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Strategies to Run a Lean Supply Chain: How Principles of Lean Manufacturing Transfer Benefits to Operations

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 15:20:01 -0800

In the last several years, the manufacturing sector has moved from vertically organized structures to horizontal organizations; that is, a single company no longer controls its product from, let's say, the mine to the store shelf. Instead, today's companies control only pieces of the supply chain, and the companies and divisions controlling those various components may be located just about anywhere in the world.

This model enables companies to concentrate on what they do best, but as a result the supply chain has become longer and more complex. The blurring of the line between manufacturing and supply chain logistics provides the opportunity to move efficient manufacturing management concepts to supply chain management. One manufacturing concept stands out as most successful: the concept of lean.

This white paper was written by Ventana Research, Sponsored by Epicor Software.

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ERP in Manufacturing: Expanding Beyond Traditional Boundaries - Aberdeen Group

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 15:20:01 -0800

Pressures to reduce costs continue to outweigh all other business drivers impacting Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) in 2009. ERP has become more than a necessary infrastructure; it is also a strategic weapon in streamlining and accelerating business processes – while providing visibility to those processes throughout the enterprise. This year Aberdeen looks beyond their annual assessment of ERP usage by module and explore the preferences and decisions between point solutions and an end-to-end integrated suite and assess the overall business value ERP brings to manufacturing.

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Key Strategies for IT Success in Today's Distribution Environment

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 15:20:01 -0800

The technology world around us is changing rapidly. Keeping up has become tougher for managers and supervisors. Today's economy has focused limited information technology resources on immediate results, not research or long term strategy. In this environment, an understanding of how to apply new technology for up-and-coming management is very worthwhile. This white paper provides high level definitions, opportunity identification, and future potentials for: Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Anytime, Anywhere Availability, Mobile Devices, Web 2.0, and Report Cards or Balanced Scorecards as a Business Intelligence (BI) capability. It is a foundation for becoming more valuable to an organization by being able to generate a Return on Investment when applying the latest capabilities to the real world.

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A Guide to Selecting the Right ERP Partner

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 15:20:01 -0800

Although a challenging economy has caused many organizations to reduce overall IT spending, several continue to invest in Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems. Such systems enable organizations to reduce costs, improve customer response time, become easier for customers to do business with and manage growth expectations.

As organizations determine their ERP strategy, they need to choose the right ERP vendor partner. This guide explores the "pros and cons" of the four types of ERP partners:

Partner ecosystems
Frameworks
Best-of-breed packages
End-to-end integrated solutions

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Smooth Transition: Preparing for IFRS

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 15:20:01 -0800

The SEC proposes that 2014 will be the first year for US registered companies to file their financial statements in International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) format. This executive brief covers how to effectively manage this upcoming transition to IFRS. You will learn how to:

Form your IFRS transition team
Set the roles of the team members
Use your enterprise resource planning (ERP) software to manage this transition

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Magic Quadrant for Midmarket and Tier 2-Oriented ERP for Product-Centric Companies - Gartner Report

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 15:20:01 -0800

The Magic Quadrant for Midmarket and Tier 2-Oriented ERP for Product-Centric Companies addresses the needs of product-centric companies or divisions of enterprises with between 100-999 employees, and with annual revenue between $50 million and $1 billion. These enterprises have limited IT resources and seek ERP systems that support their differentiating business processes well with deep functionality, but do not require significant overhead in the non-differentiating business areas (meaning the systems must minimize Total Cost of Ownership [TCO] and complexity). Although some see this market as large and mature, Gartner see this market as undergoing a "change of the guard," with older, established systems with deep functionality being displaced by more modern and agile systems.

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Achieving Efficient Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) for Financial Services through Process and Automation

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 15:20:01 -0800

Now more than ever, financial institutions are struggling to comply with regulations and manage the risks and penalties of failing to operate within the rules. Establishing, maintaining and proving compliance requires both money and time that executives would rather invest in top-line growth. The myriad of procedures, tasks, and behaviors that bear upon compliance can be overwhelming. Yet financial institutions that can master the management all of these activities—and demonstrate that they have done it—operate more efficiently, compete more effectively, and build their brands and good names in the marketplace. Fortunately, newly available software platforms that have become known as Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) technologies can help. This white paper discusses the drivers behind the growing awareness of GRC information technology and introduces the elements of an effective automated GRC system.

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Taking Lean Six Sigma Beyond Manufacturing: The Journey to Business Improvement