173 Posts found for Source: Optimize Magazine

What we have now is a multidimensional organization. On one hand, we have markets; on the other hand, functional departments. Business processes cut across all the above. In that kind of complex environment, hierarchy and power make no sense. Instead, it’s about influence and collaboration.

Content: Quotation | Source: Optimize Magazine | Subjects: Organizational Behavior, Process

In our economy, more and more of the output is in quality, variety, customer service, timeliness, and components of output other than the number of units produced at a given cost. As a result, the nature of our GDP is changing; the nature of our competition is changing on the output side.

The same thing is happening on the input side, where more and more … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Optimize Magazine | Subjects: Economics, Trends / Analysis

Global competition, supply-chain partnerships, knowledge management, and 24/7 operations are among the trends driving changes in business processes and business structures. As information and decision-making power filter deeper into the organization, traditional command-and-control, hierarchical structures are giving way to new, matrix formats. CIOs who look beyond the technologies to the culture changes they bring can lead their companies through the transition. Editor-in-chief Brian Gillooly invited … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Source: Optimize Magazine | Subjects: Miscellaneous, People

Historically, a lot of the value of technology was in automation. There was a pretty good alignment between the systems investments and the functional authority. It was a matter of automating existing business processes. What’s happened over the last 10 to 15 years is that we have offshoring, outsourcing, and value-chain relationships that get more and more complex, and we’re actually trying to use IT … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Optimize Magazine | Subjects: IT / Technology / E-Business, Organizational Behavior

People have been saying for a long time that the widespread availability of information would democratize organizations, and that the upward and downward movements of information would be replaced by horizontal ones. I just don’t see it happening.

In fact, the widespread availability of information is making it easier for senior executives to check on and control every movement of people at lower levels. So, … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Optimize Magazine | Subjects: Information, Organizational Behavior

The perspective on outsourcing must shift from a focus on cost arbitrage to one encompassing a global search for resources and methodologies for leveraging resources. That’s the new basis for innovation. We’ve just started scratching the surface of the business benefits of managing global resources; companies that focus on building a core competence in managing remote delivery-that is, managing for innovation, influencing without ownership, and … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Optimize Magazine | Subject: Outsourcing / BPO

Viewed unemotionally, the offshore outsourcing of IT and call-center work to India is merely the most recent step in a 100-year-old trend in which large corporations farm out pieces of their value chains, through which raw material becomes finished products to be marketed, sold, and delivered.

Content: Quotation | Source: Optimize Magazine | Subject: Outsourcing / BPO

Prepare to manage the risks and pitfalls of offshore outsourcing.

Editor’s Note: I found the sidebar about protecting intellectual property especially interesting…

Content: Article | Author: Sheeroy Desai | Source: Optimize Magazine | Subjects: IT / Technology / E-Business, Outsourcing / BPO

CRM came out of a good insight; we have to know our customer and have an integrated way of dealing with them. But businesses took a good insight and ran it through the standard old logic-that is, it has to be done in a low-cost, automated way. So customers were reduced to an integrated database, and communications were organized around zip codes and postal codes; … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Optimize Magazine | Subjects: Customer Related, Management

On our global information superhighway, the last thing we need is additional lanes or more information. In fact, to accelerate effective information exchange and collaboration, we need more rest stops. We need someone to guide us in processing information. Rest stops are integral to sifting through the heaps of data to get to the golden nuggets of information that will help the bottom line grow. … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Optimize Magazine | Subjects: Information, Knowledge

Technology by itself can’t make a company or leader great. The role of technology is to accelerate greatness that’s already there, not to build greatness in the first place.

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

With the right detection systems and processes in place, businesses can recognize and respond to instant information.

Editor’s Note: seemed like the idea is just to add real-time monitoring to a simplified balanced scorecard (and implementation details were conveniently left out). What do you think?

Content: Article | Author: Kenneth G. McGee | Source: Optimize Magazine | Subjects: IT / Technology / E-Business, Management

Great leaders don’t give better answers; they ask better questions. And they ask them repeatedly…It’s all about disciplined thought, understanding the challenges. A great company never owes its success to one “a-ha” moment. Rather, a series of incremental, good decisions give outstanding results.

Content: Quotation | Source: Optimize Magazine | Subjects: Leadership, Management

This content is restricted to site members. Please log in or register

As business-process outsourcing takes hold, the provider landscape is shifting and so is the way outsourcing decisions are made. CIOs must consider: What’s the key value proposition and what differentiates my business from that of competitors?

Content: Article | Author: Michael Treacy | Source: Optimize Magazine | Subjects: IT / Technology / E-Business, Outsourcing / BPO

A service-oriented achitecture (SOA) can enable innovation and ease complexity.

Content: Article | Authors: Kenneth West, Nancy Martin | Source: Optimize Magazine | Subject: IT / Technology / E-Business

There are trustworthy forecasting indexes that executives can use to time their business decisions accurately.

Content: Article | Author: Lakshman Achuthan | Source: Optimize Magazine | Subjects: Economics, Management

A venture capitalist is happy if two out of every 10 tries work. Everyone gets rewarded-even those who made the eight investments that failed. But big companies are unhappy if two of 10 tries fail. Those involved in the failures are demoted or sidelined when it comes to promotions. That means big companies focus on small, low-risk, incremental improvements and miss the big, but risky, … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Optimize Magazine | Subjects: Organizational Behavior, Risk Management

A conversation with Erik Brynjolfsson of the MIT Center for eBusiness

Content: Article | Source: Optimize Magazine | Subjects: IT / Technology / E-Business, Management

Three simultaneous revolutions-new technologies, globalization, and the end of communism-are destroying the fixed reference points for business. As they do, would-be business leaders have to think of themselves as economic explorers. Leaders are people who know they’re at point B and need to go to point A. Their problem is to find a route from B to A and persuade the troops to follow. Explorers … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Optimize Magazine | Subjects: Leadership, Trends / Analysis