Alignment, staffing and culture are often more critical than software and apps
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Many enterprise tech vendors are finding it difficult to crack the SMB market , at least in part because SMBs all "look the same" to them. Vendors fail to account for the differences in buyin... More >
We're betting that a £12 million (U.S. $24 million) knock on the bottom line wasn't what Cadbury Schweppes had in mind with a "business transformation" project that involved implementing a £200 milli... More >
Got an employee who plays World of Warcraft at the office? Instead of punishing him , maybe you should promote him. A new study from IBM and Seriosity (which sells solutions that "use psych... More >
While business intelligence is much in demand , results do not always live up to expectations -- based on recent research that indicates that 87 percent of BI projects fail to meet their original ob... More >
There are at least two certainties associated with offshoring: Most folks have strong opinions about it, and companies have a rapidly growing number of possible offshore destinations from which to ch... More >
SMBs certainly don't lack choices when it comes to ERP systems, with a veritable who's who of vendors coming out with solutions geared toward their needs. There's Microsoft, with its Dynamics... More >
Deal architect Vinnie Mirchandani makes note of the fact that a couple of tech titans, Dell and SAP, dropped from BusinessWeek's list of the Infotech 100 this year . Both had rough years. Del... More >
The latest recipient of a letter from Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who really wants to get to the bottom of this whole H-1B controversy about companies willfully scamming the system, is a Pittsburg... More >
Does father know best? Maybe not when it comes to technology choices for family-owned businesses, according to a recent Microsoft survey. The survey of 250-plus multigenerational SMBs in the... More >
Last month we blogged about a Robert Cringely column that speculated IBM was about to embark on the biggest round of layoffs in its history with an initiative called LEAN -- which supposedly stood ... More >
Oracle is feeling the love from SMBs, according to a recent customer satisfaction survey in which it trumped archrival SAP. The company hopes to capitalize on that goodwill and earn more war... More >
With the pent-up demand for a search product that could sift through all of the piles of disparate enterprise data and deliver results of value to users, we figure it's only a matter of time before... More >
Is there such a thing as too much process improvement? Yes, says consultant David Taber. While process improvement efforts like Six Sigma tend to work well for established products, helping co... More >
The controversial immigration proposal that has been stalled in the Senate is up for a crucial vote tomorrow, and observers agree it's too close to call . The bill needs the support of 60 sen... More >
We've blogged before about SMBs' relative lack of bureaucracy when compared to their larger counterparts, a trait that often allows them to make decisions faster than the big boys. It also m... More >
One of the best ways to derail a tech initiative is to downplay employee training efforts. A common error, duly noted by CRM expert Barton Goldenberg in a recent interview with IT Business Ed... More >
New developments in business intelligence and data mining are making it possible for even non-specialists to garner valuable insights by drilling down into information in ways that wouldn't have be... More >
While conventional wisdom says that globalization should act as a tide that raises all boats, economists are beginning to worry about the number of workers whose careers may be jettisoned. A r... More >
Bill Gates recently called the gap between personal productivity software and back-office applications like ERP "the last mile" in productivity . Microsoft wants to help companies traverse that rock... More >
Because they worry about added costs and complexity, many SMBs continue to use direct-attached storage (DAS) configurations rather than the storage area networks (SANs) that are fast becoming the nor... More >
Is the PC industry an early indicator of where innovation is headed? If so, it appears to be moving offshore. Like most other North American companies, PC manufacturers were quick to offhsore ... More >
Though security is the bogeyman that haunts the dreams of many CIOs, it's especially scary for SMBs. SMBs generally have fewer resources to devote to security than their larger counterparts --... More >
What is the difference between business intelligence and business performance management? There really isn't any, says a Hyperion executive in a September interview with IT Business Edge . Bo... More >
The relationship many companies have with consultants brings to mind the old saw often used to describe the most elemental relationship of all: "Men (or women) -- can't live with 'em, can't live with... More >
Though the timing seems less than coincidental -- seeing how it closely follows the request by two U.S. senators that Indian outsourcing firms supply more details on how they use H-1B visas to expo... More >
Though it seems a little early to posit that online shoppers are experiencing "Internet fatigue," as a recent New York Times article does, growth in online sales does appear to be slowing . ... More >
While SMBs' interest in software-as-a-service is strong , it is tempered by their concerns about placing business applications -- particularly those that might involve sensitive data -- outside the... More >
Despite perennial concerns over the loss of U.S. jobs to offshoring, much of the outcry over the practice has died down, with some economists even insisting that offshoring has boosted both producti... More >
We hate to kick a company when it's down -- even Dell. Following the return of prodigal CEO Michael Dell, the company continues to struggle with financial problems -- ones so bad that it pla... More >
Tech giants like Microsoft and Oracle realize the power of strong partnerships when wooing SMBs. More so than their larger counterparts, SMBs tend to look to trusted advisors to help with their tec... More >
Is there no end to the business tasks that a wiki can do? Project managment ? Check. Enterprise content management ? Check. Lightweight integration tool ? Check. Conduit for collaboration ?... More >
We blogged recently about the declining interest in establishing captive centers in offshore locations like India. News that Citigroup reportedly plans to sell its captive BPO operation , C... More >
There are two basic schools of thought when it comes to vendor management: Squeeze them as hard as you can to get the lowest possible prices, or turn on the warm-and-cuddly to build a more collabo... More >
In my previous job, I attended lots of trade shows. Perhaps my favorite was the annual blowout put on by the National Association of Convenience Stores -- largely because many of the freebies invol... More >
As the pace of hiring in the high-tech sector grows increasingly hectic, with a recent Robert Half Technology poll showing that 15 percent of CIOs expect to add new staff in 2007's third quarter , e... More >
Verizon, which tends to perform well in the customer satisfaction surveys conducted by J.D. Power and Associates, was the favorite of SMBs in this year's Major Provider Business Telecommunications S... More >
We've blogged before about the effect that a declining dollar can have on outsourcing deals . One area that tends to be hit especially hard by a weak dollar, as reported in a recent CRM Buye... More >
The folks who created the cartoon space family the Jetsons were pretty prescient. After all, we can now buy much of the technology portrayed in the Jetsons -- including the housecleaning robo... More >
Companies like Microsoft -- founded in 1975 -- are looking downright long in the tooth when compared to all of the startups rushing to produce the "next big thing." Even the new boss, Google,... More >
In a bit of turnabout is fair play, Gartner is advising CIOs of Indian companies to look offshore for IT talent . While the domestic market in India is growing by leaps and bounds , with IT ... More >
Like their bigger business counterparts, SMBs produce piles of information. Yet they tend to lack the kind of analytic capabilities that would enable them to use data to make decisions, says an execu... More >
Whitney Houston isn't the only one who believes that "children are our future." Google appears to be crafting a business model based on gaining widespread exposure for its Google Apps at universities... More >
We've said it before and we'll say it again: Companies are control freaks, which is why they are largely uncomfortable with blogs and online forums that put control pretty much directly into the ha... More >
SMBs appear to be at the forefront of the consumerization of IT , if nothing else because their IT needs are closer to those of the consumer market than most enterprises. So not suprisingly, ... More >
Remember the bestseller "Men Who Hate Women & the Women Who Love Them?" Many folks borrowed the wording to illustrate a particular kind of co-dependency (e.g., Unemployed Men & the Women Who ... More >
We've blogged about both projected growth in outsourcing by the federal government and concerns over a lack of oversight into such outsourcing . At the heart of the controversy over increas... More >
SMB decision makers often don't have as much time or budget as their larger peers to attend trade shows or other industry events. Unlike some of their bigger brethren, neither do they have vendor sal... More >
It's no secret that outsourcing contracts are shrinking , with companies increasingly opting for several smaller deals instead of all-inclusive mega-contracts. Some deals, however, are downr... More >
Though not many business types are fond of paperwork, it gets an especially negative reaction from sales people. After all, the more time you spend filing reports, the less time you have for schmoozi... More >
The far-from-amicable relationship between rivals Oracle and SAP will likely get even unfriendlier with the release of a Nucleus Research report that found that Oracle edges out SAP as the preferred ... More >
Despite a growing chorus of displeasure over the immigration bill being considered by the Senate, Majority Leader Harry Reid (D- Nev.) wants to end debate and take a vote on it by the end of this w... More >
How often do we hear about the importance of executive sponsorship in obtaining user buy-in for tech implementations? Let's see... More times than we can count. Here is Transformation+Innovat... More >
As I've blogged about previously, many companies are ready to expand their use of business intelligence beyond BI specialists and senior executives and open it up to line-of-business managers and e... More >
The first new product of the freshly announced partnership between Google and Salesforce.com is already here, and it's one that is squarely aimed at SMBs. According to an InformationWeek a... More >
Turns out labor arbitrage isn't just an issue at the low end of the pay scale. As News.com reports, companies based in China and India could get a financial leg up as they enter Western mark... More >
A common school of thought among many Web 2.0 types is that community content is better than corporate content . Thus, tapping the community is touted as an easy, inexpensive way to inject much-nee... More >
Voice mail can mean the difference between landing a deal or losing it at real estate firm Boston Realty Advisors. So the company's 28-year-old founder recently hooked up all 30 of his employe... More >
While at least one analyst dismissed as "hogwash" technology pundit Robert Cringely's report of impending mass layoffs at IBM -- which we featured in a blog last month -- IBM is apparently planning... More >
Rupert Murdoch, the mercurial media magnate whose News Corp bought MySpace for $580 million two years ago, is more of a Microsoft guy than a Google guy. By that, we mean that Murdoch has cast ... More >
The good news about today's Internet is that folks have access to more information than ever before, and plenty of cool social networking tools make it possible for them to easily share it with other... More >
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