The Process Of Creating - Softtek

TweeksBI Eleven: Real Time

Tue, 19 Mar 2013 08:49:56 +0000

The Process of Creating

Alex Camino

Last week I received a call from a sales representative of a teleconference solutions provider, referring to a request I made about video-conference software. It took me a few seconds to recall that, in fact, three weeks back I had called the company. I was trying to buy the $50 PC-based version of their software, so I could video conference with my colleagues sitting in a boardroom in Mexico. My first surprise was to find that the software was not available for download. Then I tried an old-school solution by looking for the software at Staples and OfficeMax, but no luck. So, I stepped back in time even further, and called the company looking to buy the software, hoping they could FedEx it overnight. Then they surprised me with yet another vintage approach: “I’ll be glad to pass your information to one of our resellers, as that is the only channel we use. They’ll get in touch with you ‘pronto’.” After that, I’m not surprised that their fast response time was three weeks. Obviously my solution at this point was to use one of the many options available, which include Skype, Apple’s Facetime or Google Hangouts. No hassle, no money, no middle man.

About 15 years ago I read “Real Time - Preparing for the Age of the Never Satisfied Customer,” by Regis McKenna. The book described the foundations of today’s digital consumer, one that demands instant gratification...or else. Even in the 1990’s McKenna realized that immediacy was becoming the new normal. One of the many examples used by McKenna to describe the rapid flow of information was a story of his experience in an earthquake in Tokyo and tuning the TV to CNN, an Atlanta-based news organization, to learn the details of the tremor. On August 23^rd 2011, I was in Cancun when the earthquake struck the northeast of the US; I knew about, it because I was on the phone with colleagues in D.C. before they had to evacuate the building. I rushed to CNN.com for details; nothing, yet Twitter was flooded with details, providing information during the ten long minutes it took CNN to post info on their website. The immediacy response and flow of information just keeps accelerating.

Early this morning I was sitting in the car listening to the radio, while I waited for my wife to drop the kids off at school. A song I’ve never heard came up on the radio; I liked it and “Shazamed” it: “It’s Time” by Imagine Dragons. I clicked on the iTunes icon and bought it. Two minutes passed, and the song was available in my smartphone, my iPad and the PC at home; immediacy, gratification!

The company I referenced above has top-notch technology solutions. In fact, their hardware sits in many conference rooms in the corporate world. That is why I was surprised about the old-school approach. The problem is not that this company doesn’t understand technology; they do, and they profit from it. Yet their business model is tied to a paradigm of a bygone era, not the real-time era.

TweeksBI= “This week’s Big Inspiration.” Concepts, ideas, trends and things that I find thought-provoking.

TweeksBI Ten: The white collar IT organization

Fri, 22 Feb 2013 10:20:41 +0000

The Process of Creating

Alex Camino

Last week, my colleague Federico and I spent some good time with Forrester’s Analyst John McCarthy. From my perspective, John has a unique way of making you think, “OMG! The future is changing so fast!” John’s brain works at an accelerated rate, processing anecdotes and research data while he energetically delivers the message. We talked about one of his favorite topics: The perfect storm of technology change, and how the rate of change is only going to escalate.

We tried –and I choose my words carefully—to frame the conversation around the five key megatrends we’ve outlined: applications everywhere, the new bi-functional aspect of IT, consumerization of IT, digitization of businesses and the everything-as-a-service phenomenon.

I think the image to the right epitomizes what we talked about. I took this photo while riding the NYC subway. It’s a billboard announcing 42 new apps geared to simplify the life of m ore than 8.2
million daily riders of New York’s public transit system.

These 42 apps are the result of the Metropolitan Transit Authority’s (MTA) App Quest, a software development challenge that yielded apps for travel planning, locating entrances to subway stations, tracking buses in real-time, in addition to providing entertainment and featuring the artwork that decorates various stations in the subway system, which is plenty.

This was a very smart move by the city of New York, first because the MTA recognized that they have huge amounts of data at their disposal, and that this data can be very valuable for their users. They also acknowledged the pervasiveness of smartphone applications, especially in a city like New York. Furthermore, they knew enough to recognize the advantages of conducting a contest, and basically crowd-source their apps, versus embarking in an effort to developing them by themselves.

The software challenge had $15,000 dollars in prizes. That sum would have probably paid for a few weeks of a good project manager in NY, and that’s it, no programmers. Yet the resulting product was not only bigger in terms of number of applications, but probably much more creative and sophisticated.

You can see all the megatrends come into play in the MTA example: Applications everywhere, even when you are underground. Technology-savvy consumers avid for contextualized information are pushing every organization, public or private, to ‘up’ its digital ante by not only enhancing the service they provide, but also by exploring new and creative ways to capture and use data. By creating Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) that allow developers to access their data, the MTA has turned itself into an Information-as-a-Service provider. And to me, the most shocking, and probably the most overlooked aspect, is the role that MTA’s IT is playing. For this project, they moved from developers, to enablers; from technology owners to information brokers. They adopted a utility mindset and made the information available for others to make use of it, protecting the integrity, but not the availability of data; a real breakthrough innovation.

John McCarthy mentioned that within this new reality, the CIO has to make a fundamental shift from what has been a blue collar to a white collar IT organization, in which architecture, design and services orchestration will be quintessential for keeping up with the velocity of change. The MTA has a white collar IT organization.

TweeksBI=“This week’s Big Inspiration.” Concepts, ideas, trends and things that I find
thought-provoking

TweeksBI Nine: The Future That Never Was

Thu, 14 Feb 2013 18:07:03 +0000

Alex Camino

I’ve always been fascinated by predictions and different visions of the future—anything from Jules Verne to Isaac Asimov; from 2001: Space Odyssey to The Jetsons; and of course Disney’s Tomorrowland. In recent days I stumbled upon two fantastic examples of these predictions from the past. One is “The wonderful future that never was,” a collection of predictions made by scientists and experts, published in Popular Mechanics between 1903 and 1969. Predictions as flawed as the rooftop lake or moving stairs outside of buildings, to some reasonably accurate, like microwave cooking or frozen dinners.

A common denominator I noticed among most of those predictions is that they are adaptations of the technology and materials of that time. Look at the flying car in the picture, a 1950’s car with 50’s industrial fans and police car lights. People in most of these vintage future illustrations are dressed and groomed according to the prevailing style of the time when they were created.

The second example came via Twitter: a fantastic clip from 1967, with Walter Cronkite describing the home of the 21^st century. Cronkite demonstrates the “Computerized Communications Console,” pointing out that “with equipment like this in the home of the future, we may not have to go to work; the work would come to us.”

What would Cronkite think about the fact that everything he talked about in that segment is a reality today? The big difference would be that we do not need a console occupying most of a small room, but we can carry that and much more in our back pocket.

Last year I attended a talk by Magnus Lindkvist, trendspotter extraordinaire, and he told the story of a group of urban planners in 1955, which gathered to imagine and visualize how people will live, travel and commute in the year 1990. Their vision is depicted in this picture:

Lindvkist followed up by pointing out that those urban planners were so far ahead, that still in 2012-2013, we are not even near to having personal helicopters for everybody. But most importantly, they failed to anticipate, not only that people do not wear fedoras anymore, but that there would be such relevant and profound changes in human history, like the emancipation of women, or the configuration of the modern family.

Last year I visited Walt Disney World’s “Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow” or
EPCOT, and I was surprised to see that Kodak remained a big sponsor of the park. I think both Kodak and EPCOT are examples of how difficult it is to accurately predict the future.

The point that I’m trying to make is that our ability to predict and anticipate the future is seriously constrained to our existing frame of reference. A technologist may have a reasonable idea of what
is possible in the future in the technology field, but she may miss the context of socioeconomic changes, advances in medicine or even human evolution They all play a significant role in the evolution and adoption of technology.

TweeksBI=“This week’s Big Inspiration.” Concepts, ideas, trends and things that I find
thought-provoking

How High is Your Company’s Digital IQ?

Tue, 12 Feb 2013 22:26:45 +0000

The Process of Creating

Dan Berthiaume

As a CIO, you likely rub shoulders with high-IQ individuals on a daily basis – both the IT experts in your department and the other C-level executives in your company. But despite all those smart people around, your company’s Digital IQ may still be quite low.

According to the recently released fifth annual Digital IQ survey from PwC, companies with a high Digital IQ – i.e., those that understand technology on an enterprise-wide basis and weave IT into the everyday fabric of the entire business – are four times as likely as other companies to be top performers. And a high Digital IQ means more than a big budget or the latest, greatest tools.

For starters, PwC identifies having a strong level of collaboration between CIOs and other C-level executives as the underpinning of a strong Digital IQ. Think about it, if all those educated, high-wattage minds in your company’s C-suite do not talk to each other or work toward common goals, a huge portion of their combined value is wasted. A good point of comparison is the 2012 Boston Red Sox, a baseball team with a collection of high-priced, proven talent that did not work together and had no strong senior management that finished dead last in its division.

But collaboration among the “All-Stars” is just the beginning of developing a high Digital IQ. PwC also identifies a number of other key characteristics. These include having a single, multiyear business strategy roadmap with direct links to the IT roadmap, aggressive IT capital spending in support of strategic corporate ventures, aggressive investment in emerging technologies such as mobile, social, Big Data and cloud, full mobile-enablement of the enterprise, explicit innovation approaches and a recognition that different generations of employees think differently about IT and have different IT needs.

PwC also provides some hard ROI figures that show the value of having a high Digital IQ and full collaboration among C-level executives. Their IT initiatives are more likely to be delivered on time, at or below budget, and within 100% of the planned project scope. They also more frequently cite 2012 total revenue growth of more than 25% and are more likely to be confident in revenue growth, profitability, and market share. Organizations identified as top performers reported revenue growth of more than 5% and said that their companies are in the top quartile for revenue, profitability and innovation.

So CIOs take a look at your organization; not just your department but your whole organization, and see whether or not it can justifiably boast of having a high Digital IQ. And in the spirit of the collaboration that drives Digital IQ, invite your other C-level colleagues to do the same and then share your findings. That meeting alone will produce an increase in Digital IQ, and hopefully set the stage for further growth down the road.

The Science of Prediction

Tue, 12 Feb 2013 00:43:09 +0000

The Process of Creating

Clay Browne

Big business today knows what you are going to buy and where...before you do. Predictive analytics is the science of predicting the future based on historical patterns, and predictive analytics has truly come into its own in the second decade of the 21st century.

The idea of using data to create models projecting trends into the future has been around for decades, but the huge amount of relatively easily accessed data and the sophistication of the analytics tools available today, together with the growing ubiquity of the use of these tools by organizations, is creating a stealth revolution in organizational management right under our noses.

Image by sochacki.info.

The Beginnings of Modern Predictive Analytics

Wal-Mart was among the first to apply sophisticated statistical analyses to customer and sales data, with their initial efforts stretching back as far as the mid-1990s. Even in the early days Wal-Mart recognized that data analytics was not just about identifying what people were buying, but why, how much they would pay, and how to most efficiently purchase and deliver the specific products that the people who shopped in those particular Wal-Marts were most likely to purchase. And it worked like a charm, with Wal-Mart continuing to increase sales and firmly cementing its domination of the retail sector in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

It didn't take long for Wal-Mart's competitors to see the value of what Wal-Mart was doing, but it did take a few years for the retail industry as a whole to work out the kinks in their predictive analytics programs to reach the same level of sophistication. With the retail industry leading the way, it has not taken long for predictive analytics to become de rigeur in big business in almost every industry, as it is difficult to compete without a real-time understanding of the evolving market landscape.

Predictive Analytics in Practice

The use of predictive analytics has become common in industries such as telecommunications, financial services and retail, and it is expanding rapidly into new industries and new areas.

Professional sports teams were also early adopters of sophisticated data analysis systems, particularly the statistics-oriented game of baseball. Modern player statistics analysis really began with Bill James (of MoneyBall fame) who developed the now famous Sabermetrics system in the 70s, some variant of which is used today by all 30 Major League Baseball teams. The Oakland Athletics and the Boston Red Sox led the pack with their sophisticated use of player metrics in the 90s, and most of the rest of MLB jumped on the bandwagon around the turn of the century.

Professional football and basketball teams also noted the trend and obvious value of player metrics, and by 2008 almost all major sports teams had some form of player statistical analysis program in place. The increasing sophistication of predictive analytics software has also led sports teams to take advantage of its potential in other areas such as ticket sales. According to Anthony Perez, director of business strategy for the NBA's Orlando Magic, the team enjoyed their largest ticket sales ever in 2012 after implementing a predictive analytics-based ticket pricing system, and this despite missing 11 home games of the season due to the NBA lockout.

Academic institutions of all sizes are also rushing to develop data-driven analytical processes. Colleges and universities are looking at declining enrollment over the next few years. A 2012 survey by Moody's Investors Service reported that over half of the colleges and universities project enrollment of full-time students to decline over the next few years. Furthermore, 35% project tuition revenue to decrease or to increase at less than the inflation rate.

This impending decline in revenue has forced academic institutions to start to reconsider their operational models and budgets, and search for efficiencies. College administrators need the answers to questions such as how many freshmen will drop out following their first semester or what will total revenue will look like next fall or in Fall 2014? Or even how many dorm rooms, classrooms and dining halls will we need five years from now?

The trend toward the use of predictive analytics in academia is just in its infancy in 2013 -- just a half a dozen schools (including the University of Kentucky and Taylor University) have programs in place to date. The good news is that the success of these programs is enabling college administrators to find out just how much useful information a thoughtfully developed near-real-time data-driven predictive analytics program can offer, and many other institutions have begun laying plans to implement similar or even more advanced programs.

TweeksBI Eight: House of Cards. The digitized media business

Mon, 04 Feb 2013 17:04:13 +0000

The Process of Creating

Alex Camino

I don’t know about you, but my TV and movie watching habits have been in constant change for the last 20 years. My three and six-year-old kids have definitely played an important role in that constant change, but it has mostly been driven by external factors.

I’ve moved from five or six TV channels to choose from, to over a hundred; from free TV, to monthly subscription to on-demand TV; from spotty, static-filled images with poor sound, to high-definition and Dolby sound.

As for the movie-watching front, I’ve moved from having two or three options for showings at the local movie theaters—offering soggy popcorn and flat soda—to the 12-theater multiplex featuring comfy chairs, a sushi bar and amazing surround sound. I’ve moved from a handful of VHS movies, to thousands of movies for rent, download or on-line viewing available through my cable provider,
iTunes, Amazon or Netflix. I’ve evolved from paying hundreds of dollars a year on late fees, to one monthly all-you-can-watch fee.

This past Friday Netflix released the first season of House of Cards, a fantastic original TV series available for on-demand consumption featuring Kevin Spacey, one of my favorite actors. I’ve watched three of the thirteen episodes, and I’m hooked!

I’m hooked not only because it’s an excellent show, and Francis Underwood (Spacy’s character) is ruthless and captivating, but because for the TV industry—as TVWorthWatching.com’s David Biaculli says—it is “a game-changer.” This show may mark a new era for the way TV networks make content available to the public, and how they interact with their viewers.

The evolution that I outlined above, as well as the one that is about to begin, is enabled by the digitization of the media business. Perhaps the most obvious element of digital enablement is in distribution of content. Movies, TV shows, songs, newspaper articles, you name it…any type of content can be digitally distributed across the world in a matter of minutes; accessible anywhere,
anytime from a wide variety of devices.

But the possibilities expand way beyond distribution. Netflix has been amassing an enormous quantity of data over the past few years. They know what, when and how their subscribers watch. They can aggregate all this information to identify trends and better serve their customers. Furthermore, they can drill down and identify individual patterns of media consumption, and they can come up with personalized suggestions.

For decades TV networks have relied on media agencies like Nielsen or Ipsos to understand the
ratings of their shows. They poll and survey their audience to get a better idea of the popularity of their series. They need to conduct pilot programs, and have writers constantly at hand to adapt and fine-tune their shows. It is a fairly uncertain business model, when it comes to producing revenue-generating content.

Today Netflix has the vantage point of knowing, with a much greater degree of certainty, how their original content will be received. They must certainly know that movies with Kevin Spacey get great reviews. They know that political dramas are well rated. They know that the original version of House of Cards, produced by the BBC, is well regarded by their viewers. They know that many
people, like me, like to watch TV seasons at our own pace, sometimes two or more episodes a night. Furthermore, they know exactly who watched the series, what device they were using, what day of the week, and at what time. They know when people paused, and who preferred to use close captioning. They can tell if the viewer was at home or on the road. To me, their bet has a greater chance to succeed than that of the TV network.

The digitization of the business world has opened new avenues for business innovation, new business models, and thankfully, new and advanced ways for us to watch and enjoy great movies and great TV.

TweeksBI=“This week’s Big Inspiration.” Concepts, ideas, trends and things that I find thought-provoking

Confiança de empresários latinos para o ano é amais alta do mundo

Mon, 21 Jan 2013 21:00:00 +0000

The Process of Creating

Daniel de Souza

Que os latinos americanos são calorosos, empolgados e animados com a vida não é novidade para ninguém. Basta passar um Carnaval no Brasil ou Colômbia ou um “Dia de los muertos” no México para entender bem a felicidade do povo da região. E esse bom-humor também pode ser visto no ambiente dos negócios – e as expectativas de empresários da região para o ano que começa é a mais alta do mundo.

Segundo dados de uma pesquisa realizada pela Fundação Getúlio Vargas (FGV-SP), uma das instituições mais respeitadas do Brasil, os executivos da América Latina estão mais confiantes para 2013 do que seus pares de outras regiões. Em uma escala que varia de 0 a 100 pontos, o otimismo dos diretores financeiros (CFOs) latinos quanto às expectativas da economia local está com nota de 66 pontos. Logo em seguida aparecem os executivos asiáticos, com 60 pontos, seguidos daqueles nos Estados Unidos e Europa, ambos com 52 pontos.

O Brasil, apesar de ser o país de domicílio da pesquisa, chamada de Panorama Global de Negócios, não está na ponta daqueles com perspectivas positivas para o ano – talvez o fraco desempenho econômico visto no ano passado tenha pesado negativo na hora dos diretores darem a sua nota. A nota brasileira permaneceu estável em relação ao ano passado, com 60 pontos. No México, Chile e Peru, o índice foi de 75 pontos.

Na ponta oposta, entre aqueles que menos expectativas sustentam em relação ao ano de negócios, estão os argentinos: mais uma vez, pesam mais as incertezas que pairam o futuro econômico do país, especialmente em relação ao setor regulatório. Os executivos do país deram 49 pontos para o mesmo quesito.

“O otimismo dos CFOs do Brasil está parecido com o que foi verificado na pesquisa anterior (era de 62). Esse número mostra que a expectativa em relação à economia brasileira ainda é grande”, afirmou ao jornal O Estado de S.Paulo o professor da FGV, Gledson de Carvalho, que foi um dos coordenadores do estudo.

O mesmo cenário pode ser tratado para o mercado de TI, especialmente de produção e terceirização de softwares no país. Muitos empresários têm surfado no bom momento econômico visto recentemente, mas há poucas – ou quase nenhuma – garantia de que o momento bom vai continuar a prevalecer ao longo do ano para a indústria. Resta muita expectativa oriunda dos grandes jogos de 2014 e 2016.

A interdependência das empresas locais – o que é muito vislumbrada entre a indústria de tecnologia local – também pode ser reconhecida na pesquisa. Para 75% dos entrevistados, um desempenho ruim da economia brasileira afetaria seus negócios. Já no sentido contrário, 60% dos entrevistados brasileiros consideram que um desempenho ruim na região impactaria seus negócios.

Ao todo foram 896 CFOs entrevistados, sendo 172 deles na América Latina e 59 no Brasil. Os resultados foram compilados em parceria com a Universidade Duke e a CFO Magazine.

2013 Software Industry Trends

Thu, 10 Jan 2013 18:44:31 +0000

The Process of Creating

Clay Browne

North America will lead the way in global software sales in 2013, with Europe lagging and emerging countries continuing their relatively rapid growth, according to IT consultancy Gartner. These projections are based on Gartner’s latest survey data, presented in a webinar on January 8 (IT Spending Forecast, 4Q 2012 Update: 2013 – The Year Ahead), where they discuss the latest IT industry spending results and projections based on their surveys of the major players in the sector.

Image by Official GDC.

Global IT Spending

Let’s get an overview on the sector by taking a quick look at global IT spending trends. Global IT spending only increased by 1.2% in 2012. While that is a disappointing performance, it has to be tempered with the knowledge that IT spending increased by a robust 7.9% in 2011, and that 2012 growth has been significantly impacted by troubling uncertainties about growth worldwide.

The good news is that 2013 IT spending is expected to bounce back in a big way, with Gartner projecting a 4.2% increase for the year. Gartner does, however, hedge their bets, saying that continued economic uncertainty would likely significantly slow growth in spending. They also expect a relatively slow first half, but anticipate IT spending to pick up a good bit in the latter part of the year.

2013 Software Industry Projections

Gartner projects a solid 6.4% growth in the software industry in 2013, with total industry revenues approaching $300 billion ($296 billion). This brings the overall three-year growth rate for the software industry from 2011 to 2013 to 6.8%. Gartner also expects continued future growth in the industry, anticipating software industry revenues will grow to $360 billion by 2016.

Small and medium-sized businesses are projected to lead the way, spending 7.1% percent more on software in 2013, but larger businesses are not far behind with increased software budgets of around 6%.

Trends in Emerging and Mature Markets

The growth rates for software spending in emerging markets remains high, nearly double the growth rates for mature economies, at 11.9 % compared to 5.8%. The main reason for this is that companies in emerging markets are still buying a great deal of ‘foundational” software required to run a business – ERP software, payroll, accounting, database management software, etc., whereas companies in mature markets already have these products. The top growth drivers in mature economies are expected to be security, CRM and storage management products.

One other trend of note is that software spending is expected to increase much faster in North America than in Europe in 2013. Gartner projects greater than 7% growth in North America, while only around 3% in mature Europe.

On a more general and eye-opening note, Gartner analyst Kathy Hale also pointed out that one of the major reasons that emerging countries have relatively low IT spending rates is lack of transparency. According to Hale, it boils down to the fact providing IT services requires a “relatively intimate” relationship between vendor and client, and for cultural and practical purposes, that type of close relationship is simply not possible in many emerging countries. That said, some sectors of the IT industry will continue rapid growth in emerging economies. For example, Gartner projects that emerging economies will grow from 11.4% of total software industry revenues in 2012 to 13.1% in 2016.

TweeksBI Six: Successful by design

Tue, 08 Jan 2013 14:39:44 +0000

Alex Camino

What makes an organization successful? Last Sunday’s edition of 60 Minutes featured two pieces that provided me with some answers.

The first was Charlie Rose’s piece on David Kelley, the founder and Chairman of IDEO an award-winning global design firm. Throughout the interview Kelley explained the concept of Design Thinking, which consists of applying a human-centered approach to problem solving of any sort, from new products or services, to revolutionary new business models.

I have been a longtime fan of IDEO, its CEO Tim Brown, and the work of David Kelley and his brother Tom, IDEO’s general manager and author of two fantastic books on innovation: The Art of Innovation and The Ten Faces of Innovation. What resonated most with me from the 60 Minutes piece was the reminder that design and innovation must be a collaborative process. It’s about adding and complementing one idea with another; it’s about looking at the problem from different angles and different points of view. It’s about teamwork, which, according to Charlie Rose, has made IDEO “maybe the most influential product design company in the world.”

Teamwork may have been a more obvious topic in the second story on that episode of 60 Minutes, when they featured a story on La Masia, the Barcelona Football Club’s soccer academy. Barcelona’s football (as soccer is referred to everywhere in the world except for the U.S.) club has been the most successful professional sports team of the last decade. Some even claim that today’s generation of El Barça—as fans affectingly call the team— may be the best football team in history. “When Barça plays at its best it’s like watching a ballet; poetry in motion,” said CBS’ Bob Simon. Over the last 4 years, the team has won 14 out of 19 possible trophies.

La Masia is an academy that receives kids as young as 7 years old, and provides them with an education, while teaching the Barça way of playing football. In the past seasons, most of the players in the starting lineup were graduates of the academy --all eleven players in some matches, including Lionel Messi, the Argentine star that’s widely recognized as the world’s best player. Having the best player in the world certainly helps win games, yet Argentina’s national soccer team, which also has Messi in its ranks, lacks the stellar performance of Barça, despite having a roster full of soccer superstars. Why?

Successful organizations rise by fostering talent, developing skills and allowing people to perform and learn in different roles. In his book Ten Faces of Innovation, Tom Kelley depicts ten different roles within a team. Among those are the anthropologist, the experimenter, the director, the storyteller—all of which, by working together, can defeat the most common role in the business world: the Devil’s Advocate, the role that can effectively kill projects and ideas without claiming personal responsibility.

Weather it is business or sports, teams benefit enormously by assembling a diverse group with different roles, talents and views of the world, building on each other’s strengths and ideas.

TweeksBI= “This week’s Big Inspiration.” Concepts, ideas, trends and things that I find thought-provoking.

TweeksBI Five: Resolutions

Wed, 02 Jan 2013 09:08:19 +0000

Alex Camino

TV commercials of gyms and diet products abound. Top Ten lists flood the blogosphere. Dozens of montages of those who are no longer with us close every other newscast. Many of us reflect and make lists: More of these, less of those; start doing that, stop doing this. It’s that time of the year. Every twelve months we take time to reflect on what happened, and whatever we want to make happen in our future.

Two compilations that I really like this year; one from Juan Enriquez Cabot and another from Google. In his editorial in Mexico’s Reforma.com, Enriquez Cabot compiled a concise list of eight changes that happened in 2012: Mars exploration, global warming, the credit crisis in the industrialized world, criminal quantification, Lance Armstrong --the anti-hero, positive facial recognition, 3-D printing and Hispanic influence. This is a great compilation of changes that manifested in 2012, which will have an enormous impact in the years to come.

The second compilation comes from Google, which is in a unique position to identify what matters to the world. By the way we search the web, Google can identify what is important. They did this fantastic video

Google is also capturing and mapping new-year’s resolutions in its Google Zeitgeist 2012 site.

As a young kid I used to be very sentimental about the new year. It generated a sort of melancholy in me. The countdown and the idea that the old year was vanishing relentlessly produced a very sad feeling in me, which was inevitably followed by a sense of hope. The cheers, hugs and kisses that give way to the new year are always inspiring. As one cycle ends, a new one begins.

If you think about it, nothing really changes from December 31^st to January 1^st. Winter will continue to be with us for the next 3 months; nights will continue to be long, and days short. For most of us, our job will continue to be the same, our health will not suffer a sudden change. Our environment basically remains the exact same pace of slow and steady transformation that we’ve lived our entire lives. Yet, we stop, we pay homage and we make lists, wishes and resolutions. I find that fascinating, inspiring.

Recognizing that we live in cycles, that remembering those that have helped us get here is important. Keeping memory of what happened and how that changed the world is the only way to keep evolving, of not making the same mistakes, and to keep learning about ourselves. Feeling optimistic, recognizing our shortcomings, and being resolute to overcome them is human nature at its best. Happy 2013.

TweeksBI= “This week’s Big Inspiration.” Concepts, ideas, trends and things that I find thought-provoking.

TweeksBI Four: Hello, my name is Alex, I am …

Wed, 26 Dec 2012 15:48:14 +0000

Alex Camino

I got my iPhone 5 on September 21st 2012, the day of its launch. No, I didn’t standup in line for hours; it actually took me less than 15 minutes to go in and out of the Apple store to switch my old Blackberry for the new iPhone, a device that has slowly but steadily produced changes in my behavior.

Sure enough, all of my crackberry habits—and then some— translated right over to my new device. Incessant releasing of my phone out of its holster to check email; accompanied by fast thumb-typing. I was not new to the smartphone lifestyle; I’ve also owned a couple of iPads, and my wife has had three iPhones since the first one was launched.

Yet, having an iPhone 5 as my main personal device has led me to new and different experiences— watching the presidential debates while checking Twitter, for example, was both fun and enriching. Now I use TripIt to keep track of my travel itinerary, the Passbook app for boarding passes, and I recently made my first payment using Square at a local pizzeria. I’ve played Words With Friends, while also becoming increasingly obsessed with Letterpress. I’m on my way to becoming thoroughly absorbed in the digital lifestyle!

Having access to an abundance of rich content in fantastic apps like Flipboard, Prismatic or Instapaper is an entertaining and immersive experience…until it’s not. Last weekend I just realized that I was not able to sit through an entire movie or watch a football game, without opening up one of those apps, several times. What a powerful drug! Several orders of magnitude stronger than the crackberry. I’ll admit I am a smartphone addict.

Smartphone addiction is a social malady. Look at the person next to you in the elevator; most likely she is looking at the screen in her hand. The guy standing in line at the grocery store, or the people riding the bus, or the nanny at the playground—everybody is obsessed with these tiny screens. Something needs to be done.

I took the first step yesterday evening (after recognizing the problem). I sat on my couch with my wife to watch Netflix movies, without smartphone interruption. One of those movies was Craigslist Joe, a great documentary by Joseph Garner, about his 31 days living with no money, no home and no contacts. He was restricted to whatever he could get from Craigslist, and the goodwill of the community. Perhaps yesterday’s experience was a dramatic exercise for me that came at the right time, serving as a reminder that technology-based tools can help us humans to connect better… when used in moderation.

TweeksBI= “This week’s Big Inspiration.” Concepts, ideas, trends and things that I find thought-provoking.

TweeksBI Three: Be like them

Tue, 18 Dec 2012 10:26:27 +0000

Alex Camino

He was in the front row, struggling to maintain composure. He looked to the front, quickly diverting his eyes back at his own shoes. He switched balance from one foot to the other. The little girl with the lovely bangs standing at his side looked at him, encouraging him, letting him know that everything was going to be just fine. When the music started playing “Cabeza, hombros, rodillas y pies,” the Spanish rendition of “Heads, shoulders, knees and toes,” the little boy started to sob. He had to be taken one row back by his teacher, where he regained composure and finished the performance. They were the kindergarteners of HoLa, my daughter’s school in Hoboken, NJ, at their first annual Winter Extravaganza.

Next came the first-graders, my daughter’s group. There she was, standing in the front row. I started to feel nervous, because I know she is more on the shy side. I was preparing myself to reassure her that it was OK, in case she had to follow the same path of the little kindergarten boy. As soon as the music started, she danced like no other kid, sang and maintained a big gorgeous –and toothless smile throughout the entire performance. She enjoyed every minute of it, pretty much as she finds joy on every other task.

If you have not been around five to seven year olds lately, let me remind you: they are the most energetic, creative and curious creatures of the universe. Walking to the store with my daughter is pure pleasure. For no reason in particular she’ll change her stride from a boring walk to a fun jump-walk or gleeful skip. The lamp post suddenly serves as a pole to do a quick circle around, and any line on the floor needs to be jumped, not just walked over. Of course there is always that difficult question, like why are poles cylindrical? Or, why is it green and not blue that means ‘go’?

The Winter Extravaganza started with a moment of silence for the tragic events in Newtown, CT, as it had happened that same morning. There was not a single parent or teacher that was not deeply touched by this event. The tragedy was so close, and at a grade school for K-4, just like HoLa. The gunman was carrying an ID with an address in Hoboken. Many of us have friends or relatives in Connecticut. They were little kids, just like ours.

I don’t know if I –or anyone will ever understand why this happened. There is nothing I can do to repair the loss of those 26 families. But now, more than ever, I cherish God’s gift of having my kids, and being able to learn from them, to protect them, to teach them. What I can do is to commit to be more like them—to find joy in the simple things; to have fun doing whatever I’m doing; to learn, to be curious’ to question; to be brave’ to encourage others; to sing; to dance.
That is one thing we all can do for the kids of Sandy Hook Elementary; be like them.

TweeksBI= “This week’s Big Inspiration.” Concepts, ideas, trends and things that I find thought-provoking.

TweeksBI Two: The real Internet of Things

Tue, 11 Dec 2012 09:40:45 +0000

The Process of Creating

Alex Camino

For a couple of years I’ve been a bystander for how the concept of the Internet of Things (IoT) has been brewing. And until recently it was just that— a concept. Now it is becoming tangible.

We’ve all heard the story of smart bottles of milk that talk to smart refrigerators that talk to grocery stores, so that they can deliver a new gallon of 2% right before you are unable to prepare your morning cereal. Yet no one has seen this happen in real life.
The truth is that there are still a lot of pieces out of place for this to happen, but the good news is that the pieces are available, just not in the right place yet.

This morning I read an article about Twine, a device the size of a hockey puck which allows you to turn any object in your home into a “smart product.” The concept is oh-so-smart-and-simple that it is genius. The little square, which retails for $125, has a couple of sensors (temperature and orientation), a WiFi connector, and is powered by two AA batteries, and also has the ability to connect to other sensors like moisture or magnetic. The applications are endless: know when your Thanksgiving turkey has thawed; get an email when your water pipes are about to freeze; receive a text message when the bottle of wine has the right temperature; be alerted when the garage door is open; let your plants remind you when they need to be watered. All this can be done by real non-techie humans through easy-to-use cloud-based software.

The fact is that we have reached a point in which connectivity is almost ubiquitous, sensors sell for a few dollars (if not cents), and computing power is in the palm of our hands. Whenever I visit an Apple Store, I love to spend time a little section in the back of the store, looking at what I call iPhone-enabled devices. It is inspiring!

There is an ever-increasing number of purpose-specific gadgets that use the iPhone’s computing power, as well as its GPS, compass, accelerometer and gyroscope. The fact that all these things are cramped into an iPhone is amazing, but so are the devices that can leverage all those features. You can find things like baby monitors, credit card readers, golf putting aides and blood pressure monitors.

In fact, the iPhone is becoming the ultimate universal remote control. Not only can you control your entertainment system or toys at home, but you can monitor your home’s close circuit TV, dim and change the color of the lights in your living room; or turn on your car and locate it, from anywhere in the world.

Whether it’s a multi-purpose device that brings “intelligence” to dumb-things, like Twine or specific-purpose “smart” devices, the Internet of Things is becoming real, very real.

TweeksBI= “This week’s Big Inspiration.” Concepts, ideas, trends and things that I find thought-provoking.

TweeksBI One. The machine that will change the world

Mon, 03 Dec 2012 12:04:53 +0000

The Process of Creating

Alex Camino

“Plásticos Cortés” was the name of my grandfather’s plastics business. His factory produced molded and injected plastic containers, which were later used to hold anything from mayonnaise, to mustard to cooking spices. As a child, I used to “work” for him in the summer. My jobs varied from trimming the excess plastic from the molded pieces, to gluing together sealers for bottle caps.

I loved to walk around the factory floor, amazed at those big machines, and all the electric, water and gas infrastructure needed to keep them running. I used to go with my grandpa to meetings with his suppliers—from the people that sold him the plastic pellets, to those that fabricated the molds for the new production pieces. This particular process, fabricating a metal mold for a new plastic bottle, was cumbersome; it involved a lot of back and forth and tons of tweaking.

Last Friday I walked into the Makerbot Retail Store in New York City. I was amazed by what I saw. I’ve read several articles about 3D printing in the last couple of years. But this is one of those things that you have to see to truly understand it.

What Makerbot has on displays and sells on its Lower Manhattan store is, for me, a game changer. The Replicator 2 desktop 3D printer, a 25-pound 19”x16”x17” box that fits in any desktop, geared towards the professional designer or prosumer. The machine can produce amazingly detailed objects in a matter of minutes, if not seconds. We saw helicopter and car toys, Christmas tree ornaments, watch bands and a number of examples of the type of objects that can be created by this machine that retails at $2,199 at the store, which is a statement in itself.

I was blown away by the possibilities. Today you need to have the skills to use a 3D design software, to produce the pieces. But it’s just a matter of time for this limitation to go away. What I think is possible is that in the near future, people will have a 3D printer at home, just like they have a color printer today. Imagine your vacuum cleaner breaks due to a broken part; you can go to the manufacturer’s website, download the file and print the spare part at home.

You lost a Monopoly token, the dog or your top hat – you can just print a new one in your home office. A celebrity comes with a new line of Christmas tree ornaments; you can go to an iTunes-like store, and download the files to print the entire collection at home. Need a plastic spoon? Just print it! Disintermediation at its best.

I know my grandpa would have been amazed at the possibilities of this machine, just like my mom, with whom I had the opportunity to visit the store.

TweeksBI= “This week’s Big Inspiration.” Concepts, ideas, trends and things that I find thought-provoking.

Service Providers Can Help CIOs Overcome Social Media Resistance

Wed, 21 Nov 2012 07:31:35 +0000

The Process of Creating

Dan Berthiaume

Social media is still in the early phases of use as a business tool, according to a recent study from thinkJar and Beagle Research Group. Results of “Social Media in Business” indicate that internal resistance relating to a number of non-IT problems is hindering more widespread adoption and advanced enterprise use of social media, and service providers can help CIOs looking to expand social media in their organizations overcome this resistance.

The Market is Young
One thing CIOs facing internal resistance to social media plans need to remember is that enterprise social media by and large is still a fairly early market. Most of the companies surveyed primarily have experience with social media through the big name consumer networks such as Facebook and Twitter. This suggests that employees are bringing the social channels they use at home to the workplace and modifying them for corporate use, which is a typical early step in enterprise adoption of leading-edge technologies as evidenced by the “BYOD” trend and going back a bit further the introduction of PCs to the office.

In addition, the report points out that the types of social media most enterprises are currently using are primarily oriented toward outbound personal communication, which serves as a good indicator of their level of sophistication for social media use. Outbound personal communication is critical for any business, but represents the “last mile” of social media.

Most companies are not using social media for higher-level functions like capturing customer input, to say nothing of internal uses. Naturally technology-savvy CIOs probably would like to see their organizations move up the enterprise social media food chain, so to speak. But that leads to the other main finding of the report, which is….

Obstacles to Adoption Remain
The youth and inexperience of the enterprise social media market should not blind CIOs to the fact that significant obstacles to wider and deeper adoption remain. Interestingly, the leading issues are not directly IT-related. Fear in various forms creates the biggest enterprise social media adoption challenges. Not understanding the benefits (which stems from a fear of there not being any), security issues and fears of negative impacts and unproven technologies are much more prevalent than IT apathy.

The underlying assumption CIOs can take from these findings is that social media vendors have not done an adequate job of making their cases for incorporating social media into business processes. They may be trying hard but in a new market, the messages need repetition and supporting documentation in the form of success stories, lessons learned, and early best practices.

Potential customers (i.e., a CIO’s bosses and constituents) simply do not understand how the addition of social media to their business processes can make business better. Third-party IT service providers are an ideal resource CIOs can tap into for their general social media expertise, as well as their familiarity with current best practices and learnings from other clients they can share.

For many companies, social media outsourcing may be more a case of bringing in qualified personnel rather than farming out technology infrastructure. But whatever the social media case may be, third-party service providers can be a crucial resource for CIOs to make it.

CEOs Do Really Value IT. It’s About Time

Mon, 19 Nov 2012 07:00:00 +0000

Daniel de Souza

All around the world, no matter which language a CEO speaks, where his company is established,or in which area he operates, he certainly expects his CIOs to contribute to the success of the company.

That might sound quite common for executives, but that fact has just been confirmed by an IT consulting firm from Spain, called Setesca. The company has just conducted some research aimed at learning how CEOs view their own ICT departments.

After talking to about 1,000 business executives from different companies, the study concludes that CEOs are now viewing IT and IT infrastructure as have more value that previously seen.

The CEOs hope their chief information officers will be able to come up with solutions and execute things in smarter ways. The chiefs are also expecting their subordinates to create products and new services in a faster pace than ever before, according to the study.

The reports finds that 72 percent of CEOs consider that IT represents a competitive value for their business. The wider the company expands overseas, the more valuable IT department becomes, the report says.

But, on the other hand, 80% of the bosses consider IT as a ‘generator of costs’ for the company, though they recognize its importance for the final output of the business.

The likelihood of outsourcing IT infrastructure increases if the company recognizes IT as important part of its business.

According to Miguel Ruiz, director of MR Consulting, an outsourcing firm in Brazil, many times CEOs fear that outsourcing part of their IT infrastructure may weaken their business. But that is not true, he says, adding that outsourcing is a gr at way of adding value to the business.

"Outsourcing companies have professionals who deal with different industries and business segments," Ruiz says. "And that is positive after all for the clients."

Almost half of the CEOs (48%) participating in the survey expect their IT department to develop solutions that give the company a unique position in the market. A smaller portion, 32% of the total group, said they value pro-active services from the IT department.

According to the Spanish research, technology segments that will see significant improvement in the near future are mobile (33.3%), cloud computing (21.2%), business intelligence (15.2%), virtualization (8.2%) and big data management (6.1%).

The Time is Coming for CIOs to Get in the Game

Mon, 24 Sep 2012 16:08:21 +0000

The Process of Creating

Dan Berthiaume

Now more than ever, consumers like to be entertained. In response, industries like pro sports have added show business elements to their customer experience and popular music concerts have evolved from a group of people singing and playing instruments on a stage to multimedia extravaganzas. The next step in the adaptation of the business world to the insatiable consumer desire for fun is “gamification,” and CIOs need to prepare for it now.

Gamification is a broad term used to describe how emerging technologies such as social media are used to make an online consumer experience more like a game. As detailed in a white paper from M2 Research, “Gamification in 2012,” market spend on gamification solutions, applying game mechanics and behavioral analytics in non-traditional applications will reach $242 million by the end of 2012, which is more than double from 2011. By 2016, this figure is expected to reach $2.8 billion.

As obviously indicated by the amount of money gamification efforts are generating, creating fun, engaging online environments for customers is a lot more complex than throwing a simple challenge or contest onto a website. Properly applied, gamification enables companies to get consumers to interact with their brand, product or service, individually engage for self-expression or exploration on the site, and finally to form a community with other online consumers.

To generate this kind of deep interaction, CIOs need not only to design games engaging enough to keep consumers coming back and promoting a site to their friends, but also to design them in a way that promotes their company’s branding message and still serves more meaningful consumer needs than the need for entertainment. So in addition to designing game elements that are fun and challenging, CIOs also must employ extensive analytics to determine demographic/sociological/psychological profiles of their customers and add elements of marketing and possibly even direct e-commerce. It is also worth noting that gamification can be used as a tool on internal corporate sites to incentivize employee behaviors and boost company morale.

In addition to signaling the complexity of gamification, the exponential growth in gamification spending also indicates how popular this consumer engagement IT strategy is becoming. Today, gamification could still be considered an “emerging” or “leading edge” technology. But in four short years, when spending is expected to approach $3 billion, gamification will have become a standard element of the online consumer experience.

So now is the time for CIOs to start investigating gamification, if they haven’t already. One important factor to consider is whether the proper resources to apply game mechanics to the online consumer experience exist in-house. If not (and most companies not in the video game industry probably lack in-house game design staff), the next question becomes whether to hire in-house staff or to use a third-party outsourcer.

Many ITO providers offer extensive gamification experience, and outsourcing may also prove beneficial to help efforts in analyzing customer data to help guide the path of design. Whether design is accomplished in-house, out-of-house or through a mixture of the two options, CIOs need to get in the game now if they don’t want to finish last.

Softtek felicita a Gustavo Aguirre, Gerente de Sistemas del Grupo OSDE, por su denominación como CIO del año 2012

Mon, 27 Aug 2012 10:46:09 +0000

The Process of Creating

Karen Liedl

En la 12° edición del evento “El CIO del año”, Gustavo Aguirre, Gerente de Sistemas del Grupo OSDE, fue elegido por sus pares como el CIO del año 2012.

¡Extendemos nuestra felicitación a Gustavo Aguirre y agradecemos el privilegio de contar a OSDE entre nuestros clientes!

Aguirre coordina un equipo de trabajo de más de 160 personas. Recientemente encabezó el proyecto de unificación de plataformas, logrando hacer más eficientes los procesos de la compañía. Este año lidera el proyecto ASIS, un ambicioso proyecto que implica la reingeniería técnica del servicio de la organización.

“Los CIO tenemos un rol diferente en las empresas. Estamos en el puesto más innovador y que más cambios sufre a lo largo de la vida en la compañía”, afirmó Aguirre al recibir el premio, y agregó: “Hace unos años se premiaba a los innovadores. Después se premió a los supervivientes. Y ahora se premia a los que pueden generar valor agregado y crear nuevas oportunidades de negocios”, comentó Aguirre tras recibir el premio.

Enhorabuena Gustavo. Por una trayectoria llena de éxitos y los desafíos que están por venir.

Global Non-Profit Endeavor Recognizes President and CEO of Softtek

Mon, 21 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Global Non-Profit Endeavor Recognizes President and CEO of Softtek

Is "Unsourcing" the End of Customer Support Outsourcing?

Sun, 13 May 2012 23:52:51 +0000

Nearshore Outsourcing

Dennis Barker

If outsourcing were a person, we should excuse this person for feeling beleaguered. Some days it can seem like outsourcing just can't get a break. There's always talk of some new force like cloud computing or other awesome sauce that's going to make outsourcing better or turn it into something completely different. And it must be discouraging to hear people calling for the end of you.

The latest force du jour is described in a new column by The Economist sci-tech writer who hides behind the name Babbage. Babbage calls this developing trend "unsourcing," which may not be the best name, and in fact the earlier force known as crowdsourcing might be more like it. But never mind. Here's the setup scene as Babbage sees it:

Some of the biggest brands in software, consumer electronics and telecoms have now found a workforce offering expert advice at a fraction of the price of even the cheapest developing nation, who also speak the same language as their customers, and not just in the purely linguistic sense. Because it is their customers themselves.

With "unsourcing," companies establish online communities to provide support for users with technical problems. Customers don't dial a call center in Mumbai or Cibu. Instead, they post a question on the web and happy, knowledgable people (probably in the same country but not necessarily) respond with solutions. This question-and-answer activity might happen on the company's website, or via more social media.

Cost savings is the biggest motivator – as much as 50%, according to Babbage quoting Gartner. He says retailer Best Buy figures its 160,000 experts save it $5 million a year. Babbage notes that in the world of unsourcing, problem solvers are not paid cash. Some are awarded points. A British mobile phone provider gives its help staff rewards that can be applied to their phone bill.

There are some call center situations that unsourcing could not replace. Resolving a billing dispute, for one example. And of course you can't develop software or test applications or handle more sophisticated business processes this way. But it does raise some questions, mainly: Is this the best way to go about lowering expenses? Is it a good idea to turn over something as important as customer interaction to people who don't work for you? I'm not convinced of the "wisdom of crowds" to begin with. It appears to be working for companies like Best Buy and Logitech, but it would be interesting to find out how many customers have been turned off. For every client who got a useful answer, how many left frustrated?

My experience with online forums has shown me that there are many, many well-intentioned people on the web, who are also very smart and can help with common technical problems. But it can be disappointing to parse through hundreds of messages and not find a solution that works for you. What, are my problems so unique? You're left scratching your head, and you got nothing. There needs to be some mechanism for the product or service provider to jump in at that point and deal directly with the customer.

Despite reservations, Babbage says "the prospect of halving support costs is likely to prove tempting for many companies." And he's probably right about that. That could be a bad thing, though. The human interface between business and customer should not be too flimsy or stretched too thin. Fans of your brand are fans of your brand, but they aren't your brand. Unhappy with unsourcing, the dissatisfied customer will go online and grouse about it.