Business Automation and Software Blog

With all the technology available to us, the speed of business is moving faster than ever. This can be a good thing when it comes to streamlined processes that get your products out to customers sooner, but rushing other things in business—such as new software implementation—could come at a cost.

What is good financial leadership? A recent survey of 1,500 financial executives revealed that only 11.5 percent actually qualified as leaders, despite being in a unique position to lead. What does it take to be known as a good financial leader? Is it finding the right business systems or accounting software for your company? Or is it being a go-getter, a decision-maker, and a resource-finder for your teams?

In an effort to encourage stateside consumers to purchase American-made products, President Trump has imposed taxes on imports from China, Mexico, Canada, and the EU. Each country has retaliated, yet the retaliation with the most eyes on it comes from China. The U.S. has imposed not one but three rounds of tariffs on Chinese products, totaling $250 billion worth of goods.

It’s interesting that even as we are in the midst of Industry 4.0—a fusion between technologies that blurs the lines between the physical, digital, and biological—there are some areas of business that are still woefully behind the digital power curve. One area that specifically suffers is supply chain systems.

At one time, the height of warehouse automation was the conveyor belt. In the past several years, automation has improved dramatically with the cost-effective availability of robots. Not only that, robots continue to evolve, now needing fewer restrictions—such as tracks or cables—to move about and complete a task.

Computer viruses are nothing new. In fact, they’re older than you might think. First theorized in the 1940s and published in 1966 by mathematician John von Neumann, the first real computer virus would appear only 5 years later in 1971, the Creeper Virus. Computer users have been dealing with viruses, leaks, and hacks ever since. No matter how cautious you are, there’s always a chance that a virus might infect your system and paralyze your business until IT can patch your system.

Four decades ago, Jimmy Carter was president of the United States, Star Wars episode IV hit theaters, Radio Shack introduced the TRS-80 Micro Computer, and enterprise resource planning software was born. In the past 40 years, the ERP industry has transformed into a solution that is discovery led and drives business benefit. As providers publish ERP content online almost daily—even with the intent of providing more information and being helpful—it’s still easy to get overwhelmed, making it difficult to understand what is and isn’t achievable from the solution. You may also find yourself wondering who the best partner is for finding the best solution for your business needs.

Recently a black and white photo of a young woman standing by a towering stack of paper circulated around social media. It doesn’t sound impressive until one learns that the woman is Margaret Hamilton, the year is 1969, and the paper pile that is nearly taller than her is the guidance software she and her MIT team produced for the Apollo project. It’s a familiar sight to Baby Boomers who learned to type on typewriters and wrote programs on index cards. It’s a downright perplexing site for millennials who have been able to access the internet on phones that fit in their pockets for most of their lives.

The speed of business continues to increase, and unless your organization is running in front of the competition, you risk being left in the dust. With Amazon Prime 2-day shipping becoming the “norm,” more and more, customers are expecting faster order fulfillment. The only way to meet this increasing demand is to ensure you have an effectively managed warehouse. Optimizing your warehouse management system and operations will benefit your customers, your employees, and your business as a whole.

Cloud services are becoming more and more popular and available as technology continues to improve. Earlier this year, Garner projected that the public cloud services market will grow 21.4 percent in 2018 for a total of $186.4 billion. Software as a service (SaaS) such as ERP platforms is the largest segment of that market, with a projected revenue of $73.6 billion.