How Far Would You Go…

… To Achieve Perfection In Your Information Management Initiatives?

Over a good few years, I have been fortunate to have experienced a variety of Information Management projects aimed at achieving an even more kaleidoscopic set of objectives (or lack of) out here in the Middle East (more specifically the GCC).

These projects have covered a variety of sources of information from Paper to PDF, from Web to Word, from Data to Documents.

The projects have also behaved in manners that depict a multiple-personality disorder, from Chaos to Calmness, from Schizophrenic to Stable, from Spontaneous to Structured, from Illogical to Intelligent.

Leave a commentBiz Intelligence, Management, Strategy, Tech

The Higher You Are, The Less You Know

Executives may be brilliant strategists. But strategists need foot soldiers to carry out tasks. The higher the executives are, the less they can know about what is happening. Yes, there can be summarized reporting and executive scorecards and dashboards. But monitoring the dials is not the same thing as moving the dials.

What strategies are most useful as performance improvement levers?

Leave a commentFinance, Management, Strategy

Game On! A TV Game Show for IT and Analysts?

Imagine a game show featuring three competing teams of contestants who are given a business problem involving choices. They get one week to design and test their hypotheses through experiments and return to the show with their answers. A panel of CEOs would judge the winning team.

Why not provide analysts, and the important role they perform, more visibility to the public? Make it fun. The popular TV show “The Big Bang Theory” highlights physicists. So why not have a TV game show for analysts and IT specialists to show off their investigative and discovery skills? We might call it “The Big Data Theory!”

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Long-Term Nurture: You’re Doing It Wrong

*A portion of this blog post is republished with permission from SiriusDecisions, Inc. To read the full post, please visit: http://www.siriusdecisions.com/blog/long-term-nurture-youre-doing-it-wrong/

In most organizations, “long-term nurture” is either a meaningless phrase, or an out. I will illustrate my point by sharing a conversation I recently overheard at a marketing event:

Leave a commentManagement, Strategy

Finance. Turbocharged.

Only 5% of respondents say their Finance organization is delivering Game Changing Value today? What’s that about? Please visit http://www.apqc.org/knowledge-base/documents/financial-planning-and-analysis-urgent-need-new-skills-2012-october-fm-comm to receive (free) access to the October 17 presentation. A new research paper prepared by APQC and EPM Channel argues that CFOs must now double-down on their investments in finance team training and development. The sense of urgency stems…

Leave a commentaccounting, CapEx, Finance, FP&A, Resources, Risk Management, Strategy, Videos, White Papers

15th Century Big Data - What Can We Learn From It?

“Big Data” is in vogue today. It’s the new fashion in business and technology. It’s a phenomenon that is difficult to explain but somehow managed to trek from the Technology Street to Wall Street and now blazing its trails into the Main Street.

The technocrats, the data scientists and the business executives are claiming that there hasn’t been anything like this throughout the human history.

But, is this true?

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Improving Strategy Execution through Effective Budgeting

Budgeting is nearly always portrayed as a management process that helps an organisation  to execute strategy.  Fine words indeed, but how many budgets and associated budget processes actually support that ideal?  Surveys reveal the reality that most budgets are totally disconnected from strategy and that the resources essential to success are often missing or unavailable. …

Leave a commentaccounting, Finance, Strategy