American Unit Blog

Blog

16th Strongest Growing Company
Entrepreneur of the Year 2010 Finalist
Overall Best Computer Services
Ranked #138 in the USA, #15 in Texas.
Best Company to Work For in Texas.
Celebration of Enterprise.
Chicagos 101 Best and Brightest Companies.
Dallas 100.
Deloitte 2007 - Technology Fast 500.
Frisco Chamber of Commerce Awards.
Inc 500.
Top 2007 Business.
Tech Titans/Titan Fast 50.
The American Business Awards.

5 Important Inventory Analytics Tactics for Retailers

January 3rd, 2012 by Devender Aerrabolu

The retail industry has always been competitive with very slim profit margins. Retailers can increase their sales, their profits, their relationships with their customers, and their competitiveness by effectively and efficiently managing their inventory. Historical sales data is just as important as accurate sales forecasts in spotting trends and making critical business decisions. Balancing inventory to optimize and maximize ROI entails understanding the marketplace, effectively reducing warehouse costs and customer returns, and improving sales.

Existing applications for reporting and analyzing data are inflexible and inefficient. Many retailers are moving to cloud-based SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) applications for business intelligence analysis and evaluation of business metrics. SaaS and cloud-based solutions can be implemented across all departments, including purchasing, distribution, and point-of-sale, and can be accessed from any location, computer, or mobile device. Cloud-based business intelligence technology has the capability to assist in the management of inventory more rapidly, more efficiently, and more effectively; thereby boosting profits, enhancing the competitive position, and improving customer relationships.

Inventory management is a key component to the success of retailers and several capabilities need to be available to understand the natural fluctuations of inventory and customer buying patterns.

1)Cross-functional data visibility for orders, shipping, receiving, distribution, customer returns, and marketing and advertising promotions.
2)Clear and real-time views of sales trends to maximize and optimize the product mix, including SKUs, categories, and store-by-store or region-by-region sales data.
3)A combination of metrics reports including forecasts sales, invoice aging, point-of-sale data for each reporting period—weekly, monthly, or quarterly.
4)Management capability of warehouse storage needs and inventory supply needs based on past and future sales data.
5)Strategic just-in-time inventory management that also does not negatively impact the supply chain or revenues.

SaaS-based inventory management systems does not require in-house IT resources for installation or maintenance of the applications, and allow for rapid deployment of applications. Many retailers are moving to on-demand business intelligence for their inventory management needs in order to realize cost savings, increase the speed and flexibility of data retrieval and analysis, and reduce dependent on location-based IT departments.

Posted in Applications, Business Processes, Ecommerce, Engineering Change Management, Hosting, Internet Retail, Physical Inventory, SaaS, Smart Warehouse, SMB, Systems Integration | No Comments »

How CMOs can Deliver Measurable Results

October 18th, 2011 by Devender Aerrabolu

The primary jobs of an enterprise business-to-business marketing officer are to develop strong brands, to build creative marketing campaigns, and to publish compelling content. But CMOs are also accountable to management to deliver value and measurable results on often intangible variables. One tool used by CMOs is called the integrated demand generation platform, which is a record system used for the planning, measuring, and implementation of multi-channel marketing campaigns. This marketing solution monitors and reacts to the buying signals of customers and clients, as well as to the marketing messages and website visits—signals that drive the sales cycle.

There are at least four overreaching questions that are faced by B2B marketers:

1)How to effectively reach the right prospects?
2)How to generate and manage qualified leads for the sales department?
3)How to measure the impact and value of marketing campaigns?
4)How to automate the marketing process?

The integrated demand generation platform is the tool used by marketers to produce qualified leads for the sales force in the field. It includes:

•A central depository for all information about prospects and customers, including the behaviors, activities, and interests in aggregate form.
•Effective tools for prospect and customer lists that can be refined to execute online and offline marketing channels.
•Comprehensive measuring tools for campaigns such as reports and analytics.
•Integration with other systems including sales force automation and customer relationship management.

With integrated demand generation platforms, marketing departments can optimize marketing ROI, effective target prospects, utilize lead scoring algorithms, nurture leads to cultivate more relevant buyer behavior, measure and report marketing results, increase sales revenue and decrease the sales cycle, automate the marketing and sales processes, and most importantly, align the marketing goals with the projected sales opportunities.

Posted in Business Processes, Ecommerce, Internet Retail, Systems Integration | No Comments »

Embracing Digital Resources in your Enterprise

October 4th, 2011 by Devender Aerrabolu

In order for the enterprise to successfully incorporate digital channels into the overall business strategy, the marketing department must work with the IT department to bring and keep digital channels to the highest levels possible. If the planning and implementation of a digital strategy is not structured properly, then both the marketing department and the IT department can run into potential problems such as: inconsistent branding, wasted resources, and limited impact on the business goals and objectives.

Many companies today, especially those who sell directly to the end customer, have Facebook pages, Twitter accounts, and email-marketing campaigns. Retail enterprises also allocate a major portion of their marketing to digital channels and design and maintain e-commerce sites. However, often the efforts of the disparate departments of an enterprise yield disparate results that add no value to the customer experience.

When striving to keep branding consistent, the digital marketing initiatives complement the overall brand and “fill in the gaps” in the customer life cycle. Digital marketing can also actually reinvent the customer relationship by adding value to direct consumer connection to the brand.

It falls upon the chief marketing officer (CMO) of the enterprise to embrace and manage the key components of the digital strategy and ensure that all digital efforts align with the business goals and objectives. Several initiatives can be adopted:

•Digital marketing can be aligned around specific consumer groups instead of just audience demographics.
•The digital marketing campaigns can be synchronized around the life cycle of the consumer.
•The CMO can utilize measurable business intelligence analytics supplied by the chief information officer (CIO) to optimize direct consumer responses to the marketing efforts.

The CMO who designs and implements a successful enterprise-wide digital marketing strategy considers how digital will fit into each stage of the consumer life cycle, integrates the customer relationship into the branding operation, and transforms the customer experience.

Posted in Applications, Business Processes, Ecommerce, Internet Retail, Systems Integration, Web Development | No Comments »

Collaboration and Integration with Adobe Acrobat X and Microsoft SharePoint and Microsoft Office

June 21st, 2011 by Devender Aerrabolu

Team collaboration and project review cycles can be enhanced and improved with the new integration of Adobe Acrobat X with two of Microsoft’s major enterprise software applications: SharePoint and Office.

Adobe has recently announced built-in support for SharePoint within Acrobat X; supported versions include SharePoint 2007 SharePoint 2010, Office 2003, Office 2007, and Office 2010. Many IT departments already integrate SharePoint with Office, but the editing limitations of PDF documents limited the collaboration of PDF documents.

The PDF format is the defacto standard for the secure exchange of documents and the format is accepted around the globe because of the clarity of the various content types and the accessibility by anyone with the free Adobe Reader software. With the new integration of Acrobat X with SharePoint, enterprise teams can now collaborate with PDF documents as easily as with Office documents.

Forrester Consulting recently completed a study called “Building the Future of Collaboration”. Results of the study showed that fully two-thirds of knowledge workers in the United States and in Europe regularly collaborate with colleagues in other locations and different time zones. The most-often used collaboration tool has been email, but that has presented several challenges:

Documents must be sent as attachments to emails and must be opened, edited, and commented on other disparate operating systems.

Email attachments often have a size limit and consume a high amount of space on enterprise servers.

Email is often not secure after it leaves the corporate firewall.

The seamless integration of Adobe Acrobat X into the SharePoint and Office platforms overcome the deficiencies of email collaboration by creating a digital collaboration solution. The document owner first creates a PDF file using an ad-in called “PDFMaker” and prepares it for review by uploading it to the SharePoint Server with an automatic link to the document and invites reviewers to leave comments. The document owner automatically receives and compiles comments from the reviewers all in one document. Reviewers can see the review deadline, see who else has responded, and supplement the comments of others.

The final document can be password protected and archived on the SharePoint server for future reference. All reviewed and archived documents are searchable with the free Adobe PDF Filter.

Posted in Applications, Microsoft SharePoint, Web Development | No Comments »

Designing Secure Web Applications

June 7th, 2011 by Devender Aerrabolu

The professionals who design enterprise web applications must ensure that security issues are designed into the application from the ground up. Web architects, developers and designers follow specific guidelines to counteract potential points of application vulnerability. Key areas where web design may be vulnerable include: input validation, authentication, parameter manipulation, auditing, logging, configuration and session management, and cryptology; among others.

The application itself is responsible for the authentication and identification of the user; especially important since all subsequent authorization decisions are based on the initial authorization. The designers and developers of the web applications are responsible for the secure authentication and session management issues. Even if the company network is secure, much of the input and output of data occurs over public networks and therefore web applications must prevent parameter manipulation and avoid the disclosure of sensitive data.

Early in the design phase of the application, the team of web architects and designers take into consideration corporate deployment and security practices and policies as well as the existing infrastructure. In addition to the actual design of the enterprise application, all of the requirements from the different departments and divisions of the company must be considered and the design must be kept flexible enough to accommodate future security and support needs.

The application is continually evolving from the design phase through the maintenance, with ongoing internal and external development and security issues based on the limitations of the foundation platform.

Security design challenges are less likely to emerge when high quality work is completed up front making it easier to anticipate, easier to control costs, and easier to take care of any anticipated or unanticipated problems early in the installation and implementation stages.

Posted in Applications, Systems Integration, Web Development | No Comments »

Trends in Internet Retailing

June 21st, 2010 by Nitin Bidi

The period 2008/2009 has been characterized as “The Great Recession”, referring to the global economic crisis that began in December 2007 increased throughout 2008. Though there remain serious economic challenges in Europe (Greece, Ireland, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Hungary) there are hopeful signs of improvement in the retail sector in the United States. Online merchants, in particular, seem to be well on their way to recovery here in mid-2010.

Tully & Holland is a United States investment bank that advises on mergers and acquisitions (M & A) and private placements. The firm specializes in consumer product manufacturers and distributors, multi-channel marketers, and retailers. The managing director of Tully & Holland, Stuart Rose, recently released a comprehensive report updating the Internet Retail industry overall and reporting on trends in the M&A internet retail market.

Despite the very difficult challenges of 2009, especially and including losses and restructuring for small and medium-sized businesses, the fourth quarter of 2009 showed strong signs of growth in the fastest growing sectors of the retail industry. Conversely, the M&A sector continued to struggle, although Tully & Holland predict slow but steady growth in this area over the next five years.

Tully and Holland studied the retail marketplace for the years of 2001 through 2008 before summarizing 2009 and making forecasts for 2010 and beyond. One benchmark used in the 2009 summary document was Compound Annual Growth Rate or CAGR. Although the CAGR of Internet sales grew 18.6% from $34.5B to $150B between 2001 and 2009, the actual annual growth rate declined to a near-negative rate in 2008. Other findings for total retail sales and e-commerce include

E-commerce grew as a percentage of total retail sales from 1.1% in 2001 to 3.7% in 2009.
Online retailers enjoyed a very strong Q4 in 2009 over Q408 with YOY (Year-Over-Year) sales increasing 14.6%. That increase represented 4.3% of total retail sales.
Publicly-traded internet retail companies experienced large increases in their stock prices, increasing 130% from February of 2009; contrasting with the S&P 500 Retailing Index which increased about 70% in the same time period.

Merger and acquisitions for Internet retail did not fare as well in 2009, reporting an overall decline of 37% in deals from a total of 57 deals in 2008 to only 36 deals in 2009. The decreased availability of credit brought on by the financial sector crisis, as well as a weak overall U.S. economy are thought to be the major causes for the drop in M&A activity. There were five major transactions which comprised the majority of deals: Retail Convergence, Zappos, NextRx, Circuit City, and Ticketmaster.

The message from Tully & Holland for SMB Internet retailers is that along with growth will come increased competition and reduced prices and margins. To avoid becoming a target for acquisition, SMBs should concentrate on increasing their brand recognition, strengthening their supply chains, and upgrading their financial performance.

Posted in Ecommerce, Internet Retail | 1 Comment »

SMB’s Still Need to Get Up-Close-and-Personal with the Web

April 29th, 2010 by Bill Martin

An amazing number of small and mid-size enterprises continue to avoid taking advantage of all the potential offered by establishing a robust Web presence. For businesses of all sizes, but particularly those that have seen their ability to grow constrained by the economic events of the past two years, harnessing the power of the Web and expanding their digital footprint is critical.

The question has to be asked: Why the reticence and/or complacency?

There are several schools of thought as to the core reason(s).

Establishing an e-commerce site is too expensive

Many companies will readily admit that they need to be on the Internet but fear the aggregated cost of getting there. Visions of $20,000 or $30,000 spent on a flashy Web site and e-commerce capability may create paralysis in even those business owners who perceive themselves as tech-savvy.

The truth is that those days of time consuming and expensive Web development projects are a thing of the past. The tools are better, the development platforms much more friendly and the service providers have matured their processes to the point that $1500 – $2000 can buy a state-of-the-art e-commerce solution.

It’s a generational thing

The SMB population has many 40, 50 and 60 year olds leading companies that didn’t grow up with the Internet and whose frame of reference when it comes to building the business is grounded in the traditional business models of their generation and marketplace. The digital channel, and even more so the social media channel, are foreign and uncomfortable enough that engagement and utilization is not nearly to the levels they should be.

While there may be more than a grain of truth here, fifteen years of experience, socialization, institutionalization and growth of the Internet as a cornerstone engine of commerce should have overwhelmed any negative sentiment harbored by the vast majority of that population of business leaders that are less than digital-centric.

No time and no bandwidth

Small and mid-size businesses tend to operate as lean as possible and allocating the human and time resources to build and constantly maintain a web presence that can remain beneficial to the enterprise over the long term remains, in too many cases, a non-starter.

Outsourcing non-core activities has become fundamental for senior management to provide successful stewardship of the business they are chartered to lead. Few small and mid-size businesses would or should consider web/e-commerce development as part of their core competencies. That is why there are so many companies that specialize in designing, developing and implementing the state-of-the-art in online presence for so many large enterprises as well as those in the SMB sector. You don’t have to do it yourself to harvest all the benefits of expanding the utility of your business online.

At this stage in the lifecycle of the digital business model, there is no good excuse for companies to sacrifice the growing opportunity offered by the online channel. No matter what industry they operate in and what constituencies they market to, the SMB enterprise risks either total or partial obsolescence if they fail to offer their customer base the multi-channel option that leverages online access.

Posted in Ecommerce, Outsourcing, SMB, Web Development | No Comments »