Strategy

Looking upstream for warranty cost savings

March 12, 2009

Kjell Hammerstrom of Sun presented on warranty costs. Product management teams specify warranty term duration and terms of warranties on products while procurment teams negotiate warranty terms with equipment manufacturers (many of Sun’s products are built by a manufacturer like Qunta, Mitac, Celestica). However the process was not collaborative – products would be released with [...]

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Harnessing and Coordinating Warranty Best Practices in a Global Enterprise

March 11, 2009

Terry Adams of Ingersoll Rand, the parent company of Trane, presented on harnessing and coordinating warranty best practices. IR includes Trance, Thermo King, Schlage, Steelcraft and others for about $17B worldwide. All these acquisitions have experience and systems so Ingersoll Rand has a vision of a Business Operating System to drive common [...]

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Measuring and improving an effective and efficient warranty process

March 11, 2009

John Hagen of Trane presented on measuring and improving an effective and efficient warranty process. Trane produces Commercial HVAC systems of every size. Warranty is tricky because they make everything so specific to customers.
Trane started a new quality initiative in 2004 because they felt that there were some low hanging fruit. They had warranty reserves [...]

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An update on the warranty industry

March 11, 2009

Eric Arnum, editor of Warranty Week, gave an overview of the industry as a whole. Clearly the recession is taking its toll. Starting with new home builders it has spread to RV makers, auto makers, various retailers, GE and others. Warranty is important in many of these company’s challenges and some, like Hyundai, are trying [...]

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Live from Warranty Chain Management 2009 – The Strategic Importance of Warranty

March 11, 2009

I am at the Warranty Chain Management conference this week and blogging more or less live. Despite the economy there are over 180 attendees as well as a solid core of sponsors. Marc McKenzie, Global Director of Corporate Warranty & Governance from Hewlett Packard gave the opening presentation on the strategic importance of warranty.
HP spends [...]

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The unrealized power of data

February 20, 2009

Syndicated from Smart Data Collective
Andreas Weigend, former amazon.com Chief Scientist, gave a keynote on the unrealized power of data. He started with a historical perspective. In the 70s perhaps 10M used computers, mostly in the back office. By the 80s this had reached 100M and the front office. By the 90s the internet and search [...]

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Live from the EDM Summit – From Here to Agility

October 28, 2008

I am at the EDM Summit this week and will be blogging live from some of the sessions and posting random thoughts and comments in addition. Despite the difficult market conditions, attendance looks good with a nice full room for the keynote and attendees from 17 countries. This year’s event also has a dozen new [...]

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First Look – Chordiant’s Visual Business Director

October 15, 2008

Today Chordiant announced their new Visual Business Director (CxVBD). I saw an early prototype of this some months back and got a more detailed look at the finished product at their recent Customer Advisory Board. I really like CxVBD as I think it shows the critical business value of externalizing decisions. I have yet to [...]

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Here’s how decision management delivers continuous strategy

October 14, 2008

An old colleague of mine, Vaughn Merlin, had a really interesting post this week When Strategy Becomes Continuous. It’s a great post and he makes three key points:

IT strategy is not the point – it’s all about business strategy.
Much ‘strategy’ effort is not very strategic.
Strategy formulation and execution are too loosely coupled.

He then quotes [...]

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The empire has less staff

July 29, 2008

Frank posted some great comments on Here’s how to get started with decision management the other day and made me think about this, often very severe, problem. As Frank put it:
How do you overcome the moral fear some organizations have when they realize 40-80 percent performance improvements come at 40-60 percent less personnel; so if [...]

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EDM and the role of line managers

July 14, 2008

Tammy Erickson wrote an interesting piece last week The End of Line Managers as We Know Them – Peter Drucker’s Prediction that made we wonder how applying enterprise decision management, EDM, would change the role of line managers. Several changes would seem to be likely:

Less rubber-stamping
With the automation of approvals, eligibility, refunds, pricing decisions and [...]

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After EDM – some thoughts on technology

April 10, 2008

Some time ago a regular reader, Dave Wright, left a   comment on a blog post I wrote as a guest. In it he asked “What comes after EDM?”. This, of course, is both an interesting and a difficult question. Thinking about it I decided to split it into two parts – one about technologies [...]

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Live from IMPACT – Customer Panel on Driving Alignment

April 8, 2008

After the keynote it is back to the other end of the MGM Grand to attend a customer panel on business/IT alignment. Amy Wohl is the host and she blogs here. BTW I may not finish the whole session as I have to go sign the book at the bookstore at the show. I am [...]

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Live from IMPACT – The Impact of Technology on Business

April 7, 2008

Next up is a business session on the impact of technology on business. The good news is that the IBM wireless is working in this room and I have managed to find a power outlet (though not without moving a chair and sitting under the loudspeakers).
Mark Chapman of IBM’s Business Services Strategy group introduced the [...]

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Live from IMPACT – Opening Keynotes Part II

April 7, 2008

It turns out they are going to move the schedule back to allow for the overrun in the keynotes so I have some time to catch up.
So, Steve Mills. Steve re-iterated the power of business and IT alignment, again quoting the LSE / McKinsey study that shows such alignment doubles productivity (I am looking for [...]

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Book Review – The IT Value Stack

March 21, 2008

The IT Value Stack: A Boardroom Guide to IT LeadershipI recently finished Ade McCormack’s book, The IT Value Stack: A Boardroom Guide to IT Leadership. The book is aimed at a fairly high-level audience and makes a case for better integration, or “entwinement”, of technology into businesses. Ade can come across somewhat opinionated but he [...]

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Live from DAMA – Naked Without My Data

March 20, 2008

Pip Coburn gave the closing keynote on Naked Without My Data. Pip made the point that lots of people actually don’t want to get quality data – they want to hear what they expect. People are not acting like quality of data matters. They want the data that supports their point of view or conforms [...]

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CIOs – use EDM to deliver what your business managers want

March 11, 2008

Frank Gens of IDC posted this short item on what Line of Business managers want from their CIOs and it had a nice little graph showing the key things that the business wants from IT. Of the 10 items, several seem to me to show the need for Enterprise Decision Management or EDM:

Speed up project [...]

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Live from DIALOG – Scott Klososky Keynote: Do You Have Velocity Leadership?

February 25, 2008

Next up was Scott Klososky on Do You Have Velocity Leadership? Scott talks to organizations about how technology impacts different businesses and has a book coming out soon (though I could not find a link for it). He uses a quote to show his attitude to technology:
A rock pile ceases to be a [...]

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Using EDM for ‘Long Tail’ Algorithms

February 19, 2008

I saw this post recently – “The fat tail will be human, the medium tail social, the long tail algorithmic” – in which Chris Anderson (author of The Long Tail) says “The short head will be human, the fat middle social and the long tail algorithmic”. This made me think some more about the role [...]

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