Web analytics and their proper interpretation and application to business problems can go a long way toward providing relevant, actionable intelligence for organizations in the 21^st century. Are you getting all you can from the powerful information that you already have?

The ‘barriers to entry’ – primarily time, cost and complexity are usually far, far less than the larger business intelligence or decision support initiatives you may be struggling with. How do you fully leverage information about what your customers are doing on your web presence and turn it to the advantage of your business? Aye, there’s the rub of web analytics.

The industry has been preaching the gospel of getting it right up front and doing change management since before I entered IT and I’m sure it will go on long after I’m gone. And what does that hinge on? Well, it’s about effective and frequent… wait for it… communication. The best CIO I ever worked for had a mantra, “Communicate times ten.” It served him pretty well; it would serve us all well.

In his post Third time lucky for Mr Jones?, Jim notes with, I think, some bemusement, a pattern that is actually quite common and accepted in the States.  

That is, people using venture capital to float businesses, using part of that money to live the life style of “success” from the outset, and repeating the cycle for as many times as they can convince investors to put their money up!  

It’s just that we are not used to that here and can’t quite understand how someone could pull that off.  The investors are not stupid, they are simply playing a percentage game, and they too are often playing with other people’s money!   

A recent acquaintance of mine in the States is a retired CFO of a very major multinational IT company.  He is very upset that his youngish son, as CFO of a brand new start up funded entirely by investors, drives around in a BMW M5 and lives the life that you might imagine goes with that.  He sees that as a gross misuse of investor funds.  Dad obviously had to work very hard over a 40 year career to earn his “trappings”.  

I empathize with that, however the investors and their startup community have convinced themselves that, in order to attract the talent required for future success, they need to compete with those already successful companies.  Given that startups also generally offer very attractive capital wealth sharing, this is a pretty cool proposition for as long as you can stay in the system! 

Both VCs and executives believe that sooner or later they’ll hit the jackpot, and hey, they’re all living a pretty nice lifestyle in the meantime!  The entire start up community is somewhat shielded from those that might really complain - members of managed fund schemes that are happy with their net 3% real return after fees and are unaware that a portion of their combined funds is floating this entire other “ya hoo!” community! 

We talk about how important innovation is for our economy - and this is how the sharp end of America’s “innovation engine” works.  Few local investors would have the stomach for this 3rd time ’round, however American investors apparently do. 

Some say you make your own luck. 

I think accolades such as the Computerworld Excellence Awards are a big part of this changing culture, and I’m glad that as an industry we can now celebrate our successes and point out specific individuals and projects that have something special about them.  

So, if you’re one of the growing number of increasingly proud NZ ICT practitioners (and I’d hope my readers were the kind of folk to fly their own flag!) then get to the awards’ website and decide what categories you’ll be entering (anyone from Simpl reading this – that goes double for you!).  

In the meantime I’d love to hear what you think are the “stand out” ICT solutions of the past year.  

See you in the winner’s circle!  

The whole office had confirmation the other day that we really do like doing things differently at Simpl. While the rest of the country was grappling with drought conditions we had our very own flood!  The air-conditioning valve burst and thousands of cubic litres poured through the ceiling – transforming some offices into temporary waterfalls! 

Biblical retribution for our collective sins? Not likely! Turns out the culprit was much more mundane – a power surge caused by the Vector chaps working down the road. While watching water cascade through normally humming offices was something to behold, perhaps the most amazing thing was, although it happened at 3:30pm Friday, by Monday it was undetectable thanks to people working all weekend to put things right.    

With no opening windows, the building was impossible to vent and the temperature on the floor quickly shot to 37 degrees with 100 percent humidity! 

While so many went above and beyond to get us back up to speed, a special “shout out” must go to the Fire Department who were simply amazing!  

Everyone knows how enthusiastic I am about “joined up government” and “sharing IT” within government.  This does appear to be gaining practical momentum and tacit political support.  The recent government announcement regarding IP is an example.

SSC are committing to some pretty significant outcomes by 2012 and I am keen that the IT vendor community take up Lawrence Miller’s challenge to assist progress in the way we each deal with government agencies. 

Meanwhile, I read an article by Stephen Bell in today’s Computerworld quoting Brendan Kelly’s desire to rationalise the many entity identifiers (up to 35 for one person!) for both patients and providers, down to one each.

Drawing the two together, SSC’s Authentication Programme ultimately seeks to provide one access and authentification point (you are who you say you are online) for all interaction between any citizen and the government (and conceivably for any entity that might want to use this web service to authenticate a NZ citizen’s logon).

I wonder whether this can reach as far?  What are your thoughts regarding reach and privacy?

Bottom line, I think that the answer is yes, absolutely, due to a lack of investment capital rather than anything those poor old cows are up to!  Funding from within the NZ investment community is limited and “hard won”.  Dependency on overseas investors, either directly or through NZ vehicles, tends, ultimately, to lead to asset transfer of our technology ownership (IP) to foreign hands.

A few thoughts:

People often misconstrue the government’s intention regarding IT being a central pillar of our future economy.  This is not solely about export earnings from NZ IP, but rather how NZ can apply technology to enhance the global  performance of other NZ industry sectors, such as the dairy industry.  A visit to any progressive dairy farmer in NZ, not to mention AgResearch and LIvestock Improvement in Hamilton, might blow your mind!  Until recently, I had no idea just how technology litter ate, integrated and automated dairy production and distribution has become.  This strength, under Fonterra, is truly world class and a boon to NZ.

I recently visited a well known farm south of Hamilton, that is leading the way in sustainable dairy farming.  Many in the primary sector are conscious of their impact on the environment (which equally effects their own future viability) and are, again, pioneering  environmental management technologies in order to make dramatic improvements in that area.

It may well be that “polluter pays” type policy will have the dairy industry help fund a new and innovative era of “clean and green” for NZ.

Accepting the absolute need to ensure environmental sustainability, there is so much of our NZ lifestyle and services that are funded by our primary sector.  It may not be so much a choice of “either or”, but rather how to grow and protect both sectors’ future prosperity, in part, by continuing to bring them together.