Business Automation and Software Blog

No less than 14 retailers were hacked between January 2017 and April 2018 and had information stolen. Sears, Kmart, Delta, Best Buy, Panera Bread, and Whole Foods, just to name a few and that’s just retailers. It doesn’t include financial groups such as Equifax or even web service providers like Yahoo.

Anyone in IT consulting can tell you: Cybersecurity is a big deal in the modern world and, if your ERP systems are not protected, you’re putting more than just your company at risk. It’s your job to keep your customers and their data safe, too.

Back in April, salads were suddenly unhealthy to eat due to a particularly deadly E. coli contamination on romaine lettuce. Instances like these bring a lot of things to light about food handling and processing. For anyone who works in the food and beverage industry, it heightens that daily awareness that the strict controls of your work schedule could be a major part of what stands between your customers and a very uncomfortable time in the bathroom.

Hollywood has made a mint capitalizing on all the different ways it theorizes that artificial intelligence (AI) will affect our future world. From household helpmates to law enforcement, most stories include AI going sideways and waging a war against humanity.

It’s been nearly twenty years since anyone carried a Big Mac® out in a foam box. Back in 1990, McDonald’s began making the environmentally conscious move to more sustainable paper-based packaging for some of its perennial favorites like the Big Mac, Quarter Pounder, Egg McMuffin, Filet-O-Fish, and Chicken McNuggets. Prior to this move, McDonald’s on its own had used about 2 percent of all the polystyrene produced in the United States.

With the advent of the Internet of Things (IoT), we’ve created lives and data that are more connected than ever. From smartphones to thermostats to even smart coffee mugs, software and app enabled devices make our lives easier. These devices are everywhere: According to one report, by 2020, the world will boast approximately 34 billion connected devices to the tune of a $6 trillion industry, with business as the main adopter.

Remember when Facebook was a trendy website that college students used to keep track of classmates both while in school and after they graduated? What was once a basic yearbook-type of site is now one of the most widely-visited social media sites. More than one billion people visit Facebook pages each month, and 1.74 billion users are active on Facebook via a mobile device.

There are a lot of theories and techniques surrounding inventory management. Many of them are quite helpful and very good at improving inventory management. But, we encourage you not to overlook the importance of adding an increasingly little-used tactic into your inventory management: common sense.

When you are using CRM in business (or collect customer data in other ways), it is important to stay current on data protection laws. This month sees one of the most significant changes to European Union (EU) privacy law in 20 years go into effect: the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). This new regulation gives EU citizens greater control over their personal data and how that data is used and protected, both in Europe and abroad. What constitutes “personal data”? More than you might think. According to GDPR, “personal data” refers to everything from name, email, address, date of birth, personal interests, photos, digital footprints, social posts, and more.

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) software may not be top of mind when one hears the words “hot trend” the way video games and virtual reality might be. But, while ERP might not sound trendy, its developers certainly keep tabs on business and software trends to eventually filter into their products. 

As manufacturing itself continues to transform, manufacturing ERP systems evolve right alongside it, enabling manufacturing to embrace change in ways that business may still be catching up on. As these five developments prove, manufacturing continues to push to the forefront of trendiness.

As technology continues to evolve, companies may find themselves at a crossroads between what they have been using and newer technologies to consider adding. It doesn’t always need to be a choice between one or the other; often there are ways to integrate original technology with new options for the best of both worlds. This has been seen more and more frequently within ERP systems and the on-going debate between using an on-premises system versus the cloud.