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Purchased materials and services often make up 60 to 80 percent of a product’s cost. Companies that don’t invest in the purchasing team’s capabilities are throwing away value. Jack Welch once notoriously said that “engineers who can’t add, operators who can’t run their equipment, and accountants who can’t foot numbers become purchasing professionals.” Hyperbole aside, General […]

By encouraging employees to both seek and provide help, rewarding givers, and screening out takers, companies can reap significant and lasting benefits. After the tragic events of 9/11, a team of Harvard psychologists quietly “invaded” the US intelligence system. The team, led by Richard Hackman, wanted to determine what makes intelligence units effective. By surveying, interviewing,

[:en]We are often asked this question, “why can’t I just have my employees do my translation?” The fact is that you can. But do it at your own risk! Would you get one of your employees from Accounting team to do your manufacturing? Or your creative Marketing plan? Or your strategic Business plan? Or have

For a company that has not yet had a need for translation services, it might seem as if translation services cost quite a bit. But once you analyze what really needs to happen in a translation, you’ll see that it is more economical to hire a professional translation services company like EPIC Translations rather than

Executive Summary:  The parade of new technologies and scientific breakthroughs is relentless and is unfolding on many fronts. Almost any advance is billed as a breakthrough, and the list of “next big things” grows ever longer. Yet some technologies do in fact have the potential to disrupt the status quo, alter the way people live

One of EPIC Translations’ clients has been awarded “President’s “E” Award for Exports.” The awarded was provided at a ceremony in Washington, DC by the Acting Secretary of Commerce Rebecca Blank. EPIC Translations provided localization and translation services for the client as they worked very hard to export and increase market share in 57 countries.  

The rapid emergence of a prosperous, more individualistic, and more sophisticated class of consumers in China is creating unprecedented opportunities and challenges for companies serving them. The opportunity is clear: in less than a decade, more than three-fourths of China’s urban households will approach middle-class status on a purchasing-power-parity basis. But the market is rapidly bifurcating

Perhaps as early as 2016, China will overtake the United States as the world’s largest market for premium cars. Multinationals currently dominate it in China, but they must now adjust to a market where consumers are becoming more sophisticated than previous generations of buyers, who cared primarily about social status. The reason for the change, in part,

An experienced combat commander and leading expert on training and doctrine assesses recent military history and its implications for the future. Major General Herbert Raymond (H. R.) McMaster is the commander of the US Army Maneuver Center of Excellence at Fort Benning, Georgia. A facility for military training, doctrine, and leadership development, the center works with

Emerging technologies are poised to personalize the consumer experience radically—in real time and almost everywhere. It’s not too early to prepare. Digital marketing is about to enter more challenging territory. Building on the vast increase in consumer power brought on by the digital age, marketing is headed toward being on demand—not just always “on,” but also always

As the strategic landscape shifts, an economic-scenario approach can help defense organizations grapple with uncertainty. The art of strategy, in defense as elsewhere, involves understanding possible futures to inform present decisions. Change, volatility, and uncertainty are perennial challenges to the defense strategist and are likely to increase in the coming years. Formulating strategy in these conditions

The growth of cities in emerging markets is driving the most significant economic transformation in history. The McKinsey Global Institute’s new iPad app, Urban World, offers a sense of how economic power will move as this urban expansion takes place. The app offers previously unavailable data from a proprietary MGI database of more than 2,600 cities

Big data could transform the health-care sector, but the industry must undergo fundamental changes before stakeholders can capture its full value. A big-data revolution is under way in health care. Start with the vastly increased supply of information. Over the last decade, pharmaceutical companies have been aggregating years of research and development data into medical databases,

Many companies don’t have one. Here’s how to get started.   The payoff from joining the big-data and advanced-analytics management revolution is no longer in doubt. The tally of successful case studies continues to build, reinforcing broader research suggesting that when companies inject data and analytics deep into their operations, they can deliver productivity and profit

Senior executives will better balance people and priorities by embracing the paradoxes of organizational life. I often ask business leaders three simple questions. What are your company’s ten most exciting value-creation opportunities? Who are your ten best people? How many of your ten best people are working on your ten most exciting opportunities? It’s a rough