Category Archives: Unique Ideas

Tips and tricks you may have not know

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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Tail Of The Dancing Rat: Exposing Services to User Scrutiny

Posted on April 18, 2011 by Chris Niccolls

Metrics are all around us, all the time. In fact, some of them are pervasive we forget that they’re metrics. 20 or 30 years ago, if you were in the mood for something to eat you might go to your … Continue reading →

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S’what’s a SWOT?

Posted on April 7, 2011 by Chris Niccolls

A lot of perfectly respectable management theory has been left to marinate in too long in strange acronyms and hard to remember buzz words. Good management doesn’t need to be complicated, and it doesn’t need a special language. There’s a … Continue reading →

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Cloud Watching…

Posted on April 6, 2011 by Chris Niccolls

There’s definitely a lot of talk about the Cloud, what it is and what it means for you. In fact, I recently viewed a YouTube video that stars a very animated Larry Ellison (Oracle’s CEO) opining on the definition of … Continue reading →

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Filling The Big Shoes

Posted on March 31, 2011 by Chris Niccolls

Every manager needs to plan for the development and promotion of their staff. Over the past few years the economy has been slow, so for most of us planning on how to hang on to our existing staff has usually … Continue reading →

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When Outsourcing Is Mature…

Posted on March 29, 2011 by Chris Niccolls

In the last post we talked about where outsourcing is headed for firms that have reached a “mature” stage. That is to say, if you operate out of one or more lower cost locations, all of which passed their “training” … Continue reading →

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Get off of my Cloud (computing)? Ummm… which IS my Cloud?

Posted on March 24, 2011 by Chris Niccolls

Cloud computing is certainly getting a lot of attention lately. It’s definitely a big thing, but it’s not a new thing. I’ve said before (and YES, I’m going to say it again) it’s really just the old “Mainframe with a … Continue reading →

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A Moment for Japan…

Posted on March 17, 2011 by Chris Niccolls

Rather than the normal discussions of corporate issues, I thought that today we would pause for a moment and just offer our best wishes to colleagues, friends and family in Japan. It’s difficult for us to really understand the level … Continue reading →

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Build vs. Buy: Transparent Operations Build Better Products!

Posted on March 16, 2011 by Chris Niccolls

Yesterday we looked at the old “Build vs. Buy” question, “When does it make sense to have an internal department develop a product/service, and when does it make sense to use an outside product/service?” We left off saying that a … Continue reading →

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