By Joel Klebanoff

In the final analysis, it all comes down to sales. Companies can devote considerable time and effort to realizing cost reductions, quality improvements, and other objectives, but without sales, those undertakings can't generate profits. Simply put, all other things being equal, the more products and services a company sells and the more it charges for them, the greater the profit will be. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) can help to achieve profit goals by improving customer satisfaction, optimizing interactions with customers, and ensuring that no sales opportunity is left behind.

One author says the current subprime mortgage meltdown might have been avoided if large financial players had been more collaborative.

By Chris Smith

Regardless of the hardship it is causing many people, the subprime mortgage meltdown may have a silver lining by indirectly stimulating innovation in the years ahead.

IBM's growing interest in Africa and the world's other poorer regions is rooted in several philosophies, including social responsibility, but one of those philosophies is simply economic self-interest.

What level of disaster recovery and high availability capabilities do you need? Understanding RPO and RTO can help you to find the answer that best balances costs, risks, and profitability.

By Craig A. Johnson

For a few decades now, all prudent IT departments have had some form of disaster recovery (DR) plan in place. For many companies, that still solely entails sending nightly tape backups offsite and arranging for a site, possibly one owned by a recovery service provider, where data and applications can be loaded onto systems and run should disaster strike the primary data center. Increasingly, because of more stringent regulations concerning data and system protection and because already high downtime costs are continuing to rise, organizations are augmenting DR with high availability (HA).

Automating reports and distributing documents electronically is both good for the planet and great for the bottom line.

By Chris Smith

We don't have detailed demographics on all our MC Press Online readers, but my guess is there aren't too many who were working on computers in the early 1960s when IBM coined the term "spool file."

The acronym stands for Simultaneous Peripheral Operation On-Line (SPOOL), but folklore has it that the name actually was conceived after the term "spool" came into widespread use, since a spool is what is used to wind magnetic tape.

New online storage backup services now offer tools to create and edit documents and spreadsheets.

By Chris Smith

I don't know what it is about me and backup applications, but it's sort of like me and cheerleaders. There is just a certain type of woman with whom you know you're not going to get along no matter how much time you spend with her. And so it is with me and backup software.

Universal payment platforms provide a range of options for paper payments, electronic payments, and the distribution of payment documentation in paper or electronic form.

By Mark Firmin

Throughout the corporate world, managements are waging a war on paper. The new medium for corporate "paperwork" (transactions ranging from bids and contracts, sales and purchase orders, documents and reports, to financial settlements and more) is electronic.