10 Common Mobile BI Assumptions You Should Avoid

If organizations are going to utilize mobile business intelligence (BI) to drive growth and profitability, they must take a holistic approach that leverages technology’s strengths and minimize its weaknesses within a supported infrastructure. Moreover, organizations must deliver the power of mobile BI through innovation and without disruption. Just as we know that mobile isn’t just about one or two sexy apps, the step to gain the ability to deliver reports on a mobile device alone doesn’t guarantee success with mobile BI.

Here are the ten most common mistaken assumptions people make with mobile BI projects.

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The Death of the Corporate Bully

Years from now, the depiction of a star performer running over colleagues on their climb up the corporate ladder might seem as quaintly dated as Donald Draper pouring a stiff scotch at 11am in an episode of Mad Men.

The tide has changed, likely for good, away from the individual star corporate bully and toward the “network performer”. CEB research has identified a tectonic shift in how employees accomplish their jobs that puts the network performer in the driver’s seat of corporate performance.

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Tales of an ERP Implementation

Jelly beans are tricky business.

They look simple enough — little pills of confectionary goodness, a handful of colors, a handful of flavors, consumable by the handful. Nothing could be easier.

But at Jelly Belly — the gourmet jelly bean pioneer from Fairfield, Calif. — these tiny treats represent one of the most complicated global process manufacturing feats in the industry.

“Making jelly beans is an extremely, extremely complicated manufacturing process,” explains Dan Rosman, vice president of IT at Jelly Belly.

There are, he says, 50 official flavors of Jelly Belly jelly beans, with another 130 unofficial flavors in the mix. Each of those 180 flavors, from “buttered popcorn” to “stinky socks,” require seven to 14 days of cooking, cooling, molding, drying and shell-building to complete — a process it has taken the company 144 years to perfect.

And that’s just the beginning.

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5 Reasons Not to Cut Your 2014 Marketing Budget

Understand the changing role of marketing and you’ll likely want to re-examine how you value and fund this function.

As budgeting season approaches, we huddle around projector screens and decide how to best allocate the overall expenditure budget. We try to determine which expenses are likely to have the biggest impact on growing the top and bottom lines.

After more than 15 years in the industrial world, I’ve learned one certainty: marketing budgets are the most unloved of all budgets at most industrial companies. It also raises two crucial questions:

Why is marketing the first budget line to get axed when the overall numbers don’t jive?
Is doing more with less really the path to success?
There are five good reasons why maintaining a smart and healthy marketing budget could be the most important thing you do to ensure the future of your business.

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Millennials’ Lack of Analytical Acumen Could Hurt You

As big data buzzes louder and louder in the business world, I grow more and more worried. Numbers aren’t my thing. I’m guilty of using my fingers to add, my cellphone’s calculator to multiply and squinting when subtracting in my head. I hope you’d agree that I’m better with words.

Because of my own experience, when I came across research from the American Management Association, or AMA, that stated millennials have the least analytical acumen among all generations in the workforce, I wasn’t surprised. First, we have the least experience, and with experience comes acumen. Second, we already know the U.S. needs to develop a stronger workforce of experts in science, technology, engineering and math, so what’s the news?

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How Flexible Financial Planning Can Improve Your Business Performance

“The financial crisis and subsequent recession turned these efforts on their head, rendering almost every five-year plan into worthless scraps of paper,” according to the article.

While this opinion is apparently common, and may be true, it uncovers a need for both long-term planning and flexible adaptation.

Organizations clearly project for a reason. The reality is that, major worldly events, economic changes and other news worthy events happen all the time. It may not change your business overnight, but you can be sure change will happen over time.

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The Data Behind Speed: Trade-offs in Fast Food Speed and Variety

Firms are settling for being fast enough. Sliding a bit on service times — as long as it doesn’t get crazy long — is acceptable because it let’s the firms distinguish themselves. A unique salad offering separates Wendy’s from McDonalds’ and potentially draws a premium price. The question is at what point would service times become a problem. That is, at what point does greater product variety stretch out service so long that a new salad or taco just ain’t worth it?

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We Were Once That Kid: Curious and Analytical

Although you’re now a grown up adult, you probably remember what your life was like when you were a child. I am referring to elementary school ages. We all can look back on what we were like then –somewhat naïve children. Imagine if you could go back in time and speak to yourself when you were that kid. What would you say to yourself? What advice would you give yourself knowing what you know now?

More specifically, what counsel or warnings would offer that would better prepare yourself to leverage analytics, big data and quantitative methods to help organizations improve their performance? More importantly, what would you say to yourself that would lead to a more fulfilling career and job prospects than you have now?

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