Category Archives: Uncategorized

Gramdma Has Left The Kitchen!

Posted on June 25, 2011 by Chris Niccolls

I remember a commercial from a few years back, I think it was for spaghetti sauce. It showed an Italian family’s kitchen as the Sunday meal was being made. In the kitchen, there were several grandmothers working away over a … Continue reading →

Posted in Best Practices, Expectations and Rewards, Improvement, Continuous or Not, Learning and Development, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

How Much Do Your Services Cost?

Posted on June 4, 2011 by Chris Niccolls

Budgeting in Corporate Services has always been an approximate science. In some cases, very approximate. Because your services are far removed from the products that your firm sells to the outside world, it’s hard to know how and when to … Continue reading →

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Outsourcing Analysis Part III: Building Your Toolkit

Posted on April 26, 2011 by Chris Niccolls

For the last two blogs we have been building a tool to help you evaluate your current sourcing decisions, in other words where your staff resides and how they are employed (employees, temps, outsourced, etc.) to perform your business functions. … Continue reading →

Posted in Best Practices, Common Sense Contracting, Decision Making, Delivering Services, Improvement, Continuous or Not, Uncategorized, Unique Ideas | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Outsourcing Analysis Part II: That’s My Core?

Posted on April 25, 2011 by Chris Niccolls

In our last Blog we talked about how we source for a function, which is to say the process of deciding (and executing) the “how and where” a function is performed. In the last few years the movement has been … Continue reading →

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Outsourcing Analysis Part I: How Far Out Do You Outsource?

Posted on April 25, 2011 by Chris Niccolls

Everyone talks about Outsourcing, but much of the time the talk seems to treat all Outsourcing as the same, with teh assumption that all projects end up with everyone working in a call center in India. Outsourcing predates India and predates “offshoring”. In fact, on of the … Continue reading →

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Grime and Punishment: Why Best Practices Matter (Part II)

Posted on April 21, 2011 by Chris Niccolls

Yesterday we looked at CLI’s (Central Line Infections), a type of infection that results from the use of a Central line, the needle and flexible tube used to insert an intravenous drip bag. CLI’s are extremely dangerous and expensive, infecting … Continue reading →

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Grime and Punishment: Why Best Practices Matter (Part I)

Posted on April 20, 2011 by Chris Niccolls

We’ve had a lot of discussions on this Blog about metrics and best practices. Because they’re very important. Whenever I talk to colleagues who haven’t adopted a policy of best practices, they assume that A) It’s very difficult to identify … Continue reading →

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Epsilon Cloudburst

Posted on April 4, 2011 by Chris Niccolls

Have you heard of Epsilon, the marketing firm? Well, if you haven’t you can probably expect to hear about them soon. One of the many services Epsilon offers is the management of emailing services for many large corporations. Personally, I … Continue reading →

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Projects Of The Living Dead!

Posted on March 14, 2011 by Chris Niccolls

I just can’t take another vampire movie. When did Vampires stop being spirits of the damned and become moody teenagers? True, hanging out with the cast of Twilight is pretty close to being damned, but without the pleasant brimstone aroma therapy. Give … Continue reading →

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Not All Numbers Are Equal!

Posted on March 7, 2011 by Chris Niccolls

Managers that have moved away from management by instinct to management by metrics are often frustrated by the strange quirks and illogical results they get from their management reports. This can be terribly frustrating, because it takes a lot of … Continue reading →

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