IT’s Worst Enemies
February 8, 2010
I saw an article on CIO Online this morning. Gave me a good chuckle. Thought you might appreciate it too. I know that I have met each of the “6 people” on their list and I’m sure you have too. Well worth a read if you have a few minutes today. If you don’t, here’s their top 6:
1. The Ostrich (think Exec)
2. The Penny Pincher (think CFO)
3. The Power User (think…power user)
4. The Politico (think CIO)
5. The Freeloader (think Uncle Stew)
6. You/Me/Us (duh!)
There’s even an opportunity to discover your own IT personality (there’s 8 of those…not to be confused with the 6 enemies above). My results?
“Holy split personality! The Empty Suit, The Human Roadblock, The Promiser — make up your mind already!”
Happy reading!
- Jodie
CEO Tweets Resignation
February 4, 2010
@OpenJonathan Today’s my last day at Sun. I’ll miss it. Seems only fitting to end on a #haiku. Financial crisis/Stalled too many customers/CEO no more
That’s the last Tweet from Jonathan Schwartz, Sun’s former CEO. It was preceeded by his final blog just 1 week earlier. http://blogs.sun.com/jonathan/entry/where_life_takes_me_next
In the time of Social Media, how we get the news is not nearly as riveting as how FAST we get news. Via Facebook you get birth announcements, wedding invitations, divorce annoucements…via LinkedIn yo usee job changes and now via Twitter – resignations. All real time. Faster than you can spill the announcement to your immediate family, you can notify hundreds/thousands (or in Jonathan Schwartz’s 9107 people).
If you are a company, how do you manage this flow of communication? More importantly how do you exploit this communication and how do you track the effectiveness? I think that the next generation of BI will track social media impact to financial results and/or to customer satisfaction. Imagine if you could track the ROI of your marketing efforts! If a Marketer’s MBO could include # of tweets per day and % increase of profit and truly be tied together!! Ah…dreamy
CEO Dashboard of the future
Good luck Jonathan!
- Jodie
- Writers note: when I started writing this at 4:51PM, @openJonathan had 9107 followers. 22 minutes later (5:13PM, he now has 9,151). A quirky, unexpected message gets a following…quickly!
NKY Women’s Initiative
January 29, 2010
Thanks to Suzanne Lorch for providing me with some pictures from the event! If you missed, check out the Chamber website for their next event.
- Jodie
Tomorrow’s Forecast
January 29, 2010
I am always looking for different ways to describe what LÛCRUM does. Sure there is the standard response of “LÛCRUM helps companies to turn data into useful and actionable information,” but that can be tough to visualize. Sometimes it helps to use more vivid and familiar examples of things to explain the services we offer. Think of the weather. If all of the important weather components were just structured data in table or spreadsheet, it might look like this:
So sure, I could find what I was looking for…”what’s the temp at 9AM?” It takes a pair of readers a few seconds, but it’s there. There are so many other data points, however. Is it getting warmer or colder? Is it going to rain today? Certainly the other data points are there that would help me to make the decision – relative humidity, cloud cover, wind speed – but I may need to consult the company metadata to understand what it all means and if those numbers mean it will be getting hotter or colder. THIS IS DATA. Your org has it…you’ve got to make sense of it.
What LÛCRUM does, is make this DATA meaningful. We like to call it Business Intelligence or Data Visualization. Simply stated, we take all of those data points and help you to make better business decisions (or in this case, help you to decide if you should wear a coat or bring your umbrella).
THIS IS BI!
THIS
IS
BUSINESS
INTELLIGENCE!!
Taking lots of data and making it meaningful…yeah, that’ s what LÛCRUM does.
- Jodie
NKY Women’s Initiative
January 28, 2010
Today I joined 399 other local women at the SOLD OUT Kickoff event for the Northern Kentucky Chamber of Commerce Women’s Initiative. What an experience! LUCRUM’s own Suzanne Lorch is the Chair of the Women’s Initiative. In the last year, she and 50 other women who live/work/conduct business in NKY decided that the focus of the group should be “to help women Connect…Grow…Achieve”.
The programming over the coming months will include a monthly Happy Hour, mentoring programs and roundtable discussions. Additionally, they are establishing an on-line directory for their members which will include other women’s groups and organizations with similar missions.
The Keynote Speaker today was Maribeth Rahe, CEO & President of Fort Washington Investment Advisiors, Inc. She provided the group with her wisdom on how to succeed in business. She provided the group with these 13 pearls of wisdom:
The Rule of 13
- Be strong, not weak.
- Always be willing to do what is right for your company, your clients, your colleagues, and your community.
- Learn from experience – both yours and that of others.
- Be open minded, flexible, and change-oriented.
- Never settle for the status quo or anything expedient.
- Learn to trust your instincts.
- Earn your stripes, daily.
- Measure your performance.
- Support your team personally and professionally.
- Be encouraging, not negative.
- Celebrate success.
- Say “Thank you”.
- Think before your speak or act.
Thanks to Suzanne and Maribeth and all of the other wonderful contributors to the event. Hope to see you at the next one!
- Jodie
Do you really want an iPad
January 27, 2010
iPad
I wrote a post earlier today prior to seeing the official “unveiling” of the iPad. After watching 10 minutes of the broadcast, I trashed that version. Here is what I saw in the iPad…
1. It’s a iPhone on steroids. All of the things I love about my iPhone are here.
2. It’s cool…yeah, I mean it…cool.
3. It replaces the newspaper…with a newspaper. You wanna read the NY Times? They’ll have an app for that. With a crystal clear 9″ x 7″ screen it will be better than the newspaper. I sure hope my Cincinnati Enquirer gets on board with this! Here’s a few more specs for you: http://www.pcworld.com/article/187870/ipad_specs_what_apple_announced_and_what_we_still_dont_know.html
4. For business apps, like mail, I can type longer messages with the larger keyboard. My fingers won’t get tired from the one key at a time keystrokes. This will be great when out of the office. I’ve often waited to get back to the office to respond to a mail message that I say when I was out, simply because my response would take to long on the little keyboard. Even blog posts could be written on the iPad.
5. Small & lightweight – THIS is the device to take with you on your next trip out of town!
So it has no hard drive…so what! With Google docs, I don’t need one. If I keep my files on SharePoint, I can use Lucrum’s own iPhone app – Attache to access those docs. (Hey Steve – the SDK is already available for the iPad…can you work on that Attache app??)
Wow! So excited! Wonder how long I’ll be able to keep from buying one of these??
- Jodie
Hello 7755 Montgomery Road
January 26, 2010
Our new building
For those of you that read my blog last week Farewell to 312 Plum Street, you will be happy to know that Eric made it safely to 7755 Montgomery Road. Now we begin the daunting task of unpacking, reorganizing, hanging (pictures), and navigating our new landscape. Hope to see you soon!
Matt has a lot of unpacking to do!
The Future of Business Intelligence
January 25, 2010
January 2010 Cover
Have you heard of Technology First? Technology First is a Dayton, Ohio based industry-led, industry-driven trade association dedicated to:
- Proactively Representing IT in the Region
- Increasing understanding of Technology First and its value
- Recognizing and promoting our membership
- Highlighting niche technology companies
Technology First looks to strengthen technology thought leadership by inspiring innovation, focusing on new ideas and best practices, presenting leading edge industry information that is both strategic to business and technical folks. They also look to inspire volunteer leadership by encouraging stronger member participation which involves more working committees and develops programming to best meet industry needs. Additionally, they look to engage in conversations with technology community by leveraging interactive social media.
I was asked to prepare an article on the Future of Business Intelligence. Imagine my surprise when that article was selected as their cover story this month! Click here to read. I’d love to get your thoughts.
Have a great week!
- Jodie
Farewell 312 Plum Street
January 22, 2010
Today the folks at LÛCRUM are closing the doors to 312 Plum Street forever. *sniff* It’s hard to believe that this day is here. LÛCRUM moved in in January 1997. I joined LÛCRUM in July 1998. There are a lot of memories here. I can almost recall every coffee stain, oops marker stains on our white board and worn spots on the chairs. EWWWWW!
Look at that “Admin” cube! I remember when I joined LÛCRUM we actually had someone answer the phones for us. Does any company do that anymore? (On an alternate tangent…I hate those phone systems that require you to say your option…just let me press a darn number!).
Anyway, we’re packing up 13 years of memories, dirt, proposals, old shirts, coffee pots, books (anyone need a slightly used Crystal Reports v5 book?), cables, monitors, obsolete servers, chairs, tables and…
PEOPLE!!!!
So, where are we taking all of these things? We’re heading north to Kenwood. Next week, you can find us at 7755 Montgomery Road Suite 160. I have to say, I am soooooooooooo very excited. In addition to heading to Kenwood, we are also sending a lot of people to become virtual employees. That brings a new host of challenges. GoToMeeting, conference calls, home office organization…wow!
Things will be different for sure on Monday. But one thing is certain, we’re still focused on data and we still believe in making data visual and easy-to-understand for all!
See you in Kenwood!
Building the BI Solution for Small IT Shops
January 8, 2010
Next Wednesday, I get an opportunity to speak with several CIOs of companies with small to mid-size IT shops (less than 20 people in IT). These CIOs have the unique challenge of maintaining day-to-day operations for their companies while balancing the demands of bringing new technologies to their organizations that will help them to gain competitive advantage. WHAT A CHALLENGE THESE FOLKS HAVE!! The same guy that keeps Exchange running is also finding ways to minimize IT spend and figuring out how to integrate a hand-held device into the shop floor, or into a salespersons hand.
My topic for next Wednesday is BI…Business Intelligence. More specifically, how do you bring data to users who may not be asking using staff that is already stretched to the limit? As I’ve discussed in prior posts, most find BI to be a big challenge that is expensive to implement and often times fails to deliver what was promised. This week I saw a small IT shop that tried to solve the data problem “quick and dirty”. They had the right concepts and brought the right tools to the party, but they were missing the final piece…making the data make sense to the user community. Essentially once the data had been aggregated it was “dumped” on the end users. They had data but it still wasn’t providing any insight.
So how do you bring BI in a cost effective, meaningful way to an organization? I look at it this way:
- Identify the end need. What do the users want to see when this is finished?
- Identify the available data. What’s available today that will help solve #1 above?
- Identify the gaps. Can the gap data “wait”? Or do we need it before we can make meaning out of #1?
- Deliver…deliver…deliver (repeat). If the users have a weekly meeting where they will review this data, they should have one new element (minimum) each week until all are presented. This gains buy in and confirms that everyone understands the end game.
This method works for both small and large organizations. It takes discipline and time, an on-going dialog between the developer and user, and most importantly a developer that understands the business challenges and can bring ideas to help solve those challenges.
- Happy Building!