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CLIPS
Excerpted from Network Computing Magazine
Erp: On the Rise Again
In 1999, Hershey Foods Corp.'s revenues fell 12 percent, a decline that company officials blamed largely on Hershey's inability to get new products to market during the Halloween and Christmas seasons. This debacle was linked to its SAP R/3 implementation. While Hershey insiders blamed their ERP (enterprise resource planning) system, outside critics assigned equal fault to the company's decision to go live with ERP close to the holidays.
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Excerpted from Texas Technology Magazine
Same Time, Same Channel?
Mixing traditional television programming with the Internet has opened up avenues for entertainment and communications
When it comes to television, one size does not fit all audiences. If the Internet has its way, it won't have to. The term known as interactive television describes the ability to broadcast via the Internet what was once considered programming for television only. Television programming has traditionally been a one-way street. The viewer watches what networks decide they will watch. But now the viewer can interact and participate in the programming at their liking thus allowing the viewer to be interactive. For example, viewers can answer trivia questions, participate in polls, receive details on a news story, find a convenient retail location, or order brochures and they can do all of this as a program is broadcasted over the Internet.
People love to watch television said Patrick Sansonetti, co-founder and vice president of business operations for Rachis Corp. (www.rachis.com/) , which provides software solutions for the interactive TV market. They also have grown to love the Internet. Just imagine when the two are combined! Some people have already begun to watch TV and be on the Internet at the same time so that they can instant message during a TV show or play along with Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. Once TV shows and the Internet are on the same device, it will be so easy for everyone to do.
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Excerpted from Ecommerce Times
E-commerce Companies Experiment With Free Shipping
The buy decision is made, the online order's placed, and you're ready to check out. Up pops your shipping charges. These charges can make online buying less than competitive., and some online retailers know it. As a result, they're throwing in a sweetener for the later part of your check out - free shipping.
About $1 Billion In Four Years
With the onslaught of e-commerce, shipping has become big business. "We think that the e-commerce transportation services market is about million today and will be in excess of $1 billion in about four years," according to Bill Zollars, President
of Yellow Freight Transportation Systems. From a consumer's perspective, shipping is the cost of the convenience from ordering online. Others would rather trudge to the mall than pay the shipping, and several e-commerce retailers are trying to accommodate consumers with a free shipping promotion.
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Excerpted from The Army Times
Those Who Can Do…Teach!
"Within the first month of full-time teaching I had a student throw his desk across the back of the room because I would not give him the answers to the test questions (that he was in the process of taking). Two days later he was back on class. I began to feel like Sidney Poitier in To Sir With Love.
That didn't stop Leonard A. Zigment , a retired Lt. Colonel in the U.S. Air Force from pursuing his second career as a Math Teacher at Mesa Ridge High School. One solution to the shortage of teachers in America just might be under our own nose - those getting out of the military.
"The teacher shortage issue is not a new issue, but it is a more pressing, more important and a more relevant issue today as teacher retirements and student enrollments are soaring, and the need for qualified new teachers grows more urgent" says Melinda Anderson, a spokesperson for the National Education Association. "With a projected need for 2 million more teachers over the next 10 years, policymakers and educators have recognized the need to meet current demand with more creative options. "
Teacher shortages are mostly found in Math and Science, Special Education, and some Foreign Language subjects, though lately they're seen in other subjects as well. Military members are often already trained in these subjects, and in addition, they know how to administer and practice discipline in a group setting.
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Excerpted From Desktop Engineering Magazine:
It’s In The Details
Configuration Management Tools are nudging their way into engineering applications – big time.
Combine every nut, bolt, and screw with hundreds of designers, engineers, subcontractors, purchasing agents, CAD operators and other engineering specialists, and the permutations of potential project problems can make you cringe. Because of these potential problems, the concept of configuration management has been gaining value.
To understand why configuration management is gaining ground is to understand the changing role of engineering in the firm. The engineering role of the enterprise is being expedited by network tools.
With each month of passing in an e-business environment, a new application is born. Enterprises are being integrated to the hilt with internal tools such as enterprise resource planning (ERP), finite element analysis (FEA), computer aided drafting (CAD) and product data management (PDM) software and technologies.
Customers are demanding that whatever an enterprise provides – be it a product, resource, system, facility or property, - it must be created faster and with minimal defects. In response to this, firms are using these network tools to reduce their cycle time and make their overall processes more efficient. Multi-functional areas are working together with more convenience and speed afforded by these tools .
The tools have meant that the engineering team is hardly independent, but very much interdependent with other players in the enterprise. The collaborative community has arrived.
While collaboration allows for multiple functions to be working on an engineering effort concurrently, it also presents risk to project management. As mentioned , the complexity of input into a design when combined with the number of people doing different things means that many things can go wrong. It’s the old “one hand doesn’t know what the other hand is doing”.
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Excerpted From IT Recruiter Magazine:
Networking Their Way Out
At-risk juveniles find new lives through Cisco’s networking academies
Dressed in a state-issued gray t-shirt and blue jeans, a young man with a crew cut and a tattoo on his forearm intently studies elements of network logic. It has been a while since he cruised the drug-ridden neighborhoods of Texas’ inner cities with fellow gang members and dropped out of school.
He’s back in school now. Only this time, he’s learning about networks, servers, systems logic and the nuts and bolts of keeping a network running. An ordinary day at school, you might ask?
Look closer, and you’ll understand it’s far from ordinary.
In this school, the average student is between 16 and 19 years old with a history of criminal charges that range from drug possession to sexual offense and aggravated assault. Welcome to the Cisco Networking Academy at the Gainesville School for Juvenile Offenders -- a fresh tilt in creating qualified IT professionals.
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Excerpted From Contract Professional Magazine:
G. A. Sullivan And The Fine Art Of Getting And Keeping Customers
A Look At The SBA's 1999 Small Business Person Of The Year And The Company He Built From Programming IBM PC's Almost Twenty Years Ago
Starting with just start-up capital, 41 year old Greg Sullivan has risen from a self-employed contract code writer to CEO of a multi-million dollar software company. The story of his success gets even better.
Just 18 years after going out on his own, Sullivan has built a company with a few things to brag about: The 1999 Small Business Person of the Year; placement on Inc. 500 list of “fastest growing private companies in America” for the second consecutive year in 1998; and placement on Deloitte & Touche Technology Fast 500 list of “fastest growing technology companies in the U. S.” for the second consecutive year in 1998. When a company achieves such accolades and awards, there's something behind the corporation's front. Something others can learn from. So, what's his secret?
"If you want to succeed in the IT industry, you have to understand your customers' business problems and solve them, " says Sullivan, the founder and CEO of G. A. Sullivan. With revenues expected to grow well over million in the year 2000, G.A. Sullivan has built a business on winning customers and keeping them.
The company has made a habit of listening to customers and finding solutions to their problems and needs. Lately, this means finding Internet solutions and implementing those solutions with the right application. Sullivan’s customer-centric approach adds value, obviously, or customers would not keep coming back. Twelve of the company's clients, some of them Fortune 500 companies, have contracted with GAS for over five years or more.
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