What A Dead Squirrel Taught Me About Premium Pricing

Many companies worry about the commoditization of their offerings and their inability to justify premium pricing-but if you figure out how to take care of your customers’ “dead squirrels,” you’re golden.

Social Business Transformation

Rapid changes in consumer behavior, fuelled by the ever increasing popularity of social media and the adoption of consumer technologies in the workplace, urge companies worldwide to rethink their positions. People spend more and more time online to connect and interact with friends, to publish opinions, and to purchase goods and services. Employees share their views online, strengthening or weakening the corporate brand.

Financial Risk Systems — So Nineties. Why Are They Back?

…some firms have found that tactical approaches — doing just enough to meet the reporting requirements — have not been sufficient for increasing regulatory demands or the needs of internal business users.

Apparently risk wasn’t entirely solved during the 1980s and 1990s when big systems went into banks from Algorithmics, SunGard and other major players. SAS recently ranked in the upper right quad of a Chartis report on risk systems, along with Algorithmics, now part of IBM; Moody’s analytics; SunGard and Oracle.

An Austrian bank took the tactical approach to create reports from existing infrastructure, Rogers said by way of example.

“But tactical can mean not necessarily considering all the elements you need. You meet the reporting for your regulator, but you don’t have the long term infrastructure to extend those reports to areas you really want to work on for stress tests, capital planning or overall risk management reporting.”

What CFOs Need to Know About the Cloud

“The Cloud” has become one of the hottest buzz topics in the industry this year, and what started out as a topic mostly of interest to IT executives is quickly moving to the radar screen of CFOs and Finance Executives.

Some of the advantages of cloud-based applications include improved time to value, reduced up-front costs, leveraging 3rd party skill sets and having a scalable environment to support future growth. Some of the considerations and risks include security, performance, integration of cloud-based applications with on-premise systems and long-term costs of ownership.

Find out more here.

3 (Incredibly Simple) Questions The Most Successful People Use To Change The World

I’ve heard it said that the most brilliant business ideas are often the simplest. From my experience, it’s true. In fact, when I am fortunate enough to receive sage advice from a famously gifted person, I’ll often ask myself, “Why didn’t I think of that?” So here I humbly share with you a winning formula that I see leaders use again and again and again…to change the world. Use this formula the next time you feel stuck—whether you are trying [...]

How Creative Is Your Team?

Are you creative? Try this simple test…

The well-known known illusion above can be seen in two ways: as both a duck and a rabbit. Which do you see first? And if you see one, can you also see the other?

Most people see the duck first and can flip between the two representations, but the question is: how easy is it for you to flip between them? Does it require real mental strain, or can you do it at will?

Wiseman et al. (2011) had a hunch that the ability to flip between representations is related to creativity.

But What Type of Big Data Works in Classrooms?

There’s big talk these days about “big data” in education—looking for patterns of behavior as students click through online classrooms and using the insights to improve instruction. One start-up company that manages online discussion forums for thousands of courses recently performed its first major analysis of behavioral trends among students, and found what its leaders say amounts to advice for instructors.

Quantify and Measure CSR initiatives and Cause Marketing using Web Presence Analytics

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiatives bring a variety of advantages to business, from increased awareness to alliance with community causes, health and safety and further definition of your brand while benefiting society. But in order to continually improve returns, campaigns need to be analyzed from a social media perspective.