I'm a management and technical consultant with nearly 30 years experience in the field. I've been trained in Operations Research, Process Improvement and Project Management-- I come in to figure out why a company isn't performing well and how to make it work better.
I tell clients there are three fundamental components to any business:
The people who perform the tasks (and their existing workload),
The processes they use to structure their efforts (which includes culture),
The technology they use to help perform the tasks (which includes copiers and phones).
The first two are by far the most important... but my business card usually says "Technology consultant" because everyone assumes they need more and better computers.
Sometimes they do. Other times they're not using what they have well. Frequently they have so many that nobody knows what they all do or why-- and they're afraid to change what they have, because they don't know what they might break if they retired something.
I run into a related problem on web development projects. I try to explain to clients that what retains people is the content-- that keeping the site fresh and new will be their biggest difficulty and largest expense. But they're always focused more on the graphics and the applications... which, once you exceed a certain minimum level, are superfluous to your sucesss. (unless you're a design studo or an ecommerce site).
As the son of a historian, I find that most bad decisions occur because (a) People aren't aware the underlying issue has happened many times before or (b) they mistakenly assume that their solution is unique
As a rule, no one has written anything about the Internet that was not written when the telegraph or telephone was introduced. Everything you need to know about Wall Street can be learned from studying the sale of tulip bulbs in the 17th century. I get paid to point these sorts of things out to clients.
Recently, the Obama administration has been of two minds where privacy rights are concerned. On one hand, you have an administration that vowed to veto CISPA and mandated open data for government websites. On the other hand, you have an increasingly out-of-control Department of Justice on a fishing expedition at AP and demanding legislation to let the FBI wiretap private, encrypted communications and levy fines if a company fails to comply.
The apartment and house sharing service, Airbnb, now requires members to verify their identities by demonstrating a presence on the web, and by either scanning a government ID or entering detailed personal details. Other enterprises should take a close look at Airbnb's verification policies.
Facebook advertising is a lightning rod. It seems neither brands nor consumers are 100 percent happy about the social media site's policies, placement, or procedures. But the real controversy about Facebook ads and promotions is over whether they work.
By now, you've most likely heard about the 3D-printed gun that Texas-based Defense Distributed demonstrated last week. But we haven't heard the last about the censorship war that began soon afterward.
New York's Metropolitan Transit Authority is conducting a pilot test of digital kiosks to guide subway users to where they want to go more efficiently and at lower cost.
The whole Amazon.reader debate is a double-stupid. It's stupid to think that there's any e-book buyer who doesn't know Amazon's URL, and it was stupider to let ICANN launch the whole free-form TLD initiative to start with.
While NFC's original goal was to enhance mobile commerce applications, it is finding its way into a number of other uses, which is creating both opportunity as well as challenges for IT departments.
Enterprises would like to move to cloud computing but are hesitant because they are concerned about providers’ ability to secure company data. Here are some tips that help to ensure that if breaches occur, the business is not left holding the bag.
Edmunds separates customers into segments based on the info it collects on its site and from partners, and uses that to push out custom content, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
The automotive website uses propensity modeling to target ads and customer registration forms, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
Subsidized handsets, rather than locked handsets, should be the focus of regulators. We're not getting good deals, not fostering innovation, and weakening our power as buyers.
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