Someone who has worked in a corporation or with a large organization might have heard the phrase “change management” used from time to time. Change management has been around for a while, but has become extremely popular with organizations or corporations that would like to initiate significant change to processes that can include both work tasks and culture. Change management can be defined as a set of processes that is employed to ensure that significant changes are implemented in an orderly, controlled, and systematic fashion to effect organizational change. One Read More

An Application Service Provider or ASP provides “applications” as a service – specifically, software and services having to do with the information technology requirements of companies and individuals. The service offered by Application Service Providers may include processing credit card payments, providing customer relations management (CRM) services to businesses, or customized applications. The operational concept is straightforward – a service provider identifies a function or activity that is common to a number of companies. The Application Service Provider then offers the service to its identified market for a fixed fee, Read More

As organizations grow, their potential to increase the collaboration potential of on-line technologies also grow. Therefore, the need to implement document production control early in a project’s life cycle has proven to be critical to success. Some may argue that document control is another layer of bureaucracy. However, for projects that involve many contributors, document controls make it easier for team members to find the most updated, relevant content that pertains to their interests or the assigned sub-components of a project. Understanding how to control documents is fundamental to setting Read More

Sarbanes Oxley is usually known as Sarbox or Sox, it is a United States federal law passed in 2002, that protects the public against major corporate accounting scandals that proved to be the catalyst of many investors losing billions of dollars worth of value in the stock market. The official name for Sarbox or Sox is the Public Company Accounting Reform and Investor Protection Act of 2002. It was sponsored and helped created by Senator Paul Sarbanes and Representative Michael G Oxley – hence the name. Sarbox Establishes Mainly, the Read More

The AICPA (American Institute of Certified Public Accountants) developed and maintains the SAS 70 (Statement on Auditing Standard 70). Specifically, SAS 70 is a “Report on the Processing of Transactions by Service Organizations” where professional standards are set up for a service auditor that audits and assesses a service organization’s internal controls. At the end of the audit, the service auditor issues an important report called the “Service Auditor’s Report.” A service organization can be defined as a business or entity that provides outsourcing services. These outsourcing services can, and Read More

MTBF stands for Mean Time Between Failures. MTBF numbers represent a statistical approximation of how long a set of devices should last before failure. MTBF numbers are not valuable at determining when a specific device will fail. MTBF numbers are usually stated in terms of hours. MTBF is often erroneously described as Mean Time Before Failure. Environmental Factors and MTBF MTBF numbers can be radically altered by environmental factors such as improper power and cooling. MTBF numbers can also be lowered by excessive vibration or by many forms of misuse. Read More

FISMA is the Federal Information Security Management Act. The FISMA Implementation Project was established during early 2003 in order to develop a range of crucial security guidelines and standards as required by Congressional legislation. Such publications constitute FIPS 200 and FIPS 199 together with the NIST Special Publications 800-59, 800-53, and 800-60. The development of security guidance materials support the actual project, but this is not directly required through the FISMA legislation. These publications constitute the NIST Special Publications 800-53, 800-53A, and 800-37. The actual Computer Security Division constantly produces Read More

Knowledge management is all about learning about and keeping track of a company's assets and special traits. These traits can include inventory, employees, location, or how the company conducts business. Knowledge management is essential to a company's survival and expansion in the business world. This article will go over some of the key components of knowledge management and the goals that knowledge management brings to an organization's attention. Improved Performance The first thing that a company looks at when using knowledge management is how to improve the overall performance of Read More

Value stream mapping is a popular manufacturing technique. It analyzes the flow of materials and information necessary to create a product or provide a service. The technique originated at the Toyota Corporation and is referred to as material and information flow mapping. It can be applied to any process that requires improvement. When using value stream mapping, the process being analyzed is illustrated in a step-by-step manner that depicts details such as material receipt through product assembly. It is most typically applied when a company is looking to improve process Read More

Data warehousing software is quickly on the rise to becoming one of the most needed forms of software on the market today. As more and more companies convert their brick-and-mortar foundations into cyber empires, the majority of information is now digital. Data warehousing software allows for these companies to manage their information by using various business tools to edit data and then store it in one central location that all parts of the company can access. In this article, we will discuss data warehousing and popular data warehousing software. What Read More