The economic downturn has drastically altered the rules of international business. Now that the nature of the problems facing the financial markets has become clear, the domino effect has been unstoppable for the rest of the World. The ...

The value of making an informed decision is the paradigm of Business Intelligence (BI). In my experience, SAP implementations tend to focus on making business processes efficient, but seem to lose sight on measuring corporate performance ...

I’m lucky we have demanding clients. Throughout my 20 years in the manufacturing sector my employers and clients have sought to achieve more while spending less. Recently, the speed of rising expectations has accelerated as my clients ...

As companies strive to become more cost effective and maintain focus on core competencies and market differentiators, changes to organizational approach are being applied in an effort to commoditize transactional processes. These processes must achieve the lowest possible costs ...

Your industry is in a severe downturn. Commodity costs are experiencing dramatic fluctuations. Customer demand is under pressure. Significant effort is required to determine your cash and liquidity positions, or inventory on hand. You have no ...

In my last POV, “Desperate Times Call for Strategic Measures,” I wrote about now being the right time to consider a strategic business and IT transformation project. The primary focus of that article was on SAP ...

Atos Origin and SAP have invested in the people side of change, as well as the technology and solutions for improving performance across all of our clients’ business functions (read more). A key offering, organizational ...

Gene's Point of ViewVisionary companies take advantage during a recession by stepping up innovation and marketing to capture market share from weaker companies. Studies of the last recession show that those companies that maintained or increased advertising during the ...

Leveraging a Global Factory Delivery Model to Improve Your Web Program’s Efficiency How can a marketing tool, based on creativity, work in a “factory” model? Sometimes the biggest challenge for your website is determining the ...

Integrating Training into a Larger Change Management Approach - Isn't training enough?The end user training is complete. Attendance was poor. Evaluations were mediocre, and the business is grumbling that they are not ready. But ...

As working professionals, the economic challenges of the last year have redefined how we look at so many things. Our jobs and job security, our personal spend/save choices, and our trust of public and private entities ...

Making IT work for business and the environment The pressure on companies to reduce carbon emissions will undoubtedly increase, as Governments worldwide seek to reduce the carbon emissions of industrialized nations and limit greenhouse gases of developing nations. Information ...

Every year billions of dollars are spent on IT security with the goal of protecting mission-critical proprietary information.  The technology to protect this information is in place, but does that solve the problem?  Interesting StatisticsIn ...

  In troubled economic times, as companies look for ways to reduce costs to maximize earnings, it’s tempting to look at cuts to the marketing budget as a way to improve margins.  However, such ...

Tae’s Point of ViewMany MES initiatives continue to leave 40-60% 2009 saving opportunities on the table by not blending on and offshore skills. Given the current economic climate, many MES practitioners are faced with challenged implementation ...

Achieving improved operating efficiencies is a material part of any M&A business case. Leveraging an economy of scale and supporting combined revenue with something less than combined costs, businesses can deliver on their economic promise to stakeholders. ...

Atos Origin maintains quality as it grows its offshore footprint“Do not go where the path may lead; go instead where there is no path and leave a trail”      -- Ralph Waldo ...

As discussed in my last article, offshoring has led many organizations to believe that rushing into a ‘one size fits all’ model is immediately beneficial. When in reality, it actually introduces new risks and disruption. ...

From the business perspective, we know that IT outsourcing makes sense. Outsourcing simply allows companies to concentrate on their core business while a quality IT service provider, such as Atos Origin, offers a comprehensive and strategic partnership ...

Pay for PerformanceGetting more value from your IT Outsource vendor is a requirement during these difficult economic times. Enterprises are not willing to pay for effort but rather demand cost efficiencies and quality. As a result there is a ...

In this economy, realizing the ROI on IT projects isn’t just a matter of growth, but a matter of survival. Studies have repeatedly shown that a significant contributor to project failures is the lack of attention to ...

Security is an essential component to sustainable corporate success. As technological innovation continues to redefine and improve how companies conduct business, so too expands the list of threats, vulnerabilities, and risks to an organization’s wellbeing.Perhaps ...

Global forecasts indicate that between 2007 and 2030, over $26 trillion of capital investment will be needed in the Energy and Utility industries to meet the demands of a growing and more advanced population (ref: weo2008). ...

Municipalities might not be top-of-mind candidates for the technologies used by Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) applications since their business models and information technology needs appear to differ considerably from those of traditional manufacturing companies. For example, ...

It is interesting to see from Google Trends® and Google Insights® that the interest in ‘project management office’, ‘program management’ and ‘project management maturity’ have been steadily decreasing and the interest in ...