Sure, I've been mobile for some time, but it's late spring in Chicago, and after such a hard winter, I am trying to take better advantage of the balmy weather and these newfangled mobile devices to get work done in alternative places, using alternative methods. The work is a bit different as well; I'm taking a hard run at some "digital strategy" topics, and forcibly breaking away from the manic focus on cost and productivity. Well, maybe "manic" is a…
Here's an interesting phenomenon I've encountered before ... When analyzing a specific section of a business, people seem to naturally focus attention and conversation on the top two or three customers/products/vendors that together represent (say) 20% of the revenues/costs/contracts. Our objective is to look at the data and identify opportunities (increase revenues, cut COGS, aggregate contracts); unfortunately, processing the data for these customers/products/vendors is currently a 100% manual task. Of course; this is why there is apparently so much "opportunity"…
Over the last few days, I've been in a few vendor demos, trading partner reviews, product pitches, and project discussions, all reviewing complex systems or processes, and tools / software / services to help out. Some important, common, and somewhat random issues kept popping into my mind, all about trying to have a discussion about complex systems / interactions ... Always be mindful that if something was easy, we probably would have done it already. Be alert for things that…