January, 2009

Knowing other cultures will increase your competitive advantage

The extent of the current financial crisis is the best indication of our connected world. Almost no country is immune to the fall-out of the current financial system. Our world is not only connected at the financial level, but at many other levels and managers who have a good understanding of various cultures have an advantage over those who don’t.

I have met few managers who are working for multi-nationals American companies, but their knowledge of other cultures was really limited. I haven’t work for a large corporation for such a long time to know what type of culture training these managers get, but from what I experienced I can tell that companies need to focus more on how the other side of the world functions.

Few years back, I would have never thought that I would travel to the places I have been to for the last year and half. Knowing other cultures and management style showed me how little I knew about global management.

When the job market slows down, many people try to go back to school to get more certifications and degrees; it would be a good career move to get yourself familiar with other cultures and some of the issues that are facing our world.

List of ERP Solutions providers Part 2

More details about these solutions can be found at:

 http://www.technologyevaluation.com/

PRONTO Software - PRONTO-Xi
 http://www.pronto-software.com

Retalix - Retalix
 http://www.retalix.com/

Sage - Sage ERP X3
 http://www.sagenorthamerica.com

SAP - SAP All-in-One-Distribution
 http://www.sap.com/

SAP - SAP Business ByDesign
 http://www.sap.com/

SYSPRO - SYSPRO
 http://www.syspro.com/

Technology Group International - Enterprise 21
 http://www.tgiltd.com/

TECSYS - EliteSeries
 Trackback URL

List of ERP Solutions providers part 1

ABAS Software - abas Business Software
 http://www.abassoftware.com

Activant Solutions - Activant Prophet 21
 http://www.activant.com/

Apprise Software - Apprise Distribution
 http://www.apprise.com/

Bluebee Software Inc. - Bluebee
 http://www.epicor.com/

IBS - IBS Enterprise
 http://www.ibs.net

Infor - Infor ERP SX enterprise
 http://www.infor.com

Jeeves Information Systems - Jeeves Universal
 http://www.jeeves.se/en

Lawson Software - Lawson M3 Distribution
 http://www.lawson.com/

Microsoft - Dynamics AX
 http://www.microsoft.com/dynamics/

Microsoft - Dynamics NAV
 http://www.microsoft.com/dynamics/

NetSuite - NetSuite
 http://www.netsuite.com/

Openbravo - Openbravo ERP
 http://www.openbravo.com

Oracle - JD Edwards EnterpriseOne
 http://www.oracle.com

Oracle - E-Business Suite
 http://www.oracle.com/

Software must meet your needs

When I started my current job I found out that my company didn’t have the adequate software to help us mange our daily business activities. Our company is involved in vehicles leasing, human resource, property leasing and business consulting.

I needed a complete software package that would allow me to manage all our business processes from one single point, the answer was a CRM solution.

I have contacted few vendors, including Microsoft to find a right solution for our needs. Unfortunately, the price tag was too high for our company to buy any CRM solution that is available in the market. In addition, some of the features that included in the CRM package, we will never use.

So I decided to pick individual software packages that would fit our needs and also help me cut costs. Instead of having one CRM solution, I am working with few software that will address our needs and without having to pay for extra features that we will not use.

I have looked for sometimes now for a good and affordable CRM solutions that meet the needs of a small business and within reasonable price range, but I was not able to find the right solution.

At what point must the CEO step down

Since my work involves management issues, I can’t help it put to comment on management issues. We always hear about great CEOs and even great leaders who were behind their companies’ success. But can a great CEO run the company forever? Wouldn’t it be a time that he must step down and let new faces take the lead?

If we take a look at the office of the president of the United States, it was very obvious that the office needed a new leader, this has nothing to do about being a republican or democrat, but the mood was calling for a change.

As I work in my position in Doha, Qatar, I see the how the small business community here is suffering because the old timers are refusing to step down; they are refusing to see new management style take over. Change is a fact of life and those who refuse to change will either be forced to step down or will be left behind.

As a gain more experience in my field, I constantly ask myself, “what do I need to do to keep up with changes around me?”

I believe that one part of a great management style is to manage change and manage it successfully.

Undershot customers and IT Consultants

In marketing, undershot customers are those we would want more services than what is currently provided. Major software and hardware vendors do not provide each type of technical support many customers require. Working on tech support lines for many years, I have talked to many customers who were willing to pay the extra dollar to get services not offered by the vendor.

As an independent IT Consultant, you can reach many undershot customers in your local market by offering services they cannot get from the vendor or from major tech support firms. There are thousands of small business owners who are willing to hire consultants to customize their software applications; many business owners will gladly pay you to customize their e-mail applications, their MS office, their browsers, their accounting software, etc.

There are many businesses struggling with easy to fix technical problems and they are desperately looking for help.

Crisis Bread Innovations

As the global economy slows down, companies start to look for innovative ideas to cut costs and to bring in new products or service to the market to sustain their market share. As the popular phrase goes “need is the mother of invention”, individuals and companies a like RUSH to find new solutions and this rush, sometimes, kills the very innovative idea someone may have.

To seize the opportunity is this time of crisis and bring your innovation to market, you need to keep these few tips in mind:

1-Start small: don’t think just because you have an innovative idea, you own the world. Pick a small market first and grow up slowly
2-Start slow: don’t try to rush your product to the market, you may not be able to sustain the rush, you may run out of resources, so keep your expectations low.
3-Be flexible: make sure your product or idea is flexible enough to adjust with markets demands, you should be able to change the features of your products or your solution to fit market needs.

These above tips are not only for small businesses, but studies found that even large corporations need to apply them. In the early 90s, HP failed to introduce an innovative product to the market because it failed to observe some of the tips above.

Internet of Things

Not many people are familiar with the term “Internet of Things.” In its simplest form, Internet of Things is the concept of having every object in the planet tagged with RFID device and then tracked all over the world. So if you buy a can of soda, this can of soda can be tracked by computers, at any point in time the computer will be able to tell where is the soda can is located. The idea is to tag all objects around us with tags (we are talking about billions of objects) to have a total controlled environment.

How scary that could be? We already live in much controlled environment, people can track you if you carry a cell phone and most of your personal and financial information are already stored in computers.

The more convenience out of life we seek, the more privacy we will have to give up. The Internet, satellite and cell phone technologies made it hard for anyone to hide anymore. When all these 3 components work together almost any object is traceable.

The debate of how much privacy we are willing to give up will continue, but the technology to invade your total privacy is already available.

Part of the above article can be found at:

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_of…

Management style, why Kodak failed and Nissan Survived

In my current course I am taking in Corporate Innovation we had to do a case study about Kodak, we had to analyze why Kodak lost market leadership in its industry.

The case discussed many factors that led to Kodak failure to maintain the lead position, but one thing that really caught my attention and I can relate to was “resistance to change.”

Kodak Stock holders saw the necessity for a change in leadership and the Company hired new CEO, but the CEO failed to change the management style inside Kodak. Middle managers resisted or refused to see the need to change in management style, they wanted to do business the old way. The CEO failed to fire those who resisted change and he was not able to start a new operation with new team which eventually cost the company huge market share.

In contract, when Nissan faced the same issue few years back, a new CEO was hired and the firs thing he did was to “fire the old team who resisted change” and started with a management team who was ready to see the reality and embrace new management style.

In this time of economic crisis, things need to be changed, companies will need to embrace new realities and adjust to market trends, and those who will adapt will have better chance of surviving than those we refused to change.

RFID Technology Implementations

Currently, I am enrolled in nine months course about Corporate Innovation and Entrepreneurships at Carnegie Mellon University Campus in Doha, Qatar.

Our project is to find new applications for RFID technology that can be innovative; my experience and background in RFID is limited to reading and using the technology. In our project, we are trying to find more implementations of RFID Technology besides the usual applications such as (reading of the chips.)

As we start this project, we would have to draw our first draft for the project (hardware, software and user interaction with the system.) At this point, I would appreciate it if I get help with:

1-The best RFID system for wide area coverage?
2-Best software and data base application to use to capture the raw data?

Reader feedback on this would be greatly appreciated.