QuickBooks and Dropbox? Yeah… No.

Having your data available from anywhere is awesome. Storing files in the cloud and being able to sync them with files on the computer is a great way to make sure the files are centrally available regardless of which machine you use to access them with. Dropbox is among those favored solutions which provide users with the cloud drive storage and an ability to seamlessly sync those files to various computers. It’s pretty cool, but let’s face it: not every type of file loves living in a Dropbox or sync folder. Particularly for folks who want to be able to store and sync their QuickBooks and other business files to the cloud, there are a few things to be aware of when using these nifty sync solutions.

Easy Deployment in the Cloud: What About Users and Applications?

Businesses are migrating their systems to the cloud, it’s true. Organizations of every size and type are taking advantage of the cost savings and flexibility introduced with cloud deployments and hosting services. Rather than focusing efforts on procuring, installing and maintaining servers and applications in-house, IT departments are moving workloads offsite to cloud providers and hosted platforms. The tools are readily available to help these IT workers configure and light up VMs in hosted infrastructure, and certain platform licenses and other elements are made accessible to customers. But there’s something missing in the toolsets provided by platform hosting companies – a certain something that ultimately determines how useful (or not) the hosting platform service is when IT is ready to deploy users and applications in the environment.

Turning a Product or Service into a Solution: the Value Add of a Reseller

There is quite a bit of chatter on the web and among IT resellers about how opportunities to serve business customers are diminishing, yet business adoption of cloud computing, managed services, and mobile technologies is growing tremendously. It seems that use of technology is increasing, but the opportunity for “traditional” IT resellers and channel partners to make money by selling IT-related products and services is diminishing. This is not new, and is simply a finer form of the problem that has been revealing itself for years. In order to provide value, suppliers must provide businesses with solutions to business problems rather than just trying to sell them products and services with a hefty profit margin.

How Can Advanced Financial Management Systems Make You A More Strategic CFO

For decades, financial managers have pieced together and manipulated spreadsheets in order to report on past data and maintain the financial integrity of their businesses. Sure, if they had time, they could use these primitive tools to attempt to identify trends and offer insights. But this effort was ridden with information silos, dirty data and outdated numbers.

Fortunately, times are changing.

Is Poor Quality the Anti-Hero of Data?

As a kid, I enjoyed reading comic books and watching animated television series about superheroes. Among my favorites were Spider-Man, Batman, Thor, Iron Man, and the X-Men. Which is why, as a adult, I enjoy the super advancements in cinematic technology that not only powers (mostly) live-action superhero movies, but has also propelled them into mainstream culture.

ERP Implementation Success Factors – Takeaways from Clash of the Titans

How long should ERP implementations take? How much do they cost? How long does it take to recoup these costs? How long does it take to realize the benefits of the new system? These are the magic questions asked by thousands of companies around the globe.

With so much money at stake — after all, some ERP implementations can cost millions of dollars — the timing of such a technology project is critical.

The answer, as you might expect, is that it depends on many different factors.