How Small Business Can be Benefited through Twitter List?

Most of us know that twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read messages known as tweets. In this article, we will discuss how small business can utilize twitter effectively.

Earlier in twitter, group following was not possible. On the basis of users’ feedback, twitter has launched new features “Twitter List”. It enables group relationships beyond following each other. Anyone can create and publish twitter lists, so if you have a new idea for one, just click "New list" in the sidebar of your Twitter account. Add accounts to a list using the "Lists" drop drown on a twitter profile page.

Twitter list has some incredible benefits for small businesses in how they can organize or otherwise endorse people they follow. There are no best practices for using Twitter Lists. However, we will share some great ideas to spark your imagination.

Twitter lists can be private or public and small businesses can follow any lists without resulting in an influx of people they follow. Twitter helps you to notice and noticing others in this competitive business environment. Twitter has a very fair and equal platform for everyone to connect to their desired audience or customer and engage.

Instead of becoming obsessed with the number of followers you have amassed pay attention to the lists you are enrolled on and see which associates you have attracted. We know few companies encourage employees to Tweet. This would be a healthy why to highlight and endorse one’s association with the company. Does your business make use of VIPs or similar stars that could be a street team for your brand? Draw attention to them and they will highlight you.

Associate yourself with industry associations or peers. On Twitter, it’s collaboration not competition. What are you using twitter lists for? Share it in your blogs or comments! There has to be someone in your company who is great on twitting. Showing humbleness and embracing talent on twitter is a great service for your audience to help grow your audience.

There are more ways for small businesses could benefit from Twitter Lists. To know more about how twitter can be benefited for your organization read an e-book on “Twitter Marketing”.

Copyright © Ryan Mutt, All Rights Reserved. If you want to use this article on your website or in your ezine, make all the urls (links) active.

Know more about Twitter Marketing Tips to get more followers and traffic. Read How to Get Niche Market for affiliate marketing?

SharePoint Server 2007 Integration and Management Capabilities

Office SharePoint Designer 2007 includes ground-breaking new functionality that Office SharePoint Server 2007 users and portal site managers can take advantage of, ease of customization, enabling you to design and extend portal sites or portal pages with more flexibility and power than ever before.

Ease of customization

Office SharePoint Server 2007 portal sites are easily customizable with Office SharePoint Designer 2007. You can edit your portal site pages with state-of-the-art CSS editing tools. This feature enables you to design your site according to your business needs.

Better business document workflows

With the Workflow Designer in Office SharePoint Designer 2007, you can extend the ready to use business document workflows that are available in Office SharePoint Server 2007 and create custom workflows from scratch.

Create custom views of business data

With the Office SharePoint Server 2007 Business Data Catalog and Office SharePoint Designer 2007 Data Views, you can create custom views of vital and essential business data, and even create Data Views that integrate information from different data sources into a single Data View. You can use conditional formatting to call attention to vital information. You can also use Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformation (XSLT) data forms to quickly and easily create, update, and view data.

Enhanced Management Capabilities

Office SharePoint Designer 2007 can be used by IT managers and site administrators to control and restrict the levels of access to ensure a consistent user experience across the site. By determining the levels of control for team members according to their roles and responsibility, you can control which Office SharePoint Designer 2007 commands the users can access and edit your SharePoint site. With Contributor mode, you can create user groups and assign them role and rule based specific permissions.

Manage your SharePoint site more efficiently

Managing of your site is easy with SharePoint. You can access tools and reports for a wide variety of site maintenance tasks, CSS usage, including hyperlink checking, and more.

Tracking of customized pages

You can simply track customized pages by using the Site Template Pages report. With the Site Template Pages report, you can see a list of pages that have been edited or customized, including the file names and their types, as well as the folder in which the files are located.

Roll back changes

You can use the Revert to Template Page command to roll back all the changes of the page. Making changes to the live site is possible. If unnecessary changes have been saved, you can now restore previous versions of the same page with the click of a single button.

Copyright © Ryan Mutt, All Rights Reserved. If you want to use this article on your website or in your ezine, make all the urls (links) active.

Know how to get Low Cost ERP Software for your organization. Read Comparison of Small Business ERP Software for your analysis.

ERP Implementation Key Performance Metrics (KPIs)

ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system cost is divided into two major parts: software cost and hardware cost. Software cost is depends upon many factors, number of users, implementation, customization, user training etc. After investing a huge amount on ERP project organization wants quick and better ROI. For SME, it is a significant decision.

Key Performance Metrics (KPIs) of ERP Implementation Investments in ERP project for organizations in the SME segment is an important decision. Hence the evaluation of an implementation and benefits accrued is an important factor in the overall success of an implementation project. Effectiveness of an implementation can be somewhat gauged by KPIs of business processes. KPIs are benchmarks with qualitative or quantitative values that help an organization assess the effectiveness of the processes that have been implemented in the ERP system. However it may not be suitable to expect important improvement in these values immediately after the implementation. An organization needs to give itself the time to take up the changes brought about in by the ERP system to practically achieve the KPI targets.

Examples of these metrics are as follows:

• What is the financial input necessary for achieving the targeted key performance level?
• What benefits the organization derives from a certain level of performance?
• Are the internal processes effective and efficient in assuring of performance?
• Does the new ERP system have sufficient potential for possible future customer needs?
• Measuring the monetary perspective, customer perspective, internal process perspective and human resource perspective goal
• Measure budget compliance hardware, software, training, and consulting goal
• Measure gamut of processes reduce bottlenecks
• Reduce Operational Problems: problems with customer order processing, problems with inventory processes, problems with standard reports
• Availability of the ERP system: average system availability, average downtime, and maximum downtime

Copyright © Ryan Mutt, All Rights Reserved. If you want to use this article on your website or in your ezine, make all the urls (links) active.

Read Benefits of ERP and Definition of ERP:Enterprise Resource Planning system. Also Know ERP Implementation Strategy to save your time and money.

SAP R/3 Modules Overview and Applications

In this article we have discussed all SAP R/3 modules overview.

Basis - BC (BASIS Components) accessed through SAPGUI (Graphical User Interface). It is middleware that links the SAPGUI client to SAP applications, the database, and OS (Operating System).

ABAP- ABAP is a SAP proprietary programming language. SAP R/3 supports nearly all databases: Oracle, Informix, DB2 for UNIX, DB2/400, Microsoft's SQL Server 6.0 etc.

Financial - FICO (Financial Accounting and Controlling), EC (Enterprise Controlling), AM (Asset Management) / EAM (Enterprise Asset Management), TR (Treasury), IM (capital Investment Management), GL (General Ledger).

Applications – AP/AR (Accounts Payable/Account Receivable), AA (Asset Accounting), LC (Legal Consolidation), GL (General Ledger), FM (Funds Management), BL (Bank-related Accounting), TR-CB (Cash Budget Management), TR-MRM (Market Risk Management), TR-CM (Cash Management), TR-LO (Loans Management), TR-TM (Treasury Management), Profit and Loss Accounting, Cost of Sales Accounting, Parallel set of books, Integration of Controlling, Balance Sheet by any dimension.

HR (Human Resource) - PA (Personnel Administration), PD (Personnel planning and Development)

Applications- PA-APP Applicant Management, PA-BEN Benefits, PA-EMP Employee Management, PA-INW Incentive wages, PA-PAY Payroll, PA-TIM Time Management, PA-TRV Travel Expenses, PD-OM Organizational Management, PD-RPL Room Reservations Planning, PD-WFP Workforce Planning, PD-SCM Seminar and Convention Management, PD-PD Personnel development.

Logistic and Manufacturing - MM (Material Management), MRP (Materials Requirement Planning), Material Ledger, SD (Sales & Distribution), PP/DS (Production Planning and Detailed Scheduling), LO (General Logistics), Service Management, PM (Plant Maintenance), Central Functions.

Applications- MM-PUR Purchasing, MM-IM (Inventory Management), MM-WM (Warehouse Management), MM-IV (Invoice Verification), MM-IS (Information System), MM-CBP (Consumption Based Planning), MM-EDI (Electronic Data Interchange), SD-MD (Master Data), SD-CAS (Sales Support), SD-SLS (Sales), SD-SHP (Shipping), SD-TR (Transportation), SD-BIL (Billing), SD-SIS (Sales Information System), SD-EDI Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), SD-GF (General Sales Functions), PP-SOP (Sales and Operations Planning), PP-CRP (Capacity Requirement Planning), PP-MP (Master planning), PP-ATO (Assembly orders), PP-BD (Basic Data), PP-IS (Information System), PP-KAB (Kanban/Just-in-Time), PP-MRP (Material Requirements Planning), PP-PDC (Plant Data Collection), PP-PI (Production Planning for Process Industries), PP-REM (Repetitive Manufacturing), PP-SFC (Production orders), PM-EQM (Equipment and Technical Objects), PM-IS (PM Information System), PM-PRM (Preventive Maintenance), PM-PRO (Maintenance Projects), PM-SM (Service Management), PM-WOC (Maintenance Orders Management), LO-AB-TC (Trading Contract), LO-BM (Batches), LO-ECH (Engineering Change Management), LO-EHS (Environment Management), LO-EWB (Engineering Workbench), LO-HU (Handling Unit Management), LO-LIS (Logistics Information System), LO-MAP (Merchandise & Assortment Planning), LO-MD (Logistics Basic Data), LO-MDS (Merchandise Distribution), LO-PDM (Product Data Management), LO-PR (Forecast), LO-RIS (Retail Information System), LO-SCI (Supply Chain Planning Interface), LO-SRS (Retail Store), LO-VC (Variant Configuration).

Product Life Cycle Management (PLM) - QM (Quality Management), QM-QP (Quality Planning), QM-IM (Quality Inspection processing), QM-QC-AQC (Quality control), QM-IT (Test equipment management), QM-QN (Quality notifications), QM-CA (Quality certificates), PS (Project System), DMS (Document Management System).

Applications- SAP Project and Portfolio Management, SAP Environment, Health and Safety
SAP PLM Recipe Management, Audit Management, QM-CR (General functions), QM-PT-RP (Control in logistics), PLM400 (Quality Management) or LO170 (Quality Management), PLM405 (Quality Inspections) or LO705 (Quality Inspections), PLM410 (Quality Notifications) or LO710 (Quality Notifications), PLM425 (QM in Sales and Distribution/Quality Certificates) or LO725 (QM in Sales and Distribution/Quality Certificates), PS-CAF (Payments), PS-CON (Confirmation), PS-COS (Costs), PS-CRP (Resources), PS-DAT (Dates), PS-DOC (Documents), PS-IS (Information System), PS-MAT (Material), PS-PRG (Progress), PS-REV (Revenues and Earnings), PS-SIM (Simulation), PS-ST (Structures), PS-VER (Versions).

Cross Application (X-Apps) - xApp for Manufacturing Integration & Intelligence, APO (Advanced Planner and Optimizer) – Live Cache, WF (Workflow), BW (Business Warehouse) 3.5, BIW (Business Intelligence & Data Warehousing), Analytics, xPD (Product Definition)

SAP Business Suite(formerly New Dimension) - ERP 6.0 (2005) with ECC 6.0, CRM (Customer Relationship Management), SCM (Supply Chain Management), SAP Auto-ID Infrastructure, SAP Supply Network Collaboration, SAP Extended Warehouse Management, SRM (Supplier Relationship Management), SAP Catalog Content Management, SAP SRM as Add-on for ECC.

Applications- Analytics, Channel Management, Interaction Center, Field Applications, Implementation & Operation, Sales with mySAP CRM 2005, SAP Marketing, SAP Service, Planning, Manufacturing, Order Fulfillment, Enterprise Buyer, Procurement.

NetWeaver "Business Process Management" apps – KMC (Knowledge Management & Collaboration) for 2004s - Document management service, Content Management service; XI (Exchange Infrastructure), morphing to PI (Process Integration), EP (Enterprise Portal)

IS (Information Systems) Management - CCMS (Computing Center Mgmt System), Master Data Management (MDM 5.5 SP04).

Applications- BC-CCM-ADK Archiving Development Kit, CCM-API Application Program Interfaces, CCM-BTC Background Processing, CCM-CNF Configuration, CCM-HAV High Availability, CCM-MON Monitoring, CCM-PRN Print and Output Management, MDM100 (Master Data Management), MDM101 (MDM GDS), MDM300 (MDM Print Publishing), MDM400 (MDM Data Modeling).

GRC (Governance, Risk, and Compliance) SDN - Virsa, GTS, xEM, CPM (Corporate Performance Management), SEM (Strategic Enterprise Management): Strategy Management, Business Planning and Simulation (BI), Credit Management.

Read more about SAP R/3 Architecture and SAP Business One Implementation and more information about ERP at http://www.nickmutt.com

Copyright Nick Mutt, All rights reserved.

Self Discipline To Master Yourself

Your skill and capacity to discipline you, to master yourself, to manage yourself, to control yourself, goes hand with success in every field of career. According to Elbert Hubbard, “Self- discipline is the ability to make yourself do what you should do, when you should do it, whether you feel like it or not.” People can develop following habit to make their bright future - goal orientation, result orientation, action orientation, people orientation, health orientation, honesty, integrity, and self discipline.

Make a decision clearly on the new good habit. If your want to develop your self discipline, write it down as a target in a paper or stand up in front of mirror and say “I am an extremely well disciplined individual in everything I do.” This will increase your confidence in you. Repeat this as often as possible, and with as much enthusiasm and conviction as possible. The more you repeat this, the more likely it is that your subconscious mind will in the end accept it and start to adjust your thoughts, words, action and behaviors to be consistent with it.

Imagine yourself as if you already had the new good habit prototype. Visualize yourself as already being accurately the person that you want to become in the future. Keep in mind, your intuitive mind is activated and automatic by mental pictures. All development in your life and character start with a development in your mental pictures. Use your imagination on a regular basis in combination with your positive affirmations.

Emotionalize the confirmation and the imagination. Take a few minutes each day to actually experience the feeling of being the outstanding, exceptional, brilliant human being that you have determined to become. Start into your new good habit with confidence. Suppose the role, acting as if you had been hired to do this role in a movie or play. The more you act exactly as if you already had the habit, the more you really become the person that you want to be.

Tell others that you have determined to build up this new habit. When you tell others, you motivate and support yourself. But do not share this with anyone who is not your good friend. You also force yourself to consistently act in accordance with your new targets because you know that others are watching. Repeatedly review your development progress on a regular basis. At the end of day, summarize your behavior during the day relative to the values and habits you are trying to build up.

Copyright © Nick Mutt, All Rights Reserved. If you want to use this article on your website or in your ezine, make all the urls (links) active.

Know How to Get Niche Market for affiliate marketing to make money online. Also Know How to Select ERP Software – Enterprise Resource Planning system.

Conflict Management Steps to Resolve

Conflict management in the organization develops the harmonious relationship among employees. To manage the conflict, first step is to identify different conflicts a person has experienced. Then identify appropriate ways to resolve a conflict and practice the conflict management steps to resolve a conflict.

Conflict management involves conversation, discussion and practice of conflict resolution skills. The employees should have training and/or the skills in business communication, boldness, and anger management. These skills are necessary to resolving any conflict. Conflict resolution is a hard skill to master. It is important to stress to the employees the importance of using “outs” when their skills are not helping resolve the conflict. The “outs” include leaving the area, approving to disagree, and getting a third party involved to help in the conflict resolution.

Discuss with employees different conflicts they have been facing in day to day activities. Have they talked about how to resolve it? Talk about the positives and negatives about how they resolved the conflict. Positive ways can consist of trying to know the other person’s point of view, compromising, talking about it, etc. Negative ways include yelling, refusing to modify, change or compromise, refusing to work out the conflict, etc.

Instruct the following steps to resolve the conflict. Control employee’s emotions and use recreation techniques. Take yourself out of the conflict situation. Express your feelings positively to create harmony. If there is a conflict, try to identify the root cause. Who is responsible for conflict? If it is needed, take time away from the person to think about the conflict and prepare a good strategy to resolve as soon as possible. Ask the employees if they have time to talk.

This will cause a communication between them and most of the cases communications resolve the conflicts. Discuss your feeling. Tell the person why you are reacting like you are (i.e., you have not paid your incentives of the sales for the last three months). Listen carefully completely and allow the person to respond. Discuss with the person different options for resolving the conflict. Continue to discuss peacefully. If the conflict can not be resolved and/or you are getting irritated, inform the person that you need to go away and you would like to talk about it afterward. Do not give up, wait for some time and try again.

Competitive Quality Areas of Concern

Quality is very important for the organization in this competitive business world. If you want to compete your competitor, you have to win their customer and make new customer. This is only possible if your give them better product at lower cost. Competitive quality can offer this. To have this in you business process you should understand the area of concerns. Following are the few points which will help to improve your business quality.

• Does the company have a common vision, which is shared by all the employees in its true sense?

• Are the company’s strategies targeted for quantified measurable improvement in important areas and is building for future seen as more important than short-term benefits?

• Does the company make effort to integrate employees’ job performance with key quality improvement targets and business results?

• Does the company have an effective appraisal system, which takes care of the career progression of all the employees?

• Does the company promote creativity & innovation and encourage employees to for ‘out of box’ thinking?
• Is there a system for employee recognition and is good performance rewarded?

• Is everyone in the organization given training on time management & stress management so that they can carry out the company’s task in the productive manner?

• Does the company organize training programs for the suppliers to improve their ability to meet key requirements and response times?

• Does the company have a system to generate healthy competition among suppliers of similar items to improve performance?

• What is the level of your supplier satisfaction?

• Are the suppliers paid in time?

• Does the company constantly endeavor for development of capabilities of its suppliers?

• Does the company regularly analyzes the quality costs and ensures that maximum focus is given to preventive measures?

• Does the company effectively use JIT for reducing inventory?

• Does the company use ERP system for their process?

• Does the company make efforts to find out information from best in the class and make use of this information for process improvement?

• Is the criterion of benchmarking well defined and documented?

• Has the company introduced a system of quality MIS so as to ensure that the organization is on a constant hunt for opportunity signals for improvement.

• Has the company significantly improved its market share from the previous year?

• Is the company information management system accessible to every one without any difficulty?

• Does the management involve them in recognizing the employee contributions?

Read information on the Process of Six Sigma benchmarking efforts. Read Benefits of ERP and ERP Features and Functions – Enterprise Resource Planning system.

What Keeps You Positive and Optimistic to Get Success in Your Life?

Everyone knows that to get success in life, positive attitude plays a vital role. But many of them do not know how to be positive and optimistic throughout the day. What are the things or steps are important to keep you positive and optimistic. Always think positive, thinking positive will give positive result. If you think you can win, you have already won 50 per cent.

Use your golden hour (first hour of the day) in constructive work. It’s the hour during which you planned your mind and set your emotional tone for the rest of the day. The difference between successful person and less successful person is positive thinking and planning. Successful person plan their activities in the first two hours. If you get up in the morning at least two hours before you have to be at work, or before your first appointment or meeting, and spend the first hour to make better plan by reading good books. If you do not do this and you invest your precious time in the newspaper or magazines, your whole day will flow accordingly. If you invest your golden time in constructive work, planning, reading good books, your whole day will flow more smoothly.

You’ll be more positive, cheerful, hopeful and optimistic. You’ll be calmer, confident and relaxed. You’ll have a greater sense of humor, better control and well-being by the very act of reading healthy material for the first hour of each day. After just few days of reading for 30 to 60 minutes in the morning, you’ll notice a profound change. As a result of your early morning reading, you’ll feel so excellent about yourself and your life. You will feel more confident and energetic throughout the day. This will help you in taking right decisions, proper management of workflow, etc.

Try to adopt this process for some days and see. It’s a magnificent experience, and it can have a deep impact on the rest of your life. In the period of time before work, another thing that extremely successful people do is plan and prepare for their entire day. If you also want to be successful start practicing this habit from today. I hope from this article you will get some guidelines or help to make your life even better.

Read Benefits of ERP and Definition of ERP – Enterprise Resource Planning system. Also Know How to Select ERP Software for your organization for successful implementation.

Important Skills to Achieve Great Success

Everyone wants to achieve great success in life, but they do not know how to achieve. In this article, I have focused on some important skills which lead your life towards great success. Vocational training and life skills play an important role to accomplish job tasks. These skills constitute a variety of knowledge and aptitudes that are necessary for a person to function without any help and to avoid breaks of the employment experience.

Job skills are very important and it needs to be increased day by day by vocational training program. Other skills like dressing sense, communication skills, presentation skills, body language, time management skills, smile and sense of humor are as important as job skills. All these skills can be polished by daily practice. These skills are responsible for your overall personality. If you are good in these skills you will be successful person in any field. If you are lacking in any one of these skills, start practicing from today to enrich your personality. You can join some training institute or practice by yourself.

Most of the time person identifies and understand their negatives, but fail to convert those negatives in positives. If you are facing same type of situation, be ready to adopt some changes in your daily life activities. You can take help from your spouse or close friends to identify your negatives and discuss how to convert them in positives. If you used to reach late in your office, it will ruin your impression no matter how good you are in job. To solve this problem you can start your day half an hour early, if you reach office half an hour late.

Communication skill can be improved by joining business communication classes. If you improve your communication skills, it will help in improving presentation skills. Dressing sense can also be improved by watching and adopting successful person’s dressing sense. If you are in the office, wear formal dress only. Keep harmonious relation with your colleagues and boss by enhancing your interpersonal skills. Be ready to give supports to your colleague when they required.

Apart from all these job skills, your other skills are also important. You should not postpone any work and try to complete it on or before time. If it is not possible, discuss with your boss before the deadline. Your boss may put some other person along with you to complete job at given time.

Read On The Job Training Guidelines for trainers. Know How to Get Niche Market for affiliate marketing to make money online.

ERP Implementation and Change Management

Enterprise resource planning software requires full support from top management at the time of implementation, selection, customization etc. During implementation, organization may require to change some business processes to meet the software standards, which are industry specific standards. Business process can not be change without top management support. It is quite necessary to change some of the business process. It helps in implementation. If you are not willing to change any business process you may go for customization. But, customization is costly and not good for any ERP. Little bit customization is ok, but too much customization will affect your ERP project. It will increase your project duration, budget, and increase the risk of implementation failure.

It will be better to change some business process if possible, rather than customizing. When an organization changes their some business processes, change management expert is required. People resist change. Change management expert will guide how to change, and explain the benefits of changes to the employees. ERP system helps in changing the process; it is designed and developed by adopting best practices of specific industries.

Internal Change Management: An ERP implementation entails changes in business processes and reporting structure. Addressing this paradigm move is a process that the organization has to go through. This will help in achieving the acceptability of the ERP users.

Change Management Drivers:

Employees: Employees are the key players in any ERP implementation. The employees of the organization will be in the capacity of process owners, software users and administrators of the ERP software. The main challenge of an ERP implementation is to achieve the acceptability of the system to the employees and for them to perceive the benefits to the organization and to their way of working.

Process: One of the returns on investment (ROI) is adopting business best practices by virtue of an ERP system. Little change in the business process will reduce the chance of implementation failure. Minimum or no customization is very good for any ERP implementation. These processes impact the effectiveness levels to be attained by the organization.

Technology: Implementation of ERP system automatically entails adopting technology that will address easy scalability, eradication of distance and upgradeability to latest technologies.

Organization Commitment: ERP system has to be viewed as a process enabler rather than a software package to be installed and run. The implementation process is a journey towards achieving organizational effectiveness. This demands a very strong commitment of the top management throughout the entire process.

Copyright © Nick Mutt, All Rights Reserved. If you want to use this article on your website or in your ezine, make all the urls (links) active.

Read information on ERP Implementation Strategy and fundamentals of ERP. Know more on SAP Business One Implementation. Also know How to Select ERP Software and other ERP fundamentals.

Challenges of an ERP Implementation in SME Segment

ERP implementation is always a tough job for the organizations. To get successful implementation organizations need to be very careful. When SMEs think about ERP implementation, they identify the need of an ERP system. They prepare pre-implementation strategy for enterprise software. This strategy involves identification of business needs, budgeting for the procurement of ERP software and services, evaluation of various ERP software to suite its business process. After finalizing the enterprise software they start the implementation and finally adopt the ERP system as an organization wide solution. The major challenges of an ERP implementation for an organization are:

Selection of ERP software:

This is a very critical decision that an organization needs to take. However it is vital to consider the size of the business operations, the projected growth in the years to come, geographical spread, nature of business and investment figures as key factors in determining the selection of ERP software.

The key considerations evaluation and selection of ERP Software are scalability, vendor management, functionality, reliable service and support. ERP systems are designed to grow with the organization. Unlike some stand-alone systems, they do not succumb to volume and change pressures, leaving you to start from scratch. Managing excess of vendors for customer service is not easy. An integrated ERP system gives you one solution supplier to work with. Organization needs to access the software functionality which is necessary to run the business over time at an affordable cost. It may not be cost effective choice at first, but it will usually be the most cost effective and economical in the long run as your business needs grow and change. It gives better ROI. Reliable service and support at affordable cost is critical. It is easier to support an integrated ERP system environment than a mixture of different stand alone applications.

Copyright © Nick Mutt, All Rights Reserved. If you want to use this article on your website or in your ezine, make all the urls (links) active.

Read information on ERP Implementation Strategy and fundamentals of ERP. Know more on SAP Business One Implementation. Also know How to Select ERP Software and other ERP fundamentals.

Benefits of Enterprise Resource Planning Software (ERP)

Usually, an organization thinks to implement ERP (enterprise resource planning) software to align business objective with latest technology solutions, to enhance customer confidence and stakeholder commitment, to optimum utilization of organization’s resources and assets. Typically, an organization is looking for good enterprise resource planning software with advance features and functions.

Benefits of ERP Software

ERP system introduces efficiency and improvement of its business processes.

Good enterprise software helps you to achieve transparency and availability of data across all business functions. It gives right information at the right time to the right people for effective decision making. This decision would be based on accurate information, which will give positive result and increase productivity.

ERP software helps you to optimize your human resource management and asset management. It also improves financial management. Trail balance, balance sheet, cash in hand, cash in bank, top supplier, top customer, ABC analysis, dead stock, WIP (work in progress) and other important reports are ready at any point of time. It helps in achieving better efficiency in organization reporting. ERP software streamlines the supply chain management and improves customer relationship management.

Enterprise resource planning software ensures data security and data scalability: organization can customize the enterprise software according to their requirements. It adopts systems that address changing technologies. It gives better ROI (return on investment). Organization can increase turnover with same human resource. There is a misconception that, ERP is for IT department and they will get more benefits, but it is not true. During implementation and after go-live, IT department responsibility is higher than other department.

Proper training gives better output from the new system. Lack of proper training to user results wrong entry and create problem. Top management should understand the need of detailed user training. Ultimately, user is going to use this enterprise resource planning software.

Copyright © Nick Mutt, All Rights Reserved. If you want to use this article on your website or in your ezine, make all the urls (links) active.

Also read about SAP HR Module. Know How to Select ERP Software for your organization for successful implementation.

Importance and Benefits of ERP System in SME Segment

ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) is a system which integrates various business data in a single database and provides cross function reporting on click of a single button. Earlier ERP was made for large organizations but, now it is made for medium and even for small organizations. In this global competitive market, organizations need to upgrade with latest technologies. Most of the large organizations are using enterprise resource planning system. To deal with those large organization SMEs (Small and Medium Enterprises) need to work on a similar type of technologies. In this case, importance of ERP system for SMEs increases.

Of course, there are lots of business benefits of enterprise software. Apart from all other basic benefits, enterprise software gives an information system with three important capabilities i.e.

1. Consistency and reliability of business data across the organization
2. Streamlined transaction processing within and outside organization
3. Provides operations level reporting on a click of a button

These capabilities, basic and important as they are, ensure that organizations are ready for specific solutions that improve overall performance. The areas that will increase the basic ERP requirements are like supply chain management (SCM) with electronic collaboration between supplier and customer, customer relationship management (CRM), business intelligence (BI), product data management, complete product life cycle (PLC) management, inventory and warehouse management using RFID tools. For these applications, ERP system becomes the substratum, a kind of gateway to expert functions. That is, enterprise software is a sine qua non for other applications.

In fact, the latest trend is that with basic enterprise resource planning software, tailor-made system is given by ERP companies. ERP vendors are speeding-up to integrate most of these additional capabilities. This type of customized or tailor-made enterprise system is easy to install and implement for SMEs. It also takes less time to implement and chances of implementation failure are lesser.

Copyright © Nick Mutt, All Rights Reserved. If you want to use this article on your website or in your ezine, make all the urls (links) active.

Know more on SAP Business One Implementation. Also know How to Select ERP Software and other ERP fundamentals.

What is the Need of ERP System

The opening up of the global economy has led to a significant development of the small and mid market segment. This growth has been across industry verticals in the manufacturing, retail, services, pharma, telecommunication and information technology sectors. This growth and along with that the new competition and quest for enhancing total market share has led the companies to re-look at its processes and procedures. Now, companies are trying to utilize their all resources effectively to make business more efficient and effective.

In this case, companies are looking for enterprise software and other quality techniques. Companies are implementing different practices to utilize their resource effectively viz. business process re-engineering (BPR), six sigma, enterprise resource planning (ERP), just in time (JIT), Kanban and other quality improvement systems. All these techniques are good and helping companies to provide better quality and lower cost, which is the key factor to sustain a business in this competitive environment.

The implementation of ERP systems has helped small and mid sized companies, significantly improve their business metrics by process optimization, improving the entire supply chain process, better inventory control, better reporting to take decisions, integration across functionalities and increasing transparency across the company. Purchase department can see the sales department data, Sales department can see inventory data, and top management can see any data on a click of single button.

The introduction of ERP in any company has also helped it move up the value chain in term of market credibility and building the confidence of its customer, stakeholders and vendors. Most of the small and mid sized companies were living with in-house developed applications which are non-integrated and on disparate technology architectures. This has resulted in running with redundant technology, loss of support, non availability or less availability of critical information at the right time resulting in overall business loss.

The key drivers of introducing an ERP system in a small and midsized company are introduction of industry standard processes which are already embedded in the application, adopting integration across business functions leading to better transparency, access to real time information, analytical reporting for business decisions and adopting state of the art technology. Another key reason for implementing an ERP vis-à-vis a tailor-made development is the speed of implementation resulting in achieving a quicker return on investment (ROI).

Copyright © Nick Mutt, All Rights Reserved. If you want to use this article on your website or in your ezine, make all the urls (links) active.

Read Benefits of ERP and Definition of ERP – Enterprise Resource Planning system. Also know How to Select ERP Software for your organization for successful implementation.

How to Make Money Online - Make Money with ClickBank CB Pirate

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ERP Implementation Process Steps

ERP stands for Enterprise Resource Planning. It is integrated software for all business processes of the organization. It has is two major parts – software and its implementation. ERP software can be purchased by ERP companies and implementation can be done by either ERP Company or vendor; ERP vendor provides services and consultancy to the organizations. Before implementation of an ERP system organization needs to take consultancy by industry experts. ERP implementation is quite important for the organization, but implementing successfully is a major challenge and organization must have proper road map for the implementation. If one has failed to make proper blueprint for the implementation, the chances of failure implementation will be high. Read how to get successful ERP implementation.

ERP implementation process should be divided in steps. Major focus should be on pre-implementation readiness work, implementation project management and continuous improvement of business systems. At the time of making plan for implementation organization has to think about the future growth and technology changes.

Here implementation steps are divided in 8 phase month wise to organize project data and manage change. It supports complex implementation. Some organization may have very simple process or typical processes. For all type of organization these pre-implementation, implementation, and improvement plan are very important.

In the beginning of the project i.e. first month, you should establish and prepare project resources and control structure. Along with this top level visioning planning and review of best practices should be done by top management. In the next phase which starts from second or third month, you should conduct detailed business process mapping to identify the GAP. It can take two to three months depending on your business processes. During this phase you can develop selected business process objectives and specifications for ERP implementation.

After the detailed process mapping and SRS (system requirement study) study, align the specification for implementation with the business software being implemented with selected vendor. In the next phase you can make plan along with vendor for implementation. Give implementation charge to project manager; one project manager should from vendor side and one form your company. These two managers will be responsible for whole ERP project. In the next phase project will be implemented and in the final phase migrate remaining processes to be supported by ERP software. It will take 3-4 months time.

These implementation steps will help you to implement ERP in your organization successfully without any major problems.

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Body Language During Conversation

Body language is very important part of our communication. Most of the communication is done by our body languages. If our body language is good we can be a good communicator. To identify the differences between good body language and bad language during conversation one should understand the basics of body language. Body language can be identify when taking instructions or receiving criticism from a supervisor. You can practice good body language during a conversation and practice good body language while a manager is giving instructions or criticizing.

Instructional format is mainly involved modeling and role-playing. Start the session by taking about the importance of how one looks on the outside during communications with others. If a person looks unresponsive during a discussion, he will have a hard time making and keeping associates. If a person looks irritated or annoyed when his boss tells him to do something, his boss may think he has awful approach. It is supportive to video-tape role-plays. If you have the tools, it is highly suggested.
Model both bad body language and good body language during a discussion. Have the person try to recognize whether you have good body language or bad body language. Good body language involves keeping good individual space, making eye contact, sitting or standing up straight, and looking concerned. When you are doing the awful role-play, do only one thing wrong (stare at the floor, turn body to one side scowl, fidget, rock back and forth cross arms, slump, etc.), and see if the person can recognize what you are doing incorrect. Instruct person on good body language during discussion and when supervisors are giving instructions. Have the person practice the skills in role-plays. The components of good body language during spoken message mainly involve not doing the bad things mentioned above. But, it is vital to take care of eye contact, keep still, personal space and posture.

Maintain eye contact by looking at the person the majority of the time, but not more than 15 seconds at a time. Don’t fidgets shake back and forth, play with hairs or cloths. It is hard to chat when you are 10 feet apart, but you do not wish for to be 6 inches apart either. Generally, 2-3 feet is a comfortable distance for most people during conversation. Sitting up straight or even openness toward the speaker lets the person know you are paying attention.

Read comprehensive List of Best Home Based Businesses ideas and oppourtunities. Know How to Get Niche Market for affiliate marketing to make make money online.

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Quality Management Cost, Measurement

Quality management cost is always a good investment for the organization. It helps in producing better product at lower cost, which helps you to compete in this competitive environment. Appraisal costs are associated with quality inspection and testing activities to sort out good products from the bad prevention costs are the costs of quality management programmed for example design reviews, failure analysis, quality functions use matrix and quality training prevention costs are typically very low. When quality management is introduced one would expect prevention costs to increase and failure costs and assessment costs to go down.

Quality measurement should start with a system for documenting non conformances. Every time an item fails a test, a purchased item to rejected or sent for rework, a statistically controlled process (SQP) exceeds its limits, and a product is returned from the customer non conformance must be documented. A computerized data base should be used to enter and store this information because the volume of data is too huge for a manual system to be effective. Organization can also have an ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system.

The information should be recorded in a way that gives easy reports to analyze the problem and take preventive action. The idea is not to produce loads of paper but to collect data that can be analyzed to provide direction to the quality improvement program. A computer program or software is necessary because one needs to be able to sort failure costs into categories, for example by product type, supplier or type of error. There are many off the shelf network database software that can be used to calculate or analyze. The information should be displayed using graphs, presentations, charts which show trends, bar charts and pie charts that indicate rankings.

I hope in this article you have read some information about quality management cost and its measurement.

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Read information on the Quality Improvement of Products and Services to improve customer satisfaction. Read Benefits of ERP and Definition of ERP – Enterprise Resource Planning system.

Quality Management - participation and empowerment of an employee

Nowadays organization can not think without quality management at their workplace. In this article we will read about participation and empowerment of an employee. Participation means that management actively encourages participation in running the operation and improving the business process. Empowerment is something additional. It means that management recognizes that when employees are given training and provided with the correct information, they are in the best position to manage their own work processes. This being the case, employees should be empowered to do it.

There are various techniques to solicit employee participation. Suggestion schemes work well when they are well published and when valuable rewards are provided. If all of your needs and wants are satisfied you judge that you have received excellence. Excellence is more than meeting a product requirement because a requirement only provides a minimum set of supplies. Excellence or Quality is being pleased that your expectations have been met and exceeded. Organizations need to develop a range of measures or set of quality standards that get a handle on various categories of quality costs. These include quality costs that illustrate up in the plant and quality costs that illustrate up when the product has reached the customer.

Quality costs include the costs of scrapping material throughout production, the cost of reworking faulty or defective material, the cost of repairing products, and warranty costs. Business rely on quality inspections to weed out defects are found products are either scrapped or reworked. This is rather like having two plants under one roof. There is one plant turning out good quality products that comply with customer needs. Then there is another hidden plant that turns out defective products for the scrap metal merchants and rework products that were defective in the first place. This hidden plant is may be half or a quarter the size or even smaller than that of the real plant.

Quality costs are huge and they must be measured if there is to be any expect of improvement or development. The information provided by a well designed cost tracking system helps management to focus their efforts on the high cost effective areas and track how well designed cost track how fine the improvement efforts are going. Quality costs and preventive costs give better ROI. Failure costs in organization that does not have an effective quality management program for their process and employees. They include costs associated with scrap, rework, repair and guarantee actions.

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Read information on the Six Sigma Methodology benchmarking efforts. Read Benefits of ERP and Definition of ERP – Enterprise Resource Planning system.

ERP Software Selection

Enterprise resource planning is a system that integrates all functional department including planning, production planning, sales, HR, Finance, Purchase, Inventory etc. Earlier, ERP packages were not designed to support customization, but nowadays customizations are available nearly in all ERP packages.

For a company it is really a tough job to select right ERP. Selection of ERP software is a critical issue. Only key member can select the right ERP for the organization who has a minimum 5-6 years of experience in management level. At the time of selection we should focus on implementation and customization part, timeframe for implementation, cost and time for the customization.

The ERP software solution should be based on the processes in the concerned organization. software should be from the same vertical like if you have discrete manufacturing then process manufacturing may not suite your requirement. Before finalization of any ERP you can demand for a client visit in similar kind of industries where same ERP is running successfully. This will help you to understand the exact timeframe and cost for implementation and customization in the similar kind of industries. Product may be good but not necessary that it will be good for you also.

Some ERP packages are very simple and ready to use with little bit customization which is expected in every implementation. In such cases, third party reporting tool that interface to particular ERP should be purchased. Some companies also have a web based ERP (3-tier architecture) systems that require no onsite implementation. This type of system can be access through web browser.

For successful implementation of ERP software users must be ready for change, for this change management should drive them and explain the benefits of ERP software.

Read more about ERP software in India and business strategies. Also know What is six sigma and other business terms.

Introduction To Enterprise Resource Planning

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) is a software system implemented in an organization, to increase productivity and enable efficient utilization of resources. It is a bunch of various types of softwares that are connected to the different types of departments in the large companies.

ERP implementation utilizes various ERP software applications to improve the performance of organizations for resource planning, management control and operational control.

ERP software consists of multiple software modules that integrate activities across functional departments – from product planning, parts purchasing, inventory control and product distribution, to order tracking. Most ERP software systems include application modules to support common business activities – finance, accounting and human resources.

ERP can save huge inventory cost of the companies. ERP using departmental databases to manage information, such as employee records, customer data, purchase orders and inventory, everyone in the company relies on the same database. This allows employee in different departments to look at the same information.

ERP can increase the productivity of companies. ERP can improve speed and efficiency and more complete access to information. Using this information, company employees and business managers can gain a better understanding of what’s going on in the company so that they make better business decisions.

ERP systems work in real-time, meaning that the exact status of everything is always available. Further, many of these systems are global. Since they can be deployed at sites around the world, they can work in multiple languages and currencies.

The failures of multi-million dollar ERP projects are reported once in a while even after 20 years of ERP implementation. We have identified the four components of an ERP System – ERP software, Business Processes that ERP software supports, Users of ERP systems, and Hardware and Operating Systems that run ERP applications. The failures in one or more of those four components could cause the failure of an ERP project.

Many Faces of Enterprise

According to Lord Justice Lindley, “A Company is an association of many persons who contribute money or money’s worth to shares and employs it in some trade or business and who share the profit and loss arising there from. The shares so contributed are denoted in money and are the capital of the company. The persons who contribute to it or to whom it belongs are members. The proportion of capital to which each member is entitled is his share. The shares are always transferable although the right to transfer is often more or less restricted.”

Now, you have decided what business to start and approximately how much capital will be required, you may find it necessary to join with one or more associates to launch the enterprise. The legal structures that you can set your business up in could be Public Company or Private Company?

In case of a public company, the liability of its members is restricted to the amount of share capital subscribed by them or standing in their names. At any time the company can be wound up and the value of its assets could be insufficient to meet its liabilities. The companies falling under this category are required by law to add the word “Limited” at the end of their names. Shares are offered to the public company. There is no binding on maximum number of shareholders, but there is a minimum of 7. There is no limit on the transfer of its shares. There should be minimum number of two directors.

A public company can issue shares to the public to raise capital. Shareholders are not liable for the debts of the company. The company has an indefinite life span; it means the business can continue even if the members die. As the public companies have a wide membership, control and operate substantial financial resources and cover fields of activities affecting not only the members but also the public. A number of regulatory provisions have been made under the company law to exercise control on the working of these companies.

In case of Private Company, shares are not offered to the public. There is a maximum number of 50 and a minimum number of 1 shareholder. Its shares cannot be transferred freely, and such a company is prohibited from inviting the public to subscribe to its shares and debentures. The words “(Pvt.) Ltd” will appear at the end of the company’s name. Private Companies do not have to make information available to the public. Only the founders, employees, and possibly a few large investors (venture capitalists) may own interest. Whatever information a private company makes available is completely up to the individual company.

Thus given a particular situation, keeping in mind your areas of interest as well as grabbing the opportunities coming your way you can figure out what would best suit your business idea – Private Company or Public Company.

Read more about the Importance of Communication in Business. Also know about the Risk Managementand other business terms.

Case Study: SMEs Can Also Think About ERP

Case Study of Alfa Pneumatics

Alfa Pneumatics is a manufacturing co. for pneumatic tools for pumps and Marine industry, operating on tight margins and turn over of less than 10 cr. Management of the company had realistic plans of growth in future but wanted to cut down the operating cost and time. But against the future plans, company had serious issues with material supply process from supplier, tracking the same at sub-contractor’s site and managing sales data due to which, delivery against sales order used to get delayed, costing to the co. dearly. To overcome these, Alfa Pneumatics implemented Ebizframe, an ERP solution from Eastern Software Systems Limited.

Before going for Ebizframe, manual data entry in each department caused major worries for the management as no data, either in sales, purchase or inventory tallied with the actual at hand. This made decision making for the management of the company impossible or a huge risk. It got out of hand when technical specifications followed by production team, suppliers, sub-contractors and customers were all haywire. This in turn caused variations in required and supplied from suppliers and materials going and coming in from sub-contractors. The same caused rejections from customer’s side causing cost again.

It was then that company decided to go for an ERP to solve all these glitches. Implementation of Ebizframe started by Nov 2003 and went live by March 2004. Ebizframe was adopted with minor customization and major re-engineering of their business processes to improve on performance.

Challenges of understanding the concepts and quick adoptability by staff during implementation of Ebizframe were tackled well by team from both sides. All specifications for raw material, semi finished and finished goods are now incorporated into the system. Turn around time of delivery against order is reduced by 12 to 15 days. Also, company has now got the required controls over suppliers and sub-contractors. Company is has got crystal clear MIS reports of receivables and payables. As of now, Sales (including exports), Purchase, Inventory, Production and finance are live.

Correct, uniform and smoother flow of information across suppliers, sub-contractors and customers caused delight in each due to timely receipts and payments against deliveries with precision. Even dead stock has come down by 18 to 20% of whole. Stock tracking at inventory & sub-contractor’s site was accurate due to live inventory related reports. Production processes are streamlined based on the production advice from Sales as per order bookings made.

For future, company has plans for customization of reporting in Ebizframe considering growth plans.

Read Business Management Books to increase your knowledge and business. Also read ERP vendors in Indian Market.

ERP Implementation

ERP software implementation is a typically complex job and it involves greater risk of failure. ERP implementation requires top management support and willingness to complete ERP project in given time. Usually ERP implementation takes 3 months to 1-2 years time, it depends on the size of the company, number of sites, scope of the change (customization) and willingness of the customer to take ownership of the project. The most important aspect of any ERP implementation is that the company who has purchased the ERP software takes ownership of the project. Implementing ERP is not an in-house job. To implement ERP, companies used to take consultation services from ERP vendors or third party consulting companies. These consultancy services include consultation, customization of product and long term support.

In consulting service, consultants used to map the software with existing business process. They understand the business in detail and define the role of the ERP user. Consultants will prepare a list of processes in Vital, Essential and Desirable (VED) category. In the standard implementation they will suggest to finish vital part only. After standard implementation of ERP software they will find the gap to fulfill his essential and desirable (wish list). They will do some customization to fulfill complete wish list. For support, Customer can take AMC. In AMC customer will get product updates, upgrades, new features and few man month free of cost. AMC charges vary from company to company. It may have on % basis or on amount basis. AMCs can be for product, services or for both.

Read more about ERP definition and business strategies. Also know the ERP Implementation Best Practices, cost, timeframe and benefits.

ERP Competition And Challenges For SMEs/SMBs

SME (Small and Medium Enterprises) market situation is completely different from other market.

Competition –

The SME market is characterized by a lot of competitors, who are trying to be a market leader. The competition is hard and we have to fight to get a sale.

Less earning –

SME used to keep a little margin and they have little earning capacity.

Decision making –

SME Company takes about 6 months to a year for final decision making for ERP. You will have to wait and ensure awareness. You have to keep pushing the same winner buttons: sector specific, same vertical, state of the art solution and low cost price, lower TCO (Total Cost of Ownership).

SME (Small and Medium Enterprises) Company will not wait for you; you have to push all the time. Whenever they call you have to present there.

Characteristics of the SME customer –

They are hardworking, humble, simple minded etc. They work 24×7x365, they know more than anybody. Their approach is very humble and polite. They have proud of their business. They like simple solution for their organization. They are simple and flexible. They can change themselves according to business environment.

Perception of SME Company –

For SME, it is very difficult to maintain the overview of ERP since there are too many functionality and concept changes. It is necessary to understand the available resources and their utilization in ERP. There are too many bad stories of ERP failures, but you can control the development without ERP. You have to be careful in selecting of an ERP.

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) –

Industry specific ERP template has no problem to stand up and say: I believe that this is the right solution for you dear customer. ERP covers the latest best practices and process need for a specific sub industry.

Read more about Small Scale Industries in India and their advantages. Also read Business Management Books on nickmutt.com

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SAP B1 – SAP Business One Solutions And Implementation

SAP Business One (SAP B1) is an ERP software package from sap. 70% SAP B1 ERP customers are in SME segment. It made exclusively to meet the needs of small and medium size organization. SAP B1 has 14 core modules:

1. Administration Module
2. Financials Module
3. Sales Opportunities Module
4. Sales Module
5. Purchasing Module
6. Business Partners Module
7. Banking Module
8. Inventory Module
9. Production Module
10. MRP Module
11. Service Module
12. Human Resources Module
13. Reports Module
14. E-commerce

SAP B1 is integrated through SDK (Software Development Kit) component called DI API, DI API Server and UIAPI. SAP B1 has a GUI (Graphical User Interface) which offers a 2-tier (client/server) and Microsoft Windows. 3-tier architecture is possible with the help of Citrix server. SAP B1 provides other components that allow development of add-ons to the application.

SAP B1 Implementation

Vanila implementation (standard/rapid implementation) used to take 1-2 months time for all basic modules. If you wish to go for customizations it will take more time- based on your needs and wants. In the standard implementation organization has to change their process according to software. Before starting the implementation, organization must do GAP analysis, Process Mapping, SRS (System Requirement Study) it will be helpful in deciding and implementing the ERP.

Read more about SAP R/3 Architecture visit www.nickmutt.com and also read some Business Management Books.

Oracle With Microsoft CRM

Oracle has integrated with Microsoft Business Solutions CRM to capture more market for SMEs. Some large company has Oracle based solutions for the entire business and Microsoft Business Solutions CRM is gaining its market share on the CRM market especially for mid segment market.

Suppose, you ship your goods all across the world and you do it in Oracle custom system for five years. In this case if you are looking low cost CRM solution you might still need integration between Oracle and CRM, because these are coming from different technology or software application.

If you are software developer – you should be informed about two solutions i.e. ‘MS SQL Linked Server approach – using ODBC driver to Oracle – create linked server in MS SQL Server and then use OPENQUERY, OPENROWSET technique to access Oracle data. You can create cross-platform Transact SQL stored procedures or views to facilitate your development’ and ‘Oracle Transparent Gateways and Generic Connectivity – these two will give you control from Oracle side. If you feel that you are more comfortable with Java or Oracle – this is the good way to go. Generic Connectivity gives you common solution to access database via ODBC and OLE DB mechanisms to FoxPro, Microsoft Access and other databases. More interesting is second product – Oracle Transparent Gateways. Its components are created individually for each platform, resulting in more efficient and fast access and better performance.’

Currently Oracle Transparent Gateways are available for the following platforms:

1. Oracle Transparent Gateway for Informix available on Solaris, HP/UX
2. Oracle Transparent Gateway for MS SQL Server available on NT.
3. Oracle Transparent Gateway for Ingres available on Solaris, HP/UX
4. Oracle Transparent Gateway for Teradata available on Solaris, NT, HP/UX
5. Oracle Transparent Gateway for RMS available on Alpha OpenVMS
6. Oracle Transparent Gateway for RDB available on Alpha OpenVMS
7. Oracle Transparent Gateway for Sybase available on Solaris, HP/UX, NT, AIX, Tru64

The main disadvantage is the fact that these products are not platforms independents and priced relatively high.

Read business management books and definition of erp on enterprise resource planning and business management

Competitive Quality – Areas Of Concern

1. Does the company have a common vision, which is shared by all the employees in its true sense?

2. Are the company’s strategies targeted for quantified measurable improvement in important areas and is building for future seen as more important than short-term benefits?

3. Does the company make effort to integrate employees’ job performance with key quality improvement targets and business results?

4. Does the company have an effective appraisal system, which takes care of the career progression of all the employees?

5. Does the company promote creativity & innovation and encourage employees to for ‘out of box’ thinking?

6. Is there a system for employee recognition and is good performance rewarded?

7. Is everyone in the organization given training on time management & stress management so that they can carry out the company’s task in the productive manner?

8. Does the company organize training programs for the suppliers to improve their ability to meet key requirements and response times?

9. Does the company have a system to generate healthy competition among suppliers of similar items to improve performance?

10. What is the level of your supplier satisfaction?

11. Are the suppliers paid in time?

12. Does the company constantly endeavor for development of capabilities of its suppliers?

13. Does the company regularly analyzes the quality costs and ensures that maximum focus is given to preventive measures?

14. Does the company effectively use JIT for reducing inventory?

15. Does the company use ERP system for their process?

16. Does the company make efforts to find out information from best in the class and make use of this information for process improvement?

17. Is the criterion of benchmarking well defined and documented?

18. Has the company introduced a system of quality MIS so as to ensure that the organization is on a constant hunt for opportunity signals for improvement.

19. Has the company significantly improved its market share from the previous year?

20. Is the company information management system accessible to every one without any difficulty?

21. Does the management involve them in recognizing the employee contributions?

Read some Negotiation Tips and Techniques important for any kind of business or deal. Also read about Risk Management and their model.

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