|
|
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7
First, before we talk about what actually goes into running a successful government project, let's define what a project is. If you were to ask people in your agency, department, or office to define what a project is, most would say that "it is a bunch of things that need to get done for blah, blah, blah". They're not far off the definition at all. A project is a series of steps or tasks that together bring about an end result within a certain period of time.
Continue>>
Top
To explore the possibilities of "Business Performance Management" (BPM) we must first ensure we understand its definition. Business Performance Management is a set of processes that assist organizations in optimizing their business performance. It is a framework for organizing, automating and analyzing business methodologies, metrics, processes and systems that drive performance. Corporate Performance Management (CPM) regards "all of the processes, methodologies, metrics and systems needed to measure and manage the performance of an organization," a concept introduced by Gartner Research in 2001. Operational Performance Management (OPM) is a performance management system that addresses the growing pressure to increase revenue while managing costs; meeting ever-evolving and expanding customer demands. CPM and OPM are subsets of Enterprise Performance Management (EPM), which represents the strategic deployment of Business Intelligence (BI) solutions.
Continue>>
Top
Burdened by a tangle of financial reporting regulations, corporations everywhere face a dilemma: How to comply with the growing complexity of accounting rules and still close their books quickly.
According to research sponsored by Business Objects, this is an issue that is very much on the minds of corporate executives and financial professionals. Seventy percent of respondents cited a belief that a monthly close should be complete in four days or less, and a quarterly close in under seven days. The same study also revealed that 93 percent of respondents either wanted to speed up or maintain close times. However, after a brief period in the late 1990s in which companies became more efficient in their financial reporting, compliance regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley, Basel II and IFRS have placed additional reporting rules on organizations worldwide.
Continue>>
Top
This article explores the opportunities Small, Mid-Size Businesses (SMB) have before them: in their desire to compete on a national or global scale.Specifically, leveraging the power SAP's SMB applications offers.
Also outlined are some Best Practice approaches an SMB entity should consider before undertaking this organizational-shift; and finally, we will examine an additional critical solution every SMB considering the use of SAP should also consider.
Continue>>
Top
By the start of 2007, I had already made numerous attempts to categorize and essentially make sense of my personal finances; however, managing the accumulating Excel spreadsheets proved to be a bit too cumbersome to manage and eventually became time consuming. Comparing data from multiple months side by side in an Excel document did not prove to be very useful from a visual standpoint; though, I knew my data had an important story to tell. I needed a better way to quickly see patterns and trends in my spending; I needed a better approach to managing my finances. Luckily, I learned that one of my coworkers had been using Crystal Reports from the BusinessObjects Enterprise package (BOE) for years, not only to help organizations manage their operational and financial data, but to manage her own personal accounts. When I decided to go that route myself, I was introduced to the sleek and visually stimulating Xcelsius tool. After seeing the power behind Xcelsius, I decided to take her Crystal report to an entirely new level.
Continue>>
Top
Proposing an Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) strategy over the short to medium term inevitably requires anticipating the needs not just of immediate beneficiaries of an EPM system, the financial department, but also potential beneficiaries of the fully integrated enterprise-wide EPM system. These might include departments like sales, marketing, retail store managers as well as other external stakeholders like suppliers, lenders, etc.
Continue>>
Top
I really was awake in college! I learned all about the product lifecycle from my Marketing 101 class. Of most interest to my student loan-laden wallet was when the cycle would begin to benefit the consumer's pocketbook. This is when the product has reached the point of becoming a commodity – widely available with a large selection of sellers and options. The only potential downside is that now the consumer is fully responsible for making the purchasing decision.
Similarly, business intelligence tools were once new products with very few vendors, limited features, and high price tags. However, today there are many different vendors with multiple, similar features causing pressure to differentiate them on price.
For the consumer, this makes today a fantastic time to invest in a business intelligence solution, but also means a significant and often difficult decision lies ahead.
Continue>>
Top
Transit agencies may increase ridership and fare box revenue by participating in Google Transit, but agencies should be mindful of the potential challenges of other open source projects.
Continue>>
Top
As the CFO of a major organization, you heard the windstorm that is Sarbanes-Oxley, you listened to your CIO expound the virtues of an integrated information platform: "one version of the truth". So you signed off on the check. You paid a few hundred thousand dollars for an end-to-end Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) software solution; a few more hundred thousand dollars for impressive looking consultants with impeccable references who sounded like they knew your business. Now you are able to pull up a futuristic and glitzy looking dashboard with knobs and dials that tells you at any one time what each department, division, region and country is doing. In fact you have a near flawless, apparently perfect information asset. However, there's one problem: all your operational managers are still using Excel. Even worse, they download data from the different tools in the end-to-end suite into Excel, manipulate it and in some cases, type it back into your EPM package. So you still have a lot of the problems you started with: poor audit trail; data inaccuracies; inability to rely on the numbers, etc. You have a situation that might be described as: a perfect imperfection.
Continue>>
Top
Anyone currently using SAP®R/3® is already familiar with the term Master Data. Many are wondering if SAP's latest offering of Master Data Management (aka MDM) is yet another clever marketing ploy - a repackaging of an existing SAP capability; with a "New and Improved" sticker pasted on the front.
Master Data Management is not a new term or concept – however, SAP's approach is somewhat novel and is coming to the forefront of SAP business executives more and more. Their IT staff is mentioning it; they are receiving emails linked to articles about it and seeing advertisements for conferences about it. As with most things SAP, confusion abounds and 'experts' are falling out of the trees; each trying to position themselves for the coming 'MDM boom.'
Continue>>
Top
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7
|
|
To find out how we can help you solve your information challenges, visit our professional services pages:
|
|
|
