My daughter is studying earthquakes in social science at the moment. While I was helping her to study for a test, I was struck by the similarities between the geographic impact of an earthquake and the business impact of information spreading on social media.
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It’s springtime again and my favourite time of year, Christmas is now a distant memory and seeing the parks and road sides awash with vibrant colour is both up-lifting and motivating. It reminds me that it’s time to review the art of the possible and strive to keep my eyes open to the opportunities that the season brings.
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In this digital age the distribution model for businesses is being transformed, bringing with it a change in both consumer and business buying practices.
Albert Einstein was one of the greatest minds of the 20th Century, but few of us know that not only was he a pragmatic and astonishing theorist, but also a very spiritual and personable person, who was very much in touch with music, love and life.
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Many organizations, regardless of industry sector or geographical location, find themselves in a comfort zone when it comes to managing their inventory. A high percentage continue to use Material Requirements Planning (MRP), and some even use spreadsheets for their planning, despite having expensive systems in place. The problem is that MRP was developed at a time when businesses could use static demand forecasts over an extended time period to allow for long production runs. In the modern world, long runs are rare and demand can be highly variable.
People often assume that ERP systems are only for larger companies. But, consider this – if you run a small or medium sized business, do you lie awake at night worrying about the following things:
When people talk about the three critical factors of projects, they refer to scope, time and cost. It is well documented that you can’t change one without impacting the other two, yet it still seems to come as a surprise when a change in scope delays a project or increases the cost.
In a recent article by Paul Taylor in the Financial Times, he discusses the changing dynamics of the C-suite. He looks at the strong trend towards collaboration among roles as opposed to the multiple silos that we have seen in the past. Taylor talks to how CIOs, who have in the past focused primarily on IT, now need to be well-versed across a myriad of business responsibilities. In turn, the CEO and CFO need to understand IT and its role in the company.