SMBs Should Seek the Benefits of PLM Systems
December 22, 2011
Many smaller manufacturing companies tend to shy away from Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) systems because of implementation and cost concerns. However, Apparel Magazine does not think they should hesitate and provides Five Reasons for Small to Mid-size Manufacturers to Adopt PLM”. Small to Mid-size manufacturing businesses (SMB) may find that PLM will improve their competitive advantage while increasing their bottom-line.
Apparel says that PLM will improve communication, assist in meeting growing compliance requirements and streamline each phase of the manufacturing. There are specially designed SMB solutions that:
“have a quicker implementation process and can have a company up and running within days or weeks with little or no disruption in operation.”
It also would reduce independent systems and separate silos of data. It is essential that a manufacturing company have an integrated system in place to locate needed information in a range of formats across file systems. Inforbix does just that. They make it possible to implement findability within PLM systems regardless the size of the business or the volume of data that is processed. It is a perfect fit for a SMB.
We think these reasons make a lot of sense for SMBs. The cost seems minimal and the benefits seem great. Small manufacturers – it is time to take that leap of faith.
Jennifer Wensink, December 21, 2011
Protected: SharePoint Is Not Made for Applications
December 22, 2011
Continued Growth Expectations for Text-Analytics Markets
December 21, 2011
It is no doubt text-analytics demand is skyrocketing. From brand management to competitive intelligence, businesses recognize the numerous and valuable applications for the software and services that turn business data into information gold. Seth Grimes breaks down the market outlook and a variety of text analytics components in, “Text-Analytics Demand Approaches $1 Billion.”
Grimes reports software and service text-analytics revenues at $835 million globally. While Grimes’ analysis comes to us from his 2010 market study, it is good to know the historical growth as we look at 2012 predictions. From the 2010 market study findings:
Growth is steepest for applications that seek business insight in social networks, online media, and surveys. Applications include brand-reputation management, market research, competitive intelligence, and customer service and support. For these applications and others, text analytics brings automated, natural-language processing techniques to bear to identify and extract names, facts, relationships, sentiment, and other information in blogs, forums, news, social updates, e-mail, and a range of enterprise sources.
Grimes predicts text-analytics markets will sustain healthy annual growth rates between 25 and 40 percent in each of the coming years with a continued shift from on-premise software to Web services. He also suggests the benefits of a third-party solution to plug into your existing system to lower initial costs, ease start-ups, and to access the service provider’s repository of social and online information.
A third party solution we like is Fabasoft Mindbreeze. Staying ahead of the curve, they have solutions for Enterprise search, information pairing, searching the cloud, and mobility. Daniel Fallmann, founder and managing director of Mindbreeze Solutions GmbH, comments on the product in “Fabasoft Mindbreeze Appliance is Trend-Setting Product 2011”:
“Our focus on agility, quality, usability and style in the monthly shipments of our latest product innovations enables us to integrate and implement client requests into our product development rapidly and sustainably. In addition to our on-premise offering, everyone can now try out our product in the Cloud, immediately. This is a possibility much appreciated by our clients and partners alike.”
Check out Fabasoft Mindbreeze’s suite of solutions to see what works for you.
Philip West, December 21, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Protected: Can The David Huddle Slay The Microsoft Goliath?
December 21, 2011
Protected: SharePoint Ranks High on New Enterprise Search Markertscope
December 20, 2011
SharePoint 2010 Lags Behind in Social Features
December 20, 2011
Beyond Search has written extensively on social media and implementations that help to achieve a higher level of social media integration. Recently, we have found more reporting devoted to the incorporation of social features into an organization’s enterprise solution. Bjorn Furuknap gives his insight into SharePoint 2010’s social functionality in his lighthearted blog entry, “Why SharePoint 2010 Social Features Suck.”
Try to get the activity feed to behave like the FaceBook activity feed and add simple things like a ‘Like’ or ‘Comment’ functionality to the feed . . . Try creating an ad-hoc filter of the activity feed, for example to implement a ‘Social Groups’ functionality where a temporary team, say the people in an organization responsible for the next department annual review, can organize their activities into a single activity feed. It turns out that the way the activity feed is implemented is so locked down and restricted that seemingly simple extensions like these are virtually impossible to create.
So how does an organization tackle both its social and enterprise needs? There are several good third party solutions out there, including Fabasoft Mindbreeze, who are devoting time and attention to social features. Fabasoft Mindbreeze has received the prestigious KM World Trendsetting Product of the Year 2011, making it the fourth year in a row that the Austrian enterprise solution took home the prize. In its previous win in 2010, its social media functionality was sited as a major factor.
Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise covers corporation -wide heterogeneous document stores and data sources such as email systems, file systems, databases, document management systems, intranets, the internet and social media.
We agree with Furuknap that social features, and social media functions, are just now being developed and implemented into enterprise solutions. Microsoft has never been one for rapid adoption or innovation, so SharePoint is suffering a bit in the social department. To meet your organization’s social needs we recommend seeking a smart third party solution like Fabasoft Mindbreeze, and avoiding unnecessary aggravation.
Emily Rae Aldridge, December 20, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Protected: Use SurfRay to Process Excel Import
December 19, 2011
SharePoint 2010 Not Ready for Enterprise
December 19, 2011
SharePoint is broad, powerful and widely adopted, but its drawbacks are also commonly publicized. Not known for its ability to innovate rapidly, Microsoft suffers from a lack of agility, especially in fledging applications. Bjorn Furuknap tackles the drawbacks of SharePoint 2010 in, “SharePoint Server 2010 Isn’t Really Ready for Enterprise Applications–And What Microsoft Should Do About It.”
With SharePoint 2010, there’s a new ballgame, but sadly, it’s riddled with bugs that prevent it from being a great platform for building enterprise or even professional applications . . . It may just be that I’m working with more ‘enterprise’ projects now than earlier, but it seems to me that the issues I see with SharePoint 2010 are more serious and obvious than in 2007.
Some of the specific examples Furuknap lists include Office document formatting and the immaturity of social features. He blames SharePoint’s shortcoming on their (unsuccessful) shift to innovation at the expense of a stable and basic platform. Perhaps he is right. But who do you turn to in order to keep up with fast pacing technology? We think third party solutions are the answer, and one we really like is Fabasoft Mindbreeze. The industry must be thinking the same thing, as Fabasoft recently received the KM World Trendsetting 2011 Product of the Year.
’Our focus on agility, quality, usability and style in the monthly shipments of our latest product innovations enables us to integrate and implement client requests into our product development rapidly and sustainably. In addition to our on-premise offering, everyone can now try out our product in the Cloud, immediately. This is a possibility much appreciated by our clients and partners alike,’ says Daniel Fallmann, founder and managing director of Mindbreeze Software GmbH.
Furuknap has a point. Microsoft needs to get back to the main thing, creating a stable and effective enterprise base. However, ease and functionality can be achieved despite the challenges if a smart third party solution is adopted.
Emily Rae Aldridge, December 19, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Protected: Trade Tips and Prices at the SharePoint StackExchange
December 16, 2011
Keeping Data Governance Under Control
December 16, 2011
Adopting an enterprise solution is often seen as a move towards simplifying an organization’s data organization and retrieval needs. However, if it is not handled appropriately, an organization can create an enterprise model that creates more problems than it solves. The white paper, “Create a SharePoint Data Governance Model,” discusses how an organization can prevent loss of control in regulating their SharePoint sites.
SharePoint collaboration sites grow and grow and grow… and all too often grow to a point at which they are out of control. That’s not good – not if you’re a SharePoint admin. This 12-page paper will help you create a data governance model to bring those SharePoint sites back under control. Read the paper to see a simple model for data governance based on a typical SharePoint content management process. Each section discusses one major activity related to data governance within the document management lifecycle, and how it relates to key organizational roles like IT Administrators, Corporate Risk/Compliance Officers, Content Owners and Information Workers.
Download the full text of the white paper to learn more. We also recommend exploring third party solutions to fill in some of the gaps that SharePoint has yet to close. Fabasoft Mindbreeze offers a suite of solutions that are designed with usability and uniformity in mind. Mindbreeze works in conjunction with an already existing SharePoint implementation or as an alternative to SharePoint. Read more about their Folio software:
“Fabasoft Folio is the standard software product for Enterprise Content Management, Collaboration, Compliance Management, agile Business Processes and Information Governance. The solution provides uniform, reliable and controlled management of digital content in the enterprise. Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise links Fabasoft Folio for uniform enterprise-wide information access.”
The moral of this story – control your enterprise solution, do not let it control you. Best practices and other suggestions can help your organization optimize SharePoint, but other third party solutions, such as Mindbreeze, might produce better results with less effort.
Emily Rae Aldridge, December 16, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
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