Vertical Industry Specific Software Whitepapers and Ebooks

Global challenges force ??nancial organizations to seek a new technology foundation for business. The combination of Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) provides ultimate expandability cost effectively and unlimbers organizations for SaaS rapid change. SaaS is a delivery model that unloads software over the internet in a one-to-many model which is combined with a repository of SOA components provides the ability to align technology with business

This whitepaper discusses various ways of filtering companies for electronic trading purposes.It covers methods of filtering companies by sector and industry, how to filter companies using information from balance sheets, cashflow and income statement documents. Also, reporting and visualization of the filtering results will be covered.

Businesses are looking to make technology investments to prepare for growth. But with the economic recovery uneven and uncertain, they remain cautious about these investments. One thing is clear: Any technology investments must deliver value to the business. To define this value and corresponding costs, businesses need to define a business case for their technology investments and build a framework for measuring ROI. This whitepaper describes a 7-step process that will help organizations build their own business case for an ERP investment. While the economy continues to improve, high unemployment and consumer thriftiness mean that the recovery remains anemic and uncertain. Thus, while businesses are now preparing for growth by increasing technology investments from the low rates of the Great Recession, they remain careful with their investment dollars. They are no longer willing to invest in technology for its own sake; instead, they are focused on exploiting technology to create value for the business. To this end, businesses are looking to integrate technology into the fabric of the business and use it to support business goals and objectives. For example, CIO Magazine's "Annual State of the 1 CIO Survey" found that some 30 percent of the 594 IT leaders identified "meeting or beating business goals" as a critical core competency.

Personalisation is a highly effective strategy to engage, acquire and retain site visitors. Marketers leverage website behavioural data to tailor offers and content to visitors relevant to their known interests and browsing history. The most effective vehicles for personalisation are personalised product recommendations and personalised emails. Often the biggest challenge of a personalisation programme is simply getting started and creating a framework to continuously manage, measure and optimise your initiative. Without a proper framework, the scope of personalisation programmes can become vast and even overwhelming. in this brief supplement to the white paper: A Marketing Imperative: Profile, Personalise and Profit. We outline five simple tips to create, implement and optimise personalisation programmes for product recommendations and email: 1. Set campaign goals 2. Put yourself in your customers' shoes 3. Keep it Simple 4. Measure, test and optimise your performance 5. expand beyond the fundamentals 1. Set Campaign Goals Marketing success is measured via quantitative and tangible results. Management is more likely to support and fund programmes that will impact the bottom line, so it is imperative to set campaign goals and metrics of measurement to illustrate the goals and forecasted success of your programme. To create effective metrics, it important to benchmark against past non-personalised programme performance and modify the performance metrics based on the impact of personalisation; marketers should leverage their web analytics and marketing optimisation solutions to view past programme performance.

Let's Make a Deal. To Tell the Truth. The Price is Right. All of these game show titles effectively sum up the challenges retailers face in today's market. Intense competition, and new retail channels, such as eBay and Amazon, create opportunities around price. A complicated global economy with offshore manufacturing creates questions about products arriving on time and if they are manufactured with consumer safety in mind. Shifting consumer demographics and buying choices increase market volatility. A recent study by accounting firm BDO Seidman surveyed the largest U.S. public retailers about their risk factors: 90 percent named consolidation and competition; 83 percent cited economic worries; and 79 percent said foreign suppliers. Although competitive and consolidation factors can be minimized through proper application of technology, it's in the third area � managing a supply chain contingent on foreign suppliers � where business intelligence (BI) and service-oriented architecture (SOA) can add the most immediate value. These shifts are forcing retailers to reevaluate their strategies to remain competitive in this marketplace. Success in the industry comes down to having the products people want, at the right price. And right now your organization needs to know what's selling, where, what's in stock, and quickly you can move goods to where they are selling, or replicate promotions to ensure sales.

According to industry experts, organizations that systematically manage the life cycle of their IT assets will reduce the cost per asset by as much as 30% in the first year alone. Yet today, many organizations have little or no insight into exactly what assets they own, let alone how they can optimize assets throughout their life cycle, from requisition to disposal. The same holds true for major IT investments. More and more, IT managers are challenged to generate strategic value, but with as much as 75% of the IT budget allocated to maintaining the status quo and "keeping the lights on", this goal remains beyond the reach of most organizations. Companies need a way to identify and consolidate costs across assets to plan spending better and increase the reliability of the budgeting process. CA provides you with this guide to the basics of IT asset management to help you optimize the use of your IT assets and maximize their business value. The IT Asset Management Maturity Level Summary Chart included in this paper is designed to assist you in assessing the state of your current ITAM processes and setting your roadmap for improvement. Once you have determined the maturity of your organization's IT asset management program, you can take advantage of the modular products in the CA IT Asset Management (ITAM) solution.

IT Asset Management (ITAM) is a cornerstone of IT Service Management (ITSM) yet is often omitted from existing ITSM implementations or initiatives. Version 3 of the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL�) expands the processes, functions and roles in the service life cycle. However, it still does not provide enough details on key process and functional integration points for ITAM. This lack of detail introduces significant challenges for organizations looking to implement ITSM processes to drive higher quality, stability and availability of IT services. The asset life cycle has a direct impact on the service life cycle and vice-versa. Today organizations are largely focused on continuously improving ITSM-related processes to increase service levels and manage risk to deliver value to the business, effectively managing costs to do more for less and avoid unnecessary expenditures and controlling the changes and IT resource expansion associated with evolving business initiatives and technology. The basis for the improvement of ITSM processes for many organizations is the adoption of ITIL best practices using the service life cycle approach. As more organizations adopt ITIL best practices, it is important to recognize and understand the role of ITAM in improving ITSM process. A comprehensive IT Asset Management is fundamental to managing the infrastructure that supports the delivery of IT Services to the business.

Enterprise Management AssociatesTM (EMATM) research has uncovered several trends and best practices in the industry around asset management and asset intelligence. These best practices are focused on solving some of the most difficult challenges facing enterprises today. Business growth that outpaces increases in IT headcount coupled with escalating complexity in managing the infrastructure are two factors threatening to overwhelm companies with inefficient IT organizations. In order to increase IT efficiency, one of the fundamental building blocks is good asset management practices, a standardized environment that is automatically discovered and holistically visualized. Tools that address issues such as intelligence about assets in the environment, deviations and drift in hardware and software, visualization of dominant configurations, and integration with other IT domains (i.e., portfolio management, incident and problem management, etc.) are becoming absolute requirements for companies interested in advancing their asset management to the next generation and improve IT efficiency. This white paper addresses asset management and asset intelligence in the larger context of overall IT objectives by providing insight into the industry and future trends. A case study for Erie Insurance illustrates the principles advanced in the paper. Finally, a review of the current offerings from CA, specifically focused on Asset Intelligence r11.2,

Web conferencing has been changing the way many people work for over a decade. While the technology has several applications � general business meetings, Web seminars, and on-line training to name a few � one that is often overlooked is the team meeting. By nature, team meetings are collaborative affairs where a repetitive group of participants present data, introduce their ideas and perspectives, wrangle and reach consensus, and then often produce some sort of deliverable. Almost all teams are facing increased time pressure, heavier workloads, and tight operating cost constraints. As the globalized economy continues to evolve, the need to involve team members independent of their location is also increasing. With all of the pressures being faced by teams, has the role of Web conferencing changed? What are the values that teams are realizing � and can they be quantified? To find out, Wainhouse Research conducted a series of a dozen in-depth interviews with individuals who use Web conferencing as a member of a team. While the traditional values are once again mentioned, we were pleased to find a number of new values are being realized as well � many of which indicate a "maturation" in the role that conferencing plays to enable and catalyze the team meeting process.

Many project managers don't know what to expect from a testing organization. They don't know what the group does, how the product is going to be tested, when things will be done, what deliverables to expect, or how to find this information out. Complicating matters, some test managers want to keep things this way. We've been successful at managing both development projects and testing groups, mainly for companies that develop and publish packaged software. We see the testing effort as an integral part of the overall process of developing an appropriate quality product on time and within budget. To succeed at this, though, the project manager must be able to see schedules, to receive meaningful deliverables, and to recognize genuine problems, which test groups�like all other software groups� have in plenty. This article is written for project managers, with suggestions on how to work with a test group and hold them accountable for their work on your project. In particular, we recommend that you: (1) assess the risks for your project as a whole; (2) assess the risks associated with the testing sub-project; (3) lay out criteria for important milestones, and stick to them; (4) develop a project plan the testing sub-project; and (5) track testing progress against the plan.