Tag Archives: change

eBay… The New King Of Procurement?

Posted on July 21, 2011 by Chris Niccolls

A few blogs ago we were talking about how the next generation of Cloud services will evolve. To make a long story short, the best candidate would be large scale, on-line merchants with a lot of excess  computer capacity. The … Continue reading →

Posted in Best Practices, Common Sense Contracting, Decision Making, Improvement, Continuous or Not | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Are Outsourcing Obstacles Too Big To Swallow?

Posted on July 11, 2011 by Chris Niccolls

Last week I saw a question on Linked-In that I thought was particularly interesting. The question was, “What are the top five challenges in BPO transitions that  need to be addressed in the outsourcing/offshoring industry?”  If there were any “winners” … Continue reading →

Posted in Best Practices, Common Sense Contracting, Decision Making, Delivering Services | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Higher Clouds: Learning From Amazon’s AWS Strategy

Posted on July 8, 2011 by Chris Niccolls

Last month, Amazon had a conference in New York to show off its latest web services. At the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Conference a number of very experienced executives presented some exceptionally impressive technology.  Still, as they day wore on … Continue reading →

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Social Networking for Service Managers

Posted on June 14, 2011 by Chris Niccolls

Want less face time on Facebook? Tired of being a twit on Twitter? Don’t care if you can Google it? I think we’ve all had occasional overload from Internet social media. Yet, everywhere you go you’re told how this is … Continue reading →

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4th Sigma: Project Charters, Part 3 – Building Consensus

Posted on June 9, 2011 by Chris Niccolls

A Project Charter is a document that describes a project, names the people who will perform the project, what their roles will be and the name of the project sponsor (the individual that requested the project). Any book on Six … Continue reading →

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The Regulators: Round 2 – Are Your Costs In Line With The Market… Which Market?

Posted on June 3, 2011 by Chris Niccolls

Yesterday we spoke a bit about the rise of “Regulators” in Fortune 500 Firms. In the past service managers would periodically see directives for firm-wide budget controls, freezes for new hires, or (during especially difficult economic times) special committees that … Continue reading →

Posted in Best Practices, Common Sense Contracting, Decision Making, Delivering Services, Improvement, Continuous or Not | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Management Trends for 2011: MORE!

Posted on May 30, 2011 by Chris Niccolls

The corporate world is changing. The biggest firms in the world are almost entirely public corporations, and an every smaller number of the largest firms are privately owned. Of the largest firms in America, the top five public firms are … Continue reading →

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The 4th Sigma: The Paradox of Customer Service

Posted on May 28, 2011 by Chris Niccolls

You’ve probably heard about it elsewhere, and if you haven’t in these Blogs we’ve discussed how the Six Sigma framework defines waste as any activity that doesn’t contribute value. For example, in “Is Quality Control A Waste of Time?“ we … Continue reading →

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The 4th Sigma: Analysis Paralysis… More Options Don’t Always Help

Posted on May 25, 2011 by Chris Niccolls

Any good management book or management system provides you with more than a few tools or the steps for a process. The best books remind that you are applying these systems to people, people with preferences and limitations. Some people … Continue reading →

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The 4th Sigma: Is It Time to Rethink Six Sigma?

Posted on May 22, 2011 by Chris Niccolls

Over the past few months, I have been using this blog to collect information from different operational managers, especially IT managers because of the wide range of services they run. The subject has been, “How are you dealing with the … Continue reading →

Posted in 4th Sigma, Best Practices, Decision Making, Delivering Services, Improvement, Continuous or Not, Unique Ideas | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments