| Business Edge: A vice-president with Fusepoint Managed Services says the Canadian IT business services company has enjoyed tremendous increases in productivity since it began using an on-demand service that lets users integrate a combination of Web, audio and desktop video-conferencing services. The company's partners log in on their PCs and dial in on their telephones for weekly meetings, during which individual audience members can raise questions for the group to consider or send an instant message directly to the VP for questions they don't want to address in public. While such sessions don't replace face-to-face discussions, they help ensure that face time has a more strategic focus, the VP says. Other pros — and a few cons — of Web conferencing are discussed. Forbes: It hasn't been quite a year since Canon introduced the first color laser multifunction printer. Yet the market for these versatile devices is set for stratospheric growth. Lyra Research, which tracks trends in the imaging market, says North American shipments of MFPs — printers that also copy, scan and fax — will hit nearly 78,000 units in 2005, up from 1,700 in 2004. The firm forecasts a 220 percent compound annual growth rate over the next four years. Lasers are generally a more cost-effective option than similar multifunction inkjet printers, as they have a speedier output and require less maintenance. A Lyra analyst says the MFPs boast more advanced technical capabilities than standalone printers. CIO.com: This article highlights the dangers of negotiating contracts that focus so closely on cost savings and service-level agreements that the processes required to implement the new technology are shortchanged, leaving no wiggle room for innovative solutions that can ease implementations and cut costs. The author offers brief examples of good and bad contract clauses and makes the point that valuing good outcomes over good process practically guarantees that neither will occur. CIOs should share their next-to-final-draft vendor contracts with project leaders to solicit comment on what impact the contract could have on system implementation, he suggests. An interesting string of reader comments following the article support its conclusions. | | Special Offer: Free White Paper Yankee Group: The Emerging Importance of Hosted CRM
Until recently, hosted solutions generally have not figured in strategic, enterprise-wide initiatives that extend CRM across departments, systems, channels, partners and geographies to reduce operating costs, drive new revenue and deliver superior customer experiences. According to this white paper, all organizations now have unprecedented opportunities to combine the lower costs and faster time-to-the-customer of hosted solutions with the strategic benefits of enterprise-wide CRM. | | | | Under the Buzz: Although this commentary is written from the perspective of helping software sales reps close deals with prospective customers, we think it's just as valuable as a guide for said customers. It includes a handy list of nine questions that every CIO should expect to have answered: Who are you and how do we know you'll still be in the space a year from now? What does your product do, and what does it not do? Do you actually have a product we can install and use? How are your products different from those of competitors? What critical problem does your product help me solve? Which companies in our industry use your product with positive results? How difficult is your product to install and implement? How will your product impact the way we work? What proof do you have that we will achieve the desired results? The author's explanations provide insight that may help CIOs separate sales pitches from reality.
Computerworld: Business appears to be taking a backseat to technology in recent IT spending surveys by Alinean. Business initiatives like ERP, CRM, Web services, business intelligence and portals are being passed over in favor of upgrading aging equipment and unsupported platforms, consolidating assets and operations, beefing up security to fight costly attacks, and integrating prior application and data storage. Yet Alinean says more companies should take their cues from peers categorized as top performers, who pay as much attention to improving the business as to reducing costs. Top performers also allocate more funds to innovation — on average, 17 percent vs. 10 percent in average companies and less than 5 percent for those defined as laggards. They've also increased spending from just 0.82 percent of revenue in 2003 to 2.8 percent of revenue in 2005, to help their companies capture growth opportunities. West Yorkshire Police: The UK's West Yorkshire Police force is saving money and boosting productivity with wireless Blackberrys issued to 1,500 frontline officers across 11 divisions. The project has been so successful that it was nominated for Best Public Sector Technology Project of the Year in the forthcoming CNET Networks UK Technology Awards. The handhelds let officers access police computer systems while on patrol, making checks on people or vehicles, updating and executing warrants, viewing the latest intelligence and briefing information, and sending and receiving e-mails while on the go. The project was inspired by a 2001 study of national police forces that revealed that most officers spent almost as much time in police stations as they did on the streets. Research shows that the use of handhelds saves up to five hours a week of an officer's time. The West Yorkshire system costs the equivalent of one hour a week to run. | IT Marketplace | | | | | Tell the IT Business Edge audience of technology decision makers about your product, service, event, or job. Click here to list it in the IT Marketplace! | | 3 QUESTIONS:
BI Can Boost Quality of Healthcare
With Scott Wanless, a business intelligence consultant with Greenbrier & Russel, a business and technology consulting and training company. Question: Are business intelligence tools more useful/important in the healthcare industry than in some other sectors?
Wanless: Right now, BI is critical in healthcare. Frankly, we have what amounts to a national crisis on our hands — rising costs, increased pressure for quality, performance, efficiency, safety, etc. You also have a rapidly aging population with chronic conditions, which will put a further burden on our healthcare system. Plus, we have an industry where it is difficult to even identify who our patients are, where they have received care, what the outcome of that care is, and even if the care given is proven to be effective. Add to that the fact that much of the information is still in paper form, with a high price tag to make it electronic. This will hamper efforts to improve quality, performance and so on.
BI tools are essential to this industry because they serve as a means to "pull" value through the system. For example, a basic necessity right now is widespread implementation of electronic health records (EHRs). But implementing EHRs is viewed as a cost. Using BI tools converts this "cost" into an investment. The value of this investment surfaces when you combine EHR data with other data (clinical encounters, lab, financial, research evidence, operational process statistics, etc.) and then analyze this combined information for patterns, trends and improvement opportunities. This helps to justify the investment — but it can only happen if you can see, touch, slice, dice, sort, sum and squeeze the data for value. That is where BI tools come in. Question: Which BI tools in general provide the biggest bang for the buck in the healthcare industry?
Wanless: The most important tools in healthcare are extract, transform, load (ETL) tools, data visualization tools and predictive analytics capabilities. ETL tools are the most important because healthcare data and data structures are extremely complicated. There are dozens of "standards" for each subject area in healthcare, be it diagnoses, procedures, treatments, outcomes and so on. Plus, there are subject areas for which there really are no standards at all, such as measuring satisfaction, measuring accessibility to healthcare services, measuring the effects of improved outreach and so forth. It is complex and difficult to transform the data for all of these subject areas, whether they have standards or not. To get the value out of the data requires heavy-duty ETL tools to successfully manage this data.
Data visualization tools are the next most important BI tool. There are two reasons for this. First of all, healthcare people do not have much time to explore data. The patterns and trends must be instantly visible, or (healthcare workers) must by necessity move on to one of the thousand other things they have to do today. The second reason is that most of the key decision-makers in all healthcare sectors (provider, payer, researcher, public health authority, etc.) have been trained in some discipline which required heavy use of data. Leaders in provider organizations usually have medical and clinical education. In payer organizations, leaders are often actuaries by trade. In research organizations, they grew up as scientists. In public health agencies, they are social scientists. All of these disciplines are accustomed to data usage, and visualizing this data provides them with a powerful perspective as to what is going on.
The third type of tool, predictive analytics, is usually regarded as a new technology capability. But this is not the case. Evidence-based medicine is actually a predictive capability. Study the past, discern patterns, and use the patterns to predict the future. Actuarial science is even older, dating to the mid-1700s. Pursuing predictive analytics today has both tactical and strategic value. On the tactical side is the ability to translate observations into predictions, and then use these predictions to be prepared. This is the promise being touted. On the strategic side is the ability to study the past, translate observations into proactive actions, and then create a new future, so you can not only prevent bad outcomes but promote good outcomes. No matter how you gather, transform, deliver and report your data, it is essential to use it to the fullest. Question: What are some key criteria for folks in the healthcare industry to use when evaluating how BI can help their organization?
Wanless: There are three key criteria to use when evaluating applications and projects to pursue. These are value (business, clinical), feasibility and reusability. The pressure is on in healthcare to perform better, faster, smarter. Eventually, you will be required to measure everything. So aim for value. Prioritize projects based on value. Resolve conflicts based on value. Another key decision factor has to be feasibility. Almost all projects that are proposed have some form of value. But some are just not feasible. Some never will be, while others will be some day. So, while you aim for value, keep in mind whether the proposal is doable.
The third factor is reusability. For most organizations in most industries, healthcare included, a single set of data can be used for a number of productive purposes. Clinical data can be used for clinical analysis, operational analysis, business analysis, research purposes, quality improvement purposes and so on. Unfortunately, in these same organizations, this same data is being gathered, stored and manipulated a number of times by various groups, using various levels of sophistication. View your data as a reusable resource across the organization, and you can eliminate much of this duplication and waste, while adding to the value of your data to improve the quality, efficiency and effectiveness of the services your organization provides. | | Also from IT Business Edge: Voice & Data Convergence Voice & Data Convergence examines the strategic and tactical implications of emerging IP telephony technologies, from VoIP services to advanced CRM systems to security considerations. Find out what every IT decision maker should know. Click here to sign up! | By the Numbers
5 percent Portion of the typical IT budget eaten up by printers, related supplies and the support required to keep them up and running, according to Gartner. 17 percent Proportion of IT budgets allocated to innovation by companies categorized as top performers, according to Alinean. In contrast, companies deemed average spend 10 percent on innovation while those defined as laggards earmark less than 5 percent of their IT spend for innovation. 85 million USB flash drives sold in 2005, as forecast by Gartner, up from 1.7 million sold in 2001. Breaking Headlines
InformationWeek: According to Forrester Research, 53 percent of business technology executives expect IT spending to increase in 2006, while only 7 percent say spending will decline. Forrester predicts spending will increase 4.3 percent — not a huge number, but more than the 3.5 percent increase forecast in 2005 and 1.4 percent increase in 2004. Interestingly, the survey indicates that 60 percent of companies that centralize IT will increase their tech spending next year compared to 46 percent of peers with decentralized IT organizations. (The article doesn't account for the math.) Other survey results are highlighted.
CFO.com: The Securities and Exchange Commission, as expected, has granted small companies — defined as those with market capitalization of up to $75 million — another year before they must report on their internal controls under Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. They will now have until July of 2007 to do so. Companies have complained that Section 404, which requires them and their auditors to sign off on corporate adherence to internal controls, is an especially costly area of Sarbox compliance. Some advocates want the SEC to expand its definition of small businesses to include companies with a market float of up to $1 billion. E-Commerce Times: Hewlett-Packard is acquiring Peregrine Systems in an all-cash deal worth $425 million in a bid for the lead in the growing IT asset management software market, expected to be worth $1 billion within three years. HP will integrate Peregrine's software into its OpenView suite of IT management tools, which claim to reduce the costs and complexity of maintaining complex enterprise systems. The acquisition comes on the heels of HP's purchase of AppIQ, a provider of open storage area network management and storage resource management software. Some analysts say the move may help indicate the company's future strategic direction as it attempts to turn around its flagging financials. Emerging Trends
SiliconValley.com: USB drives, the lowly little bits of plastic used to transfer information from one PC to another, are getting a lot smarter — with the ability to perform tasks rather than just storing documents. A Silicon Valley startup called U3 has introduced software that allows flash drives to store software applications as well as data. Because applications run from the drive itself, without having to be installed on the PC's hard disk, users can access data on any computer into which they insert a U3-compatible flash drive. Several companies will sell the U3 drives, beginning in October. For now, they work only with Windows XP and Windows 2003, but U3 plans to support Apple's Macintosh and Linux as well. Flash drive manufacturer Lexar Media, chip maker Samsung and Microsoft are supporting a non-proprietary approach through a group called the USB Flash Drive Alliance, which is working on creating open standards for smart flash drives.
Entrepreneur: Want to save money on R&D spending? Consider having companies like IBM and Microsoft do the heavy lifting for you. These companies license patents, trademarks and other intellectual property for cutting-edge technologies they have developed but have no plans to market. Microsoft recently began offering licenses for technologies for biometric identity authentication, counterfeit-resistant labels and other intellectual property through its IP Ventures division. IBM reportedly earns billions of dollars a year in added revenue by licensing its assets, including its 40,000 U.S. patents. Such deals require the companies licensing the technology to split profits with the developer — but they also allow smaller companies to legally capitalize on the considerable time, effort and money that the big players pour into R&D. The Register: CIOs looking for a business case to fund laptops for executives may find one in these warnings by network security provider Scanit that execs are using Microsoft Outlook to write and send e-mails on PCs in airport lounges that allow business and first-class travelers to surf the Web. Unless removed by the user, messages remain in the "sent items" folder where they can be accessed by others. Scanit engineers claim to have found everything from illicit personal messages to documents containing sensitive business info on such machines during their own travels. They are also frequently infected with viruses, says the company's CEO, who calls the machines "a veritable goldmine" for fraudsters hoping to collect confidential data. IT Business Edge: Maximizing IT Investments
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| | About the Editor
Ann All covered a variety of business topics as a newspaper reporter before switching to automated teller machines — which, unbelievably, are just beginning to migrate to a Windows-based platform and more modern networking technologies like TCP/IP — as the editor of online trade publication ATMmarketplace.com. She can be reached at investments@
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