In this first issue of Business Applications Digest, find advice from industry insiders on mastering the five success factors for enterprise resource planning (ERP) upgrades, choosing the best fit between 'best of breed' business intelligence (BI) and built-in ERP tools, and how to take advantage of the latest Software as a Service (SaaS) trends. 

While most common payroll process errors are avoidable, they are also easily overlooked. Unfortunately even the smallest errors can lead to long-term issues and increased expenses. Read more to find out the top 10 payroll pitfalls and how to prevent them. 

Read this whitepaper to understand why and how SOA-enablement will reduce cost and risk of Application upgrades for your organization. 

 Visit this interactive learning environment to learn how to improve SAP performance and enable greater operational efficiency by leveraging automation and other emerging technologies and best practice. 

This white paper provides high level definitions, opportunity identification, and future potentials for: Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), Software as a Service (SaaS), Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Anytime, Anywhere Availability, Mobile Devices, Web 2.0, and Report Cards or Balanced Scorecards as a Business Intelligence (BI) capability. 

Small busi­nesses need to have the infrastructure in place that lays the foundation to con­tinue on an expansionary path. This often involves adding a server to the operating environment. This paper takes a close look at Windows Server 2008 R2 Foundation, Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard, and Windows Small Business Server 2008. 

Read this case study to learn how one growing Euopean retailer was able to migrate to an architecture that could support real-time delivery of shop data to the data center for processing and real-time communication of pricing events to its shops using open source integration software. 

IBM’s SPSS acquisition gives SPSS users a broader support network, IBM Cognos users a predictive analytics platform, and more enterprise users one-stop shopping.  Looking to the future, that could mean analytics ― and better predictive decision making ― on every desktop. 

There is no question that the successful implementation of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) relies on a careful and holistic approach to business planning. One of the most important tools in the evaluation, purchase, and ongoing use of SOA is this body of best practices that vendors, consultants, and customers have compiled. 

The tool of choice to the highly mobile workforce is the  mobile phone. From customer contact and records keeping, through calendaring and scheduling to mapping and news feeds, the  mobile phone is usurping the laptop as the main point of technology for the road warrior. 

This paper provides best practice guidelines for deploying SAP software solutions on VMware Infrastructure 3. 

This paper presents an overview of strategies and practices for governing the transformation to, and the evolution of, SOA.