Stories by: Bart Perkins

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Good Service Offers ROI 12 March, 2012 21:07:47

For many organizations, service centers are necessary evils that eat budget dollars while adding little value. Because they are viewed as overhead, many service centers (a.k.a. call centers, help desks, etc.) are outsourced to reduce costs. But that may not guarantee that you'll save money, and worse, it can alienate customers by presenting as your public face service-center staffers who may have insufficient product knowledge, language capabilities or civility.
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An argument for keeping IT training budgets intact 07 February, 2012 02:11:32

Every corporation wants an effective workforce, but few want to pay for the training that can give them one. Some executives seem to believe that their IT staff should be able to keep up with new ideas and technology on their own time, with minimal corporate financial support. Those organizations that do support training and education tend to do so only in good times, so those items are often among the first to be slashed when IT budgets get tight.
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Is social connectivity friend or foe to corporations? 07 January, 2012 03:16:48

In 1929, Frigyes Karinthy conjectured that anyone on Earth was connected to anyone else, on average, through just six people. Social networking may be increasing connectedness. Facebook recently studied connectedness among its 721 million active users, concluding that the average distance between any two Facebook users is now only 4.74 "hops" (down from 5.28 in 2008).
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Ensuring project success 21 November, 2011 22:10:00

Project plans sometimes go off the rails. That's always been the case, and with the perfection of the human race nowhere on the horizon, it will remain true. But we can reduce the number of projects that fail.
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Project Management: No horsing around 08 November, 2010 22:11:00

IT organizations are expected to complete projects on time, on budget and with high quality -- but often don't.
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Cloudy, with a chance of trouble 08 February, 2010 22:16:00

Many organizations are considering shutting down their data centers and migrating most IT functions to the cloud. Beware, though: Not all clouds are soft and fluffy .
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Take advantage of the recession 25 March, 2009 16:16:00

Virtually every IT organisation is feeling the impact of the global downturn. But there is a silver lining. It provides an opportunity to challenge the status quo, eliminate ineffective systems and services, and make changes that management has previously refused to consider.