At Agora Consulting Partners, we have a long held practice of
sharing business and technology information with our clients,
partners and friends. We formalize this content in our
newsletter articles that we collectively call Agora Insight.
The articles follow our focus areas - how to deliver great
projects (Enterprise Project Management - EPM) and how to build
and manage your software assets to deliver maximum value to your
business (Application Lifecycle Management - ALM).
On September 16th, 2009, Microsoft unveiled Project 2010 at
the Project Conference in Phoenix, Arizona. Agora is part
of an exclusive Microsoft Partner Advisory Council for
Enterprise Project Management solutions, so we received a
detailed, inside look at the new features.
More...
As with any software migration, success is dependent on
good planning. In this article, our lead
technical architect for Enterprise Project Management
solutions takes you step by step through the issues that
need to be addressed to make sure your organization realizes
the benefits of the upgrade as quickly as possible.
More...
A project is a planned undertaking to achieve a given goal.
Within the context of a business this goal typically supports a
strategic objective such as increasing revenue, launching a new
product or streamlining operations. Since the achievement
of the objective is dependent on these projects, there is a
direct correlation between project success and an organization's
success.
More...
Bad economic news is all around us and will affect most
organizations with reductions in revenues, expense and staff
cuts and greater scrutiny of all expenditures. For many it
is easy to conclude that now is not the time to be investing in
project management tools and processes. In fact, the
opposite is true. Here are four reasons.
More...
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM)
Enterprise application development is a complex task.
Today's enterprise applications are responsible for keeping the
organization functioning smoothly and driving revenue.
Mistakes in the development process can have catastrophic
impacts in production. Even less dire mistakes can still
result in significant and costly inefficiencies in the
development process. The most effective way to manage the
risk of these mistakes is through the implementation of a
comprehensive Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) process.
More...
Most well-established companies have amassed a complex
infrastructure of applications, including both new and legacy
systems. These application portfolios become increasingly
costly to support and maintain, and enhancements and integration
of new solutions become more and more difficult to implement.
Businesses routinely invest almost 70% of their IT spend on
maintaining these application portfolios.
More...
The need to deliver solutions in multiple languages is a
reality of today’s business world. However, there is the right
way and many wrong ways to design a software application to be
multi-language and multi-culture ready. In this article we show
you the right way and save you time and money in the process.
More...
Business Intelligence and General Technology
Information Technology is a core platform and competitive
advantage for organizations. There are diverse and complex
roles within an IT organization from help desk through to
application development. Aligning an IT organization
through metrics can help ensure the different roles are driving
towards the same strategic objectives.
More...
You may have an opportunity to reduce costs and provide
additional functionality to your end users by utilizing your
existing investment in Microsoft SQL Server 2008. The
standard SQL Server licence includes many Business Intelligence
capabilities that are expensive add-ons with other database
platforms. More...
Online presence has been a requirement for corporate
marketing for many years. Most companies have moved from
brochureware to eCommerce. The next evolution of Web sites has
begun and it is the move to social commerce. With social
commerce, consumers have an unprecedented forum for
communicating with each other and corporate organizations about
their purchases and opinions about corporate organizations.
More...
BI is a key priority for many organizations, but most are
confused about where to start to get the greatest return on
their investment of time, energy and technology dollars. We
provide a structured approach to assessing your BI Readiness
and point you in the right direction. The good news is
typically you already have a lot of the tools that you’ll
need to quickly start turning your mountains of corporate
data into actionable insight.
More...
