Precision Based Tools for Electrical Distributors

Time is money and this is especially of paramount significance in a business. A business requires prompt decisions and results. Processes that fail to deliver on time have to be discarded and replaced by rapid modes with enhancing and optimizing capabilities. Electrical distributors are faced with challenges when they are asked to build job submittals for their customers. This is a time consuming procedure as they have to source vast information from the manufacturers’ catalogs and sometimes the information has to be sourced from printed copies that are no longer in use. The pricing and product details are also handled manually which contains errors and the findings are usually inaccurate.


The electrical distributor requires correct information and instantly so that the customers can be served without any delays. However the standard of customer service level is far below expectation which is not an encouraging fact due to the inefficient processes. Also searching the catalogs, finding information and creating submittals incur heavy expenses. The web based electrical estimating software is an intelligent program that provides a large repository of manufacturer catalog pages which can be accessed easily and incorporated into the distributors’ system to provide a customized page as per the requirement of the customer.


This tool assists in uploading the items list, finding and adding the corresponding catalog pages automatically to the submittal process, creating templates of the most frequently used items so that they can be copied into new submittals without delays, classifying documents and providing formatting options for adding job information, company logos, headers, footers and numbers to each page. The software program is a time-saving process for submittals. It provides a checklist of items that help the electrical distributor to keep a track. The program provides the facility of emailing the submittal packages, thus reducing the costs of paper, printing and shipping.


The submittals can be instantly archived for easy accessibility and the program provides control to the user for changing names and sequences, and categorization of documents. As the software is web based it can be easily used anywhere with an internet connection. The database is consistently updated with direct information from manufacturers. The software delivers high quality and reliable electrical pricing information through flexible formats that can be integrated with the existing business applications. It provides a comprehensive electrical products catalog with more than a million electrical items.


The web based electrical estimating software helps in streamlining the processes, providing accurate, rich and flexible data, and delivering admirable customer experience thereby elevating prospects for enhanced revenues and profits.

 

Understanding the Significance of CMMS Software

The growing popularity of CMMS software proves its benefits beyond doubt. To facilitate systematic management and maintenance of assets, Computerized Maintenance Management Systems (CMMS) are being widely adopted by organizations. The ability to schedule preventive maintenance work orders is the key feature that makes for a good CMMS solution. As your organization needs an edge on your competition, maintenance and preventive maintenance software is hugely essential. It is also necessary to have proper facility maintenance to focus on the key elements that that make your business successful and CMMS software is absolutely necessary for this. If you don’t already have a CMMS software, here are a few reasons that help understand the significance of a CMMS Software.

 

  • Saves time in the organization

As the staff in today’s economy is required to do a lot with as little as possible, the staff is usually stretched thin. The entire organization and the team itself can conserve a lot of time with a good CMMS Software. It can handle everything from scheduling maintenance, tracking it, reporting, cost and time analysis and much more. With the maintenance needs being taken care of, an organization is bound to run smoothly. This in turn saves the organization time as well as money.

 

  • Employee Responsibility Enhanced

Supervising progress on a work order and knowing when it is complete can get complicated, especially when maintenance employees work in shift work, or on off site locations. An employee who submitted a work order can monitor the progress easily and be aware of when it is complete or due to be completed with a good CMMS software.

 

  • Better Management Control

If the management is unaware of the going-ones in the company, they cannot manage. The management team can gain all the benefits of being on the site of a maintenance call, without actually being on site, with an efficient web-based CMMS software. It allows anyone in the organization mainly management to monitor progress, address issues and remedy problems remotely.

 

  • Augment Visibility

As clients want to know that their money and resources are being used wisely, it is necessary for organizations to be responsible for reporting to clients by giving progress reports. Good CMMS software allows clients to have access to certain projects and stay in the loop. It gives good visibility and has the ability to give the access to status updates.

 

  • Always be connected

When CMMS software is web based there are many advantages like instant updates, consistent technology throughout the organization, no I.T. department requirements, and no need for update installations. With web based CMMS software, access from anywhere is possible, which means that supervision from anywhere is also possible.

 

CMMS solutions have the capability to complement and enhance the asset management initiatives of an organization. By understanding the significance of good CMMS software, the needs of the organization can be met to achieve optimal results.

Clinical Laboratories Contributing To Clinical Trials

Clinical laboratory testing has an essential role to play in detection, diagnosis, treatment and follow up of diseases. The professionals involved in the clinical laboratory are from medical and para medical fields.

 

With the advent of Clinical trials and research in India, it is recognized that clinical laboratories should have systems and procedures in compliance with good clinical laboratory practice guidelines (GCLP). GCLP provides the framework for a quality system for analysis of clinical trial samples, ensuring GCP compliance of processes and results.

 

The analysis of samples collected from patients and healthy volunteers participating in clinical studies forms a key part of the clinical trials process, providing important data which is used to make decisions on an investigational medicinal product’s safety, efficacy and mechanism of action. This data may also contribute to the initiation of new drug development and research projects. Consequently, it is essential that laboratory analysis is performed to an acceptable standard which will ensure patient safety is not compromised and that data are unbiased, accurate and complete.

 

Global harmonization of clinical laboratories for the analysis of specimens from clinical trials operations (i.e., for safety, diagnostic, endpoint laboratory assays) faces international challenges (e.g., laboratory logistical and technical factors), and it is subject to different interpretations of regulations and guidance materials published by the government, accrediting, and non-accrediting organizations.

 

Presently CROs in India have clinical laboratories that form the foundation for numerous studies and other research activities. They are fully equipped with state-of-the-art infrastructure, immaculate logistics & experienced, well-trained and competent personnel, assisted by new age technology that comprises the use of Laboratory Information Management System for online information sharing. This assures shorter turnaround time, excellent consistency level and quality of reports.

 

CROs in India have their central laboratories that help in conducting numerous investigations in various branches of laboratory medicine ex: Hematology, Biochemistry, Serology, Urine Analysis and with capabilities for specialised tests required for Phase i studies.

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Significance of Unified Storage Solutions in SMB’s and MNC’s

Business data is expanding at a faster pace. The SMB’s are witnessing a heavy demand to secure and store crucial information in a long-term basis owing to compliance needs, while ensuring that it stays highly accessible in case of any unforeseen disaster. The difficulty of managing external storage systems, poor storage utilization and the requirement to assist in data and storage protection at branch as well as remote offices are few of the major challenges that companies have to deal with today with storage management.


Furthermore, the effects of server virtualization also need a huge focus on storage management expenses, along with other increased performance demands. It is a known fact that server virtualization only addresses a part of the infrastructure problem. As a result of which organizations must align well with their storage as well as server virtualization environments.


Importance of Unified Storage Server Solutions


SMB’s need to ensure regulatory compliance, high data accessibility and fast disaster recovery. As a result, their storage systems need to cost-efficient and adaptive and ensure that the business information can be accessed, stored and managed with ease and simplicity. This is where Unified storage solutions come into use. They virtualize, consolidate and assist in NAS and SAN storage systems and address every challenge faced by an organization.


Unified storage is fast gaining significance now with the increased market adoption, As per a Enterprise Strategy Group research report, published on September 2009, almost 70 percent of the organizations are in the process of deploying or planning to buy, unified storage in order to consolidate their SAN and NAS systems.


Features and Advantages of Unified Storage Server Solutions


Eminent service providers of unified storage systems have introduced customized recovery, unified storage and backup solutions, that allows organizations to minimize back up expenses, enhance protection and streamline data recovery.


In addition to that, there is the Deduplication storage system that significantly reduces the quantity of disk storage required to secure and maintain enterprise information. By identifying the outmoded data and files while they are stored, the unified storage offers a storage footprint that is about 10x – 30x small on an average as compared to the original dataset. The backup data is retrieved efficiently and replicated over existing networks for streamlining consolidated tape operations and disaster recovery.


While discussing on unified storage it is pertinent to discuss about storage consolidation as well. This refers to the sharing and consolidating storage resources amongst several application servers. The consolidation provides a shared platform to manage and assign increasing demands for data storage while minimizing administrative attempts and enhancing storage utilization.


The modern day service providers of unified storage systems also offer efficient solutions in enterprise storage server that benefits the organizations in managing their data better.  Overall, these solutions use high-end technologies in order to improve efficiencies, maximize the storage assets, and help in operations with the existing infrastructure.


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Virtual Workspace –The Hyper-linked Organization

The business horizon today is lined with a number of corporate sectors, which have spread its wings as multinational organizations. These organizations largely rely on their multicultural and distributed workforce to mange their global assets. However, these teams, which span functional, geographical and corporate boundaries, besides been located worldwide, have worked together on various projects as virtual teams. The emerging technological innovations have enabled these teams with a virtual workspace making it easier for them to communicate and work effectively under the same umbrella.


The concept of Virtual workspace is a boon to the corporate sectors as well as to the employees. The corporate companies can leverage the global expertise of the virtual team members, understand the market pulse of diverse markets, and devise organizational strategies for higher productivity and better profit sharing. For the workforce, this gives more scope of job flexibility with minimum or none relocation, lesser travel and more time for self and family while still be working for Corporate giants across geographical boundaries. Even though far off physically, they can still participate in key strategic decision making process for the organization and also gain from the pool the knowledge of experts.


The mobile workforce solution is designed to increase the productivity of the employees while giving them flexibility of time and location. Hence a virtual workspace should be available online and accessible from any location irrespective of the time or machine and provide for an uninterrupted workflow. This requires the normal desktops to be connected to a technology platform, which can pave way for effective workspace virtualization solutions. The workspace virtualization technology would enable the corporate organizations to empower their mobile workforce irrespective of the location.


The leaders in the IT service sectors have developed dynamic virtual desktop platform as a scalable and reliable solution to meet the requirements of the corporate world. This would help the organizations to effectively provide for, deliver and efficiently streamline the lifecycle of virtual workspace. With simplicity of operations, such virtual desktop technology solutions facilitate the organizations to mange delivery challenges with lesser turnaround time, low infrastructure requirement and in a cost-effective manner.


Also read on - App Store, Virtual desktop

Enterprise Video: Making Of A Tech-Savvy Organization

The advent of technology has seen the entry of the Internet into the business environment. The World Wide Web has paved way for the expansion of the business across geographical boundaries. With offices and manufacturing units and workforce spread across the globe, every globalized organisation looks for methods to keep all these units working in unison. This means the communication networks of these organisations should be strong enough with an easy access to the corporate network from any location across the globe. This has led to the innovation of the videos being used as a part of communication in an organization and has been termed as enterprise video.


Before the Internet, the videos were used only through television in the form of commercial or recorded training programs stored in VHS or DVD’s. The Internet has created a powerful new medium for video and this market is expected to showcase a growth of around 26% in the future.  Brand commercial video has become a must for most corporate websites and poses a new challenge for marketing. However, Online Video Platforms (OVPs) have made organising the videos a fairly simpler task. Further, most Corporates have now stared investing in enterprise video solutions not just as a marketing tools for creating brand advertisement commercials but also for communications within the corporate network, in the form of video conferencing and training sessions across global divisions.


The future of enterprise videos is very promising. Integrating technological innovations into the methods of utilizing the videos have resulted in corporate sectors incorporating streaming of product demos, customer testimonials, Webinars, and announcements on their websites. However, this process also requires tracking by the sales team to ensure that the prospective clients view these collaterals.  The management of the video database should also integrate effective video search tools to make it accessible to all prospective customers.


The advent of cloud technology has facilitated the cloud-based searchable media platform for the enterprise videos. This rich media platform paved way for the Corporates to set new standards in enterprise videos search, capture. This platform also acts as a great tool for streamlining and accelerating the delivery of corporate training, enabling sales and partnerships conducting corporate video on demand training, and other events spanning over larger demographics.


An enterprise video enabled organization will enable its employees and customers with tech savvy and innovative methods to achieve desired goals. This would also facilitate to raise the level of productivity, increase revenue, and enhance the bottom line of the organization.  


Also read on - Enable marketing, Sales enablement software

Returns Management Maximizes Future Profits

Until recently, companies and organizations focused only on forward supply chain. Enterprises were more concerned about making their forward supply chain as perfect and as flawless as possible. Hence, reverse supply chain did not receive the kind of attention that it truly deserves. Though products did come back, it was considered as a pain in the neck that eats into company profits. Hence, the products were dumped in warehouses to gather dust and dirt. It remained there until it was ‘discovered’ during a physical inventory or warehouse cleanup. By that time, there would be nothing left to be salvaged.


Companies and organizations are now slowly waking up to the fact that product returns are the reality of every business. It is completely unavoidable and therefore, instead of considering it as a nuisance concrete steps are being taken to manage it cost-effectively. Moreover, the economic downturns also forced companies to explore possibilities of profits with returned goods.


At a time when another recession is in the offing, effective returns management can help companies and organizations to tide through tough times. Not only can it help in improving the company’ financial condition but also help in fostering strong relationships with customers.   


Returns management is defined as “The management of all logistic operations related to returns of products from their original user to their supplier with the intention of a cost-effective recovery, while meeting all legal obligations”. Product returns are always viewed from the perspective of transportation costs, inventory costs and warehousing costs but the fact of the matter is if managed effectively returns management can actually help in maximizing future profits. It can be a value generating system though not as perfect as forward supply chain.


Today the world has become customer-centric and hence it is the customers who call the shots. In order to increase sales and customer loyalty companies and organizations must ensure customer satisfaction. But today’ customers cannot be satisfied easily. They expect and want the after sales services to be as excellent as the sales services. Customers prefer return policies to be simple and easy and this has been vouched by several studies which says that a lenient return policy translate into long-term sales relationships. If the customers are assured that the product can be returned at any time they would not think twice when making the purchase or making other purchases of the same brand.


Hence, returns management is as important as any other activity in a supply chain be it retail distribution, retail fulfillment or order fulfillment.


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Importance of Cosmetic Packaging and Design

As people became more and more conscious about their looks, spending a fortune to look his or her best became a normal affair. With people being very particular about their looks and the way they carry themselves, cosmetic manufacturers have come up with vast array of products ranging from facial cleansing systems, fairness creams, shampoos, shaving foams, hair sprays, shower gels, moisturizers, conditioners, lotions, perfumes, deodorants, lipsticks, makeup to skincare products. Price of the products is of no concern to them; what they want is solutions to all their beauty related problems in the form of any beauty product.


Almost all leading cosmetic manufacturers come up with the same kind of products and the only way to distinguish them from their competitors is by packaging differently. By providing distinctive and unique packaging for cosmetics, manufacturers can make their products stand out from the rest. Just as branding helps companies in creating a distinctive identity of their own, distinctive and unique packaging play a decisive role in the products finding their way from the shelves to the baskets of the customers.


Earlier when consumers bought cosmetics, they looked at price and brand name. Now cosmetic packaging is also considered especially during those times when they want something new and different. If the design does not appeal to them then the product is rejected outright. However great the product might be, nobody even tries it to see the quality of the product. Hence, cosmetic manufacturers started giving great attention to the packaging of cosmetic products.


Designing cosmetic packages is not at all an easy task. It takes considerable amount of time since lot many factors need to be considered followed by careful planning before a designing can be finalized. The packaging must not only be unique, exceptional, and visually appealing but it must also match the product, the brand and the age group of the customers. For instance, if the product is for the middle-aged, then they definitely would not like something that is flashy and gaudy. They would prefer something that is subtle and elegant. Moreover, once a design has been finalized, it is necessary to make sure that the packaging of other products of the same brand is more or less similar to the finalized one so that customers can easily make the pick.


There are a number of cosmetic packaging manufacturers, who offer a wide array of attractive and well-made products that include airless bottles and pumps, lotion pumps, canisters, cosmetic jars, perfume bottles, foamer pumps and bottles, liquid dispensers, aerosol cans and others. Hence, today cosmetic manufacturers can relax as these professionals have the expertise and experience to come up with fabulous designs themselves.


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Global Engineering Services: Engineering Service Outsourcing

Globalization has created a multicultural and multinational environment in every business sector. The industrial world is also not left behind. The Engineering services, which makes up for the largest chunk of the industrial sector have also started experiencing the global environment.  Engineering services comprises of design and support functions catering to the core functionality of practically every industry that comes under the engineering spectrum such as Computer aided manufacturing and design, Auto designs, failure analysis etc.

 

The engineering services being a large domain, all core engineering works have accompanying support services. With the advent of globalizations and technology innovations, this industrial sector has also crossed geographical boundaries. Like other traditional business processes, the trend has set in to outsource these engineering services to experts in the field. This paves way for a reduced budgetary investment for the client organizations as well as receive better quality services from domain focused vendors.

 

The Engineering Services Outsourcing or ESO’s besides delivering global engineering services related to design services around patented products, design specifications or customized requirements of a total engineering solution, also offer engineering consultancy services based on their domain expertise. The concept of outsourcing of the engineering support services has been on for a while now with the assignments outsourced to onshore or near shore vendor and partners. The recent trend has seen these services on a global scale.

 

An industry segment which started as an offshoot of the legacy IT services, have now matured and established as various engineering service practices such as engineering consultancy services, Plant Automation & Enterprise Asset Management, Advanced Simulations, Prototyping, Styling & Testing, Product Lifecycle & Data Management, Electrical & Electronics Engineering and Embedded Design & Development Engineering. Besides these services, these ESO’s also undertake preparation of production drawings, engineering consulting assignments in its initial phases

 

The industrial world with its growth pattern in the aerospace engineering services and the oil and Gas engineering service sectors, India and China are benefiting by the demand for Global Engineering Services from developed countries. The consultancy services generally undertaken for these global organizations include Locational suitable study involving in-depth analysis and recommendation for low cost expansion for Global Aerospace majors, expansion strategies for Oil & Gas major through joint venture operations as well as evaluating the feasibility of establishing competent testing centers in the country.

 

The global engineering services by shouldering the responsibilities across the complete product life cycle, from design to manufacturing support and vendor management, help their clients to reduce product development costs, shorten lead times, as well as extend capacity and maximize the availability of resources.

An Unforgettable Lesson for the Counterfeiters’ Pack

The increase in online frauds has led to a proliferation of counterfeit products in the market. Those who have endeavored for years to build their business and maintain a respectable online are not immune to counterfeit activity. Large pharmaceutical companies, hi-tech organizations and luxury goods enterprises are consistently losing revenues and their reputation due to ineffective and insufficient online fraud protection and detection measures.

The effects of these online frauds can be mitigated by using robust fraud detection software that delivers compelling results. The software should demonstrate capabilities which prove its worthiness. Temporary solutions and manual search are not the answer since you risk missing listing that show up for just a short period of time.

In a pharmaceutical, hi-tech or luxury goods company there should be a constant monitoring of the online activities for effective detection, this insures prompt action can be taken to address the issue before it causes any large scale damages. IP protection is the most vital aspect in a business and the fraud detection software should deploy best practices to ensure stringent monitoring, assessment and authentication measures. The software should be equipped with intelligent tools that help in prompt reporting with real-time and updated information. The real-time reports are critically analyzed for some vital business decisions that bear positive and long-lasting results.

The fraud detection software should detect the illegal seller efficiently and maintains the channel integrity. Not all fraud detection software can provide such illustrious support. However New Momentum is a renowned name that provides commendable product counterfeiting solutions. Many businesses have sought the assistance of this product and enjoyed benefits beyond expectations.

The New Momentum fraud detection software focuses on assessing the possibilities and intent of anticipatory threats, and recommending timely and effective measures on time to purge these threats and make them invalid.