Top Six Reasons to Buy Rather Than Build an Inventory Management Solution
Is building your own inventory management solution really your best bet? The issues that companies face when they decide to build a solution in house are numerous: Scarce development resources, project cost overruns, delivery delays, unexpected technical issues, long-term maintenance issues. For these reasons, you should consider purchasing hosted, flexible, "out-of-the-box" vendor managed inventory (VMI) and web-based inventory solutions that can be running in five days, all at a fixed monthly price - with no delays, low risk and a lower total cost of ownership.At Invendia we've often seen companies struggle with the decision to buy a technology or to build that solution in-house. The decision criteria typically are:?Availability of qualified development resources?Long-term maintenance staffing?Implementation time and costs?Project risk?Process understanding?3rd party objectivitySo, what are the top six reasons to buy rather than build an inventory management solution?6. Availability of qualified development resources. If you have available resources that are experienced in developing web-based, distributed solutions then you should consider building your own solution in house.
In addition, your staff should ideally be knowledgeable about leveraging development standards such as J2EE or .NET. If not, you should source an off-the-shelf solution that can readily integrate with your existing applications. 5. Long term maintenance staffing. Once you have a solution, how are you going to keep it current, from both a technology and from a process point-of-view? For example, in the last few years RFID, collaboration, wireless and countless other developments have forced companies to update their processes.
With ever increasing innovations, you need to ensure that you are staffed to manage not only the system upgrades but any errors that you may discover. If you either don't have the staffing for this or don't want the headache, then you should consider a "bought and maintained" solution.4. Implementation time and cost. How quickly do you need a solution? If you have ample time to scope your project, build a project plan, free-up resources, develop and test the application, then you should consider building the solution. Furthermore, do you have the budget to pull off an in-house project? What are the opportunity costs? What is your company's track record of getting IT projects completed on-time and on-budget?3.
Project risk. One major reason that organizations build in-house is that they want to build expertise in an emerging technology. Does this meet your organization's business goals? What if you find that the learning curve is long and steeper than you anticipated? Are you willing to take that risk? When you are scoping your project, have you considered all of the issues? Are you willing to stick to your original scope when your users demand new features (scope creep)?If you cannot mitigate these issues, then you should strongly consider a fixed price, packaged solution.2. Process understanding. Collaborative inventory management(VMI) processes are complex and varied as your trading partner needs.
If you have many diverse trading partners (or may have in the future), building your own solution may not be a great idea (see "long term maintenance" above). Additionally, your trading partners may want to extend the use of the collaboration solution to their trading partners. Can they do this? Only if you are willing to get into the solution environment. This is especially important as your trading partners start to get more and more benefit from these solutions and may force you to switch to another solution.1. Third-party objectivity.
A critical concern for trading partners is that of data confidentiality and security. Most trading partners are leery of exchanging critical and confidential and feel more comfortable with a third party managing the data. Is this a critical issue for your organization? SummaryIn the nascent days of any technology, be it the car or software, many companies think that they can build the better mousetrap. However, as the technology evolves and becomes more complete, there are significant barriers to entry. As the collaborative inventory management field continues to evolve, there are enough reasons to give pause before deciding to build a solution in-house..
Ken Town is VP of Research and Technology for Invendia, a leading provider of vendor managed inventory and web-based inventory solutions. He can be reached at kentown1@invendia.com or http://www.invendia.com.STILL MORE CRAZY COLLEGE ROOMMATE STORIES
This story could constitute a practical joke or a revenge. My junior year in college myself and three friends had a house and since we went to a relatively small school it became somewhat of the party house. For one of my roommates 21st birthday a friend of ours gave him a handle of the cheapest whiskey (it came in a plastic bottle and the dude that gave it to us had an entire case of these handles!) I have ever run across.A few weeks later we had thrown a small gathering and had people in and out of the house. Well I noticed that (and I mean no offense to frat boys when I finish this sentence) some 'think you are cool trying to take our cheap whiskey'-fratboy walked outside and tried to stash our cheap whiskey to take at a later point. Little did he know I noticed this.
So instead of taking our cheap whiskey back, I tell one of my other roommates and we decide to piss into the whiskey the rest of the night. When we started pissing in the whiskey there was about a quarter of the...
STILL MORE CRAZY COLLEGE ROOMMATE STORIES
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Producer Dan Workman hits the ground running in 2004.
(ContentDesk) April 16, 2004 -- Producer Dan Workman hits the ground running only weeks after the official launch of Dan Workman Music.A VIP Party and showcase during SxSW 2004, featuring singer/songwriter Sarah Sharp, marked the beginning of Workman's long-time aspirations taking form. After a long tenure engineering for ZZ Top, Workman moved on to ultimately take over historical SugarHill Studios in Houston, TX.
Known in the audio community for his stellar mixing and engineering on such high profile projects as Beyonce's Dangerously in Love and many Destiny's Child projects, Workman has contributed to a number of successes in the international music scene. His list of credits also include Smashmouth, Enrique Iglesias, Lyle Lovett and Clay Walker. Sarah Sharp's debut release, Fourth Person, was completed just in time for Austin's SxSW Music Conference.
With three other projects in production and several more on the books, Dan Workman Music is kicking it into high gear...
Producer Dan Workman hits the ground running in 2004.
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iCal. The Elegant Desktop Calendar of Apple
iCal is a personal calendar application made by Apple Computer that runs on the Mac OS X operating system. iCal can also refer to iCalendar, the standard calendar format used by the iCal calendar application. iCal was the first calendar application to offer support for multiple calendars and the ability to publish/subscribe calendars to WebDAV server.
Apple's new calendar application, iCal, is available for Mac OS X. iCal makes it easy to publish and share your calendar data online, either through Apple or third-party services. Perhaps of more interest to developers, iCal stores its data in the standard calendar (.ics) file format, which is used by other calendar programs, like Mozilla Calendar.
This means you can take advantage of existing libraries to develop your own applications for sharing and publishing iCal files.
Special Features:
Keeps track of events and appointments, allows multiple calendar views (such as calendars for...
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CAN YOU BE A GOOD ROOMMATE?-TAKE THE ROOMMATE TEST
Test yourself with our roommate personality test.1. Do you tend to find fault with others? Yes or no2. Are you a moody person? Yes or no3. Have you ever had a check bounce before? Yes or no4. Do you generally pay your bills after the due date? Yes or no5.
Do you wait for someone else to contact the landlord about a maintenance problem? Yes or no6. Do others call you a "messy person". Yes or no7. Do you start quarrels with other people? Yes or no8. Are you regularly late for class or work? Yes or no9.
Do you frequently have friends over on the weekend to party? Yes or no10. Is it difficult for you to make new friends? Yes or no11. Do you like to keep the volume of your TV or stereo way up? Yes or no12. Is it difficult for you to forgive people? Yes or no13. Do you need to be alone a lot? Yes or no14.
Are you a "neat freak"? Yes or no15. Do you usually leave dirty dishes in the sink? Yes or no16. Do you smoke inside the house? Yes or no17. Do you regularly get drunk?...
CAN YOU BE A GOOD ROOMMATE?-TAKE THE ROOMMATE TEST
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Red Hat Society Tea Party at the San Francisco Zoo, July 24, 2004
The Strutting Peacocks, an Red Hat Society Chapter, will be throwing a Red Hat Society Tea Party on July 24th at the San Francisco Zoo. The Strutting Peacocks and guests will mingle with the resident live peacocks at the San Francisco Zoo. The catering services at the zoo have graciously agreed to create a tea service for the Red Hats, something that is not normally on their menu. Over 100 Red Hatters have registered to dress in their purple outfits and red hats to meet, eat, play games, win prizes, and celebrate the birthday of the Queen Peacock, Amber-Leigh. Saturday July 24, 200410 AM
Zoo opensNoon - 1 PM
High Tea in the Lorikeet Meadow Tent1 PM - 4 PM
Games, Prizes, Zoo Tour 5 PM
Zoo closesFor more information about this event, please visit www.thestruttingpeacocks.com/birthdayzoo.htmThe Red Hat Society provides fun social opportunities for mature women.
Inspired...
Red Hat Society Tea Party at the San Francisco Zoo, July 24, 2004
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Why You Should Use Turnkey Websites To Jumpstart Your Ecommerce Activity
Most people looking to do business online have heard of turnkey websites. They seem to be a one stop solution to getting an online business going without all the usual hassles associated with an online startup. Take a look thought the business & industry section of eBay and you'll see thousands of turnkey sites, sometimes going for hundreds of dollars.
Turnkey sites are ideal way to start or grow your ecommerce activity, below are just a handful of reasons explaining why. 1.
DesignEver tried to design a site yourself. Did it go well? Or were the results not as expected. Designing and building a site from scratch can be difficult work if not impossible to finalise your desired look. Turnkey sites already have been designed by full time graphic designers to look professional and more importantly to achieve maximum sales conversions from your end users visitors. Why spend hours trying to get that look right when you can buy an existing proven design ready to go.2.
FunctionalityAll...
Why You Should Use Turnkey Websites To Jumpstart Your Ecommerce Activity
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I Gave A Party and Nobody Showed Up
I GAVE A PARTY AND NOBODY SHOWED UP!Did you ever do that? Give a party and nobody showed up? Ihope not. I must admit I never have either.But, I'll tell you what I have done and it's just about asbad, maybe worse. I've placed ads and nobody answered them.Now, that really hurts - not only your ego, but your bankaccount.Maybe that's why so many people are afraid to place ads. Ihear them say - "yeah, but what if I put in ads and they donot get a response? Then what?" Well, my answer to that is -you lost money.So, why do ads not pull a decent response? How can you avoidlosing money when placing ads? The answer - there is noguarantee. But, you can almost assure a decent response toan ad by doing several things right.When I first started in business I was going gung-ho.
Ispent money left and right placing ads, thinking that's allthere was to it - just place the ad and watch the money rollin. Well, the money rolled alright, but it went the wrongway - *out*, not in.However, I did profit...
I Gave A Party and Nobody Showed Up
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