Month: January 2007

Supply chain management is a complex business function which covers the process of each part of the product manufacturing process (the 'supply chain'). Choosing the best supply chain management software is crucial for enterprises to be able to control and streamline their business. In business where the product margins are thin, the benefits of even small gains in efficiencies can be materially beneficial.

Supply chain management software allows companies to control the cost and delivery time of the manufacturing of products. High end SCM software will include features such as:

• Procurement Process
• Manufacturing Flow Management
• Distribution
• Outsourcing & Partnerships
• Performance Measurement

For more information on the value of supply chain management software and how it can assist in resource planning for the manufacture of products read this article on Supply Chain Management Software.

After Internet Explorer 7.0 was released in October it has quickly climbed to claim a 25% market share in the US (largely due to it's rollout via Windows Update). This makes it the second-most used after IE 6.0 in the United States, according to Microsoft's IE Blog. Microsoft claims more than 100 million users have installed Internet Explorer 7.0. By contrast, Firefox's U.S. market share was slightly below 16% six months ago (though it likely has increased since then).

Look for IE7's market share to continue to increase with the retail launch of Windows Vista at the end of this month.

Read more at The Tech Report

Anyone who has worked on web sites that use open source MySQL database will appreciate a good tool to manage and create your databases. WordPress is my CMS of choice for most pet projects, with Expressions Engine coming in as the tool of choice for most higher-end projects that demand a more robust feature set.
I was sad to see MySQLFront (an open source but aging tool) be deep sixed and not be supported as an open source project. Enter Navicat.

Navicat has been downloaded more than 1,100,000 times and ranked as the most popular MySQL GUI in download sites such as http://download.com.

It features an intuitive interface and provides a set of useful tools to import/ export, backup/restore data, Synchronize databases, etc.

Navicat is known for its ability to import/export Access, Excel and other popular files, backup data, building query and creating report. Navicat is sophisticated enough for professional developers, yet easy to learn for new users.

I particularly like to use it to import and export the entire database schema for my web sites. I can easily copy and duplicate a new site from an pre-existing site -- something only a database tool like Navicat can let you easily do.

Some features Navicat includes:

• - Visual Query Builder
• - SSH and HTTP Tunnel for remote database connection
• - Database transfer from server to server
• - Data and Structure Synchronization
• - Data backup and restore
• - Import/ Export of most popular data formats to and from MySQL
• - Tasks Scheduling and Easy-to-use wizards tool

To learn more, visit http://www.navicat.com

For a free trial, Download Navicat MySQL GUI Management Tool.

Project plans lay out a defined series of steps to accomplish a goal. Most software development methodologies produce an undesirable goal—failure. A 60% failure rate is not just dumb luck, it is the natural consequence of the methodology. To change the outcome, we must change our methodology!

I’ve witnessed failed projects which did not achieve business results. Despite experience and planning, many times the best efforts still turned into the worst results. Developers typically lack a good road map to navigate their project to a successful end. This lack of direction dooms the project before the first line of code is even written.

Don’t become another victim of project failure—adopt a proven Agile software development methodology!

There are many Search Engine Optimization design factors which involve how your HTML is structured (e.g. H1 headings, meta tags, alt tags, etc.) But beyond this alphabet soup of technical factors, a lot of SEO comes down to good copywriting. If you have compelling content which by design contains key words and phrases which you're targeting, you have a foundation for good SEO ranking. Some reason that copywriting is the single most important aspect of SEO. Here's why:

Companies interested in increasing sales rely on copywriting to monetize those leads.

Poor copywriting may attract a high volume of qualified buyers but ones who aren't being convinced to buy your product or service.

Poor copywriting is usually done by people so focused on rankings that they forget about the conversion value of the text (read by real potential customers!) and fixate on tweaking the web page copy solely to please the search robots.

Quality copywriting has headlines and text that snags your attention and entices you to read more. The copy quickly helps the reader to understand that the product meets their needs and answers the questions they had in mind when they typed in their keywords into the search engine.
By priming the customer with good copy, the calls to action like "Buy Now" or "Contact Us For a Free Consultation" the customer will gladly do so because the quality copy has persuaded them in a way poor text could not.

Read more about copywriting and Search Engine Optimization Information.

The rise of Internet technology has forced IT to adopt new methods that inherently combat the issues leading to failed projects. Delivering web systems rapidly to a geographically dispersed customer base is requiring dramatic changes to the way software is constructed and managed.

Today’s new economic structure is characterized by compressed business cycles. Companies are increasingly under pressure to launch new products or services in mere months from conceptualization. In the war of business, bringing new IT solutions to bear on the market is not just a perk—it is a business necessity.

Businesses must adapt to new Agile ways of managing projects—or go out of business. The 60% failure rate is simply no longer a viable option.

Enterprise support services traditionally will cost you an arm and a leg. Rimini Street annual support services can replace Siebel, PeopleSoft, and JD Edwards maintenance and support services while providing 24x7, 30 minute emergency engineer response and premium support features.
They tought a 50% cost savings. If you use Siebel Support today, you might want to get a quote from them about their service alternative.

There are a number of SEO and SEM related glossaries on the Internet, but this is the first one I've seen that is humorous. If you need to learn the difference between 404 errors and Latent Semantic Analysis, this is one place you can learn it and still have fun:

Bot: The term bot is used to mean spider, the kind that SEs send to trawl through your site. It's short for ROBOT which is itself short for something else (which I can't remember right now). ROBOT is officially an endangered species, if the word gets any shorter than bot it may become extinct as it's not known to mate and breed successfully in the wild.

Read more at The Alternative Webmaster Glossary

A new software solution from NetSimplicity: meeting room scheduling and asset management.

NetSimplicity's product automates many day-to-day office administration tasks. It integrates with Microsoft Outlook and other tools to provide for the management and scheduling of rooms, equipment, assets and resources.

This software can replace personal calendaring software and spreadsheets to inventory, map and track all sorts of assets using your Web browser or a handheld scanner. This can help you know what you own, where the asset is at, and what the asset is worth.Their Scheduling Software has a free 30 Day Trial; a great way to test out their asset management system.

"I don’t get it," the project manager complained. We were debriefing after a project launch debacle, and tensions were running high. "We had our best people on the project. We authorized overtime. We even had outside consultants review our systems before we put the system into production. And now this!"

My boss was referring to the high-profile new system we had spent months building—only to have our customers utterly reject it. We had worked hard, planned extensively, and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to develop what was supposed to be a revolutionary system to save millions of dollars for the company.

Yet we had failed.

Even worse, there were no assurances we would fare any better on the next project.

Does this scenario sound familiar? Multiple studies indicate the failure rate for custom software projects is above 60%. This astonishing statistic is tolerated only because software systems are integrally vital to modern organizations. Given this poor track record it is no wonder businesses balk at increasing IT budgets.
Large web site projects suffer from these same ailments. Why do these failures occur? Software projects fail not from lack of effort, but from effort misguided. A nimble, easy-to-use methodology makes projects consistently successful.

Agile software development is the solution.