By Mark Brousseau
Accounts payable (AP) professionals see "minimal IT involvement" as the biggest benefit of using Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) or cloud computing for AP processing, according the findings of the 2011 AP Automation Study by International Accounts Payable Professionals. Nineteen percent of survey respondents identified "no capital investment" as the biggest benefit of cloud computing or SaaS, while 17.5 percent cited "lower cost per invoice" and 14.3 percent identified "fast start-up."
Some 12.7 percent of respondents identified "no software or hardware " as the biggest benefit.
Randy Davis, vice president of sales and marketing operations for eGistics isn't surprised that these benefits would rank high in the minds of AP staff. "Cloud offerings have always touted minimal IT involvement, no capital investment, fast deployment, and no on-site software as benefits," he notes.
But Davis believes that the ability of cloud-based document processing solutions to remove paper management from AP processing could deliver even greater benefits to AP professionals. "Today's cloud-based AP solutions significantly improve on key usability factors such as electronic capture, structured indexing, search and retrieval, work allocation, data updates and corrections, and audit and tracking -- things that directly contribute to the smooth operation of an AP department," Davis says.
"eGistics believes that business users will increasingly appreciate and accept the benefits of SaaS and cloud computing for critical tasks such as AP processing and management, and that such benefits will soon be taken for granted. At the end of the day, AP departments are looking for solutions that help them do their jobs faster, more accurately and with better accountability," Davis concludes.
What do you think?
Showing posts with label SaaS. Show all posts
Showing posts with label SaaS. Show all posts
Monday, May 2, 2011
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
5 Questions For …
Shayne Magee, director, Client Solutions, Diversified Information Technologies
When you talk to prospects, what do they tell you is their biggest document processing challenge, and why?
Our prospects and clients typically have many customers. The relationship they have is one that requires efficient management of inbound and outbound documents and data. The biggest challenge has been finding a partner that has a complete solution. The solutions needs to seamlessly capture, output, processing, and preservation of increasingly compliant centric environments.
What is your company doing to address this challenge?
Diversified is continuing to develop our virtual mailroom and information lifecycle management solutions. Our solutions can be combined and interfaced seamlessly with our clients infrastructure and systems. All of our offerings are specifically designed to deploy quickly and solve this previously unmet industry challenge for a single source solution.
Additionally, We have been adding integrated document facilities across the country to support the requirements of our financial, healthcare, enterprise and government clients. We added five in the last 12 months and continue to invest in quality programs and certification to support our clients needs. Currently, Diversified holds the following certifications: NARA, ISO 9001, SaS 70 Type II, HIPAA, and, most recently, NAID.
What do you believe will be the major storyline in document processing over the next 12 months, and why?
We are in the middle of a swiftly moving trend of SaaS technology, which is allowing organizations to collaborate and communicate in real time streamlined processes that in many cases eliminate previous steps, antiquated systems, and documents. We feel SaaS-deployed applications, and the inclusion of the mobile Internet tsunami, will be the major ECM storyline in the next 12 months.
What’s the most interesting thing in the documents processing space that you’ve read about recently (that wasn’t put out by your own company)?
Some new data points from some AIIM research have been very interesting regarding the change in paper-based policies in a Facebook era. They forecast an evolution from systems of records to systems of engagement and potentially the end of email, wet signatures, and paper based transactions.
What do you think?
When you talk to prospects, what do they tell you is their biggest document processing challenge, and why?
Our prospects and clients typically have many customers. The relationship they have is one that requires efficient management of inbound and outbound documents and data. The biggest challenge has been finding a partner that has a complete solution. The solutions needs to seamlessly capture, output, processing, and preservation of increasingly compliant centric environments.
What is your company doing to address this challenge?
Diversified is continuing to develop our virtual mailroom and information lifecycle management solutions. Our solutions can be combined and interfaced seamlessly with our clients infrastructure and systems. All of our offerings are specifically designed to deploy quickly and solve this previously unmet industry challenge for a single source solution.
Additionally, We have been adding integrated document facilities across the country to support the requirements of our financial, healthcare, enterprise and government clients. We added five in the last 12 months and continue to invest in quality programs and certification to support our clients needs. Currently, Diversified holds the following certifications: NARA, ISO 9001, SaS 70 Type II, HIPAA, and, most recently, NAID.
What do you believe will be the major storyline in document processing over the next 12 months, and why?
We are in the middle of a swiftly moving trend of SaaS technology, which is allowing organizations to collaborate and communicate in real time streamlined processes that in many cases eliminate previous steps, antiquated systems, and documents. We feel SaaS-deployed applications, and the inclusion of the mobile Internet tsunami, will be the major ECM storyline in the next 12 months.
What’s the most interesting thing in the documents processing space that you’ve read about recently (that wasn’t put out by your own company)?
Some new data points from some AIIM research have been very interesting regarding the change in paper-based policies in a Facebook era. They forecast an evolution from systems of records to systems of engagement and potentially the end of email, wet signatures, and paper based transactions.
What do you think?
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
Cloud computing's "green" credentials
By R. Edwin Pearce
The market for cloud computing has expanded quickly over the past few years, largely driven by its ability to deliver impressive economic benefits to cash-strapped organizations. But a new study finds that not only can cloud computing keep operations in the black, it also can help them be "green."
Pike Research reports that the growth of cloud computing will have important implications for both energy consumption and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. In fact, by 2020, cloud computing will lead to a 38 percent reduction in worldwide data center energy expenditures, compared to a business-as-usual scenario, Pike Research reports.
“The growth of cloud computing will have a very significant positive effect on data center energy consumption,” says Pike Research Senior Analyst Eric Woods. “Few, if any, clean technologies have the capability to reduce energy expenditures and GHG production with so little business disruption. Software-as-a-service, infrastructure-as-a-service, and platform-as-a-service are all inherently more efficient models than conventional alternatives, and their adoption will be one of the largest contributing factors to the greening of enterprise IT.”
To be sure, cloud computing's "green" credentials and environmental impact aren't the top reasons for organizations to deploy the technology. But they are certainly incremental benefits, particularly for organizations that list environmental sustainability among their strategic objectives.
R. Edwin Pearce is executive vice president of sales and corporate development for eGistics, Inc., a leading provider of hosted document management solutions. Pearce can be reached at 214-256-4607 or via epearce@egisticsinc.com.
The market for cloud computing has expanded quickly over the past few years, largely driven by its ability to deliver impressive economic benefits to cash-strapped organizations. But a new study finds that not only can cloud computing keep operations in the black, it also can help them be "green."
Pike Research reports that the growth of cloud computing will have important implications for both energy consumption and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. In fact, by 2020, cloud computing will lead to a 38 percent reduction in worldwide data center energy expenditures, compared to a business-as-usual scenario, Pike Research reports.
“The growth of cloud computing will have a very significant positive effect on data center energy consumption,” says Pike Research Senior Analyst Eric Woods. “Few, if any, clean technologies have the capability to reduce energy expenditures and GHG production with so little business disruption. Software-as-a-service, infrastructure-as-a-service, and platform-as-a-service are all inherently more efficient models than conventional alternatives, and their adoption will be one of the largest contributing factors to the greening of enterprise IT.”
To be sure, cloud computing's "green" credentials and environmental impact aren't the top reasons for organizations to deploy the technology. But they are certainly incremental benefits, particularly for organizations that list environmental sustainability among their strategic objectives.
R. Edwin Pearce is executive vice president of sales and corporate development for eGistics, Inc., a leading provider of hosted document management solutions. Pearce can be reached at 214-256-4607 or via epearce@egisticsinc.com.
Monday, December 6, 2010
Cloud computing grows up
By R. Edwin Pearce
The next year will be big for cloud computing, with the technology transitioning from “early adopter status” into a mainstream platform for IT. That’s according to IDC, a leading research and advisory firm, which ranked the maturation of cloud computing among its top IT predictions for 2011.
IDC predicts that spending on public IT cloud services will grow at more than five times the rate of the IT industry in 2011, up 30 percent from 2010, as organizations move a wider range of business applications into the cloud. Small and medium-sized business cloud use will surge in 2011, with adoption of some cloud resources topping 33 percent among U.S. midsize firms by year’s end.
“[Cloud computing] can no longer be invested in, or managed, as sandbox efforts around the edges of the market. Instead, they are rapidly becoming the market itself and must be addressed accordingly,” warns Frank Gens, senior vice president and chief analyst at Framingham, MA-based IDC.
Gens is exactly right. Organizations of all sizes are taking a hard look at cloud-based solutions as a way to avoid the hefty capital investments and ongoing maintenance and upgrade costs associated with traditional on-premise solutions, and to ensure their IT infrastructure remains up-to-date.
In addition to changing the way organizations access business applications, the growth of cloud computing also will bring mobile banking and payments one step closer to reality, IDC predicts. But this also is true of mobile applications in other industries, most notably healthcare and insurance.
What do you think?
R. Edwin Pearce is executive vice president of sales and corporate development at eGistics, Inc. (www.egisticsinc.com), a leading provider of hosted solutions for payments and document automation. He can be reached at 214-256-4607 or via e-mail at epearce@egisticsinc.com.
The next year will be big for cloud computing, with the technology transitioning from “early adopter status” into a mainstream platform for IT. That’s according to IDC, a leading research and advisory firm, which ranked the maturation of cloud computing among its top IT predictions for 2011.
IDC predicts that spending on public IT cloud services will grow at more than five times the rate of the IT industry in 2011, up 30 percent from 2010, as organizations move a wider range of business applications into the cloud. Small and medium-sized business cloud use will surge in 2011, with adoption of some cloud resources topping 33 percent among U.S. midsize firms by year’s end.
“[Cloud computing] can no longer be invested in, or managed, as sandbox efforts around the edges of the market. Instead, they are rapidly becoming the market itself and must be addressed accordingly,” warns Frank Gens, senior vice president and chief analyst at Framingham, MA-based IDC.
Gens is exactly right. Organizations of all sizes are taking a hard look at cloud-based solutions as a way to avoid the hefty capital investments and ongoing maintenance and upgrade costs associated with traditional on-premise solutions, and to ensure their IT infrastructure remains up-to-date.
In addition to changing the way organizations access business applications, the growth of cloud computing also will bring mobile banking and payments one step closer to reality, IDC predicts. But this also is true of mobile applications in other industries, most notably healthcare and insurance.
What do you think?
R. Edwin Pearce is executive vice president of sales and corporate development at eGistics, Inc. (www.egisticsinc.com), a leading provider of hosted solutions for payments and document automation. He can be reached at 214-256-4607 or via e-mail at epearce@egisticsinc.com.
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Enterprises will place emphasis on vendor integration in 2011
Posted by Mark Brousseau
As organizations become increasingly decentralized, 2011 will see enterprises identifying technology suppliers that can integrate effectively with other — often competing — solutions, according to new research released by analyst firm Real Story Group (formerly CMS Watch).
"Going into 2011, our research customers are indicating an unprecedented aversion to vendor lock-in," said Real Story Group President and Principal Analyst, Tony Byrne. "In the real world, enterprises have to support multiple devices, multiple internal portals, multiple web delivery channels, underutilized SharePoint deployments, and the lingering primacy of e-mail as a corporate information management platform — so vendors will have to adapt."
Real Story Group provided 12 other technology predictions for 2011:
1. "Bring Your Own Device" policies will push HTML5 adoption for mobile access to enterprise applications
2. Content-rich customers will rebel against Web CMS marketing spins
3. Microsoft will turn to partners to fix SharePoint shortcomings
4. The top end of the Web CMS market will be redefined
5. Intranet community managers will adopt public social functionality
6. SaaS vendors will try to separate from "The Cloud"
7. Buyers will have a greater acceptance of newer standards
8. Case Management will become the leading application from high-end ECM vendors
9. Digital Asset Management vendors will greatly expand video management capabilities
10. E-mail will remain the world's de-facto enterprise document repository and workflow system
11. Portal software will increasingly produce services for other portals
12. Specialized talent around managing content will begin to migrate out of large corporations
What do you think?
As organizations become increasingly decentralized, 2011 will see enterprises identifying technology suppliers that can integrate effectively with other — often competing — solutions, according to new research released by analyst firm Real Story Group (formerly CMS Watch).
"Going into 2011, our research customers are indicating an unprecedented aversion to vendor lock-in," said Real Story Group President and Principal Analyst, Tony Byrne. "In the real world, enterprises have to support multiple devices, multiple internal portals, multiple web delivery channels, underutilized SharePoint deployments, and the lingering primacy of e-mail as a corporate information management platform — so vendors will have to adapt."
Real Story Group provided 12 other technology predictions for 2011:
1. "Bring Your Own Device" policies will push HTML5 adoption for mobile access to enterprise applications
2. Content-rich customers will rebel against Web CMS marketing spins
3. Microsoft will turn to partners to fix SharePoint shortcomings
4. The top end of the Web CMS market will be redefined
5. Intranet community managers will adopt public social functionality
6. SaaS vendors will try to separate from "The Cloud"
7. Buyers will have a greater acceptance of newer standards
8. Case Management will become the leading application from high-end ECM vendors
9. Digital Asset Management vendors will greatly expand video management capabilities
10. E-mail will remain the world's de-facto enterprise document repository and workflow system
11. Portal software will increasingly produce services for other portals
12. Specialized talent around managing content will begin to migrate out of large corporations
What do you think?
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
7 Major Projects CIOs Should Consider
Posted by Mark Brousseau
With 2011 predicted to be the year when the IT industry will reach nearly $3.5 trillion in revenue and show long-term growth for the next five years, Gartner analysts say there are seven business and IT issues that warrant the greatest attention and demand the clearest strategies for the future.
“We are increasingly living, playing and working in a digital world where people will have no alternatives but to become ‘more digital’ with the assets they have available,” said Stephen Prentice, vice president and Gartner Fellow. “In 2012, the Internet will be 75 times larger than it was in 2002, and if Facebook was a country, it would be the third largest in the world (after China and India). Device and data proliferation is also a reality that cannot be escaped. Smart devices will rise from 60 billion devices in 2010 to more than 200 billion in 2020.”
“Technology is no longer the preserve of the CIO,” said Ken McGee, vice president and Gartner Fellow. “It has become everyone’s property and everyone’s issue.”
With the IT industry on track to show a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 4 percent for the next five years Gartner has identified seven business and IT issues that CIOs should act on during the next three years. “CIOs will need to begin implementing these technologies within three years to meet the six year predictions,” McGee said. The seven issues include:
IT/OT Alignment- Inadequate software management of operational technology (OT) systems will result in a major business failure of a top Global 100 company by 2013.
Executives are realizing there are cost savings and management efficiencies to be gained by integrating the IT and OT groups together. Although efforts to integrate groups are challenging, benefits from streamlined budgets, coordinated planning, consistent technology architectural decisions and maximizing technology purchasing power make for extremely compelling cases for IT and OT group integration.
Business Gets Social -Through 2015, 80 percent of organizations will lack a coherent approach for dealing with information from the collective.
Today, social media is changing the way business is conducted. “Understanding the power of communities, the multiple personas of their members expectations, their aspirations and how to interact with them will become essential skills for business in the 21st century,” said McGee. “However, vast sums of money and enormous amounts of time will be spent during this decade and beyond to discover how IT and business leaders best capitalize on the growing spread, power and influence of social networks.”
Pattern-Based Strategy- Through 2015, pattern-seeking technology will be the fastest-growing intelligence investment among the most successful Global 2000.
A Pattern-Based Strategy provides a framework to proactively seek, model and adapt to leading indicators, often-termed "weak" signals that form patterns in the marketplace. It will allow IT leaders to seek-out patterns amidst the burgeoning information sources and model future possibilities. “We have found that senior business and IT leaders see lack of information shareability as a barrier to growth,” Prentice said.
Cloud Computing- By 2016, all Global 2000 companies will use public cloud services.
Cloud computing represents a shift in the relationship between the providers and consumers of IT-based solutions. It constitutes the basis of a discontinuity that amounts to a new opportunity to shape the relationship between those who use IT services and those who sell them. Gartner said worldwide cloud services revenue (including public and private services) is forecast to reach $148.8 billion in 2014.
Context-Aware Computing- By 2016, one-third of worldwide mobile consumer marketing will be context-awareness-based.
Context-aware computing will foster people to be more digital with the assets they have available. Context-aware computing is taking advantage of location and time and is a new era of augmented reality. More than $150 billion of global telecom spending will shift from services to applications by 2012, and the global market for context-aware services will amount to $215 billion.
“Unlocking this potential will be one of the next major challenges for IT,” said McGee. “For example, we expect 75 percent of new search installations to include a social search element. The world is digital and business leaders can’t ignore it.”
Sustainability- By 2016, sustainability will be the fastest-growing enterprise compliance expense worldwide.
As long as the current science surrounding climate change remains credible, organizations should anticipate that the current focus on energy, water and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions will continue, and this will draw attention to other environmental issues, such as resource depletion, species extinction, bio-diversity and environmental justice. There will remain many hard trade-offs between an organization’s financial and operational performance and that of its environmental performance. Information systems will be critical in the role — from governance, risk and compliance, through corporate social responsibility systems, to enabling new and more-sustainable business models.
New Realities of IT: Balancing Cost and Innovation with Risk and Governance- Innovation accomplishments will be among the top-three selection criteria for new CIOs by 2016.
With the recent global recession, innovative thinkers must find new ways to create growth — in revenue, jobs and industries — in this new business climate. Cost and value optimization must remain a top priority, while the search for growth continues.
Regulatory and corporate demands for greater attention to risk have already begun to emerge. Gartner also foresees a new emphasis on business change governance.
Beyond 2020, Gartner analysts forecast that two emerging trends will become $1 billion markets. First, human augmentation, a technology that focuses on creating cognitive and physical improvements as an integral part of the human body is slowly but steadily becoming a reality and enhancing peoples’ lives.
The second trend is wireless power devices. By 2011, there will be more than 1 billion PCs and 5 billion mobile phones in use in the world, and based on the levels of demand Gartner foresees cumulative sales from wireless power products surpassing $1 billion by 2020.
“We are reaching these observations by exploring future IT growth and future adoption projections upon demand,” McGee said. “We are looking at emerging business and societal trends and based upon our findings, we will indicate likely future IT winners and losers. This methodology will not replace any existing methodologies, but simply complement existing models.”
“Looking forward, we expect to see more deployment of existing technologies in new and innovative ways, and fewer and fewer genuinely new technologies emerging in the mainstream,” said Prentice. “That is not to imply that no new developments will occur, but we are now starting to see the early indications of precursor and trigger technologies for the next wave of technology, which is likely to run from about 2025 through 2080.”
What do you think?
With 2011 predicted to be the year when the IT industry will reach nearly $3.5 trillion in revenue and show long-term growth for the next five years, Gartner analysts say there are seven business and IT issues that warrant the greatest attention and demand the clearest strategies for the future.
“We are increasingly living, playing and working in a digital world where people will have no alternatives but to become ‘more digital’ with the assets they have available,” said Stephen Prentice, vice president and Gartner Fellow. “In 2012, the Internet will be 75 times larger than it was in 2002, and if Facebook was a country, it would be the third largest in the world (after China and India). Device and data proliferation is also a reality that cannot be escaped. Smart devices will rise from 60 billion devices in 2010 to more than 200 billion in 2020.”
“Technology is no longer the preserve of the CIO,” said Ken McGee, vice president and Gartner Fellow. “It has become everyone’s property and everyone’s issue.”
With the IT industry on track to show a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 4 percent for the next five years Gartner has identified seven business and IT issues that CIOs should act on during the next three years. “CIOs will need to begin implementing these technologies within three years to meet the six year predictions,” McGee said. The seven issues include:
IT/OT Alignment- Inadequate software management of operational technology (OT) systems will result in a major business failure of a top Global 100 company by 2013.
Executives are realizing there are cost savings and management efficiencies to be gained by integrating the IT and OT groups together. Although efforts to integrate groups are challenging, benefits from streamlined budgets, coordinated planning, consistent technology architectural decisions and maximizing technology purchasing power make for extremely compelling cases for IT and OT group integration.
Business Gets Social -Through 2015, 80 percent of organizations will lack a coherent approach for dealing with information from the collective.
Today, social media is changing the way business is conducted. “Understanding the power of communities, the multiple personas of their members expectations, their aspirations and how to interact with them will become essential skills for business in the 21st century,” said McGee. “However, vast sums of money and enormous amounts of time will be spent during this decade and beyond to discover how IT and business leaders best capitalize on the growing spread, power and influence of social networks.”
Pattern-Based Strategy- Through 2015, pattern-seeking technology will be the fastest-growing intelligence investment among the most successful Global 2000.
A Pattern-Based Strategy provides a framework to proactively seek, model and adapt to leading indicators, often-termed "weak" signals that form patterns in the marketplace. It will allow IT leaders to seek-out patterns amidst the burgeoning information sources and model future possibilities. “We have found that senior business and IT leaders see lack of information shareability as a barrier to growth,” Prentice said.
Cloud Computing- By 2016, all Global 2000 companies will use public cloud services.
Cloud computing represents a shift in the relationship between the providers and consumers of IT-based solutions. It constitutes the basis of a discontinuity that amounts to a new opportunity to shape the relationship between those who use IT services and those who sell them. Gartner said worldwide cloud services revenue (including public and private services) is forecast to reach $148.8 billion in 2014.
Context-Aware Computing- By 2016, one-third of worldwide mobile consumer marketing will be context-awareness-based.
Context-aware computing will foster people to be more digital with the assets they have available. Context-aware computing is taking advantage of location and time and is a new era of augmented reality. More than $150 billion of global telecom spending will shift from services to applications by 2012, and the global market for context-aware services will amount to $215 billion.
“Unlocking this potential will be one of the next major challenges for IT,” said McGee. “For example, we expect 75 percent of new search installations to include a social search element. The world is digital and business leaders can’t ignore it.”
Sustainability- By 2016, sustainability will be the fastest-growing enterprise compliance expense worldwide.
As long as the current science surrounding climate change remains credible, organizations should anticipate that the current focus on energy, water and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions will continue, and this will draw attention to other environmental issues, such as resource depletion, species extinction, bio-diversity and environmental justice. There will remain many hard trade-offs between an organization’s financial and operational performance and that of its environmental performance. Information systems will be critical in the role — from governance, risk and compliance, through corporate social responsibility systems, to enabling new and more-sustainable business models.
New Realities of IT: Balancing Cost and Innovation with Risk and Governance- Innovation accomplishments will be among the top-three selection criteria for new CIOs by 2016.
With the recent global recession, innovative thinkers must find new ways to create growth — in revenue, jobs and industries — in this new business climate. Cost and value optimization must remain a top priority, while the search for growth continues.
Regulatory and corporate demands for greater attention to risk have already begun to emerge. Gartner also foresees a new emphasis on business change governance.
Beyond 2020, Gartner analysts forecast that two emerging trends will become $1 billion markets. First, human augmentation, a technology that focuses on creating cognitive and physical improvements as an integral part of the human body is slowly but steadily becoming a reality and enhancing peoples’ lives.
The second trend is wireless power devices. By 2011, there will be more than 1 billion PCs and 5 billion mobile phones in use in the world, and based on the levels of demand Gartner foresees cumulative sales from wireless power products surpassing $1 billion by 2020.
“We are reaching these observations by exploring future IT growth and future adoption projections upon demand,” McGee said. “We are looking at emerging business and societal trends and based upon our findings, we will indicate likely future IT winners and losers. This methodology will not replace any existing methodologies, but simply complement existing models.”
“Looking forward, we expect to see more deployment of existing technologies in new and innovative ways, and fewer and fewer genuinely new technologies emerging in the mainstream,” said Prentice. “That is not to imply that no new developments will occur, but we are now starting to see the early indications of precursor and trigger technologies for the next wave of technology, which is likely to run from about 2025 through 2080.”
What do you think?
Thursday, November 4, 2010
Companies Unprepared to Address Risks Created by New Technology
Posted by Mark Brousseau
Less than a third of global businesses have an IT risk management program capable of addressing the risks related to the use of new technologies, according to Ernst & Young’s 13th annual Global Information Security Survey. In spite of the rapid emergence of new technology, just one in ten companies consider examining new and emerging IT trends a very important activity for the information security function to perform.
A significant increase in use of external service providers and business adoption of new technologies, such as cloud computing, social networking and Web 2.0, is recognized to increase risk for 60% of respondents. Yet, in spite of this, less than half intend to increase annual investment in information security.
Paul van Kessel, Ernst & Young Global IT Risk and Assurance Leader,comments: “Technology advances provide an increasingly mobile workforce with seemingly endless ways to connect and interact with colleagues, customers and clients. These advances represent a massive opportunity for IT to deliver significant benefits to the organization but new technology also means new risk. It is vital that companies not only recognize this risk, but take action to avoid it.”
Over half of respondents state that increased workforce mobility poses a considerable challenge to the effective delivery of information security initiatives, due to widespread use of mobile computing devices. For almost two-thirds employees’ level of security awareness is recognized as a considerable challenge.
"As the mobile workforce continues to grow, so does the level of risk. In addition to implementing new technology solutions and re-engineering information flows, companies must focus on informing the workforce about risks. The delivery of effective, and regular, security awareness training is a critical success factor as companies attempt to keep pace with the changing environment,” van Kessel adds.
Among the other findings in the report:
•Half of respondents plan to spend more over the next year on data leakage and data loss prevention – up 7% from last year. To address potential new risks, 39% are making policy adjustments, 29% are implementing encryption techniques and 28% are implementing stronger identity and access management controls.
•For the first time, continuous availability of critical IT resources was identified as one of the top five risks.
•23% of respondents are using cloud computing services, a further 15% plan to use within the next 12 months. For 85% of respondents, external certification of cloud service providers would increase trust; 43% state that certification should be based upon an agreed standard and 22% require accreditation for the certifying body.
What do you think?
Less than a third of global businesses have an IT risk management program capable of addressing the risks related to the use of new technologies, according to Ernst & Young’s 13th annual Global Information Security Survey. In spite of the rapid emergence of new technology, just one in ten companies consider examining new and emerging IT trends a very important activity for the information security function to perform.
A significant increase in use of external service providers and business adoption of new technologies, such as cloud computing, social networking and Web 2.0, is recognized to increase risk for 60% of respondents. Yet, in spite of this, less than half intend to increase annual investment in information security.
Paul van Kessel, Ernst & Young Global IT Risk and Assurance Leader,comments: “Technology advances provide an increasingly mobile workforce with seemingly endless ways to connect and interact with colleagues, customers and clients. These advances represent a massive opportunity for IT to deliver significant benefits to the organization but new technology also means new risk. It is vital that companies not only recognize this risk, but take action to avoid it.”
Over half of respondents state that increased workforce mobility poses a considerable challenge to the effective delivery of information security initiatives, due to widespread use of mobile computing devices. For almost two-thirds employees’ level of security awareness is recognized as a considerable challenge.
"As the mobile workforce continues to grow, so does the level of risk. In addition to implementing new technology solutions and re-engineering information flows, companies must focus on informing the workforce about risks. The delivery of effective, and regular, security awareness training is a critical success factor as companies attempt to keep pace with the changing environment,” van Kessel adds.
Among the other findings in the report:
•Half of respondents plan to spend more over the next year on data leakage and data loss prevention – up 7% from last year. To address potential new risks, 39% are making policy adjustments, 29% are implementing encryption techniques and 28% are implementing stronger identity and access management controls.
•For the first time, continuous availability of critical IT resources was identified as one of the top five risks.
•23% of respondents are using cloud computing services, a further 15% plan to use within the next 12 months. For 85% of respondents, external certification of cloud service providers would increase trust; 43% state that certification should be based upon an agreed standard and 22% require accreditation for the certifying body.
What do you think?
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
Google giveth then taketh away
Google’s test of “streaming search” not so short lived
Google has just announced its “streaming search” service, Google Instant, is coming out of limited beta testing and going live for all users.
According to Adam Bunn, head of search at independent search and social marketing agency Greenlight, when it comes to search engine optimisation campaigns (SEO), some websites may now suffer a drop in traffic. This service could also potentially result in complications for rank checking software and impact on search demand figures given by Google’s keyword tools, Bunn says.
With regards to paid search, Matthew Whiteway, director of campaign management (paid search) at Greenlight, says it could play havoc with an advertisers Google Quality Score. Whiteway also says Google’s motives for doing this must be questioned. Given the “longtail” is becoming increasingly important, with search queries, the cost-per-click (CPC) Google can charge for “longtail” keywords is significantly lower than that on one or two keyword search queries, Whiteway says. Therefore the more people search for “longtail” search queries, the less money Google can charge the advertiser, he explains.
Google’s development uses AJAX to dynamically serve search results as you type, Greenlight notes. Each time a new recognizable word or phrase is typed that changes the results set in a meaningful way, Google will fetch the search results for that word – without you having to hit “search.” So, if you’re intending on searching for ‘scary books suitable for children,’ Google might first fetch results when you’ve finished typing ‘scary,’ then ‘scary book,’ then ‘scary books,’ then finally ‘scary books suitable for children.’
Bunn says this is a mightily impressive display of processing power on Google’s part. Now, for every search you do Google may have to process anywhere from a couple to half a dozen different searches. It has got to do this fast enough to keep up with your average typing speed. This, on top of the fact that retrieving and sorting thousands of documents in a split second is already a modern marvel - admittedly one that few people spend much time thinking about, Bunn adds.
What of the impact for SEO?
According to Bunn, SEO campaigns including long multi-word keyword variants may see a drop in traffic for those keywords as a result of streaming search. Why? Users may now find something to click on before completely typing their originally intended search term (depending, of course, on Google being able to provide accurate enough results at an earlier stage in the search). Consequently, to be visible/show up in search results, it may become more important for websites to optimise for the shorter, constituent parts of longer keywords, Bunn says.
“For example, if a website has optimised for and holds good rankings for ‘cheap car insurance UK,’ that term may lose search traffic as UK users find that the shorter ‘cheap car insurance’ returns several relevant looking results, negating the need to finish their sentence,” Bunn says.
Bunn points out that the constituent parts of longer keywords are often the types of generic keywords that are typically dominated by big brands and powerful sites with the cash to maintain rankings in an extremely competitive keyword space.
“So for smaller websites, this could well be a case of first Google giveth (the 'May Day update') then it taketh away (streaming search results). We’ll have to hold tight for the exact repercussions, which could also extend to complications for rank checking software (if AJAX is involved in retrieving search results) and impacts on the search demand figures given by Google’s keyword tools (if each stage in the streaming search counts as an impression)," Bunn says.
Ramifications for paid search
In relation to paid search, the question is whether Google will count each refresh/change of the search engine results pages (SERPS) as an impression for the advertiser. While some advertisers will believe increasing the number of impressions/eyeballs that see their ad will help improve brand awareness and brand recall, from a pay per click (PPC) marketing perspective, this increase in unwanted impressions could play havoc with an advertisers Google Quality Score, Greenlight says.
“At Greenlight, we are constantly looking for ways of reducing wasted impressions for our clients with the objective being to improve click through rate (CTR) and therefore relevancy, one of the most important factors of Google’s Quality Score,” says Whiteway. “If Google is going to count these dynamic changes/refreshes to the SERP then should we also expect to see some fundamental changes to the Quality Score algorithm, the keyword Match Types, or do we simply need to increase the number of negative keywords in the account to several hundred thousand? Only time will tell.”
Whiteway says Google’s motives for doing this must also be questioned. It has been suggested that as users become more and more internet savvy, the number of keywords used for each search query is increasing, he adds. For example, users looking for low annual percentage rate (APR) credit cards historically may have simply searched for “credit cards” and then conducted the filtering process manually, whereas in recent years the “longtail” has become increasingly searched for and important, with search queries such as “credit cards with low APR” for example, growing in popularity, Whiteway explains.
So why would the “Google financiers” not like this “longtail” trend? Money, says Whiteway.
“The CPC that Google can charge for ‘longtail’ keywords is significantly lower than that on more generic (one or two keyword search queries). Therefore the more people search for ‘longtail’ search queries, the less money Google can charge the advertiser," Whiteway says. "With ‘streaming search’ therefore, Google is potentially ‘helping’ users find relevant results with less search term queries, thus increasing the number of clicks on generic terms and therefore increasing the CPC for the advertiser.”
Many would argue Google Instant is an example of Google flexing its technological processing power and helping users get results quicker, Greenlight notes. However there must also be some form of financial benefit for Google in making such a dramatic change to the way it finds and displays the results. Which explanation is true? Greenlight says we are unlikely to ever really know.
What do you think?
Google has just announced its “streaming search” service, Google Instant, is coming out of limited beta testing and going live for all users.
According to Adam Bunn, head of search at independent search and social marketing agency Greenlight, when it comes to search engine optimisation campaigns (SEO), some websites may now suffer a drop in traffic. This service could also potentially result in complications for rank checking software and impact on search demand figures given by Google’s keyword tools, Bunn says.
With regards to paid search, Matthew Whiteway, director of campaign management (paid search) at Greenlight, says it could play havoc with an advertisers Google Quality Score. Whiteway also says Google’s motives for doing this must be questioned. Given the “longtail” is becoming increasingly important, with search queries, the cost-per-click (CPC) Google can charge for “longtail” keywords is significantly lower than that on one or two keyword search queries, Whiteway says. Therefore the more people search for “longtail” search queries, the less money Google can charge the advertiser, he explains.
Google’s development uses AJAX to dynamically serve search results as you type, Greenlight notes. Each time a new recognizable word or phrase is typed that changes the results set in a meaningful way, Google will fetch the search results for that word – without you having to hit “search.” So, if you’re intending on searching for ‘scary books suitable for children,’ Google might first fetch results when you’ve finished typing ‘scary,’ then ‘scary book,’ then ‘scary books,’ then finally ‘scary books suitable for children.’
Bunn says this is a mightily impressive display of processing power on Google’s part. Now, for every search you do Google may have to process anywhere from a couple to half a dozen different searches. It has got to do this fast enough to keep up with your average typing speed. This, on top of the fact that retrieving and sorting thousands of documents in a split second is already a modern marvel - admittedly one that few people spend much time thinking about, Bunn adds.
What of the impact for SEO?
According to Bunn, SEO campaigns including long multi-word keyword variants may see a drop in traffic for those keywords as a result of streaming search. Why? Users may now find something to click on before completely typing their originally intended search term (depending, of course, on Google being able to provide accurate enough results at an earlier stage in the search). Consequently, to be visible/show up in search results, it may become more important for websites to optimise for the shorter, constituent parts of longer keywords, Bunn says.
“For example, if a website has optimised for and holds good rankings for ‘cheap car insurance UK,’ that term may lose search traffic as UK users find that the shorter ‘cheap car insurance’ returns several relevant looking results, negating the need to finish their sentence,” Bunn says.
Bunn points out that the constituent parts of longer keywords are often the types of generic keywords that are typically dominated by big brands and powerful sites with the cash to maintain rankings in an extremely competitive keyword space.
“So for smaller websites, this could well be a case of first Google giveth (the 'May Day update') then it taketh away (streaming search results). We’ll have to hold tight for the exact repercussions, which could also extend to complications for rank checking software (if AJAX is involved in retrieving search results) and impacts on the search demand figures given by Google’s keyword tools (if each stage in the streaming search counts as an impression)," Bunn says.
Ramifications for paid search
In relation to paid search, the question is whether Google will count each refresh/change of the search engine results pages (SERPS) as an impression for the advertiser. While some advertisers will believe increasing the number of impressions/eyeballs that see their ad will help improve brand awareness and brand recall, from a pay per click (PPC) marketing perspective, this increase in unwanted impressions could play havoc with an advertisers Google Quality Score, Greenlight says.
“At Greenlight, we are constantly looking for ways of reducing wasted impressions for our clients with the objective being to improve click through rate (CTR) and therefore relevancy, one of the most important factors of Google’s Quality Score,” says Whiteway. “If Google is going to count these dynamic changes/refreshes to the SERP then should we also expect to see some fundamental changes to the Quality Score algorithm, the keyword Match Types, or do we simply need to increase the number of negative keywords in the account to several hundred thousand? Only time will tell.”
Whiteway says Google’s motives for doing this must also be questioned. It has been suggested that as users become more and more internet savvy, the number of keywords used for each search query is increasing, he adds. For example, users looking for low annual percentage rate (APR) credit cards historically may have simply searched for “credit cards” and then conducted the filtering process manually, whereas in recent years the “longtail” has become increasingly searched for and important, with search queries such as “credit cards with low APR” for example, growing in popularity, Whiteway explains.
So why would the “Google financiers” not like this “longtail” trend? Money, says Whiteway.
“The CPC that Google can charge for ‘longtail’ keywords is significantly lower than that on more generic (one or two keyword search queries). Therefore the more people search for ‘longtail’ search queries, the less money Google can charge the advertiser," Whiteway says. "With ‘streaming search’ therefore, Google is potentially ‘helping’ users find relevant results with less search term queries, thus increasing the number of clicks on generic terms and therefore increasing the CPC for the advertiser.”
Many would argue Google Instant is an example of Google flexing its technological processing power and helping users get results quicker, Greenlight notes. However there must also be some form of financial benefit for Google in making such a dramatic change to the way it finds and displays the results. Which explanation is true? Greenlight says we are unlikely to ever really know.
What do you think?
Friday, September 3, 2010
ECM & Shared Services
By David Buttgereit senior partner, the BPM Group, KeyMark
Succinctly and in the context of Shared Services, Enterprise Content Management (ECM) is the conceptual term for a range of tools, processes, and procedures used to capture, store, deliver, manage, and preserve business process documents.
But what does all this mumbo-jumbo really mean? Let’s break it down and see how it applies to the Shared Services Organization (SSO) model of business service delivery.
Nomenclature, with SSO Flair
• Enterprise – not just departmental in scope; at its core ECM is supportive of the SSO model.
• Content – the paper documents, faxes, e-mail messages, electronic forms, and – increasingly so – instant messages (IMs) that drive and contain supporting information about business processes and transactions.
SSOs by their nature require content but can drown in it too. For example, the content necessary to complete a complex Accounts Payable transaction may include a lengthy master contract, multiple purchase orders, receipt confirmations, invoices, and perhaps records of IM communications among purchasing agents, requesters, and vendors spelling out discount terms.
Importantly, content often spans departments and multiple lines-of-business software applications and needs to be managed and stored in a manner that makes it accessible to multiple systems and SSO staff members concurrently.
• Capture – the collection, electronic transformation (recognition, classification, validation, quality control, etc.), and delivery of content into a format usable by other computer processing systems.
Traditionally, capture has been thought of as the process of scanning paper documents, using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) and similar automated technologies to extract information from the documents, and then sending the resulting data to lines-of-business applications for transaction processing.
Fortunately, capture has now matured to the point that it can also handle additional sources (faxes, e-mails, IMs, etc.) and can be used to sort, classify, and authenticate complex document sets according to pre-defined sets of business rules. In an efficient SSO, these advanced capture capabilities mean that fewer hands need touch content, greatly minimizing exceptions processing downstream.
• Store – once content has been captured, it must be properly indexed and securely stored – typically in an enterprise repository – for later processing.
• Deliver – the process of making content available to multiple lines-of-business applications while at the same time allowing it to be easily located and viewed through a variety of user interfaces. For example, an SSO Customer Service Representative may need to locate and view an outstanding HR document as part of a customer contact (a job promotion status inquiry, for example) at the same time the document is being actively used to drive corresponding payroll and benefits line-of-business transactions.
• Manage – has multiple meanings, from initiation and management of workflow processes that span multiple lines-of-business applications, to enforcing document security according to Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and similar compliance rules, through providing metrics to Business Intelligence (BI) and Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) applications. It is here that most SSO business transactions are completed and the greatest efficiencies can be gained, with all other components of an integrated ECM system playing important supporting roles.
• Preserve – long-term management of content after it has been used for transactional purposes. Typically preservation is based on sets of Document and Records Management (RM) rules and is tightly controlled for both compliance and discovery purposes. Content may be maintained in an enterprise repository for a finite length of time (or in perpetuity, in some cases) or may be migrated to an off-line storage medium or external repository for archival and eventual destruction.
It’s clear from the above that ECM has great implications for SSOs that provide transactional business services across a single or multiple organizations or agencies.
SSO Content Challenges
Without ECM, an SSO will likely:
• Handle paper documents, faxes, e-mails, e-mail attachments, and IMs in an ad hoc manual manner, slowing processing as transactions traverse departmental boundaries.
• Employ scores of data entry clerks to transcribe information from documents into lines-of-business applications – often multiple times and likely inconsistently.
• Manually validate data accuracy and integrity, with inevitable human errors causing significant rework, exceptions, and costs downstream.
• Inconsistently or poorly secure and protect the data and privacy of customers and business partners.
• Create multiple copies of documents as they traverse departmental boundaries as each department is skeptical that the next will adequately preserve documents if they are needed for review or rework (lengthy contracts can be prime offenders because they consume a significant amount of both paper and storage space).
• Incur high costs for paper, transport, duplication, and eventual destruction of documents.
• Complete complex transactions in a serial manner, even though many components could be processed simultaneously if the supporting content was simultaneously available to multiple staff members and systems.
• Gather BI metrics in an inconsistent manner where the output from one process or system may not easily or directly map to the input of the next, losing continuity.
• Apply the perhaps flawed BI metrics as the basis for managing productivity, quality, staffing, load balancing, and Service Level Agreements (SLAs).
• Employ multiple manual searches when attempting to retrieve transaction, customer, or business partner content found on different documents and housed in different locations.
• Preserve historical business documents and apply RM rules inconsistently, if only because of the multiple copies stored in physical files in multiple departments.
ECM Solutions to SSO Content Challenges
With a properly implemented ECM, the SSO described above could:
• Efficiently capture and store all input types in a consistent, automated manner while speeding transaction initiation.
• Consistently extract business data from captured documents – once – and then feed multiple lines-of-business applications with precise input.
• Automate validation of data accuracy and integrity, reducing downstream rework costs for correcting input errors.
• Consistently secure and protect the data and privacy of customers and business partners, reducing both business risk and easing inevitable audit burdens.
• Use a single, canonical, set of documents for all business purposes and systems – simultaneously.
• Employ a single, comprehensive search and retrieval function, eliminating costly and time-consuming multiple searches and ensuring that only canonical versions of documents are returned.
• Eliminate most of the costs for document storage, transport, duplication, and destruction.
• Complete complex transactions in a parallel manner, supporting aggressive SLAs and leading to higher customer satisfaction.
• Leverage a set of cross-referenceable BI metrics to manage productivity, quality, staffing, load balancing, and SLAs.
• Appropriately preserve historical documents by consistently applying RM rules to the single set of canonical electronic documents.
Pulling it All Together
In conclusion, a robust and comprehensive ECM system can augment and link the multiple lines-of business applications inherent to SSOs, while decreasing costs and yet increasing consistency and customer satisfaction. Careful implementation of an appropriate ECM system should be considered a best practice for any SSO.
Succinctly and in the context of Shared Services, Enterprise Content Management (ECM) is the conceptual term for a range of tools, processes, and procedures used to capture, store, deliver, manage, and preserve business process documents.
But what does all this mumbo-jumbo really mean? Let’s break it down and see how it applies to the Shared Services Organization (SSO) model of business service delivery.
Nomenclature, with SSO Flair
• Enterprise – not just departmental in scope; at its core ECM is supportive of the SSO model.
• Content – the paper documents, faxes, e-mail messages, electronic forms, and – increasingly so – instant messages (IMs) that drive and contain supporting information about business processes and transactions.
SSOs by their nature require content but can drown in it too. For example, the content necessary to complete a complex Accounts Payable transaction may include a lengthy master contract, multiple purchase orders, receipt confirmations, invoices, and perhaps records of IM communications among purchasing agents, requesters, and vendors spelling out discount terms.
Importantly, content often spans departments and multiple lines-of-business software applications and needs to be managed and stored in a manner that makes it accessible to multiple systems and SSO staff members concurrently.
• Capture – the collection, electronic transformation (recognition, classification, validation, quality control, etc.), and delivery of content into a format usable by other computer processing systems.
Traditionally, capture has been thought of as the process of scanning paper documents, using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) and similar automated technologies to extract information from the documents, and then sending the resulting data to lines-of-business applications for transaction processing.
Fortunately, capture has now matured to the point that it can also handle additional sources (faxes, e-mails, IMs, etc.) and can be used to sort, classify, and authenticate complex document sets according to pre-defined sets of business rules. In an efficient SSO, these advanced capture capabilities mean that fewer hands need touch content, greatly minimizing exceptions processing downstream.
• Store – once content has been captured, it must be properly indexed and securely stored – typically in an enterprise repository – for later processing.
• Deliver – the process of making content available to multiple lines-of-business applications while at the same time allowing it to be easily located and viewed through a variety of user interfaces. For example, an SSO Customer Service Representative may need to locate and view an outstanding HR document as part of a customer contact (a job promotion status inquiry, for example) at the same time the document is being actively used to drive corresponding payroll and benefits line-of-business transactions.
• Manage – has multiple meanings, from initiation and management of workflow processes that span multiple lines-of-business applications, to enforcing document security according to Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and similar compliance rules, through providing metrics to Business Intelligence (BI) and Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) applications. It is here that most SSO business transactions are completed and the greatest efficiencies can be gained, with all other components of an integrated ECM system playing important supporting roles.
• Preserve – long-term management of content after it has been used for transactional purposes. Typically preservation is based on sets of Document and Records Management (RM) rules and is tightly controlled for both compliance and discovery purposes. Content may be maintained in an enterprise repository for a finite length of time (or in perpetuity, in some cases) or may be migrated to an off-line storage medium or external repository for archival and eventual destruction.
It’s clear from the above that ECM has great implications for SSOs that provide transactional business services across a single or multiple organizations or agencies.
SSO Content Challenges
Without ECM, an SSO will likely:
• Handle paper documents, faxes, e-mails, e-mail attachments, and IMs in an ad hoc manual manner, slowing processing as transactions traverse departmental boundaries.
• Employ scores of data entry clerks to transcribe information from documents into lines-of-business applications – often multiple times and likely inconsistently.
• Manually validate data accuracy and integrity, with inevitable human errors causing significant rework, exceptions, and costs downstream.
• Inconsistently or poorly secure and protect the data and privacy of customers and business partners.
• Create multiple copies of documents as they traverse departmental boundaries as each department is skeptical that the next will adequately preserve documents if they are needed for review or rework (lengthy contracts can be prime offenders because they consume a significant amount of both paper and storage space).
• Incur high costs for paper, transport, duplication, and eventual destruction of documents.
• Complete complex transactions in a serial manner, even though many components could be processed simultaneously if the supporting content was simultaneously available to multiple staff members and systems.
• Gather BI metrics in an inconsistent manner where the output from one process or system may not easily or directly map to the input of the next, losing continuity.
• Apply the perhaps flawed BI metrics as the basis for managing productivity, quality, staffing, load balancing, and Service Level Agreements (SLAs).
• Employ multiple manual searches when attempting to retrieve transaction, customer, or business partner content found on different documents and housed in different locations.
• Preserve historical business documents and apply RM rules inconsistently, if only because of the multiple copies stored in physical files in multiple departments.
ECM Solutions to SSO Content Challenges
With a properly implemented ECM, the SSO described above could:
• Efficiently capture and store all input types in a consistent, automated manner while speeding transaction initiation.
• Consistently extract business data from captured documents – once – and then feed multiple lines-of-business applications with precise input.
• Automate validation of data accuracy and integrity, reducing downstream rework costs for correcting input errors.
• Consistently secure and protect the data and privacy of customers and business partners, reducing both business risk and easing inevitable audit burdens.
• Use a single, canonical, set of documents for all business purposes and systems – simultaneously.
• Employ a single, comprehensive search and retrieval function, eliminating costly and time-consuming multiple searches and ensuring that only canonical versions of documents are returned.
• Eliminate most of the costs for document storage, transport, duplication, and destruction.
• Complete complex transactions in a parallel manner, supporting aggressive SLAs and leading to higher customer satisfaction.
• Leverage a set of cross-referenceable BI metrics to manage productivity, quality, staffing, load balancing, and SLAs.
• Appropriately preserve historical documents by consistently applying RM rules to the single set of canonical electronic documents.
Pulling it All Together
In conclusion, a robust and comprehensive ECM system can augment and link the multiple lines-of business applications inherent to SSOs, while decreasing costs and yet increasing consistency and customer satisfaction. Careful implementation of an appropriate ECM system should be considered a best practice for any SSO.
Monday, July 12, 2010
Economic risks of data overload
By Ed Pearce (epearce@egisticsinc.com) of eGistics (www.eGisticsinc.com)
When data pours in by the millisecond and the mountain of information builds continuously, professionals inevitably cut corners and go with their 'gut' when making decisions that can impact financial markets, medical treatments or any number of time sensitive matters, according to a new study from Thomson Reuters. The study indicates that when faced with unsorted, unverified "raw" data, 60 percent of decision-makers will make "intuitive" decisions that can lead to poor outcomes.
Many government regulators have flagged increased financial risk-taking, which can be traced in some degree to imperfectly managed data, as a contributor to the recent financial crisis. Moreover, the world is awash with data -- roughly 800 exabytes -- and the velocity of information is increasing, Thomson Reuters says.
The challenge is that the staffing and investment needed to ensure that information and information channels are trusted, reliable and useful is not keeping pace. In fact, it is estimated that the information universe will increase by a factor of 44; the number of managed files by a factor of 67; storage by a factor of 30 but staffing and investment in careful management by a factor of 1.4.
"The solution to data overload is to provide decision makers with what Thomson Reuters calls Intelligent Information: better organized and structured information, rapidly conveyed to the users preferred device," says David Craig, executive vice president and chief strategy officer.
Fortunately, as the Thomson Reuters study notes, the same technological revolution that has resulted in the explosion of information also opens the way to new and improved tools for providing intelligent information: better organized and structured information, rapidly conveyed to the user's preferred device.
"We must use the benefits of the information technology revolution to minimize its risks. This is a joint task that the private sector and governments must closely focus on if we are to avoid systemic crises, in the future, whether we speak of finance, healthcare delivery, international security and a myriad of other areas," comments Craig.
How is your organization managing information overload?
When data pours in by the millisecond and the mountain of information builds continuously, professionals inevitably cut corners and go with their 'gut' when making decisions that can impact financial markets, medical treatments or any number of time sensitive matters, according to a new study from Thomson Reuters. The study indicates that when faced with unsorted, unverified "raw" data, 60 percent of decision-makers will make "intuitive" decisions that can lead to poor outcomes.
Many government regulators have flagged increased financial risk-taking, which can be traced in some degree to imperfectly managed data, as a contributor to the recent financial crisis. Moreover, the world is awash with data -- roughly 800 exabytes -- and the velocity of information is increasing, Thomson Reuters says.
The challenge is that the staffing and investment needed to ensure that information and information channels are trusted, reliable and useful is not keeping pace. In fact, it is estimated that the information universe will increase by a factor of 44; the number of managed files by a factor of 67; storage by a factor of 30 but staffing and investment in careful management by a factor of 1.4.
"The solution to data overload is to provide decision makers with what Thomson Reuters calls Intelligent Information: better organized and structured information, rapidly conveyed to the users preferred device," says David Craig, executive vice president and chief strategy officer.
Fortunately, as the Thomson Reuters study notes, the same technological revolution that has resulted in the explosion of information also opens the way to new and improved tools for providing intelligent information: better organized and structured information, rapidly conveyed to the user's preferred device.
"We must use the benefits of the information technology revolution to minimize its risks. This is a joint task that the private sector and governments must closely focus on if we are to avoid systemic crises, in the future, whether we speak of finance, healthcare delivery, international security and a myriad of other areas," comments Craig.
How is your organization managing information overload?
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
Putting the kibosh on the soaring software maintenance and upgrade costs
By Randy Davis (rdavis@egisticsinc.com)
Finextra reports that in a recent speech to the Committee for Economic Development in Australia (CEDA), CBA Chief Information Officer Michael Harte lambasted legacy technology vendors for their slow embrace of cloud-based computing and their apparent preference for solutions that lock-in users to a "never-ending spiral" of costly maintenance and upgrades.
"We're saying that we will never buy another data center. We will never buy another rack or server or storage device or network device again," Harte said. "I will never let any organization that I work for get locked into proprietary hardware or software again. I'll never tell my teams in the business that it will be weeks to get them hardware provision. I'll never pay upfront for any infrastructure and certainly would never pay for any, or rent any, infrastructure that I would never use."
Harte concluded: "I will never implement an internal solution for a common problem that I could procure on subscription across the Web."
With increasing demand for cloud-based solutions, combined with a general reluctance to pay hefty upfront capital costs, Harte's comments would seem to reflect growing dissatisfaction with the traditional licensed software model -- and its “never-ending spiral” of ongoing expenses.
Are you as fed-up as Harte?
Finextra reports that in a recent speech to the Committee for Economic Development in Australia (CEDA), CBA Chief Information Officer Michael Harte lambasted legacy technology vendors for their slow embrace of cloud-based computing and their apparent preference for solutions that lock-in users to a "never-ending spiral" of costly maintenance and upgrades.
"We're saying that we will never buy another data center. We will never buy another rack or server or storage device or network device again," Harte said. "I will never let any organization that I work for get locked into proprietary hardware or software again. I'll never tell my teams in the business that it will be weeks to get them hardware provision. I'll never pay upfront for any infrastructure and certainly would never pay for any, or rent any, infrastructure that I would never use."
Harte concluded: "I will never implement an internal solution for a common problem that I could procure on subscription across the Web."
With increasing demand for cloud-based solutions, combined with a general reluctance to pay hefty upfront capital costs, Harte's comments would seem to reflect growing dissatisfaction with the traditional licensed software model -- and its “never-ending spiral” of ongoing expenses.
Are you as fed-up as Harte?
The state of storage
Randy Davis (rdavis@egisticsinc.com) of eGistics, Inc. (www.egisticsinc.com) finds several interesting trends in The 2010 State of Storage Report from Networking Computing.
1. The top planned storage project for 2010 is improved allocation
2. Forty-seven percent of respondents say insufficient storage resources for mission-critical applications is their No. 1 concern
3. Storage area network (SAN) vendors are responding to demands for lower-cost storage
4. Storage virtualization is growing
5. Thin provisioning is catching on
6. There is a significant increase in interest in cloud-based storage
How do these trends reflect your storage strategy?
1. The top planned storage project for 2010 is improved allocation
2. Forty-seven percent of respondents say insufficient storage resources for mission-critical applications is their No. 1 concern
3. Storage area network (SAN) vendors are responding to demands for lower-cost storage
4. Storage virtualization is growing
5. Thin provisioning is catching on
6. There is a significant increase in interest in cloud-based storage
How do these trends reflect your storage strategy?
A welcome cloud during the economic recovery
By Ed Pearce (epearce@egisticsinc.com)
In spite of hopeful signs that the economy is on the mend, the 2010 State of Storage report from Network Computing finds that the fallout from the recession has left IT execs without the resources necessary to store the rising volume of information required to support their business applications.
Nearly half (47 percent) of the respondents to the survey say they have insufficient storage resources for their mission-critical applications, while 30 percent say they have insufficient tools for storage management. Another 30 percent of respondents say they have insufficient storage resources for departmental/individual use. Nineteen percent say they lack staff for their storage requirements.
And -- regardless of economic "green shoots" -- the situation isn't likely to change any time soon: 34 percent of respondents say they have an insufficient storage budget to meet their business demands.
Against this backdrop, it's little wonder that survey respondents are showing increased interest in cloud storage services (34 percent in 2010 versus 19 percent in the 2009 State of Storage report).
With a hosted variable cost storage model, if your business struggles, and your volumes drop, your operations costs will be aligned with your usage, and you won’t pay for a “just-in-case” capital investment. The variable cost model also eliminates the need for capital investment (software licenses and hardware) or maintenance contracts; customers typically are charged a one-time load fee to archive documents. And when an array fills up, or a server must be replaced, it’s your service provider’s problem. Using a thin-client interface, there may not even be software to install, manage or maintain. In addition, variably priced storage solutions can facilitate more effective operations by providing scalability that would be very cost prohibitive in a traditional, licensed in-house system.
CBA Chief Information Officer Michael Harte spoke for many users when he recently told the Committee for Economic Development in Australia that, "I will never implement an internal solution for a common problem that I could procure on subscription across the Web."
With the economic recovery still gaining strength, the trend for 2010 will be the more efficient use of existing IT resources. That should make hosted solutions a welcome cloud during the turnaround.
In spite of hopeful signs that the economy is on the mend, the 2010 State of Storage report from Network Computing finds that the fallout from the recession has left IT execs without the resources necessary to store the rising volume of information required to support their business applications.
Nearly half (47 percent) of the respondents to the survey say they have insufficient storage resources for their mission-critical applications, while 30 percent say they have insufficient tools for storage management. Another 30 percent of respondents say they have insufficient storage resources for departmental/individual use. Nineteen percent say they lack staff for their storage requirements.
And -- regardless of economic "green shoots" -- the situation isn't likely to change any time soon: 34 percent of respondents say they have an insufficient storage budget to meet their business demands.
Against this backdrop, it's little wonder that survey respondents are showing increased interest in cloud storage services (34 percent in 2010 versus 19 percent in the 2009 State of Storage report).
With a hosted variable cost storage model, if your business struggles, and your volumes drop, your operations costs will be aligned with your usage, and you won’t pay for a “just-in-case” capital investment. The variable cost model also eliminates the need for capital investment (software licenses and hardware) or maintenance contracts; customers typically are charged a one-time load fee to archive documents. And when an array fills up, or a server must be replaced, it’s your service provider’s problem. Using a thin-client interface, there may not even be software to install, manage or maintain. In addition, variably priced storage solutions can facilitate more effective operations by providing scalability that would be very cost prohibitive in a traditional, licensed in-house system.
CBA Chief Information Officer Michael Harte spoke for many users when he recently told the Committee for Economic Development in Australia that, "I will never implement an internal solution for a common problem that I could procure on subscription across the Web."
With the economic recovery still gaining strength, the trend for 2010 will be the more efficient use of existing IT resources. That should make hosted solutions a welcome cloud during the turnaround.
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Removing the Model T mentality from SAP hosting
Posted by Mark Brousseau
At one time or another, most people have heard Henry Ford’s famous quote about his revolutionary Model T automobile: “Any customer can have a car painted in any color so long as it is black.” Today, we look upon his inflexible, non-customer service-oriented attitude as quaint, a mindset from a bygone era that would never fly today.
But the reality is that attitude is still very prevalent. Not in our vehicles, thankfully – you can get a car or truck painted in just about any crazy color, or combination of colors you want. Instead, it’s the common mindset for IT hosting in the SAP world.
Dan Wilhelms (dwilhelms@sym-corp.com), president and CEO of Symmetry Corporation (www.sym-corp.com), explains:
By now you’ve probably seen all the articles and heard the Webinars talking about IT infrastructure as a commodity rather than a strategic advantage. They tell you how, in this day and age, managing your own infrastructure makes about as much sense as manufacturing your own electricity on a day-to-day basis, and that you’d be better off moving to a hosted model. And they tell you how IT costs to manage SAP average three percent to five percent of revenue, whereas an integrated technical managed services solution incorporating hosting reduces this figure to only one percent of revenue. All of which is true.
Unfortunately, they tend to leave out one small detail. The act of moving your infrastructure to a 20th Century-style hosting provider can be very expensive and time-consuming, especially for a mid-market organization, before it ever becomes smooth and cost-efficient.
The reason is that Henry Ford mentality. The typical 20th-Century hosting provider has a giant server farm full of equipment onto which it will move your applications. Essentially, they tell you that you can run your applications on any hardware you want – as long as it’s the hardware they already have. If you’re running on the same hardware – say your current system is IBM and so is the provider’s – that part will probably transition fairly smoothly. But if your applications are set up to run on HP servers and they’re using IBM, it’s going to take a lot of work to make the changeover. And guess who has to make the change?
The other big problem with the 20th Century model is sharing resources. Back in Ford’s day, when running water was still a rarity, families often shared bathwater (or even baths) because filling a bathtub was a time-consuming, labor-intensive task. They didn’t want to waste the effort on providing clean water for each bath.
In the traditional hosting world, the resources you’re sharing are servers. In order to operate as efficiently (and profitably) as they can, hosting providers try to fill every micron of disk space on every server with data. That means they’ll often mix data from two or more organizations to increase utilization.
It makes sense from their standpoint. But it’s not so good from yours. If a problem with some other organization’s application takes down the server you’re sharing, you are just as out of luck as they are – even though your applications are running perfectly fine. In addition, if you’re working with a government agency and have to show compliance with laws requiring separation of data, it’s going to be pretty tough to prove when your supposedly secure data is running alongside that of an organization with different (or no) compliance requirements.
There is a solution, however. Rather than settling for a “Model T” type of hosting environment, look instead for a provider using a 21st Century hosting model.
With a 21st Century hosting provider, you don’t have to make your applications fit their hardware. Instead, they will host your applications on whatever hardware you want – whether that means purchasing all new hardware of your choice as part of an upgrade, or actually packing up and shipping your current hardware to their locations. If you’re buying new hardware, a good hosting provider will even give you a choice of procuring it yourself or taking that burden off your hands – whatever method works best for you.
Moving to a hosted system dedicated specifically to your organization instead of one that is carved out of a general storage area network also solves the concerns regarding data separation. Since your hardware operates as separately as if it were in your own facility, there is no chance someone else’s application problems will affect your business. It also makes proving separation of data a very simple task.
A 21st Century hosting provider will also tend to be more specialized. In the early days, hosting meant setting up equipment and running whatever applications its customers sent its way. There was little on-staff expertise to draw from if there was a problem with, say, SAP or another complex system. In the new world of hosting, providers specialize in particular technologies and have deep expertise on staff, which allow them to do what you really want them to do – manage and maintain the system completely, including overcoming any issues immediately rather than having to call an outside specialist.
While moving to a 21st Century hosting provider makes sense for virtually any organization, it is particularly well-suited to mid-market organizations that are increasingly finding more time being spent on IT maintenance and less on actually deriving more value out of their applications. It’s a lot like those early Model Ts. Back then, if you were going to own a car, you had to know how to fix it, too.
Today, most car owners don’t know what’s under the hood and don’t want to know. They just want to get in and drive. Rather than adding IT staff (and finding themselves in the IT business instead of whatever business they’re actually in), these mid-market organizations can stay focused on the reasons they installed their applications in the first place.
When it comes to hosting, why settle for a Model T mentality? Using a 21st Century hosting provider will give you complete control over your environment and keep your data separate, all while saving you as much as 30 percent over traditional hosting. Even Henry Ford would approve of that.
What do you think?
At one time or another, most people have heard Henry Ford’s famous quote about his revolutionary Model T automobile: “Any customer can have a car painted in any color so long as it is black.” Today, we look upon his inflexible, non-customer service-oriented attitude as quaint, a mindset from a bygone era that would never fly today.
But the reality is that attitude is still very prevalent. Not in our vehicles, thankfully – you can get a car or truck painted in just about any crazy color, or combination of colors you want. Instead, it’s the common mindset for IT hosting in the SAP world.
Dan Wilhelms (dwilhelms@sym-corp.com), president and CEO of Symmetry Corporation (www.sym-corp.com), explains:
By now you’ve probably seen all the articles and heard the Webinars talking about IT infrastructure as a commodity rather than a strategic advantage. They tell you how, in this day and age, managing your own infrastructure makes about as much sense as manufacturing your own electricity on a day-to-day basis, and that you’d be better off moving to a hosted model. And they tell you how IT costs to manage SAP average three percent to five percent of revenue, whereas an integrated technical managed services solution incorporating hosting reduces this figure to only one percent of revenue. All of which is true.
Unfortunately, they tend to leave out one small detail. The act of moving your infrastructure to a 20th Century-style hosting provider can be very expensive and time-consuming, especially for a mid-market organization, before it ever becomes smooth and cost-efficient.
The reason is that Henry Ford mentality. The typical 20th-Century hosting provider has a giant server farm full of equipment onto which it will move your applications. Essentially, they tell you that you can run your applications on any hardware you want – as long as it’s the hardware they already have. If you’re running on the same hardware – say your current system is IBM and so is the provider’s – that part will probably transition fairly smoothly. But if your applications are set up to run on HP servers and they’re using IBM, it’s going to take a lot of work to make the changeover. And guess who has to make the change?
The other big problem with the 20th Century model is sharing resources. Back in Ford’s day, when running water was still a rarity, families often shared bathwater (or even baths) because filling a bathtub was a time-consuming, labor-intensive task. They didn’t want to waste the effort on providing clean water for each bath.
In the traditional hosting world, the resources you’re sharing are servers. In order to operate as efficiently (and profitably) as they can, hosting providers try to fill every micron of disk space on every server with data. That means they’ll often mix data from two or more organizations to increase utilization.
It makes sense from their standpoint. But it’s not so good from yours. If a problem with some other organization’s application takes down the server you’re sharing, you are just as out of luck as they are – even though your applications are running perfectly fine. In addition, if you’re working with a government agency and have to show compliance with laws requiring separation of data, it’s going to be pretty tough to prove when your supposedly secure data is running alongside that of an organization with different (or no) compliance requirements.
There is a solution, however. Rather than settling for a “Model T” type of hosting environment, look instead for a provider using a 21st Century hosting model.
With a 21st Century hosting provider, you don’t have to make your applications fit their hardware. Instead, they will host your applications on whatever hardware you want – whether that means purchasing all new hardware of your choice as part of an upgrade, or actually packing up and shipping your current hardware to their locations. If you’re buying new hardware, a good hosting provider will even give you a choice of procuring it yourself or taking that burden off your hands – whatever method works best for you.
Moving to a hosted system dedicated specifically to your organization instead of one that is carved out of a general storage area network also solves the concerns regarding data separation. Since your hardware operates as separately as if it were in your own facility, there is no chance someone else’s application problems will affect your business. It also makes proving separation of data a very simple task.
A 21st Century hosting provider will also tend to be more specialized. In the early days, hosting meant setting up equipment and running whatever applications its customers sent its way. There was little on-staff expertise to draw from if there was a problem with, say, SAP or another complex system. In the new world of hosting, providers specialize in particular technologies and have deep expertise on staff, which allow them to do what you really want them to do – manage and maintain the system completely, including overcoming any issues immediately rather than having to call an outside specialist.
While moving to a 21st Century hosting provider makes sense for virtually any organization, it is particularly well-suited to mid-market organizations that are increasingly finding more time being spent on IT maintenance and less on actually deriving more value out of their applications. It’s a lot like those early Model Ts. Back then, if you were going to own a car, you had to know how to fix it, too.
Today, most car owners don’t know what’s under the hood and don’t want to know. They just want to get in and drive. Rather than adding IT staff (and finding themselves in the IT business instead of whatever business they’re actually in), these mid-market organizations can stay focused on the reasons they installed their applications in the first place.
When it comes to hosting, why settle for a Model T mentality? Using a 21st Century hosting provider will give you complete control over your environment and keep your data separate, all while saving you as much as 30 percent over traditional hosting. Even Henry Ford would approve of that.
What do you think?
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Control is Overrated
Posted by Mark Brousseau
Out of control? When it comes to management, “Out of Control” is a compliment. Siamak Farah, director and CEO of InfoStreet (www.infostreet.com) explains:
It may seem counter-intuitive, but the more you control, the less you will succeed. In other words, unless you let go, you won’t grow.
Especially in small business environments, there is a general feeling that if management does not keep it all in check, the business will fall apart. For a moment, let’s assume that this theory is true. By this definition, the more management controls, the better work gets done.
Expanding further, it then behooves us to give management control of everything to ensure it is done the best it can be done. Now, we have just bound the growth of the company to the availability of management. Since the hours of the day are limited, the growth of the company is now limited. Therein lies the fundamental flaw in “control by management”.
If management liberates itself from control it can then be free to think of larger plans. After all, presumably the reason you are in a management position is that you have experience.
Experience can not only create competitive advantages, but it can also avoid costly mistakes. In business, as in sports, wins often come from not making mistakes. Yet, when in the trenches, even the most experienced can make mistakes since they are not sufficiently removed from the process to clearly see the obstacles. This is precisely why even the best players in the world have coaches.
Be a Coach, Not a Player
Throughout our business lives, we have all heard the advice: “delegate, delegate, delegate”. But often this great advice is shrugged off with “I wish I could”, “Don’t have the talent”, “We are under-resourced”, “It’s too risky at our size”, and similar rationalization. Yet, the truth is that by delegation you will get more done with better quality, have a happier team, and the quality of your business and your business life will increase at least ten-fold.
Some are fortunate enough that they can afford great talent, therefore delegation seems like a no-brainer. However, delegation is an acquired skill for most. Those who don’t have it will try to micromanage even the best talent, rendering it virtually ineffective.
On the other hand, some may overcompensate for previous micromanagement and completely wash their hands off of the tasks at hand. That, in the words of my friend Allen Hargreaves, is abdication and not delegation.
Delegation is about letting the person closest to the problem solve the problem, and you, the management, being there in support of them, not to monitor them. You have to be there, side-by-side and close enough to share your experience, but far enough that the work is done by the delegatee and they receive ALL the credit for it.
Developing Delegatees
A great psychiatrist friend of mine once told me that counseling is ineffective. It amounts to giving advice, in one ear and out the other. By contrast, with therapy, the psychiatrists often know the answers, but never share it with the patient. They just ask questions leading the patient down the path so they themselves can reach the right conclusions. That experience will never be forgotten, and thereafter, the patient will always take the right steps.
Management coaching should also be very similar to the therapy approach. Using this model, you can empower the best talent to be better. You can also take even the least experienced, and turn them into the most valuable team members. This approach can allow you to hire out of college, and in no time compete very effectively with those who are paying much higher salaries.
Control has its place
As you may have seen in my other posts, patience is running thin in today’s work environment. Impatient people are often short with others, especially with those that are in the learning phase, or simply did not see a problem the way others viewed it.
This is where control has its value. Regardless of how frustrated, outraged, or peeved you are, you need to be in control of your emotions. This is even more important for leaders who are coaching, teaching, and sharing their experience on a daily basis.
Remember the rule on controlling emotions: In any given exchange, regardless of the position one holds, the one who loses their temper has lost. The damage might seem temporary, but I can assure you it is not.
People often don’t remember details of events, but they do remember how they felt at the event. Therefore an event in which you have shown frustration – or worse yet, anger – will be forever be remembered in a negative light, diminishing your value as a leader or a team player.
Manage Processes Not People
In the 1930s, when talking about black empowerment, Marian Andreson was credited with a quote which truly applies to today’s business environment. She said:
“As long as you keep a person down,
some part of you has to be down there to hold him down,
so it means that you cannot soar as you otherwise might.”
So let go of controlling people today, and focus on creating processes, strategies, and competitive advantages. When you create processes, people can follow them with minimal guidance. As a result, you get controlled quality without having to control people.
This is the formula for growth. Let go, so you can grow.
What do you think?
Out of control? When it comes to management, “Out of Control” is a compliment. Siamak Farah, director and CEO of InfoStreet (www.infostreet.com) explains:
It may seem counter-intuitive, but the more you control, the less you will succeed. In other words, unless you let go, you won’t grow.
Especially in small business environments, there is a general feeling that if management does not keep it all in check, the business will fall apart. For a moment, let’s assume that this theory is true. By this definition, the more management controls, the better work gets done.
Expanding further, it then behooves us to give management control of everything to ensure it is done the best it can be done. Now, we have just bound the growth of the company to the availability of management. Since the hours of the day are limited, the growth of the company is now limited. Therein lies the fundamental flaw in “control by management”.
If management liberates itself from control it can then be free to think of larger plans. After all, presumably the reason you are in a management position is that you have experience.
Experience can not only create competitive advantages, but it can also avoid costly mistakes. In business, as in sports, wins often come from not making mistakes. Yet, when in the trenches, even the most experienced can make mistakes since they are not sufficiently removed from the process to clearly see the obstacles. This is precisely why even the best players in the world have coaches.
Be a Coach, Not a Player
Throughout our business lives, we have all heard the advice: “delegate, delegate, delegate”. But often this great advice is shrugged off with “I wish I could”, “Don’t have the talent”, “We are under-resourced”, “It’s too risky at our size”, and similar rationalization. Yet, the truth is that by delegation you will get more done with better quality, have a happier team, and the quality of your business and your business life will increase at least ten-fold.
Some are fortunate enough that they can afford great talent, therefore delegation seems like a no-brainer. However, delegation is an acquired skill for most. Those who don’t have it will try to micromanage even the best talent, rendering it virtually ineffective.
On the other hand, some may overcompensate for previous micromanagement and completely wash their hands off of the tasks at hand. That, in the words of my friend Allen Hargreaves, is abdication and not delegation.
Delegation is about letting the person closest to the problem solve the problem, and you, the management, being there in support of them, not to monitor them. You have to be there, side-by-side and close enough to share your experience, but far enough that the work is done by the delegatee and they receive ALL the credit for it.
Developing Delegatees
A great psychiatrist friend of mine once told me that counseling is ineffective. It amounts to giving advice, in one ear and out the other. By contrast, with therapy, the psychiatrists often know the answers, but never share it with the patient. They just ask questions leading the patient down the path so they themselves can reach the right conclusions. That experience will never be forgotten, and thereafter, the patient will always take the right steps.
Management coaching should also be very similar to the therapy approach. Using this model, you can empower the best talent to be better. You can also take even the least experienced, and turn them into the most valuable team members. This approach can allow you to hire out of college, and in no time compete very effectively with those who are paying much higher salaries.
Control has its place
As you may have seen in my other posts, patience is running thin in today’s work environment. Impatient people are often short with others, especially with those that are in the learning phase, or simply did not see a problem the way others viewed it.
This is where control has its value. Regardless of how frustrated, outraged, or peeved you are, you need to be in control of your emotions. This is even more important for leaders who are coaching, teaching, and sharing their experience on a daily basis.
Remember the rule on controlling emotions: In any given exchange, regardless of the position one holds, the one who loses their temper has lost. The damage might seem temporary, but I can assure you it is not.
People often don’t remember details of events, but they do remember how they felt at the event. Therefore an event in which you have shown frustration – or worse yet, anger – will be forever be remembered in a negative light, diminishing your value as a leader or a team player.
Manage Processes Not People
In the 1930s, when talking about black empowerment, Marian Andreson was credited with a quote which truly applies to today’s business environment. She said:
“As long as you keep a person down,
some part of you has to be down there to hold him down,
so it means that you cannot soar as you otherwise might.”
So let go of controlling people today, and focus on creating processes, strategies, and competitive advantages. When you create processes, people can follow them with minimal guidance. As a result, you get controlled quality without having to control people.
This is the formula for growth. Let go, so you can grow.
What do you think?
Saturday, February 20, 2010
Compliance and Outsourcing
By Mark Brousseau
While new compliance, security and privacy regulations are likely to take a bigger bite out of operations budgets this year, most organizations believe they can meet the stricter rules without having to outsource their payments and document processing. Just 20 percent of respondents to a recent TAWPI Question of the Week said new compliance, security and privacy regulations would force their organization to consider outsourcing. Sixty-five percent of respondents said the tougher regulations wouldn't force them to consider, and 15 percent of respondents said they weren't sure.
The time and cost associated with meeting compliance, security and privacy regulations continues to rise -- giving pause to any company entrusted with sensitive data that must be stored and shared.
"Regulatory compliance is very expensive and extremely time-consuming," says R. Edwin Pearce (epearce@egisticsinc.com), executive vice president of sales and corporate development for eGistics, Inc. "Companies have two choices for meeting regulatory demands for privacy and security: assume the full expense of the resources and time associated with meeting each regulation, or work with an outsource provider that can spread the costs of meeting the regulations across its customer base."
Pearce also believes that organizations should ask themselves whether it makes sense to go through the cost and trouble of becoming compliant, when there are outsource providers that already are.
"Companies don't necessarily have to absorb the full capital burden of meeting various certification and compliancy tests," Pearce explains. "For example, organizations that store images and data for multiple years may have to meet PCI, SAS 70 and HIPAA regulations. Rather than engineer a data center environment that meets all of these requirements -- including policy and procedural standards -- it may make better sense for the organization to partner with a compliant outsource provider."
"The result is faster compliance, at a significantly lower cost," Pearce adds.
With new regulations on the horizon, this is a decision more organizations will have to make.
What do you think?
While new compliance, security and privacy regulations are likely to take a bigger bite out of operations budgets this year, most organizations believe they can meet the stricter rules without having to outsource their payments and document processing. Just 20 percent of respondents to a recent TAWPI Question of the Week said new compliance, security and privacy regulations would force their organization to consider outsourcing. Sixty-five percent of respondents said the tougher regulations wouldn't force them to consider, and 15 percent of respondents said they weren't sure.
The time and cost associated with meeting compliance, security and privacy regulations continues to rise -- giving pause to any company entrusted with sensitive data that must be stored and shared.
"Regulatory compliance is very expensive and extremely time-consuming," says R. Edwin Pearce (epearce@egisticsinc.com), executive vice president of sales and corporate development for eGistics, Inc. "Companies have two choices for meeting regulatory demands for privacy and security: assume the full expense of the resources and time associated with meeting each regulation, or work with an outsource provider that can spread the costs of meeting the regulations across its customer base."
Pearce also believes that organizations should ask themselves whether it makes sense to go through the cost and trouble of becoming compliant, when there are outsource providers that already are.
"Companies don't necessarily have to absorb the full capital burden of meeting various certification and compliancy tests," Pearce explains. "For example, organizations that store images and data for multiple years may have to meet PCI, SAS 70 and HIPAA regulations. Rather than engineer a data center environment that meets all of these requirements -- including policy and procedural standards -- it may make better sense for the organization to partner with a compliant outsource provider."
"The result is faster compliance, at a significantly lower cost," Pearce adds.
With new regulations on the horizon, this is a decision more organizations will have to make.
What do you think?
Monday, March 9, 2009
The Business Intelligence Market
By Mark Brousseau
When Colleen Graham, research director at Gartner, looks at trends in the business intelligence market, she sees two 800 pound gorillas for organizations to consider: business intelligence mega-vendors (the result of vendor consolidation over the past few years) and the weakening economy.
“Besides figuring out how to deal with the mega-vendors, you also have to figure out how your organization is going to deal with the economy. Organizations had to turn on a dime as a result of the economy,” Graham told attendees at the Gartner Business Intelligence Summit 2009 in Washington, D.C. The good news: “We’re seeing more organizations looking at business intelligence as a life line; a way to run the business smarter, to use existing resources better, to do more marketing, to gain market share and beat their competition. There is a growing realization that information is an asset that organizations need to leverage,” she said.
“For many organizations, business intelligence is like a lot of new projects: it is under pressure,” Graham told attendees. “But the market is still growing. Business intelligence is not a commodity yet. Business intelligence can make every dollar count. It can help organizations drive toward strategic goals while meeting near-term needs.”
Graham expects business intelligence to enjoy continued growth as a result of lower technology prices and the fact that business intelligence functionality such as reporting and analytics is being embedded in other products, such as predictive modeling, workflow and virtualization. “Business intelligence is becoming more available. It used to be only in the hands of mega users. Now, business intelligence is spreading to more users in the organization and reaching beyond the firewall to partners and customers.” Graham sees the highest growth rates for business intelligence in operations; users are becoming more sophisticated and more accustomed to using analytics in their day-to-day lives, Graham said. She expects business intelligence usage to double by 2013.
Against this backdrop, Graham thinks there are few things to watch for from vendors:
... Creative financing deals
... Maintenance revenue becoming increasingly important for vendors
... Pricing pressures and bundling
... Infrastructure-light business intelligence
... Users looking to leverage what they already have
... Open source and SaaS solutions getting a push
... More departmental-level business intelligence
What do you think? Post your comments below.
When Colleen Graham, research director at Gartner, looks at trends in the business intelligence market, she sees two 800 pound gorillas for organizations to consider: business intelligence mega-vendors (the result of vendor consolidation over the past few years) and the weakening economy.
“Besides figuring out how to deal with the mega-vendors, you also have to figure out how your organization is going to deal with the economy. Organizations had to turn on a dime as a result of the economy,” Graham told attendees at the Gartner Business Intelligence Summit 2009 in Washington, D.C. The good news: “We’re seeing more organizations looking at business intelligence as a life line; a way to run the business smarter, to use existing resources better, to do more marketing, to gain market share and beat their competition. There is a growing realization that information is an asset that organizations need to leverage,” she said.
“For many organizations, business intelligence is like a lot of new projects: it is under pressure,” Graham told attendees. “But the market is still growing. Business intelligence is not a commodity yet. Business intelligence can make every dollar count. It can help organizations drive toward strategic goals while meeting near-term needs.”
Graham expects business intelligence to enjoy continued growth as a result of lower technology prices and the fact that business intelligence functionality such as reporting and analytics is being embedded in other products, such as predictive modeling, workflow and virtualization. “Business intelligence is becoming more available. It used to be only in the hands of mega users. Now, business intelligence is spreading to more users in the organization and reaching beyond the firewall to partners and customers.” Graham sees the highest growth rates for business intelligence in operations; users are becoming more sophisticated and more accustomed to using analytics in their day-to-day lives, Graham said. She expects business intelligence usage to double by 2013.
Against this backdrop, Graham thinks there are few things to watch for from vendors:
... Creative financing deals
... Maintenance revenue becoming increasingly important for vendors
... Pricing pressures and bundling
... Infrastructure-light business intelligence
... Users looking to leverage what they already have
... Open source and SaaS solutions getting a push
... More departmental-level business intelligence
What do you think? Post your comments below.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Cost Reduction Driving Solutions Sales
By Mark Brousseau
The current economy is creating additional impetus for expense reduction and service improvement, says Bob Lund (rlund@egisticsinc.com), chairman and CEO of Dallas-based eGistics, Inc., and vice chairman of the TAWPI Board of Directors.
“Every solution that you are going to install has to have a cost reduction element associated with it,” Lund told me. “Increasing functionality without improving productivity isn’t going to get you there.”
What do you think? Post your comment below.
The current economy is creating additional impetus for expense reduction and service improvement, says Bob Lund (rlund@egisticsinc.com), chairman and CEO of Dallas-based eGistics, Inc., and vice chairman of the TAWPI Board of Directors.
“Every solution that you are going to install has to have a cost reduction element associated with it,” Lund told me. “Increasing functionality without improving productivity isn’t going to get you there.”
What do you think? Post your comment below.
Saturday, November 8, 2008
Service Bureaus Tout Labor Savings
By Mark Brousseau
In light of the weakening economy, service bureaus need to change their sales message to emphasize their ability to reduce a company’s headcount and help them avoid capital expenditures, says Mario G. Duckett, CDIA (Mario@metasource.com), senior director, business development, for Bristol, PA-based metasource.
Duckett spoke during AIIM's 33rd Annual Document Management Service Providers Executive Forum in Austin last week.
“Down markets are great for soft dollars and Software as a Service (SaaS) is an excellent way for someone who has had their capital budget way taken away to still solve their business problems,” says Duckett. “In this economic environment, a company that can’t afford a $100,000 capital expenditure will be interested in a $2,000 a month fee for SaaS. The key is to stress labor savings.”
What do you think? Post your comments below.
In light of the weakening economy, service bureaus need to change their sales message to emphasize their ability to reduce a company’s headcount and help them avoid capital expenditures, says Mario G. Duckett, CDIA (Mario@metasource.com), senior director, business development, for Bristol, PA-based metasource.
Duckett spoke during AIIM's 33rd Annual Document Management Service Providers Executive Forum in Austin last week.
“Down markets are great for soft dollars and Software as a Service (SaaS) is an excellent way for someone who has had their capital budget way taken away to still solve their business problems,” says Duckett. “In this economic environment, a company that can’t afford a $100,000 capital expenditure will be interested in a $2,000 a month fee for SaaS. The key is to stress labor savings.”
What do you think? Post your comments below.
Service in the Sky
Posted by Mark Brousseau
Below is a link to an interesting article in the November 10 issue of Newsweek about cloud computing.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/166818
What is your organization's approach to cloud computing? Post your comments below.
Below is a link to an interesting article in the November 10 issue of Newsweek about cloud computing.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/166818
What is your organization's approach to cloud computing? Post your comments below.
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