Mergers & Acquisitions: Impacts on Supply Chain Management
Although the pace of M&A activity has slowed during the current economic downturn,
companies with sufficient cash reserves or secure financing will still take advantage of
opportunistic acquisitions at bargain prices. This White Paper focuses on the three key
elements that must be carefully designed, planned and executed in order to maximize
the benefits of the M&A activity across the Supply Chain.
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Are You Ready for ERP? Gaining Full Value from ERP Implementations in the Public Sector
Many ERP implementations fail to meet their original goals, often for preventable reasons.
Although a successful implementation can be challenging in the private sector, it can
be even more daunting in the public sector. This paper discusses why public sector ERP
projects are often more difficult, and presents ideas to help maximize the value of your
ERP system.
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Optimizing the Value Chain: Collaborative Customer Knowledge in Global Insurance
Customer information, the foundation of customer relationship management (CRM), must be treated as a corporate asset that allows organizations to compete in a complex and rapidly evolving world.
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The What’s and How’s of ETL Architecture
This paper is basically a high level description of a highly technical subject -
Extract, Transform, Load (ETL) Architecture. It is written for IT management and professionals to address and explain an area which often has been overlooked.
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Process Automation for the Procurement of Direct Materials
This paper will present an analysis of a plan-driven procurement process for direct
materials. This analysis includes not only the activities and steps in such a process,
but also the data sets associated with each activity. Automation of this process will be
explored to highlight where an organization can find process improvements that lead to
positive impact on the bottom line. Several recent studies are referenced to identify the
benefits companies have obtained by automating the plan-driven direct procurement
process. Purchasing executives can use this information to analyze their own direct
material procurement processes to determine what benefits might be obtained.
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Business Intelligence Best Practices: Transforming Data into Information
The introduction of information technology systems decades ago helped organizations worldwide benefit from more efficient operations and greater productivity. Over the
years, companies have acquired volumes of data in these applications, but much of this data is trapped in multiple, disparate systems which cannot easily communicate. As a result, firms must expend considerable effort to tap into the full potential of these data assets to strategically maneuver the business in a rapidly changing and competitive marketplace. The latest evolution in IT is “business intelligence,” which promises to help businesses better tap into and leverage their data assets. But what, exactly, is BI? How can it help? How is it implemented? And what can it do for your company? Essentially a primer on BI, this paper describes BI, how it can help you, and best practices to consider when launching or refining a business intelligence initiative.
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Conquering the Challenge of Global SAP Implementations: SAP Rollout Strategies and Best Practices
Implementing SAP on a global scale presents many challenges and
issues that require careful planning and preparation. This whitepaper
provides strategies and best practices on how to proactively manage
challenges that arise for an international SAP project. It also evaluates
various approaches to template development plans and rollout
strategies. This whitepaper is a hands-on guide, based on real-life
lessons learned, that IT and business leaders can use to achieve
successful international SAP implementations.
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Learn how Endsleigh Insurance is using Microsoft applications to gain competitive edge with their business.
Using their body of datawarehousing best practices as an architectural framework, CIBER helped the 
