Applications for Midsize Organizations

Applications for Midsize Organizations: The Customer Experience is an excellent resource blog site written by Jim Lein of Oracle and features a wealth of pithy information about applications for emerging companies.

You can get there at: http://blogs.oracle.com/midsize/

Overcome Collaboration Roadblocks whitepaper

Overcome the Technological and Cultural Roadblocks to Effective Collaboration “Corporations are taking a fresh look at the way they support internal collaboration. Inspired by the millions of people using social networking tools and hundreds of new products that foster online collaboration, IT departments are looking to technology for answers. Forrester finds a serious flaw with this approach. While IT departments are implementing the latest fashionable tools, information and knowledge management (I&KM) professionals are finding that behaviors don’t change by virtue of new tools alone. Corporate culture takes the blame. But I&KM professionals rarely confront culture as their primary issue. We found insights from those who succeeded at improving collaboration by addressing culture and technology together.” — What It Takes To Foster A Culture of Collaboration, Forrester Research, Inc., January 28, 2009. Oracle would like to offer you the full independent report from Forrester Research, so you can more easily identify and build a solid collaboration strategy that enables your enterprise to: Overcome organizational structures that impede collaboration Select technology that transforms rather than distracts Align IT initiatives with executive priorities.

Email bruce.bain@oracle.com for a copy of the report, What It Takes To Foster A Culture of Collaboration.

Managing in a Downturn Whitepaper

  

Maintain Stability in a Financial Downturn

A new report from McKinsey provides a powerful argument for the importance of investing in IT during a downturn.

According to McKinsey’s “Managing IT in a Downturn”: 

“Except in the most dire circumstances, turning off technology investments during a downturn is counterproductive…. The trick is to scan for opportunities – such as improving the customer experience, reducing revenue leakage, and improving operating leverage.

“Investments in technology-enabled business processes can deliver up to ten times the impact of traditional IT cost reduction efforts, in some cases the increase in EBIT can be 3-5%.”

Managing IT with operational focus during downturns can actually aid organizations in:

• Developing New Insights (the need for a comprehensive and accessible view of operations) – A data management strategy will empower all levels of an organization to act more quickly and with greater confidence.

• Optimizing Processes (leveraging the insight developed to optimize both process and people) – What-if scenarios are more critical than ever; companies are looking out 30 days to manage through this financial crisis.

These activities are typically enabled though technology that might otherwise be cut or postponed in a slow economy. Postponing competitive and operational improvements may ultimately impact downstream performance.

Oracle has secured distribution rights.  I am happy to introduce this valuable article into your ongoing planning today.  Just contact me at bruce.bain@oracle.com for your copy.