Why use blogs in organizations?

Blogs are mainly friendly-face webpage done by “the people” for “the people”.

There are many advantages as to using blogs in organizations:

• Blogs are written in more familiar, friendly, easy to understand ways. Take this blog for example: it is about pretty complicated functional software that a company could implement in their automated systems. The official web site of the enterprise why sells this product gives tons of information about it, but in an unfamiliar, cold way. All they do is give numbers, a few examples and then say: BUY IT!!! Blogs don’t have for purpose to make you buy or not something, they are just opinions about products and services. Thus if employees don’t really understand why their company decided to use GTS for example, managers could create a blog similar to this one so that they can explain the reasons for the change. At the same time managers could get an idea of who is comfortable with the changes and who is not. Helping them do their inside training better. All of this could be done anonymously to avoid conflicts among colleagues.

As well there can exist some disadvantages when creating organizational blogs:

• The information that an organizational blogger might give about the GTS, for example, might be erroneous. That is it might be misinterpreted from the official website and rearranged as understood by that person. This could create confusion to employees. Also a blog might not be used to professional purposes. Instead it could be utilized for rumour chatting (what Jane Doe did during lunch?, who was she eating with?, and so on). Distracting people from their work priorities, reducing the work time efficiency, increasing the cost to the company.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog
http://www.netsquared.org/blog/amysampleward/organizations-putting-blogs-good-use

Impacts GTS has upon a company...

Positive:

The most important thing that SAP emphasizes about this software is that:

1) IT REDUCES THE COSTS OF THE COMPANY
2) LOWERS THE RISK THAT MIGHT APPEAR WHILE DOING BUSINESS GLOBALLY

These two important statements could increase the company’s ROI because of the following reasons:
a) By automating the trading process the company eliminates the paper manuals that were much more expensive than the software.
b) This software will insure the managers that they manage the complex system of global trade and that they end up meeting the regulatory requirements, all this through the main system as demonstrated by their demo.
c) Also it reduces the financial risk and maximizes the profits by avoiding supply chain agglomeration, downtime production; eliminate errors that could end up costly in the long run by implementing automated comprehensive letters of credit management.

Negative:

Although there are numerous positive impacts generated by such software, some drawback might also exist when implementing it.
1) Not all the company’s employees are, at this day, comfortable with using a computer, which might imply that if they are not warned in advance that with the company’s intentions of automation, they might reduce their productivity or even refuse to use the application.
2) Also, even though the business company might see a reduction in costs generated by the automation of the system, this cost that they just saved might go to the training of their employees on how to use the system. It’s an expensive process, for each Canadian employee that needs to be trained; the employer will have to disburse $2100. This might not be a huge sum by employee, but adding it up might consume all the savings that this process brought in the first place. YES, it is cheaper to automate the trading system, BUT (what SAP forgot to mention) it will be appreciated in the long run.
All of the above are given in more details on the SAP's official web site:
(http://www.sap.com/solutions/sapbusinessobjects/large/governance-risk-compliance/customers/index.epx)
http://www.sap.com/solutions/sapbusinessobjects/large/governance-risk-compliance/businessbenefits/index.epx
http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2238720/sap-launches-governance-tool

Technical & Training requierements!!!!

To have a preview of how to actually use this software, companies can click on the following link (http://www.sap.com/demos/demplayv2/demoPlayMaster.html?demos/GRC_GTS/GRC_GTS_config.xml) and get a detailed video explanation, with specific examples, so that they get familiar with the application that they want to implement. Of course this implies that managers who will possibly use this functional software already have some computer knowledge.

All the global trade system will be automated once the company decides to implement the software, but the knowledge that was once known and used through paper manuals should already be well known by the global trading managers. The only new thing that this software application brings to the company is that all is done through an easy to use computerized system.

http://www.sap.com/solutions/sapbusinessobjects/large/governance-risk-compliance/globaltradeservices/index.epx

http://www.sap.com/canada/services/education/tabbedcourse.epx?context=[[|GTS200||1||US|]]|

Who uses GTS and How do they use it???

This functional software, once implemented by the company, will be the main application used by the export/ import managers. Also it will be used by the trade preference management and the restitution management.

For the above managerial categories , I will tell you how each of those managers are using this global trade service application:

Export/ import managers will use GTS for the following:

Export/import classification (such as assigning export/import numbers to each one of their products goods and maintaining them in a database that can be uploaded from an external data provider)

Export/import compliance (that includes auditing the trail of each product exported or imported; embargo checking; export/import licences management; screening processes that ensure that business partners are not on restriction lists.)

Outbound/inbound custom services ( for example we have the monitoring of export/import processes; electronic custom communication; printing of the export/import documents; the determination of how an export/import document should look like…)

Electronic compliance reporting (allowing the managers to see all the transactions of import/export that occurred during a specific time)

Outbound/inbound trade financial services ( open and monitor letters of credit)

Trade preference managers will find useful the global trade system for:

The handling of vendor/customer declarations (issue automatic requests to vendors/customers)

Preference determination (determine which products will benefit from preferential treatments such as discounts and first to be exported/imported)

Restitution management will do the following applications with GTS:

Licenses and securities handling

Handling the restitution of recipes

Restitution of the calculations of each order

for more informations about GTS you can visit :

http://www.sap.com/global/scripts/jump_frame.epx?content=/businessmaps/B3C7A0E34CB3410EA2FD135EA988C8F6.htm&CloseLabel=

which is the functional software's solution map.

info sources:

http://www.sap.com/solutions/businessmaps/0A3B961AC2E64CADA46181F484B183D5/index.epx

http://www.sap.com/global/scripts/jump_frame.epx?content=/businessmaps/14B29C754C1642F6ADD27F17FC3BDA07.htm&CloseLabel=

http://www.sap.com/global/scripts/jump_frame.epx?content=/businessmaps/4C476613F9F94663B32AED5A28320D36.htm&CloseLabel=

http://www.sap.com/global/scripts/jump_frame.epx?content=/businessmaps/E65219B24B50492794FDAECC47BF7AF0.htm&CloseLabel=

What is SAP’s GTS???

The global trade service application (GTS) is functional software developed by the SAP company which is the largest European software enterprise and the fourth largest company in the world. Its total market share for ERP is 27.5 percent which makes this company the leader in this area. Its main competitor is Oracle which according to the findings owns about 13.9 percent of the ERP market share.

This global trade service application is mainly aimed to be used by large organizations that conduct business globally. And helps mid-size companies with the expanition of their global business. It is software that manages all trade processes existing in a multinational company or in a company that wants to go international. Although it has not been a long time since SAP enterprises launched this software it is already giving encouraging results.

info sources:

http://www.sap.com/solutions/sapbusinessobjects/large/governance-risk-compliance/globaltradeservices/index.epx

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAP_AG