04 Nov 07 Corporate Performance Management

Today we review a corporate performance management software. Of course, we have not used this software personally, but we will try and list all the features that this software has and how it can help you manage your corporate better.

Prophix is a software solution for budgeting, financial analysis, forecasting, financial reporting, personnel planning, consolidation, and other financial functions. It lets you rapidly gain control over your enterprise through quick implementation road maps.

The software has the following capabilities:

• Reporting - the tool provides complete reporting, including financial reporting, management reporting, transactional reporting, and ad hoc reporting. It has support for industry standards and built-in security features.
• Budgeting - supports top-down and bottom-up budgeting, audit tracking, scenario management, and zero-based budgeting. This combines with tools such as multiple budgeting, templates, charting, multiple currency, etc. makes it a compelling tool.
• Personnel Planning - you can manage benefits, overtime calculations, commission-based calculations, personnel data, and scenario planning.
• Forecasting - you can do break-even analysis, inventory forecasting, production forecasting, rolling forecasts, and sales forecasting. Once again, you can leverage advanced features such as automatic allocations and multi-user data entry.
• Advanced Functions - A number of features such as job costing, allocations, currency management, and consolidation add to the offering.
• Analysis - there are capabilities for scorecards and dashboards, variance reporting, analytics, ad hoc analysis, and converting analytics to action.
• Business Modeling - centralized control, business rules, alternate scenarios and mass data manipulation are some of the features that the Business Model manager offers.
• Business Process Management - has a GUI based designer to manage workflow and processes.
• Financial Consolidation - it allows multiple roll-up requirements, real-time consolidation analysis, secure approval process, and consolidated management and financial reporting.
• Data Integration - allows you to integrate with your sales data, CRM system, and historical data. It can connect to your ERP system as well. It allows you to connect to any ODBC compliant database, which pretty much means, you can connect to anything.

The above features are not even scratching the surface of this ull blown corporate application.

12 Ago 07 OsCommerce for High Risk Merchants: The Good, The Bad, and The Possibilities

Just because osCommerce is the most popular merchant account software doesn’t mean it’s the best solution for your online business. Agree or disagree? Do you find osCommerce to be overrated? A lot of high risk merchants adopt osCommerce as their primary merchant account solution because of so many advantages. But, knowing osCommerce is open source (hence the name), there will always be loopholes before merchants can actually find it functional for their specific business needs.

OsCOMMERCE BUGABOOS

So what are the likely monkey wrenches that might pop out once you start using osCommerce? For those having second doubts, you may be justified. Consider:

1. There are way too few templates in the osCommerce solution. If you attempt to tinker with the stylesheets, it would take a lot of time and a developer’s help to be able to accomplish the best template for your needs.

2. Merchants may be vaguely aware of "attributes". In order to take full advantage of the limited attributes system, merchants will need to get a good developer to modify it. Otherwise, osCommerce’s shopping cart may not be the best solution to use.

3. Even osCommerce’s administration area isn’t keen on password protection. However, this is remediable by simple research on the site and discussion with your developer.

4. As osCommerce is heavily dependent on the contribution of programmers worldwide, even product catalog capacity needs to be modified. osCommerce’s solution won’t suffice for big scale catalogs unless it has been altered to adopt new products that the server can handle.

Based from these loopholes, we can tell that a lot of osCommerce’s capabilities are dependent on the software developer who is responsible for the alterations and extensions in the system. osCommerce is so powerful but without the ability to customize it to your merchant account’s needs, it loses its potential to provide a cheap (or free) and efficient credit card processing solution.

THE SWEETER SIDE OF OsCOMMERCE

Now what makes osCommerce absolutely attractive for low risk and high risk merchants alike? Hands down, it beats other solutions simply because it’s free! You can download the software, add-ons, and modifications grais. Also, osCommerce was being utilized by online merchants all over the world since March 2000, so it’s pretty much universally trusted.

Although osCommerce’s main weakness is the great necessity to modify the attributes, it is also its biggest strength. Its flexibility for customization as well as the capacity to support several languages and accept many international currencies make it the best open source merchant account software around. Security, user-friendliness, and a strong developers’ community support also add up to its usability.

osCommerce’s features can easily be checked out on their website. It lists down general functionality, set-up or installation, design, administration, customer, product, payment, shipping, and tax functionalities. Indeed, low risk and high risk merchants may only realize the full potential of osCommerce as shopping cart and card processing tool only when they pick out the features that would seamlessly work with their business — then, enlist the help of developers for further customization and expansion.

Gerri Bryce is a versatile technical writer specializing in general web content copywriting and consultancy for finance and high risk merchant account providers. She has contributed a massive number of articles for today’s most popular technology, gadget, gaming, business, finance, and science news websites. She participates in a number of top webmaster, finance and merchant account forums.

15 May 07 Alliance Leicester, Best Current Account provider

 # Sponsored Post # Another post about business, banks and money, which is becoming an interesting and quickly growing category within this blog because of the many new services and companies launching products on the market.

This time we are writing to talk about recent awards that were given in the banking world in the UK, where Alliance Leicester, a well-known UK-based firm, was awarded the “Best Current Account Provider” in 2006. 

Because I got some friends that do have their savings in here I am pretty sure that was a good new for them also ;-).

A&L is one of the banks that provide premium services for their Bank Accounts holders, their Premier Direct Current Account has been named “Best Current Account 2006″ by the UK’s best selling personal finance magazine, Moneywise - with Alliance & Leicester’s Premier Current Account also taking second place. A&L also has been named as Best Current Account Provider - Credit AND Debit Interest by leading independent finance guide Moneyfacts. It is the fourth successive year Alliance & Leicester has won the Debit Interest award, which is not bad at all.

I guess this is good press for them and their customers, we all like to trust and see the company that keeps our money somehow be one of the best in the market, otherwise, what would us all keep the money there? :-).

14 May 07 Airaid, Credit Cards comparison service

Not difficult to introduce this interesting service :-), who in the world does not need a credit card in today’s daily life? :-). Well, now if you live in the UK ( yep, for the moment they are only available for UK residents) you can get some help to find the right credit card from the right bank for your real needs (cool sentence, isn’t it? :-)).

The service I am talking about is called Airaid, and it is a Credit Cards comparison service that in 3 easy steps helps you find the right credit card UK for you in minutes. The only thing you need to do is to set up your needs and put their search engine to work. It will return you a list of a dozen or so credit cards with some characteristics, then you can just apply online through their system to get it. It is also possible to hit the “Compare cards” link and you will find the different possibilities sorted out by type of card.

It seems to me a pretty quite clear and fast service, I did not apply to any of them as I have one since I can remember :-), but should you have in mind to get a new one or to change your bank, give it a try and let us know if you found the best option for you!