The Best-Run Businesses Run SAP

 Jump-starting the world economy will be a central topic of discussion among world leaders meeting for the next few days at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

Many of the business leaders in Davos lead large global companies. However, you cannot talk about growth, jobs, and innovation without talking about small (more…)

For a lot of fast growing small businesses and midsize companies the procurement processes that once worked well when the company was small may now seem slow, error prone, and inefficient. Most operations managers would love to streamline these processes to cut costs, gain purchasing power, and collaborate with suppliers. (more…)

When you think of Greeley, Colorado you might think of the noted author James Michener who studied and lived here for several years in the 1930s. While not as tropical as the South Pacific, Greeley is certainly a hot spot for agri-business and the animal health industry since that is home base for Animal Health International (AHI), formerly Lextron, a premier producer and distributor of animal health and feed products. (more…)

Although it is sometimes said that sales is an art, the reality is that sales is a process. This process requires specific skills and activities that can be measured and managed to improve a salesperson’s performance. Unfortunately, front line sales management has a tendency to operate at the individual opportunity level instead of the process level. (more…)

Most small and medium businesses (SMBs) can relate to Albert Einstein’s famous quote that “Information is not knowledge.” Many SMBs have plenty of data, but find it challenging to get the insights from it that they need to run their businesses more effectively and efficiently.

Businesses have always needed the ability to track and measure critical success metrics in a quantifiable way. The problem is that when there’s too much information, people find it difficult to fully comprehend it and make decisions. In fact, more than one- (more…)

Approximately 80% of Forbes 2000 companies run SAP, but what percentage of SMBs (Small and Midsized Businesses) in the world run SAP?  That figure is difficult to calculate, but an increasing number of SMBs are acknowledging the advantages of SAP and are choosing SAP Business One to run their businesses. In fact, over 32,000 SMBs already run Business One. (more…)

HANA is effectively bringing companies into the 21^st century, where business is conducted in real-time.  Small and midsized businesses are turning to HANA to free themselves from their archaic 20^th century business processes, which are no longer capable of maintaining a competitive advantage in today’s market. They are also leveraging HANA to put information into the hands of the business users, giving them the freedom from having to rely on IT.  Given that most  (more…)

How technology can create entrepreneurs at the bottom of the economic pile

Two completely unrelated facts caught my attention the other day. One,  there are about 4 Billion people on the planet who lie squarely at the bottom of the economic pyramid, eking out a marginal existence on about US$2-3 per day, give or take. Two, there are over 825 Million mobile phone subscribers in India and poor rural subscribers have them just as much as their urban richer counterparts. On the face of it, there is little to connect these 2 disparate facts. But if (more…)

At SAP TechEd 2011 this week SAP demonstrated how SAP HANA^TM, the in-memory computing solution from SAP, can benefit companies by analyzing millions of records in milliseconds. This opens the path to adapt, plan and execute in real-time as well as drive rapid business innovation and simplify IT.  But is it right for small and medium enterprises?

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Have you ever walked down the street only to narrowly miss being run over by someone so engrossed in their smartphone that they were in their own world? Okay, happens everyday – especially here in the San Francisco Bay Area.  I used to think, how many dancing cats YouTube videos can these people watch!? (more…)