Activity-Based Business Process Reengineering

Consider the importance and magnitude of most business process reengineering projects. The time, the money, the systems, the consultants – usually driven by some compelling external or internal concern – an acquisition, a new product line, competition and a topsy-turvy market, the need to innovate or improve quality, to change the corporate culture, to simplify, to cut costs drastically. To transform the business.

Analytics for Your Varied Team Member Styles

Constructing or selecting a team is not the same as team building. The latter focuses on team cohesion and cooperation, whereas the former, by definition, precedes this exercise in camaraderie.

An effective team requires a balance of skills and team member styles. The problem with most departmental teams, and even executive teams, is that certain team member styles tend to be over-represented in particular functions. You end up with nearly everyone in the team exhibiting one particular style and therefore competing with each other for that one team member role, while other styles and roles go begging.

A model I was introduced to many years ago delineates eight distinct team member styles:

Is it Cloud or is it Desktop?

The information technology industry has seen a lot of disruption in recent years, with complexity and risk in systems rising as users demand more functional mobile capability and software developers struggle to protect and preserve their assets (users included). Skyline (by Uni-Data) is jumping right into the middle of it with Numecent, delivering solutions for software developers and cloud providers alike, and answering the question of whether it’s cloud or desktop. The answer is “yes”.

FP&R, or, How We Kicked The Spreadsheet Habit

Are you missing the “A” in your FP&A (financial planning and analysis)? Maybe missing some of the “P” as well? Are you and your department getting a bit tired of the “FR” gig you seem to have landed?

Metrics: Too Many Different Ways of Keeping Score

You’ve likely played an organized sport at some time in your life - How many different ways were there to keep score? How many different ways were there to determine the winner? Just one – right? It was goals, or runs, or points, or something, but never goals and/or assists, or some weird combination of runs, hits, errors, average, ERA, RBI’s and on-base percentage.

Now, ask the same question about your business – how many ways do you have of keeping score, of determining if you’ve “won” (i.e. met your key strategic objective)?