Archive for June, 2011

Message in a bottle!

Friday, June 10th, 2011 | Posted by Matthew Smith in Blog

On Thanksgiving Day 2009 my youngest son, Andrew, threw a bottle into the Atlantic Ocean. The bottle had been sealed with a note inside. This last Sunday I received the below email a well as the attached pictures. It’s pretty cool…

Hi,

We live in Nassau, Bahamas. Have a house in Governor’s Harbour Eleuthera. We are in Eleuthera with friends visiting from Nassau. Our friend, Annie Hall, was walking with us on the beach on Friday June 3 and found this green bottle with a rolled up note in it.

We were all excited to open it and even more excited when we saw when and where this had been launched!

Attached is the picture of the note as well as a couple of Google Maps showing you where our house is in Eleuthera. Where it shows beach access, the bottle was found about a half mile north of there…

Very cool!

Best Regards, Galen Johnston

 

 

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Hi Matthew & Andrew

Galen shared your email with us regarding the bottle find as we have a house on the beach where the bottle was found. I do a bit of oceanography so I thought I would shed some light on the bottle adventure for you. First and as you mentioned, often your bottles just go down the beach a few miles and such, so you should consider yourself lucky that the bottle got out of the shore current. Once it did, it was taken by the gulf stream for a brief ride north and east at which point it likely got caught in an eddy which broke off from the gulf stream on the easterly side. It would have been lost spinning for a while in the Sargasso Sea. The Sargasso sea sits out in the Atlantic east of the Gulf Stream and basically rotates due to the gulf stream running up the western side of it. Stuff, (bottles) get caught up in the Sargasso and may spin there forever. However at times due to winds and weather patterns, stuff from the Sargasso will spin out and get pushed across the Atlantic toward Eleuthera. This is evident by the deposits of Sargassum on the beaches on Eleuthera. Sargassum is a type of seaweed that grows only in one place, you guessed it, The Sagrasso sea. So given this information. you can look at a map and trace the journey of you bottle. It looks like you released it in 2009, and it was found now in 2011, so I would suspect it took a short time to make it to the Sargasso, spent most of the time in the Sargasso until it recently spun out and made the trip to the shores of Eleuthera. Hope this is interesting for you. Keep up the good work!

Scott form Rhode Island & Eleuthera

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Five Questions to Ask When Considering an Enterprise Cost System

Tuesday, June 7th, 2011 | Posted by Stacey Adams in Blog

Like any major decision, when your company decided to take on implementing a cost system, there are a few questions to consider. Here are a few that we think are important.

What’s the goal? The first step in choosing a costing solution is the most important one – understanding the goal. Deciding how a cost initiative fits into the company’s goals will drive its requirements.

How will the culture change? We’ve heard from many of our clients that when you introduce an enterprise cost system, the culture of the costing organization shifts from reactionary to proactive. Instead of simply gathering results from past production, finance and accounting groups have the ability to forecast results and project the impact of business and environmental changes to the company’s performance.

Do we have buy-in from the Big Guys? For any system implementation that crosses department lines, senior managers must engage as coaches, referees, and judges to ensure that the project moves forward and achieves its goals. Many times cost system implementations require rethinking and reengineering business processes in all departments – operations, sales, marketing, finance and accounting. With executive involvement, there is a reduced chance that the project will become stalled or sidelined.

What do our shareholders think? Public or private, ultimately companies are in business to generate profits. Determining the return on investment in a costing system is a vital step in determining which solution is best. During the goal-setting stage, it is important to establish success criteria for your costing system’s performance. Goals vary among companies and include anything from reducing production costs to reducing man-hours to compile performance results. Whatever the metric, establish it upfront and benchmark against it to ensure that your company is moving in the right direction.

Can we use what we already have? Your company has likely invested significantly in technology, so it is important that the costing system you select is able to leverage those investments. The costing system should tightly integrate with existing database and data warehousing environments, enterprise resource systems, and anywhere else you collect vital business data.

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Welcome new team member Rich LaSalle

Monday, June 6th, 2011 | Posted by Stacey Adams in Blog

As spring turns to summer, we’re continuing to add talented people to our team. We’re thrilled to announce that Rich LaSalle has joined 3C Software as the Director of Business Analysis. In his new role, Rich will work closely with our sales and professional services teams to help prospective clients understand the benefits of enterprise costing and how ImpactECS is uniquely suited to meet their needs.

Rich comes to 3C Software with over 15 years of costing and cost system experience from previous roles at Tom’s Foods and Acorn Systems. Prior to that, Rich served 20 years in the US Army and retired as a Command Sergeant Major. In his free time, he’s an avid motorcyclist with a love for Italian motorcycles. When he’s not riding in the North Georgia Mountains, you can find him busy landscaping in his yard or playing with his 2 year old English Cocker Spaniel. Rich and his wife Anna have been married for 35 years and they have a daughter, Erica, who works as a marketer.

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