Microsoft Vista

April 1, 2007 from CAmagazine – "If you’ve heard anything at all about Microsoft Windows Vista, you are probably wondering whether it’s worth upgrading to the new operating system. The short answer is a qualified yes. It offers a lot of advantages in security, connectivity, collaboration and ease of use. However, because of those new features, you might find your existing PC or laptop does not have sufficient memory (RAM) or processing power (CPU) to run it…"

Microsoft’s ERP Wave Hits Shore

March 15, 2007 written by Michael Burns of 180 Systems – When Microsoft Corp. acquired Great Plains Software Inc. in 2001 and Navision in 2002, the force about to be unleashed in the ERP marketplace was not well understood. Many people wondered what Microsoft was up to. How could they expect to be successful in the ERP space, which is so different than all their other markets?...

Microsoft Evolves its Enterprise Plans

March 17, 2007 from PC World – “When the vendor (Microsoft) first started talking about Project Green in 2003, the initiative focused on bringing the disparate products then known as Axapta, Great Plains, Navision, Solomon and CRM together into a single code base. Then in May 2005, Microsoft began to talk more about having two distinct waves of the projects. Wave one committed Microsoft to bringing out major new releases of each of its business offerings, while wave two, due to start occurring in 2008, was when the company would begin releasing elements of the converged code base.

By September 2005, Microsoft brought its back-end applications together under a single brand name "Dynamics" resulting in the rechristening of its business applications as Dynamics AX, GP, NAV, SL and CRM. At that point, the vendor announced "Dynamics" would also refer to the ongoing Project Green research and development road map, but the old name has refused to die and still persists among the company's executives, partners and customers.
Fast forward to this week's Convergence show in San Diego and the natural question is what's happening with Project Green? Is a converged product or platform still on Microsoft's agenda?

"We don't have the goal of just convergence for convergence's sake," said Satya Nadella, corporate vice president of Microsoft's Business Solutions group. "We've delivered on Wave 1 and, with each sharing of technology, we're increasing the level of convergence, but it's not a front and central goal. We now have a common portal, a common UI (user interface) and common Web services infrastructure. Perhaps the news here is that Green's done," he added…”

180 View – I (Michael Burns) was at also at Convergence – see the article above entitled “Microsoft’s ERP Wave Hits Shore”. At Convergence, I asked Satya Nadella the question about the future of Project Green. There is still some confusion about Microsoft’s enterprise plans. We were told that all the products will share the same user experience. However it’s not so clear what will happen with the four Microsoft ERP systems. What I heard is that each product will continue to evolve but they will gradually become more differentiated. Microsoft also announced that they will focus on five industries – Manufacturing, Distribution, Professional Services, Retail and Public Sector. I anticipate that each product will be mapped to one of these industries and if more than one is mapped to a particular industry, there will be other differentiators.

MS After Convergence: Shakeup in Dynamics Leadership

March 21, 2007 from eWeek – “A little more than one week after Convergence, Microsoft's big annual user conference that highlights the company's Dynamics brand of ERP and CRM software, Microsoft quietly made some changes in the Business Solutions executive lineup.

Satya Nadella, corporate vice president of Microsoft Business Solutions, and effectively the leader of the Microsoft Dynamics group that includes the company's four separate enterprise resource planning suites and customer relationship management offering, will be joining the Platform Services Division to lead a new division, the Search and Ad Platform Group. Nadella will transition from his current role in the Business Solutions group by April 19…”

180 View – I was wondering about the keynote and subsequent presentations by Satya Nadella at Convergence. He seemed extremely knowledgeable but lacked passion. Now I know why. Why he did not get the job is another matter. My guess is that he was having a hard time replacing Doug Burgum, who seemed to inspire the troops.

Giant tech, small package

April 2007 from The Financial Post – “Historically, small businesses across Canada haven't been as switched on to technology as their larger counterparts. That's partly because the investment and organization necessary to roll out a big IT project has been beyond them. That left key technologies such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer-relationship management (CRM) almost exclusively in the realm of big business…”

180 View – We don’t agree with the premise that ERP is only for large companies. ERP systems provide a business solution across most if not all departments in one organization. With this definition, QuickBooks and Simply Accounting are also examples of ERP systems. Nevertheless, it has been difficult to obtain all the functionality in the higher end systems at low costs until recently. One way to lower costs is to use the ASP (Application Service Provider) or SaaS (Software as a Service) model as is described in the article with NetSuite.

Lawson and IBM Join Forces to Attack the SMB Market

February 2007 from Aberdeen Group – “On February 1, 2007 Lawson and IBM jointly announced an expanded relationship to better serve small and mid-size businesses (SMB) in North America. Under this agreement, IBM will co-develop, sell, and implement solutions specifically designed for the needs of banking and insurance companies, and for manufacturers of fashion and food and beverage products. The solutions will be based on Lawson’s S3 and M3 enterprise management applications.”

180 View – The M3 system mentioned is the former Movex product from Intentia, which was purchased by Lawson. Lawson/IBM will be competing with SAP, Oracle, Microsoft and many others including themselves as they also implement SAP and Oracle. The SMB Market has many interpretations. Our view is that Tier One products like SAP, Oracle and Lawson are targeted to companies with revenues of $200 Million and up.

Emerging Trends in Compliance

March 2007 from IT Compliance Institute: – In this article, the author discussed emerging trends which included:

“The first several years of SOX involved a mad dash to get needed IT controls in place to ensure compliance. Firms typically first instituted manual controls, and have been steadily replacing those controls with automated ones, to create more easily repeatable, demonstrable, and cost-effective compliance.

Unfortunately, many of these controls are actually ineffective, claims Forrester Research analyst Michael Rasmussen in a recent report. The problem: “In a rush to avoid being fitted for orange jumpsuits, firms don’t devote nearly enough consideration to the adequacy of the controls that compliance teams are implementing.” Rather, many companies rely on one-size-fits-all checklists of controls—“because firms all want a ‘get out of jail free’ card that assures their executives that if they do these three things in order, litigators and regulators will leave their companies alone.”

As a result, he says, “many compliance teams have implemented controls that may not make sense for their businesses.” Thus controls are either overblown, which siphons off valuable IT time and resources; or more often insufficient, which leaves organizations vulnerable to attack, as well as potentially noncompliant with regulations. Hence as regulations mature, expect auditors to take a much closer look at whether in-place controls actually do the job...”

“Increased security spending will also be needed to comply with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) version 1.1, which was released in September 2006. The PCI DSS is a security standard that was developed by the founding payment brands of the PCI Security Standards Council, including American Express, Discover Financial Services, JCB, MasterCard Worldwide and Visa International, to help mitigate emerging payment security risks, while facilitating the broad adoption of payment account data security. Simply put, PCI specifies minimum policies, procedures, data security, network architecture, and more for any merchant handling credit card data. Unlike SOX, which many deride as being so vague that many auditors aren’t even sure what it requires, experts say PCI is a model of clarity, clearly spelling out what companies must do…”

180 View – Hopefully it’s not as bad as Forrester claims. No doubt SOX has been expensive and in the end it’s unlikely that the benefits exceed the costs. However it’s another matter if the new SOX controls have been both ineffective and inefficient. We see a parallel in replacing ERP systems as a result of Y2K. The implementations were often done in a rush without consideration of optimizing business process at the same time, which is what ERP should be all about. In the same way, organizations rushed into compliance without concerns for efficiency and effectiveness. Expect a second wave of compliance to include business process improvement.

Warehouse Automation--What's Really Working For Pallet, Case, and Piece Pick Operations

January 2007 from the Aberdeen Group – “Warehouse Automation” is a broad term that encompasses many different individual technologies. The following is a list of the primary technologies Aberdeen has analyzed for this benchmark report:

Bar-Code Scanning
Bar-coding has been used in distribution centers for decades, and it remains the most commonly adopted form of warehouse automation today. It is reliable and relatively inexpensive. Bar-coding is typically used in a real-time environment, with data being transmitted back and forth via a Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN).”

Voice-Directed Picking
Voice-Directed Picking was widely introduced in distribution center environments in the 1990’s and now is used heavily in certain industries such as grocery distribution. It is used in areas where workers benefit from being able to use both hands to perform their work, without ever having to take their eyes off of the task at hand.

Cart-Based Picking
Cart-Based Picking is both a technology and a methodology. Cart picking excels in cluster pick operations, where several orders are picked at the same time with a single pick path through the warehouse. Keeping track of which items belong in which orders can be challenging; hence, cart-based cluster picking often involves secondary technology such as bar-code scanning, voice-directed picking, and pick-to-light systems…”

Aberdeen has broken out its Best in Class framework according to three key metrics:

• Labor cost reduction
• Percentage of on-time and complete shipments
• Pick accuracy

Very few companies were Best in Class for all three categories – meaning that there is more than ample opportunity for even those considered top performers to improve their operations…”

180 View – Many ERP systems have the basics, but don’t include features such as cart-based picking and other technologies discussed in the Aberdeen report.

Ideagora: A Marketplace for Minds

February 15, 2007 from Newsfactor.com – “A growing marketplace for ideas, innovations, and uniquely qualified minds is changing the long-standing rules of innovation and talent management. Companies seeking solutions to seemingly insoluble problems can tap the insights of hundreds of thousands of enterprising scientists without having to employ everybody full-time. This shift is rippling through Corporate America and changing the way companies invent and develop products and services.

Take Colgate-Palmolive. The company needed a more efficient method for getting its toothpaste into the tube -- a seemingly straightforward problem. When its internal R&D team came up empty-handed, the company posted the specs on InnoCentive, one of many new marketplaces that link problems with problem-solvers.

A Canadian engineer named Ed Melcarek proposed putting a positive charge on fluoride powder, then grounding the tube. It was an effective application of elementary physics, but not one that Colgate-Palmolive's team of chemists had ever contemplated. Melcarek was duly rewarded with $25,000 for a few hours work…”

180 View – Got any good ideas? Better yet, if you need some, there’s a place to get them.

What's to Be Done About Performance Reviews?

November 27, 2006 from Harvard Business School – “The topic of performance reviews triggers a wide range of complex responses. The fact that most of their strongest critics elected to reply anonymously to this month's column suggests that there are also political overtones to the subject. This month's debate was much like a case discussion, one that is often hard to summarize. But in an attempt to do it, here is my "take" on what you have said collectively…”

180 View - While this Harvard Business School article and related survey addresses many of the important issues surrounding Employee Performance Reviews, perhaps a ‘refresher’ on the importance of performing such reviews would be helpful.

Most of the companies that Lawrence Young has consulted with only do employee performance reviews on an annual basis, and usually as part of a yearly salary review. Lawrence suggests that employee performance be evaluated on a quarterly basis at minimum, and that these reviews are of a great benefit to not only the employee, but to the company and the employee’s supervisor as well.

Performance evaluation benefits the employee by:

• Translating job duties into specific performance expectations (goals/strategies) and standards;
• Prioritizing goals to be accomplished during the evaluation period;
• Helping the employee focus on the job and on how it contributes to the overall goals of the business unit;
• Providing meaningful job performance feedback;
• Providing concrete suggestions for how job performance can be improved;
• Laying out a plan for future career development;
• Recognizing work achievements;
• Providing a formal opportunity for the employee to inform the supervisor about barriers to work accomplishment, to ask for clarification of duties and roles, to identify resources and tools needed to help improve performance, and to highlight work achievements and the strengths he brings to the job.
  

Performance evaluation benefits the supervisor by:

• Clearly communicating job performance expectations and standards to all parties involved so there is no basis for confusion or disagreement later on;
• Serving as formal documentation of numerous personnel actions such as training needs, performance improvement needs, recognition of goal accomplishment and exceptional performance, pay increase, job redesign, and discipline;
• Providing a means of either encouraging the employee to continue good work or to change/improve in areas that don’t meet expectations;
• Providing an opportunity in time to paint a picture of past performance and lay a roadmap for future planning and development;
• Reinforcing the employee’s accountability for job performance

Performance evaluation benefits the company by:

• Communicating to employees the overall corporate strategic plan so that they can plan for the future;
• Engaging everyone in the organization, from top to bottom, to help the company successfully fulfill its mission;
• Helping to define and clarify roles – who does what, how and when – in order to foster responsibility and accountability throughout the workplace;
• Helping determine when program and policy changes need to be made;
• Aligning the work goals/strategies of each employee with the mission and strategic goals of the company in order to deliver its products and services effectively;
• Providing a uniform method of giving each employee constructive feedback about their job performance.

According to Lawrence, the importance of doing employee performance reviews on a frequent and regular basis cannot be overstated. “After all” says Lawrence, “you cannot manage what you cannot measure!”

By the way, are you aware that there are usually government grants available to train your employees if your company is based in Quebec and its gross payroll in 2006 was between $1 million and $5 million?

As well, there are a host of other grants, subsidies and cost-saving measures that may be able to help your company significantly reduce its labour costs and address its human resource issues.

To obtain more information, without cost or obligation, on how your Quebec-based company can benefit from one or more of these opportunities, please contact Lawrence Young at lyoung@180systems.com.