budget

Implementing your online collaboration strategy

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My speaker’s notes (not that they bear much resemblance to what was actually said) are to be found here as a downloadable pdf:  Implementing an online collaboration stategy.  This presentation was given at the Blogs, Wikis, and RSS conference in Sydney on August 29th 2006.

Implementing your online collaboration strategy

We work in a Web World for business outcomes

Introduction

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.  My name is Micheal Axelsen, and this presentation focuses on providing a practical guide to the implementation of your online collaboration strategy, with some useful tips and thoughts on how to proceed with the implementation of collaboration technologies, including blogs and wikis, into the business.

This presentation is focussed upon:

  1. Business
  2. Collaboration technologies
  3. How to succeed with their implementation

At all times, though, this is intended to be a practical look at the application of these technologies, and addressing the practical concerns of business.

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IT outsourcing – selecting the ‘best’ infrastructure model

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This article was published on CEO Online a month or two ago, and I did promise I would post it here eventually.  And as I am of course absolutely certain that there is a raft of readers out there who would like to see the full article on the basis of that promise (delusionment is a wonderful thing) I am posting the article here.

In order to keep us all sane, you will need to click through to see the full article.

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Fighting IT Failure should be Toasting IT’s Success!

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CIO.com has an article, the topic of which is close to my heart – the success of IT projects.  I have a theory that says that more IT projects would be successful if the IT guys could find it in their hearts to say ‘no’ more often, and ‘that’s got to follow our defined methodology before we do it’. 

Apparently AG Edwards in this article reduced their failure rate (behind schedule, over budget) for projects from 50% to 12%.  The focus was on IT’s understanding the business, on having business understand both the business needs and the potential of technology, and on prioritising and finishing projects. 

The article is really worth a read.

Budgets in Australia, IT, and You

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The new Smartcard seems to have given the government’s budget expenditure on information technology a bit of a boost.  Hopefully they realise that replacing 17 cards with 1 is a whole lot more difficult than it sounds when you say it really fast. 

ZDNet has an overview on the implications of 2006’s budget on the technology industry, as does Australian IT.  Department of Communication, Information Technology, and the Arts has its wrap-up here (predictably positive):  Budget at a Glance.  A quick glance at party-politic websites finds no specific responses to issues around technology, as yet, as contained in the budget. 

The big deal seems very much to be on the adjusted depreciation schedules on business – the diminishing value for assets including computers has gone from 150 percent to 200 percent.  This ‘merely’ reflects the real decline in asset value, particularly for technology – which alone should be pretty good for business.

SAP: Just Look at me Now…

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I have had the opportunity over the last couple of weeks to take a look at what SAP calls its “MySAP All-in-One” solution. All-in-One is essentially the MySAP software combined with the skills, expertise and intellectual property of the business partner/software vendor (disclaimer: my firm, BDO Kendalls, sells, supports and implements the MySAP software, although I don’t personally benefit from the thing).

A few years ago I would have told my clients to run screaming in the other direction (or at least think very, very carefully before proceeding with any ERP, including SAP – particularly after the experience of the Queensland government with SAP). In fact, I once had a good hearty laugh when SAP tendered for a software solution I was advising on – the client’s budget didn’t cover Stage 1.

However, it would seem that the lesson has been learnt, and MySAP’s focus is on delivering business solutions in the context of the customisation required. Time was, a salesperson would glibly state, “yes, that’s possible, just do the customisation” – and somehow completely omitting the phrase “but I don’t know that that’s a particularly smart thing to do because it’s really expensive and adds bugs and makes upgrades difficult and…”.

Of course the difficulties were not always, I think, due to “good” salespeople. Some of my best friends are salespeople. Businesses at one time felt that it was worth the effort to change software to meet their business processes – but neglected to adjust the projected cost by the requisite risk factor.

At any rate, if you are an SME thinking about the possible benefits an ERP can bring, you could do far worse than check out MySAP All-in-One. It’s a rapidly shrinking market since Peoplesoft bought JD Edwards and Oracle bought Peoplesoft – but that’s the way of the world.