Understanding Supply Chain Management

APICS Dictionary defines supply chain management as the "design, planning, execution, control, and monitoring of supply chain activities with the objective of creating net value, building a competitive infrastructure, leveraging worldwide logistics, synchronizing supply with demand and measuring performance globally." Supply chain management is the management of all the activities in a supply chain be it sourcing, procurement, storage of raw materials, production planning and scheduling, forward and reverse logistics, warehousing, inventory, finished goods, order processing, customer service  or returns management.

 

Supply chain management facilitates the management of the complex and dynamic supply and demand networks by linking all the stakeholders in a supply chain namely vendors, carriers, manufacturers, wholesalers, distributors, retailers, third party companies, information systems providers and customers. In other words, it is the art of providing the right product, at the right time, at the right place and at the right cost to the customer.

 

Supply chain management is comprised of five basic components and they are:

 

Plan
The first step is to plan an effective strategy to manage and monitor the flow of raw materials and other resources through the supply chain. Effective planning helps to have a
supply chain solution that is not only responsive but also fully prepared for contingencies. This leads to reduced costs, prompt delivery, quality products and high value to customers.

 

Source

The next component is sourcing which involves analyzing the competencies of each supplier to select a good one who can deliver goods and services to create the products. As part of it, supply chain managers develop policies for pricing, delivery and payment with each supplier and then monitor their activities.

 

Manufacture

At first the supply chain managers schedule activities for manufacturing, testing, packaging and shipping. Then they execute it by coordinating the activities of each stakeholder in the supply chain.

 

Deliver

On time delivery of products requires synchronization of various activities such as logistics, customer orders, warehousing, invoicing and so on.  Supply chain managers make sure to put in place an effective delivery process so that right product reaches the right customer.

 

Return

Returns management is the most difficult part of the supply chain. Defective and excess products would always exist in a supply chain. Supply chain managers must set up an effective system to manage the returned and defective products from customers and retailers. This translates into customer loyalty and new business opportunities.

 

In today’s business atmosphere, supply chain management has a very important role to play as it facilitates faster product availability in the market thereby ensuring increased company revenue and enhanced customer satisfaction.

Read more about : Supply Chain Integration

 

Secure Your Company from Phishing Attacks

Simply using the computer for your official or individual purpose is not all that is there to your computer. For that matter, if you think that installing an anti-virus is all that you need to do for security, then there is more for you to learn. It is crucial that you know through fraudulent mails and other online activities you can be robbed off your personal and private information. This process is known as phishing.

Understanding a Phishing Email

It is thus crucial to understand what exactly a phishing email is. Any internet user can encounter a phishing mail that might appear all authentic at the first glance. These kinds of mails generally come from fictitious sources that claim to be a financial, banking, online auction or lottery websites. They forward you compelling content in terms winning awards or offering discounted products and ask for your personal data. The mode of enquiring is very thrifty and often the users are not able to grasp dangerous phishing attacks targeted at them.

Though you might hear less about phishing mails as compared to viruses or spyware, but they are equally dangerous. Once you fall prey to one it might just cause harm to your entire computing system along with robbing all your data.

How Phishing Attacks Operate

The most obvious way in which third party intruders operate a phishing attack is with the help of a mail that appear authentic. They are cases when they take up esteemed brand names. For instance, think of the yahoo lottery or MSN lottery mails that you on and oft receive in your inbox, declaring that you have won huge prize money or that your email id has been chosen as a prize winner. You might just get overwhelmed by the amount of prize money and other forms of attraction that the phishing mail uses.

Hence, human emotions are the crux point on which phishers play and base their attacks. Today, they have come up with sophisticated attacks that are otherwise difficult to gauge. One of the ways to steer clear of such mails is by checking the details offered along with the mails. On most occasions phishing mails will not have any contact details. However, protection from phishing is a must today, especially for eminent brands that might have employees unaware of such attacks.

Innovative Anti-Phishing Solutions

Today eminent companies have come up with anti-phishing software that helps companies to assess whether their employees are adequately aware on social engineering and its side effects. The software helps in the following ways:-

 

* Helps enterprises in estimating the probable hazards associated with phishing

* Offers elastic reporting and incorporate them back into the company’s chief performance-indicator framework

* Offers a “road map" solution concentrating on security awareness and training within an enterprise

* Helps to recognize weakness within people, method and technology links

* Helps in prioritizing remediation attempts through useful benchmarking and maturity analysis

* Helps in increasing employee awareness and expertise to safeguard crucial information

Just investing in ant-virus or anti-spyware protection is not enough. To stay away from hazardous phishing attacks anti-phishing solutions offered by eminent service providers are useful.

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Anti-Phishing Software – A Phishing Safety Valve

The cybercriminals business models have recently moved on to low-volume targeted phishing attacks. With e-mails being the major attack vector, such attacks are going up both in their frequency as well as in their financial impact on certain esteemed organization. Furthermore, the business activities caused by sophisticated targeted attacks are also increasing rapidly. The financial impact of such targeted phishing attacks translates down to monetary loss and stolen credentials. Many enterprises that underwent through such attacks had to bear the expenses of remediating the infected hosts and computing devices and the brand erosion.

 

Need for Phishing Protection Solutions

 

The growing prominence of sophisticated phishing attacks is compounded by the trends towards uncontrolled endpoints and mobility. This highlights the fact that enterprise’s today need to deploy a new and effective approach towards security from phishing that leverages the network. While there are numerous companies that train their users or employees to recognize dangerous messages and avert clicking on URL that would most likely lead to  malware downloads and compromised websites, user training cannot totally secure companies from such threats. Rather, enterprises today require an advanced security architecture that would efficiently manage enforcement components, for instance web proxies, firewalls and innovative intrusion prevention sensors with high-end policy language that is context-aware.

 

Innovative Anti-Phishing Solutions

 

The best answer to all these phishing attacks is an anti phishing software offered by top notch service providers. Simply put, this is an automated tool that is internally installed within a company, customized with people data, processes and technology inputs. Innovative anti-phishing software enables organizations to estimate the employee readiness against social engineering and phishing attacks. With the help of its high-end features simulated phishing attacks or more targeted spear phishing attacks can be generated. The software analyses the social response towards phishing attacks and generates a detailed report.

 

Post this, the software offers statistics on user behavior, evaluates security awareness amongst the employees, recognizes data leakage, analyses Data Loss Prevention programs and examines the incident response programs. As this test gets over, a personalized email is sent to every individual, updating them about their respective performances and suggesting them about their appropriate action. Furthermore, an e-learning module is offered to update users and employees on security awareness. With the help of effective solutions enterprises can diagnose threats for certain divisions as well as for their overall business. Furthermore, organizations can effectively monitor compliance within the risk management framework.

 

Do Innovative Brands Spell Better Success

With companies spending a great deal of time on new and creative ideas, innovation has certainly become the future of business. Innovation creates success and one of the keys to being successful is being innovative in your business. It’s no surprise then, that a new survey released by PwC finds that 75% of 226 CEOs and CFOs of private businesses report that they have made innovation a priority.  


Companies that have made innovation a priority expect to grow 63% faster than others, forecasting 8% revenue growth over the next 12 months, as against 5% for non-innovators. When discussing innovation, inevitably Apple and Google are innovation champions of the same kind.   In a talk on Innovation at World Economic Forum 2012, consultant John Kao said, “The Apple model is more edited, intuitive and top-down”. And when asked what market research went into the company’s elegant product designs, late Steve Jobs had a standard answer: “None”.


“Google speaks to the power of data-driven decision-making, and of online experimentation and networked communication. The same Internet-era tools enable crowd-sourced collaboration as well as the rapid testing of product ideas — the essence of the lean start-up method so popular in Silicon Valley and elsewhere…”

This way, they create an identity that on the basis of a genuinely personal innovation model.   Innovation is more than just “an improvement”. While improvement is taking what you have and making it better, innovation involves discovering new methods and making changes. Being innovative requires you to think and be wacky. Albert Einstein once said, "If at first an idea doesn't seem totally absurd there's no hope for it." Innovators must take risks, often big ones, by moving toward the absurd, the "seemingly" irrelevant, in order to create a competitive advantage, while competitors move in the "obvious" direction.


Research shows that consumers respect brands that are constantly moving forward.  Consumers want new products to make their lives easier, and most don’t believe in creating something new for the sake of it. Take Steve Jobs, he always adapted and moved forward. Few would deny that the iPod is a great product surpassing any other mp3 player offering. It was Steve Jobs constant drive for innovations is what Apple drove right on through a green light towards victory, and made the iPod, “the Walkman of the early 21st century.”


New ideas by themselves are worthless as most successful strategic innovations need more than a great idea. It is important to move from idea capture to execution, and that is where the majority of companies stumble. Companies need successful idea management solution that helps them right from idea inception all the way through development and implementation.


In such a fast-changing environment, with innovation being so important to both consumers and business, many companies open permit innovations for the sourcing of the best ideas from across the world thereby contributing to better their growth and success.


Know more on : idea management services & idea management implementation & manage innovations

Successful Drive to Curb Counterfeiting and Gray Market Operations

Revenue losses in business can be caused due to several reasons but counterfeiting and gray market sales top the list. If you encounter some losses due to an error or a misinterpretation of the market statistics you can still hope to recover your losses. But losses caused due to counterfeiting and gray markets are irrecoverable. When fake and inferior versions of your original products are manufactured and sold at cheap prices in the market you become a victim of the counterfeiting market. And if authorized dealers sell your genuine goods illegally at discounted prices your goods are headed towards the gray market. In both cases the loss is yours.

 

The counterfeit goods are of no value to the customers. On the contrary they show adverse reactions which are often fatal, causing your company damaging repercussions. Your goods sold in the gray market will cause a dent in the earnings of distributors who are loyal and do not resort to such despicable methods. The years of toil that you put in to build your brand reputation is liable to be ruined if you do not implement proactive measures to stop the counterfeiters and gray marketers on time. You must take initiatives that help prevent internet fraud and stop the impersonating operations permanently.

 

Solutions that respond assertively to all product counterfeiting and gray market activities are highly recommended. The solutions deploy compelling anti-counterfeiting processes that are automated. The gray markets and auction sites such as Amazon, eBay etc., that carry on discounted sales of counterfeit goods in bulk are monitored 24x7 in real-time. The counterfeit product listings on these channels are irregular but the anti-counterfeiting solutions provide you with accurate reports on the violators. They help you identify the main sources of these illicit activities and impose stringent law enforcements to shut down their operations forever.

 

The solutions possess intelligent capabilities for employing advanced search criteria that help in effective capturing of the prices, discounts and quantities of products sold. You can view the data comprehensively on the dashboards with the help of configurable charts. A risk index helps to rank and prioritize the suspects that are causing losses to your business and displays them on your dashboard. Once the culprits are identified cease and desist letters are automatically generated and the online auctions are shut down without wasting time.

 

Solutions that provide you with efficient online fraud detection results and apply eligible remediation measures create value in your efforts to stem illegal sale of product. You can provide your customers and loyal distributors with selfless service and invaluable support with the assistance of the anti-counterfeiting solutions.

 

Read also on :  counterfeit detection, Brand Protection

 

Implement IT compliance frameworks to Secure Your Organization

Security Compliance has become one of the most important drivers of data security spending today. This is due to the increasing number of regulatory norms imposed on companies to ensure the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of vital information assets.

 

Most Organizations today depend on their ability to induct the latest technologies, to work more competently. These technologies also at times expose businesses to a variety of new and emerging information security breaches, data leaks, and cyber-attacks. As security threats are causing huge losses to companies across the world, it has become imperative for organizations to follow the advice of compliance experts and ensure that managers are able to understand exactly what the controls to implement in order to go beyond simply meeting the letter of the law.

 

Thus, taking an enterprise-wide approach is an important consideration while implementing a compliance IT risk management program. Many times IT managers find it difficult to ascertain and understand the exact requirement to achieve compliance. With non-compliance having serious repercussions, there is a need to follow a set process that includes risk identification, quantitative and qualitative analyses of non-compliance risks, and establishing a risk mitigation plan for ensuring security and compliance. Organizations wishing to manage information security and risk need to implement an information security management system.

 

Achieving control over the IT Process and managing changes can be accomplished by defining and communicating change procedures, like emergency changes, assessing, prioritizing and authorizing changes, etc. With a unified security monitoring solution, organizations can allow their users to access applications and information where and when it is required, without exposing the organization to security threats, data losses and compliance risks.

 

The first step to ensuring complete compliance is, choosing the best IT security and compliance solution. By understanding the importance of IT security, organizations can take adequate measures to adopt the best practices. This involves re-evaluating the IT environment at least once a year, and then integrating, consolidating, and testing systems regularly. An effective compliance risk management program involves people, policies, processes, and technology. The IT compliance solution that organizations choose must provide information on how to implement IT controls that enable them to meet compliance goals.

 

Carrying out each of these controls into specific tasks is the key to effectively using this framework. Investing time and effort to implement effective IT compliance controls will certainly mitigate risks and secure the organization.

 

Also read on - meaningful use in healthcare, vendor management

 

Manage Lawsuits Better with e-Discovery Litigation Support

 

In the recent past, the amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP) have recorded high expenses and increasing amount of litigation scopes. This indicates a significant e-discovery challenges that can be faced by government agencies, corporation and eminent law firms. The process of recognizing evidences and analyzing cases early is hindered by the huge and expanding rate of electronically stored information. Today the total number of litigation cases gas increased and have resulted in making enterprises trying hard to address the challenges while managing the expenses.

Though there have been certain solution addressing these litigation issues, but they have not been able to uncover the case facts fast and does not control the highest expenses of e-discovery, such as document processing and review. This apart, the conventional procedures lack completely transparency and require an amount of defensibility for litigation. This makes the enterprise witness a greater risk of sanctions. Thus enterprises, are aiming to optimize their e-discovery procedures making them consistent with other allied standard business processes. This is will help them to minimize the risk and the capital they generally invest on litigation.

Industry Solutions for E-discovery Litigation Support

Today leading names in electronic data discovery have come up with innovative electronic discovery litigation support that aims to address litigation in a structured manner. The solutions acts on time and is cost efficient in nature. They have been helpful in solving the critical law suit concerns with its easy to use applications. Other key benefits of this solution are as follows:-

  • Helps to consolidate the total e- discovery process from identification and legal hold with the help of reviews, utilizing a single application and assisting the iterative nature of e-discovery.
  • Eradicate the expensive and time consuming data movement that takes place between several separate tools.
  • Helps in reducing processing expenses and time by up to 80 percent.
  • Helps in minimizing the review volume  by up to 90 percent.
  • Assists in gaining perceptive insights into content and keyword search results to prepare better for the keyword negotiations.
  • The early case assessments are conducted fast to scope litigation expense and timeline.
  • It quickly recognizes the main custodians and essential evidence to cater to court appointed deadlines.

Innovative litigation support solutions offers complete transparency and lifecycle reporting to make sure that the defensibility of the e-discovery process and minimize the hassle of court sanctions. Furthermore, these solutions have proven extremely beneficial for enterprises allowing them to have a systematic litigation strategy at hand.

 Know more on : legal disclosure

 

 

The Best Way to Provide Your Employees with Protection in Unsafe Conditions

Industrial conditions and requirements give rise to many occupational hazards. In some industries the workers are exposed to extremely dangerous environments with high noise levels. Those who work in the aviation industry have to bear the loud noises produced by the aircrafts. Those who work in construction companies are constantly exposed to loud noises produced by heavy machinery. A country sends its soldiers to the frontiers to man the territories and keep it safe from forcible entries. These soldiers are not only at war with the human enemies. Every minute they are at war with the heavy artillery and ammunition also which pose serious risks to their hearing ability.


It is a cruel fact that some people are inflicted with severe injuries that can mar their normal living simply because the profession they are in create adverse conditions and challenges. The constant loud noises in the environment can lessen their hearing power and they can be prone to fatal accidents as they are not aware of any approaching dangers. Human life is extremely precious and you must ensure measures to protect these assets that give their life and blood for your business. It is a priority to provide your employees with quality and effective hearing protection devices to prevent them from becoming victims of hearing loss.


There are different kinds of noise blocking ear muffs available in the market. You must choose the one that cuts all background noise and enhances speech and communication.  The earmuffs are designed to only eliminate the background noise and therefore there is no hindrance to productivity. Your employees can easily communicate through the two-way radio, the Bluetooth hearing protection and the ear muff to ear muff for distances that measure up to 50 meters with noise levels up to 120 dB. The device is meant for rugged use and is accompanied by a durable and adjustable headband, soft ear cushions to provide complete comfort to the users and easily adjustable settings that can be controlled without removing the device.


The ear hearing protection devices are stylish with highly visible colors. They provide more than 12 hours of non-stop talk time. They facilitate face to face communication in environments with noise levels up to 95 dB. Nothing is more important than your employees. If you ensure the safety of your employees your business will flourish with their dedicated contributions. If you fail to provide them with fundamental amenities you will not only lose revenues but also force innocent people to suffer for life.

Importance of Reverse Logistics in SCM

Today, as supply chain management (SCM) activities are gradually evolving and generating modifications in the business models, the concentration and initiatives are not just limited to raw materials management and finished products from the point of origin i.e. from the vendors to plants and finally to the end users. There is yet another important extension to the supply chain process, known as reverse logistics.

Simply put, reverse logistics is the procedure of dealing with processing, planning and the flow of the final finished products inventory, packaging materials. It also deals with returns management or returns good management, where the product shipped to the end user is returned back to the product company as sales return. Efficient reverse logistics planning recaptures the value from these materials in the best possible ways such as by repairing, recycling, re-furbishing and so on.

 

Industry offering for reverses logistics

Total eminent brand names specializing in retail fulfillment has introduced effective reverse logistics solutions. This helps you to remarket complete systems, main constituents, attain total or complete recycling as well as convert your old assets in valuable investments. Reverse logistics services offered by these companies offer a complete package with customized solutions to cater to all your requirements.

 

Once you make use of this solution, you can detect the outmoded revisions and components instantaneously, save the warehousing stock expenses that went stale and remain compliant. Furthermore, it efficiently re-furbishes a wide selection of goods within a nominal time and makes them ready to get back to the field as per certain reviewed standards. All this can be attained within just 24 hours. Other services offered includes the following:-

·         RMA Support

·         Warranty Returns

·         Lease Returns

·         Refurbishment

·         Test and Debug

·         Repackaging

·         Fulfillment

·         Disposal (remarketing, recycling)

·         Web Based Inquiry and Reporting

Global trends in Reverse Logistics

In the recent past, there has been an increase in the global awareness about hazardous waste generation and disposal owing to legislations that were passed in numerous countries. Europe was the leader in executing this legislation ensuring that the product enterprises will take accountability of reverse logistics of all the product wastage that generates from any supply chain activity. In this regard, a Green Logistics initiative came into enforcement and had defined a detailed procedure for manufacturers and suppliers to get used to color coding systems to recognize various kind of waste recyclable and green waste.

Read more about : Evaluation Systems & supply chain solutions

 

Efficient HPC Cluster Solutions for A Scalable Performance

The importance of high performance computing (HPC) is rapidly growing. Emerging as a key enabler of innovation for manufacturers, HPC solves convoluted computational problems that are difficult and time-consuming to compute with traditional computers. Most manufacturing companies are trying hard to come to a balance between costs and maintaining their competitive edge. With business transactions become more complex, HPC is being utilized in the areas of data storage, and transaction processing.

High performance computing (HPC) clusters has made extensive contributions in the field of business innovation and competitiveness as they offer  analysts, computing resources required to make vital decisions, to promote product innovations, to speed up research and development, and to reduce time to market.  HPC allows an organization to channel great computing power by distributing workloads across numerous relatively-inexpensive computers.

Clusters are deployed to improve performance and availability, so regardless of whether your workloads require a huge complex cluster or an office cluster, eminent service providers allow you in establishing well-integrated and dynamic HPC cluster infrastructure that is simple to manage and implement. HPC is a cost-effective method that can be exceedingly beneficial for companies. Manufacturing industries have added flexibility to try new, creative ideas and methods, and save on costs with better computing capabilities and reduced testing times. By adopting efficient HPC computing solutions, companies can be better poised to prepare for future success.

Such solutions help you speed access to information, reduce risk and manage growth more easily. There are many well-known IT brands and other enterprises specializing in storage servers and custom computer have come up with successful built-to-order HPC clusters. These service providers offer speed, information and help businesses manage expansion seamlessly. The market players in HPC cluster solutions have an alliance with the hardware providers and HPC middleware technologies that aid the users to have a contact point for a complete cluster application that assures less risk.

High performance computing clusters in a business application can result to top line expansion and bottom line savings.  There are a number of solutions that offer efficient personalized HPC clusters with scalable performance. They also help in leveraging high speed interconnects industry standard servers, so whether you are updating software, adding a new node, migrating to new hardware platforms or realigning high-performance computing (HPC) processes, the service provider that you choose must be able to offer unlimited guidance to help get the most out of your high performance computing cluster environment.

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