Buying invoices, these usually called Factoring, will buying invoices from other company in a discount price, and take the responsibility to collecting the due payments. Using this process, both companies will reap good benefits. The company who has invoices could get necessary funding, and the invoice buyer could make nice profits from it.

So, how this works actually? Get ready for a little lovemoney.com financial talk now, to make things clearer. Well, the invoices that are due are required to pay fees starting from 1.67% of the total amount for every ten days since the last payment term. So, when you have an invoice that is due in 30 days, the invoice buyer could buy it from you and ask 5% discount from it. This 5% will be their profits when they get back their investment. The amount of fees will be depends on the creditworthiness of your debtor, and not you. So, the company who has a good reputation in paying their debts on time will give you a better deal than a company without a strong credit.

Usually, the company that will buy invoice from you will limit the amount of total invoices that you have not more than $100,000. They don’t have any minimum. So, if you have, for example, $200,000 invoices at hand, it doesn’t mean that you can’t sell them. They could still take your invoices by paying you several thousand dollars upfront, and pay the entire amount after they collected it.

Buying invoices or Invoice Factoring will make at least three parties involved. The first is you, the invoice seller. Second is the company who owes you money, and third is the invoice buyer. The third parties could be separated funder or broker, individual, or company. The broker will have the tasks to arrange the agreements and facilitating your receipt. The funder is the person who actually has the money to buy invoices. So, the broker who doesn’t have any money involved will arrange the agreement and the invoice buyer who has the money will pay you for the invoices.

The funder who buy your invoices usually get a higher share because they use their own money while the broker will get a smaller share at least 10% of it because they arrange the agreement.

If you ever dealing with a buyer invoice, you need to build a very good relationship with them. Because when you found yourself facing a financial problem in your business and need a fast cash to fix it, you could contact them and offering your invoices. These people prefer to dealing with companies that they already worked and successful from than other new companies that contacting them. They also would offer you a favorable terms for it.

The companies or individual who buy invoices usually have lots of money at hand. You could find a lot more invoice buyers overseas, especially from cash rich companies in Middle East as the economy is fast expanding over there with rich natural resources.

This integration requires the common database and some hardware and software components. There are usually several things that been included in ERP systems, such as financial, manufacturing, human resource function, and also sales and department. These things often separated in different modules that could be tied up in one big system.

The benefits of ERP for each module are:
- Creating a single unified database that could be accessible by people who already had a granted accessed
- Having one simple user interface to dealing with all modules, thus minimizing the confusion and learning curve
- Standardization for all modules and database that leads to minimum maintenance costs and maximum understanding for each user.

Some of the modules that being included in this ERP system have their own properties, and it will and taking care of different aspects in the enterprises. Below are lists of the properties that being taken care of for each module :-

1. Manufacturing

Dealing with all things related to manufacturing process, starting form the production schedule, engineering, material lists, workflow, process management, cost control, and quality control.

2. Supply Chain Management

This module mostly dealing with supply chain planning, supplier monitoring, supplier data storage, purchasing function, and so on.

3. Customer Relationship Management

This module taking care of all aspects that related to customer like customer supports, sales and distribution, after-sale follow up, and so on. This is one of the most important part in your business. If you have a poor support system, people don’t want to buy anything from you anymore.

4. Financial

Just like the name implies, it will taken care of all business issues related to financial. Some of them are cash flow management, cash flow control, accounts payment and receive, etc.

5. Human Resource

This module mostly dealing with payroll and the people that working in the enterprises. It is important to realize that Human Resource and Payroll System are to be working seamlessly with other financial modules.

Those are the most common modules that you could find in the ERP system. There could be a lot more modules like project management or data warehouse, but it’s not really essentials. This system could also be used to providing interface for the business owners and the customers. If you decide to use the ERP system for the first time, you need to realize that the costs of it will be a bit expensive, especially if you’ve never have any system to begin with.

However, this problem could be easily solved by mimicking the ERP system that already adopted by other successful enterprises. By doing this, you’re not only having a guaranteed success with your ERP system, but also increasing your profits at the same time. Before you installed any of this ERP system, make sure you already have a support system who can answer all of the questions regarding the using of ERP system. If you don’t want to answer the questions yourself, better to get some people who already have the experience in that field to take care of that for you.

It’s DEAL between two giants ! Microsoft and Yahoo! announced early on Wednesday 29th July 2009, that they had reach agreement in cooperation on both their network search, and the lucrative advertisement service, in bid to put forward more resistances on the formidable competitor, the Web Supremo Google.com .

Thanks to the early success of Bing.com , this 10 year cooperative agreement does appear to be of beneficially to both party in their face-of with supremo Google . According to source, Microsoft will provide its search platform in Yahoo!’s website, while Yahoo! will be responsible for both search and advertisement services. For the first 5years period,  Microsoft stands to gain from Yahoo! search advertising earning portion of 12%. As Yahoo retain 88% of the profit, it would gains about $500millions US Dollars in yearly operating income, with saving of about $200 millions US Dollars in capital expenditures. Further by these, Yahoo also estimated that the deal would bring benefit of $250 millions US Dollars in yearly operating cash flow.

Some of the terms of the Microsoft-Yahoo partnership:

• This agreement will last for 10 years, but can be prolonged.
• Both companies will keep current display advertising business, and sales force separately.
• Microsoft will buy the Yahoo’s search technologies 10 year license.
• Bing will become the exclusive search technology for Yahoo websites.
• Microsoft will pay TAC ( traffic acquisitions cost ) to Yahoo at a rate of 88% of the ad sales revenue during the first five years.
• Microsoft will guarantee Yahoo!’s O&O revenue per search (RPS) in each country for the first 18 months following initial implementation in that country.
• Full implementation is expected within 24 months after regulatory approval.
• The agreement protects consumer privacy by limiting the data shared between the companies to the minimum necessary to operate and improve the combined search platform, and restricts the use of search data shared between the companies. The agreement maintains the industry-leading privacy practices that each company follows today.

*Full detail can be reached at http://www.choicevalueinnovation.com/thedeal/pressroom/Default.aspx

Separately, at last month comscore’s data, Yahoo had an estimated of 19.6% while Microsoft had 8.4% in market share. After these two giant sealed on the cooperative deal, their market share looks set to occupy 28% of USA search market ( which is still a far short of the supremo Google market share ) . Clearly, this deal doesn’t likely to shake off Google position as the leader in market anytime soon. Maybe, Microsoft and Yahoo could just set their sight on grabbing 50% of market share, which is more possible.

At first glance, it may seems like good and smart move for both Microsoft and Yahoo!  With their smaller market share each in online advertising, having corporation would help in boosting their presence, in facing the current Web Supremo Google. Further, Yahoo! will also save quit substantially on its operational costs.

However, as we should be well aware of, executing the deal could in details could really be a disaster to both party. If we look at the agreement, Yahoo! will be tasked on “Selling” part, while Microsoft will be held responsible for the “Support”. It’s looks more like a division out tasks in a large MNC . When two division didn’t communicate properly, right from the bottom level, up to the top, what could it possibly ends up with -> TROUBLE !

Every company should knows that Sales and Supports have to works hand-in-hand. Falling so would just create more trouble, and it just snowball until someone put an end to it. So, are Microsoft and Yahoo really capable of executing this agreement in details ? Let’s see…

Whatever it is for now, both has to defend their deal when it face with Anti-Trust Committee, which looks like Google would love to see them passing the deal. Well, by then Google would be able to claim that it is not dominating the WEB, with this Microsoft and Yahoo deal. This could really help when Google continue to expand its muscle online.

So, who really stands to gain ? As Yahoo puts it in its ycorpblog.com -> Better Search, Better Everything Else, Better Competition ! Well, web users should be the one who gain .

During the sell off of Microsoft shares on last Friday, 24th July 2009, investors were looking pessimistically toward it. In fact, with the latest profit result released by the software giant, it looks like Microsoft , the most powerful profit software engine just couldn’t gets on it motor amid current economy situation.
It has been investors’ great concern pertaining to the software giant technology business which is facing very stiff competition and fast losing its shine, in particular when facing with the other 2 gigantic competitors, Apple and Google . With the release of latest corporate result, investors selling off its share has caused Microsoft stocks to fall stiffly of nearly 9% , which eventually lead to 20 billions US Dollars being evaporated off the market.

If we were to look at it further, the contributing reasons that causes Microsoft’s revenue falling to a low point in the second quarter this year, could be due to following these factors :-

Current economy crisis

Nobody could deny that current crisis has major negative impact on business everywhere. With the  relatively low level of  revenue coming from business sector, it shows that the majority of enterprises are delaying their IT expenses, which cost Microsoft stiffly.

Product Life Cycle

It has been obvious that the issue of Microsoft’s product life cycle has seriously lagging behind, while its competitors are launching more and newer innovative products rapidly. Just look at Apple’s IPhone, Google’s Chrome ( and it’s coming Chrome OS ). Competitors has been rapid in introducing new or improved product’s line, while the software giant has been seriously lagging for years.

Market Shift

Inevitably, markets are moving, including the technology sector, toward other low cost countries. Those high cost of PC-based software that has traditionally been MicroSoft main profit engine, is starting to loss out comparing to other low cost emerging markets.

With the growing crowded and continuous inflow of of low-cost mainstream computers company , the sales projection of Microsoft’s Windows 7 is not looking bright indeed.