Time to Market Archives

Supplier Supplies Capital, Engineers to Save Energy and Money

Outsourcing Center, Beth Ellyn Rosenthal, Senior Writer

Farmland Industries, located in Kansas City, Missouri, is the largest co-op agribusiness cooperative in the U.S. In addition to the brand Farmland Foods, the company makes nitrogen- and phosphate-based fertilizers. Because the company uses a tremendous amount of natural gas, it has its own risk management operation. Its energy traders evaluate the price situation, working with various commodity traders, and then take futures positions in the natural gas commodity market.

Coping with Increased Development Cycles

Jerri L. Ledford, Business Writer

In the world of packaged software, upgrades usually happen about once a year, sometimes less, and those upgrades are usually pretty extensive. But in the world of an application service provider (ASP), one of the benefits of offering a centrally located application is the ability to upgrade more frequently. And because upgrades can be performed without disturbing a user’s systems, they can be done on a more direct, incremental basis.

The Heat Is On for Energy Management Outsourcing

Outsourcing Center, Beth Ellyn Rosenthal, Senior Writer

California’s skyrocketing energy costs and energy price volatility all across the U.S. have turned the spotlight on energy costs, and that’s a good thing for energy management outsourcing providers.

Linking Inbound and Outbound Marketing

Outsourcing Center, Beth Ellyn Rosenthal, Senior Writer

Has this happened to you? You receive a letter in the mail describing a special promotion. You visit the Web site and notice the details are different. You visit the store and no one there knows anything about the vaunted promotion. Frustrated, you call the toll free customer service number and the person who answers the phone is clueless, too.

A New Way to Look at BPO

Michel Janssen, Managing Director, Everest Research Institute

This spring I had lunch with one of our clients, a national retail chain. The chief financial officer, the chief information officer and the executive vice president for human resources (HR) gave me a list of 20 business processes they wanted to shed that weren’t part of their core competency. Read about how they did it.

How to Spend Resources Wisely

Outsourcing Center, Kathleen Goolsby, Senior Writer

To survive in our rapidly changing world, companies need agility to make progress in the shifting sands in the business arena. So today’s executives seek advice on how to survive or even get ahead of the pack. One of the most crucial survival tools is outsourcing, and Siemens Business Services (SBS) has a proven track record in helping its clients streamline workflow, reduce costs and improve time to market through outsourcing.

The Seven Deadly Negotiating Sins

Brad L. Peterson, Partner, Mayer Brown LLP

An outsourcing negotiation is a complex endeavor, with interwoven financial, technical, performance, people, and legal issues. However, after boiling it all down, there are seven very common mistakes both vendors and customers make in negotiating outsourcing contracts. This article will help you spot those mistakes. Then you can correct them in your own negotiating team and exploit them in the other side’s negotiation.

Value Drivers

John Higgins, Senior Consultant

In difficult economic times, corporations seek to improve their financial performance. One way to do this is to understand value creation. This is a technique that helps companies improve their product quality, financial performance, customer satisfaction or time to market.

Beyond our Shining Seas

Outsourcing Center, Kathleen Goolsby, Senior Writer

To succeed in the United States, you have to do everything right from A – M. But to go international, you have to do everything right from A – Z. A lot of factors come into play that are not present in a domestic market, says David Cisneros, sales and marketing manager for Western Export Services, Inc.

Outsourcing Customer Interaction Management

Jerri L. Ledford, Business Writer

Before Del Monte Foods decided to outsource its customer interaction management, the company held yearly sales meetings. Representatives received five-inch binders filled with information about products, clients, and company information. The system proved to be very ineffective because it was time consuming, and the information became out of date long before new binders were issued. \x0d\x0aThen Del Monte began using outsourced Marketing and Sales Effectiveness (MSE) tools from Proscape Technologies.

Research & Insight

Time to Market

Supplier Supplies Capital, Engineers to Save Energy and Money

Coping with Increased Development Cycles

The Heat Is On for Energy Management Outsourcing

Linking Inbound and Outbound Marketing

A New Way to Look at BPO

How to Spend Resources Wisely

The Seven Deadly Negotiating Sins

Value Drivers

Outsourcing Customer Interaction Management

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