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  • Get ready for street commerce

    According to MIT Sloan, the global customer relationship management (CRM) market exceeds $50 billion annually and yet consistently 55-75 per cent of implementations fail to meet the expectations of business stakeholders. There are case studies of successful CRM projects, but it raises the question of the validity of building silos of customer data in the belief that it adds intrinsic value to the enterprise balance sheet or the customer experience. Will emerging technologies change the way we think about managing customer relationships and interactions?

    Written by Scott Stewart • 14 Feb. 12 10:36

  • Don’t wait for Windows 8

    Windows XP is 10 years old, yet a substantial number of businesses are still using it. They’re not really at fault. Upgrading to Windows Vista was considered too much work for too little payoff, and for many businesses upgrading to Windows 7 has for a long time seemed unnecessary.

    Written by Rhys Evans • 07 Feb. 12 12:40

  • Mergers & acquisitions: The first 100 days

    It is day one of the acquisition and executive reputations are on the line. Are you prepared? Have you revised your current organisation commitments and reviewed organisational priorities with colleagues?

    Written by Evan Thomas • 06 Feb. 12 13:15

  • Opinion: Is Google evil? The jury is out

    Much outrage has been expressed about Google's new privacy policy. People are acting as if they are shocked that Google would consolidate the personal information it gathers from its customers through all of its varied services. What is shocking to me is that none of these people, including members of Congress, seemed to see it coming.

    Written by Ira Winkler • 02 Feb. 12 01:30
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    Free news, paywalls and the slow death of media

    Not all stories end badly, but this one does. Of all the industries unravelling upon our screens since the advent of the Web almost 20 years ago, traditional news media is dying the hardest.

    Written by Andrew Birmingham • 21 Nov. 11 09:22
  • 1

    Customer service in the Cloud

    At the Gartner Summit in Sydney, delegates were asked if they agreed with the premise that by 2016, 20 per cent of all businesses’ IT would be based in the Cloud. Roughly 70 per cent of the people at the Summit considered the statement to be accurate. Depending on your own predictions on the take-up of Cloud and what your business’ IT looks like, that statistic is either quite surprising or completely underwhelming. But for once at least there’s some consensus on how Cloud is taking off, with all businesses now aware of the benefits it can deliver.

    Written by Simon Burke • 01 Nov. 11 13:13

  • IT risk: More rhetoric than action

    Several recent spectacular IT system failures causing millions of dollars impact on pre-tax profit indicate the framework to identify and treat risks in organisations is more rhetoric than action, according to industry specialists Dean Slight, Chief Audit Executive and Devan Naidoo, Head of Audit for Technology at Tabcorp.

    Written by CIO Staff • 28 Sept. 11 16:41
  • 1

    The challenges of competing with Cloud computing providers

    In discussions about cloud computing and in comments readers leave on my blog posts, I commonly get statements along the lines of "Yeah, this cloud computing stuff sounds great, but at the end of the day, you have to have an IT guy solving problems like they've always done." In personal interactions, I often hear this sentiment portrayed as, "Public cloud computing is fine for the SMB and startup market, but enterprises aren't ready to move to that model." The tone of much of this feedback is that anyone who advocates cloud computing is at best naive or at worst incapable of understanding the real details of IT.

    Written by Bernard Golden • 27 Aug. 11 03:32

  • Rise of the planet of the tablets

    The Planet of the Apes series of sci-fi thrillers in the late 1960s and early '70s depicted a world in which intelligent apes are the dominant species and humans have been subordinated.

    Written by Mike Elgan • 09 Aug. 11 00:13

  • Vendor view: Five tips for integrating BI and ERP

    The Global Financial Crisis put Business Intelligence (BI) and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) integration in the spotlight. We needed to know urgently what was happening in our businesses and why.

    Written by Ian Whiting • 25 July 11 07:00

  • Vendor view: Taking your CRM mobile

    About 41 per cent of Australian consumers have now installed a mobile application on their phone, and, given their incredible popularity, it’s no surprise that businesses, and their employees, are crying out for mobile apps.

    Written by Ian Whiting • 19 July 11 12:38

  • How to achieve better results from your Oracle negotiation

    From its organisational complexity, to the challenge of finding good negotiation leverage, this growing technology giant can be one of the most challenging to work with. A recent survey of 20 different Oracle customer organisations within Forrester's Sourcing and Vendor Management (SVM) Leadership Council found that across the board, the primary point of contention was Oracle's lack of flexibility on price model evolution, volume/scope changes, and overall business transparency (such as pricing). Council members also expressed that from their perspective, Oracle constantly tries to upsell and increase their costs.

    Written by Duncan Jones • 07 July 11 08:04

  • Smartphones, security and the enterprise

    Smartphones are among the most important technological developments of our time. Since the advent of the first smartphones in the 1990s, these once cumbersome devices have become immensely powerful and sophisticated tools – not just individual communications devices, but whole computing platforms, capable of running a vast array of personal and business applications.

    Written by Richard Ting • 20 May 11 09:40

  • Think Tank: Tips for IT strategic planning success

    We all know that we need to get more value from information technology investments. That means IT projects, portfolios and priorities must be aligned to those of the business. IT strategic planning is often used as a tool to achieve this alignment and turn the business needs into results. But it is often not that easy! Many organisations develop a strategic plan but successful implementation is still difficult. Like in golf or chess, rules are well known but consistent performance is still hard.

    Written by Hemant Kogekar • 23 April 11 08:00

  • What do data centres and iPads have in common?

    Judging by the hardware announcements coming out of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, you’d have to agree 2011 is a stellar year to be a consumer. It might actually be the best year on record.

    Written by Trevor Clarke • 22 April 11 09:00

  • Opinion: LinkedIn: friend or glorified recruitment tool?

    With a worldwide user base of 100 million people, LinkedIn has some credence in its claims of being the world’s largest professional network. Now, with two million users in Australia alone, it’s clear that the site has captured the attention of many in the local workplace.

    Written by Lisa Banks • 15 April 11 08:54
  • 2

    Total cost of ownership is only part of the SaaS picture

    For me TCO is only part of the picture, using this measure in isolation can lead you to make suboptimal purchasing decisions. This is written with my experience of Salesforce front of mind, however this can apply to most SaaS providers.

    Written by Andy Pattinson • 14 April 11 15:54

  • Seven key imperatives of full spectrum leadership

    Let’s open the aperture for a more expansive view towards a ‘full spectrum’ approach to deep consciousness within a framework that combines seven imperatives of leadership.

    Written by Bruce Carlos • 14 April 11 15:27

  • 5 Ways to make costs cuts stick

    Short-term cuts are easy; but making them stick is more difficult. Sales, general and administrative (often grouped as ‘SGA’) prove to be particularly intransigent. While manufacturing efficiencies have improved in recent years, SGA has remained more or less at same levels.

    Written by Morris Kaplan • 21 March 11 16:54

  • Social media - part 2

    Apart from the above example where it can be demonstrated that it improves productivity when we allow employees to use social media as a ‘diversion break’ from the concentration of their daily tasks, there are also the obvious benefits of ‘market intelligence”. By encouraging staff to get positive messages out there via Twitter, Facebook etc and also uncovering public opinion of your organisation that is being shared via social media, it is easy to see why organisations would permit and even encourage social media use.

    Written by Breed Lewis • 11 March 11 10:17
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