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Small Businesses: Fighting the Competition

Joan Howey — Wed, 23 Sep 2015 17:04:20 +0000

Do you ever feel like David fighting Goliath? My sister works for an office supply company. She often tells me stories of how she won a new contract over her competitor. I once asked her “Outside of pricing, why do you think a customer would choose you?” Her response, “They just love me”. Digging deeper in that answer, I found out that she was able to establish a relationship of trust and confidence in her and the company she worked for. You may be a small business offering the same products or services as your competitor. You have to stand out, in some way, in order to win that fight against your competition. How do you do that?

There are 4 key elements to help you with your success:

Product – Whether you sell merchandise or services, your product needs to stand above the rest. Focus on what makes your product better/different than others. Market how your product is going to simplify your customer’s life or how you offer lower prices than your competitor. Find your niche.
Processes – The second element to consider is that of processes. Determine and document what processes you have in place that helps you get product to market faster or reduces costs, or generates revenue or even improves customer service. Those processes are critical in helping you compete against your competitor.
People – The ‘hottest next big thing’ product will fail if the people to manufacture or support it are not adequately prepared. The human aspect cannot be forgotten. Make sure your staff is trained properly on all your processes. If new staff members are to be recruited, take into consideration that this could be time-consuming and allow adequate time to hire and train.
Partners – Partners are those specialist suppliers, usually external third-party suppliers, manufacturers and vendors – that provide part of your overall product. Ensuring the correct partners are chosen is essential, because failure by a partner may cause a delay in getting product to market. A failure by a partner may also cause you to incur unexpected costs. It may also cause you to lose a customer. Ensure that your partner is someone you can trust, have an open dialogue with, and that you have confidence that they will provide their services as agreed upon.

When you blend these 4 key elements within your framework of business, you take a holistic view of what is required to deliver a product that will stand out and win over customers against your competitor. Etairos is a trusted partner, with over 20+ years of IT experience in Fortune 500 and 1000 firms and world-class technologists, consultants, solution architects, developers and engineers with operation expertise across domains and industries. To learn more about how Etairos can help your company succeed, go to http://52.90.136.194.

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Accelerate your design lifecycle by applying Enterprise-class Architecture

Ron Smith — Sat, 19 Sep 2015 00:47:07 +0000

Previously, we told of the benefits our fellows in the semiconductor industry can harvest by adopting the principles of an Enterprise Architecture (EA) Program. We brought to light that – though the time and effort to fire up SemiConductor EA seems counter-productive – the fruits of a lowered infrastructure spend, as well as a leap forward in the race to tape out are the rewards. EA Programs are going to prove to the industry that those who step up will step away from the crowd. The technology stack supporting design underpins this modern approach to super-computing and must abandon the stovepipe and the skunk-works. The narrow-minded architecture is costly. The holistic approach to High Performance Computing (HPC) design encompassing; storage, servers, virtualization, connectivity and cloud pushing up through the capture, design, simulation and verification applications needs to be established throughout the flow. An optimized stack yields the performance you want. The benefits of enterprise-class technology may not be so obvious, but the value is quantified as consumption of the resources grows. As the demand grows, first step is often to eliminate slowdowns with immediate point solutions, which may not fit into an integrated EA topology. These short sighted solutions often solve department-centric challenges, yet these short-sighted answers result in higher costs overall. The real cost is support of the disparate systems, and effort to integrate. All too often, a design firm’s EDA tools support team has the laborious job of maintaining several hundred integration patterns and the RTL developer is continually adding another nightly batch job – these end up being the tape and strapping wire that is cobbled together to create a synthetic alternative to an Enterprise-class environment. The environment starts to resemble a modern-day Rube Goldberg machine. One example is we looked at a combination Semiconductor design/Analysis environment for a medical device manufacturer. Taking the holistic approach we shaved 40 % off the $ 3 million allocated budget, saved $ 550k in manpower costs and were able to increase analysis coverage by 20 %. So, as the industry pursues 10 nanometer solutions, those design firms that have tooled their compute environment effectively with an Enterprise-class topology will be the ones who will be able to start and end their design lifecycle without having to ask their supply chain team, their HR team, and their integration team to throw a king’s ransom at the problem. Transition the skunk works, apply EA to modernize your infrastructure on a achievable schedule may prove a tough challenge. Etarios can guide you with as much or as little help as you’d like. Please check out http://52.90.136.194 to see what Etairos can do for you!

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Semiconductor Design Acceleration through Enterprise Architecture

John Shute — Wed, 29 Jul 2015 03:30:06 +0000

Accelerate your design lifecycle by adopting a Semiconductor Enterprise Architecture Framework

By John Shute – from Etairos Premier Semi/EDA Expertise Center

For those in the semiconductor design industry who have gone through with the process of developing a solid Enterprise Architecture (EA) program, the benefit is there! Though perhaps painful to hammer out all the necessary steps, they know that finally their IT team is aligned and understands the business. By now, they are seeing their EA endeavor reap significant rewards in the race to tape out.

While there are numerous benefits of a semiconductor design firm adopting an EA program, let’s look at three likely benefits which merit serious consideration:

Your compute infrastructure costs will go down significantly
You will be able to introduce new technologies into the environment sooner and with less interruption to the business
The documentation and definition of your firm’s IT environment will better describe how your business runs

Included in the guiding principles of most EA frameworks is the fundamental goal of alignment between business goals and IT operations. The exercise of road mapping a design firm’s short and long term business goals alongside IT team’s coordinated activities serves to help both entities gain greater insight into the level of effort needed to ensure the goals are met. In doing so, the rather hefty cost a firm pays for poor coordination between both parties, reflected in poor leveraging of resources, is saved. It is often during the planning activities of these EA-based activities that each side finds efficiencies that produce meaningful savings – whether those efficiencies are in introducing new and better technology or in the planful provisioning and supply chain activities that take advantage of discounts and ensure delays are avoided.

A key benefit to the EA mapping exercise is that the priorities of engineering and information technology are realized and aligned. All IT priorities do not fit engineering, and visa-versa. Once understood, both parties now have a common ground on which to embark.

Equally worth noting, the myriad of approaches that various EA frameworks offer in depicting the environment through architectural blueprints, business term definition, and technology components establish a multifaceted lexicon. This new dictionary, so to speak, facilitates an all-around better understanding of how what IT operates is consumed by the business. From this are a variety of benefits that equate to savings – the reduction of redundant systems, an expedited time to market, and a prompt and effective evaluative process of new technology offerings as they arise.

As the industry moves through 14 nanometer and beyond, it is imperative that you have agility in scaling your infrastructure. Though it may seem like a roadblock to productivity, it is the entrance ramp to the design superhighway required to complete your designs.

Getting stated with an EA program an be a daunting task. Etarios can guide you with as much or as little help as you’d like. Please check out http://52.90.136.194 to see what Etairos can do for you!

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Upcoming – Design Acceleration thru Enterprise Architecture

John Shute — Wed, 06 May 2015 21:38:34 +0000

Coming up this month, Etairos Semiconductor/EDA veterans Ron Smith and John Shute will explore how to put your design services lifecycle on the fast track by adopting an Enterprise Architecture approach to your infrastructure. Etairos Semiconductor/EDA Expertise offers up thought leadership in getting out in front of your high demand for compute resources.

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