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institution (or group of institutions) create risks for the financial system. Understanding this risk requires that regulators collect accurate and up-to- date information on how global financial firms are interconnected. They must also investigate threats from a firm's exposure to common risks. The macroprudential approach includes oversight of key components of the global financial infrastructure, such as the payments and clearing systems, which

Сhad significant weaknesses that made the financial crisis more severe.

Limit destabilizing failures

To reduce the potential systemic threat to the financial system and broader

economy, the legislation requires larger and more interconnected firms to

иThis makes such transactions more transparent to market participants and regulators and provides greater assurance that contracts will be honored even

hold more shareholder capital as a buffer against losses. The so-called

Volcker rule restricts the extent to which banks can use federally insured

funds for speculative trading and other risky investments. The new law also

shifts many complex financial instruments called derivatives onto open

failing financialбАinstitutions that weren't banks or thrifts in ways that protected the financial system. RegulatorsДnow have new authority to take over and close failing nonbank financial institutions in the same way the

exchanges rather than being privately negotiated between trading partners.

if a counterparty fails. Finally, the reform restricts the Federal Reserve's

ability to bail out individual institutions. This signals to financial companies

and their shareholders and creditors that they will bear the cost of risks that

lead to big losses.

During the financial crisis, federal regulators lacked the tools to close large,

FDIC can take over failing banks. The reform act also requires that firms create "living wills" or "funeral plans," which explain how they could be shut

down in a rapid and orderly way if they fail. If an institution cannot come up with a credible plan, it will face financial penaltiesИand constraints on its

activities. This new framework seeks to ensure that failure of a nonbank financial institution doesn't ignite financial panic, and that shareholders and creditors, not taxpayers, bear the costs.

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES

HOW CAN IT HELP YOUR ORGANIZATION

MAKE BETTER, FASTER DECISIONS?

Market conditions and customer demands shift, and it’s your people who are in the best position to react accordingly. Your organization needs to have an accurate and actionable 360-degree view of the enterprise. Real-time visibility provides a means to verify and justify results, as well as full

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confidence that your company is leveraging the right information at the right time to make better, faster decisions. With the right IT personnel and infrastructure, small and medium companies can respond quickly and effectively to changes in the market.

If you want to help your company create an accurate and actionable 360-degree view of your organization that allows you to make better, faster

Сdecisions, you can jump-start the process by following three steps.

Step 1 – Asses your current business environment and it infrastructure

Management should perform a health check of its business activities and IT infrastructure. Your management needs to understand where the organization is, where it needs to go, and what IT systems are needed to get there. Management also needs access to real-time information to ensure that departmental activities are in line with corporate objectives. Management

и2. provide the necessary analytics and reporting tools to conduct a gap analysis to determine what the

should look to IT to help the organization:

requirements.бАMore importantly, this can hamper management’s ability to

1. extract the relevant business information to provide a clear overview of the company’s current health;

company is doing and what it needs to do; and

1. create a framework to document a performance plan and review, including desired results, measures and standards.

Step 2 – Establish a common set of metrics across your company

aggregate information to create a unified view of all the company’s critical business information. Management should look to IT to help the

1. get buy-in from key internal and external stakeholders on what to measure and how to measure it;

2. develop key performance indicators (KPIs) across your company that can assist management in making informed business decisions; and

3. design analytics and reporting tools to provide quick access to the right information, tailored to the appropriate stakeholders’ needs.

Step 3 – Execute the plan

Management should determine what needs to be done and then deploy the right resources to the right activities. To achieve corporate goals, management needs insight into its best opportunities and its most effective resources—and how well it is using them. Here, IT serves as the engine to analyze and report all business opportunities and activities and give management the overall visibility to allocate resources in the most effective manner. Specifically, IT should help the organization:

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1. capture and organize relevant business information so it can be quickly and easily accessed whenever needed;

2. unlock key business information so that management can make informed decisions regarding the effective allocation and utilization of resources and investments; and

3. create a collaborative environment to monitor, manage, and analyze Сprogress against corporate goals.

иIs it dead or alive? This 40-year-old programming language often appears in

There are some things in life, like good manners, which never go out of style, and there are other things, like clothing styles that fall in and out of

fashion, but when an IT skill falls out of favor, it rarely ever comes back. Here’s our list of 10 dying IT skills. If any of these skills are your main expertise, perhaps it’s time to think about updating your skill set.

oriented architectureбАto “transform legacy applications and make them part of a fast and flexible IT architecture.”

10. COBOL

lists of dying IT skills but it also appears in as many articles about

organizations with legacy applications written in COBOL having a hard time

seeking workers with COBOL skills. IBM cites statistics that 70% of the

world’s business data is still being processed by COBOL applications. But how many of these applications will remain in COBOL for the long term?

Even IBM is pushing its customers to “build bridges” and use service- Д

9. HTML

We’re not suggesting the Internet is dead but with the proliferation of easy to

use WYSIWYG HTML editors enabling non-techies to set up blogs and Web pages, Web site development is no longer aИblack art. Sure, there’s still a

need for professional Web developers (see the ColdFusion entry above for a discussion about Java and PHP skills) but a good grasp of HTML isn’t the only skill required of a Web developer. Professional developers often have expertise in Java, AJAX, C++ and .Net, among other programming languages. HTML as a skill lost more than 40% of its value between 2001 and 2003, according to Foote Partners.

8. SNA

The introduction of IP and other Internet networking technologies into enterprises in the 1990s signaled the demise of IBM’s proprietary Systems Network Architecture. According to Wikipedia, the protocol is still used extensively in banks and other financial transaction networks and so SNA skills continue to appear in job ads.

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But permanent positions seeking SNA skills are few and far between. ITJobsWatch.com noted that there were three opening for permanent jobs between February and April, compared to 43 during the same period last year. Meanwhile, companies such as HP offer consultants with experience in SNA and other legacy skills such as OpenVMS and Tru64 Unix for short-

term assignments.

СSiebel was synonymous with customer relationship management in the late ‘90s and early 2000s, and the company dominated the market with a 45% share in 2002. Founded by Thomas Siebel, a former Oracle executive with no love lost for his past employer, Siebel competed aggressively with Oracle

7. Siebel

Siebel is one skill that makes a recurring appearance in the Foote Partners’ list of skills that have lost their luster.

иmanage. That model lost out to the new breed of software-as-a-service (SaaS) packages from companies such as Salesforce.com that deliver comparable software over the Web. According to the U.K.’s ITJobsWatch.com

until 2006 when it was ultimately acquired by the database giant. Siebel’s

extreme programmingбАdevelopment philosophies resulted in quicker and more flexible programming that embraced the ever changing needs of

complex and expensive CRM software required experts to install and

site, Siebel experts command an average salary of GBP52,684 ($78,564), but

that’s a slide from GBP55,122 a year ago. Siebel is ranked 319 in the job research site’s list of jobs in demand, compared to 310 in 2008.

6. RAD/Extreme Programming

Back in the late 1990s and early 2000s the rapid application development and

customers during the development process. In XP, developers adapted to changing requirements at any point during the project life rather than attempting to define all requirements at the beginning. In RAD, developers

accelerated software development. Although the skills were consistently the highest paying in Foote Partners survey since 1999, they began to lose ground in 2003 due to the proliferation of offshore outsourcing of applications development.

5. ColdFusion

ColdFusion users rave that this Web programming language is easy to use and quick to jump into, but as many other independent software tools have experienced, it’s hard to compete with products backed by expensive marketing campaigns from Microsoft and others. The language was originally released in 1995 by Allaire, which was acquired by Macromedia (which itself was purchased by Adobe). Today, it is superseded by Microsoft

.Net, Java, PHP and the language of the moment: open source Ruby on Rails.

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A quick search of the Indeed.com job aggregator site returned 11,045 jobs seeking PHP skills compared to 2,027 CF jobs. Even Ruby on Rails, which is a much newer technology receiving a major boost when Apple packaged it with OS X v10.5 in 2007, returned 1,550 jobs openings on Indeed.com.

4. Wireless Application Protocol

Yes, people were able to browse the Internet in the late 1990s before Apple’s СiPhone. Web site operators would rewrite their content to the WAP’s

Wireless Markup Language, enabling users to access Web services such as email, stock results and news headlines using their cell phones and PDAs. WAP was not well received at the beginning because WAP sites were slow and lacked the richness of the Web. WAP has also seen different levels of uptake worldwide because of the different wireless regulations and standards around the world. WAP has since evolved and is a feature of Multimedia Messaging Service, but there are now a new generation of competing mobile Web browsers, including Opera Mobile and the iPhone’s Safari browser.

и3. Visual J++

legal wrangleбАthat lasted three years. Microsoft eventually replaced J++ with Microsoft .Net.

Skills pay for Microsoft’s version of Java declined 37.5% last year, according

to the Foote Partners’ study. The life of J++, which is available with

Microsoft Visual Studio 6.0, was not a smooth one. Although Sun

Microsystems licensed Java to Microsoft to develop J++, Microsoft failed to

implement some features of the official Java standard while implementing

other extensions of its own. Sun sued Microsoft for licensing violations in a Д

2. Novell NetWare

Novell’s network operating system was the de facto standard for LANs in the 1990s, running on more than 70% of enterprise networks. But Novell failed to compete with the marketing might of Microsoft.ИNovell tried to put up a good fight by acquiring WordPerfect to compete with Windows Office, but that move failed to ignite the market and Novell eventually sold WordPerfect to Corel in 1996. Novell certifications such as Certified Novell Engineer, Master Certified Novell Engineer, Certified Novell Certified Directory Engineer, and Novell Administrator were once hot certs in the industry, but now they are featured in Foote Partners’ list of skills that decreased in value in 2008. Hiring managers want Windows Server and Linux skills instead.

1. Asynchronous Transfer Mode

ATM was popular in the late 1990s, particularly among carriers, as the answer to overworked frame relay for wide-area networking. It was considered more scalable than frame relay and offered inherent QoS support. It was also marketed as a LAN platform, but that was its weakness. According to Wikipedia, ATM failed to gain wide acceptance in the LAN

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where IP makes more sense for unifying voice and data on the network. Wikipedia notes that ATM will continue to be deployed by carriers that have committed to existing ATM deployments, but the technology is increasingly challenged by speed and traffic shaping requirements of converged voice and

data networks. A growing number of carriers are now using Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS), which integrates the label-switching capabilities of ATM with the packet orientation of IP. IT skills researcher Foote Partners listed ATM in its IT Skills and Certification Pay Index as a non-certified IT skill that has decreased in value in 2008.

СPDF - PORTABLE DOCUMENT FORMAT

иFooter for each page of the document. The Header indicates that a new page is starting. Likewise, the Footer indicates that the page has ended. The Content is the part of the file that contains information viewable by the user.

In recent years, the PDF file format has emerged as a standard for

sharing documents between users or posting information to the Internet.

WhereбАone PDF file may differ from another is in the format of the content. Many different formats may be used including formatted text, unformatted ASCII text, raster images, vector images, or any combination of these. It is the nature of this content that determines how the final PDF file will function. Many terms have been created and used to describe the PDF

All PDF files are structured the same way, with a Header, Content, and

This setup differs from a traditional word processing file (such as a

Microsoft Word .doc file) that contains a single column of information and is only paginated when printed. In the PDF file, each page is a holding area for that page’s specific block of information.

PDF Normal

Also known as True PDF and Real PDF, these documents represent the ideal PDF files for most applications. These documents have been created and published using PDF software. The content includes the original formatted text of the document. Tables in the document are also usually published as formatted text. Graphics or pictures will usually appear as cut images inserted into the text.

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PDF Normal documents allow the user to search text and copy/paste into other files. And, because most of the information in these files is text, the file size is greatly reduced making these files easy to use and ideal to exchange.

PDF Images

The PDF Image is also called the Wrapped PDF or the PDF Wrapped СTIFF. In these files, the content is simply an image file. The image file could be in many formats (GIF, TIFF, JPG, etc.), and of many subjects (scanned page, picture, graphic design). The most common use is a scanned page in TIFF format. To create a PDF Image file from TIFF images, PDF creation иsoftware is used to insert the PDF Header and Footer information around the image to make it a PDF page. This process of “wrapping” the image with the

PDF information is why these are often referred to as Wrapped PDFs.

Text searching and text copy/paste functions are not available with this type of PDFбАfile because the only information they contain is image information. Although a scanned page may appear to contain text, it is actually just a bitmap of that text and not the text itself. Because of the large size of image files, the file size of the resulting PDF files can be quite large. As such, the files can occasionally be difficult to use.

PDF Image + Text

This file type represents a compromise between PDF Normal and PDF Image files. To make these files, the author begins with a hardcopy document. The document is scanned to get a TIFF image making it similar to the PDF Image document describedДabove. But, the scan is then run through Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software such as OmniPage® to capture the text of document and the position of the text on the page. This text information is then added to the content part of the file.

When these files are viewed, the user sees the image on the screen. However, the text in the background is availableИfor text searching and copy/paste functions. Because these files contain both the image and text information, their file size is even larger than that of PDF Image files

ENTERPRISE RESOURCE PLANNING

SOFTWARE: TAKING THE PLUNGE

Successful companies are often filled with an excitement and energy that can fuel continued expansion. However, if a comprehensive system to manage the internal processes and procedures that serve as companies’ foundations are not in place, growth can become unwieldy. The very growth that had inspired so much promise can bring down a business as quickly as it helped it to rise – unless the enterprise is managed accordingly.

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Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software provides a solid foundation upon which organizations can not only grow, but also thrive. ERP helps to alleviate pressures on the enterprise by integrating all data and processes of an organization into a unified system.

This unity allows decision makers to understand, from the warehouse floor to the call center, exactly how the company functions, and what is

Сneeded to keep operations running smoothly.

A Myriad of Benefits

For a company that has grown to the point where an ERP system is the most logical next step, there are enormous benefits to be realized. For иexample, the centralization of key business data and applications is a critical feature for the enterprise. At the click of a mouse, it is possible for management to view important sales analysis data to identify profitable and unprofitable items, while another click of the mouse can provide command of purchasingбАfunctions by automating the planning purchasing and ordering process. A good enterprise system will provide a bird’s eye view of the company – maximizing its productivity and profitability across-the-board.

Streamlined operations save time, money and effort. ERP helps achieve efficiency by providing one integrated system and eliminates the need for duplicate data entry. Key company information is entered once and automatically routed to all appropriate databases. In addition, this provides real-time access to information. For instance, if a product order is entered via the call-center, that same information is immediately sent to the warehouse floor, where the order is filledДand inventory counts are automatically adjusted, providing an accurate display of what product is available for sale. An enterprise system is critical for company expansion because it is generally easier to scale the system and add functionality. An ERP solution is a unified, integrated system that simplifies employee training with the use of one common software solution. This also facilitatesИenhanced cross-training opportunities and appropriate allocation of resources.

With an ERP system, traditionally all data is stored on one scalable database, providing easy access to real-time information—invaluable in today’s economic environment. Additionally, a good ERP system runs on a reliable computing platform and provides a stable and secure environment. This is imperative for peace of mind, especially as it is the repository for critical company information. While enterprise software is often perceived as extremely complex, it needn’t be. ERP solutions should be simple to manage, easy to upgrade and readily expandable to support business growth, while at the same time facilitating easy employee training and reducing long-term expenses.

One of the most important components of an ERP system is the ability to extract and utilize key data. Effective, powerful data management tools

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built into an enterprise software system allow for flexible reporting options that include customized reports with the ability to save outputs in a variety of formats to match your company’s needs. In addition, ERP systems should incorporate Business Intelligence (BI) functions such as dashboards, therefore, eliminating the need to buy separate software tools to meet this need.

СEssentially, ERP allows companies to improve operational processes up

to a global scale, create efficiencies throughout the organization, expand relationships with suppliers, and continually improve customer satisfaction. This comprehensive view of the business provides decision makers with the ability to understand the consequences that one area of an organization has on another.

иimportant to perform a thorough analysis to determine which solution best matches a company’s needs. A comprehensive assessment of the options will narrow those that can supply the majority of the required functionality.

Vendor Selection—A Critical Component

There are numerous vendors in the ERP software industry, all offering

employeeбАproductivity and real bottom-line benefits, but it is also important to know what is right for your specific organization. Companies should ask:

your business improved operational performance. With so many choices, it is

The best enterprise software provides increased efficiencies, improved

• What functional specifications do we need?

• Is this software solution compatible to our company’s business model?

• How flexible are the applications?Д

• Can this software adapt to meet the growing needs of our company?

• Does this vendor have the requisite industry knowledge?

Ready, Set—Implement

Implementing ERP software is an important decision that requires an experienced vendor to guide companies throughИa process that can sometimes

be challenging. Preparation is a fundamental component and, if done well, can alleviate a myriad of roadblocks to an effective and timely enterprise implementation. A skilled ERP vendor, with industry specific knowledge, will ease this process and provide a detailed plan to guide companies to successful completion.

An experienced provider will analyze your business requirements, recommend industry best practices to streamline operations and personalize the system to meet a company’s precise needs. In addition, your enterprise software vendor will work with you to incorporate advanced software features to improve employee productivity.

That said, it is imperative that the implementation phase include comprehensive technical and end-user training. Without this critical component, employees will muddle their way through the new software. If

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