Archive for the 'Uncategorized' Category
06-22-2008
Work/life balance
This is an interesting topic to me since I manage a team, but it is also of interest because it means so many things to so many people. I am especially interested in hearing about this topic from a management perspective (either through your own experiences as a manager, or through your own observations). What does this concept of balance mean to you, does it even exist and in what situations have you seen it work best across a team? How has it been measured?
Thanks for sharing your thoughts regarding these questions!
Answers:
By Peter B. Giblett
It is important to have a balance in all things. Work is no different. You can be dedicated to your work without working 80 hours a week.
Having a life outside work is essential in refuelling the body and mind in order to face the next work challenge.
There are times when work takes priority. I have a couple of times worked all weekend (till 3am Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and sometimes Monday when it is a holiday weekend) in order to ensure a project goes in on time. However this should only occur once in a while, you do not want to do that every week, it will not do you or the corporation any good.
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06-09-2008
Which is the best ERP path to take?
We’re an industrial distribution company growing into more sub assembly and engineer to order work. Is a traditional distribution based ERP system with a service/manufacturing package the best solution for us going forward? Or is it easier for a manufacturing-centered package to also do normal distribution functions?
Peter’s answer:
There is no easy answer to this question. Much will depend on your business philosophy IT architecture, so I will not answer by naming a specific product, because that will be against my principles.
Before recommending any specific product I would have to understand much about the business processes and current systems used at the corporation. You should firstly identify the business requirements that need to be met.
There are plenty of solutions available and I cannot stress how important it is to select the right solution. In part you will need perform a due diligence check to ensure that you are satisfied with the longevity of any solution selected. Taking the opinions of a few LinkedIners is not sufficient for a sustainable solution.
The majority of solutions will not fit 100% of your requirements and it will be necessary to consider the amount of data integration that will be required.
There is no such thing as a One-Size-Fits-All solution here and I will strongly disagree with anyone who suggest otherwise. Also articles like the requestfill answer suggested do not understand the needs of YOUR business. Informative they may be, a solution they are NOT.
Andrew, as I said in the beginning there is no easy answer to this question. You will need to perform the appropriate analysis and carry-out a full RFI/RFP process to ensure the vendors can live upto your requirements. It is YOUR business future that depends on this.
I personally have much experience with ERP implementations and know you have much analysis yet to perform before identifying the solution that you purchase. Good Luck.
Clarification added:
Andrew,
I thought it essential to add a clarification. In my original answer I said “Much will depend on your business philosophy IT architecture”. I should have added that the most important element to the selection process is identifying and mapping your business processes, both as they exist today, and as you would like to see them. This should be completed before you start investigating solution providers.
As this question is located in the “Enterprise Software” section of Answers then you are looking at a solution that will be used across the organisation.
I will disagree with anyone that answers this question with a suggestion for a specific software solution - if fact I would say that they have only given such an answer because they have an axe to grind.
Any IT professional MUST start by understanding and analysing the business problem before leaping in to offer solutions.
Questions like whether to adopt a “manufacturing-centered” or a “service” type solution will be answered by the process analysis that should be performed.
I have led solutions with implementation costs ranging between $1 million to over $100 million. The biggest challenge in all of these solutions is knowing the intended processes to be followed, get this wrong and your organisation will be cursing the solution adopted with 5 years, get it right and you will be the hero.
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06-09-2008
User-generated content, social networks, or broadband video - which will have the greatest “disruptive” impact on mainstream media?
By Andrew Heyward
Peter’s answer:
I think three things
1 - Computer games (2007’s best entertainment title)
2 - Broadband Video - I think the ability to watch/record TV on the other side of them world to be something that will takeoff in a massive way (along with Intelligent TV’s/Set-top boxes to record it.
3 - Social Networks.
A thought: before the age of television we used to build social networks - inviting the neighbours around for a meal and evening’s entertainment - true enough it was normally the daughter playing the piano. So we now use modern technology and abandon TV in favour of social networking albeit an online version.
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06-09-2008
Do you consider printed media as polluting / environment-unfriendly?
We all know that print media uses paper, which is a depleting resource. Even chemicals required to print / process / decorate paper is not really eco-friendly. Have you ever thought on these lines?
Peter’s answer:
Firstly lets deal with the question of paper. Contrary to you supposition there is no reason why paper should be a depleting resource. Agreed we can be more eco-friendly in producing ‘white’ paper (but who says paper has to be precisely white? or that we cannot have eco-friendly inks for printing), but paper itself is a farmed resource that has been farmed for a long time, and there is no reason why this cannot continue well into the future.
The rule for paper production is “as you chop one tree down, you plant a new one”. Remember that paper is biodegradable, which is something we cannot say about plastic bags from the local supermarket.
So what is the alternative to printed media? eMedia - well this is one of them. I will make a similar mis-assumption eMedia is polluting and environmentally unfriendly!
The reason I make this statement is that much of out electricity comes from polluting sources - coal, gas, oil, and nuclear. The truth is on the whole we are using the wrong type of electricity - we should be using more wind, solar, and water. But for what comes into our offices and homes is is all simply electricity, acquired from the grid.
I do not believe human society will ever be truly paperless, although we should all contribute as well as we can - perhaps things like PDF invoices instead of paper ones will assist - we have done this for a couple of years now.
Personally I favour the use of printed books (well fiction or informational works anyway). For instructions on how to use a software package, then electronic manuals is more than acceptable than paper versions, and I am 50% of the way accepting that access to newspapers is better through the net - although I still have some issues.
I am against abandoning print media, but I think changes are essential. Some are already afoot - check the current crisis in the magazine industry as readers (particularly the younger ones) desert in droves.
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05-13-2008
Are we ready for Win 2008 deployment?
I have test 2008 servers, and I wonder if it is time to move my customers from 2003 to 2008. On Mac, I am already in process of moving from 10.4 to 10.5 server and it works fine. Test installations are not proof of quality because not much is happening around them (and only few errors).
Here is what keeps me waiting. From time to time I encounter some error on some 2003 system which is not supported on Microsoft, and is very hard to find on Google. 2008 is new and there is much less support (and experience) from other people in IT. I have great uptime and my customers are very satisfied, so I don’t want to change that because MS is still experimenting. So, is it too early to move clients to this new platform, or the risk is enough low? (of course I have backups, etc, but I want to keep number of problems as low as possible)
Peter’s answer:
I would generally advise waiting till later in the year, or perhaps 2009 before going ahead. Keep an eye on the computer press for issues of stability, because I sure some will arise.
Additionally with servers you need to be concerned about the applications that need to be run on the server when selecting the appropriate operating system. I would suggest that is your main driver.
I would not upgrade to a new operating system version without a clear statement statement that the software support that version - even then I would build a test server with all of the components newly installed and test each against the operation system version, and then re-test all interconnectivity thoroughly before going ahead with such an upgrade on live systems.
BTW, Microsoft will always say their products are fully compliant with the new version - please have this verified by an independent third party before going ahead with the upgrade.
In my experience some servers have had to kept at old versions for many years because of incompatibilities or interoperability problems. Step cautiously!
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05-04-2008
Can a Competitive Advantage, or an Innovation, Endure for Longer than 18 months?
Moore’s Law says that technological innovation is continuing to progress at a “doubling” factor every 18 months or less, at the same price point or less.
Regardless of the industry, business, or technology you wish to focus on, can any change, innovation, or competitive advantage endure longer than 18 months?
If no, why not? If yes, how do you ensure it?
Clarification added:
Before closing this questions, I want to clarify what I meant. I often use shorthand and intuitive leaps, assuming that others will understand what I mean. I apologize for any confusion, though we got many excellent answers, for which I thank you all.
What I meant was that the “concept” of Moore’s Law is generically transferable and has been so transfered to the need for continuous and rapid innovation in all industries, whether tech-based or not. In terms of competitive advantage, I ought to have excluded outright monopolies. Excluding those, I don’t think a competitive advantage can be maintained for very long without sustained and repeat innovation. And there is always the risk than some upstart will “change the rules of the game” in terms of product/service application and delivery to the marketplace. Companies who had breakthrough technologies but failed to innovate completely lost their dominant competitive advantage. Examples might be Polaroid, Xerox, General Motors.
In any event, we had several good answers, on various counts, so it is not possible or equitable to select only one answer. I therefore will nominate a handful of what I considered the best answers as “good”.
Thanks again for all who participated.
Best! Frank
Clarification added:
To further clarify, GM did not have a particular tech “breakthrough” but had the dominant market share and thus controlled pricing in the industry. By failing to innovate, it totally lost that virtual monopoly power.
The reader is also referred to Frank’s corporate website for more information.
Peter’s answer:
An interesting question.
On the surface a patent will provide protection for 20 years (although James Dyson will testify to the fact that you do have to be aggressive in protecting your advantage. I used to be said that on average a patented product would take 13 years to get from the design/patent stage till production, giving the inventor an average of 7 years protection.
However in the Microchip industry a 7 year old chip is a dinosaur, let alone a 20 year old one. That said speeds of microchips are not doubling every 18 months anymore. My 5 year old PC is still more than capable of running most of the latest software (so long as I keep it away from Vista).
Then talking of Vista I have to ask the question whether all change that comes our way is good change, as it certainly seems that Vista has been taking a kicking over the last year. Some of these type of change seems to be change for change sake, not always a good thing.
Modern manufacture also seems to be into mini cycles. A few years ago I purchased a watch, it was a distinct design and caught my eye. When I got it home from my business trip my wife asked me to buy her a ladies version of the same type - upon returning to the same store less than a week later, the model was no longer on the shelves.
It turned out that this manufacturer produces watches in small production runs, then change to a new design. The products are distributed around the world in small distinct quantities, so only 2 male and 2 female are available in any one country at the same time, so my only chance to buy my wife one was on the day I visited the shop in the first place (they had a ladies one on display).
The upshot is that models are in constant change. All that differs between one watch and another is the external fascia, the internal components are standard. In this case the production cycle is perhaps 1 week, maybe less. This somewhat similar to the car industry that is always convincing us to purchase the new 2009 model (as the greatest thing since sliced bread) - to which we infer that the 2008 model we have just started paying for should be put on the junk heap.
This could be argued as crass commercialism.
If we look at the computer game industry GTA 4 is the hottest thing on the planet this week, but in 3 months it will lie gathering dust in most teenagers’ closets.
I think that there are two worlds in product manufacturing today, the other side of the coin being traditional products (e.g. bricks and mortar) where the product may remain unchanged for centuries - I would suggest a sign of a very successful product. But with such products it is difficult to discern a competitive advantage - if any exists it is price and convenience (locality).
I don’t think the 18 month advantage is by any means a general rule - putting aside who said what. I personally think we need to look for a sustained competitive advantage, but in order to achieve this business needs to be leveraging the right tools, using Business Intelligence to aid better business understanding, particularly in respect of a identifying how your organisation competes within its marketplace. This knowledge when applied to the business can contribute to improving business results.
There is no easy answer - much is dependent on persistently re-validating and re-measuring performance against the industry.
Posted by webmaster in Uncategorized, Answers, Competative Advantage | No Comments »
05-01-2008
How I get knowledge about Business Intelligence?
By Shoaib Khan
Peter’s answer:
I would say that there are many good people out there that can help. I would firstly go and get Ralph Kimball’s book Data Warehouse Toolkit, which will give you the foundations for building business intelligence solutions.
This covers the fundamentals, but it is only really a starting point, not the total answer.
I cannot recommend any BI project management book as the ones that I have read fall far short in terms of practical advice.
TDWI has a lot of good information, as does the B-Eye Network.
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05-01-2008
Email Hours: Like Working Hours, How about Email Hours?
Email Hours: Everyone of us receive emails ranging from 25-100 a day and some mails take lot of time to read, digest, respond, clarification, etc., From my experience if someone talks to a person in-person then number of emails can be shortned so how about this idea of companies implementing EMAIL HOURS or NO EMAIL HOURS. What do you think?
By Siva Jonnala
Peter’s answer:
Hmmm, Neat idea, not sure it will work though.
In the past I used to check emails 4 times a day 9am, 11am, upon returning from lunch, then 3:30pm. This gave me an opportunity to do some work in between.
Then…
I never believed this could happen before being a victim of it. One day last year I received over 1,000 emails in a single day (and generated in excess of 100). Most of these were Blackberry based and were more akin to SMS messages in length - they were a chain of emails relating to software testing and shifting of responsibilities across the continent.
The chain would have never been as efficient if we had held a conference call as we would have stopped all action for the call - this approach allowed each developer and tester to perform their responsible part the pass it on to the next person.
You could not fit that into you email hours.
Posted by webmaster in Uncategorized, Answers, Neat Ideas | No Comments »
05-01-2008
Can a Business Plan be Wiki-based?
The whole idea of “secret information” is pre-wiki; for this denotes the idea that the privately held “information” has reached its highest potential, and that to make it public would only make it less.
The whole value behind the wiki concept is that “information” is never truly “finished,” it can
always be analyzed and edited from a different point of view, most likely making it all the more valuable.
Is this concept suitable with a complete or a part of a business plan of a new activity?
Which part of the plan are more appropriate for this view (if there are any)?
Do you know any example of a successful improvement in this way?
Peter’s Answer:
I do like the idea. My gut feel is that the software behind the average Wiki is not yet robust enough. I personally start any idea with a mind map, which is an excellent starting tool and will express ideas well. I would expand this to a document once there is enough meat behind it.
There are some alternatives to Wiki’s such as shared documents (available through products such as Share Point).
If you are talking about business planning then I suppose any sharable form of document is fine to use, but this is different from a specific business plan. I assume security to the documents is limited to the relevant audience.
For a full business plan you will need to build market analysis, trends, growth, and P&L projections, etc. In order to do this properly you will need some analytical capability (which for the average small business means using Excel or another spreadsheet). There will need to be multiple what-if projections included - again possible through Excel.
The other issue comes to tracking reality against the plan. To do this you will need to get at a minimum some business plan software (price probably in the range $100 to $250 for a product with reasonable capabilities - shared plans may add to the cost).
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