Although other portions of a system, including the operating system and hardware, can vary without significantly affecting the performance of the application, this is not the case when an application runs on different databases. Queries that might run quickly on an Oracle database might run slowly on Microsoft's SQL Server or IBM's DB2, or vice versa, depending on how the application is optimized.

New Technology Solves Problems

One argument for designing database-agnostic applications was the perceived difference between the level of skill and effort required to manage different database platforms. Historically, SQL Server had the reputation of being relatively simple and user-friendly, whereas many people believed that Oracle required a DBA with extensive knowledge of tools and methodologies that were difficult to comprehend and master.

However, recent data suggests that the opposite is true. A study released in March of 2006 by Edison Group, Inc. reveals that current Oracle databases are, in fact, less time-consuming and less costly to administer than current structured query language (SQL) databases. The study, titled Comparative Management Cost Study of Oracle Database 10g Release 2 and Microsoft SQL Server 2005 (visit www.theedison.com), makes the following conclusions:

* DBAs can perform typical administrative functions 38 percent faster when using Oracle Database 10g Release 2 than when using Microsoft SQL Server 2005.

* Oracle Database 10g Release 2 requires 30 percent fewer steps than Microsoft SQL Server 2005 for the same set of standard administrative tasks for a relational database management system (RDBMS) based on Edison Group's metric for complexity assessment.

* Benefiting from increased DBA productivity, businesses can save up to $31,664 (USD) per DBA per year by using Oracle Database 10g Release 2 instead of Microsoft SQL Server 2005.

These facts aside, many users of applications running on Oracle databases retain no DBA whatsoever. Automation tools within the database have largely "leveled the playing field" in terms of maintenance cost and activity. All databases require some level of maintenance, and the types of maintenance—such as the maintenance and work required to prepare for a restore in the event of system failure—are similar regardless of the database vendor. Today, anyone with the knowledge and skills to administer an SQL database can likely do the same with an Oracle database. It is similar to switching from one brand of automobile to another: When it gets dark outside, you know you need to turn on the headlights, and you can do so simply by familiarizing yourself with the location of the switch.

By tightly integrating the application with the database, the application can be designed to perform much of the routine database maintenance by itself. This is simple to do if the application is designed so it understands the performance characteristics and maintenance requirements of the database, but is more difficult and expensive if the application must support multiple databases.

One argument against database-specific enterprise applications has been the fear that the database eventually will become overburdened, creating a bottleneck in the system. This is no longer a concern as a result of technologies such as Oracle Grid Computing and Oracle Real Application Clusters. Real Application Clusters allows an application to share a single database across multiple nodes or servers in a computing cluster. It is now possible to run a powerful enterprise application that is tightly integrated with its underlying database in an infinitely scalable environment—without suffering performance problems or requiring increasingly expensive server hardware.

Focus on the Middle Tier

By the late 1990s—about the time that Microsoft purchased SQL Server—many enterprise software customers were interested in applications that were database-agnostic enough to support SQL Server. Although there arguably may have been a case for database neutrality in those days, such is not the case today.

The focus of how applications interact has changed since the late 1990s to the point that it makes little difference what database an application is running on, as long as the application can make the best use of its database platform. Today, it is more important that the application be compatible with a variety of middleware products because this gives users greater freedom.

As recently as ten years ago, applications were designed to deliver reporting directly from the database tier. Similarly, integration with other systems was done from the database. If an add-on program was developed for the application, it was tied directly to the database. The database was the functional hub of the application, and the ability to choose the database affected how well the application could interoperate with other systems.

But things have changed. Today, any integration work is done through Web services in the middle tier of the application, and add-on development is similarly tied into the application in the middle tier through services that communicate with the application programming interfaces (APIs). Reporting is done not against the database, but rather against extensible markup language (XML) data schemas in the middle tier. In short, the middle tier has become the place where all connection points and interfaces in an enterprise application are located.

Today, it is more important for customers to choose the middleware product they want to use, and less important to choose the database. It is as if the database is turning into a "black box," meaning it is performing its tasks in a self-contained manner, with little or no human intervention required. Everything a user does with a truly modern enterprise application is driven by the middle tier, while hidden elements of the functionality may, in fact, be driven by features embedded in the database layer.

The enterprise application of the future will not need to offer the choice of multiple databases, but rather it will give users the power to choose the middleware product. This will allow twenty-first century application vendors to offer products that are technology-neutral, with functionality that can quickly adapt to changing technologies without disrupting the entire application stack. While implementing these applications, a company can choose to use middleware such as Oracle Fusion, SAP NetWeaver, or IBM WebSphere—or it can opt for an open-source solution such as JBoss.

It is important to note that many leading enterprise software products are owned by companies that also are in the business of selling middleware. Application vendors that specify a single middleware solution—or force users to adapt their own—are increasing the cost and complexity of their customers' solutions. Operating a single middleware product leads to a more homogeneous information technology (IT) environment and lowers total cost of ownership (TCO) by limiting licensing fees and training costs. Today, however, nearly all companies use multiple products, including enterprise resources planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM) software, extranets, and homegrown applications. If these products offer a choice of middleware, a company can standardize on one middleware product, but if each application requires a different middleware product, then the customer is in a difficult situation.

Imagine a company that runs Oracle Financials on Oracle Fusion middleware. When it buys a new maintenance solution, can it continue to use Oracle Fusion? If its maintenance product does not support Fusion, could it be forced to adopt a second middleware, such as WebSphere, to accommodate its new maintenance solution? Or imagine a company that is already using WebSphere to manage integrations with its old mainframes. Will the company be able to continue using WebSphere, or will it be forced to learn a second platform when it acquires a new business application?

The answers to these questions are, unfortunately, not what companies would want to hear.

To be clear, a SAP customer, for example, is limited to NetWeaver. A Microsoft enterprise applications customer must use Windows Server. Other products, including those from Lawson, limit users to WebSphere.

Conclusion

At one time, database-agnostic enterprise applications may have had marginal advantages. But even then, these applications presented vendors and users with significant drawbacks. Today, new technology has eliminated the benefits, and the advantages of integrating an application with the underlying database are more compelling than ever before. At the same time, it has become more and more important that enterprise application vendors offer a variety of middleware choices.

Not only does a middleware-agnostic application reduce TCO and complexity, but it also frees enterprise software buyers from relying on vendors that use their middleware applications to force customers to adopt their enterprise software. After all, why would an application vendor develop its own middleware product if not to lock customers into its solutions and to stifle competition?

SOURCE:
http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/articles/why-database-agnostic-enterprise-applications-are-on-the-way-out-18920/

6 Immediate Business Improvements Offered by an Online SRM System: Part 2: Online SRM

2010-08-17T22:46:00.001-07:00

6 Immediate Business Improvements Provided by an Online SRM System

Referencing the activities from the inverted triangle' in Part One (Duane link to Part One), the following is an explanation of how online SRM helps to reduce the time spent on transactional details and put more emphasis on strategic activities.

1. Faster and more accurate document transmittal
A result of: Transaction Automation

An inherent problem with traditional procurement processes is that they are manual. To conduct business with suppliers, buyers must print documents such as forecast reports, RFQs, notes, messages, quote responses and POs, and then transmit them using fax or post. Both time consuming and expensive, activities such as these very quickly eat away at the profitability of the procurement department.

Online SRM provides a way to automate these processes. Documents are now accessible by buyers and suppliers in electronic format, and they can be quickly and efficiently transmitted via the Internet. All documents are located outside of both users' firewalls, so there are no security concerns. And transactions that take place through the online SRM system can be easily integrated with back end enterprise systems, ensuring consistency and accuracy throughout the organization.

2. More efficient and reliable buyer-supplier communication
A result of: Online Collaboration

Seldom is a procurement document sent and then immediately closed. More often than not, collaboration must take place between buyers and suppliers to ensure that both parties agree on the terms and expectations relating to the document. A supplier, for instance, may need to adjust quantities, price levels or delivery dates on a purchase order. When this collaboration takes place using paper or phone-based means, important details are often lost.

Using an online SRM system, these details are easily maintained. All transactions and communications take place within the Internet-based system, and historical information is stored in a central location that is easily accessible by both buyers and suppliers. Users are able to verify details regarding each transaction by performing a simple electronic query an action that takes seconds not hours, which is often the case with a search involving an overstuffed filing cabinet.

This is Part Two of a three-part article.

Part One presented the supplier relationship activities.

Part Three discusses other points to consider when choosing an online SRM system.

Less time spent checking details

3. Less time spent checking details
A result of: SCEM (Supply Chain Event Management)

Because information is not available electronically, manual monitoring of exceptions can be cumbersome, requiring users to constantly create lists of transactions and related conditions and scan them on a regular basis for inconsistencies. Errors are introduced when lists are incomplete or out of date and when participants simply forget to check for overdue or out of parameter situations.

An online SRM system is able to sort through the data and provide the buyer only with information that they must review at once. Users have the option to program alerts and reminders for events that are important to them, such as overdue responses to quotes or an impending missed ship date; these alerts may show up within the system, on an e-mail application, or on a wireless device such as a mobile phone or PDA. In addition, the system provides continuous real time document status updates (read, responded, WIP, etc) and easily viewable highlights of sections that have been changed within a document.

4. Better contract terms and supplier performance
A result of: Reporting and Analysis Tools

The reporting and analysis-related benefits of an online SRM system are two-fold. The first is the reallocation of time: buyers who traditionally used non-electronic means to transmit documents, collaborate with suppliers and monitor exceptions are now able to perform these tasks in half the time, giving them the opportunity to focus their efforts on more strategic, analytical activities.

The second are the actual reporting and analysis functions provided within the system. Using the data gathered from the transactions that have taken place within the system, buyers are able to quickly and easily generate reports. These reports provide valuable supply data, including purchasing patterns (which, how many and from whom items are being purchased), and the measurement of supplier performance (including contract compliance, delivery schedules and pricing).

Some online SRM systems also have the ability to analyze the data and make recommendations based on results found. Using these recommendations, buyers are able to strategize how to negotiate optimal contract terms or place orders that keep inventory levels at optimal levels.

Optimal contract terms and inventory management

5. Optimal contract terms and inventory management
A result of: Multiple site collaboration

For companies that operate multiple plants or locations, particularly those that have grown through mergers and acquisitions, consolidating the data from disparate systems and making sense of it is a difficult, if not impossible, task. As a result, each plant tends to manage its own inventory and place orders with its own suppliers.

Having the ability to consolidate purchasing and manage inventory centrally provides tremendous leveraging power, and some online SRM systems provide the tools necessary to do this. Acting as a central translating' device, the online SRM system maps the procurement data from each location and consolidates it into one language that can be easily analyzed. From here, central commodity managers are able to view purchasing activities across plants, share inventory to maintain optimal levels, and perform centralized quote gathering and consolidated sourcing enabling better leverage and, in turn, better contract terms.

6. Suppliers take on the cost of managing the inventory
A result of: VMI (Vendor Managed Inventory)

Vendor Managed Inventory, or VMI, has become an effective method to vastly improve supply chain performance. Using VMI, the supplier has access to some subset of the buyer's inventory, planning, and order history data and is responsible for replenishing the buyer's inventory, based on mutually agreed upon criteria and replenishment rules.

Some online SRM systems offer this capability a tremendous benefit because, in most cases, integrating VMI into an ERP application is time consuming and cost prohibitive. Using VMI through an online SRM solution, however, is relatively straightforward; it is simply a matter of exchanging VMI data through the already existing import/export function of the enterprise system. Using VMI through a hosted Online SRM system, users can perform functions such as forecast aggregates, blanket POs, release orders and advanced shipping notices through a browser, outside of the corporate firewall. Working through a Web browser alleviates security concerns, because suppliers are not required to enter the network to access VMI information.

This concludes Part Two of a three-part article.

Part One presented supplier relationship management.

Part Three discusses other points to consider when choosing an online SRM system.

About the Author

Sunil Pande, with over 20 years of experience in the high tech industry, is a co-founder and President of Entomo, Inc. He has conceived, developed and brought to market integrated Supply Chain/ERP products for "to-order" manufacturing, an Offline Transaction Processing (OFTP) product, network management, and videoconferencing products. Mr. Pande holds a MS in Computer Science from the University of Oregon and a BS/MS in Computer Engineering from BITS, Pilani, India.

About Entomo, Inc.

Entomo, Inc. offers Online SRM and strategic sourcing applications that electronically link manufacturers with their direct materials supply chain. Its Web-based application, Entomo SmartHub/SRM, delivers transaction automation, online collaboration, exception management, supplier performance measurement, and supply chain analytics. Advanced capabilities support aggregation of inventory and purchasing data from multiple sites delivering cross-plant visibility, consolidated sourcing, centralized commodity management, and inventory sharing. For additional information, please visit www.entomo.com or call 1.877.936.8666

SOURCE:
http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/articles/6-immediate-business-improvements-offered-by-an-online-srm-system-part-2-online-srm-16783/

Playing Devil’s Advocate with an Innovative Vendor’s “Techies”

2010-08-17T22:45:00.000-07:00

ntroduction

The series of articles where Technology Evaluation Centers (TEC) asks vendors to provide their input on a number of market trends has received much attention and reaction from readers and vendors. Infor and IFS were the first to respond (see Two Stalwart Vendors Discuss Market Trends), followed by Progress Software (see Open Platform Provider Answers Questions about the State of the Market), xTuple (see A Semi-open Source Vendor Discusses Market Trends), and The Sage Group (see A Traditional "Local Touch" Leader Espouses a More Global Vision).

As detailed in some of TEC's previous articles, enterprise applications have evolved from mainframes via client/server to service-oriented architecture (SOA) and Web service paradigms (see Architecture Evolution: From Mainframes to Service-oriented Architecture).

According to some of the latest developments, the user interface (UI) has improved and evolved on the server side (i.e., "under the hood"), especially lately. But in any enterprise application, the aim should be to reduce interaction with the system and make it as "lights out" as possible (i.e., reduce human intervention to the maximum degree possible). The only thing users should use the system for is studying the data and making the right decisions (if we don't count the heads-down folks that focus only on capturing transactions).

Then again, the interface should be adapted to the analysis being done. Poor interfaces and the inability to search for the right information are time wasters in business applications. Generally speaking, the best way to users' hearts and minds is via an intuitive UI that helps with the "zero training" and "self-evident applications" themes. The need for agility in business and the ability to continually make the changes in processes to accommodate the demands of the market means that the user ought to have intuitive tools that require minimal system training and re-training.

In evolutionary terms, from character-based "green screens," the next step was a Microsoft Windows-like "fat/rich" graphical user interface (GUI) during the client/server era. Lately, many vendors have been betting on Microsoft Office's familiarity. For instance, Microsoft Dynamics CRM's UI emulates working within Microsoft Outlook, and Duet emulates working in SAP from Microsoft Word, Excel, or Outlook, while Alloy (previously code-named Atlantic project) will emulate working in SAP from IBM Lotus Notes (see Application Giants in Duel—and Duet—for Users' Hearts, Minds… and Wallets). Moreover, Lawson Smart Client leverages a number of common Microsoft Office products (most notably Microsoft Office Groove).

However, the other school of thought is that Microsoft Office is not necessarily the only familiar "inspiration." With the help of interactive tools like Asynchronous Java and XML (AJAX) and JavaScript that provide "richness" to Web applications, Salesforce.com and other software as a service (SaaS) players use the Web browser familiarity to build their UIs. In other words, if a UI resembles Amazon's, Google's, or eBay's Web pages, who needs any formal software training?

Other similar products such as IQMS Smart Page and Smart Search, IFS Enterprise Explorer (IEE, part of the ongoing Project Aurora venture), Microsoft Dynamics Client for Office (DCO), Lawson Smart Office and Enterprise Search, Epicor Productivity Pyramid and Enterprise Search, and Infor MyDay revolve around themes such as role-based portals, contextual analytics, key performance indicators (KPIs), alerts, dashboards, etc.

Below is a list of TEC's recent blog entries that touch on the topic of "vendors trying to win users' minds and hearts."

*

May a New Day Begin for Mature Enterprise Applications – Part 2
*

Intelligent Manufacturing Systems: Beating the Odds, Mightily – Part 3
*

Microsoft's Underlying Platform Parts for Enterprise Applications: Somewhat Explained – Part 3
*

Microsoft's Underlying Platform Parts for Enterprise Applications: Somewhat Explained – Part 4

IFS Appeals to Generation "Y"

Sweden-based IFS has surprised us pleasantly by going a step further to provide the familiarity of Apple's iPhone and Google search within the IFS Applications suite.

Who is IFS?

The following information was taken from the recent press release entitled IFS and Saab Sign Strategic Partnership Agreement.

IFS is a public company (OMX STO: IFS) founded in 1983 that develops, supplies, and implements IFS Applications™, a fully integrated, component-based extended ERP suite built on SOA technology.

The company has more than 2,000 customers in 54 countries and focuses on seven main industries: aerospace and defense, utilities and telecom, manufacturing, process industries, automotive, retail and wholesale distribution, and construction contracting and service management. IFS has 2,700 employees and net revenue in 2008 was SKr 2.5 billion [$330 million USD].

IFS straightened its balance sheet and profit and loss (P&L) statements well before the current economic onslaught, which in turn has produced good financial results (against the odds) and fewer layoffs than its competitors.

A few years ago, under the new chief executive officer (CEO) Alastair Sorbie, IFS organized its priorities via a number of wise initiatives. The first priority was to pick its research and development (R&D) battles in several asset-intensive and project-based industries. The idea was to address a number of recent industry trends with new functionality. One example would be to accommodate the new project-focused ways of working or the new business paradigm, with fewer being manufactured by the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) and more being produced via subcontracting and outsourcing—all that while delivering products more frequently.

The capital contract management functionality was another priority for IFS because many organizations develop a product and service according to their contract obligations. Moreover, each contract is managed as a project if it has its own P&L statement. Another particular example is the in-life service and maintenance of an asset; assets are being managed more by the OEM (i.e., the user rents the asset as a service) and less by the actual asset user.

Furthermore, any product endeavors had to be in line with revenues. In some cases, major customers were involved in R&D undertakings and both parties would benefit. For IFS's part, the vendor would end up with an intellectual property for a fraction of R&D costs (if it developed it on its own), while the major customer would have the first-to-market competitive advantage in terms of IFS's functionality.

IFS also decided to selectively rely on partners (resellers) to sell and implement IFS Applications in certain markets. This would include some major customers such as Saab. Partnering with Saab would mean that

Saab's support division, besides using IFS Applications for its internal processes, will also offer its customers various business models that include a broad spectrum of services involving IT and information management. As a result, Saab, as a support integrator in collaboration with IFS, can implement solutions at customer sites, provide the service as an application service provider, or manage the assignment with in the framework of its own internal systems. (See IFS and Saab Sign Strategic Partnership Agreement.)

Finally, being ahead of the SOA curve (due to the way its suite has long been structured as components) has enabled IFS to focus on the user experience (UX) innovation. IFS believes that small- and medium-sized companies can beat the larger competitors (like IFS does against SAP, Oracle, and Microsoft Dynamics) by reacting faster and adopting new and innovative ways of working by learning from iPhone's and Facebook's generation "Y." Usability leads to increased user productivity via intuitive, zero-training, and familiar interfaces such as enterprise search features like Google's Web-based search, but confined within the enterprise data and extended enterprise. IFS was one of the first vendors with the native enterprise application search capabilities, and the other vendors have lately been following suit, including the recently unveiled SAP BusinessObjects Explorer.

For more information on IFS's recent moves and philosophy, see the following TEC articles:

*

Why Database-agnostic Enterprise Applications Are on the Way Out
*

Is Your Enterprise Application on a Road to Nowhere?
*

Blast Past Manufacturing Bottlenecks with Constraint-based Scheduling
*

"Once Bitten" Vendor Is Not "Twice Shy" about New Acquisition
*

Why Enterprise Application Search Is Crucial to Your ERP System

Instead of giving a ringing endorsement or criticism on IFS's moves and directions, we decided to pose a number of provocative questions to the vendor. The answers were provided by Rick Veague, chief technical officer (CTO) at IFS North America, and Dan Matthews, CTO at IFS AB.

TEC's Questions and IFS's Answers

Q1. Will IEE be the default UI metaphor from the IFS Applications 7.5 release onwards, or will users be able to opt for the old one?

IFS: At present, it will be the default metaphor for the UI in IFS Applications 7.5.

Q2. Does the iPhone-like UI aim at certain user groups per se (casual, power, etc.), or it is for everyone to use? I assume it doesn't entail any additional licensing [as Duet does]?

IFS: IEE is for all users and at no extra licensing cost.

Q3. How do you position IEE against various "intelligent desktop" and office business applications (OBA) initiatives, not to mention Duet, Alloy, Productivity Pyramid, and so on: complementary, overlapping, or in-between? In other words, what is IFS's approach and view towards winning users via a UI? Different users will want and need different UIs. Is there a single winning UI strategy in your mind?

IFS: Users can configure how the UI looks to suit their needs. Some will still want a tree structure; others will want symbols or a combination; some will want a simple desktop, [and] others more complex. We have been delighted at the response from analysts, press, and users on the look and feel of IEE/Aurora—we believe this will drive upgrades to 7.5 and win over new clients.

Q4. How are the iPhone UI, Enterprise Search, and the "consider the sticky" capability (with a "Post-it" note metaphor) related within IEE?

IFS: The "sticky" is to enable data that is not part of the normal system database, to be kept, as a sticky note would be on a physical desktop—and it can be searched along with the data in the database.

Q5. What UI technology was used for IEE?

IFS: Web-deployed Microsoft .NET Framework. More specifically, it was developed with 100 percent managed C# code, delivered over the Web through Microsoft ClickOnce technology, the .NET standard for Web deployment of rich/smart Microsoft Windows clients.

Q6. One concern is that many traditional enterprise resource planning (ERP) users are not exactly part of Facebook's generation "Y." For example, some are still happy with the "green screen" and "boxy" old Microsoft Windows GUI. I'm not sure how many of them are even familiar with Apple's iPod/iPhone to jump on that.

IFS: From surveys conducted by IFS on our customer base and other ERP user systems, we have determined that one of the top priorities for clients is ease-of-use and that is what we are providing with IEE. The screens can be customized by users to show what they want to see—so the "two field" user in the stores just gets his/her two-input fields/icons.

Q7. What are your thoughts on the following statement: What IEE might really look like to some is just a graphical version of a menu system, while at the business logic level, it is the same old stuff?

IFS: IEE is a new user experience. While it is quite a drastic change to what the user sees and the capabilities of the UI, the underlying business logic has not changed at all. You can compare IEE/Aurora to a new operating system (OS). Installing it on your computer does not mean any changes to the underlying hardware, but how you, the user, interact with and experience the computer can change quite a lot.

Q8. What would you say to the observation (criticism) that new UIs are not a matter of what it is possible for the vendor to do at low cost (e.g., substituting iPhone-like icons for Windows-like icons), but [rather] thinking through what users need and want in a new way and then delivering it?

IFS: Absolutely. With IEE we are going through every single aspect of a UI (navigation, search/query, workflow, etc.) and revising or completely re-engineering it to achieve higher usability. The new color scheme and icons are a fraction of the investment, although one aspect that should not be ignored is that the look of the UI is as important as the materials in the interior of a car.

Q9. Some might comment that IEE isn't very "shocking," just the next turn of the UI crank [i.e., the next revolution of the wheel]. They also might comment that this is some marketing person's pladding around a paper-thin shell of change. What is your view on this matter?

IFS: We certainly don't want IEE/Aurora to be shocking but we do believe it will be the biggest productivity-increasing change to IFS Applications.

SOURCE:
http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/articles/playing-devil-s-advocate-with-an-innovative-vendor-s-techies-19559/

Knowledge Management: The Core of Service Resolution Management

2010-08-17T22:44:00.002-07:00

Knowledge Management: The Core of Service Resolution Management

Today's businesses are faced with the reality of customers expecting and demanding more multichannel information and better service from call centers than ever before. Integrating call center service resolution management (SRM) into customer relationship management (CRM) can help companies retain both their call center agents and their customers.

For more background, please see Integrating Customer Relationship Management and Service Resolution Management.

Knowledge management (KM) is at the core of integrating CRM and SRM. KM software aims at helping to unlock the power of a company's knowledge to improve efficiency, competency, and profitability. It does so by providing an environment in which companies can, more quickly and cost-effectively, create a company-wide knowledge base to store and index documents and to more accurately search for the answers to user questions.

Currently, the key trends in KM tools enable companies to perform the following: 1) target their online information to reflect what is most likely to interest customers, and 2) maintain online forums where customers can share amongst themselves what they know about the company's products.

Hence, KM products typically fulfill two functions. KM accommodates self-service, meaning a customer can access a pool of public information that a company accumulates about itself, without the need for live assistance, to have his or her questions answered. Second, KM software helps call center agents to retrieve information from a repository that is often, obviously, larger than what is available to the public (since the aim of live assistance is the same as self-service—to answer customers' inquiries quickly and accurately, but with the preferred human touch).

The above considerations have marked a fundamental shift away from the time when any company could claim to perform a valuable service to customers simply by displaying information on its web site, without having to take into account who the customers were. Today however, virtually all companies must demonstrate their value to customers by segmenting information that is directly relevant to them.

Customer segmentation is not a new idea, since segmentation was supposed to be the way that—with the help of CRM tools—companies would offer the best possible service to their best customers. The problem with applying overt segmentation to customer service was that it then revealed a hierarchy that placed most customers at the bottom. This was so because, by definition, elite customers represent a small minority (the proverbial Pareto's 80/20 Rule). The premise of segmenting customers reinforced the idea that customers existed to create value for companies, rather than the other way around. Using this logic, most (up to 80 percent) customers were of little value to the companies that they bought products and services from.

By contrast, the practice of KM helps companies establish a bidirectional relationship with customers that rewards them for sharing knowledge (their product and service use experience), and not only for spending money. The latest generation of KM software makes this possible by enabling the company to combine what it knows about customers and what customers know about the company, and to offer this information as part of the resources available on its web site.

As discussed in Making the First Call Count by Greg McFarlane, an astute KM software has to make it easier for agents to author new knowledge when new services, products, or upgrades are in place. This reduces the need for agents (especially novice agents) to escalate calls to the upper service tier. This decreases the costs and the lengths of calls, but more importantly, it gets calls answered more quickly. In addition, the diagnostic search functionality helps resolve customers' issues quickly and accurately with its ability to pull answers from any data source an agent can connect it to, thereby giving agents the right information at the right time. Lastly, the automation of key resolution processes enables new agents to get up to speed more quickly. By pre-populating case notes and pre-establishing workflows and other techniques, the companies can create an environment that allows agents to operate as effectively as possible, regardless of their experience.

With the addition of multiple channels and new technologies to support them, call center agents' job descriptions should become more interesting and diverse. When this occurs, several of the major barriers to call center agent job satisfaction, such as stress, repetition, and dullness, can be eliminated, thus resulting in greater retention. The customer service representative (CSR) might start to feel like a problem-solver rather than a mere document reader.

Agents might also feel more accountable for problem resolution, as they begin to follow problems from start to finish. For instance, a CSR can access and present solutions to problems from a knowledge base; create a service ticket; request repair services; note a complaint; process returned materials; issue a rebate, coupon, or refund; and escalate issues to other responsible parties, such as tier (level) two support, development, quality assurance (QA), or even third parties.

Customer satisfaction should, in turn, increase, as the number of disconnected handoffs between agents, customers, and channels are reduced. On the other hand, increased agent retention should improve the organization's domain knowledge, and as a result, the number of first-call closures should rise.

The Impact of Online Customer Service

Online customers are becoming increasingly demanding, since they want answers to queries quicker than ever before, and they want to be able to access services when it suits them—around the clock. No customer wants to be put (seemingly endlessly) on hold or escalated, or to attempt several different solutions over the next hour, only to be called back the next day. He or she wants the issue resolved as quickly as possible, either through self-service or by a knowledgeable agent at the other end of the telephone.

At the same time, web site design is maturing, and the average customer is becoming more computer literate, which means that customers are ready to be introduced to online self-service solutions. Many customers indeed want to be able to solve their own problems through self-support on the Web, since we are all “too darn busy, and who has time for lengthy phone calls.” Companies, too, are ready to embrace the benefits of self-help solutions, which offer the dual advantage of cutting the cost of support while improving the quality of the service delivered to users.

In the early 2000s, Forrester Research reported that it costs, in US dollars, about $33.00 to handle a customer inquiry by telephone, $10.00 to handle it by e-mail, and about $1.00 to deal with the question through an online self-service system. Furthermore, by 2010, Gartner projects that self-service interactions will account for 58 percent of all service interactions, up from 35 percent in 2005. Thus, the goal of self-service has been to drive as many inquiries as possible away from the telephone to the Web, which is less difficult than it might seem, because organizations usually find that about 12 questions will account for half the calls made.

An effective self-help system should allow users or customers to resolve most common queries on their own, but it should also make it easy to escalate inquiries to an operator through telephone, Web chat, or e-mail if users get stuck or their questions are more complex. Also, call center representatives can sometimes handle problems more productively over live chat than on the phone, since an agent can deal with only one customer at a time over the phone, but it is quite possible to simultaneously juggle a few live chat sessions with customers.

One should note, however, that different users have different levels of tolerance for the length of time they are willing to commit to self-service, which means the availability of live support is still a necessary option companies must offer. On the other hand, in a corporate setting, the company may want to discourage highly paid staff from using self-help for more than a few minutes, because it does not want these employees to be unproductive.

In summary, enterprises can provide customer self-service that reduces service costs, improves customer satisfaction, and facilitates the sales and marketing of products and services. Moreover, IT organizations can increase the effectiveness of employee help desk operations while decreasing internal technical support costs.

SOURCE:
http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/articles/knowledge-management-the-core-of-service-resolution-management-19189/

The Hidden Role of Data Quality in E-Commerce Success

2010-08-17T22:44:00.001-07:00

Introduction

E-commerce holds the promise of working seamlessly with customers, prospects, suppliers, and partners. That's why companies publish volumes of information on e-commerce sites and even open internal systems to business affiliates. Exchanging information online increases the opportunities for more sales, faster product development and fulfillment, and better relationships.

Or does it?

E-commerce also opens the door to data quality issues that can endanger revenues and relationships. New data enters systems daily from internal sources and the Web, where input is uncontrollable - resulting in inconsistencies and typos in names, addresses, and product numbers. These discrepancies can hamper data integration, generate duplicates, and prevent companies and their business affiliates from getting accurate information. Published data like product price and availability quickly becomes outdated, giving rise to misinformation and, possibly, financial and legal consequences.

Additionally, there's a communications gap when people search internal systems and online catalogs. Many people will use terminology that differs from the entries in an e-catalog in searching for an item (like laptop versus notebook), leading to delays and dissatisfaction, at least, and causing searches to fail and prospects to click away, at worst.

Previously, company representatives limited the exposure of internal data to outsiders and bridged the communications gap. But four trends arising from the nature of e-business expose and aggravate data quality issues, threatening revenue growth, online collaboration and relationships. It's important for businesses to understand these challenges and the resulting risks of misinformation in order to implement the right solutions.

Trends Accentuating Data Quality Issues

Diversity and Volume of Data: In e-commerce the unpredictable external world generates data into your operational infrastructure without controls. It's often difficult to integrate this diverse data and link it to related internal information for business analyses.

For example, repeat visitors often vary their personal data - Mark Atkins, M.E. Atkins, or Mark Akins (a typo) - or misrepresent key data (e.g., type in 000-00-0000 Social Security number because they fear privacy violations). These quality issues result in duplicates in the customer database - blocking complete views of the customer and causing one-to-one marketing to fail.

Also, given the speed of electronic exchange, data from buyers and sellers needs to be quickly integrated, synchronized, and standardized for smooth, accurate transactions. Examples include catalog updates, changes to contract terms or industry-coding schemes such as UN/SPS, or dynamic pricing based on real-time market fluctuations.

Without controls and updates for data quality, companies risk disseminating and acting on misinformation.

Disintermediation: Though eliminating the customer service representative reduces costs, that person bridged the communications gap, translating the corporate data for outsiders. Now when you expose your products through your catalog and search engine, don't assume people know your nomenclature and classification.

A typical experience illustrates the point. I visited a popular website to buy shirts, typed Egyptian cotton, and got towels. To be more precise, I entered Egyptian cotton button-down shirt, but got zero matches. Next, I tried cotton button-dwon shirt, inadvertently transposing letters. No matches, again. Finally, I typed simply button-down shirt - and received 20 pages of results! I clicked to a competitor's site.

This is a data quality problem: Not that the data was wrong, but processes couldn't reconcile disparate communications. Multiply this miscommunication by hundreds or thousands per day, and the result is real dollars in e-commerce sales! In the B2B context, the stakes are often higher.

Without an intermediary, e-commerce will breakdown unless automated processes mediate varying contexts and representations. The consequences of disintermediation are apparent in the next two trends as well.

Breadth of User Exposure: E-commerce exposes your data to customers, prospects, partners, and suppliers. If it is inaccurate, there will be transaction mistakes and business misunderstandings. Even if it is accurate, it may be unclear to users whose perspective may be different than anticipated.

Consider this product listing. The product number shows the weight of chips in a bag - 4-, 12-, or 24-ounces - and "Package" lists the bags per carton.

Your sales rep (an intermediary) knew that a local grocer who ordered the "small" size, actually wanted the 12-ounce (117JU-12) - 16 bags to a carton. But to the grocer, who doesn't know the product numbers, orders directly online, the data seems unclear. If he orders 117JU-04 (which seems to be the "small"), or if he orders based on the smallest "Package" number, he'll get the wrong size.

The more numerous your online customers and affiliates, the greater the risk of misinterpretations - which can increase the time and costs of doing business and, even worse, sabotage sales and relationships.

Privacy and Ethical Issues: When accurate operational data is available on an e-commerce site or extranet, there are still risks - data quality issues - that can reduce sales, offend people and cause legal liabilities.

An example of context determining quality relates to "good" internal data that is inappropriate to expose to the public. Your customer records probably contain information on discounts and negotiated terms. If you just open your systems to the public, this information could alienate companies that don't receive the discount, violate the confidentiality of your agreements, and give information on a company to its competitor.

Ensuring Data Quality

Avoiding data misinterpretations and ensuring the integrity and success of e-commerce initiatives require a continuous data quality process. Software designed for this class of problem must be combined with business rules customized to your data and its intended usage.

Start by ensuring the quality of initial loads when you translate legacy or supplier data into the new formats for e-business processing and searches. This must be followed by near real-time data quality filtering to keep catalogs and databases current and pure. Equally important, you must mediate the daily activity that goes against your databases, both user searches and unattended transactions.

To solve tough problems, you need mathematically based and other advanced technologies that go beyond basic conversion and reformatting and deal with data at the syntactical level, to analyze informational content. Look for these functions:

1. Context mediation - for determining the business meaning of a word or value based on its context or adjacent data values. This usually involves parsing, lexical analysis, and multi-field correlation analysis. Context mediation is a pre-requisite for the next functions and essential when dealing with free-form text and multiple-word fields such as names, addresses, product descriptions and search queries.

2. Normalization - for standardizing spelling, abbreviations, format and recognizing word variations and synonyms. This facilitates matching input data to internal systems and shoppers' searches to your product master. The normalization strategies used for search should also be employed when loading product masters to create consistent, searchable e-catalogs.

3. Fuzzy retrieval - for finding data without a precise key (e.g., a product number) or under conditions in which data is inconsistent or missing. An inbound transaction or user search must be joined to an optimal set of matches from thousands, even millions, of choices in the database. Vendor software uses sophisticated database indexing and search optimization strategies to achieve speed and yield.

4. Fuzzy matching and filtering - for measuring and ranking "possible" matches to get the best one(s) and avoid irrelevant matches. In search engines, this technology returns only the most useful "hits." In non-interactive transactions (EDI/EAI), it applies your business rules and measures of statistical certainty, to determine critical relationships within the data, such as duplication and affiliations (e.g., households, divisions of one company). Fuzzy matching is necessary because normalizing data can't eliminate all non-standard data.

What does it cost? Though prices vary, higher priced solutions yield greater automation and better quality results. For catalog content, automated processes will dramatically reduce the aggregation time and costs of manual review and provide content that is generally more detailed and consistent than what content resellers and content factories (which aggregate your own data) offer.

Software license fees are usually competitive, and some vendors offer pay-as-you-go transactional pricing models. Implementation fees may be the most expensive part. Configuring the software generally takes several weeks and accounts for up to 15 percent of the total cost. For data-intensive sites, such as e-procurement sites or e-marketplaces, the process can take several months and a majority of a site's deployment budget.

However, successful e-commerce relies on intelligible, trustworthy content. To achieve this, companies need a complete solution at their back- and front-ends, so they can harness and leverage their data and maximize the return on their e-commerce investment.

SOURCE:
http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/articles/the-hidden-role-of-data-quality-in-e-commerce-success-16850/

Document Management and Digital Asset Management Is There a Difference and What Might It Be?

2010-08-17T22:43:00.002-07:00

Introduction

Everywhere you look within organizations, there is content. All this content needs to be managed. At first it was static information, and documents published on the Internet needed management solutions. As a result document management (DM) emerged as the mechanism or process to create, capture, manage, store, and deliver these documents to the right departments and individuals.

Digital Assets

Today, electronic media is more then just on-line text. Organizations are using images, video, and audio files and other digital formats within organizations that need to be managed as well. Digital assets are often time consuming to create, but they are valuable to organizations because digital assets attract the attention of clients, whether internal or external to the organization.

Digital assets require a format and management process that enables re-use. When looking for a solution, one question that faces organizations is whether a DM system is capable of supporting their needs or if a digital asset management (DAM) solution it more appropriate.

To determine this answer, an organization must understand the difference between the two solutions. This is a difficult task because there is confusion in the market between DM and DAM solutions. This article will investigate what is unique to a DAM solution and why organizations need a DAM to manage other types of data instead of just text documents.

Document Management

Organizations use document management to assist with the management, creation, workflow, and the storage of documents within different departments. A DM solution uses databases for storage, and workflow engines to design and support workflows, including business rules and metadata.

Document management systems are often used in industries where there are high volumes of documents, such as in the insurance, health care and government industries. Increasingly DM solutions are evolving into Web content management (CM) systems.

Digital Asset Management

Digital asset management (DAM) solutions are also referred to as media asset management (MAM), entertainment media asset management (EMAM), brand resource management (BRM), marketing content management (MCM), and asset management (AM). DAM focuses on organizations specifically with digital assets, such as the entertainment or advertising industry, and is used in situations where asset reproduction is important. Often organizations combine a DAM solution with a CM solution to maintain their web site. Consequently, DAM and CM vendors acquire one or the other to combine their solutions into an integrated solution.

Different Views on DM and DAM

Even though there is a variety of acronyms for DAM, and there are slight differences in functionality for each category. This article, however, will focus mainly on regular DAM functionality, including rich media files and types.

Magan Arthur of Arthur Consulting Group, explains that organizations can take three different approaches when contrasting DM and DAM:

* Tools and processes
* File and content types
* Business use

This article will leverage these approaches to explore the difference between DM and DAM.

Tools and Processes

Both DM and DAM use functionality common to content management solutions. These functionalities include the repository, metadata indexing, search capabilities, user- and role-defined accessibility, and workflow.

The repository stores the content and can either be a relational database or a simple file system. It includes standard features, such as check in and check out, versioning, and taxonomy. It will also allow metadata to be defined, so it includes all relevant descriptions of the different documents and files. This metadata then can be used by the search engine for indexing. The workflow takes care of the different tasks and roles that are involved within the process, whether serial or parallel.

Besides these similarities, there are essential differences in the respective tools and processes of DM and DAM.

DM, on one hand, focuses on capturing text content through optical character recognition (OCR), it is integrated with text processing tools, and is able to define different elements within a document as content. DM is capable of reusing this content either in parts or as the whole document. In the repository, DM can store document elements in different formats, such as extensible markup language (XML).

DAM, on the other hand, integrates with applications that focus on the creative design of assets, such as Quark, AutoCAD, Flash, and three dimensional animation. DAM solutions are capable of linking, disassembling, and reassembling complex and combined assets. DAM is also able to change images directly by either resizing or changing colors, and can handle large files, especially video files. Its search capabilities extend beyond standard search to permit visual searches using image recognition. Besides text indexing, which DM solutions also provide, DAM is able to index speech-to-text videos, closed caption videos, and more.

File and Content Types

The tools, as described above, allow different file types to be stored, which is another way to differentiate DM with DAM. DM files are mostly text based such as, paper documents, files from office tools, PDF, HTML files etc. DAM systems capture rich media files which can be images; logos; audio; video; CAD; animation (including GIFs and Flash); and design files.

DM systems are often capable of storing these kinds of files as well, but provide little more than storage, which is not sufficient for organizations that handle large quantities of digital asset files.

Business Use

Each solution can also be used for different types of business processes. Business processes are automated by these solutions, which help with the creation, collaboration, review, and approval of content throughout different departments within the organization. Below are some examples of the business processes in which DM and DAM can be used.

DM is often used in contract negotiations, documentation creation, policy and procedures, articles, reports, or statement processes. DAM solutions focus on the collaboration and management of advertising or marketing material, multimedia kits, corporate presentations, or video on demand. Libraries created by the system include image libraries, video libraries, and font and logo libraries.

SOURCE:
http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/articles/document-management-and-digital-asset-management-is-there-a-difference-and-what-might-it-be-18316/

Advertising Online - A Guide to Successful Market Penetration Part One: Why Internet Advertising

2010-08-17T22:43:00.001-07:00

Why Internet Advertising?

Online advertising in the past year has proven to be no longer an option, but a requirement. With billions of pages on the web, companies are increasingly feeling the pressure to advertise online to bolster corporate presence, B2B and B2C revenues and to also turn their websites into sources for acquiring client information. Indeed, statistics show that more and more business is being conducted online, and a recent study conducted from Ernst and Young reveals that 74% of Americans purchased online in the last year.

Accordingly, of all Internet users in the US, 94% of them query search engines to find information on the Web (Nielson-Net Ratings). Even more appealing is the fact that 81% of people querying search engines find the information every time they search (NPD). Considering these numbers and how relatively inexpensive and risk free Internet advertising is compared to other types of traditional media, it is a wonder why more businesses are not optimizing their sites on search engines (aka SEO Search Engine Optimization) to bolster online presence.

This is Part One of a three-part article on successful online advertising.

Part Two will discuss Search Engine Strategies.

Part Three will cover Geographical Targeting and Fraud Prevention Programs.

Search Engine Marketing Is Essential

Reaching the ever-increasing number of online users is critical to complementing your offline advertising efforts as well as establishing your corporate presence on the net. Corporate websites should be information rich for both returning users and new users. They should also be a platform for your company's values and offering. Attracting your clients, or potential business partners to your website is therefore the key to not only forging long-term relationships, but also bolstering online sales.

CEOs and marketing directors need to acknowledge the power of search engine marketing. It's one of the most cost-effective marketing tools available, yet most companies spend little on search engine optimization. In a recent study from Marketing Sherpa, "more than 90 percent of the Fortune 100's websites not optimized properly". This is a striking statistic when considering that next to email, search engines are the most widely used application on the Internet (Market Leap).

A fully integrated marketing campaign should therefore include aggressive Internet advertising, which consists of listings on search engines, portals, directories and banners on strategic portals and large sites. Most importantly, listing your site on search engines with a broad reach is important to expose your product and/or services. Search engines will provide the technology to bring your corporation to people who are actively looking for your solution. And since over 80% of web site traffic is guided by search engines (Forrester Research), the question remains: how do you use search engines effectively in order to draw clients, partners and industry experts to your site?

To support online initiatives, listing and ranking high on search engines is a critical step towards garnishing success. In the industry, the top 10 results receive approximately 80% more traffic than those in positions 11-30 (I search). Now, how do you achieve that top rank?

There are various ways to approach getting top listing with the large search properties. Some sites use specific keywords and phrases to allow large indexing engines to recognize the validity of the site to the users, some also purchase relevant keywords and phrases from content suppliers who feed this information to the large search properties. Most of these content suppliers charge per referral.

There are many different types of pricing structures, the two most popular being bidding and CPC. The later version charges only when a user clicks on the search result (CPC- Cost per Click- Model), and redirects the user to your site. There is little risk in comparison to traditional advertising media, which charges strictly on demographics, circulation, and the likelihood of how many people will see or hear your message. Paying a content supplier on a "cost per click" referral is akin to having someone deliver a bus load of people to your store and charging you pennies for every potential customer who steps through the door. In this scenario, even if two people purchase, you will have been successful in your online marketing efforts.

Added Benefits of Advertising Online: Tracking your ROI

You can analyze down to the penny your increase in sales through keyword advertising by tracking the conversion rates (sales generated from clicks) for each ad dollar that you spend. You only have to create a specific URL, per initiative, pointing to your website so that you can track which marketing effort the click is coming from. You will then be able to monitor someone clicking on your advertisement, going to your site and converting into a sale. This information will notify you which keywords, creatives and marketing effort are producing an ROI and which efforts are not.

Data Warehousing

An organization's Data Warehouse is detailed information obtained about each client, including their behaviors, and their preferences. The Data Warehouse is typically a combination of detailed demographic data on a customer. You may obtain this type of information from clients that submit information about themselves by opting in to your company's newsletters, updates or specials information via your site. Oftentimes, parties that are interested in your product/service offering are more willing to take five minutes in the comfort of their own home to optin to receive company information.

This concludes Part One of a three-part article successful online advertising.

Part Two will discuss Search Engine Strategies.

Part Three will cover Geographical Targeting and Fraud Prevention Programs.

SOURCE:
http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/articles/advertising-online-a-guide-to-successful-market-penetration-part-one-why-internet-advertising-16823/

Usability

2010-08-17T22:42:00.002-07:00

Introduction

There have been several reasons given over the years to explain the success of Microsoft's software products. Rarely has usability featured in these discussions.

Many of us would recall how painful it was to draw a table in WordStar or WordPerfect. Microsoft Word made it simple, intuitive and fun to draw tables. The same goes for text formatting, mail merge, envelope printing, and so on.

Extra wide screens in many software packages force users to scroll horizontally. As a result, speed suffers because users need to lift their hands from the keyboards and keep reaching for the mouse. On the other hand, some packages have thoughtfully laid out their screens in such a way that horizontal scrolling is not needed and users can instead concentrate on their keyboards.

Many of us have come across web sites that take up several paragraphs to explain how to perform a certain tasksay, check contents of shopping cartwhen a hyperlink placed right there would have done the job easily. The Search feature on different web sites result in wide-ranging hit lists: some web sites provide matches only if the search term matches exactly with the way the web site has stored it; others are smart enough to present a hit list of approximate matches. Some on-line shopping web sites even lack a shopping cart feature and force you to keep entering the same information (for example, name, address and credit card details) separately for each item you want to buy.

Poor usability leads to irritation and fatigue, even if users do not their feelings. It has an adverse impact on the usage experience. In an on-line shopping web site, it can lead to loss of revenues. Poor usability of business applications leads to increased help desk costs.

On the other hand, better usability makes our usage experience more fun and can increase productivity. A highly usable on-line shopping web site tempts repeat visits, builds customer loyalty, and increases its revenue-earning potential.

For a company developing a software product, better usability plays a significant role in defining the brand appeal and conveying a certain positive brand experience. The enjoySAP initiative of SAP AG is a case in point. Owing to enjoySAP, the previously difficult-to-use screens of SAP software were completely re-designed, making them much easier to use.

As more and more software products tend to become commodities, traditional functional criteria will take a backseat to usability aspects. Says Mark Rolston of frog design, "In future, the behavior of controlling elements can be configured in an objective or playful way, and thus become part of the brand experience." Operating elements such as zooming or scrolling menus may ultimately determine whether a product is accepted or rejected by the market.

In a broader context that is equally applicable to software and web sites, C.K. Prahalad, management guru and professor at the University of Michigan Business School, recently unveiled a roadmap wherein companies will have to make a rapid transition from product and consumer orientation to customer solution orientation, and finally to the personal consumer experience viewpoint .

Defining Usability

While all of us have an intuitive understanding of what usability means, it is now time we looked at some definitions.

Fundamentally, usability is concerned with making systems easy to learn and easy to use. The term is used to describe the quality of a user's experience when interacting with a system whether a software package or a web site. A usable system is one that enables users to perform their job effectively and efficiently.

The International Standards Organization (ISO) defines usability as the "effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction with which a specified set of users can achieve a specified set of tasks in a particular environment."

Usability relates to both form and content.

Microsoft Word and Excel are two examples of excellent usability among software products. The mail merge wizard in Word make it easy to create form letters. Word has similar highly usable features for printing mailing labels and envelopes. Excel provides an excellent paste function wizard (invoked through the f* button) for defining complex formulas with ease, and a highly usable chart wizard to quickly convert numbers to graphs.

Amazon and Expedia are examples of two web sites that display tremendous commitment to enhance the total usage experience.

Amazon's 1-Click ordering feature improves usability by enabling the registered buyer quickly order an item without having to enter shipping address and credit card details during each buying session.

Amazon's recently launched Search Inside the Book feature (see figure 1) allows buyers to search millions of pages to find exactly the book they want to buy.

Figure 1: Amazon's Search Inside the Book

Now instead of just displaying books whose title, author, or publisher-provided keywords match their search terms, buyers' search results will surface titles based on every word inside the book (see figure 2).

Figure 2: Search inside the book results

When selling a used book, an obvious question in the mind of the seller is whether the asking price is too high or too low. Amazon helps sellers by providing a Used Price Guideline, which is computed not only on the basis of the price of a brand new version of the same book on Amazon, but also on the condition of the used book (see figure 3).

Figure 3: Used price guideline

Immediately after you have booked a flight ticket, Expedia asks you if you need a hotel room, a travel insurance policy or a rent-a-car. If you do, Expedia takes you directly to the respective web pages so that you can order them quickly.

There are many travel web sites where you can order a hotel room, travel insurance, and rent-a-carbut only if you specifically remember to locate these links and click them separately. Where Expedia scores is by prodding visitors to make these additional purchases when they have completed the flight booking and are most likely to be in the mood for buying other travel necessities. It will not be a surprise if one discovers that Expedia sells more hotel rooms, travel insurance policies, and car rentals for each flight ticket it sells on-line.

Why Is It So Often Lacking?

If usability is so important, why do so many software packages and web sites lack it?

Usability requires empathythe ability to put yourself in the shoes of users and think as they would while interacting with the system. Programmers and systems analysts do not learn empathy during their technical education.

Another reason, to quote Gerd Waloszek of SAP Portals Product Design Center, is "release schedules are tight and, as a result, usability is still too often handled as an afterthought'" .

Standard software development methodologies include a stage that focuses on gathering functionality requirements. That is, What the software is expected to do. Little or no attention is paid to defining usability requirements, which is How the software is expected to do what it is expected to do. Faced with a "clean-slate" during the stage of defining requirements, users are barely able to define the What aspects accurately. Without actually seeing the software, they are just not in a position to define the How aspects. For example, a business user who has not yet seen a to-be-developed customer order screen may at best be able to specify what pieces of data he or she would like to see in a customer order screen. It is virtually impossible for the business user to specify at this stage how the screen should be laid out and whether he or she is willing to accept horizontal scrolling, and details like that.

To the extent that usability has to do with things such as fonts, and color schemes may fall in the realm of graphics design. However, wizards, screen navigation, number of mouse-clicks required to perform a certain action, and so on, belong entirely in the domain of software engineering.

While better usability may sometimes call for more features, it can often be achieved within the framework of existing features. What it really takes is to make the features available to users when they are most likely to want them and in a form that they find easiest to use, as the Expedia example illustrates.

Steps to Improving Usability

Let us see what steps could be taken to improve usability in the course of a software development or implementation project.

One, software engineers could build repositories of usability best practices from previous projects and earlier product versions. As we have seen from our various examples, basic elements like wizards, rightly-placed hyperlinks, shopping carts, and navigation schemes can lead to significant improvements in usability. During the early stages of the project, these best practices could be used to guide users instead of expecting them to define usability requirements without seeing a single screen of the software.

Two, prototyping could be used more frequently to give the user a "look-and-feel" of key screens before they are fully developed. Prototyping is used to eliminate misunderstanding and verify a solution at an early stage of design. Based on user feedback, mid-course design corrections could be made, if necessary. There are many tools available in the market that help the software engineer develop prototypes rapidly. Many of these tools allow re-usability so that the prototypes developed at the early stages can be used as part of the actual software being developed during the later stages. In other words, the prototypes need not be discarded.

Three, screen navigation and workflow could be demonstrated and signed-off before coding actually begins. Here, use could be made of a structured methodology like the Delta Method for better results.

Four, users volunteering to test beta versions of software could be encouraged to provide feedback not only on functionality and performance issues, but also on usability. While it may be too late to make changes to the software at this stage, the next release can benefit from this feedback.

Five, look for usability tips available on the Internet for specific areas. For example, SAP Design Guild for SAP developments and add-on products.

It is important to note that usability should be built in at the design stage. Once software is developed, the cost of making changes to enhance usability is prohibitively high.

With increasing attention being placed on improving user experience as a means of promoting software branding, usability is gradually becoming "must-have" rather than "nice-to-have". Users can finally start looking forward to a time in the not too distant future when software and web sites are not just useful but also usable.

SOURCE:
http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/articles/usability-17186/

Advertising Online - A Guide to Successful Market Penetration Part Two: Search Engine Strategies

2010-08-17T22:42:00.001-07:00

Keyword Advertising

Most search engines use the CPC model, and price keywords based on their market value. Currently, the market is stating that generic keywords such as investment and insurance are highly valued and consequently more obscure, but targeted keywords are valued much lower. Another, more efficient system is categorizing the website and determining the market value of the industry the website falls into and taking a step back from pricing keywords. The average price in the industry for CPC advertising, including categorization, is fragmented as the CPC can range from 1 cent to 2 dollars depending on the industry.

Everything stems from your keywords since it is these words that will let you be visible to the billions of online searchers. However, there is more to building keyword lists than just coming up with words that describe your product or service offering. For example, results show that 45% of users search by using a combination of keywords (key phrases), 28% use one keyword, 18% search by a pre-defined option (such as browsing through a directory category) and 9% search by typing in a question (NPD).

There are two schools of thought when it comes to creating a keyword list. The first is listing generic keywords in order to generate the most traffic as possible to your site, resulting in high click through ratios, but low conversion rates. The other option is listing targeted keywords that will drive targeted traffic to your site, resulting in traditionally lower click through rates, but higher conversions ratios. For example if you are selling ECRM services in New Jersey, and are only capable of delivering your services in the US, then you may not want to list the single keyword "ECRM". You would receive a high amount of clickthroughs, but from traffic that may not be interested in purchasing, or from users that you would not logistically be able to supply. This is a waste of advertising dollars. If you were to list keyword phrases such as "ECRM in the US" or "improve ECRM for US business" you would receive more targeted traffic, given that the user typing in this keyword is probably looking for information on ECRM in the US.

Since building targeted keyword lists requires some knowledge of online advertising, search engine's staff editors are always available to help in building highly targeted keywords for your campaign. Keyword enthusiasts also go to Wordtracker.com and WordSpot.com. The number of keywords that you list on a search engine is also crucial to your online success. Each additional keyword and keyword phrase you suggest will increase your site's chances of being located. Think of it as not only placing as many hooks as possible in the lake, but also making sure they are of the right type to attract what you need.

This is Part Two of a three-part article on successful online advertising.

Part One addressed the question "Why Internet Advertising?"

Part Three will cover Geographical Targeting and Fraud Prevention Programs.

Powerful Creatives

Almost as important as the keywords are the creatives that support them. Creatives in the search industry refer to the titles and descriptions that expand upon the keywords. They provide a small glimpse of what your website has to offer.

It is important to be as clear as possible for a number of reasons. First, it is preferable not to use superlatives, caps or exclamation marks in your titles because this reduces the validity of your offer and is not viewed as a professional listing. Second, it is suggested that the title and the description have the keyword in it to further prove that the result is relevant.

It should also expand in as few words as possible the website's is offering. Using the ECRM solutions firm as an example, the title should have the following elements: "ECRM business solutions for US businesses". The description then, as an expansion of the title should have the following elements: "Reputable ECRM business solutions that can make you business more profitable". Using this method of advertising on search engines, you are sure to be attracting your target market to your site, (from a purely geographic demographic).

Relevant URL's

In addition to using specific and relevant titles and descriptions, the URL that you submit to the search engine must be very targeted. Ideally, the user should get to the exact page that they are looking for on the first click. For example, if the user is searching for a specific ECRM solution, that solution should be on the URL associated with the creative. Internet searchers have low patience levels, and if they cannot immediately find what they are looking for on your site they will give up and move on to the next result on the list.

This concludes Part Two of a three-part article on successful online advertising.

Part One addressed the question "Why Internet Advertising?"

Part Three will cover Geographical Targeting and Fraud Prevention Programs.

SOURCE:
http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/articles/advertising-online-a-guide-to-successful-market-penetration-part-two-search-engine-strategies-16828/

What’s New in Microsoft SQL Server 2000

2010-08-17T22:41:00.000-07:00

Product Background

In 1987, Sybase released the SQL Server database management system on the UNIX platform. The product was ported to IBM OS/2 by Microsoft, Sybase, and Ashton-Tate (of DBase fame) in 1988-89. Ashton-Tate dropped out of the consortium in 1990. Between 1991 and 1993, Microsoft and IBM divorced in the OS/2 arena, and SQL Server 4.2 for Windows NT and the Windows NT 3.1 operating system were released.

In 1994, Microsoft and Sybase ended their co-development efforts (for a period in the early 1990's, SQL Server 4.x for OS/2 was actually labeled Microsoft on the manuals and Sybase on the diskettes.) Microsoft carried forward on Windows NT, and Sybase carried forward on UNIX. Microsoft SQL Server version 6.0 was released in 1995, version 6.5 in 1996, and version 7 in 1998. The rest is basically history, the fate of IBM OS/2 and Sybase's database compared to Microsoft's offerings is well known.

Microsoft has developed a number of versions of the successor to SQL 7.0, known as SQL Server 2000, including the Enterprise Edition, which includes distributed partitioned views and failover clustering to improve database uptime; Standard Edition, which should be appropriate for small to mid-sized businesses; Personal Edition, which will run on non-server platforms including Windows 98; Developer Edition, which includes a development and test end-user license precluding production deployment; and a Windows CE Edition, which will not be available until the second half of 2000.

The product has historically been used at the departmental data mart level. Microsoft is now trying to penetrate the Enterprise Data Warehouse market. Their largest competitors are IBM's DB2 Universal Database and Oracle's 8i. The database market is growing at approximately 20% per year, and since Microsoft will continue to thrive with mid to low-end customers, they should profit greatly in these markets.

In addition, Microsoft has announced that they are running 20 critical internal systems, including their worldwide sales data warehouse, on SQL Server 2000. In the vendor world, this is referred to as "eating your own dog food", and their commitment to the product is clear.

The product is based on Microsoft's Windows DNA (Distributed Internet Architecture), and includes many interesting components, some of which are also present in SQL Server 7.0 and many of which have been enhanced:

Web Related

Internet Information Services 5.0 (IIS): Web services integrated with the operating system to allow web hosting.

Active Server Pages (ASP): A web server scripting language.

HTTP Connectivity: A DLL is supplied which allows users to define virtual roots in IIS that are associated with an instance of SQL Server. Security can be set to anonymous access, using SQL Server id/password (in conjunction with the secure sockets layer), or with Windows Access Control Lists (ACLs).

Work Sharing

COM+ Component Services: This feature was formerly known as the Microsoft Transaction Server (MTS). This service allows for remote object calls and many other programming language features similar to Remote Procedure Calls (RPCs).

Distributed Transaction Support: The ability for multiple computers to participate in a coordinated unit of work.

Message Oriented Middleware: MSMQ (Microsoft Message Queuing) is similar to IBM's MQSeries product, and coordinates the communications across networks and systems.

XML Support: The Microsoft XML Parser helps create applications that exchange data formatted in the Extensible Markup Language (XML). Most newly released products from data warehouse vendors support XML in some form.

ActiveX Data Objects: Software modules based on Microsoft's Component Object Model (COM) architecture which make it possible to call ready-made components that blend in and appear as normal parts of the program.

Security

Security: Microsoft has enabled role-based security to simplify the programming effort.

Improved Security: Analysis Services includes security features all the way down to the cell level within a cube.

Queries/Searches

English Query: A method for issuing natural language queries in English that are turned into the appropriate SQL statements to answer the question posed. "Authoring" of English Query applications is performed in Microsoft Visual Studio version 6, which is included with SQL Server. In its prior incarnation, English Query could use only ODBC, it is now enabled with OLE DB, and can therefore access heterogeneous data sources.

Analysis Services: (Formerly OLAP Services). The capability to create On-Line Analytical Processing multi-dimensional databases (MDBs or "cubes") within SQL Server. Also provides roll-up (aggregation) capabilities. Includes support for Multidimensional, Relational, and Hybrid OLAP.

Integrated Data Mining: The ability to perform such tasks as clickstream analysis for web sites. Analysis services also provides the ability to link cubes (multiple cubes, either inside and/or outside the firewall appear in a single "view", essentially a "virtual cube") and access cubes via HTTP (web-enabled analysis). The features are part of the OLE DB for Data Mining specification (see "Microsoft Says OLE for Data Mining: Is It Bull?", March 28, 2000, for additional details). The data mining algorithms supported were developed by Microsoft and consist of Decision Trees (four different algorithms based on classification theory), and Clustering (based on the nearest neighbor method). Third party algorithms are also supported.

Full Text Search: The ability to run queries on text documents in relational tables and search across all indexed columns in a table. For Full-Text Search, documents are stored in Binary Large Objects (BLOBs) and registered for full-text indexing, including the ability to filter out "noise words" such as "a" and "the". This capability is similar to the full text indexing in Lotus Notes. Microsoft has also added the capability to update the full-text index in near real-time instead of batch mode, if desired.

Distributed Partitioned Views: The ability to share database processing across a group of servers. The data is "horizontally partitioned" across the servers, but the partitioning is transparent to the application. The servers distribute scans and updates as needed. The technology used is known as "shared-nothing clustering".

Sub Indexing: On Symmetric Multiprocessing (SMP) hardware, the product has the ability to multi-thread index creation. Separate processors and threads create "sub-indexes" of large databases in parallel (including parallel database scans to gather the index information), and then a "coordinating thread" combines them into a complete index. This can be extremely valuable in a very large database that is frequently updated, since it can save a great deal of time.

Materialized Views: The product allows the creation of a unique clustered index on a database view. This can result in great performance gains, and the query optimizer will even be able to use the view if it is not referenced in the query's FROM clause. This feature is important in that existing queries do not have to be re-coded to force the optimizer to use the view index.

Directory Services

Directory Services: The new Active Directory Services process centralizes administrative information about resources.

Active Directory: Databases can be centrally managed using the Active Directory service.

Efficiencies

Network Load Balancing: On the datacenter and advanced server products, Microsoft has enabled load balancing of TCP/IP traffic across multi-node clusters.

Multi-Instance Support: The ability to have multiple installations of SQL Server on the same machine. This was previously impossible due to the way NT registry entries were made. This inability in prior versions was a serious problem, since many customers wanted to be able to run a test and a production instance on the same (typically very expensive) machine.

Database Maintenance

Database Programmability Enhancements:

* Cascading Referential Integrity: In previous releases of major databases, if an attempt was made to delete or update a key that had foreign keys, the operation had to be handled programmatically. This ability, most often used to perform a "cascade delete" (delete a parent and all its children), is now built into the product.

* New data types: SQL Server now supports BIGINT (an 8-byte integer), and a variant datatype that can store data values of different data types.

Product Strategy and Trajectory

Microsoft is attempting once again to make inroads into the enterprise space with the Enterprise Edition of the product, specifically to compete with IBM's DB2 Universal Database and Oracle's 8i. It is questionable whether they will be successful, since they only support Microsoft operating systems, but the product's ease of use and breadth of offering is compelling.

Microsoft is attempting to create a product that is "all things to all people", by including data movement technology, data mining, transaction services, OLAP support, and ease of use - all "out-of-the-box". Microsoft will also leverage its DNA initiative to lock customers into its solutions, if it can get them to run Windows 2000 on some or all of their servers. TEC predicts that Microsoft will have not succeeded at the Enterprise level (60% probability) and will have to provide further enhancements in the next major release (already in development, code-named "Yukon"). The timing of the Yukon release is unknown.

Product Strengths

* The product has a lower total cost of ownership (TCO) than many of its competitors, and runs on less expensive x86 hardware (compared to the price of a mainframe or high-end UNIX machine).

* SQL Server contains many features not currently contained in its competitors' out-of-the-box database product.

* Customers will be intrigued at the concept of an almost-complete data warehouse or data mart solution from a single vendor, in a single box.

* Very broad feature set.

* Improved Data Transformation Services (DTS) that allows the product to access data sources other than Microsoft databases.

Product Challenges

* The product is not supported on any non-Microsoft operating system. Customers which run UNIX and mainframe operating systems will be less inclined to move to SQL Server, especially at the enterprise-wide high end of the database spectrum. In this space Microsoft will be challenged by IBM, Oracle, and to a lesser degree, Informix and Sybase.

* It will be difficult for Microsoft to dispel the belief in the IT industry that they are not ready for Enterprise level applications. IBM and Oracle will continue to control this space (80% probability).

* It will be difficult to dislodge competing products from non-Microsoft SQL Server shops. Companies with large hardware installations of other (non-NT or 2000) operating systems, such as IBM OS/390 and Sun E10000 enterprise UNIX systems, will not be willing to let that hardware cost go to waste (90% probability).

* The product is not as efficient at handling multimedia data as Informix, Oracle, or IBM.

* Tuning distributed partitioned views (which potentially access data across many servers to answer a single query), will be very tricky, and if not properly handled, will cause the network to suffer due to traffic between the SQL Servers that contain the appropriate data.

* Microsoft will suffer somewhat in the market, at least in the near term, due to the dust raised over the Department of Justice anti-trust suit.

BOTTOM LINE

Vendor Recommendations

* Continue to improve the product and scale it up to the Enterprise level even further. A 64-bit release brought to market on time would help them in this regard.

* Improve multimedia support.

* Bring Host Integration Server 2000 (for SNA access to mainframe data) to market as quickly as possible to improve your marketing message with legacy database shops (the product is currently in Beta 1).

SOURCE:
http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/articles/what-s-new-in-microsoft-sql-server-2000-15888/

Why Database-agnostic Enterprise Applications Are on the Way Out

2010-08-05T11:20:00.001-07:00

The shift to a service-oriented architecture (SOA) by many software vendors has changed the focus of application architecture. Although it is a given that it is best to separate an application into layers, the question remains whether the application should be tightly integrated with the database. The traditional approach, known as database agnosticism, allows the user to select an application and a database independently. While this approach may sound good at first, it sacrifices system performance and flexibility.
The reason for this is that to support multiple databases, the software vendor must pick the lowest-common-denominator set of database features for the application to use. Often this results in less than optimal design, user experience, and performance. Focusing on a particular database product enables developers to take maximum advantage of the database's feature set. This allows the application to offer additional capabilities not available in a database-agnostic application, resulting in richer functionality. Tight application and database integration also lowers database management costs because the application itself can automate these ongoing management tasks, eliminating much of the work required of a database administrator (DBA).
This article presents the case for applications that are integrated tightly with the database platform on which they operate. This method of application development increases functionality, improves system performance, and lowers both development and maintenance costs. In the past, databases were the integration point where applications connected to communicate with each other. But in the twenty-first century, the middleware layer is the integration point. Companies are investing more in middleware acquisition and in building the competence to manage that middleware than in investing in database technology and expertise. To achieve cost efficiencies, companies are using a single middleware layer for all their applications and are choosing the middleware themselves rather than being forced to accept what their application vendors dictate. In other words, they are turning away from database-agnostic applications in favor of middleware-agnostic solutions.
More Than a Storage Bin
Today, database applications have become more than devices with which to store and retrieve data. Significant query functionality and data management tools are packaged with the database itself. As enterprise application vendors work to add Google-like enterprise search features, development organizations that rely on the text indexing and query functions of their underlying databases will find it easier to bring this functionality to market. However, database-agnostic applications must be developed and then redeveloped to adjust to each database. This adds cost that customers must absorb through increased license fees and makes the applications more complex and expensive for vendors to support and upgrade.
Furthermore, operating these search capabilities is database-intensive. If you can rely on the database to perform these functions, you are spared the stress on system resources that would result from pulling this information out of the database and performing the search function. Similarly, rich media, such as video and audio, can be handled much more easily if they can be accessed within the database itself rather than by pulling a large, unwieldy file out of the table in which it resides.
Apart from enterprise search, database-specific applications can more easily deliver business intelligence (BI) and data-mining functions. BI tools such as online business analytical processing (OLAP) cubes can be built right into the application at the database tier, and this is where this type of functionality should naturally reside—as close to the actual data as possible.
Database-agnostic applications often require different management tools and processes for the database layer than for the application layer. An application that is database-specific can lower costs by unifying the tool set and management time for both layers, thereby reducing or eliminating the need to retain the services of a DBA and cutting application management costs.
Also, a database-agnostic application has very different performance characteristics depending on the database on which an instance of the application is running. Although other portions of a system, including the operating system and hardware, can vary without significantly affecting the performance of the application, this is not the case when an application runs on different databases. Queries that might run quickly on an Oracle database might run slowly on Microsoft's SQL Server or IBM's DB2, or vice versa, depending on how the application is optimized.
New Technology Solves Problems
One argument for designing database-agnostic applications was the perceived difference between the level of skill and effort required to manage different database platforms. Historically, SQL Server had the reputation of being relatively simple and user-friendly, whereas many people believed that Oracle required a DBA with extensive knowledge of tools and methodologies that were difficult to comprehend and master.
However, recent data suggests that the opposite is true. A study released in March of 2006 by Edison Group, Inc. reveals that current Oracle databases are, in fact, less time-consuming and less costly to administer than current structured query language (SQL) databases. The study, titled Comparative Management Cost Study of Oracle Database 10g Release 2 and Microsoft SQL Server 2005 (visit www.theedison.com), makes the following conclusions:
* DBAs can perform typical administrative functions 38 percent faster when using Oracle Database 10g Release 2 than when using Microsoft SQL Server 2005.
* Oracle Database 10g Release 2 requires 30 percent fewer steps than Microsoft SQL Server 2005 for the same set of standard administrative tasks for a relational database management system (RDBMS) based on Edison Group's metric for complexity assessment.
* Benefiting from increased DBA productivity, businesses can save up to $31,664 (USD) per DBA per year by using Oracle Database 10g Release 2 instead of Microsoft SQL Server 2005.
These facts aside, many users of applications running on Oracle databases retain no DBA whatsoever. Automation tools within the database have largely "leveled the playing field" in terms of maintenance cost and activity. All databases require some level of maintenance, and the types of maintenance—such as the maintenance and work required to prepare for a restore in the event of system failure—are similar regardless of the database vendor. Today, anyone with the knowledge and skills to administer an SQL database can likely do the same with an Oracle database. It is similar to switching from one brand of automobile to another: When it gets dark outside, you know you need to turn on the headlights, and you can do so simply by familiarizing yourself with the location of the switch.
By tightly integrating the application with the database, the application can be designed to perform much of the routine database maintenance by itself. This is simple to do if the application is designed so it understands the performance characteristics and maintenance requirements of the database, but is more difficult and expensive if the application must support multiple databases.
One argument against database-specific enterprise applications has been the fear that the database eventually will become overburdened, creating a bottleneck in the system. This is no longer a concern as a result of technologies such as Oracle Grid Computing and Oracle Real Application Clusters. Real Application Clusters allows an application to share a single database across multiple nodes or servers in a computing cluster. It is now possible to run a powerful enterprise application that is tightly integrated with its underlying database in an infinitely scalable environment—without suffering performance problems or requiring increasingly expensive server hardware.
Focus on the Middle Tier
By the late 1990s—about the time that Microsoft purchased SQL Server—many enterprise software customers were interested in applications that were database-agnostic enough to support SQL Server. Although there arguably may have been a case for database neutrality in those days, such is not the case today.
The focus of how applications interact has changed since the late 1990s to the point that it makes little difference what database an application is running on, as long as the application can make the best use of its database platform. Today, it is more important that the application be compatible with a variety of middleware products because this gives users greater freedom.
As recently as ten years ago, applications were designed to deliver reporting directly from the database tier. Similarly, integration with other systems was done from the database. If an add-on program was developed for the application, it was tied directly to the database. The database was the functional hub of the application, and the ability to choose the database affected how well the application could interoperate with other systems.
But things have changed. Today, any integration work is done through Web services in the middle tier of the application, and add-on development is similarly tied into the application in the middle tier through services that communicate with the application programming interfaces (APIs). Reporting is done not against the database, but rather against extensible markup language (XML) data schemas in the middle tier. In short, the middle tier has become the place where all connection points and interfaces in an enterprise application are located.
Today, it is more important for customers to choose the middleware product they want to use, and less important to choose the database. It is as if the database is turning into a "black box," meaning it is performing its tasks in a self-contained manner, with little or no human intervention required. Everything a user does with a truly modern enterprise application is driven by the middle tier, while hidden elements of the functionality may, in fact, be driven by features embedded in the database layer.
The enterprise application of the future will not need to offer the choice of multiple databases, but rather it will give users the power to choose the middleware product. This will allow twenty-first century application vendors to offer products that are technology-neutral, with functionality that can quickly adapt to changing technologies without disrupting the entire application stack. While implementing these applications, a company can choose to use middleware such as Oracle Fusion, SAP NetWeaver, or IBM WebSphere—or it can opt for an open-source solution such as JBoss.
It is important to note that many leading enterprise software products are owned by companies that also are in the business of selling middleware. Application vendors that specify a single middleware solution—or force users to adapt their own—are increasing the cost and complexity of their customers' solutions. Operating a single middleware product leads to a more homogeneous information technology (IT) environment and lowers total cost of ownership (TCO) by limiting licensing fees and training costs. Today, however, nearly all companies use multiple products, including enterprise resources planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM) software, extranets, and homegrown applications. If these products offer a choice of middleware, a company can standardize on one middleware product, but if each application requires a different middleware product, then the customer is in a difficult situation.
Imagine a company that runs Oracle Financials on Oracle Fusion middleware. When it buys a new maintenance solution, can it continue to use Oracle Fusion? If its maintenance product does not support Fusion, could it be forced to adopt a second middleware, such as WebSphere, to accommodate its new maintenance solution? Or imagine a company that is already using WebSphere to manage integrations with its old mainframes. Will the company be able to continue using WebSphere, or will it be forced to learn a second platform when it acquires a new business application?
The answers to these questions are, unfortunately, not what companies would want to hear.
To be clear, a SAP customer, for example, is limited to NetWeaver. A Microsoft enterprise applications customer must use Windows Server. Other products, including those from Lawson, limit users to WebSphere.
SOURCE:http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/articles/why-database-agnostic-enterprise-applications-are-on-the-way-out-18920/

6 Immediate Business Improvements Offered by an Online SRM System: Part 2: Online SRM

2010-08-05T11:19:00.002-07:00

6 Immediate Business Improvements Provided by an Online SRM System
Referencing the activities from the inverted triangle' in Part One (Duane link to Part One), the following is an explanation of how online SRM helps to reduce the time spent on transactional details and put more emphasis on strategic activities.
1. Faster and more accurate document transmittal A result of: Transaction Automation
An inherent problem with traditional procurement processes is that they are manual. To conduct business with suppliers, buyers must print documents such as forecast reports, RFQs, notes, messages, quote responses and POs, and then transmit them using fax or post. Both time consuming and expensive, activities such as these very quickly eat away at the profitability of the procurement department.
Online SRM provides a way to automate these processes. Documents are now accessible by buyers and suppliers in electronic format, and they can be quickly and efficiently transmitted via the Internet. All documents are located outside of both users' firewalls, so there are no security concerns. And transactions that take place through the online SRM system can be easily integrated with back end enterprise systems, ensuring consistency and accuracy throughout the organization.
2. More efficient and reliable buyer-supplier communication A result of: Online Collaboration
Seldom is a procurement document sent and then immediately closed. More often than not, collaboration must take place between buyers and suppliers to ensure that both parties agree on the terms and expectations relating to the document. A supplier, for instance, may need to adjust quantities, price levels or delivery dates on a purchase order. When this collaboration takes place using paper or phone-based means, important details are often lost.
Using an online SRM system, these details are easily maintained. All transactions and communications take place within the Internet-based system, and historical information is stored in a central location that is easily accessible by both buyers and suppliers. Users are able to verify details regarding each transaction by performing a simple electronic query an action that takes seconds not hours, which is often the case with a search involving an overstuffed filing cabinet.
This is Part Two of a three-part article.
Part One presented the supplier relationship activities.
Part Three discusses other points to consider when choosing an online SRM system.
Less time spent checking details
3. Less time spent checking details A result of: SCEM (Supply Chain Event Management)
Because information is not available electronically, manual monitoring of exceptions can be cumbersome, requiring users to constantly create lists of transactions and related conditions and scan them on a regular basis for inconsistencies. Errors are introduced when lists are incomplete or out of date and when participants simply forget to check for overdue or out of parameter situations.
An online SRM system is able to sort through the data and provide the buyer only with information that they must review at once. Users have the option to program alerts and reminders for events that are important to them, such as overdue responses to quotes or an impending missed ship date; these alerts may show up within the system, on an e-mail application, or on a wireless device such as a mobile phone or PDA. In addition, the system provides continuous real time document status updates (read, responded, WIP, etc) and easily viewable highlights of sections that have been changed within a document.
4. Better contract terms and supplier performance A result of: Reporting and Analysis Tools
The reporting and analysis-related benefits of an online SRM system are two-fold. The first is the reallocation of time: buyers who traditionally used non-electronic means to transmit documents, collaborate with suppliers and monitor exceptions are now able to perform these tasks in half the time, giving them the opportunity to focus their efforts on more strategic, analytical activities.
The second are the actual reporting and analysis functions provided within the system. Using the data gathered from the transactions that have taken place within the system, buyers are able to quickly and easily generate reports. These reports provide valuable supply data, including purchasing patterns (which, how many and from whom items are being purchased), and the measurement of supplier performance (including contract compliance, delivery schedules and pricing).
Some online SRM systems also have the ability to analyze the data and make recommendations based on results found. Using these recommendations, buyers are able to strategize how to negotiate optimal contract terms or place orders that keep inventory levels at optimal levels.
Optimal contract terms and inventory management
5. Optimal contract terms and inventory management A result of: Multiple site collaboration
For companies that operate multiple plants or locations, particularly those that have grown through mergers and acquisitions, consolidating the data from disparate systems and making sense of it is a difficult, if not impossible, task. As a result, each plant tends to manage its own inventory and place orders with its own suppliers.
Having the ability to consolidate purchasing and manage inventory centrally provides tremendous leveraging power, and some online SRM systems provide the tools necessary to do this. Acting as a central translating' device, the online SRM system maps the procurement data from each location and consolidates it into one language that can be easily analyzed. From here, central commodity managers are able to view purchasing activities across plants, share inventory to maintain optimal levels, and perform centralized quote gathering and consolidated sourcing enabling better leverage and, in turn, better contract terms.
6. Suppliers take on the cost of managing the inventory A result of: VMI (Vendor Managed Inventory)
Vendor Managed Inventory, or VMI, has become an effective method to vastly improve supply chain performance. Using VMI, the supplier has access to some subset of the buyer's inventory, planning, and order history data and is responsible for replenishing the buyer's inventory, based on mutually agreed upon criteria and replenishment rules.
Some online SRM systems offer this capability a tremendous benefit because, in most cases, integrating VMI into an ERP application is time consuming and cost prohibitive. Using VMI through an online SRM solution, however, is relatively straightforward; it is simply a matter of exchanging VMI data through the already existing import/export function of the enterprise system. Using VMI through a hosted Online SRM system, users can perform functions such as forecast aggregates, blanket POs, release orders and advanced shipping notices through a browser, outside of the corporate firewall. Working through a Web browser alleviates security concerns, because suppliers are not required to enter the network to access VMI information.
SOURCE:http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/articles/6-immediate-business-improvements-offered-by-an-online-srm-system-part-2-online-srm-16783/

Playing Devil’s Advocate with an Innovative Vendor’s “Techies”

2010-08-05T11:19:00.001-07:00

Introduction
The series of articles where Technology Evaluation Centers (TEC) asks vendors to provide their input on a number of market trends has received much attention and reaction from readers and vendors. Infor and IFS were the first to respond (see Two Stalwart Vendors Discuss Market Trends), followed by Progress Software (see Open Platform Provider Answers Questions about the State of the Market), xTuple (see A Semi-open Source Vendor Discusses Market Trends), and The Sage Group (see A Traditional "Local Touch" Leader Espouses a More Global Vision).
As detailed in some of TEC's previous articles, enterprise applications have evolved from mainframes via client/server to service-oriented architecture (SOA) and Web service paradigms (see Architecture Evolution: From Mainframes to Service-oriented Architecture).
According to some of the latest developments, the user interface (UI) has improved and evolved on the server side (i.e., "under the hood"), especially lately. But in any enterprise application, the aim should be to reduce interaction with the system and make it as "lights out" as possible (i.e., reduce human intervention to the maximum degree possible). The only thing users should use the system for is studying the data and making the right decisions (if we don't count the heads-down folks that focus only on capturing transactions).
Then again, the interface should be adapted to the analysis being done. Poor interfaces and the inability to search for the right information are time wasters in business applications. Generally speaking, the best way to users' hearts and minds is via an intuitive UI that helps with the "zero training" and "self-evident applications" themes. The need for agility in business and the ability to continually make the changes in processes to accommodate the demands of the market means that the user ought to have intuitive tools that require minimal system training and re-training.
In evolutionary terms, from character-based "green screens," the next step was a Microsoft Windows-like "fat/rich" graphical user interface (GUI) during the client/server era. Lately, many vendors have been betting on Microsoft Office's familiarity. For instance, Microsoft Dynamics CRM's UI emulates working within Microsoft Outlook, and Duet emulates working in SAP from Microsoft Word, Excel, or Outlook, while Alloy (previously code-named Atlantic project) will emulate working in SAP from IBM Lotus Notes (see Application Giants in Duel—and Duet—for Users' Hearts, Minds… and Wallets). Moreover, Lawson Smart Client leverages a number of common Microsoft Office products (most notably Microsoft Office Groove).
However, the other school of thought is that Microsoft Office is not necessarily the only familiar "inspiration." With the help of interactive tools like Asynchronous Java and XML (AJAX) and JavaScript that provide "richness" to Web applications, Salesforce.com and other software as a service (SaaS) players use the Web browser familiarity to build their UIs. In other words, if a UI resembles Amazon's, Google's, or eBay's Web pages, who needs any formal software training?
Other similar products such as IQMS Smart Page and Smart Search, IFS Enterprise Explorer (IEE, part of the ongoing Project Aurora venture), Microsoft Dynamics Client for Office (DCO), Lawson Smart Office and Enterprise Search, Epicor Productivity Pyramid and Enterprise Search, and Infor MyDay revolve around themes such as role-based portals, contextual analytics, key performance indicators (KPIs), alerts, dashboards, etc.
Below is a list of TEC's recent blog entries that touch on the topic of "vendors trying to win users' minds and hearts."
*
May a New Day Begin for Mature Enterprise Applications – Part 2 *
Intelligent Manufacturing Systems: Beating the Odds, Mightily – Part 3 *
Microsoft's Underlying Platform Parts for Enterprise Applications: Somewhat Explained – Part 3 *
Microsoft's Underlying Platform Parts for Enterprise Applications: Somewhat Explained – Part 4
IFS Appeals to Generation "Y"
Sweden-based IFS has surprised us pleasantly by going a step further to provide the familiarity of Apple's iPhone and Google search within the IFS Applications suite.
Who is IFS?
The following information was taken from the recent press release entitled IFS and Saab Sign Strategic Partnership Agreement.
IFS is a public company (OMX STO: IFS) founded in 1983 that develops, supplies, and implements IFS Applications™, a fully integrated, component-based extended ERP suite built on SOA technology.
The company has more than 2,000 customers in 54 countries and focuses on seven main industries: aerospace and defense, utilities and telecom, manufacturing, process industries, automotive, retail and wholesale distribution, and construction contracting and service management. IFS has 2,700 employees and net revenue in 2008 was SKr 2.5 billion [$330 million USD].
IFS straightened its balance sheet and profit and loss (P&L) statements well before the current economic onslaught, which in turn has produced good financial results (against the odds) and fewer layoffs than its competitors.
A few years ago, under the new chief executive officer (CEO) Alastair Sorbie, IFS organized its priorities via a number of wise initiatives. The first priority was to pick its research and development (R&D) battles in several asset-intensive and project-based industries. The idea was to address a number of recent industry trends with new functionality. One example would be to accommodate the new project-focused ways of working or the new business paradigm, with fewer being manufactured by the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) and more being produced via subcontracting and outsourcing—all that while delivering products more frequently.
The capital contract management functionality was another priority for IFS because many organizations develop a product and service according to their contract obligations. Moreover, each contract is managed as a project if it has its own P&L statement. Another particular example is the in-life service and maintenance of an asset; assets are being managed more by the OEM (i.e., the user rents the asset as a service) and less by the actual asset user.
Furthermore, any product endeavors had to be in line with revenues. In some cases, major customers were involved in R&D undertakings and both parties would benefit. For IFS's part, the vendor would end up with an intellectual property for a fraction of R&D costs (if it developed it on its own), while the major customer would have the first-to-market competitive advantage in terms of IFS's functionality.
IFS also decided to selectively rely on partners (resellers) to sell and implement IFS Applications in certain markets. This would include some major customers such as Saab. Partnering with Saab would mean that
Saab's support division, besides using IFS Applications for its internal processes, will also offer its customers various business models that include a broad spectrum of services involving IT and information management. As a result, Saab, as a support integrator in collaboration with IFS, can implement solutions at customer sites, provide the service as an application service provider, or manage the assignment with in the framework of its own internal systems. (See IFS and Saab Sign Strategic Partnership Agreement.)
Finally, being ahead of the SOA curve (due to the way its suite has long been structured as components) has enabled IFS to focus on the user experience (UX) innovation. IFS believes that small- and medium-sized companies can beat the larger competitors (like IFS does against SAP, Oracle, and Microsoft Dynamics) by reacting faster and adopting new and innovative ways of working by learning from iPhone's and Facebook's generation "Y." Usability leads to increased user productivity via intuitive, zero-training, and familiar interfaces such as enterprise search features like Google's Web-based search, but confined within the enterprise data and extended enterprise. IFS was one of the first vendors with the native enterprise application search capabilities, and the other vendors have lately been following suit, including the recently unveiled SAP BusinessObjects Explorer.
For more information on IFS's recent moves and philosophy, see the following TEC articles:
*
Why Database-agnostic Enterprise Applications Are on the Way Out *
Is Your Enterprise Application on a Road to Nowhere? *
Blast Past Manufacturing Bottlenecks with Constraint-based Scheduling *
"Once Bitten" Vendor Is Not "Twice Shy" about New Acquisition *
Why Enterprise Application Search Is Crucial to Your ERP System
Instead of giving a ringing endorsement or criticism on IFS's moves and directions, we decided to pose a number of provocative questions to the vendor. The answers were provided by Rick Veague, chief technical officer (CTO) at IFS North America, and Dan Matthews, CTO at IFS AB.
SOURCE:http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/articles/playing-devil-s-advocate-with-an-innovative-vendor-s-techies-19559/

Knowledge Management: The Core of Service Resolution Management

2010-08-05T11:18:00.002-07:00

Today's businesses are faced with the reality of customers expecting and demanding more multichannel information and better service from call centers than ever before. Integrating call center service resolution management (SRM) into customer relationship management (CRM) can help companies retain both their call center agents and their customers.
For more background, please see Integrating Customer Relationship Management and Service Resolution Management.
Knowledge management (KM) is at the core of integrating CRM and SRM. KM software aims at helping to unlock the power of a company's knowledge to improve efficiency, competency, and profitability. It does so by providing an environment in which companies can, more quickly and cost-effectively, create a company-wide knowledge base to store and index documents and to more accurately search for the answers to user questions.
Currently, the key trends in KM tools enable companies to perform the following: 1) target their online information to reflect what is most likely to interest customers, and 2) maintain online forums where customers can share amongst themselves what they know about the company's products.
Hence, KM products typically fulfill two functions. KM accommodates self-service, meaning a customer can access a pool of public information that a company accumulates about itself, without the need for live assistance, to have his or her questions answered. Second, KM software helps call center agents to retrieve information from a repository that is often, obviously, larger than what is available to the public (since the aim of live assistance is the same as self-service—to answer customers' inquiries quickly and accurately, but with the preferred human touch).
The above considerations have marked a fundamental shift away from the time when any company could claim to perform a valuable service to customers simply by displaying information on its web site, without having to take into account who the customers were. Today however, virtually all companies must demonstrate their value to customers by segmenting information that is directly relevant to them.
Customer segmentation is not a new idea, since segmentation was supposed to be the way that—with the help of CRM tools—companies would offer the best possible service to their best customers. The problem with applying overt segmentation to customer service was that it then revealed a hierarchy that placed most customers at the bottom. This was so because, by definition, elite customers represent a small minority (the proverbial Pareto's 80/20 Rule). The premise of segmenting customers reinforced the idea that customers existed to create value for companies, rather than the other way around. Using this logic, most (up to 80 percent) customers were of little value to the companies that they bought products and services from.
By contrast, the practice of KM helps companies establish a bidirectional relationship with customers that rewards them for sharing knowledge (their product and service use experience), and not only for spending money. The latest generation of KM software makes this possible by enabling the company to combine what it knows about customers and what customers know about the company, and to offer this information as part of the resources available on its web site.
As discussed in Making the First Call Count by Greg McFarlane, an astute KM software has to make it easier for agents to author new knowledge when new services, products, or upgrades are in place. This reduces the need for agents (especially novice agents) to escalate calls to the upper service tier. This decreases the costs and the lengths of calls, but more importantly, it gets calls answered more quickly. In addition, the diagnostic search functionality helps resolve customers' issues quickly and accurately with its ability to pull answers from any data source an agent can connect it to, thereby giving agents the right information at the right time. Lastly, the automation of key resolution processes enables new agents to get up to speed more quickly. By pre-populating case notes and pre-establishing workflows and other techniques, the companies can create an environment that allows agents to operate as effectively as possible, regardless of their experience.
With the addition of multiple channels and new technologies to support them, call center agents' job descriptions should become more interesting and diverse. When this occurs, several of the major barriers to call center agent job satisfaction, such as stress, repetition, and dullness, can be eliminated, thus resulting in greater retention. The customer service representative (CSR) might start to feel like a problem-solver rather than a mere document reader.
Agents might also feel more accountable for problem resolution, as they begin to follow problems from start to finish. For instance, a CSR can access and present solutions to problems from a knowledge base; create a service ticket; request repair services; note a complaint; process returned materials; issue a rebate, coupon, or refund; and escalate issues to other responsible parties, such as tier (level) two support, development, quality assurance (QA), or even third parties.
Customer satisfaction should, in turn, increase, as the number of disconnected handoffs between agents, customers, and channels are reduced. On the other hand, increased agent retention should improve the organization's domain knowledge, and as a result, the number of first-call closures should rise.
The Impact of Online Customer Service
Online customers are becoming increasingly demanding, since they want answers to queries quicker than ever before, and they want to be able to access services when it suits them—around the clock. No customer wants to be put (seemingly endlessly) on hold or escalated, or to attempt several different solutions over the next hour, only to be called back the next day. He or she wants the issue resolved as quickly as possible, either through self-service or by a knowledgeable agent at the other end of the telephone.
At the same time, web site design is maturing, and the average customer is becoming more computer literate, which means that customers are ready to be introduced to online self-service solutions. Many customers indeed want to be able to solve their own problems through self-support on the Web, since we are all “too darn busy, and who has time for lengthy phone calls.” Companies, too, are ready to embrace the benefits of self-help solutions, which offer the dual advantage of cutting the cost of support while improving the quality of the service delivered to users.
In the early 2000s, Forrester Research reported that it costs, in US dollars, about $33.00 to handle a customer inquiry by telephone, $10.00 to handle it by e-mail, and about $1.00 to deal with the question through an online self-service system. Furthermore, by 2010, Gartner projects that self-service interactions will account for 58 percent of all service interactions, up from 35 percent in 2005. Thus, the goal of self-service has been to drive as many inquiries as possible away from the telephone to the Web, which is less difficult than it might seem, because organizations usually find that about 12 questions will account for half the calls made.
An effective self-help system should allow users or customers to resolve most common queries on their own, but it should also make it easy to escalate inquiries to an operator through telephone, Web chat, or e-mail if users get stuck or their questions are more complex. Also, call center representatives can sometimes handle problems more productively over live chat than on the phone, since an agent can deal with only one customer at a time over the phone, but it is quite possible to simultaneously juggle a few live chat sessions with customers.
One should note, however, that different users have different levels of tolerance for the length of time they are willing to commit to self-service, which means the availability of live support is still a necessary option companies must offer. On the other hand, in a corporate setting, the company may want to discourage highly paid staff from using self-help for more than a few minutes, because it does not want these employees to be unproductive.
In summary, enterprises can provide customer self-service that reduces service costs, improves customer satisfaction, and facilitates the sales and marketing of products and services. Moreover, IT organizations can increase the effectiveness of employee help desk operations while decreasing internal technical support costs.
SOURCE:http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/articles/knowledge-management-the-core-of-service-resolution-management-19189/

The Hidden Role of Data Quality in E-Commerce Success

2010-08-05T11:18:00.001-07:00

E-commerce holds the promise of working seamlessly with customers, prospects, suppliers, and partners. That's why companies publish volumes of information on e-commerce sites and even open internal systems to business affiliates. Exchanging information online increases the opportunities for more sales, faster product development and fulfillment, and better relationships.
Or does it?
E-commerce also opens the door to data quality issues that can endanger revenues and relationships. New data enters systems daily from internal sources and the Web, where input is uncontrollable - resulting in inconsistencies and typos in names, addresses, and product numbers. These discrepancies can hamper data integration, generate duplicates, and prevent companies and their business affiliates from getting accurate information. Published data like product price and availability quickly becomes outdated, giving rise to misinformation and, possibly, financial and legal consequences.
Additionally, there's a communications gap when people search internal systems and online catalogs. Many people will use terminology that differs from the entries in an e-catalog in searching for an item (like laptop versus notebook), leading to delays and dissatisfaction, at least, and causing searches to fail and prospects to click away, at worst.
Previously, company representatives limited the exposure of internal data to outsiders and bridged the communications gap. But four trends arising from the nature of e-business expose and aggravate data quality issues, threatening revenue growth, online collaboration and relationships. It's important for businesses to understand these challenges and the resulting risks of misinformation in order to implement the right solutions.
Trends Accentuating Data Quality Issues
Diversity and Volume of Data: In e-commerce the unpredictable external world generates data into your operational infrastructure without controls. It's often difficult to integrate this diverse data and link it to related internal information for business analyses.
For example, repeat visitors often vary their personal data - Mark Atkins, M.E. Atkins, or Mark Akins (a typo) - or misrepresent key data (e.g., type in 000-00-0000 Social Security number because they fear privacy violations). These quality issues result in duplicates in the customer database - blocking complete views of the customer and causing one-to-one marketing to fail.
Also, given the speed of electronic exchange, data from buyers and sellers needs to be quickly integrated, synchronized, and standardized for smooth, accurate transactions. Examples include catalog updates, changes to contract terms or industry-coding schemes such as UN/SPS, or dynamic pricing based on real-time market fluctuations.
Without controls and updates for data quality, companies risk disseminating and acting on misinformation.
Disintermediation: Though eliminating the customer service representative reduces costs, that person bridged the communications gap, translating the corporate data for outsiders. Now when you expose your products through your catalog and search engine, don't assume people know your nomenclature and classification.
A typical experience illustrates the point. I visited a popular website to buy shirts, typed Egyptian cotton, and got towels. To be more precise, I entered Egyptian cotton button-down shirt, but got zero matches. Next, I tried cotton button-dwon shirt, inadvertently transposing letters. No matches, again. Finally, I typed simply button-down shirt - and received 20 pages of results! I clicked to a competitor's site.
This is a data quality problem: Not that the data was wrong, but processes couldn't reconcile disparate communications. Multiply this miscommunication by hundreds or thousands per day, and the result is real dollars in e-commerce sales! In the B2B context, the stakes are often higher.
Without an intermediary, e-commerce will breakdown unless automated processes mediate varying contexts and representations. The consequences of disintermediation are apparent in the next two trends as well.
Breadth of User Exposure: E-commerce exposes your data to customers, prospects, partners, and suppliers. If it is inaccurate, there will be transaction mistakes and business misunderstandings. Even if it is accurate, it may be unclear to users whose perspective may be different than anticipated.
Consider this product listing. The product number shows the weight of chips in a bag - 4-, 12-, or 24-ounces - and "Package" lists the bags per carton.
Your sales rep (an intermediary) knew that a local grocer who ordered the "small" size, actually wanted the 12-ounce (117JU-12) - 16 bags to a carton. But to the grocer, who doesn't know the product numbers, orders directly online, the data seems unclear. If he orders 117JU-04 (which seems to be the "small"), or if he orders based on the smallest "Package" number, he'll get the wrong size.
The more numerous your online customers and affiliates, the greater the risk of misinterpretations - which can increase the time and costs of doing business and, even worse, sabotage sales and relationships.
Privacy and Ethical Issues: When accurate operational data is available on an e-commerce site or extranet, there are still risks - data quality issues - that can reduce sales, offend people and cause legal liabilities.
An example of context determining quality relates to "good" internal data that is inappropriate to expose to the public. Your customer records probably contain information on discounts and negotiated terms. If you just open your systems to the public, this information could alienate companies that don't receive the discount, violate the confidentiality of your agreements, and give information on a company to its competitor.
Ensuring Data Quality
Avoiding data misinterpretations and ensuring the integrity and success of e-commerce initiatives require a continuous data quality process. Software designed for this class of problem must be combined with business rules customized to your data and its intended usage.
Start by ensuring the quality of initial loads when you translate legacy or supplier data into the new formats for e-business processing and searches. This must be followed by near real-time data quality filtering to keep catalogs and databases current and pure. Equally important, you must mediate the daily activity that goes against your databases, both user searches and unattended transactions.
To solve tough problems, you need mathematically based and other advanced technologies that go beyond basic conversion and reformatting and deal with data at the syntactical level, to analyze informational content. Look for these functions:
1. Context mediation - for determining the business meaning of a word or value based on its context or adjacent data values. This usually involves parsing, lexical analysis, and multi-field correlation analysis. Context mediation is a pre-requisite for the next functions and essential when dealing with free-form text and multiple-word fields such as names, addresses, product descriptions and search queries.
2. Normalization - for standardizing spelling, abbreviations, format and recognizing word variations and synonyms. This facilitates matching input data to internal systems and shoppers' searches to your product master. The normalization strategies used for search should also be employed when loading product masters to create consistent, searchable e-catalogs.
3. Fuzzy retrieval - for finding data without a precise key (e.g., a product number) or under conditions in which data is inconsistent or missing. An inbound transaction or user search must be joined to an optimal set of matches from thousands, even millions, of choices in the database. Vendor software uses sophisticated database indexing and search optimization strategies to achieve speed and yield.
4. Fuzzy matching and filtering - for measuring and ranking "possible" matches to get the best one(s) and avoid irrelevant matches. In search engines, this technology returns only the most useful "hits." In non-interactive transactions (EDI/EAI), it applies your business rules and measures of statistical certainty, to determine critical relationships within the data, such as duplication and affiliations (e.g., households, divisions of one company). Fuzzy matching is necessary because normalizing data can't eliminate all non-standard data.
What does it cost? Though prices vary, higher priced solutions yield greater automation and better quality results. For catalog content, automated processes will dramatically reduce the aggregation time and costs of manual review and provide content that is generally more detailed and consistent than what content resellers and content factories (which aggregate your own data) offer.
Software license fees are usually competitive, and some vendors offer pay-as-you-go transactional pricing models. Implementation fees may be the most expensive part. Configuring the software generally takes several weeks and accounts for up to 15 percent of the total cost. For data-intensive sites, such as e-procurement sites or e-marketplaces, the process can take several months and a majority of a site's deployment budget.
However, successful e-commerce relies on intelligible, trustworthy content. To achieve this, companies need a complete solution at their back- and front-ends, so they can harness and leverage their data and maximize the return on their e-commerce investment.
SOURCE:http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/articles/the-hidden-role-of-data-quality-in-e-commerce-success-16850/

Document Management and Digital Asset Management Is There a Difference and What Might It Be?

2010-08-05T11:17:00.000-07:00

Introduction
Everywhere you look within organizations, there is content. All this content needs to be managed. At first it was static information, and documents published on the Internet needed management solutions. As a result document management (DM) emerged as the mechanism or process to create, capture, manage, store, and deliver these documents to the right departments and individuals.
Digital Assets
Today, electronic media is more then just on-line text. Organizations are using images, video, and audio files and other digital formats within organizations that need to be managed as well. Digital assets are often time consuming to create, but they are valuable to organizations because digital assets attract the attention of clients, whether internal or external to the organization.
Digital assets require a format and management process that enables re-use. When looking for a solution, one question that faces organizations is whether a DM system is capable of supporting their needs or if a digital asset management (DAM) solution it more appropriate.
To determine this answer, an organization must understand the difference between the two solutions. This is a difficult task because there is confusion in the market between DM and DAM solutions. This article will investigate what is unique to a DAM solution and why organizations need a DAM to manage other types of data instead of just text documents.
Document Management
Organizations use document management to assist with the management, creation, workflow, and the storage of documents within different departments. A DM solution uses databases for storage, and workflow engines to design and support workflows, including business rules and metadata.
Document management systems are often used in industries where there are high volumes of documents, such as in the insurance, health care and government industries. Increasingly DM solutions are evolving into Web content management (CM) systems.
Digital Asset Management
Digital asset management (DAM) solutions are also referred to as media asset management (MAM), entertainment media asset management (EMAM), brand resource management (BRM), marketing content management (MCM), and asset management (AM). DAM focuses on organizations specifically with digital assets, such as the entertainment or advertising industry, and is used in situations where asset reproduction is important. Often organizations combine a DAM solution with a CM solution to maintain their web site. Consequently, DAM and CM vendors acquire one or the other to combine their solutions into an integrated solution.
Different Views on DM and DAM
Even though there is a variety of acronyms for DAM, and there are slight differences in functionality for each category. This article, however, will focus mainly on regular DAM functionality, including rich media files and types.
Magan Arthur of Arthur Consulting Group, explains that organizations can take three different approaches when contrasting DM and DAM:
* Tools and processes * File and content types * Business use
This article will leverage these approaches to explore the difference between DM and DAM.
Tools and Processes
Both DM and DAM use functionality common to content management solutions. These functionalities include the repository, metadata indexing, search capabilities, user- and role-defined accessibility, and workflow.
The repository stores the content and can either be a relational database or a simple file system. It includes standard features, such as check in and check out, versioning, and taxonomy. It will also allow metadata to be defined, so it includes all relevant descriptions of the different documents and files. This metadata then can be used by the search engine for indexing. The workflow takes care of the different tasks and roles that are involved within the process, whether serial or parallel.
Besides these similarities, there are essential differences in the respective tools and processes of DM and DAM.
DM, on one hand, focuses on capturing text content through optical character recognition (OCR), it is integrated with text processing tools, and is able to define different elements within a document as content. DM is capable of reusing this content either in parts or as the whole document. In the repository, DM can store document elements in different formats, such as extensible markup language (XML).
DAM, on the other hand, integrates with applications that focus on the creative design of assets, such as Quark, AutoCAD, Flash, and three dimensional animation. DAM solutions are capable of linking, disassembling, and reassembling complex and combined assets. DAM is also able to change images directly by either resizing or changing colors, and can handle large files, especially video files. Its search capabilities extend beyond standard search to permit visual searches using image recognition. Besides text indexing, which DM solutions also provide, DAM is able to index speech-to-text videos, closed caption videos, and more.
File and Content Types
The tools, as described above, allow different file types to be stored, which is another way to differentiate DM with DAM. DM files are mostly text based such as, paper documents, files from office tools, PDF, HTML files etc. DAM systems capture rich media files which can be images; logos; audio; video; CAD; animation (including GIFs and Flash); and design files.
DM systems are often capable of storing these kinds of files as well, but provide little more than storage, which is not sufficient for organizations that handle large quantities of digital asset files.
Business Use
Each solution can also be used for different types of business processes. Business processes are automated by these solutions, which help with the creation, collaboration, review, and approval of content throughout different departments within the organization. Below are some examples of the business processes in which DM and DAM can be used.
DM is often used in contract negotiations, documentation creation, policy and procedures, articles, reports, or statement processes. DAM solutions focus on the collaboration and management of advertising or marketing material, multimedia kits, corporate presentations, or video on demand. Libraries created by the system include image libraries, video libraries, and font and logo libraries.
SOURCE:http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/articles/document-management-and-digital-asset-management-is-there-a-difference-and-what-might-it-be-18316/

Advertising Online - A Guide to Successful Market Penetration Part One: Why Internet Advertising

2010-08-05T11:15:00.002-07:00

Why Internet Advertising?
Online advertising in the past year has proven to be no longer an option, but a requirement. With billions of pages on the web, companies are increasingly feeling the pressure to advertise online to bolster corporate presence, B2B and B2C revenues and to also turn their websites into sources for acquiring client information. Indeed, statistics show that more and more business is being conducted online, and a recent study conducted from Ernst and Young reveals that 74% of Americans purchased online in the last year.
Accordingly, of all Internet users in the US, 94% of them query search engines to find information on the Web (Nielson-Net Ratings). Even more appealing is the fact that 81% of people querying search engines find the information every time they search (NPD). Considering these numbers and how relatively inexpensive and risk free Internet advertising is compared to other types of traditional media, it is a wonder why more businesses are not optimizing their sites on search engines (aka SEO Search Engine Optimization) to bolster online presence.
Search Engine Marketing Is Essential
Reaching the ever-increasing number of online users is critical to complementing your offline advertising efforts as well as establishing your corporate presence on the net. Corporate websites should be information rich for both returning users and new users. They should also be a platform for your company's values and offering. Attracting your clients, or potential business partners to your website is therefore the key to not only forging long-term relationships, but also bolstering online sales.
CEOs and marketing directors need to acknowledge the power of search engine marketing. It's one of the most cost-effective marketing tools available, yet most companies spend little on search engine optimization. In a recent study from Marketing Sherpa, "more than 90 percent of the Fortune 100's websites not optimized properly". This is a striking statistic when considering that next to email, search engines are the most widely used application on the Internet (Market Leap).
A fully integrated marketing campaign should therefore include aggressive Internet advertising, which consists of listings on search engines, portals, directories and banners on strategic portals and large sites. Most importantly, listing your site on search engines with a broad reach is important to expose your product and/or services. Search engines will provide the technology to bring your corporation to people who are actively looking for your solution. And since over 80% of web site traffic is guided by search engines (Forrester Research), the question remains: how do you use search engines effectively in order to draw clients, partners and industry experts to your site?
To support online initiatives, listing and ranking high on search engines is a critical step towards garnishing success. In the industry, the top 10 results receive approximately 80% more traffic than those in positions 11-30 (I search). Now, how do you achieve that top rank?
There are various ways to approach getting top listing with the large search properties. Some sites use specific keywords and phrases to allow large indexing engines to recognize the validity of the site to the users, some also purchase relevant keywords and phrases from content suppliers who feed this information to the large search properties. Most of these content suppliers charge per referral.
There are many different types of pricing structures, the two most popular being bidding and CPC. The later version charges only when a user clicks on the search result (CPC- Cost per Click- Model), and redirects the user to your site. There is little risk in comparison to traditional advertising media, which charges strictly on demographics, circulation, and the likelihood of how many people will see or hear your message. Paying a content supplier on a "cost per click" referral is akin to having someone deliver a bus load of people to your store and charging you pennies for every potential customer who steps through the door. In this scenario, even if two people purchase, you will have been successful in your online marketing efforts.
Added Benefits of Advertising Online: Tracking your ROI
You can analyze down to the penny your increase in sales through keyword advertising by tracking the conversion rates (sales generated from clicks) for each ad dollar that you spend. You only have to create a specific URL, per initiative, pointing to your website so that you can track which marketing effort the click is coming from. You will then be able to monitor someone clicking on your advertisement, going to your site and converting into a sale. This information will notify you which keywords, creatives and marketing effort are producing an ROI and which efforts are not.
Data Warehousing
An organization's Data Warehouse is detailed information obtained about each client, including their behaviors, and their preferences. The Data Warehouse is typically a combination of detailed demographic data on a customer. You may obtain this type of information from clients that submit information about themselves by opting in to your company's newsletters, updates or specials information via your site. Oftentimes, parties that are interested in your product/service offering are more willing to take five minutes in the comfort of their own home to optin to receive company information.

SOURCE:http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/articles/advertising-online-a-guide-to-successful-market-penetration-part-one-why-internet-advertising-16823/

Usability

2010-08-05T11:15:00.001-07:00

There have been several reasons given over the years to explain the success of Microsoft's software products. Rarely has usability featured in these discussions.
Many of us would recall how painful it was to draw a table in WordStar or WordPerfect. Microsoft Word made it simple, intuitive and fun to draw tables. The same goes for text formatting, mail merge, envelope printing, and so on.
Extra wide screens in many software packages force users to scroll horizontally. As a result, speed suffers because users need to lift their hands from the keyboards and keep reaching for the mouse. On the other hand, some packages have thoughtfully laid out their screens in such a way that horizontal scrolling is not needed and users can instead concentrate on their keyboards.
Many of us have come across web sites that take up several paragraphs to explain how to perform a certain tasksay, check contents of shopping cartwhen a hyperlink placed right there would have done the job easily. The Search feature on different web sites result in wide-ranging hit lists: some web sites provide matches only if the search term matches exactly with the way the web site has stored it; others are smart enough to present a hit list of approximate matches. Some on-line shopping web sites even lack a shopping cart feature and force you to keep entering the same information (for example, name, address and credit card details) separately for each item you want to buy.
Poor usability leads to irritation and fatigue, even if users do not their feelings. It has an adverse impact on the usage experience. In an on-line shopping web site, it can lead to loss of revenues. Poor usability of business applications leads to increased help desk costs.
On the other hand, better usability makes our usage experience more fun and can increase productivity. A highly usable on-line shopping web site tempts repeat visits, builds customer loyalty, and increases its revenue-earning potential.
For a company developing a software product, better usability plays a significant role in defining the brand appeal and conveying a certain positive brand experience. The enjoySAP initiative of SAP AG is a case in point. Owing to enjoySAP, the previously difficult-to-use screens of SAP software were completely re-designed, making them much easier to use.
As more and more software products tend to become commodities, traditional functional criteria will take a backseat to usability aspects. Says Mark Rolston of frog design, "In future, the behavior of controlling elements can be configured in an objective or playful way, and thus become part of the brand experience." Operating elements such as zooming or scrolling menus may ultimately determine whether a product is accepted or rejected by the market.
In a broader context that is equally applicable to software and web sites, C.K. Prahalad, management guru and professor at the University of Michigan Business School, recently unveiled a roadmap wherein companies will have to make a rapid transition from product and consumer orientation to customer solution orientation, and finally to the personal consumer experience viewpoint .
Defining Usability
While all of us have an intuitive understanding of what usability means, it is now time we looked at some definitions.
Fundamentally, usability is concerned with making systems easy to learn and easy to use. The term is used to describe the quality of a user's experience when interacting with a system whether a software package or a web site. A usable system is one that enables users to perform their job effectively and efficiently.
The International Standards Organization (ISO) defines usability as the "effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction with which a specified set of users can achieve a specified set of tasks in a particular environment."
Usability relates to both form and content.
Microsoft Word and Excel are two examples of excellent usability among software products. The mail merge wizard in Word make it easy to create form letters. Word has similar highly usable features for printing mailing labels and envelopes. Excel provides an excellent paste function wizard (invoked through the f* button) for defining complex formulas with ease, and a highly usable chart wizard to quickly convert numbers to graphs.
Amazon and Expedia are examples of two web sites that display tremendous commitment to enhance the total usage experience.
Amazon's 1-Click ordering feature improves usability by enabling the registered buyer quickly order an item without having to enter shipping address and credit card details during each buying session.

SOURCE:http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/articles/usability-17186/

Advertising Online - A Guide to Successful Market Penetration Part Two: Search Engine Strategies

2010-08-05T11:14:00.000-07:00

Keyword Advertising
Most search engines use the CPC model, and price keywords based on their market value. Currently, the market is stating that generic keywords such as investment and insurance are highly valued and consequently more obscure, but targeted keywords are valued much lower. Another, more efficient system is categorizing the website and determining the market value of the industry the website falls into and taking a step back from pricing keywords. The average price in the industry for CPC advertising, including categorization, is fragmented as the CPC can range from 1 cent to 2 dollars depending on the industry.
Everything stems from your keywords since it is these words that will let you be visible to the billions of online searchers. However, there is more to building keyword lists than just coming up with words that describe your product or service offering. For example, results show that 45% of users search by using a combination of keywords (key phrases), 28% use one keyword, 18% search by a pre-defined option (such as browsing through a directory category) and 9% search by typing in a question (NPD).
There are two schools of thought when it comes to creating a keyword list. The first is listing generic keywords in order to generate the most traffic as possible to your site, resulting in high click through ratios, but low conversion rates. The other option is listing targeted keywords that will drive targeted traffic to your site, resulting in traditionally lower click through rates, but higher conversions ratios. For example if you are selling ECRM services in New Jersey, and are only capable of delivering your services in the US, then you may not want to list the single keyword "ECRM". You would receive a high amount of clickthroughs, but from traffic that may not be interested in purchasing, or from users that you would not logistically be able to supply. This is a waste of advertising dollars. If you were to list keyword phrases such as "ECRM in the US" or "improve ECRM for US business" you would receive more targeted traffic, given that the user typing in this keyword is probably looking for information on ECRM in the US.
Since building targeted keyword lists requires some knowledge of online advertising, search engine's staff editors are always available to help in building highly targeted keywords for your campaign. Keyword enthusiasts also go to Wordtracker.com and WordSpot.com. The number of keywords that you list on a search engine is also crucial to your online success. Each additional keyword and keyword phrase you suggest will increase your site's chances of being located. Think of it as not only placing as many hooks as possible in the lake, but also making sure they are of the right type to attract what you need.
Powerful Creatives
Almost as important as the keywords are the creatives that support them. Creatives in the search industry refer to the titles and descriptions that expand upon the keywords. They provide a small glimpse of what your website has to offer.
It is important to be as clear as possible for a number of reasons. First, it is preferable not to use superlatives, caps or exclamation marks in your titles because this reduces the validity of your offer and is not viewed as a professional listing. Second, it is suggested that the title and the description have the keyword in it to further prove that the result is relevant.
It should also expand in as few words as possible the website's is offering. Using the ECRM solutions firm as an example, the title should have the following elements: "ECRM business solutions for US businesses". The description then, as an expansion of the title should have the following elements: "Reputable ECRM business solutions that can make you business more profitable". Using this method of advertising on search engines, you are sure to be attracting your target market to your site, (from a purely geographic demographic).
Relevant URL's
In addition to using specific and relevant titles and descriptions, the URL that you submit to the search engine must be very targeted. Ideally, the user should get to the exact page that they are looking for on the first click. For example, if the user is searching for a specific ECRM solution, that solution should be on the URL associated with the creative. Internet searchers have low patience levels, and if they cannot immediately find what they are looking for on your site they will give up and move on to the next result on the list.

SOURCE:http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/articles/advertising-online-a-guide-to-successful-market-penetration-part-two-search-engine-strategies-16828/

What’s New in Microsoft SQL Server 2000

2010-08-05T11:13:00.000-07:00

In 1987, Sybase released the SQL Server database management system on the UNIX platform. The product was ported to IBM OS/2 by Microsoft, Sybase, and Ashton-Tate (of DBase fame) in 1988-89. Ashton-Tate dropped out of the consortium in 1990. Between 1991 and 1993, Microsoft and IBM divorced in the OS/2 arena, and SQL Server 4.2 for Windows NT and the Windows NT 3.1 operating system were released.
In 1994, Microsoft and Sybase ended their co-development efforts (for a period in the early 1990's, SQL Server 4.x for OS/2 was actually labeled Microsoft on the manuals and Sybase on the diskettes.) Microsoft carried forward on Windows NT, and Sybase carried forward on UNIX. Microsoft SQL Server version 6.0 was released in 1995, version 6.5 in 1996, and version 7 in 1998. The rest is basically history, the fate of IBM OS/2 and Sybase's database compared to Microsoft's offerings is well known.
Microsoft has developed a number of versions of the successor to SQL 7.0, known as SQL Server 2000, including the Enterprise Edition, which includes distributed partitioned views and failover clustering to improve database uptime; Standard Edition, which should be appropriate for small to mid-sized businesses; Personal Edition, which will run on non-server platforms including Windows 98; Developer Edition, which includes a development and test end-user license precluding production deployment; and a Windows CE Edition, which will not be available until the second half of 2000.
The product has historically been used at the departmental data mart level. Microsoft is now trying to penetrate the Enterprise Data Warehouse market. Their largest competitors are IBM's DB2 Universal Database and Oracle's 8i. The database market is growing at approximately 20% per year, and since Microsoft will continue to thrive with mid to low-end customers, they should profit greatly in these markets.
In addition, Microsoft has announced that they are running 20 critical internal systems, including their worldwide sales data warehouse, on SQL Server 2000. In the vendor world, this is referred to as "eating your own dog food", and their commitment to the product is clear.
The product is based on Microsoft's Windows DNA (Distributed Internet Architecture), and includes many interesting components, some of which are also present in SQL Server 7.0 and many of which have been enhanced:
Web Related
Internet Information Services 5.0 (IIS): Web services integrated with the operating system to allow web hosting.
Active Server Pages (ASP): A web server scripting language.
HTTP Connectivity: A DLL is supplied which allows users to define virtual roots in IIS that are associated with an instance of SQL Server. Security can be set to anonymous access, using SQL Server id/password (in conjunction with the secure sockets layer), or with Windows Access Control Lists (ACLs).
Work Sharing
COM+ Component Services: This feature was formerly known as the Microsoft Transaction Server (MTS). This service allows for remote object calls and many other programming language features similar to Remote Procedure Calls (RPCs).
Distributed Transaction Support: The ability for multiple computers to participate in a coordinated unit of work.
Message Oriented Middleware: MSMQ (Microsoft Message Queuing) is similar to IBM's MQSeries product, and coordinates the communications across networks and systems.
XML Support: The Microsoft XML Parser helps create applications that exchange data formatted in the Extensible Markup Language (XML). Most newly released products from data warehouse vendors support XML in some form.
ActiveX Data Objects: Software modules based on Microsoft's Component Object Model (COM) architecture which make it possible to call ready-made components that blend in and appear as normal parts of the program.
Security
Security: Microsoft has enabled role-based security to simplify the programming effort.
Improved Security: Analysis Services includes security features all the way down to the cell level within a cube.
Queries/Searches
English Query: A method for issuing natural language queries in English that are turned into the appropriate SQL statements to answer the question posed. "Authoring" of English Query applications is performed in Microsoft Visual Studio version 6, which is included with SQL Server. In its prior incarnation, English Query could use only ODBC, it is now enabled with OLE DB, and can therefore access heterogeneous data sources.
Analysis Services: (Formerly OLAP Services). The capability to create On-Line Analytical Processing multi-dimensional databases (MDBs or "cubes") within SQL Server. Also provides roll-up (aggregation) capabilities. Includes support for Multidimensional, Relational, and Hybrid OLAP.
Integrated Data Mining: The ability to perform such tasks as clickstream analysis for web sites. Analysis services also provides the ability to link cubes (multiple cubes, either inside and/or outside the firewall appear in a single "view", essentially a "virtual cube") and access cubes via HTTP (web-enabled analysis). The features are part of the OLE DB for Data Mining specification (see "Microsoft Says OLE for Data Mining: Is It Bull?", March 28, 2000, for additional details). The data mining algorithms supported were developed by Microsoft and consist of Decision Trees (four different algorithms based on classification theory), and Clustering (based on the nearest neighbor method). Third party algorithms are also supported.
Full Text Search: The ability to run queries on text documents in relational tables and search across all indexed columns in a table. For Full-Text Search, documents are stored in Binary Large Objects (BLOBs) and registered for full-text indexing, including the ability to filter out "noise words" such as "a" and "the". This capability is similar to the full text indexing in Lotus Notes. Microsoft has also added the capability to update the full-text index in near real-time instead of batch mode, if desired.
Distributed Partitioned Views: The ability to share database processing across a group of servers. The data is "horizontally partitioned" across the servers, but the partitioning is transparent to the application. The servers distribute scans and updates as needed. The technology used is known as "shared-nothing clustering".
Sub Indexing: On Symmetric Multiprocessing (SMP) hardware, the product has the ability to multi-thread index creation. Separate processors and threads create "sub-indexes" of large databases in parallel (including parallel database scans to gather the index information), and then a "coordinating thread" combines them into a complete index. This can be extremely valuable in a very large database that is frequently updated, since it can save a great deal of time.
Materialized Views: The product allows the creation of a unique clustered index on a database view. This can result in great performance gains, and the query optimizer will even be able to use the view if it is not referenced in the query's FROM clause. This feature is important in that existing queries do not have to be re-coded to force the optimizer to use the view index.
Directory Services
Directory Services: The new Active Directory Services process centralizes administrative information about resources.
Active Directory: Databases can be centrally managed using the Active Directory service.
Efficiencies
Network Load Balancing: On the datacenter and advanced server products, Microsoft has enabled load balancing of TCP/IP traffic across multi-node clusters.
Multi-Instance Support: The ability to have multiple installations of SQL Server on the same machine. This was previously impossible due to the way NT registry entries were made. This inability in prior versions was a serious problem, since many customers wanted to be able to run a test and a production instance on the same (typically very expensive) machine.
Database Maintenance
Database Programmability Enhancements:
* Cascading Referential Integrity: In previous releases of major databases, if an attempt was made to delete or update a key that had foreign keys, the operation had to be handled programmatically. This ability, most often used to perform a "cascade delete" (delete a parent and all its children), is now built into the product.
* New data types: SQL Server now supports BIGINT (an 8-byte integer), and a variant datatype that can store data values of different data types.
Product Strategy and Trajectory
Microsoft is attempting once again to make inroads into the enterprise space with the Enterprise Edition of the product, specifically to compete with IBM's DB2 Universal Database and Oracle's 8i. It is questionable whether they will be successful, since they only support Microsoft operating systems, but the product's ease of use and breadth of offering is compelling.
Microsoft is attempting to create a product that is "all things to all people", by including data movement technology, data mining, transaction services, OLAP support, and ease of use - all "out-of-the-box". Microsoft will also leverage its DNA initiative to lock customers into its solutions, if it can get them to run Windows 2000 on some or all of their servers. TEC predicts that Microsoft will have not succeeded at the Enterprise level (60% probability) and will have to provide further enhancements in the next major release (already in development, code-named "Yukon"). The timing of the Yukon release is unknown.
Product Strengths
* The product has a lower total cost of ownership (TCO) than many of its competitors, and runs on less expensive x86 hardware (compared to the price of a mainframe or high-end UNIX machine).
* SQL Server contains many features not currently contained in its competitors' out-of-the-box database product.
* Customers will be intrigued at the concept of an almost-complete data warehouse or data mart solution from a single vendor, in a single box.
* Very broad feature set.
* Improved Data Transformation Services (DTS) that allows the product to access data sources other than Microsoft databases.
Product Challenges
* The product is not supported on any non-Microsoft operating system. Customers which run UNIX and mainframe operating systems will be less inclined to move to SQL Server, especially at the enterprise-wide high end of the database spectrum. In this space Microsoft will be challenged by IBM, Oracle, and to a lesser degree, Informix and Sybase.
* It will be difficult for Microsoft to dispel the belief in the IT industry that they are not ready for Enterprise level applications. IBM and Oracle will continue to control this space (80% probability).
* It will be difficult to dislodge competing products from non-Microsoft SQL Server shops. Companies with large hardware installations of other (non-NT or 2000) operating systems, such as IBM OS/390 and Sun E10000 enterprise UNIX systems, will not be willing to let that hardware cost go to waste (90% probability).
* The product is not as efficient at handling multimedia data as Informix, Oracle, or IBM.
* Tuning distributed partitioned views (which potentially access data across many servers to answer a single query), will be very tricky, and if not properly handled, will cause the network to suffer due to traffic between the SQL Servers that contain the appropriate data.
* Microsoft will suffer somewhat in the market, at least in the near term, due to the dust raised over the Department of Justice anti-trust suit.

SOURCE:http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/articles/what-s-new-in-microsoft-sql-server-2000-15888/

Engage Helps Advertisers Fish for Best Prospects

2010-08-02T07:20:00.000-07:00

Engage (Nasdaq: ENGA) announced a new service called AudienceNet that allows advertisers using its Engage ad network to target ads to users based on anonymous profiles. The company claims a database of 35 million consumer profiles.

Market Impact

Engage is member of the CMGI (Nasdaq: CMGI) family of companies, and is a cornerstone in its advertising tournament with DoubleClick. Engage claims that AudienceNet is fundamentally different from existing ad models, saying that it lets advertisers target ads to an individual desktop based on profiles that contain information about a consumer's preferences, including the "frequency, recency and duration" of visits.

AudienceNet is based on consumer profiles built with data collected from more than 400 consumer sites over a number of years. It allows advertisers to identify individual surfers based on cookies dropped onto their computers. These cookies point to profiles in Engage's database. AudienceNet uses those data to select an ad to show to a particular surfer. The criteria include the surfer's previous clickthroughs, time spent on pages with specific content among the 400 sites, and interests in more than 800 specific categories.

SOURCE:http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/articles/engage-helps-advertisers-fish-for-best-prospects-15429/

Informix Decides to Start Analyzing Websites

2010-08-02T07:12:00.002-07:00

Informix Corporation (Nasdaq: IFMX), recently announced that i.Decide Web Success, an application promising to provide e-businesses a set of tools to integrate web data with enterprise data, would be available November 15. i.Decide Web Success has analytical capabilities that combine traditional business intelligence tools with web monitoring and analysis tools. Informix is able to integrate these two sets of tools by tapping its expertise in Extract, Transform, Load (ETL) and Database Management Systems (DBMS). See: Informix XML's Its Metadata Transport Data - for more information on Informix's technical proficiency in these areas. The product works by pulling web data, operational data (such as ERP), third party data, and legacy data into a central data repository. The merged data in the repository is then available for data analysis. Analytic capabilities within the front-end component include operations analysis, clickstream analysis, website visitor analysis, marketing effectiveness, and e-commerce merchandising and sales analysis.

Integration of traditional business intelligence with web analysis allows clicks-and-mortar organizations to identify customer demographics, online and offline buying habits, and web behavior. Personalization/recommendation engines and campaign management applications can then use data from i.Decide Web Success to perform their functions (i.Decide Web Success will supply data to Informix's personalization engine and content management software or to products from other vendors' such as BroadVision and Vignette).

i.Decide Web Success rounds out a broad offering of e-business applications from Informix. Other e-business applications include i.Sell, i.Reach and Media360. i.Sell is an e-commerce store-front product that consists of a personalization/recommendation engine and online transaction processing software. i.Reach is a web publishing solution. Media360 is a content management product that manages media assets (documents, web pages, videos, 3D images and other files) over intranets, extranets, and the Internet.

Market Impact

The market force behind the development of i.Decide Web Success is the increasing need for data integration and analysis across multiple channels such as web, call center, and point of sale. i.Decide's primary differentiator is that it integrates traditional business intelligence with web analysis. Informix competes with vendors such as Informatica and Business Objects in business intelligence and NetGenesis and WebTrends in web analysis, but few vendors deliver both capabilities. Information on other vendors that compete in this space can be found in the article: What Good Is Information If Nobody Sees It?.

Realizing that its strength lies in data integration, Informix is actively pursuing alliances to provide best of breed e-business applications to use i.Decide Web Success' central data repository as a platform. According to an Informix representative BroadVision and Vignette are likely partners. BroadVision can supply personalization and online transaction processing applications and Vignette can provide content management applications.

It makes sense for Informix to partner for these and other applications that can use the central data repository and the processes analysis, but this will undoubtedly cause confusion among IT decision makers. This is because significant overlap will likely exist between the i.Sell and i.Reach offerings and the partner offerings. This is an issue Informix should deal with before making any partner applications commercially available. Informix also purchased Ardent software in December 1999 (see: Ardent Software: Will Informix Merger Affect Their Success?) to strengthen their web analytics capabilities prior to developing i.Decide Web Success.

Informix has some key advantages that may help it succeed in the crowded CRM market. With well over $200M in quarterly revenues for the past five quarters and positive profits, Informix is financially strong compared to the likes of Informatica, Business Objects, WebTrends and NetPerceptions. Informix expects i.Decide Solutions to bring a healthy change to the top line, as revenues have slipped from $252M in 4Q99 to $240M in 2Q00.
SOURCE:http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/articles/informix-decides-to-start-analyzing-websites-16164/

Geac Computer Corporation: Mastering Growth by Acquisitions

2010-08-02T07:12:00.001-07:00

Geac Computer Corporation Limited manufactures, services, and rents systems, hardware, and enterprise applications to large and small organizations worldwide. Geac is the largest Canadian and one of the largest and most successful international software companies. Its solutions are specifically designed for the critical needs of users in the banking industry, hospitality markets (restaurants and hotels), newspaper publishing, public safety, property management & real estate, and libraries.

Geac is also a best-of-breed provider of mainframe and client/server cross industry solutions for financial administration and human resources (HR) functions, and enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications for manufacturing, distribution, and supply chain management. Founded in 1971, with headquarters in Markham, Canada, Geac has been experiencing a steady growth over the last decade. It has been a publicly traded company on the Toronto Stock Exchange since 1983, with revenues of Can$793.2 million in fiscal 1999.

Geac has grown from a small company focused on libraries and banking/financing in the early 1990s, to an applications software giant with more than 5,200 employees with 90 offices in 18 countries. Through its growth-by-acquisition strategy, the company has increasingly expanded its range of solutions targeting vertical industries. Over the last five years, Geac has acquired in excess of 40 companies around the world.

As a result of its acquisition of Dun & Bradstreet Software in 1996, Geac formed its SmartEnterprise Solutions division, which provides mid- to large-sized enterprises with advanced best-of-breed financial, procurement, human resources and business intelligence solutions. Its multiple platform client/server 'SmartStream', mainframe 'E' Series and 'M' Series, and SQL product suites enable organizations to streamline business processes and enhance information access throughout their enterprises.

Geac's purchase of UK-based ERP software maker JBA International in 1999 has nearly doubled the company's size. With the addition of JBA, Geac is expected to surpass US$1 billion in revenue and occupy the 4th largest ERP vendor position.

Geac serves its worldwide base of more than 30,000 customers in more than 40 countries through direct sales, support, and affiliate locations worldwide. The company operates throughout the world, and as such segments its revenues geographically. In 1999, 68% of total revenues came from the USA and Latin America, 18% from Europe, 7% from Canada, and 7% from Australasia. The large majority of Geac's revenues are derived from maintenance and professional services (76%), with the rest coming from the actual sale and licensing of software and hardware products.

We expect acquisitions to continue to form an integral part of Geac's overall growth strategy, and the company to continue to be a leading global consolidator of mission critical applications in distinct niches within industrial, commercial and government sectors.

Vendor Strengths

Geac has proven itself an adroit and disciplined acquirer of application software businesses. Selective acquisitions have added breath through both attractive untapped market segments and a worldwide market presence. Its large customer base and strong widespread global presence will provide Geac a sustained service and support revenue stream in the future.

Geac has demonstrated a very proficient focus in niche industries that are currently untapped by other leading ERP vendors (Geac is regarded as one of the Top 3 solutions for Libraries, Property & Real Estate, Cash & Securities Reconciliation, and Newspaper Publishing Industries). The mission-critical nature of its solutions makes the company a "first call provider" in these esoteric markets whose customers turn to it first for further system enhancements.

The company is generally competitive in speed of implementation, total cost of ownership (TCO), and price/performance ratio. Geac was one of the first ERP vendors to embrace concepts of component technology, workflow- and Web-enablement, and interconnectivity with other vendors' systems. Furthermore, its products run on a broad set of the most popular platforms and databases. Its broad range of multiple platform products, worldwide coverage, and significant maintenance revenue stream tend to cushion the blow from any technological change and/or vendor intrusion.

Geac is financially viable and stable (See Fig. 1 & 2 - Geac Computer Corporation Ltd. - Annual & Quarterly Results). It has a lean general & administrative headcount and keeps its business units manageable in size. As a result, the company generates significant free cash flow and maintains one of the highest 'revenue per employee' ratios within the industry.

Vendor Challenges

Due to its late expansion into the ERP world and since its product portfolio is regarded as a bunch of niche point solutions (as opposed to a complete ERP product suite), the company may struggle for recognition as a potential strategic partner when involved in software selections against other, even smaller ERP suppliers. Its best-of-breed solutions provider strategy may fall flat with customers who prefer a vendor that can leverage a "one-stop shop" capability.

In order to maintain its strong growth, Geac intends to continue with both software solutions and service provider acquisitions. This will pose a challenge of avoiding both financial indigestion and creation of an unmanageable product portfolio of very diverse solutions. Some of its products are already in a maturity phase and will have to be either discontinued or retrofitted. In addition, the continual need of integrating/interfacing new products with its current or other vendors' products will require a very careful balancing of R&D expenses with a desired operational profitability.

We believe that Geac has a narrow choice of complete vertical industry solutions compared to other large ERP vendors. It only recently introduced Web-based self-service applications, which is significantly later than some much smaller competitors (e.g. Great Plains and Lawson Software). Furthermore, the lack of Client Relationship Management (CRM) and Advanced Planning & Scheduling (APS) modules in its product suite will remain, even after the incorporation of JBA and Clarus. This adds additional future integration issues to a company that already faces massive integration of its disparate ERP systems.

Vendor Predictions

Despite a highly competitive environment, we predict that Geac has a potential of reaching US$2 billion in revenues within the next 4 years (60% probability), based on its expertise and stronghold in relatively untapped industries (See Vendor Strengths).

We believe that, within the next 18 months, the company will have to either acquire (55% probability) or partner with (45% probability) a vendor whose products would significantly enhance its customer relationship management (CRM) capabilities. The potential acquisition candidate is Onyx Software, while Clarify/Nortel or Pivotal are strong partnership candidates. Failing to do so will enable J.D. Edwards to regain and fortify its #4 ERP vendor position within the same time period (70% probability).

Within the next 3 years, more than 65% of Geac's license revenues will come from JBA System 21 and Geac SmartStream product lines (60% probability). During the same time, more than 75% of its total revenue will come from license revenue (60% probability) based on the company's need to integrate its products with other 3rd party products.

Vendor Recommendations

Geac must promptly resolve any outstanding product interconnectivity issues both within its confederacy of products and with other vendors' products. It must also send a strong reassuring message to a possibly wary market regarding its strategic partner viability.

Geac should further penetrate the Small-to-Medium Enterprises (SME) market segment in the following ways:

Expand business in its existing customer base, by upgrading older versions of software and by offering new extended ERP modules and enterprise applications.
Conduct a detailed scrutiny of current geographic coverage by product lines as to identify any room for further global expansion.
Deliver more new, focused and pre-configured vertical solutions (e.g., healthcare, insurance, education, courts, etc.), and offer application outsourcing to make Geac attractive to smaller, resource constrained smaller enterprises.

Geac also must remain committed to new product features and the introduction of additional enhancements (See Vendor Challenges), and to enhancing CRM and e-Commerce offerings, possibly through strategic product alliances with competitors. We also encourage the company to consider continuing its stream of wise acquisitions within fragmented industries that might be ripe for a consolidation (see above-mentioned industries).

SOURCE:http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/articles/geac-computer-corporation-mastering-growth-by-acquisitions-15193/

IBM to Demo Crusoe-based Notebook

2010-08-02T07:11:00.000-07:00

For the second time in as many weeks, Transmeta has been named as the processor for a major manufacturer's upcoming product. In late May, Gateway and AOL announced their joint effort to produce an Internet appliance based on the Crusoe processor, and now IBM has said it may use the Crusoe in ThinkPad notebooks due to ship later this year.

IBM said it will have a technology demonstration of one notebook at the PC Expo (June 26-29 in NYC), and is considering offering Crusoe-based models later this year.

Transmeta, which unveiled the Crusoe after months/years of speculation, is focusing on mobile Internet computing. One of Crusoe's much-publicized features is its very low power consumption, meaning it can (theoretically) run all day on a single battery, thus making it a good fit for notebook computers and handheld devices.

Market Impact

This is the next step in Transmeta's plans for microprocessor world domination. When Transmeta announced the Crusoe chip, one of the areas where it focused was notebooks and mobile computing. At the time they discussed (without divulging names) partnering agreements with key manufacturers. Along with original backers Compaq Computer and Sony, they have revealed Gateway as their partner for an Internet appliance (Ref. "Gateway & AOL Follow Crusoe's Footprints"). Adding IBM as their notebook partner gives them even more credibility - for now. Dell Computer has made it abundantly clear that they are currently Intel-only, so we do not expect them to join the Crusoe yet. We do expect Transmeta to expand their partnerships in the low-power end, including handhelds.

If Transmeta is able to deliver on the promise of all-day battery power, we expect the other major notebook manufacturers (Toshiba, Hewlett-Packard, NEC, Gateway) to develop Crusoe-based products within 12-18 months. If IBM is able to deliver a quality product, we see their sales increasing markedly by early 2001.

Intel is not expected to stand still, and a likely response will include mobile Celeron and SpeedStep technologies - if they can make it less power-hungry. Likewise, AMD will probably accelerate work on its low-power offering. (Ref. "Cooler-running Notebooks from HP, Toshiba, et al.")

SOURCE:http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/articles/ibm-to-demo-crusoe-based-notebook-15895/

Clarus –Sprinting or Going the Distance?

2010-08-02T07:10:00.000-07:00

Clarus Corporation (NASDAQ: CLRS) announced the addition of strategic sourcing capabilities to its ClarusAuctions product. ClarusAuctions is a hosted (i.e., ASP) B2B trading service that supports twelve different kinds of auction. The enhanced capabilities in version 2.1 include:

Support for wireless access via phone and PDA
The addition of weights to the evaluation of RFQs. With this feature sellers can apply weights to the individual items on an RFQ when determining which response best meets their needs.
The ability to create a private branded auction within the public ClarusAuctions site; access can be limited through secure encrypted access keys
The capability for bidders to remain anonymous

Clarus also announced a number of new customers for its Clarus eMarket digital marketplace. Clarus eMarket enables direct buyer-to-seller connectivity, without the central hub associated with other marketplace solutions, such as those from Ariba and Commerce One. It is the first Windows 2000-based digital marketplace framework, and is built upon Microsoft's latest technologies. The new marketplace customers include:

AvidXchange.com, a commercial real-estate site that will also use ClarusAuctions
HispanB2B, which is designed to provide Hispanic-owned businesses access to the Fortune 500
LabBook, which provides access to genomic data
Wachovia, a financial services provider that is building a procurement service that it will use internally and make available to its corporate customers
VerticalCity, a builder of online communities targeted to vertical content

Market Impact

Just over one year ago Clarus divested itself of its entire ERP business and dedicated itself to becoming an e-commerce company. The effect on revenues of giving up the ERP business makes Clarus look almost like a startup. Figure 1 shows the company's actual quarterly revenues, compared to the pro forma revenues taking only the e-commerce business into account. The Figure also shows comparable numbers for Ariba (NASDAQ: ARBA) and Commerce One (NASDAQ:CMRC).

Figure 1. Quarterly Revenues

click here to view larger version

As we read the tealeaves, Clarus is trying to follow in the wake of industry leaders Ariba and Commerce One while selling a different model. For example, while the Market product boasts that it eliminates the intermediate vendor hub, Clarus is still effectively in the hub business because it sees the need to recruit suppliers through its SupplierUniverse trading network. Grant for the sake of argument that Clarus provides better content management and other support to its suppliers, as it claims; it isn't obvious that this is a better model for buyers, and buyers are Clarus' customers. Certainly, there are companies in the mid-range and somewhat larger that will want a marketplace with Clarus' "direct" architecture (called ClarusDirect); however, we believe that there is more to offer most companies with the promise of a marketplace that is part of a larger network. Both Commerce One and Ariba use this as a significant strength, in somewhat different ways: Commerce One through the promise of trading in the global economy and Ariba through its developing emphasis on the supply chain. We wonder if Clarus' anti-hub emphasis is really going to catch the forward looking fish it needs as customers.

While we don't see Clarus as likely to be competing against Ariba and Commerce One directly most of the time, they are both real and virtual competitors. Real because they recognize the need to have a wider market: witness Commerce One's tight partnership with mySAP. Virtual because there are mid-market players offering product suites that include procurement who connect to Ariba or Commerce One's marketplace, in this way offering the homey touch in front-end software and the power of a large trading network.

The market for auction software is somewhat different. Although both Ariba and Commerce One do have offerings, not to mention specialists like FairMarket, this seems like a market that still needs to define itself. The new features in ClarusAuctions seem to give it considerable strength and a real opportunity to carve out a place for itself.

SOURCE:http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/articles/clarus-sprinting-or-going-the-distance-16176/

Microsoft Hopes to Win Over Consumer Privacy Advocates

2010-08-02T07:09:00.000-07:00

By announcing a beta version of several privacy and cookie management features, Microsoft responded to recent news stories against online advertisers and other parties who obtain aggregate data through clickstream technologies. In Microsoft's new browser privacy model, before reporting through any cookie, Microsoft's browser will tell the user what type of cookie. It also can be customized to request further permission before proceeding with the website's cookie request. Figure 1, taken from Microsoft's press information, shows what a typical cookie warning would look like. What makes these features different from the cookie management features in previous versions of Microsoft's and Netscape's browsers is that they add some more information to the surfer when a cookie is reported, and allow a finer level of control for blocking cookies.

Figure 1.

Consumer advocates say that though this is a technical improvement regarding use of demographic and personal information derived from Internet activities, it does nothing to prevent the misuse of prior clickstream data obtained without permission.

Users can expect to have access to the new privacy enhanced Internet Explorer 5.5 following feedback from 2,000 beta testers. The 5.5 release is expected in mid August.

Market Impact

The story starts with a big company making a nasty PR mistake. Some months ago DoubleClick purchased Abacus Direct, a company engaged in off-line marketing. Abacus had huge databases of personally identifying information about people who shopped through catalogs and other Abacus customers. This created the possibility that DoubleClick could put these personally identifying data together with the data it collects about individuals - who it cannot identify - by serving ads. Indeed, DoubleClick intended to do this, though an opt-out model; that is, surfers would have to refuse to allow their personal information to be correlated with their cookie data. (See "DoubleClick Takes Bath, Throws in Towel").

Unfortunately, DoubleClick did a poor job of explaining its model and of making sure that surfers were clearly notified about the opt-out possibilities. The result was a major news story that culminated with DoubleClick doing a public mea culpa and significantly strengthening its privacy policies. Among these policies is an explicit promise never to sell any data to a third party.

With the public still sensitive to that issue, and to the recent reports that failed dot-com ToySmart wanted to sell the data it had collected, Microsoft's announcement makes a good deal of sense. It will probably be followed (or one-upped) by Netscape when it is ready to announce the next release of its own browser.

It is important to note that Microsoft is in no way opposed to the use of cookies. Far from it; cookies are important to Microsoft for its own advertising, for gaining information about the visitors to its own websites, and as a feature of its web servers and commerce servers. Microsoft, like most other software companies, has come to understand that if users feel comfortable about the use of cookies they will ignore them. Indeed, one recent study suggests that even now only about 3% of users bother to turn off cookies in their browsers. Microsoft's Director of Corporate Privacy, Richard Purcell, is working to help craft better standards and regulations about Internet privacy. However, Purcell states that "Cookie management alone is not the answer to consumer privacy." In supporting consumer privacy empowerment, Microsoft said that the new cookie agents will include technology based on P3P, an acronym for Platform for Privacy Preferences. P3P is a standard developed under the auspices of the World Wide Web Consortium. It specifies a machine-readable language with which websites can encode their privacy policies. This will enable browsers to automatically steer surfers away from sites whose policies do not match the surfer's level of comfort. P3P does not in itself say anything about the kinds of policies sites should adopt.

SOURCE:http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/articles/microsoft-hopes-to-win-over-consumer-privacy-advocates-16020/

Syncsort Sigma Manages Database Aggregates

2010-08-02T07:08:00.000-07:00

Programmers and administrators of large databases and data warehouses can create, manage and process data aggregates with speed, ease and accuracy with a new software product unveiled by Syncsort Incorporated.

Called Sigma, the vendor states that the product combines a high-performance data aggregate engine with an intuitive graphical user interface. By simplifying aggregation creation, Sigma reduces the time it takes to define and maintain aggregates, saves computer resources when processing aggregates, and dramatically cuts response time for database queries.

"Having the right aggregates available can improve runtime performance up to a thousand times according to leading data warehouse experts," said Vic Werner, director of marketing at Syncsort. "Sigma helps database administrators manage the explosive growth of data in their companies and meet the demands by their users for faster query processing of click-stream data from web sites, 24/7 business operations and electronic commerce initiatives. Sigma frees administrators to concentrate on selecting those aggregates that will optimize query performance."

Market Impact

Data warehouse administrators have long been vexed by the difficulty of creating aggregations of data. (An aggregate is defined by Ralph Kimball in his "Data Warehouse Toolkit" as "the items in a SQL Select list that are one of: SUM, COUNT, MIN, MAX, or AVG"). They are a method to improve query response time for frequently used reporting questions such as "what were my sales numbers by region for the last month?"

IT professionals have used Syncsort for many years to sort data into a predetermined order to reduce processing time in programs (i.e., sorting data for batch input to a COBOL program on mainframes), and they have extensive experience in this area. Many data warehousing products have very counter-intuitive approaches to creating aggregates. Syncsort, in contrast, should have a strong influence in this market because IT professionals are familiar with the Syncsort product family.

SOURCE:http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/articles/syncsort-sigma-manages-database-aggregates-15977/

Microsoft Hopes to Win Over Consumer Privacy Advocates

2010-08-02T07:07:00.002-07:00

Figure 1.

Users can expect to have access to the new privacy enhanced Internet Explorer 5.5 following feedback from 2,000 beta testers. The 5.5 release is expected in mid August.

Market Impact

SOURCE:http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/articles/microsoft-hopes-to-win-over-consumer-privacy-advocates-16020/

A Kinder Unisys Makes Web Users Burn

2010-08-02T07:07:00.001-07:00

Unisys Corp holds the patent for a data compression algorithm known as LZW. Many years ago CompuServe used LZW as the basis of its GIF image format. In 1995 it obtained a license fee arrangement from CompuServe. It has also obtained licensing arrangements with most major commercial vendors of graphics programs. Unisys is now asking Web developers to determine whether the software they are using is properly licensed; if not, Unisys is requesting a $5,000 fee from sites displaying GIF files. Web developers are organizing an event at Unisys' Bluebell, PA, headquarters at which artists and users will burn GIF images in protest.

Market Impact

Whatever license fees Unisys may get from this patent are probably noise to its overall revenues ($7.2 billion in 1998), and the company is not a competitor with others from which it is seeking licensing fees. The potential impact of this action is on companies using the GIF format. GIF is the most popular image format for the Internet, especially for original artwork, although the JPEG format is frequently used for photographic images. With millions of GIF images all over the Internet it is not hard to believe that a strong legal challenge by Unisys will have wide-ranging effects. However, although many web developers and other users have formed the opinion that Unisys is out to wring pennies from every single GIF image, that does not seem to be the case. The recent announcement is less a new policy than a new tactic. Unisys had already been attempting to get for-profit websites to certify that their GIF images were created by licensed software. The recent announcement is in fact a reduction in the license costs, according to the company. It may, of course, also be a shot across the bow of large websites and portals which they suspect are using GIF images created by software that did not license the LZW patent. But Unisys claims that while they are seeking, in their stockholders' interest, to obtain fees from for-profit users of the compression algorithm, they are not attempting to gain control of the GIF format. The company claims to have offered free licences to non-profit users and websites, and is only interested in license arrangements with large, profit-making sites. "We're not after people doing Beanie Baby sites," said Unisys spokesperson Oliver Pitcher. Pitcher suggested that Unisys' attempts to collect fees will not slow down the use of the Web or the use of the GIF format.

It is worth noting that there is a new graphics standard called PNG (and a closely related companion called MNG that handles animation and other multimedia effects) that can be used freely. Conversion of existing GIF format files to PNG is not difficult, and at least the high-end design tools such as those from Corel and Adobe can generate PNG as easily as they can generate GIF. The only reason for not converting all images to PNG immediately is that only the latest generations of browsers support it well.

SOURCE:http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/articles/a-kinder-unisys-makes-web-users-burn-15457/

Webtime Now Legal

2010-08-02T07:06:00.004-07:00

It is common for a company to require new hires to sign agreements that would prevent them from working for "competitors" after they leave the company. Mark Schlack signed a one-year contract with EarthWeb in October 1998, according to the New York Law Journal. The following September he resigned to take a position with a new website, Itworld.com, to be launched by IDG in January. EarthWeb tried to enforce the non-competition clause in court, but Judge William H. Pauley III ruled in favor of Shlack.

Although he found in part that the new site was not likely to be strongly competitive with EarthWeb, and that Schlack was not in possession of trade secrets, he also ruled that in the IT industry a non-competition agreement for a term as long as one year would be unreasonable. "Courts tend to find that in any non-compete agreement that the nature of the restriction and any geographic restrictions have to be reasonable," explained Andrew Kisseloff, a Norwood Massachusetts attorney who specializes in employment law. "In this case the judge has forged a definition of what's reasonable for IT." While companies may have rights to prevent employees from using trade secrets and other special knowledge from going into direct competition, according to Kisseloff a non-compete agreement cannot be so restrictive as to prevent someone from working at all in his or her field.

The Judge's decision cited the dynamic nature of the IT industry, its lack of geographical borders, and the fact that Schlack's professional position required him to be aware of day-by-day changes on the Internet. For someone in Mr. Schlack's position, the judge asserted, "a one-year hiatus from the work force is several generations, if not an eternity."

Market Impact

The law, it has been said, grinds slow but exceedingly fine. Employment contracts are primarily covered by state, not federal, law and this decision is not binding on other cases. For that to happen it would have to be appealed; if the Appellate courts agreed with the Judge's decision their opinion would be likely to put forth principles that would be binding in other cases in New York. We believe that the probability that EarthWeb will appeal is nil.

However, the Judge's opinion in this case can be cited in other cases as exemplary reasoning, regardless of what other states a similar suit may be brought in. Judges will certainly weigh the opinion carefully. Although the facts of every case are different, especially as they relate to issues of possible competition and possession of trade secrets, the Judge in this case has made a ruling that reflects the reality of the Internet. Each company's lawyers will have to determine whether to modify its own employment agreements, but we'd advise IT executives to continue to rely more on proactive means to keep valuable employees.

SOURCE:http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/articles/webtime-now-legal-16167/

Top Business Objectives When Adopting PLM

2010-08-02T07:06:00.003-07:00

Although product lifecycle management (PLM) can help business organizations achieve a variety of goals, some benefits of adopting PLM are more frequently sought than others. Research focusing on business objectives that PLM users have in mind prior to evaluating specific PLM solutions demonstrates that drawing and product documentation management, product collaboration, and engineering change management are among the most popular areas on a PLM buyers’ priority list.

Every year, Technology Evaluation Centers (TEC) helps thousands of users compare and select PLM solutions via TEC’s PLM Evaluation Center. In order to better assist TEC users in identifying the most suitable PLM solutions in accordance with business requirements, one of the 17 questions that the TEC PLM Evaluation Center asks in the online questionnaire is about users’ business objectives when adopting PLM systems. To answer this question, users can choose from a multiple selection list of over 50 options. Although this list is not exhaustive, TEC believes it covers the majority of business objectives that are related to PLM adoption.

Within the pool of thousands of PLM initiatives recorded each year, TEC was able to select and verify a certain number of PLM selection projects using consistent selection criteria from 2007 to 2009. In total, TEC included 485 PLM selection projects for this study—over 100 projects for each year.

The demography of this study stays relatively consistent from year to year and companies of all sizes have been included. Within the 485 selection projects, we managed to maintain a variety of industries with the six major industries that account for 60% of the total. These industries are electronics/high-tech, industrial and commercial products/machinery, aerospace and defense (A&D), engineering and construction, automotive, and consumer packaged goods (CPG).

Based on this data, the table below shows the top 10 business objectives selected in 2009 and its rankings in the previous two years.

Table 1. Top 10 Business Objectives When Adopting PLM, 2009

Most of the objectives in the top 10 list are steady from year to year. After looking through these 10 items, we separated nine out of the 10 business objectives into three categories: drawing and product documentation management, product collaboration, and engineering change management.

Drawing and Product Documentation Management

There are three business objectives in this category and “better manage drawings and product documentation” has been ranked first for the last three years. Without a doubt, PLM has roots in managing computer-aided design (CAD) drawings and all other product documentations if we trace back to PLM predecessors such as engineering document management (EDM) and product data management (PDM). Although today’s PLM is capable of offering much more than product documentation management, this remains the top priority for many organizations.

If you feel that “better manage drawings and product documentation” is a rather generic objective, the other two objectives (both ranked fifth in 2009) may give you clearer ideas about what organizations are looking for in PLM for product documentation management. These two objectives indicate that improving accuracy and decreasing costs are the major priorities for product documentation management. Generally speaking, they are negatively correlated—better accuracy usually comes with higher costs. However, today’s organizations must achieve both objectives at the same time in order to survive and to excel against competitions. A PLM solution can help resolve this negative relationship by ensuring that product data is effectively and efficiently captured, stored, protected, and distributed.

Drawings and other product documentations need to be managed because most product definition information resides within these documents. Although recent technology advancements (such as Google Wave that may empower content generation and knowledge collaboration processes) have the potential to transform traditional document-based product development to a more structured manner, we expect that “better manage drawings and product documentation” will be kept as a priority for many organizations in the near future.

Product Collaboration

Nowadays, PLM is not only in place to help product designers and engineers but also used in a wider range of business processes including marketing, manufacturing, and services. In other words, PLM is expanding its coverage to the entire life cycle of a product just as its name suggests. Hence, instead of using “product development collaboration”, we decided to use “product collaboration” to describe the second category of business objectives of adopting PLM. Within this category, we were able to include four business objectives from the top 10 list. These are “decrease cost of new product development and introduction projects”; “improve design review and approval processes; “communicate manufacturing processes or work instructions to manufacturing”; and “increase speed of new product introductions”.

As we can see, except for “improve design review and approval processes”, which focus on the product design department, the other three objectives all have significant interactions between product design and other business functions. For product oriented companies, new product development and introduction (NPDI) has become a critical business process that companies want to build their core competences on. The two major goals that many companies have regarding NPDI are to make it more cost-efficient and faster. In addition, organizations also want to build tighter connections between product design and manufacturing. TEC believes that this requirement represents the need of a two-way communication—product design and engineering design providing information for what and how to produce in one direction, and manufacturing feeding back data for how to design better and faster in the other direction.

Engineering Change Management

Technically speaking, engineering change management is part of product collaboration. However, due to the specificity and importance of engineering change, we decided to categorize this specific product collaboration in a stand-alone set.

Engineering change management is the process by which changes to product designs are implemented in the production process. This process covers simple material substitutions as well as major process changes that require plant engineering. When distributed and outsourced product design and production become more frequent in business practices, “decrease errors for engineering changes” and “reduce engineering change cycle time” receive higher priority. The ranking changes of the two business objectives over three years also suggest the same trend.

“Improve product quality” is the only business objective from the top 10 list that is not assigned to any of the above categories. Since product quality is the result of many activities that a company does, PLM is not the only system that companies use to improve product quality. In fact, software solutions such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) and manufacturing execution system (MES) also contribute significantly to product quality. The difference is that ERP and MES are more for the immediate quality of physical products from operation and execution control perspectives, whereas in PLM, quality improvement is a longer-term result achieved through more frequent and constant product collaboration among a wider range of product stakeholders.

As mentioned earlier, there were over 50 business objectives that TEC provided as answers. Below is a short list of some noticeable ranking increases outside the top 10 business objectives mentioned above.

Table 2. Noticeable Ranking Increases Outside the Top 10 Business Objectives

Design reuse: Keeping reinventing the wheel or starting from the scratch every time there is a new design task not only wastes engineers’ precious time and energy but also blocks many cost reduction opportunities in downstream processes such as production and services. As companies keep accumulating design data, the reuse of this digital asset becomes a promising area to seek for more opportunities for achieving business excellence.

Outsourcing support: While manufacturers enjoy the cost benefit of outsourced production, they also face the drawbacks such as delivery time, quality control, and collaboration between product development and production due to the elongated value chain. The ranking increase of “enable outsourced manufacturing” may represent the expectation that PLM can help build better collaboration within the extended enterprise environment.

Strategic sourcing: Without a doubt, data and process connectivity between product design and sourcing is a rewarding area for manufacturers to explore. More and more companies start looking into PLM in order to improve their sourcing performance. As a result, today’s PLM solutions are expanding to sourcing and related functionality that help companies make better decisions on commercial feasibility of products in development.

The rating status shown above represents an overall expectation when business users are thinking about adopting PLM. When it comes to a specific PLM initiative that an organization has, the business objectives may vary—sometimes significantly. Nevertheless, knowing the priorities that the majority of PLM-seeking organizations have may help you strategize you own PLM road map, if you are looking for a PLM solution, or help you provide better software offerings to the market, if you happen to be a PLM vendor.

SOURCE:http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/articles/top-business-objectives-when-adopting-plm-20492/