Including product images in e-commerce ordering apps and shopping carts ensures that the correct product is being ordered, and prevents click-errors and order-entry typos. This saves businesses a ton of money on returns, delivery delays, and manufacturing production delays.
For example, here's the new online order interface recently added to crazybikes.com Note: as you order, the images appear in your cart, allowing you to prevent any mistakes.
You've probably seen samples of mrc's calendar template in action, and as an mrc customer, you may have one of your own...but does it have all of the functionality you need?
Well, now it's easy to include additional functions in your calendar such as search capabilities and drop down menus. Here's how»
Whether you get your business information via a dashboard, portal, or some other interface, the BI tool has become the primary domain of IT's most important constituents: end-users.
This Intelligent Enterprise article takes you through the seven "pillars," or best practices that support the most successful BI implementations, and where you should direct your focus to start achieving BI success and solid business alignment.
We recently put crazybikes.com through a major design overhaul. Why? Well, we've been doing quite a bit of talking recently on corporate branding, and what is important when establishing a look for your Web site...and that got us thinking. Where did this site need to improve?
So you tell us...
Pop Quiz: Which design changes are most important to the site, and why?
As an mrc customer, here is one perk courtesy of AJAX technology that can make your Web application navigation super easy. Here's what I mean: Go to this application and click on one of the customer name links. Now, do you see the tabs that appear at the bottom?
Note that each tab correlates to a different application, but the data that appears is only to the record selected. You never have to leave the Web page.
Here's how to include it in your application»
This article from Information Week gives some useful tips for business travelers, particularly those traveling to and from the UK with the latest security restrictions.
An easy way to do this is by using Conditional Calculations (Calcs) in m-Power applications.
mrc's conditional calcs also allow you to customize customer views/available links based on log-ins, allow users to update/add/delete a record depending on the value of a specific field, and color code your data for easy analysis.
Here's how you can take advantage of this feature»
Although not a new issue, the breakdown of working relations between IT departments and their internal clients appears to be getting not only more common, but also more serious. Almost every organization has at least some of the symptoms. What are yours?
This article from Darwin Magazine helps you put an end to the finger-pointing and breakdowns, and vaccinate, diagnose, and cure these common ailments.
As a sidebar to an article on the drive for better Structured IT Management, this quick article from Intelligent Enterprise, delivers on one of our favorite topics: How to Turn IT Resources Toward Strategic Business Advantage.
Its tips include: improving business agility, getting out of reactive mode, and using tools to improve IT executives' business understanding.
You may have noticed that we've updated our site again to give you an easier way to find the information you seek.
Now you can begin navigating the site starting with topics that are near and dear to your position. You get what you need»
mrc's newly re-designed Customer portal was created using m-Power and has more of a dashboard feel. Here's what you can do with it:
This article in Computerworld, "Escape the 80-20 Rut" is a great little follow up to the white paper we discussed last week about determining the value of your IT projects.
This article gives you some other ideas on how to save by creating a consolidation strategy, and as they put it: "The goal is to free up dollars and personnel from maintenance and management tasks and create an infrastructure flexible enough to react to business changes and problems."
But perhaps we're making it too complicated. Here are some quick and dirty measurements you can pull together to create a better understanding of the value of your IT projects.
This article by one independent IT research firm gives you the high points to predicting ROI to help establish the value of your IT initiatives:
Measuring your Return on Investment: Quick Reference Guide»
And here's one of ours, containing a lot of good general information about where to find value in Web initiatives Determining the Value of Delivering Web initiatives with m-Power»
Have you seen the recent blurb on mrc in July's edition of SQL Server Magazine?
It talks about how m-Power has helped solve the universal problem: how to get business intelligence to users in the form they need it...when they need it.
Read it here»
The tool, called Typetester is used via the Web, and it will help you to drive home that Typography knowledge you picked up in last week's article.
A link to the tool, and some quick pointers on how to use it, is located in this new Forum post.
This article gives insights from industry experts about what we can expect from email in the future.
One unique benefit to mrc's new drag-and-drop m-Painter feature and n-tier flexibility, is that it's easy to quickly change the look, and often breathe new life (as user applications) into old applications.
1) 
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Above is the exact same application with 3 different looks. (You can click on them to see a larger version.)
If you're considering building a portal, this article might be helpful.
One interesting point it makes is: "A portal may provide a nice set of built-in applications that can get you off the ground in a short period of time. In reality though, what often happens is that portals prove to be just the tip of the iceberg, with much more work to customize and integrate the various layers than most customers expect."
The secret, is knowing how to create those customized and integrated portal applications on your own in a fast and efficient way.
If you'd like to get started, but aren't sure how to serve a portal, here's a list of Portal vendors you might want to check out.
With all you have to do in IT, no one expects you to be a Web designer too.
Or do they?
Here's a new section in our User Forum we've added called Web Design Tips, to give you the basic tenets of Web design to help you keep your applications looking neat, professional...and downright cool.
This week's topic? Best Practices in Navigation.
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