Author Archive for Louis Columbus
Louis Columbus is Senior Manager, Enterprise Systems at Cincom Systems, concentrating on assisting clients with their channel management, sales and product configuration system strategies. Pricing and revenue management strategies enabled through Cincom Acquire are also his key areas of focus. Louis is a former senior analyst with AMR Research where he served both companies adopting enterprise software and vendors with their product and go-to-market strategies. He has worked with enterprise clients on defining solutions to their channel management, order management and service lifecycle management strategies. He is the author of fifteen books on technology and two books on analyst relations. His book, Getting Results from your Analyst Relations Strategies, can be downloaded for free (http://bit.ly/yDKWs). Mr. Columbus also teaches graduate-level international business and marketing courses at Webster-Loyola Marymount University, Webster University and University of California, Irvine.
Reasons 6-10 to Automate Manufacturing Compliance
Compliance is the competitive strategy of making sure every product produced every day will exceed customer expectations and, as a result, drive up sales and profits.
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Reasons 1-5 to Automate Manufacturing Compliance
Study the top-performing companies across all manufacturing industries and a plain and simple truth emerges: the ability to produce consistently high-quality products, regardless of the forces impacting demand, suppliers, pricing, or channels, is the key to accomplishing revenue and profit goals.
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The Future of ERP in Quoting Systems
The paradox of channel management, quoting, pricing and product configuration strategies is that they are so unique, so inherently different from any other ERP process that they continue to resist consolidation – even in the midst of a recession.
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ERP is About Enabling Change, Not Stopping It
ERP systems have transitioned from being an enterprise-wide system for financial reporting to becoming a synchronization point of suppliers, fulfillment, customer relationships and services. As a result, they are critical to companies being able to change their go-to-market strategies and stay responsive to the ma
The Truth About ERP Integration – Part III
Bottom line: The greatest gains from ERP integration begin when the most talented contributors in organizations have a chance to think more and react less. Unshackling them from their desks begins by vowing to stop swivel chair integration.
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The Truth About ERP Integration – Part II
The legacy, home-grown and long-standing ERP systems in companies are the ones that really test the limits of what modern Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) technologies can do.
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Why Your ERP Systems Need To Stay In Step with Customer Needs
It’s time to challenge your preconceived ideas of just what an ERP system is and is not.
First, it cannot be just a system for coordinating the internal processes in your company. Why? If you ignore the customer-facing processes like order capture, multi-channel management, and the entire area of channel-based pricing, the competitive dynamics of your industry will pass you buy – fast
The Truth About ERP Integration – Part I
I’ll never forget a call I was on with a client while at AMR Research discussing how they had created a work-around to get their years-in-the-making ERP system to communicate with their legacy channel management systems. “So did you guys just go for the EAI platform from the ERP vendor?”
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Fundamentals of ERP Systems: Part II
The use of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems is rapidly changing to reflect the changing requirements of manufacturers’ business models in general and their specific needs for better aligning manufacturing and service to customer needs.
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Fundamentals of Enterprise Resource Planning Systems: Part I
The basic concept of an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system is to act as the coordination and synchronization point of inbound supplies, raw materials, subassemblies, matching up customer orders while also scheduling production and manufacturing resources.
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