This article from TechCrunch, which describes the launch as a “disaster”,  does a good job of breaking down how Nokia’s through process works. I should mention that I made an assumption that the Ovi Store web team had a test plan and executed it. It would seem obvious to any project manager or test manager that testing the application or web self service platform you’re building, should through some sort of break fix testing and user acceptance testing more over, load and capacity testing. Unfortunately for Nokia, this one time shot to prove their Ovi Store and it failed. Their great resolution? Add more servers. Who thought of that crazy idea and why wasn’t that person their from the beginning?

To ANY Nokia executuives looking for answers, my guess is you’re going to find a load / capacity plan that was poorly executed or wrose, the complete lack of a test plan altogether. Either way, without a solid and proven methodology for executing a large scale web application, things will get over looked and sometimes more than performance and accessibily can be affected. In this case, Nokia needed a big win and instead fell short of something big.

While Web content management (WCM) has been around for more than 10 years, enterprises only now seem to be getting serious about implementing WCM that can solve business problems, as opposed to solving IT problems.

Many first-generation WCM systems proved to be clunky to use, expensive to implement, misaligned with business goals and ultimately dissatisfying for both IT and business. As the Web has fueled demand for customer-centric business practices, enterprises have begun to realize that their Web presence must do far more than statically display the same information to all visitors. In turn, leading WCM vendors have augmented initial products with tools that help organizations target users and deliver persuasive content, analyze customer interactions and enable Web 2.0 engagements.

However, some of the problems that plagued first-generation WCM are inherent and will not automatically be solved with the technology advances of second-generation WCM systems. Most of the problems earlier WCM initiatives faced still exist today—because of people and processes, not WCM feature sets. Getting smarter at selecting the appropriate technologies remains important, but internal competencies and best practices will still make or break any WCM project.

Enterprises implementing WCM still face numerous challenges, such as:

• Business and marketing still have problems playing nicely with IT. In many cases, marketers continue to rank their relationship with
  IT staff as somewhat or highly unproductive.
• Business doesn’t have the bandwidth—or the desire—to take on WCM responsibilities.
• IT also drives too much of the development and implementation process, leaving marketing, e-business and operations out of the loop during implementations, even though those are the stakeholders who will use and drive the completed system.
• Some WCM tools still lack maturity to fulfill advanced customer-facing Web site needs, forcing IT to get involved and add customizations to meet those persuasive content requirements.
• Many enterprises struggle with poor technology selection, basing RFPs on long lists of features rather than real-life business use cases.
• Web teams often lack content management know-how, with the number of experienced professionals who have led or been involved in
• WCM solutions still require vendor-specific skill sets, and the skills knowledge for one WCM product doesn’t necessarily transfer to another.

Forrester Research has found best practices in external Web site WCM that information and knowledge management professionals should keep in mind to avoid the pitfalls mentioned above. Though some of those best practices may seem straightforward, the people with whom we spoke had to overcome political, organizational and cultural challenges to meet their WCM goals.

Best Practice #1: Engage stakeholders throughout the project life cycle.

Enterprises with the most successful business-oriented WCM systems engage relevant stakeholders—such as content authors and contributors, template designers, interactive marketers and Web site managers—not only during requirements gathering, but also during the entire implementation process and into ongoing operations. Those who merely engaged IT and limited business stakeholders, or excluded those stakeholders from the vendor selection and design phases, inevitably launched projects that suffered from lack of user adoption and poor internal reputations.

Talk with stakeholders during requirements gathering to develop use cases. Engaging business users early enables clear definitions of their requirements and helps avoid wasting time with trite and vague RFP checklists. In addition, involve representative content contributors during the design of the authoring tools. Information and knowledge management (I&KM) pros need to find out how various stakeholders author and search content and handle workflows. Certain departments or groups may author content differently from others, and those needs should be taken into account. Content management systems are living, breathing things, and projects don’t end with phase one. Continue to periodically solicit feedback from relevant stakeholders after initial implementation and direct developers to tweak the authoring interfaces before complaints reach critical mass. That continuous feedback also enables you to keep the vendor in the loop on what features are needed.

At the same time, be careful to avoid the major pitfalls that sometimes come up when engaging stakeholders. They can include dealing with moonlighters, who may have conflicting operational duties and aren’t able to devote full attention to the WCM project. Be vigilant about having regular, scheduled contact with potential moonlighters and make sure that they communicate project deliverables clearly and in writing. Also don’t forget about documentation and training; many organizations tend to give that task the short shrift at the end of a project, so be sure to get basic documentation in place before deployment, and perhaps lighten the training load by training power users who can in turn train the masses.

Best Practice #2: Use pilots as tools for evaluation and learning.

Long implementation times remain one of the biggest issues with WCM projects. Often, organizations can go nine months or more after selecting a vendor before moving into live production mode. During that time, hidden mistakes can be compounded, and heads of e-business or marketing communications groups can get nervous due to their inability to see any progress. That can erode faith in the project and dampen initial enthusiasm. However, enterprises that tested out new WCM systems with pilot programs reported greater satisfaction with overall WCM success.

Consider commission pilots to help with the vendor selection process. WCM decision makers benefit by seeing the product in action, rather than just hearing the vendor state that it can meet certain functionality needs. You can also use the pilots to catch mistakes early in the implementation process, and they enable project leaders to better estimate the implementation timelines and the effort and resources needed for various portions of the project. Leverage the pilots strategically to demonstrate capabilities to critical constituencies; that will help to build enthusiasm and gain buy-in.

While WCM pilots can serve as a great strategic tool to prototype functionality, organizations need to avoid a few missteps that can diminish their value. Be sure not to develop meaningless pilots; pilot programs should demonstrate functionality in a way that’s simple enough to keep resource needs down but diverse enough to act as a selling point for different constituencies. Also, don’t commit “pilot error,” meaning, don’t necessarily base WCM purchase decisions on which vendor can install its software more quickly on a corporate server; instead, remember that a pilot project should last weeks, not hours or a few days. And lastly, keep the 80/20 rule in mind, and don’t attempt to accommodate the most difficult use cases, rather than the typical ones. It’s tempting to test the outer limits of the WCM platforms with overly complicated use scenarios, while overlooking more mundane but important requirements.

Best Practice #3: Keep it simple throughout the initiative.

The most successful WCM projects tend to have the most straightforward requirements. Of course, complexity is a given with the technology and every organization’s unique customer experience needs. Yet, those most satisfied with their WCM projects were those who chose customizations wisely and eliminated those that introduced too much risk.

Remember to keep requirements to a minimum; less is more, and simplifying requirements decreases implementation time, costs and headaches. In addition, make customizations the exception rather than the rule, because they can carry significant developmental and administrative costs, and have the potential to interfere with upgrade paths. Take the agile approach and think of the project in terms of phases, to minimize scope creep, improve time and resource estimates, and expose mistakes earlier rather than later.

But when simplifying, watch out for the usual traps. Simplifying WCM can lead to reduced implementation times and costs, but simplifications can also lead to unmet business goals and lack of user adoption. Be careful not to ignore core user requirements, use simplification as a shield against innovation, or underestimate—even with simplifications—implementation times.

Following these best practices won’t necessarily solve all your problems, as each content management project inevitably goes through bumps in the road. Issues relating to vendors, resource constraints and internal politics will continue to pop up, and no amount of best practices will help you avoid them. However, pitfalls relating to issues such as vendor selection, content authoring tool configuration and over-customization can be avoided. Keeping these best practices in mind throughout the implementation process will help minimize those bumps, and lead to a smoother path as you head down the WCM implementation road. See the Chart for Best and Next Practices in WCM Adoption for External Sites.

A sampling of WCM providers

Alfresco
Alterian
Clickability
CrownPeak
Day Software
Ektron
EMC
FatWire
IBM
Interwoven, now part of Autonomy
Microsoft
Open Text
Oracle
PaperThin
SDL Tridion
Sitecore
Vignette

• Will the customization have a negative effect on the maintenance and operation of the WCM system
• Will the customization have a negative effect on the WCM upgrade path
• Will the customization positively affect productivity and usability for internal content contributors
• Will the customization enable a differentiating customer experience or competitive advantage
• Can the customization be used by multiple businesses/sites
• Does the WCM vendor publicly support this type of customization
• What is the return on investment for the customization?

Source: KM World

But the impending eligibility of baby boomers, who are projected to start joining Medicare in 2011, and the unrelenting rise in healthcare costs have heightened concerns in recent years about the program’s long-term viability.

Report: Medicare fund eight years from insolvency - Los Angeles Times.

It would seem that the tax plan outlined by Obama recently, will likely keep larger companies from offshoring their resources. Yet when you dig a little deeper it appears that may not be the case at all.

Analysts say it’s the low cost of highly skilled labor overseas–not the tax code–that has driven the offshore outsourcing trend.

By Patrick Thibodeau

President Obama unveiled tax code changes Monday he said could curb offshoring, but analysts and tax experts believe the plan will have little to no impact on the megatrend that threatens as many as one-in-four IT jobs at large companies.

The criticism boils down to this: It isn’t the tax code that created the offshore outsourcing industry over the last decade; it’s the low cost of highly skilled labor.

President Obama didn’t address the wage gap today, but he is arguing that the tax code has played a contributing role in the growth of offshoring, and that includes high-skilled outsourcing.

In his remarks, he cited a major Indian IT outsourcing center, Bangalore, as one of the places that has benefited from tax loopholes. The U.S. has developed “a tax code that says you should pay lower taxes if you create a job in Bangalore, India, than if you create one in Buffalo, New York,” Obama said.

These tax loopholes give companies that create jobs overseas the ability to take deductions on expenses “when they do not pay any American taxes on their profits,” he said.

The proposed tax changes, which must be approved by Congress, may affect IT vendors that run subsidiaries overseas by denying deductions for offshore payments on things like payroll expenses, said Alan Appel, a tax attorney at Bryan Cave LLP in New York.

“By denying the deduction, the hope is that it will be more expensive to operate offshore and it will give incentives to create jobs in the U.S,” Cave said.

The proposed tax code changes is about as close as the White House has come to addressing the issue of IT offshoring. Whether the administration ties the use of the H-1B visa, which is heavily used by Indian offshore firms, is still a question mark.

Alan Greenspan, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve, said last week that the U.S. should increase the supply of foreign workers and said the H-1B cap is keeping wages high, protecting workers from global competition and creating a “privileged elite” in the U.S.

The major motivation for moving work overseas is the difference between salaries in the U.S. and overseas. A job that pays US$100,000 here may only cost one-sixth that in India, said Peter Bendor-Samuel, CEO of the Everest Group, a outsourcing consultancy in Dallas.

“If there is a tax consequence here it’s de minimis to the overall impact” of outsourcing, Bendor-Samuel said. In any case, he said, “this idea that people are doing outsourcing to avoid taxes is simply wrong.”

Sang Kim, a partner in the international tax practice at DLA Piper, also said he doubts that the legislation will impact outsourcing. “The argument is that it should stem the flow of jobs leaving the U.S. but the reality is I don’t think the jobs are moving outside the U.S because of tax policy,” Kim said.

If anything, the tax code changes could accelerate the flow of jobs overseas to offset the larger tax bite, he said.

Kim said there could be unforeseen consequences to the tax changes. A foreign country could, for instance, could offer subsidies to U.S. firms to create jobs as a way of mitigating any tax impact, he said.

The Hackett Group, whose clients include many multinational firms, reviewed data collected from 200 companies to find that at companies with revenues of at least $5 billion, as many as one quarter of IT jobs will be moved offshore by 2010.

Source:  CIO.com

Spirit Bank Strategic Partner Network

Broken Arrow, OK — ICON has developed a partnership with Spirit Bank, a leading community bank headquartered in Tulsa, Oklahoma. “ICON is pleased to be working closely with Spirit Bank to assist it’s clients, ” said Neil Twa President of ICON Business Solutions. “We’re very happy to be associated with the Strategic Partner Network. By partnering with other local firms it allows us the ability to call on a variety of top notch talent, the very best of Oklahoma small businesses.”

The Strategic Partner Network is in place to help small businesses in Oklahoma gather the much needed support of experienced businesses who have paved the way already. ICON joins a team of industry experience in the area of business improvement specialists.

About Spirit Bank

Great business success is all about relationships. SpiritBank has a long tradition of creating, maintaining, and growing powerful and profitable relationships. Now, through the Business Resource Center, you have access to a dynamic best-of-breed collection of business leaders from around the state of Oklahoma assembled to support you in overcoming the challenges of operating and growing your business.

About ICON Business Solutions

ICON is focused on next generation CRM solutions and delivery of strategic consulting, systems integration and managed services to help you leverage all of your technology investments. Our proven approach and unique perspective delivers rapid results, and has made ICON a thought leader that understands critical market trends, and how to apply emerging best practices. Our consultants are knowledgeable, dedicated professionals who are thought leaders in their areas of expertise.