Wednesday, August 27, 2008

A “complex, creative” project for a large corporate contributed to Gareth Tucker’s win in the inaugural Rising Star award category at the second annua

When I was a kid, cutting and pasting was something you did in kindergarten. It’s possible that, 10 years from now, no one will remember it was once something you did on a computer, too.

Microsoft made the biggest splash this week with its announcement of Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2, but Mozilla nearly stole its thunder with the announcement of Ubiquity, an add-on that allows you to insert data into an e-mail or pull information from various Web pages without a lot of navigating around.

The example Mozilla offered involved a user e-mailing a friend to get together for coffee. Using Ubiquity, they could easily add a map to their message. Or, if they were searching for an apartment on Craiglist, potential buildings could be highlighted and a route plotted out by simply asking Ubquity to map them. The technology both mashes information into applications and pulls them information out (Wikipedia entries, e-mail addresses). It’s a great concept and a great name.

It’s just not really the way anyone works today. Some behaviours, like cutting and pasting URLs, is so ingrained that to really get users accustomed to its features Ubiquity would have to be, well, ubiquitous across nearly every major online service. Unless Mozilla took a different approach.

Think about all the data entry that happens in the enterprise every day. Now think about how many of those traditional, client-based processes have been migrating over to browser-based applications. The shift has made things a lot easier on the back end, processing side of companies, but grunt work is still largely grunt work.

Ubiquity could change that by creating easier ways to graph out sales opportunities in a memo, for example, or create a more flexible way for employees to bring up CRM data inside an internal portal where marketing strategies are developed. Over time, information workers would develop new habits, to the point where toggling back and forth between browser tabs or cutting and pasting would seem as onerous as simply writing and sending notes by hand.

Although it would undoubtedly simplify some processes, Ubiquity might also force users to think about content in a different way. A lot of the e-mail messages and other documents we create electronically today are pretty messy. Most people have a hard enough time just inserting an extra row into an Excel spreadsheet. Ubiquity, by opening up all kinds of possibilities for elegant confluences of data and applications, subtly encourages us to think more like developers. In a great Web site, for example, navigation should be so intuitive as to be effortless, but that effortlessness takes a lot of pre-planning and thought. Once you can add maps, reviews, or other disparate pieces of information, you are immediately becoming more involved in the user experience of the recipient of that e-mail message or Web page.

We don’t really “design” information right now because we have never been given the proper tools. Ubiquity may be among the first of those tools, which means form will be as important in its relationship to content as ever.

Source:blogs.itworldcanada.com/shane/

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Tucker demonstrates Microsoft 'Star' quality

A “complex, creative” project for a large corporate contributed to Gareth Tucker’s win in the inaugural Rising Star award category at the second annual Microsoft Partner Awards.

Tucker, who is Complete Solutions’ professional services manager, has spent the majority of his 10 years in the industry working on Microsoft’s CRM and ERP platforms.

Over the past two years he has been a solution architect in a team implementing a CRM system for Fonterra, saying he has enjoyed the challenge of continually adding functionality during the project.

“It’s the complexity and scope of what we’ve done up there and being challenged by what they want CRM to do. We had to get creative in how we delivered to their requirements and you don’t get that in smaller projects.”
Advocacy for Microsoft technology was also a factor in being nominated, Tucker says. Complete Solutions is a Microsoft Gold partner and Dynamics CRM specialist.

After graduating from Waikato University in the late 1990s, Tucker moved to Auckland and worked for DataGroup, which subsequently merged with Complete Solutions.

He has also worked on Siebel and SalesLogix platforms and was with OneSource in the early 2000s.
In addition, he assisted Microsoft with its deployment of CRM last year.

The Rising Star award was open to both individuals and companies, with the other finalists being Altaine, CodeBlue and Enlighten Designs.

Microsoft partner group manager Nick Fletcher says the category was added as a way of celebrating individual or company partners “who are doing great things and who we can expect more from in future”.

“The idea of company and individual submissions is when you think of a company, it tends to be the owner who is the entrepreneur driving it. In an established organisation that person may be an individual and that’s where Gareth fitted in.”

The winning individual had to show leadership in implementing technology for a customer, Fletcher says.

A tale of two small businesses and their ERP software

By Courtney Bjorlin

Growth presented Skullcandy and Super Sailmakers with vastly different customers and a common problem -- the need for ERP software.

Skullcandy had Best Buy and Target knocking at its door, wanting to sell its headphones, geared to the trendy, extreme sports crowd.

Super Sailmakers had grown to two locations and was selling sails not only in the U.S. but in Europe and the Caribbean.
Small businesses like these are driving ERP spending in a down economy. Investment in ERP software by small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) is exploding, according to a recent report by Boston-based AMR Research, but small companies -- those with less than $250 million in revenue -- are leading the charge. Revenue from small companies grew by 31% this year, the report says.

ERP purchases by SMBs will help the ERP market reach $38.2 billion this year and grow to $55.9 billion in the next five years, according to the report.

In trying to decide on an ERP system, both companies looked to similar vendors, including SAP, NetSuite and Microsoft Dynamics. Park City, Utah-based Skullcandy chose Business ByDesign, SAP's Software as a Service (SaaS) ERP geared to SMBs. Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based Super Sailmakers ended up going with SAP's on-premise ERP software for small businesses, Business One.

As a young company with no IT department and only four or five people who had ever worked with ERP software, Skullcandy didn't want to spend money to grow an in-house IT department, or lose productivity by sending people away for ERP training.

But the company was growing fast. When ERP implementation coordinator Beth Siron joined the company in April, there were 20 employees. Since then, the number has grown to 35.

Meanwhile, Siron said, financials consisted of Quickbooks and a lot of Excel spreadsheets.

Once Skullcandy executives decided SaaS ERP was the choice, they priced out Microsoft Dynamics NAV in a hosted situation, NetSuite, and Business ByDesign.

Learning about Business ByDesign was a challenge, however, partly because its ambitious rollout was scaled back in May -- SAP maintaining that it needed more work. So Siron went to SAPPHIRE, SAP's annual user conference, in May. There she spent two days talking with people on the Business ByDesign development team.

What ended up selling Skullcandy on SAP's SaaS ERP, she said, was the number of features it had out-of-the-box. It fit Skullcandy's human resources, warehouse management system, supply chain planning and production needs.

Also, it would be easy for employees who worked on the road to access the network. And the training is embedded in Business ByDesign, Siron said, so the company can craft it to users' needs.

Skullcandy's implementation began on June 10, and they expect to go live on September 15, she said. They are in the middle of migrating data into the production system right now.

"I was really skeptical," she said. "But we have hit every single milestone we have on the individual plan. It's crazy; crazy in a good way. SAP has been great for us. I know there [have] been a lot of concerns, but we have had so much attention from SAP."

Likewise, Super Sailmakers, with two locations, 15 employees and overseas sales, needed to consolidate management and operations on one platform, according to its vice president, Bob Meagher III.

"We had systems that worked very well when we were a smaller company," he said. "We had little integration between systems. As a result, we had duplicate data, errors were hard to catch and [the system] wasn't very accommodating about changes in the data."

Along with Business One, Super Sailmakers looked at Microsoft Dynamics, Sage AS 90 and NetSuite, Meagher said.

"We thought Business One and Microsoft Dynamics were both capable of meeting our needs," he said. "Business One seemed more proven and more flexible."

Having the data elsewhere was a concern for Super Sailmakers in considering an SaaS ERP, but that could have been overcome, Meagher said. He felt NetSuite didn't fit the company's needs because it doesn't have significant e-commerce, one of three applications NetSuite offers in addition to ERP and CRM.

On the financial side, the ability to customize dashboards, and the overall integration of the five or six different components of the business, sold executives there on Business One, Meagher said.

There were some hardware purchases they had to make, meaning the process is a little more costly than an SaaS ERP implementation up front, he said.

The company will go live with the software on September 1.

"We want a solution that's going to last 10 years," he said.

Source:searchsap.techtarget.com

Sunday, August 24, 2008

All the mistakes to avoid

Ian Mann is a business consultant. He provides insights from the latest business books for his clients

Professor Jeffrey Pfeffer explains that the title What were they thinking? comes from his response to what he reads almost daily about the actions of leaders and organisations. They seem like “something drawn from a Dilbert cartoon”.

Now, these are not stupid people. For the most part they are hard-working, serious people, often expending enormous amounts of time and effort trying to do a good job. And the book is not focused on why they do so many things that are incorrect, but rather describes their decisions in a way that makes the errors crystal clear, which saves you the bother of making the same mistakes yourself.

There are 28 short chapters filled with examples that will alert you to errors you could make, or ones that make you squirm because you have already made them.

The range is broad and I cannot think of anyone who won’t find the majority of the examples very relevant to their work.

Consider CRM, the technology that tracks customer activity and tailors marketing pitches accordingly. The CRM software market is substantial at 76-billion in 2005 and growing, and it has become the dominant software investment.

But here lies the problem: before you can manage a customer relationship, you first have to build or create the relationship — and that is not done by fancy data-mining and the analysis of people’s behaviour. Relationships begin when a customer comes into contact with your organisation. Hint: most people (94%) hate the automated telephone answering system which is their gateway to your company; they want to speak to a person. Really. What was the budget committee thinking?

Isn’t it interesting that Southwest Airlines has their phones answered by live humans? They are one of the few airlines which do, but then they are also one of the few airlines that have been profitable for more than 30 years.

Isn’t it amazing how companies who have fallen on hard times turn first to their middle and lower level staff for help in overcoming their problems? They are the ones who are asked to take the pay cuts and reductions in benefits. Did they think that cutting workers’ pay would actually make them more profitable?

Japan runs a trade surplus with China, as do other countries with high labour costs such as Canada, Germany and Italy. How?

Labour costs depend on two things: the rate of pay and, more importantly, employee productivity.

Alienating staff rarely achieves increases in productivity. What were they thinking?

Many companies make long hours a type of loyalty test — leave on time and you are not committed; leave late, now that’s what we respect. Hours worked equals work output may make sense when the work is agricultural labour and factory-based, but the equation doesn’t work when it comes to innovation and creative work. The fact is that the stress caused by excessive work takes a physical toll, which might explain why hard-working America ranks 24th in terms of life expectancy.

Then factor in the cost to family and social life. If you are still unconvinced, you could consider diminished focus and concentration, and the cost of the mistakes fatigue causes. SAS Institute, the producer of complex software products, has a 35-hour work week so that no one programmes when they are exhausted, and they employ a third fewer “checkers” than Microsoft. Makes you think. .. if you are not too fatigued.

In case you haven’t noticed, airline employees seem to be constantly apologising for the decisions made by their higher-ups — awful food, little legroom, the strangest choice of movies and poor scheduling. And the help desk is making excuses for the bug-infested software, and the nurses for the hospital’s unfriendly visitor policy and the. .. (you fill in the blank). It is almost taken for granted today that status is measured by how far you are from the actual work of an organisation.

This leaves executives hopelessly out of touch and unable to empathise or even understand the situation faced by frontline staff. And no, having the execs walk about the floor glad-handing the staff is not the remedy. At Men’s Warehouse, regional managers and senior executives are encouraged to visit stores regularly and serve customers themselves.

DaVita, the huge American kidney dialysis service, has a programme called Reality 101 in which newly hired or newly promoted executives spend a week interacting with patients and staff. They get to see what it is like to be up at 4am to be at the centre by 5am to be ready to insert needles (themselves) into patients at 6am, and then to fill out patient-treatment records.

The book is full of great insights and, if forewarned is forearmed, it should be at your bedside.

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

CRM Vendor NetSuite Tallies More Sign-Ups

NetSuite has announced the latest companies to switch from Microsoft Great Plains to NetSuite.

Company officials say the firms switched "largely to take advantage of NetSuite's integration of enterprise resource planning (ERP)/Accounting, customer relationship management and e-commerce capabilities."

These new customers, which include CMC Energy Services, Symbiot, Safir Rosetti and Advantage Sign Supply, also cited "advanced functionality and ease of use" as the other compelling reasons for moving to NetSuite.

Angelica Biehl, IT Support, Home Energy Tune-UP, a new national residential energy audit program of CMC Energy Services, based in Bethesda, Maryland said her company needed "CRM data integrated with accounting and ERP data."

Older generation software applications like Microsoft (News - Alert) Great Plains were once very popular within mid-sized companies, NetSuite officials say, adding that "NetSuite is designed as a single system for ERP, CRM and e-commerce operations."

"After a little more than two years of using Great Plains and Salesforce.com (News - Alert), we decided we really needed a completely integrated system to gain better visibility, so we switched to NetSuite," said Ray Jones, Senior VP, Infrastructure/Supply Chain Management, Symbiot, adding that "the ability to access our accounting information along with CRM data from anywhere in the country is a huge benefit for our company.

Yesterday Velaro, a vendor of live help for increasing sales, announced the release of Live Chat for NetSuite. The Velarians say it features integration with the NetSuite on-demand business management suite and uses NetSuite's ability to present a 360-degree view of customer information by using core functionality in CRM, ERP and e-commerce.

Live Chat for NetSuite is designed to provide real-time visibility to all customer data, as well as documentation of customer support notes and elimination of transferring data from one application to another.

The integration of live chat and NetSuite was accomplished using the NetSuite Business Operating System, a set of development and testing tools allowing ISVs to create new applications and whole vertical products using NetSuite's core functionality.

By building on and extending the core of NetSuite, Velaro officials say, NS-BOS "increases ISVs' speed-to-market."

Among the product's advantages are that Live Chat for NetSuite allows customers to search for or create NetSuite leads and cases in real-time while being in a Velaro live chat session. Upon completion of the chat, each transcript is automatically attached and archived to the associated NetSuite records.

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Microsoft Ready to Hit the Gas on CRM Accelerators

Microsoft's Reuben Krippner hit the blogs to tout the company's new CRM "accelerators," promising to write more about a new accelerator each week. Meanwhile in the CRM blogosphere, CrossTech Media's Chris Brogan muses on the value of content marketing vs. advertising -- one's a meal, the other is merely candy -- and FutureNow's Bryan Eisenberg puts the spotlight on Google's new offering.

Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) Free Trial. Security Software As A Service From Webroot. Latest News about Microsoft will be rolling out eight CRM Improve customer service and productivity with Avaya Unified Communications. "accelerators" for its Dynamics CRM product line in the second half of 2008. On the Javista blog, Microsoft's Reuben Krippner gives readers a thorough update on what they will offer customers. On the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Team Blog, he shares information for the analytics add-on.

Krippner promises to blog about each accelerator each week. Altogether, the company will release accelerators for analytics, eService, event management, enterprise World Class Managed Hosting from PEER 1, Just $299. Click here. search, sales methodologies, extended sales forecasting, CRM notifications and business productivity HP LaserJet M3035 MFP series - Starting at $1,599. Save up to $500. Click Here..

Krippner writes, "each accelerator will showcase how the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 platform can be configured and extended to broaden marketing Learn how you can enhance your email marketing program today. Free Trial - Click Here., sales and service capabilities." They come with an importable data model, business process workflows, business Intelligence elements such as custom reports, functional code samples that adhere to software developer kit guidelines, an automated installer, and documentation for installing, operating, localizing and extending the add-on.

The accelerators met with approval from the crowd when Microsoft demoed them this summer in Houston at its Worldwide Partner Conference, Brad Wilson, GM of Microsoft Dynamics, told CRM Buyer shortly after the conference ended.

"They are building out functionality that our partners and clients have been asking for," he said. "For instance, the e-service accelerator allows user to integrate CRM cases into a Web site and set up a workflow for these cases. The sales methodology accelerator provides integration for leading firms like Miller Heiman." These will all be delivered to Microsoft's partners through Q3, he added.
Content Marketing vs. Advertising

What's the difference between content marketing and advertising? It's the same as the huge difference between candy and a well-balanced meal, Chris Brogan, VP Strategy & Technology at CrossTech Media, an integrated media and events business, writes in his blog post.

"Content marketing, in my definition, is the ability to produce useful and entertaining information that is worthwhile on its own, but that might also be useful towards a sale or subsequent action ... traditional marketing efforts, the slick and shiny kind, are like red licorice."

For instance, he says, someone whose goal is lead generation might take a traditional approach working very hard to explain just why a product is the best tool for a certain job. "But what if, instead, you wrote up some really great suggestions for how one might do that certain job better, with or without your product, and then made a very simple link back to whatever your product offer might be? Which would offer more value to your prospective customer?

"Slower? Yes. More effort? Yes. But I believe the results will speak for themselves."

Instead of gorging on data culled from yet another Free iPhone offer, he concluded, "you will start to accumulate relationships with people who actually care about the space where your company is doing business, and might actually benefit from your product/service."

In another post, Brogan lists his favorite e-books on social marketing.
More Web 2.0 Tools

Another week, another new tool by Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) Latest News about Google. Bryan Eisenberg, a cofounder at FutureNow, takes a look at Google Insights for Search. Why? "Whether you're an advertising agency, a small business owner, a multinational corporation, or an academic researcher, Insights for Search can help you gauge interest in your relevant search terms," he writes. "It allows you to compare search volume patterns (and trends) across specific geographic regions, categories (like finance, health, and sports), and time frames."

Meanwhile, Robert John Ed takes a look at why Facebook is sometimes a useful tool for marketing -- and when it isn't. "A lot of people hoping that somehow the social network New HP LaserJet P4014n Printer Starting at $699 after $100 instant savings. will be the answer to increasing revenues, attendance, bottom line profitability. It's a good thing to do, certainly, but most marketers who are doing it as a grassroots effort are going to hit some very serious walls very quickly," he writes.
CRM Integration Wars

At Sales Software and Marketing, S. Watts takes on a subject that's been a running topic of debate -- not to mention angst -- in companies ever since enterprise software was first introduced.

He points to the usual horror statistics -- "One late 2002 study showed that between 40 and 50 percent of all CRM software licenses purchased end up going unused within 12 months" -- and then moves on to why so many projects fail.

"Yet time and again, when companies would struggle, it usually came down to one or more of three core factors: technology, processes and people, with people being by leaps and bounds the most important element.

"In all cases, whether through mis-management, shortsightedness, or just plain bad luck, they had failed to account for critical factors that were going to ultimately determine the success or failure of their new initiative."

Source:technewsworld.com

Monday, August 11, 2008

MS wants bigger slice of online

Microsoft will continue to work on becoming a stronger Internet player alongside the likes of Google and Yahoo, it says.

The acquisition of Yahoo was one possible strategy in upping the company's online profile and its loss will not hinder the software giant in its Internet strategy, said CTO for Microsoft IT Barry Briggs, speaking at the Microsoft Partner Summit, in Durban, last week.

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He said, while he can't comment on the company's plans in the space, he knows it is working to increase its profile in search.

However, according to Briggs, the company has been in the online space for years. “We have had automatic updates and downloads from our Web site for many years – people tend to forget that is an online presence also.”

Briggs said Microsoft will also invest in its other online businesses, such as Live, and several other hosted services, including Exchange, CRM and Hotmail.

As part of his keynote address on Friday, Briggs gave summit delegates a preview of some of the technologies that will come out of the business over the next year.

While he did not showcase the Surface, Microsoft's multi-touch device, he said there are some “great” innovations around the technology. “One of our engineers came up with a spherical version of the Surface; it looks like so much fun.” Surface is currently shipping worldwide to partners.

Briggs noted Microsoft's IT department has started working with the development team on Windows 7. While he did not provide any details on the next-generation operating system, he confirmed that Windows 7 will support multi-touch technology.

The company is also investing in changing development models, he added. “The process of translating a business process into code is not always easy. We are working on translating those processes into modules, which will allow developers to build applications visually.”

Source:itweb.co.za

Tuesday, August 5, 2008

NetSuite, Zoho post app suite gains

Two on-demand business software firms reported accelerating adoption of their suites today.

NetSuite reported second-quarter 2008 revenue of $36.6 million, up 43 percent from the same period in 2007. Net loss per GAAP was down to $3.1 million in the quarter, compared with $9.6 million in Q2 2007.

The company also announced new midmarket and enterprise customers for its ERP and CRM suites, which are delivered as Web applications. Surgical robotics company Intuitive Surgical adopted NetSuite CRM; Nestle UK used services from NetSuite to launch an online store; and sports market firm Wasserman Media Group adopted NetSuite for accounting functions, replacing an installation of Microsoft Dynamics-Great Plains, NetSuite announced.

Meanwhile, Zoho, a provider of business software-as-a-service to small and midmarket companies, prepared to announce that it has reached the milestone of 1 million sign-ups for its services. Zoho's Raju Vegesna says that of those, roughly 300,000 to 350,000 still log on to the service each month. He also believes that Zoho is tracking at about one-third of Google Apps adoption. (Google Apps is Google's business-focused app suite; Vegesna did not consider individual or business use of Google Docs, which offers some of the same services.)

These success stories, in addition to the continued strong performance by Salesforce.com, put continued pressure on the distribution models and market that Microsoft and other traditional software houses rely on.

Monday, August 4, 2008

We will reinvent Microsoft, says Tony Scott

Tony Scott, chief information officer, Microsoft Corp was in India recently. Pratima Harigunani from CyberMedia News caught up with Scott for a talk on consolidation of data centers and applications, virtualisation, MS's IT budget and strategic outlines, open standards, Green IT, as well as his headaches, and more…

Tony Scott, chief information officer, Microsoft Corp.How has it been as Microsoft's CIO so far?

It has been six months now. It is one of the most interesting CIO roles probably in the world. More so, as it simultaneously covers three domains: the classic CIO role, which entails responsibility for the IT operations of the company. Then there is the task of working closely with the product development side and contribute as users of MS technologies in beta and development stage, thereby improving product quality. Add to that the chance to work our broad customer base and large enterprises and act in some ways as advocates of revolutionary technologies. This is indeed a unique combination of many roles as a CIO.

What's the status of initiatives taken up by your predecessors like Stuart Scott with respect to consolidation of data centers, trimming of applications, virtualisation drive and use of new collaboration software?

We have made good progress in all of that. The data center consolidation continues. Virtualisation is turning out to be a more interesting story. With less than 10 per cent a year back in terms of servers, it is now about 25 per cent this year with 50 per cent level expected next year. That is remarkable progress. We have achieved all goals on application reduction. As regards collaboration software, SharePoint is the primary platform and it has been a great success story, not just at Microsoft but all across.

Is a greater part of your IT budget being injected increasingly in NPD (New Product Development)?

Historically, the budget was around operation and maintenance and yes, there is a shift towards NPD and we are making new progress every year.

How has it been for you since you came from CIO roles at organizations like Bristol-Myers Squibb, General Motors, PwC and Disney to Microsoft?

While I was at Bristol Myers Squibb or PwC, Y2K was a big issue. That won't be there until for quite some decades. Then the dotcom era came. At Disney, the ERP movement was a big thing. So each role at its time, had a different challenge. Today's problems are different from the ones years ago. Today, demand, capacity, and efficiency to deliver are all going up and there are many new things that are coming up. But then there are some constants also, like finding talent, or connecting with our business partners well. So some things stay constant, some change, and some change dramatically.

While you were at GM, you set up Liberty Alliance for Identity Management, which was an open standards group. Now at Microsoft, what's your view on the open landscape?

That was created amidst some different factors operating that time. Today, the field of Identity Management has evolved a lot. We have set standards in this space. MS' commitment as shared prominently some time back, is broad and significant. Standards are important for commerce and interactivity.

How do you manage the bridging task between MS internal IT and external one?

There are a number of ways in which we are continuously achieving that. Large enterprise forums, CIO summits and EBCs (Executive Briefing Centres) are some examples, which help connect various entities.

How similar or dissimilar are the headaches you and other CIOs today have?

Some issues remain the same everywhere. There are budget issues every year, there are increasing business demands and the question of squeezing efficiency and productivity well with the given money. Every CIO in that sense is faced with the same concerns be it business demand for IT services, digitization, demand for services from our customers, which keeps going up. The capacities are going up but so are the costs. There are two areas in particular today that concern us. One is network bandwidth, as richer applications and more media content calls for resources. Then there is the question of storage in view of economics of price reductions.

Green IT is almost turning from a buzzword to a cliché? Your practical take on that?

It is an important imperative for Microsoft. This is where virtualization is a great contributor. Added to that is significant action on data center capability, system management tools, server operating system with Green IT as a focus. In our data centers, we are using all available technologies as we can find, be it heating or cooling ones or the sources of energy in the very first place. So we have to find ways to offset that with efficiencies wherever possible.

What is your view on some of the contemporary CIO attention areas like redundancy, complexity, consolidation and standardization?

Yes, it is an important part of what a CIO does these days. As a leader in the organization, it's my job to set strategy and objectives in each of these areas. These are really derivatives of other factors. What matters is making business process more effective, making systems easier for customers and partners and of course, handling costs well at the end of the day.

What are you betting on next?

Our next big bets are on Microsoft CRM solution broadly across the company. We are developing a platform for Microsoft as well as our customer base. So there is a big initiative around that as well as in data warehousing and Business Intelligence.

Any particular observations on India?

I am very happy to with MS IT team here, which is a critical mass of people and talent that are helping in developing some critical systems. The India team is critical to some of the most important products and projects within MS. This team is a support team for many important elements of our technology landscape as well.

Has it been as challenging a task as most would guess for being the CIO of an organization that presents together scale, spotlight and size all in one?

I often explain that in a lighter vein. I have come from a Mickey Mouse company (Scott was earlier the CIO of Disney) to a Mouse one. Microsoft clearly attracts some of the world's smartest people and it is fun to work in that environment. There are lots of changes happening and we will reinvent Microsoft and set the bar for the coming 10 to 15 years in the next few years only.

Milestones ahead?

The biggest job today is keeping up with what's happening. There are a lot of moving parts because of an organization as dynamic as this. MS should continue being recognized as world-class and a trendsetter among its peers and continue to enhance its image.
©CyberMedia News

Friday, August 1, 2008

CRM for Bikinis

The news as of the second cup of coffee this morning, and there comes a time in most men's lives when the realize "Hey... I need some more Skynyrd on the iPod." That time has come for First Coffee, so the music today is Lynyrd Skynyrd's Second Helping:

CRM vendor Epicor has announced Canadian swimwear retailer Groupe Bikini Village has selected the Epicor Retail Software as a Service (SaaS) product.

Bikini Village sells swimwear across Eastern Canada. Headquartered in Boucherville, Québec, the company operates 60 stores under the Bikini Village banner in Quebec, Ontario, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.

Bikini Village has overhauled and refreshed many of its stores, company officials say, "part of an ambitious renovation and expansion strategy now beginning to yield results." The company recently posted a 25 percent increase in Q1-2008 year-over-year revenues.

Bikini Village wanted an end-to-end "retail product that would give the company greater inventory visibility, improve operational efficiencies and streamline business processes," company officials said.

The Epicor Retail SaaS delivery model is a turnkey retail product billed as "virtually eliminating the need for an on-site retail IT infrastructure." It has associated implementation and integration services, support and maintenance as well as ongoing updates and upgrades.

For a fixed fee plus a one-time start-up charge, the SaaS offering delivers Epicor's Store, Merchandising, Planning, Audit & Operations Management, CRM and Business Intelligence to store locations and the head office.