I’ve been trying to get to grips with in-memory databases. Seems the bard beat me to it.

(image via wikipedia, thanks)

Thy gift, thy tables, are within my brain
Full charactered with lasting memory,
Which shall above that idle rank remain,
Beyond all date, even to eternity:
Or, at the least, so long as brain and heart
Have faculty by nature to subsist;
Till each to razed oblivion yield his part
Of thee, thy record never can be missed.
That poor retention could not so much hold,
Nor need I tallies thy dear love to score;
Therefore to give them from me was I bold,
To trust those tables that receive thee more:
To keep an adjunct to remember thee
Were to import forgetfulness in me.

Sonnet 122.

Thanks to the sonnet a day site.

Shakespeare groks in memory databases is a post from: Enterprise Irregulars

(Cross-posted @ Vendorprisey)

I realised recently that although I have referred to the talk I gave in Barcelona on Mobile Sustainability (for the Mobile 2.0 conference) in a couple of posts I never talked about the talk directly here, so now it is time to redress that.

I have posted the slide deck above so you can follow along with the slides above and my explanation below.

Slides 1-3 are simply my introducing the topic and myself (along with my contact details).

I started off with a bit of a background:

• Slides 4-6 I start to talk about some of the reasons why sustainability is important. Climate change, for example, is real and is recognised as real. Even that last hold-out, the US government, has now admitted it is real and have set up the United States Global Change Research program to study the effects of Climate Change on the US.
• Slide 7 – New studies show that the impacts of climate change are likely to be worse than we anticipated
• Slide 8 – The polar ice caps are shrinking far faster than anyone predicted
• Slide 9 – Climate change is affecting animal populations today
• Slide 10 – Climate change is affecting the world’s river systems, and thus access to water for many people globally today
• Slide 11-13 – This is having devastating effects on people in South America, the Middle East, and Asia (and agriculture in Australia and California)
• Slide 14 – NGO’s are warning that the humanitarian systems, already stretched thin, will be overwhelmed

Then I went on to discuss the business case for sustainability today:

• Slide 15 – I referred to the 2001 white paper The Business Case for Sustainability [PDF warning] – produced by KPMG
• Slide 16 – I mentioned the McKinsey Quarterly publication How IT Can Cut Carbon Emissions
• Slide 17 – I brought up the MIT Sloane Management Review piece Using Corporate Social Responsibility to Win the War for Talent
• Slide 18 – Then there’s the Goldman Sachs GS Sustain focus list
• Slide 19 – Not to mention the AT Kearney “Green Winners” [PDF warning] research which showed that “during the current economic slowdown, companies that show a “true” commitment to sustainability appear to outperform their industry peers”
• Slides 20-22 – Examples of large companies (GE, DuPont, 3M) who cut costs, reduced carbon emissions and increased revenue by focussing on sustainability

Having set the stage (we need to be more sustainable, and look, there is a strong consensus that there is a business case for it too), I started to bring the talk around to the subject of the Mobile industry:

• Slide 24 – Quote from Smart 2020 report saying ICTs could deliver emissions reductions of at least 15% by 2020
• Slide 25 – While there are 1 billion PCs in the world today, and 1.4 billion Internet users, there are 4 billion mobile phone subscriptions
• Slides 26-29 – Examples of Green handsets from Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, and Sony Ericsson. I made the point here that in many cases the ‘Green handsets’ being produced by manufacturers are simply so they can ‘tick that box’ in the annual report. Sony had 57 handsets on their website. 1 was green. Green handsets should be the rule, not the exception.
• Slides 30-33 – I checked out the websites some of the main mobile operators. 3 have no mention whatsoever (that I could find) of sustainability on their corporate website; the websites of Telefonica and O2 had Sustainability sites but they could both stand a lot of work, while Vodafone’s Sustainability site was the best of the mobile operators which I examined (that’s not to say it couldn’t stand some improvement too!)
• Slides 34-36 A quick look at some of the Sustainability apps which have been developed for the mobile platform – slim pickings, tbh!

So having shown how poorly this industry is doing in terms of sustainability, I posited a few what-if’s:

• Slide 38
  What if manufacturers made phones which lasted 6 yrs not 6 months? Rent, not buy?
  What if manufacturers made non-toxic handsets?
  What if manufacturers standardised to usb chargers?
  What if mobile operators switched to e-billing?
• Slide 39
  What if carriers avoided unnecessary duplication in mobile networks, (would lead to a savings of 300gWh pa in UK alone)
  What if everyone pushed sustainability down supply chain?
  What if developers used mobile platform to build apps which ‘made a difference’?
  What if grid computing client apps were created for mobiles?
  Other?

Under the “Other” heading go ideas like creating Augmented Reality applications for handsets with sustainability related information, or what if the phone makers included pollution sensors (for example) in handsets. With the ubiquity of handsets and with most handsets having inbuilt Internet access, it wouldn’t be long before realtime information on air quality worldwide would be available. Combine that with an Augmented Reality app so people can visualize live their air quality and you would very quickly see changes in people’s behaviour.

Finally, I concluded with two quotes to show why this is critical:

• Slide 40 – From the 2007 IPCC Climate Change Synthesis Report [PDF Warning]
  As global average temperature increase exceeds about 3.5 degrees C, model projections suggest significant extinctions (40-70% of species assessed) around the globe.
• Slide 41 – From the Chair of the IPCC, Rajendra Pachauri
  If there’s no action before 2012, that’s too late. What we do in the next two to three years will determine our future. This is the defining moment.

The thing to remember here is that Rajendra Pachauri is a George Bush appointee. He was appointed Chair of the IPCC because his predecessor, Dr. Robert Watson was deemed by the American fossil fuel industry (and in particular ExxonMobil) to be too outspoken.

Rajendra Pachauri and the IPCC’s quotes are the conservative point of view.

Mobile phones are ubiquitous. There are in excess of 4 billion of them. They are now for all intents and purposes hand-held computers increasingly with an Internet connection. Shame on us all if we don’t leverage this incredible resource in the battle to mitigate the effects of climate change.

(Lack of) Sustainability in the Mobile industry is a post from: Enterprise Irregulars

(Cross-posted @ GreenMonk: the blog)

The conference is a full day of discussions about the browser and browser add-on market.  The closing keynote is on the future of the web browser and is moderated by Douglas Crockford and features representatives from Microsoft, Mozilla and Google.

In addition, if you are a new company and want to get exposure to the community and the browser vendors, Add-on-Con09 has a Sandbox program.  Companies that are accepted into the Sandbox receive promotion on the Add-on-Con website, $75 off the event cost of the event (50% discount), and the ability to demo their product in front of Browser representatives and conference attendees the morning of the conference.

If you aren’t a Sandbox company, you can still get a discount by using the discount code Bfeldaddoncon09 which takes $50 off of the $150 registration fee.

Add-on-Con09 is a post from: Enterprise Irregulars

(Cross-posted @ Feld Thoughts)

And look is about all you can do – good luck trying to sit in them for a longer period.

But in the case of the latest Mouse War, you have great design, ergonomics and functionality all on one side, and ugly bulkiness and utter uselessness on the other.  But I’m not telling which is which

(P.S. I seriously thought it was a joke – but we’re nowhere near April 1st)

Related posts:

• OpenOfficeMouse Is An 18 Button Freak, But I Want It
• OpenOffice Introduces Multi-Button Confusion With New Mouse

Update:  If you do like the OpenCrazyMouse, I suggest you buy one of these, too:

When Design Meets Ergonomics – And When They Fail Together is a post from: Enterprise Irregulars

(Cross-posted @ CloudAve)

I reach down, pick it up. Hit the home button, slide the slider… oh crap. It’s got that damn password block on it. The one my teenage son uses so I won’t read his text messages. I guess at a few passwords. Of course, that doesn’t work. Crap. Now what do I do? It’s impenetrable.

I ask on Twitter what do I do with an iPhone I found that is locked? Most tell me to take it to an AT&T store. They can track it by GPS. But, I don’t want to do that… so impersonal. It would release me from my decent sense of civil obligation to personally return this phone safely to its owner.

Hey, what’s that? A tweet comes through from @steamykitchen. I look her up on my iPhone. She’s in Tampa, a food writer with a lot of followers. Hummm. Not likely she’ll know my iPhone owner. But, what the heck… Maybe she’s a sister; a college roommate? I send her a Tweet. No luck. I realize the Tweet notifier came through as “emFeigen.” (which I stupidly don’t recognize as her twitter ID). I google emFeigen. Nothing. I search “Emily Feigen Twitter.” Nothing. Shoot. We’re so close, but so far.

The iPhone is running out of battery. Luckily, I have my charger in my bag. I arrive at NYU Parent’s Day at the Kimmel Center, and I’m worrying about the iPhone. I settle into my seat in the auditorium and spot an electric outlet near me on the wall. I discreetly charge the iPhone.

The kickoff speech is over. I check the iPhone and see there are texts coming in. Mom, Shara, some other names, nothing that gives me a clue how to contact the owner.

Finally, a phone number texts to the iPhone… I text back, “You just txted someone’s iPhone. Please tell that persion I have her/his iPhone. It was left in a taxi in NY.” A text comes back, “Thanks for texting back! Where are you? Still in NY?” Yay! I feel good. I’m only one degree of separation removed from the owner. Connected.

It turns out the owner’s name is Emma, not Emily. Emma’s friend calls me while I’m in the rest room. I tell her I’ll be at NYU all day; my name is Susan. I eventually hear from Emma. She reaches me while I’m eating lunch with my daughter at a neighborhood Italian restaurant. She’s two blocks away. She says she’ll come by in ten minutes. She arrives with a beautiful bouquet of three dozen roses and offers to give me money. I flatly refuse the money, but am happy about the flowers because I know my daughter will love to have them in her dorm room. Emma is very sweet and very grateful. I had learned from her friend she is a chef downtown. I feel good about humanity.

It turns out, it was a banner social media day. The reason I was receiving so many texts on the iPhone is Emma wrote this note on her Facebook wall:

Because of the volume of texts I received, I was able to text back to the one number she did not have in her address book. (If a text from a friend comes up, you only see the friend’s name, not the number.)

Later, I text Emma and ask her for her Twitter ID and I ask her to friend me on Facebook. I tell her I’m a blogger and would like to post about this encounter and take a screen shot of her Facebook wall. She agrees.

In this simple vignette, I affirm for myself that the social web is bringing out the best in people. It’s connecting us in ways that are wonderful and useful. During the dotcom era I was a CMO for a digital startup. Our tagline was a question– “What happens when everyone is connected to everything?” In the late 90s, we didn’t know; the question was rhetorical. A decade later, the answers are unfolding.

The more connected I become, the more hopeful I am about the transformative, empowering changes that are taking place in society as a result of moving from an atoms-constrained planet to a pervasive-digital world. Yes, I know it’s only a minority of individuals who are connecting today, but the connections we’re making and the do-good we’re doing is establishing a new social order among civilized humans. With the exploding growth of mobile connectivity and ubiquitous access to the web, those in power to change our world are getting the job done in a spirit of service and humility.

So maybe it was only a lost iPhone and a grateful owner today, but the premise of humans helping humans via Twitter, Facebook, and SMS messages, is becoming the rule and not the exception.

And I’m loving every moment of it.

Social Studies 2.0 is a post from: Enterprise Irregulars

(Cross-posted @ Taking it Personal)

Video says it all or?

John Astill you rock! is a post from: Enterprise Irregulars

(Cross-posted @ Friday Morning Report)

Years ago I was chairman-and-investor-in-residence at a electronic games company. Starting in 1995 it gained about 50 new employees every year, doing games on Nintendo and Sega platforms, later Sony and online – all developed by a great gang of mostly boys with an average age of 20. No kidding, our first Xmas party started with a ‘parents day’.

As the industry expanded and the kids became slightly older and experienced we had the usual groups gelling in some corner tinkering with business plans behind our backs, then jumping ship and starting a competitor.

Not what the ‘leadership’ wanted of course, but pretty inevitable. The kids soon learned to encrypt the business plans as well, so the fun of reading plans and mails left behind on hard drives was withdrawn. Annoying.

Suddenly something happened, we did not know what, but whatever it was it stopped the wave of desertions.

Could it be the new menu in the cafeteria? Could it be that we suddenly became better at communicating? No theory clicked and management (me included) remained as clueless as we should be.

Until one day.

This being the quintessential geek work place, reeking of popcorn and with employees sleeping on the floor after a good night of downloading stuff, they had just made good use of the servers and network and created a flurry of internal ‘newsgroups’, the predecessor of todays forums. Of course the management was the last to find out, but we did not care.

Suddenly the group dynamics changed. When networking was solely physical classic group dynamics ruled, groups formed in a corner of the corridor, and face to face disagreements had to be handled and a common purpose quickly built. Usually along the lines of ‘management sucks, we’re smarter’ and ‘lets split and do it on our own’. And surely enough every desertion group came from the same physical location of the office.

With the company-wide network something else happened, visiting the office next door was replaced with online socialising. And while Peter found Andy in full agreement with his views one day it did not take long before they found disagreement helped by full transparency and input from 100 opinionated co-workers. The full throttle dynamics killed the slower dynamics of yesteryear and any tendency to group forming was followed by instant and efficient group splintering.

It was the exact same effect the E 2.0 advocates predict will flatten the hierarchy that splintered the employee group building. ‘Split and control’ is an old adage, and here they had organised it themselves. Excellent we said.

And the management lived happily ever after.

E 2.0 – Not Joining the Debate, But… is a post from: Enterprise Irregulars

(Cross-posted @ thingamy)

Guido Bartels is General Manager of IBM’s Global Energy and Utilities Industry. Guido leads IBM’s corporate initiative around building an ‘Intelligent Utility Network,’ IBM’s portfolio of offerings and capabilities for the Smart Grid.

Guido is also a member of the Electricity Advisory Committee at Department of Energy, an organization whose mission is to

provide advice to the U.S. Department of Energy in implementing the Energy Policy Act of 2005, executing the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, and modernizing the nation’s electricity delivery infrastructure

And Guido holds the position of Chairman at GridWise Alliance, the US Smart Grid industry association.

Download audio file (GuidoBartels.mp3)

I invited Guido onto the show to discuss the current state of Smart Grid roll-outs globally and I asked him, amongst others, the following questions:

Define what is a smart grid (there are a lot of definitions out there!)

Why do we need them? What are the benefits of smart grid?

What is your vision of what the ideal Smart Grid rollout would be?

and what would be necessary to achieve it.

What differences are there in global geographies?

Are regulationss affecting rollout?

Can you point to any good smart grid rollouts?

Download the entire interview here
(12.7mb mp3)

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• Whirlpool leaps into Smart Grid game with 1M smart dryers by 2011 (green.venturebeat.com)
• Smart Grid Stimulus Funding: Who Gets What? (gigaom.com)
• Smart-grid grants could assist broadband sector (infoworld.com)

Guido Bartels of GridWise and IBM discusses Smart Grids with GreenMonk is a post from: Enterprise Irregulars

(Cross-posted @ GreenMonk: the blog)

Some might say that as both a consultant/analyst with subject matter knowledge and business owner, I’m in a position to study the Spend Management sector from a truly unique vantage point. Namely, I constantly talk to folks in both procurement and A/P about the technology they’re buying while also having frequent discussions with many of the vendors and services providers pushing their software and services wares. But I’d argue that most important, as one who runs a business and needs to get paid, I also learn about the sector as a supplier. And boy, can I tell you stories about screwed up supplier management processes (even from companies who many would think on first glance would be good at it) — without naming names, of course.

So without further adieu, I’ll list a few examples of how companies can damage supplier relationships ..

Friday Rant: Getting A/P and Supplier Management Wrong — A Supplier’s Perspective is a post from: Enterprise Irregulars

Read the complete article @ SpendMatters

Talking Points

• Shout Outs
  • Anne and her visa issues
  • Abesh and his new job
  • Martin Lang and meeting people going to the bathroom
  • Marilyn and her presentations in Switzerland
  • Bangalore SAP TechEd
  • Duane Nickull
    • Duane’s World
• Twitter Lists
• Google Wave
• Demo Jam
  • Highlights
• OMG
  • Mobile
• Photo Contest

Video Replay

OMG is a post from: Enterprise Irregulars

(Cross-posted @ Friday Morning Report)

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• NetSuite customers and other fun stuff (accmanpro.com)
• NetSuite adds ERP support for iPhone (infoworld.com)
• Net Suite Overview – 360 Customer And Business View (slideshare.net)
• The iPhone and Business; Netsuite Banks on a Happy Union (cloudave.com)

NetSuite Business Cloud event feedback is a post from: Enterprise Irregulars

Read the complete article @ deal architect

Friday Rant: With Technology Choice Comes Responsibility That Many Aren’t Ready For is a post from: Enterprise Irregulars

Read the complete article @ SpendMatters

Anu Elmer’s explanation of the collaboration platform they call Ourspace inside Swiss Re is another great “text book” example of how to get enterprise 2.0 and social media adopted properly in the corporate landscape.  Swiss Re is the World’s second largest reinsurance company and has been in operation since 1863.  Their business is all about understanding risk, and they are known for being a conservative organization, which makes it all the more powerful that they have made such a success of this new technology.   Anu, who is their Vice President of Communications and HR, told us that the mantra for the project is the proverb “None of us is as smart as all of us”, which is a superb way to position their intent.   She says:

“increasing virtualisation of work including a large number of geographically dispersed teams drove the need for a collaboration platform in Swiss Re. We needed to break silos and increase interaction   between different units and experts..”

Swiss Re have done some of the classical things you need to do to make a project like this a success.  The project was sponsored by a member of the Swiss re Executive Committee.  Before they started they held an online stratewgy “jamming” session involving a significant percentage of all Swiss Re staff – this is an online, forum based discussion, a concept first piloted by IBM back in 2001, something that we strongly advocate.  When the project itself started, they involved 1,300 users in a pilot that ran from April to September.  The platform, based on Jive, is available to all 11,500 employees.  As of today 55% of all Swiss Re employees have logged in at least once, and they are seeing a steady increase in creation and viewing of content.  There are currently 347 groups created for collaboration on business topics with both global and local themes.  The participation is cross-functional and comes from all regions and countries.  They had used data from an existing internal user directory, called “Who is”, as a starting point and IT had been amongst the first regular users, but eventually they’ve even got their account managers involved.

There are some important messages to learn from their adoption story.  Anu explained that they had to fight against the perception that they were creating an internal social network like Facebook, and that the social media terminology got in the way (more on that in a later post).  They were careful to position  this as a set of business collaboration tools.  They spent time considering what type of exclusive and interesting content the community would need.  They trained community managers and recognized (and budgeted for) the significant amount of time that group moderation, support and management takes.  They identified a network of advocates, or champions, who they helped develop and encourage.  They consulted group owners to see what more they could do to help.  Anu also commented that it took a lot of off-line promotion to get things moving.

One of the key questions that people from the corporate world ask about this kind of project is where is the ROI and how did you cost justify the project.   Anu used the classical example of old style group working with a presentation sent by email to 9 people.  You are immediately out of control, with 10 copies of the presentation – who’s got the latest version?  You then have to track and make sense of all the email dialogue back and forth.  If you put that presentation in a shared group, the master presentation is in one place, and the team can have a sensible, threaded discussion together to agree what needs to be done.  Anyone can see the benefit to that style of collaboration, but part of the problem with tracking ROI is that the company didn’t measure how efficiently it worked the old way, so it’s not easy to come up with “hard numbers” to help cost justify the spend to get to the new way.  When we discussed this Anu explained that Swiss Re had taken a similar line to some other companies like Wachovia.  They argued a very modest percentage saving in overall travel budgets.  They had two existing, old, and not very effective Knowledge Management systems within their Intranet.  These systems were turned off and the associated cost savings along with the travel reductions were used to help fund the project.

This is a great adoption story for enterprise collaboration.  I’m hoping we can facilitate a longer case study write up, but Anu and the Swiss Re team should be congratulated on how far they have come.  I think it’s fitting that the hosts of the 2009 SOMESSO in Zurich should be such a great example of the conference theme – bridging the gap between corporate culture and “the web 2.0 society”.

Swiss Re – One of the Smart Companies is a post from: Enterprise Irregulars

(Cross-posted @ Home)

Robotic Fish (from the Study)

Just came across the report from Royal Society, – the UK’s national academy of science, – Hidden Wealth: the contribution of science to service sector innovation (warning: PDF).
Innovation to services and its linkage to hard sciences happens to be one of the core focus area of this report. This excellent report presents the findings of a major study on the role of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) to innovation in the services sector. One of the pioneering and comprehensive investigations of the impact assessment of services innovation in the current age . Why is service sector economy so important?

Let’s look at the significance of this : Over 2/3rd of the global economy (GDP)is centered around services with developed countries seeing a greater percentage of service sector contribution to their national economies. By far the single largest employing sector in the developed world, the significance of service industry cant be overlooked. It goes without saying that the competitiveness of service sector along with government policies and implementation efficiency would to a great extent determine the competitiveness of the nation.

The study revealed that STEM is omnipresent in the service sector, but, unlike the case in the industrial sector, its impact is rarely recognized. The Hidden Wealth study, points out that despite the great significance of services to global economy, their nature remains somewhat undefined and is invisible under a majority of circumstances !

Employment and economic vibrancy in developed countries hinges on service sector and hence this is an important body of study and the findings very relevant and useful to developed nations in large measures and by extension to global economy. The report reinforces the traditionally held view about service sector :

Our main conclusion, . . . is that services are very like to remain central to the new economy, not least because we are at or near a tipping point: innovations now underway seem likely to change dramatically the way we live and to generate many services (though few can be predicted in detail at present). . . .

Scientific and technological developments have triggered and brought about major transformations in services industries and public services, with the advent of the internet and world-wide-web . However, the full extent of STEM’s current contribution is hidden from view – it is not easily visible to those outside the process and is consequently under-appreciated by the service sector, policymakers and the academic research community. This blind spot threatens to hinder the development of effective innovation policies and the development of new business models and practices in the UK.

Services rely significantly on external STEM capabilities to support or stimulate innovation – indeed they tend to innovate in more external and interdependent ways than manufacturing firms. This can take the form of bought-in expertise or technology and collaborations with suppliers, service users, consultants or the public science base. Through these ‘open innovation’ models, service organisations respond to the knowledge, science, and technology that they see being developed elsewhere (eg in other companies or universities), and use collaboration to solve their problems in innovative and competitive ways.”

The Hidden Wealth report eloquently makes the case that most of the economic value of breakthroughs in science and technology will likely be realized through services, and thus, this is the area around which most new, high paying jobs will be created. In conclusion:

The main message of this study is that the contribution of STEM to service innovation is not an historic legacy, nor simply a matter of the provision of ‘human capital – important as the latter may be. STEM provides invaluable perspectives and tools that will help to nurture emergent service models and define future generations of services for the benefit of businesses, government, and citizens.

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Services, Innovation & Competitiveness is a post from: Enterprise Irregulars

(Cross-posted @ Sadagopan's weblog on Emerging Technologies,Thoughts, Ideas,Trends and The Flat World)

BusinessWeek stole the idea, and even the headline, for this blog post. But I thought of it first. And mine’s better.

Steve Jobs is the CEO of the Decade. He’s a multi-billionaire. And he’s the best presentation presenter in the world. So what’s his secret? Actually, he has exactly three of them. And by using these secrets, you can be the best presentation presenter in the world too. Here they are:

3. Make the best products in the world

This one is so obvious that most people overlook it. It’s hard to present a great presentation without something great to present. So first, create something everybody in the world wants, like a Mac, an iPod, or an iPhone, then give a presentation about it. Once you do, you’ll be on your way to being the best presentation presenter in the world.

2. Present them

Once you’ve made the best products in the world, don’t make the common mistake of forgetting to present them to people. Find a stage, go up on it, and turn towards the audience. Then hold up these best products in the world that you’ve made and smile.

Also, feel free to go ahead and tell people that your products are the best products in the world, just in case they don’t understand why you’re smiling.

1. Be Steve Jobs

But the most important Steve Jobs presentation secret? Be Steve Jobs. Duh.

Uncovering Steve Jobs’ *Real* Presentation Secrets is a post from: Enterprise Irregulars

(Cross-posted @ Moonwatcher)

It has come to management’s attention (we own your PCs, the network and the log files, remember?) that our employees are spending an increasingly large amount of time on Social Networks – and that we may have even developed a number of Social Media ‘gurus’ inside the walls of our company.

Because of the increased time and energy many of you are spending on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other Social Networks, we thought it important to issue a brief memo to clarify company policy toward these initiatives.

Personal Use of Social Networks

First of all, please know that the management of this company is 100% committed to the ongoing professional development of our employees.  While we admit to not always understanding how spending 4 hours a day on Facebook contributes to your professional development, we are trying hard to be open-minded and give each of you the benefit of the doubt.

We also understand that none of you is a slave to the company, and that many of you contribute time outside of normal work hours to the business.  We also understand that many of those you  are networking with may be our partners or customers – people, after all, ultimately do business with people.  We do not want to begrudge you the ability to tweet about your favorite sports team or share last night’s dining experience with your friends.  Just please don’t let it get out of hand – or allow it to interfere with your or others’ job performance.

We also understand what stepped-up activity on LinkedIn means.  Our employees are truly our greatest asset – and we want you to stay.  We just want you to be productive while you’re on our payroll.

‘Corporate’ Social Initiatives

We are bit more concerned by those of you who are claiming the time you are spending on these networks is being done on the company’s behalf.

Your management team and board is always interested in discovering and investing in programs that contribute to the growth and profitability of our company – that is our job.  We are delighted when our employees think ‘out of the box’ and try new things.  There are few things that would make us happier – and our company more profitable – than finding creative new ways to reach our current and prospective customers.

However, please realize that any ‘investment’ – needs to be justified in light of the resources that need to be invested – whether those resources are time or money (because, ultimately, they are the same thing).

We continue to hear that the ‘power’ of Social Media can be utilized to improve revenue, lower costs, enhance customer loyalty, etc…  So show us – in financial terms.  In other words, if you propose that we invest our time and money – you need to build a business case.

While we frequently hear the term ‘Social Media ROI’ used both inside and outside the company, we have thus far seen precious little concrete evidence that this ‘ROI’ actually exists. More often than not, what we find instead are weak excuses that Social Media can’t be measured, or citing of fluffy non-metrics such as ‘engagement’.  Or we find cases like this – not the type of ROI we are looking for.

We also hear many of you citing the ‘wisdom’ of some big-name Social Media ‘gurus’ who, as far as we can tell, don’t represent any particular company and seem be mostly in the ‘business’ of flying around the country, attending conferences, selling books, and congratulating themselves on the size of their networks.  We even understand that one of the better-known ‘gurus’ built his name and reputation while working for a large technology company, where he was frequently critical of and embarrassed his employer until he eventually resigned.  That’s not the type of Social Media ROI we’re looking for either.

The bottom line is – we understand the need to network – we only ask that you keep your use of these networks under control, use them appropriately, and do not disparage or otherwise embarrass your employer.

But if you’re going to make the claim that your Social Media time is being spent on the company’s behalf, we will hold you to a different set of standards.   If it’s for ‘us’ – you need to show us the money.

Thank you for your attention.  If you have any questions or concerns, our doors are always open.

Well, almost always….

@TheManagementTeam

A Memo regarding Corporate Social Media policies is a post from: Enterprise Irregulars

(Cross-posted @ The SiliconANGLE » Chris Selland)

Our systems need to be smarter because we live in a time of constant, rapid change – regulations change; competition changes due to globalization; business models and methods change – and businesses need to respond to this change or risk losing their competitive edge. It’s not just enough to be a smarter organization, however: you have to have smarter systems because of the volume and complexity of the events that drive businesses today, the need to respond in real time, and the complex network of delivery systems by which products and services are delivered to customers.

Smarter systems have four characteristics:

• They’re action-oriented, making decisions and taking action on your behalf instead of just presenting information and waiting for you to decide what to do.
• They’re flexible, allowing corrections and changes to be made by business people in a short period of time.
• They’re forward-looking, being able to use historic events and data to predict likely events in the future, and respond to them proactively.
• They learn, based on testing combinations of business decisions and actions in order to detect patterns and determine the optimal parameters (for example, testing pricing models to maximize revenue).

Decision management is an approach – not a technology stack – that allows you to add decisioning to your current systems in order to make them smarter. You also need to consider the management discipline around this, that will allow systems to not just become smarter, but begin to make decisions and take actions without human intervention.

James had a number of great examples of smarter systems in practice, and wrapped up with the key to smarter systems: have a management focus on decisions, find the decisions that make a difference to your business, externalize those decisions from other systems, and put the processes in place to automate those decisions and their actions.

Smarter Systems for Uncertain Times #brf is a post from: Enterprise Irregulars

(Cross-posted @ Column 2)

Have CFOs Moved Beyond Cost Reduction and Supply Risk Management? is a post from: Enterprise Irregulars

Read the complete article @ SpendMatters

Here’s who says it isn’t:

Accenture+

Adidas Group+

Alcatel-Lucent+

Alcoa+

Allstate+

Alstom Power+

AMD+

AT&T+

Bell Canada+

Booz Allen Hamilton+

British Petroleum+

CapitalOne+

Cardiff University (UK)+

Chubb+

Cisco+

Compagnie de Saint Gobain+

Compuware+

Corning+

Covidien+

CSC+

Deloitte+

Deutsche Bank+

The Disney Corporation+

DuPont+

Electronic Arts+

Eli Lilly+

EMC Corp+

European Central Bank+

FDA+

Ford Motor Company+

GDF Suez+

General Mills+

General Motors+

GlaxoSmithKline +

Goldman Sachs+

Hatch Associates+

Hewlett-Packard+

Honeywell International+

HSBC+

Humana+

IBM+

Intel Corporation+

International Paper+

Johnson and Johnson+

Juniper Networks+

Lockheed Martin+

Lowe’s Companies+

Lyonnaise des Eux/Suez Environment+

Massachusetts Institute of Technology+

McDonald’s+

McKinsey & Company+

Medtronic, Inc.+

Mercer+

Merck+

MetLife+

Microsoft+

NASA+

Nike+

Nokia+

Océ+

Penn State University+

Pitney Bowes+

Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne+

PricewaterhouseCoopers+

Procter & Gamble+

Progressive Insurance+

Raytheon+

Research in Motion+

SAP+

SAP BusinessObjects+

Schlumberger+

Seagate+

SK Telecom+

State of Maryland+

Sun Microsystems (Oracle)+

Swedish Armed Forces+

Texas Instruments+

The Washington Post+

United Business Media+

Wells Fargo+

Wipro Technologies.

And we’re just getting started…

Checkmate is a post from: Enterprise Irregulars

(Cross-posted @ ITSinsider)

Image credit: Inbound Logistics

Earlier this morning, JDA announced it was, once again, buying supply chain rival i2 (the previous deal between the two ended up falling through). This around time, the terms of the deal are slightly richer, at least as The Wall Street Journal is reporting. JDA is now valuing the deal at a 26% premium compared to the first go around. According to The Journal, the $434.4 million deal “will create [a] global leader in helping corporate-supply chains,” or so the merging parties suggest. In the first arrangement, “A deal between the software companies fell apart in December as JDA needed more time to close a deal, then valued at $346 million.” But what does this deal mean for the Spend Management world? A few things I’d argue. .

Everything I wrote about the previously announced deal still holds true. Namely, that “For those who aren’t familiar with i2, the once high-flying supply chain management player had dabbled quite a bit in the Spend Management world as well, but never really seemed to get traction with its products. Even though I doubt that it’s JDA’s intent, they could absolutely now become a player in the source-to-pay world with some of i2’s old technology assets, should they chose to take them off the shelf and dust them off. Only time will tell if they go down this path, but stranger things have happened. For example, who would have thought that a niche player like JDA would end up gobbling up both Manugistics and i2 for literally a penny or two on the dollar compared with what they were once worth.”

Now granted, it’s much more likely that JDA will play a consolidator role in the supply chain world and focus on owning as much of the sector by concentrating on its core supply chain assets — versus extending these into procurement and sourcing — but I suspect that the underlying capabilities that i2 has in the Spend Management area will at least tempt JDA to consider some auxiliary opportunities to pursue. I also find it interesting that vendors and private equity firms are pursuing consolidation plays in different areas of the supply chain market. Consider that just as JDA bought Manugustics and is now buying i2, Marlin Equity has bough Xelus and Click (Servigistics) in the service parts arena (leaving only MCA and select others as independent providers). Moreover, it’s curious that the overall sector consolidator, Oracle, has stayed on the sidelines in supply chain. But perhaps they’ll decide to get more active when it comes to Spend Management deals.

JDA + i2 — A Supply Chain Acquisition Part Deux is a post from: Enterprise Irregulars

Read the complete article @ SpendMatters