IoT Field Notes: Building a Business Case
Asking for the investment? Here's an outline, with examples, for a business case that includes Cost to Build (one-time) and Cost to Run (ongoing), as well as the Benefits (revenue).
The SMB Business Case for Cloud
Few cloud computing vendors are able to produce a plausible cost model with any level of detail. All of your SMB customers are asking the same question, so why don't you have a simple, clear, canned answer? In the absence of a vendor model, this article will help you quickly work up the big chunks of the opportunity in short order.
Justifying Preventative Maintenance – Where’s the Value?
How to build a simple, easy-to-understand business benefits model for preventative maintenance investments; you have to model the risk of failure. Fear not - this simple calculation will do the trick.
Who is Using the System? Tracking in the Enterprise
For years, web sites have been measured - and valued - by user traffic. Who is looking at this site? When are they coming, and how long are they staying? Driven by the advertising business model that values "impressions", web analytics have evolved in a number of ways; the interest has shifted from Passive to Active. Advertisers want to know who is clicking, selecting, comparing, buying, and abandoning. Games track Daily Average Users, Social Networks quantify contributions and visualize connections,…
You Can’t Ignore This Any Longer
Cloud and open source have been around for some time - long enough for the term "cloud" to [finally] fade away as a differentiator (it's just assumed!). Still, some continue to dismiss these technologies for their corporate solutions - but it's getting tougher to just ignore this stuff ... Scale? Cloud provider Amazon continues to dominate the market, with five times the market share of all of their competitors combined. The breadth, depth, and scale of some of their customers…
How May I Help You? Four Ways IT Can Deliver Value
Classic lament of IT - I just want get involved, be part of the conversation - I want a seat at the table. Classic lament of everyone else - How can IT deliver value to the business? It sounds like two people reaching for each other - but in the dark. They want to connect, but they don't know how. The problem, of course, is that many - from IT and other areas of the business - default to the…
How to be Taken Seriously as a Business Partner
Part of my job consists of working with General Managers & Managing Directors, talking about process and technology projects, and how we might leverage internal and external resources. I am no longer surprised that external consulting groups get more of the interesting and exciting projects - internal IT is often challenged by a lack of "latest and greatest" tech skills (in support of a modern digital strategy), available cycles (to take on the extra work), or communication & marketing skills…
Strict Rules of Golf – for IT
Years ago, an avid golfer told me about his long-time buddies who, after a few years of playing together, found themselves getting into arguments during play. Through high-school and college, they had been fairly competitive and loved a friendly wager, but they got better as they got older. The money started getting serious - and the squabbles took away from the fun. So they adopted a new Guiding Principle, and began to play strictly according to the USGA Rules of…
Structured Process Improvement for Unstructured Processes
Have you ever waded into a process improvement project that had trouble finding a place to start? Consider, for example, a strategic sales team (for RevCo, famous maker of Widgets), working their established product families to generate breakout new customers and revenues. They've implemented a CRM system, but are having problems getting adoption and seeing benefits. The difficulty, of course, is that they have not changed their marketing strategies, and can't see beyond "automating our current process" as a measure…
IT Strategy for the Fast Twitch Crowd
This evening (Monday, 11 Feb 2013) , I did a presentation on Developing IT Strategy in a "Consumer IT" Environment - an expansion on some of the ideas that I have written about previously. I’ve posted my slides here – I realize that they do not “stand on their own”, and need some explanation, but if you weren’t in attendance and are interested in hearing more, let me know in the comments - happy to review with anyone interested. Developing IT Strategy that Connects…