Curtain call....

Of the cases my group members and I presented this semester, the one that stands out the most is the CVS case. This case really brought home some of the main points that BADM 7050 aims to convey. One of which is change management and how important it is for an organization that is attempting to implement any kind of major change. The recurring theme seems to be how to incorporate managing people in a change management system. Last week I blogged about the finding of a study that people are the biggest hindrance to companies trying to adopt analytics into their organizations. The issue of change management resonates with me particularly because I always took it for granted how resistant some people are changes even change.

More on Competing on Analytics

As a member of the group that worked on the “competing on analytics” video, I was really drawn to this article. According to article, a new study by MIT and IBM says technology is not the biggest barrier to business analytics – it’s people. Business analytics is the direction that most companies are heading in - using data analysis as the basis for most business decisions rather than “gut feeling,” but according to the study it’s not the technology that’s standing in the way of accomplishing, it’s “change management and cultural resistance.”

Outsourcing for Gov'ts

It’s always amazed me how inefficient government agencies can be. Then our recent discussions in class about outsourcing and the reasons companies outsource, one being to gain efficiencies, including cost efficiencies got me thinking: to what extent does government and its agencies outsource? I don’t know the answer to this question, but could outsourcing provide a response to the inefficiencies in government? What are some of the functions that could/should be outsourced? For profit companies have been able to gain efficiencies by outsourcing, so it’s quite plausible that outsourcing could also improve efficiencies for governments and their related agencies.

Virtual Desktops

Now here’s a great story about a firm leveraging technology to gain efficiencies. Rory Clements, chief tech systems architect for CB Richards Ellis, a Los Angeles based global real estate company, has undertaken converting CBRE’s 40,000 traditional PCs into virtual desktops. “His guinea pigs: 2,000 London-based executives, surveyors, appraisers and agents. In exchange for giving up their company-issued Windows XP desktops and laptops, Clements is giving each employee access to a virtual copy of a new, more powerful Windows 7 desktop residing in CBRE's private data center.

Using the latest virtualization technology from VMware, Clements can push out a Windows 7 desktop to any PC the employee happens to have handy. It could be an old office XP machine, a personally owned netbook or a computer in an Internet cafe in Kuala Lumpur, for that matter. The employee gets full access to company e-mail, databases and business applications.

Some top CBRE executives will even be able to access their company-issued Windows 7 virtual desktops on their smartphones and tablet PCs.”

While the upfront costs of doing this are huge, the company anticipates huge savings over time. CBRE not only stands to gain cost efficiencies, employees should also become more efficient, thereby increasing productivity.

India's Outsourcing Firms Post Record Growth

  As the outsourcing discussion heats up in class, it’s interesting to see that India’s major outsourcing companies have posted “unprecedented revenue growth,” according to an article on the website InfoTech Spotlight. A sign that outsourcing continues to be a growing trend. The companies, Tata Consulting Services, Infosys Technologies, and Wipro, were last week “all predicting impressive growth this year” and as a result were hiring in large numbers to meet the growing demand. The article posits that Tata Consulting Services is expecting to end the fiscal year with $8 billion in revenues. According TCS’ CEO such growth, given the uncertain economic situation is a positive indication about the global demand recovery going forward. In my opinion, this could also be an indication that companies continue to be cautious about the global recovery and as such are continuing with the trend to remain as lean as possible. The company also said that “all major outsourcing markets showed double digits, Europe leading the pack” and its North American revenues crossed one billion dollars.

 Some of the Tata’s key new clients this year are “Canada's large financial institutions, a Fortune Top 50 Healthcare company, a U.S.-based large banking and financial services institution, the Phoenix Group, a leading publishing and education services provider, a leading grocery retailer, and a leading North American general merchandise retailer.”

 By the way, has anyone seen the NBC comedy Outsourced?

Nokia

In class we’ve been talking a lot about change. Not just changing technology, but also changing corporate. Our panelists on Thursday talked even more about this. In our discussions we came across companies that willing to embrace change and some that are unwilling to embrace. We also talked about how this willingness or unwillingness to embrace change has affected their businesses. As the discussion continues, I came across an interesting article in the New York Times this past week about Nokia. Nokia is the world’s leading supplier of mobile phones controlling (as of June 2010) 40.3 percent of the world mobile phone market, down from 40.7 percent last year. In the United States, Nokia controls 8.1 percent of the mobile phone market, but in 2002 controlled 35 percent of this said market.

Nokia recently appointed a new CEO, Stephen Elop, and the article discusses the challenges he will face to changing the long standing corporate culture at Nokia, a culture of “complacency” and one heavily influenced by bureaucracy. According to the article Nokia developed a touch screen, internet ready mobile phone years before Apple released the IPhone. However, influenced by their own complacency and bureaucracy managers at Nokia killed the development of the mobile phone.

Now with a new CEO at its helm and it lags behind in the smartphone world, Nokia has reached a kind of cross road. How is the new CEO going to create a corporate culture that is conducive to innovation? How far reaching should these changes be? Or as the world leader in the mobile phone market, should they continue with what they’ve been doing thus far?

BlackPad?

Speculations are that Reasearch In Motion (RIM) is getting to ready to release its own tablet PC, duly named the BlackPad. Reports are that the BlackPad is expected to become available in the fourth quarter. RIM has been on a losing streak in recent times, as its market share in the smartphone market continues to slip. But is this a good move for RIM? Entering a market that it has no experience in? Some analysts seem to think that a move into the tablet PC market for smartphone producers is a natural one. How will the BlackPad compete against the Ipad? This should be be interesting.