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For a business person, accounting is a backwards-looking activity. Looking forward, out the ‘front windscreen’ of your business, you see the next customers to win, to next orders to fulfill, the next payments to collect. By comparison, accounting is what you see in the rear-view mirror: a mundane recording of what has already gone by.

Depressing as it may be for the more sales-oriented types, accounting is still a critical ingredient for business success. Businesses who ignore it or screw it up don’t last very long.

So, getting accounting right is critical for a business, and this means that getting the accounting software right is critical too. And here is where things are now becoming tricky.

Supply chain management is the "chain" linking each element of the manufacturing and supply process from raw materials through to the end user, including several organizational boundaries. As the process involves several organizations, information flow plays a vital role to the success of the supply chain management especially in terms of keeping all the components (i.e. suppliers, manufactures, logistics, warehouses etc.) connected. Innovation in technology has successfully integrated factory automation and enhanced communication devices. These technologies are applied to help supply chain planning, collaboration among customers, manufactures, and suppliers. With the use of web technology, customers may order more easily, manufacturers will forecast demand better given the instant customer feedbacks, upstream suppliers will also have relative correct date and reduce the bull-whip effect.

The advent of ERP has significantly boosted efficiency and simplified back-office process automation in a wide range of manufacturing industries. This spreads across discrete and process production based industries. The biggest beneficiaries of such automation were without a doubt the large enterprises as they were the early adopters of ERP systems. Their SME counterparts were fence sitters, but soon realized the potential ERP offered and followed suit.

This is because efficiency is a common factor to all irrespective of size and geographical spread. While enterprises grew in size, ERP grew in its value proposition. ERP got more verticalized and several built in tools for data drill downs became key ERP elements. Besides, ERP moved from client server to web architected platforms and it made sense to many enterprises to take advantage of the significant cost benefit that is achieved by dropping their slower LAN/WAN/VPN/Lease line based systems and adopt a web based ERP.

How many times have you, the procurement professional, established an enterprise-wide contract only to find your staff making purchases from other suppliers? Even worse, when you find out that they are making purchases from other suppliers, you realize that they are making purchases at a cost that is very unfavorable to the contract that you have established both for strategic and cost reasons! There is a term for this in the procurement industry, and I guarantee you’ve heard of it: maverick buying. The purpose of this article is to present some important ideas on how you can prevent your staff from engaging in this cost-wasting practice of maverick buying.

In the manufacturing world two very common terms are procurement and sourcing. To the unknowing person, these terms often have the same meaning, but this is incorrect. Although these terms are often used interchangeably, their meanings are different enough that interchanging the two terms can lead many to confusion.

The most likely reason these two terms are freely interchanged is because they both involve purchasing. The terms procurement and sourcing both lie under the large umbrella that is purchasing. Since purchasing is a very general term, it gives the two terms vaguely similar meanings. Each term is a method in which a company can obtain goods or services that meet customer’s needs at the lowest possible cost. In addition to finding an affordable way to obtain goods and services, procurement and sourcing methods must also avoid sacrifices in quality or service. The difference between the two is that although procurement lies under the purchasing umbrella, it also has aspects that come out from under the umbrella, making it a bit more than just purchasing.

You have diligently gone through the process of establishing which of your subscribers are actually inactive and more importantly why. There could be a number of reasons for this, but one of the most likely is that your content simply isn’t interesting enough to grab their attention, either in the subject line or in the body of your emails. These are the subscribers that you want to target your re-activation campaign at.

Re-engaging (re-activating) your subscribers is a good idea for a number of reasons. Firstly, the process costs less than if you were to try and acquire new subscribers. Also, having inactive subscribers on your list can harm your reputation and deliverability. This is because client interaction is becoming increasingly important in the filtering decisions with ISP’s. With the aim of identifying spammers, these ISP’s turn old email addresses in to ‘spam traps’ or ‘honeypots’ and monitor email marketers that constantly send emails to these invalid addresses.

In a supermarket, more than 90% items are recognized by barcode reader / scanner. We have all noticed that, whenever the cashier of the supermarket scans a barcode using a laser device, item description and price appears in the computer screen. Do you know how the magic works?

A barcode, is a code using multiple lines and spaces of varying widths, designed to represent some alpha-numeric characters. The barcodes generally are read with a laser scanner, which measures reflected light and interprets the code into numbers and letters. The barcode scanner passes the data to the attached computer or stores it to it’s internal memory.

While reading articles on Toyota's Production System I came across the term Kanban. Kanban is derived from the combination of two Japanese works, "Kan" meaning visual and "ban" meaning card or board. Kanban is a process relating to lean and just in time production, it is a scheduling system that helps determine what to produce, when to produce and how much to produce. Kanban maintains inventory levels by sending visual signals for production and delivery of new shipment as material is consumed.  The signals are tracked through the replenishment cycle and bring extraordinary visibility to suppliers and buyer.

The Kanban system was developed by Toyota after they observed how supermarkets operated in United States. Toyota observed that the supermarkets only stocked items that they believed they could sell, and the customers only took what they needed. Toyota decided to adapt this process in the production system, considering themselves as customers of their suppliers and their suppliers as stores. Toyota would go to its suppliers and only get what it needed, and the suppliers would then restock.

Can you honestly say that you feel the love emanating from your loyal subscribers?  If the answer is ‘no’ and the feeling is more like that of licking a cactus, then you could assume that you aren’t engaging with your subscribers very well, if at all. As you know, engagement is one of the first things you need to establish and meticulously maintain if you want to reach the goals you have in mind. If the thought of this strikes fear in your heart and mind, fear not! Engaging with subscribers has become infinitely easier over the past few years and today there are scores of different online platforms you can choose to connect with your valuable customers on.

Today, 39% of the overall vacation trips are booked on the Internet. Email marketing is the most cost effective and easiest way  to communication online.

Email marketing is an ideal complement for your website for a decent presence over the Internet. With one among the NGR's packages that fit your needs the most you'll be able to increase your online bookings and give a boost to your CRM strategy.

B2B Marketers are trying to make everyone happy. The CEO needs revenue. The sales team needs qualified leads. Customers need information. Everyone is looking at marketing to make it happen. If you're a B2B marketer, you may feel like the success or failure of your company rests entirely on your shoulders.

So, how did B2B Marketing become responsible for everything, including sales? Is there a way to fix it?

We attempt to answer those questions by examining the evolution of modern marketing that has brought us to this point. Nothing happened overnight but here we are, feeling like we need to do more when in fact the solution may be doing less and spreading the responsibility. First, some background…