Monday, March 15th, 2010
In a recent example of Barack Obama’s estimable prowess as an orator, the president referred to corporate America’s ability “to squeeze more productivity out of the workers that they’ve got; they’re working people longer hours, they’re doing more overtime, or not, but either way they’re producing the same amount of product or providing the same services without hiring more people. And that’s something that we’re going to have to really work on.”
True enough. But the work’s already afoot up here at 360 Visibility, where we long ago recognized the value of being smarter with fewer resources. (more…)
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Monday, February 15th, 2010
The Aberdeen Group released a report recently that made me shake my head in one of those “I-told-you-so” kind of ways.
The study, called Delivering Project Profitability: On Time and Under Budget, looked at project-based businesses and the challenges they face in remaining profitable inside a distressed and developing world.
While it acknowledged that a subject like this can’t be accurately painted with a single brush, given the range of corporate activity bustling out there, it does provide some strong counsel on how everyone could get a leg up in this cramped economy by paying attention to certain proven practices. (more…)
Tags: projects early, projects on budget, projects on time
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Friday, February 5th, 2010
A surfeit of schedules. An excess of expenses. A ribbon of red tape. An imperative to keep costs low and occupancy high. Government agencies on your tail; feckless tenants on your case. Deals that need to be tracked, leases that need to be managed, writeoffs that need to be recovered.
Property management ain’t the breeze you imagined it might be.
But there is help at hand. (more…)
Tags: property management checklist, property management software
Posted in Property Management | No Comments »
Thursday, January 21st, 2010
I read something recently that tugged at some of my dangling entrepreneurial threads.
It was an account of a recent study, an annual report on CFOs from global business process outsourcing company WNS, in which analysts spoke breathlessly of the looming sea change for the chief financial officer’s role on the corporate stage.
The concept of a revised version of this essential corporate functionary is interesting to me, particularly as it relates to the question of how 360 Visibility might support it. (more…)
Tags: CFO
Posted in Business | No Comments »
Tuesday, January 12th, 2010
I’m not looking to ride the ink trails of Charles Dickens here, but it’s awfully hard to resist when he laid down so apt an all-purpose summary of a year. Because it is always the best of times—and the worst. A little of this, a little of that. Some highs, some lows. One day you’re an American journalist getting an escort from North Korea by Bill Clinton, the next you’re Taylor Swift and your stage is being stormed by Kanye.
Certainly if you were Miss California or Roman Polanski in 2009, you’ve had better revolutions through the lunar cycle. But if you were Susan Boyle or the guy who won that dream job on that Pacific Island, well, you had yourself a bit of a party over the last 12 months, didn’t you?
As for us here at 360 and our journey through the latest calendar pages, we feel confident laying claim to Dickens’ more positive category of assessment. Prominent among those best-of times was our growth. In spite of the so-called “recession,” we managed to pass another year in expansion mode. (more…)
Posted in Business, Disaster Recovery, Enterprise Software, Hosted Exchange, VoIP | 1 Comment »
Friday, January 8th, 2010
Pause for the briefest of moments—just long enough to re-tally Tiger Woods’ score, maybe, or to reassure yourself of Michael Jackson’s continued non-existence—and don’t be surprised to look up and discover it’s 2010.
A solid-sounding year, certainly. The first semi-comfortable post upon which to hang the collective, persistent astonishment we feel at finding ourselves in this twenty-first century. A year of some substance, at last, that breaks through the watery single digits with the triumph of a decade marker. (more…)
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Monday, December 14th, 2009
It’s a hackneyed, overworked, inelegant maxim. But my God, it’s a good one: every dollar spent in planning saves five dollars in implementation.
Too many folks operate under the misguided notion that they can secure the best results for their businesses without investing much in preemptive effort. They believe an afternoon spent gladhanding and hanging in front of a handful of vendor demos will provide them with all the data they need to make an informed choice about what often proves to be a pretty hefty IT spend.
Or they issue a standardized call for quotations on a project whose multiple features and fiddly requirements are not given nearly their due in the process—and then suffer the consequences. (more…)
Tags: business analyst, ERP planning, quotations, RFP
Posted in Business, Enterprise Software | No Comments »
Thursday, December 10th, 2009
More is not always better.
Indeed, in the world of distribution, a condition of either too much or too little is equally undesirable. Best of all? Just enough.
It’s extraordinary now to conceive of a time when wholesale distribution software was not as prevalent as it has become. Imagine the world when it was populated by order-counting drones who spent the better part of their days chasing and accounting for things. Orders were lost, invoices were miserably delayed, salespeople were too caught up with data entry to sell much, employees spilled coffee on their daybooks. Awful.
Thank heaven someone brilliant came up with the idea of automating the whole affair. (more…)
Tags: distribution software system, wholesale distribution software
Posted in Distribution | No Comments »
Thursday, December 3rd, 2009
Just because something has always been done a certain way doesn’t mean it can’t be done another way. A better way. Particularly if the first way has been knocked to the turf with a one-star rating and a 67% decline in license revenue in the last quarter alone.
Times are high right now and getting higher for Ontario engineers. Finally seeing some of the government funding earmarked for infrastructure trickling into their coffers from the last economic recession, these professionals are presiding over a scene that features more projects, more project management, more accountability for funds. (more…)
Posted in Maconomy, Microsoft Dynamics NAV, Professional Services | No Comments »
News
In the wake of the chaos at Copenhagen, global enterprise applications firm IFS North America has published the results of a study that reveal much about how well prepared the business world is to participate in the makeover of the planet. And the news, on the face of it, is not so good.