Strategy

Using EDM and adaptive control to respond to uncertainty

February 6, 2008

In a recession, perhaps even more than in other business climates, companies face a high degree of uncertainty. How will markets and consumers react to each new piece of news? How desperate will competitors get? Which products and services will be regarded by customers as necessities even in hard times and which will be jettisoned [...]

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Using EDM to reduce and control business costs

February 4, 2008

First post in my series of posts on using EDM to thrive in a recession. Let’s start with the easy stuff – companies always look to reduce and control business costs in a recession so how can EDM help you do this?

One of the costs many businesses carry, almost without thinking, is a certain level [...]

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Using EDM to thrive in a recession

February 4, 2008

This week’s editorial calendar is about using Enterprise Decision Management – EDM – to survive and thrive in a recession. Prompted by a comment from Nathan Jones, the topic seems appropriate as everyone flails around trying to decide if they should use the “r” word or not. Clearly, whether we meet the definition of [...]

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EDM should be a top priority for CIOs in 2008

January 9, 2008

Allan Alter over at CIO Insight had this article on CIOs Rank Their Top Priorities for 2008. Across all categories of company it was interesting that the top items were:

Delivering better service to customers
Improving business processes
Contributing to the creation of new business strategies
Cutting costs

I don’t know about you but I can see how EDM can [...]

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Delivering “Policy-Oriented Enterprise Management”

December 5, 2007

Charlie Bess had an interesting post over on the EDS blog that led me to this article in the November IEEE journal titled: Toward the Realization of Policy-Oriented Enterprise Management (fee charged). The article is by Matthias Kaiser from SAP labs here in my home town. He is doing some research with a group at [...]

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Bridging strategy and technology with enterprise decision management

December 4, 2007

I got an interesting email from Dan Appleton this week. Dan is a principal of The Capabilities Center and his email prompted me to blog today on this topic. Dan’s email introduced his perspective on how business rules, especially in the context of enterprise decision management or EDM. He and I are broadly in agreement [...]

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Live from Business Rules Forum – Insurance 2020: Innovating Beyond Old Models

October 23, 2007

Jamie Bisker was up after lunch talking about Insurance 2020: Innovating Beyond Old Models. Jamie used to be a Tower Group analyst and now works for IBM in their Institute for Business Value (I blogged about his reports before). Studied future customers and their needs, how automation is flattening the competitive environment, what fundamental trends [...]

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Better decision-making can boost your top line

October 18, 2007

I saw this post by Keith Harrison-Broninski Some Processes Cost Money – Others Processes Make Money, in which he discusses the fact that companies have already squeezed lots of costs out of their systems and processes. He takes away from this the valid conclusion that not all processes are therefore good targets for high ROI [...]

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Boosting shareholder value with decision management

October 16, 2007

Dave Dixon wrote a nice post a little while ago – Why You Should Care About Shareholder Value – and I have been mulling writing a response. Dave works at Provisdom and has recently started a blog there (despite being a fairly new blog, he has already written some interesting posts so check it out [...]

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Book Review – IT Risk

August 15, 2007

IT Risk: Turning Business Threats into Competitive Advantage
I was lucky enough to get a pre-release copy of IT Risk: Turning Business Threats into Competitive Advantage by George Westerman and Richard Hunter. The book approaches IT risk not as a technical issue but as a business and management one with potentially serious consequences. As businesses increasingly are there [...]

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Book Review – Hard facts, dangerous half truths and total nonsense

June 18, 2007

Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths And Total Nonsense: Profiting From Evidence-Based Management
On the plane over I finished Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths And Total Nonsense: Profiting From Evidence-Based Management by Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert Sutton. This excellent book lays out why and how companies fail to drive their business based on evidence, and instead “miracle cure” advice [...]

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Book Review – Execution

December 20, 2006

Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done
Over the weekend I finished “Execution. The Discipline of Getting Things Done” by Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan. This book is a succinct summary of all that is wrong in many companies. Larry and Ram analyze many of the most dysfunctional behaviors seen in large corporations and lay out [...]

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Book Review – The world is flat

December 14, 2006

The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century
I have just finished reading “The World Is Flat” by Thomas Friedman. Firstly a health warning – it’s a REALLY long book. Even skimming some sections it took me a long while to read it. Overall it is a good if somewhat long winded read. [...]

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Book Review – The only sustainable edge

November 30, 2006

The Only Sustainable Edge: Why Business Strategy Depends on Productive Friction and Dynamic Specialization
In this book John and John discuss how recent changes in the world will force, indeed are forcing, companies to change how they think about offshoring and outsourcing, innovation and even their core business processes. They describe how a combination of “Converging [...]

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Book Review – The Long Tail

November 26, 2006

The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More
Chris Anderson does a nice job of introducing some key concepts that are redefining business in the Internet era. As he says “The era of one-size-fits-all is ending, and in its place is something new, a market of multitudes”. In this world the [...]

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