December 28, 2010 from InfoWorld – “No year in the IT industry would be complete without a number of high-profile ERP (enterprise resource planning) project failures, ones that burn through mountains of cash, bring company operations to a standstill, generate bad publicity for vendors, and toss careers in the trash. There’s no one reason why ERP projects run off the rails. In fact, you can equate a typical project to a three-legged stool, with the customer, vendor, and systems integrator each serving as a leg. Customers have to plan well, budget enough money for training, and evolve their usual way […]
Developing An Effective KPI Plan
November 29, 2010 from Dashboard Insight – “When looking at the BI landscape and available solutions, dashboards give the biggest bang for their buck. After all, with high levels of interactivity, strong data visualizations, and general capabilities that provide the quickest way to monitor performance and manage what is happening within the organization, it stands to reason that dashboard use would be gaining in popularity. Despite the positive aspects of making BI and analytics easier to access and to interact with, the reality is that effective dashboards don’t design themselves. Simply implementing a dashboard and monitoring metrics does not mean […]
Beyond budgeting
November 15, 2010 from FSN – ““The annual budget is an artifact rooted in managing feudal governments in agrarian societies,” declares Robert Kugel, analyst and research director for financial performance management at Ventana Research, and although many organisations are putting aside some of the assumptions that are usually associated with this (such as ever-increasing expenses) and ramping up the frequency of budgeting revisions and forecasts, the latter can prove problematic for the many more that are using inadequate, ineffective and inappropriate software and systems… Fortunately, the tools to make budgeting and planning more efficient are increasingly accessible – even for […]
My Blackberry Is Not Working!
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BENCHMARKING: Get the Gain
April 2008 from the Supply Chain Management Review – “…Another important reality is that benchmarking brings a necessary level of objectivity to performance evaluation. The subjective notion that “We think we’re pretty good” isn’t really good enough. That was the trap we fell into at Compaq when it came to order cycle time until the benchmarking told us otherwise. The reality is that self-opinion doesn’t truly matter to customers, who are comparing you against other suppliers… The biggest hurdle to benchmarking is coming up with standard ways to compare one company’s operations with another’s in order to make “like-for-like” comparisons…” […]
Project Management Approach for Business Process Improvement. – 180Systems
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Lost generation
A palindrome reads the same backwards as forward. This video reads the exact opposite backwards as forward. Not only does it read the opposite, the meaning is the exact opposite. This is only a 1 minute, 44 second video. Make sure you read as well as listen…forward and backward. Check it out […]
How to Document Requirements
June 2010 from CAmagazine written by Michael Burns – “Before replacing any system, you need to document your requirements. Obvious, right? You just have to talk to the people working with the existing system and ask them for the requirements. But that would be a huge mistake, for a number of reasons. If employees are afraid the new system will automate a big part of their job, they might be reluctant to tell the whole story. Also, they might be unable to think outside of their own box, or they might think certain tasks are not worth mentioning. There is […]
Top 10 Leadership Qualities of a Project Manager
February 2010 from ProjectTimes – “What qualities are most important for a project manager to be an effective project leader? It’s a question often asked and one that makes us sit back and think… Over the past few years, the people at ESI International, a leader in project management training, have looked at what makes an effective project leader. They quizzed some highly-talented project leaders and compiled a running tally of their responses. Below are the top 10 qualities in rank order, according to their frequency listed…” Read more The article’s list is Inspires a Shared Vision A Good Communicator […]
The future of ERP: Why the ‘big ERP’ approach is dead
November 23, 2009 from InfoWorld – …“With ERP, you can’t do a one-size-fits-all,” Read says. “The corporate office of a $10 billion organization just has different needs than the local operations in Australia. And if you try to deploy [SAP or Oracle] everywhere, you’re effectively going to be deploying an enterprise solution in a midmarket company, and the costs are going to explode. Could there be a resurgence in “best of breed” app strategies for vertical-specific business areas — whether that’s on-premise or in the cloud — without all the integration headaches of yore? AMR Research Chief Research Officer Bruce […]