By David Sims
[email protected]
The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music
is Frank Sinatra’s Come Fly With Me
album:
SAP AG has announced that Swiss Army
Brands, Inc., distributor of Swiss Army timepieces and Victorinox
multi-tools, cutlery, travel gear and apparel, has selected SAP products to optimize business processes and
drive the expansion of its business lines.
The distributor decided to retire its Oracle/JD Edwards legacy
system and turned to SAP, specifically, the integrated SAP Apparel and Footwear
application.
In the apparel industry, company officials say, businesses
need to react within days or even hours to changes in consumer behavior and
customer demand. Swiss Army Brands (leave it to the Swiss, even their military
is a profitable enterprise) say they chose SAP AFS as it “features a flexible
master-data structure that represents sizes, colors and styles at the stock
keeping unit level and gives planners up-to-the minute visibility into daily
activities,” to improve on-shelf availability.
Tom Hennigan, senior vice president and chief operating officer, Swiss Army
Brands, Inc. said his company views the implementation of SAP as “essential for
us to provide our customers with the same service levels that much larger
brands provide.”
Swiss Army Brands will use SAP CRM, ERP and supply chain management products to
integrate its global distribution operations and standardize information on an
enterprise level. They’ll also get rid of incompatible legacy systems, using SAP
NetWeaver platform to enable “smooth system integration,” according to company
officials, “across the organization’s distribution facilities, which will help
streamline operations and improve financial management controls.”
Under the agreement, Swiss Army Brands will implement a full range of SAP products
including enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management
(CRM) and supply chain management (SCM) in a phased rollout for approximately
200 users.
Swiss Army Brands, Inc., a subsidiary of Victorinox A.G., headquartered in
Ibach, Switzerland. It expects to go live with the software in the third
quarter of 2006.
…
EVergance, a vendor of end-to-end
consulting services for CRM and Web self-service, today announced its partnership with The Winters Group, a
consulting firm that works with companies’ contact centers.
This partnership is structured for eVergance to bring call
center operational perspectives to client engagements. The Winters Group offers
eVergance’s existing service lines with call center-specific offerings
including revenue generation, outsourcing strategy design, contact channel
management and due diligence.
…
Compass Global, Inc., an operator of
IP-based international voice and data communications networks, has announced it
will use Sansay’s VSX VoIP session control
systems.
Compass officials say the move is an effort to minimize
operating costs while improving the quality of service to hard-to-reach
destinations.
Compass Global builds and operates international
communications networks between the United States and destinations with
underdeveloped telecom infrastructures in South America, Africa, Asia, and the
Middle East, partnering with in-country carriers to build routes and reselling
minutes to global service providers.
Compass Global says it has already migrated 95 percent of
its wholesale traffic and virtually all of its retail traffic to IP. The
company now averages 75 million minutes of traffic per month.
Dean Cary, founder and CEO of Compass Global says they had
been “originally looking to complement our TDM switch with VoIP, but it quickly
became obvious that the world was moving toward a global VoIP to VoIP
infrastructure.”
Good customer service helped swing the contract: “In talking
to another session control company we felt like we were talking to our TDM
switch vendor again; like it would be very difficult to get anything customized,”
Cary says.
As a result of converting to an IP based infrastructure
based on Sansay systems and integration with their in-house “Global Traffic
Management” software, Compass Global says it has seen ROI, Cary says:
“Before we migrated to Sansay, our TDM switch alone cost
between $75-90K per month for power and other environmentals, with DS3s, SS7
links and other facilities adding another $100K. With the new IP infrastructure
we can replace what used to take up 2500 square feet with four Sansay units the
size of DVD players and consume less power than a hair dryer. We’re saving $180-200K
each month and our quality improved dramatically by eliminating conversions of
voice traffic between TDM and IP.”
Compass Global is a privately held international
telecommunications company headquartered in Woodcliff Lake, N.J., which builds
and operates international voice and data networks between the United States
and many destinations in South America, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East.
…
According to a new report, “Strategic Analysis of IPTV In
Europe: Telecom Operators Strategies” published by research firm Frost &
Sullivan, the ongoing deregulation of the European telecommunications market
and the subsequent entry of alternate service providers means incumbent telecom
operators are witnessing a sharp decline in revenues from traditional business
streams.
And that means technologies such as VoIP and broadband over
cable modem are starting to make their presence felt.
The report sees VoIP and broadband as “contributing to this
trend,” and says to offset this decline, as well as to reverse the downward
trend in their customer base, telecom operators are beginning to focus on
delivering bundled services that provide higher revenues and growth, such as IPTV.
What makes IPTV an attractive defense strategy against the
entry of cable operators in the telephony business is its ability to provide on-screen
programming information, time shifting features, and multiple camera angles.
IPTV can do this thanks to the two-way communication
capability of the broadband connection and the point-to point distribution, the
report explains: The two-way communication capability allows for interactivity
between subscribers and the network, and the point-to-point lets each viewer
watch individual broadcasting such as video on demand.
It’s not all roses: “IPTV involves not only network
upgrades, but also securing premium content for distribution, resolving
operational, billing and management integration issues as well as providing a
satisfactory user interface, among other concerns,” notes ICT Senior Industry
Analyst Fernando Elizalde in the report. “All these represent significant
challenges to telecom operators entering an unfamiliar territory, such as the
distribution of entertainment content.”
Notably, market participants consider premium content in the
distribution business the most important element in the delivery of television
over digital subscriber line. Service providers will have to invest
considerable time and effort in procuring content as well as exclusive sports
material from major studios and producers.
IPTV may not be an immediate success throughout Europe, and
the success of this offering will be different in each country, depending on
specific country and regional characteristics.
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