173 Posts found for Source: Optimize Magazine

Companies that do see a linkage between branding and IT performance go well beyond bumper-sticker slogans about customer intimacy or the customer experience. They recognize that in many cases, IT systems are the brand-not only to customers, but also to employees, business partners, and other stakeholders. Such companies don’t treat branding’s IT implications as an afterthought. On the contrary, they consider IT an integral part … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Bruce Rogow | Source: Optimize Magazine | Subjects: IT / Technology / E-Business, Marketing / Sales

IT and infrastructure shouldn’t be treated like the elephant in the room that no one wants to acknowledge. Eventually, ambivalence will give way to fear and loathing if the CIO and the IT team can’t account for its presence. Instead, companies should proactively set new strategic imperatives for their IT infrastructures. This may require a new operational model, more sophisticated value measurements, and tough choices … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Jeff Hughes | Source: Optimize Magazine | Subject: IT / Technology / E-Business

Combining the elements of best-practice frameworks such as ITIL, ISO, and COBIT can result in integrated systems and process improvements.

Content: Article | Author: Jean-Pierre Garbani | Source: Optimize Magazine | Subjects: Best Practices, IT / Technology / E-Business

It’s been every company’s quest to achieve IT and business alignment, but if executives did some true introspection, most would have to admit that there’s still a gap to close. The Corporate Executive Board, a best-practices research organization for senior executives, has conducted one of the most comprehensive research studies on the topic of alignment, and found that there are significant, ongoing gaps between … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Jaime M. Capellá | Source: Optimize Magazine | Subjects: Best Practices, IT / Technology / E-Business

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The concept of a value chain–defined as the coordinated series of activities leading to the creation and delivery of any product or service–is deeply embedded in the collective wisdom of today’s business leaders. This concept has shaped a generation of business models and enormous efficiencies have been gained by organizing and managing value chains. However, the next round of efficiencies will come from new processes … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: James A. Champy, Thomas Koulopoulos | Source: Optimize Magazine | Subjects: Innovation, IT / Technology / E-Business

Understanding how and why employees gradually lose their enthusiasm and begin to disengage can help us see how we, as managers, can salvage key talent at many points along the decision path. It’s important to realize that employee turnover is not an event–it is really a series of events, a process of disengagement that can take days, weeks, months, or even years until the actual … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Leigh Branham | Source: Optimize Magazine | Subject: Human Resources

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People always talk about the learning curve. The hardest thing is the forgetting curve. You have to discard what you think you know. And the higher you go in management, the more difficult it is. When things are changing rapidly, you have to abandon information that is no longer useful. That takes a certain amount of courage.

Content: Quotation | Source: Optimize Magazine | Subjects: Change Management, Learning

When examining any complex business model, it becomes obvious that being exceptional at your business means becoming extraordinarily efficient at handling exceptions. Breaking away from the anticipated and structured is the very foundation of innovation and, we would claim, is impossible without a focus exclusively on your company’s core competency.

If you approach the market with the idea that exceptions are the norm and then … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Optimize Magazine | Subjects: Innovation, Operations

Treating IT as a different animal creates problems. It’s developed its own language, myths, and mystique that give IT managers a get-out-of-jail-free card. When you have this mind-set, it means that it’s OK that a $10 million project got screwed up. If any other project had been screwed up, people would have been held accountable. But managing IT is not about managing technology; it’s about … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Optimize Magazine | Subject: IT / Technology / E-Business

The problem with KM-besides its being an unwieldy term-is that there’s no intrinsic value in managing knowledge. The term itself isn’t outcome- or business-oriented.

I’ve really tried to extricate myself from it. I believe there are five ways of looking at the issues unearthed by KM: social networks, collaboration, data relevance, workflow, and knowledge-based relationships. These are all outcome-oriented, and executives understand them. To me, … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Optimize Magazine | Subject: Knowledge

Two authors with opposing viewpoints suggest new common ground for optimizing the IT-purchase process.

Content: Article | Authors: Brian Sommer, Vinnie Mirchandani | Source: Optimize Magazine | Subject: IT / Technology / E-Business

It turns out there’s this thing called great management, and…there’s a…positive relationship between good management and effective use of IT. People who just improve management practices get a benefit, and people who invest in IT without good management get a negative result. So on your path to improved productivity, you’re better off putting management practices first. People who improve management practices and invest in IT … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Optimize Magazine | Subject: IT / Technology / E-Business

CEOs and CFOs must ensure that internal controls in outsourced activities are documented and tested each year.

Content: Article | Author: Bryan Mekechuk | Source: Optimize Magazine | Subjects: Management, Outsourcing / BPO

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Unrelenting cost pressures have renewed CIOs’ interest in running IT as a shared service. But shared service transitions usually require significant IT support-such as upgraded financial systems or self-service HR capabilities-at the same time that IT itself is undergoing a significant transition. By aiming for a market-level standard of quality, IT shared services can sustain and build on those improvements over time-all while delivering greater … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Jonathan Silver, Peter Peters | Source: Optimize Magazine | Subject: IT / Technology / E-Business

We have much better customer service than we used to. Some people say, “Sure, we’re doing CRM because we have friendlier telephone operators.” I call that random-access CRM. No matter how great the service is, it doesn’t matter if the company doesn’t remember the customer.

We call that the “goldfish principle,” after Dory, the goldfish, in Finding Nemo. She’s lovely, but she can’t remember a thing … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Optimize Magazine | Subject: Customer Related

Seven practices characterize highly productive companies turning them into ‘digital organizations.’ IT is the catalyst, but organizational capital provides the context.

Content: Article | Author: Erik Brynjolfsson | Source: Optimize Magazine | Subjects: IT / Technology / E-Business, Organizational Behavior

While all other corporate definitions have evolved and changed, much of what we call marketing today harks back to the era of mass media, with information compressed into marketing-designed messages and distributed by one-way broadcast channels, primarily television. Marketing today is really “message making” aimed at influencing consumers’ needs and wants. It’s heavily steeped in interpreting the psychology of the customer and the marketplace, not … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Optimize Magazine | Subject: Marketing / Sales