Emergic: April 11, 2005 Archives

Monday, April 11, 2005

IBM's Business Transformation

Business Week writes about IBM's focus on business transformation services: "BM, with its legions of PhDs and closets full of patents, is not built to duke it out with the likes of Dell. Palmisano's strategy promises a neat escape. Instead of battling in cutthroat markets, he takes advantage of all the low-cost technology by packaging it, augmenting it with sophisticated hardware and software, and selling it to customers in a slew of what he calls business transformation services. That way IBM rides atop the commodity wave -- and avoids drowning in it."

Management | PermaLink | Comments (2)

It is a very interesting topic although some may term it as old vine in new bottle or vice versa. We have traditionally had Biz Process engineering, biz process reverse engineering, biz process re-engineering, biz process forward engineering and now biz process transformation..
So is transformation a form of engineering .. Definitely.. Engineering does mean to engineer a thing/product/service to a certain target.
It is just jargonry at play and of course those in consulting ( read BIG 5, SAP consultants, Siebel consultants et al ) have known this trick in book for years.. IBM has set off a trend.. sell software dirt cheap and sell implementation consulting by an expensive hourly rate.. In car business also, dealers dont make much on car sales, but more on spares and recurring servicings..
I did read an article on IBM's internal BPT project in Computer mag, and feel it is definitely the forward path. We need to rework existing biz processes,efficiencies,domain knowledge rather than introduce totally new ways which throws things out of gear and causes immense sufferring to one and all.

Posted by Krishna Iyer

diazepam | carisoprodol online | hydrocodone online

Posted by linda

Emergence Effect

Kevin Werbach nicely summarises what we are seeing around us: "Something that gets me quite jazzed these days is the way so many innovations are linking up and leveraging one another. It's not just, 'hey, check out that cool company!' Blogs, search-based innovations, tags, and so forth allow both new startups and established platforms like Google, Amazon, and Yahoo! to build on one another. The emergent whole is greater than the sum of the parts."

General | PermaLink | Comments (0)

Software as Service Conference

Torsten Jacobi has 8 posts blogging the conference.

Enterprise Software | PermaLink | Comments (0)

Ajax: Promise or Hype?

QuirksBlog has a detailed discussion.

Software | PermaLink | Comments (0)

Corporate RSS Made Simple

Corporate RSS - Applied has some ideas "for corporate RSS feeds to external constituents including; your partners, your vendors, your customers, remote employees, etc. "

Enterprise Software | PermaLink | Comments (1)

Very nice link... Look forward to reading more on those lines...
In todays market place, we need proven case studies where technology can be introduced in the business place and the benefits explained for the switch. Businesses are ALWAYS wary of being the guinea pig when it comes to technology but sprinkle the tech buss words and the hype and it has the cascading effect on the business heirarchy.. Everyone from the IT manager to the directors on the board are keen on jumping on it and take credit for it while praying hard that it does not fail and fall flat. Also, tech buzz words help create the awe effect and extract precious resouces through capital outlays.. Although the bust of 99-2001 of IT ecommerce sites had a significant impact, every company realises that better software is the one of the very few ways to improve biz efficiencies.

Posted by Krishna Iyer

The Costs of Long Tail Businesses

Kevin Laws writes that "when individual transactions are very small, non-monetary costs dominate."

Chris Anderson of Long Tail fame recently posed a question in a post on the economics of abundance: what happens when it costs almost nothing to produce and stock one more item?

One surprising result is that non-monetary costs dominate the transaction. Most of you are familiar with monetary costs - pay $0.99 to download a song from iTunes (or $0.10 from AllofMp3). However, as the monetary costs fall, the most important impediments to a transaction are non-monetary: search costs and psychic costs.

It is not enough for a company to aggregate lots of small things. Reducing search costs by matching content to users is critical for Long Tail businesses.

Psychic costs measure the stress of having to think about a transaction.

General | PermaLink | Comments (1)

Very significant factor but it is a catch-22 for business as well..
Higher prices - skim the market - less stress on hardware/software resources bcos volumes generally lower.
lower prices - high volume - higher requirement for reliability,stability,after-sales support.. All add up.
Take ebay.. significant inputs in the form of hardware/software resources.. but volumes transalate into good money as well.. Also would recommend reading of ebay's transformation from a high cost shop floor using sun/hp/ibm servers to rack based linear scalable open source Linux servers.. Huge difference..

Posted by Krishna Iyer

TECH TALK: When Things Go Wrong: The Journey’s Pitfalls

As an entrepreneur, I have made more failures than successes. And that is probably true for most entrepreneurs. No one starts contemplating failure, but for various reasons, failure ends up being an integral part of the terrain. So, dealing with failure becomes an important challenge for entrepreneurs – one that decides whether they work towards eliminating their errors and redoubling their efforts to succeed, or they quit the field and take up employment elsewhere.

When things go wrong, the only person who can set things right is the entrepreneur – because it is the entrepreneur who knows why the business got there. Unlike professional managers who can leave (or get fired) if things don’t work, an entrepreneur cannot walk away. The battle has to be fought – and won. There is no escape route. Entrepreneurship is a one-way street – the only way is forward. And that is what makes it so exciting. Ask entrepreneurs and they will gladly tell you that they’ll do it again. Entrepreneurs think that they will succeed even through the odds are stacked against them. The story of entrepreneurship has more failures than successes – and yet this is a reality that no entrepreneur will accept!

When things go wrong for entrepreneurs, it is a time for deep introspection – and action. This Tech Talk series is about those difficult times. I have experienced more than a handful of such periods. Each is like a crucible experience. When one is going through that challenging patch, it is hard to imagine how business and life could get better. There are few people one can talk to. At times, it is even hard for oneself to accept that the business is failing – or has failed. It is like part of a train wreck that is happening – in slow motion.

While entrepreneurs can take many steps to try and avoid failure, one needs to accept that failure is part of the game. Things will – and do – inevitably go wrong. That is the path the entrepreneur treads on – by choice. Of course, one does not naturally set oneself up for failure. But, inevitably, failure happens. A wrong decision, a series of seemingly inconsequential actions, an external event – it could be anything that can cause a business in its early stage to land into trouble.

While one can argue that it is the entrepreneur’s errors which have caused the situation, one needs to also look beyond that. It is also times like these that bring out the best in some entrepreneurs. This is what, as they say, separates the men from the boys. These are the situations which are like a trial by fire for the entrepreneur – provided the trying times can be tackled. It is rare to find an entrepreneur who doesn’t have stories about the difficult times. More often than not, we try and forget about them – like a bad dream. But these times are not easy to hide away in memories. For anyone who has gone through them, these are the days when all one can think of is negativities and collapse. And yet, one has to deal with the situation – one day at a time, one event at a time.

Tomorrow: My Failures

Tech Talk | PermaLink | Comments (2)

Very poignant thoughts indeed, coming from a thouroughbred entrepreneur..
Can't agree less... It is an dilemma that poses interesting situation. Should you go work for someone else or be confident about yourself and rake in the glory and brickbats. Should you seek solace in the security of the pay check or subject yourself and your family through the vagaries of your belief in the buziness idea..
It is also true that a ship is built to venture into the seas not to sit in the harbour.. But then all that floats is not a ship either.. Small boats cannot tackle high seas nor fishing every person's cup of tea.
IMHO, an entrepreneur is one who can tackle diverse requirements of concept, finance, marketing, challenge, ability to digest failures, prevent successes running the ego amok, to finding balance in stress as well. Only the toughest and the street smart often have the fancied rags-to-riches stories.. For the bulk of them its just a continuous process of attrition which makes their life meaningful and fruitful.. The hope of success/riches is what propels.. and Machiavelian theories on human greed ( not just for money) cannot be very behind.
Saw a nice episode of The Apprentice yesterday which was a kind of a summary so far and I liked the last part where Trump says " You need to have lots of passion to work ... Without a positive attitude and passion to work, you CANNOT succeed in life" Ahem!!

Posted by Krishna Iyer

It's cool site please visit our site.http://www.tristatemeds.com
and http://lamictal.tristatemeds.com
http://lexapro.tristatemeds.com
http://meridia.tristatemeds.com
http://nexium.tristatemeds.com
http://omnicef.tristatemeds.com
http://paxil.tristatemeds.com
http://propecia.tristatemeds.com
http://prozac.tristatemeds.com
http://valtrex.tristatemeds.com
http://zithromax.tristatemeds.com
http://zoloft.tristatemeds.com
http://zyrtec.tristatemeds.com
http://www.shopeastwest.com/med
http://www.shopeastwest.com/med/health-wellness/Valtrex/136.html
http://www.shopeastwest.com/med/health-wellness/Lamictal/161.html
http://www.shopeastwest.com/med/health-wellness/Lexapro/34.html
http://www.shopeastwest.com/med/health-wellness/Zoloft/76.html
http://www.shopeastwest.com/med/health-wellness/Nexium/105.html
http://www.shopeastwest.com/med/health-wellness/Prozac/98.html
http://www.shopeastwest.com/med/health-wellness/Omnicef/201.html
http://www.shopeastwest.com/med/health-wellness/Zyrtec/79.html
http://www.shopeastwest.com/med/health-wellness/Paxil/49.html
http://www.shopeastwest.com/med/health-wellness/Zithromax/74.html
http://www.shopeastwest.com/med/health-wellness/Propecia/82.html
http://www.shopeastwest.com/med/health-wellness/Meridia/41.html
http://www.shopeastwest.com/catalog/Carpets/28.html
http://www.shopeastwest.com/catalog/Art-Painting/Oil-On-Canvas/26_31.html
http://generic-medicine.blogspot.com/
http://20six.co.uk/toponseo
http://generic-drug.blogdrive.com/
http://www.blogstudio.com/GenericDrug/index.html
http://generic-drug.blog.ca/
http://generic-drug.blog.co.uk/
http://generic-drug.blog.de/
http://generic-drug.blog-city.com/index.cfm
http://generic-drug.blogbeee.com/
http://generic-drug.blogbugs.org/
http://www.nyasasoftec.com/
http://www.bloggator.com/node/3190

Posted by bob