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  • How IT Helps Nissan Beat Chevy in the Electric Car Game

    The all-electric Nissan Leaf had the potential to woo eco-conscious shoppers away from the Chevy Volt when it was launched last December. But from a customer service and sales perspective, the Japanese automaker was at a distinct disadvantage. Chevrolet consistently scored four stars on J.D. Power's five-star customer service and sales experience scales; Nissan earned just two.

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    IT managers weigh in on the digital education revolution

    The digital education revolution of 2007 has posed management challenges, but has had an overall positive impact on schools, two IT managers have claimed.

  • Bankwest cites project management as key to capped rate home loan success

    Bankwest has praised the use of project managers after revealing one of its key projects relied heavily on project management skills.

  • How to avoid the trouble with continuous multi-tasking

    Picture the following scenario: You have gone into a “quiet room” such as your office or den to write a long-term program or project plan that you have been meaning to get to for several weeks. The plan requires your full concentration, and it has taken you say three plus weeks to get to because of short-term issues and urgent requests from others that have continually taken priority.

  • Communication risks within and around a virtual team

    In recent years, the way that projects take shape has evolved at or near the same pace as the information and communications technology we use in our business and personal lives. Not long ago, a project team was either co-located (all team members in the same close proximity) or connected together via express couriers and air travel (regular travel to meet face–to-face was reasonable, prudent, the best method, and acceptable in cost). Then came the email revolution.

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    Rescuing troubled projects

    You are not impervious to having troubled projects in your portfolio. Any project can fail. Even the most seasoned and skilled project manager may, at one time or another, find themselves at the helm of a troubled project. Having a project in trouble does not necessarily signal the project manager is doing a poor job. Projects can go off course for a variety of reasons; some reasons are outside the span of control of the project manager. What are some of the common causes for projects to fall into troubled waters and what are some prudent steps to get the project back on course?

  • Project management and disaster relief

    These days, it seems we can’t go more than a couple of months before facing yet another catastrophe somewhere in the world. In order for these countries to effectively manage the situation, it is critical that disaster relief coordinators understand and implement essential project management skills and employ project managers with a background in successful post-disaster reconstruction, and who have been involved in both managing project portfolios and overall project programs.

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    CRM: Four dirty little secrets of marketing automation

    In the heat of a sales cycle, marketing automation vendors tell you all the great news about how their systems will increase conversion rates, improve sales effectiveness, and save time. When used properly, marketing automation systems do all that. What the sales reps don't tell you is...

  • The CRM reality distortion field

    Full disclosure: I was a card-carrying marketing guy for 20 years. So when I see the effects of reality distortion in my clients' purchase decisions, I know whereof I speak.

  • Customer demand priority

    Program, portfolio and PMO managers understand the ‘benefits to value’ of a project and can use return on investment (ROI), internal rate of return (IRR), or other financial metrics, as well as non-financial criteria (‘intrinsic value’ criteria) to evaluate projects at the start of and during their full lifecycle into ‘operations mode’. Selecting which projects to charter within your organisation have long-term implications both for you individually and your organisation. Conducting in-depth pro-forma ROI, IRR of other financial analysis can be costly and time consuming. What about an alternative method that is relatively quick and easy to undertake and can provide you with an objective ‘weighting’ criteria for your stakeholders and program/project team to consider? If you manage a PMO, Portfolio or Program of work (in any discipline – finance, manufacturing, IT, etc), the customer demand priority (CDP) tool we put forward below may be helpful to you at the front-end decision-making process of project prioritisation. It is a simple method that is similar to a risk matrix table to evaluate and score projects on a scale from 2 to 11 where 2 are the lowest challenge and 11 is the most intensive.

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