IT Strategy

The development of strategic and operational plans for effective provision of information services to support business objectives.

Windows Vista & Office 2007 – Captain Cranky’s Comments

by

Well, what can I say?  I have had Windows Vista & Office 2007 now for about six months.  Am I happy with both of them? 

Short answer:  No.  Long Answer:  No.

Why?  Vista seems to be no major improvement whatsoever in the user experience – and as for much vaunted reliability, I seem to recover a lot from unspecified and insoluble crashes of the operating system.  Perhaps this is because I tend to push the machine and have installed a chunk of open source software and such like, but in the main it’s about as vanilla a machine as I have ever had.  I have at least one friend who bought a laptop with Vista, found it kept failing and was told to ‘go back to xp’.  So he bought more RAM (surely, 1gb of RAM should be enough?) with an OEM of XP (yay for the program!) only to find that the problem was with the graphics card. 

Unfortunately for Vista – he found that XP was much more stable, did more than everything he wanted, and was, basically, better!  So he’s stuck with XP – he’s not going to bother with the pain involved in reinstalling.

I personally find Vista to be OK – the much vaunted AeroGlass display is interesting and worth a wow or two the first couple of times but after that, you don’t use it.  And some of the things it does are, frankly, terrible (I can’t stomach  the new ‘start menu’ – it’s find for the advanced user (particularly if you type – yay me) but for the faint-of-heart?  Not so good). 

I think Vista suffers terribly from bloat and useless, pretty functions.  Stand-alone – I can’t see a compelling argument for it yet at home.  It’s a great way to slow down a terrifically fast machine.  Maybe it’s better when you have a network.

I do think that one thing going in its favour, though, is that I still think that Linux has a way to go with usability and software selection and installation – I know, there’s ‘35000 components of software’ in each standard Linux install – but here’s the thing, if it’s all dross, it doesn’t help me.  I did try to get Linux on a stick going from a USB Stick.  That’s a day of my life that I won’t get back (it doesn’t help that the magazine I was using had the completely wrong instructions – better instructions were available free, on the web!).  Post-script – Linux still doesn’t work for me on a stick.

So Vista – it’s fine, not compelling, I think it’s a pain in the rear end to have to install it and manage it, and I don’t think Linux would make me feel better.

As for MS Office 2007.  Where do I begin?  My purest vitriol is saved for this one.  The ribbon interface is completely non-intuitive; things are in seemingly bizarre places until you think like a six-year-old, and many functions that I use regularly I can only access through the old keystrokes (you have to hunt through help to find where they now live – frankly, I spent fifteen years honing my skills – why did they change it on me? God forbid that somebody else would have to learn something on their own). 

I think feature bloat is rampant all over MS Office.  It’s bizarre some of the features you get.  I think most of what I get would be able to be done with Open Office.  And the file format change seems destined to backfire – as XML the new version is basically useless, but the old file format causes Office to complain and advise about lost features and incompatibilities. 

Argh.

I used to be a Microsoft fanboy.  I think the ‘Live’ series of applications are terrific (please, someone give those guys a promotion – and head them on over to MS Office, please please please!).  Visio is great (although damnably expensive, but there you go – if it’s great, you should pay!).  And Outlook seems fairly terrific to me as well, all things considered. 

So there you go – Captain Cranky returns at his best…

Demystifying Web 2.0

by

Being a presentation that was co-presented with Kate Andrews of Knowable (website not available yet) back in July for the Australian Institute of Management.  The presentation is a basic introduction to web 2.0 issues and concerns.  I recall that it was a lot of fun to create – again, giving me an excuse to research Second Life.

Although I have to say, the more I look at Second Life the less I feel the need to use it…

Anyway, Web 2.0 is not only Second Life and all sorts of issues (Folksonomies, Wikis, RSS, Weatherbonk, podcasting, etc), so the presentation was, I think, quite interesting:

 

For the sake of the children, there is no photo of the venue in which this presentation was given.

The impact of the internet on business

by

Internet marketing is a business imperative because the Internet is an irrevocable and unstoppable trend. Even if you have a traditional “brick-and-mortar” business, you’ll lose valuable customers without an online presence. People routinely search for goods and services with their computers in lieu of the yellow pages. If your business isn’t on the Web, customers will likely choose another company with whom to do business, and this is one the reasons why online business have more successful that regular business.

Also, online advertising is cheap. Advertising in the phone book or a newspaper is expensive, especially if you want an ad that has a presence on the page. An ad in an Internet directory is generally free, and you can include links directing customers to your Web site for more information. And because you can provide customers with a wealth of information, they no longer have to pick up the phone to have their questions answered.

Although you don’t need a Web site to register your site in an online directory, your marketing efforts will be much more effective if you have your own site. The first thing to do is to register a domain name. The name of your business is usually a good place to start, because it can help to build your brand and will be easy for customers to remember. If that’s not available, you may have to settle for another name. Before you commit, give your domain name serious consideration; the name you choose will be your company’s online identity for years to come. B2b marketing software also became a need for online business.

Once you choose your domain name, you’ll need to build a professional Web site. You can use templates provided by your Web host, hire a Web designer to develop your site, or use software to design it your self.

The difficult part is to rise above the crowd and differentiate yourself from your competition. This is where a well thought out Internet marketing plan can help. Here are the main components of any good online marketing plan:

  • Registering your site with search engines and directories
  • Optimizing your site for search engines
  • Sponsoring search engine keywords
  • Building a database of customer email addresses
  • Sending email newsletters
  • Buying online ads

Business Process and Change Management

by

I note that I really need to keep up with this blogging thing so watch this space some more.

On Monday just gone I gave a presentation on change management (in the context of business process management) for the Ark Group.  I did a fair chunk of research for this presentation – I wanted to feel that I was on top of the topic – and so it does have some (what I consider to be) fairly good content.  The presentation notes are a bit big I think for a blog post (but I will probably put it in the articles section eventually.

For anyone that is wondering (which is perhaps 3 people and my dog), the Applied Insight website will be up and running in the next couple of weeks.  Until then it will be under construction.

The Powerpoint for the presentation on Monday is provided below.  The speaker’s briefing I was given is below:

Monday 26 November

3:45pm:  Business process management and change management

  1. Moving towards an enterprise process-driven organisation
  2. Dealing with employees who have ownership over their processes
  3. Understanding why change management has been tagged as the major factor behind BPM success

Micheal Axelsen, Director, Applied Insight Pty Ltd

 

You can download the PDF handout of the Powerpoint slides on the below link:

20071126_bpm_cm

And the complete paper is here:

20071126_bpm_cm_handout

I believe the presentation was well received by the participants in the conference, but of course I will wait for feedback from the wonderful Velerie Moerbeck and Aimee Rootes of Ark Group before the jury is in on that.  I wish I had been able to stay longer at the end of the presentation, but being from Brisbane I of course had to fly back on Monday night – and as it was I only checked in 5 minutes before the plane commenced boarding.  Traffic across town was horrific.

Of course that was academic, as flying Virgin the flight was of course delayed (for the fourth time in a row) by at least half an hour.  Grrr.

Implementing Systems for Improved Reporting Efficiency Workbook

by

Today (Tuesday) I presented at the Victorian CPA Congress for 2007 in Melbourne on the topic ‘Implementing systems for improved reporting efficiency’. This is a presentation that I gave last year to the Queensland CPA Congress, slightly revised for the passage of a year.

For anyone looking for the workbook and the slides from today’s presentation, you will find it here:

The download is about 1 megabyte in size.

And a quick photo of the convention centre:

Of course if you did attend the presentation, please feel free to leave feedback and/or ask a question through the comments area below. It was a smaller group than last year, but it was good to have a good room-full of people to present to. Again, feel free to leave any feedback if you’re from today’s session.

Thanks: Micheal Axelsen