Archive for September, 2006

By Randy Sei
Before you acquire any software solution (Enterprise Resource Planning), the first thing you would do is to define your needs. What exactly you are looking for? What is your business objective and what kind of return on investment are you looking for? Continue Reading »
Key Factors To Consider When Choosing Manufacturing Solutions

By Tim Bryce
INTRODUCTION

We now live in a fast paced society where we expect products and services to be delivered rapidly (some say “yesterday”), cheaply, and with a high degree of quality. This is particularly true in the systems and software industry. If we lived in a perfect world, systems and software would be developed rapidly and inexpensively, they would effectively satisfy business needs, and would be easy to maintain and modify. There is only one problem with this scenario: it is a fantasy. In reality, we live in a “disposable” world where systems and software are slapped together in the hopes everything will hold together and will pacify the end-user for the moment. Some people believe striving for a Utopian world is an impossibility and, as such, resign themselves to rewriting systems and software time and again as opposed to designing them to be industrial strength. Continue Reading »
What Price Quality?

By Terri Roeslmeier
Examine, for a second, the thought process of the staffing software buyer. It’s amazing how many times buyers will say it has to be an ASP or web based before they ask any questions about what the software can do. The thinking is to pare down the systems before taking an in-depth look at any of them. The idea is to save time, as there are too many systems out there to be able to evaluate them all. So, they eliminate a number of systems and then take a close look at the survivors trying to pick the one that best fits their actual business need. The error in this process is subtle. It must be since so many good business people seem to fall into the same trap. By using a non-functionality based criteria to winnow out possible solutions they are left choosing from amongst systems that may not meet their actual business needs. If an integrated payroll and billing solution is needed, why look only at systems that don’t offer this capability? Yet this is exactly what would have happened. Continue Reading »
Choosing An Effective Software Solution

Microsoft recently released the latest Microsoft Vista RC1 operating system (build 5564) to half a million Technical Beta Program, MSDN and Technet Subscribers. Another 2 million copies of the OS will also be placed in magazine inserts for the public. Though it’s not the final version to be released, the OS has dramatic improvements over the previous build. One particular feature that I’m impressed with is Windows Readyboost. Continue Reading »
Best Microsoft Vista Feature