Gartner Blog Network

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Should BP Pay Amateur Scuba Divers to Find Flaws in Deep Sea Oil Wells?

by John Pescatore  |  July 29th, 2010  |  no comments

Google and Mozilla recently announced they are increasing the "bounty" they pay to external parties who find vulnerabilities in their products to about $3,000 US.  Both believe the bug bounty programs have been successful, but most major software vendors like Microsoft or Oracle or even Apple do not pay for bugs...

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Categories: Uncategorized    

Traditional Customer Service Excellence Trumps Social Anything.

by Michael Maoz  |  July 28th, 2010  |  7 comments

Over the past several weeks I have been trolling around the Customer Service organizations of nine seperate companies, each of which has been focused on CRM for at least ten years. They also have Social CRM projects. In conversations with their customers I've asked which is more important to you:...

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Categories: Strategic Planning, Leadership, Social Software, Social CRM, Social Networking, Customer Centric Web, Innovation and Customer Experience, SaaS and Cloud Computing, CRM    

Interesting Economist Articles this last week

by Andrew White  |  July 28th, 2010  |  2 comments

It was another one of those weeks – a “love in” with the Economist.  A bunch of articles peaked my interest this week and thankfully I happened to travel to/from Indianapolis which provided the time.  I rarely open up my laptop when I travel this year (thus impacting productivity) unless...

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Categories: Economy    

Process Intelligence is About Operational Action

by Jim Sinur  |  July 28th, 2010  |  2 comments

What I like about process intelligence(PI) is that it is not there to just analyze what happened in the past. It also helps with the here and now so that process owners can use the dynamism of processes to adjust to conditions right now. In addition, PI can test out...

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Categories: business Process Improvement, Simulation, Optimization, Simulation, Optimization, BPM, Business Proces Improvement, BPM    

Elise Olding - First Blog Post

by Elise Olding  |  July 28th, 2010  |  11 comments

This is my first blog entry!!!! Over the past few years I have guest blogged in Jim Sinur’s blog. However, it’s time for my own! I tend to tweet – but sometimes there’s just more to say than 140 characters will allow! So, just to kick things off some things...

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Categories: scuba diving, change management, BPM, Uncategorized    

There are Plenty of Unbanked Initiatives, but are there any Real Success Stories?

by Kristin Moyer  |  July 28th, 2010  |  no comments

The Financial Access Initiative (FAI) believes that 2.5 billion adults worldwide do not have access to formal financial products (such as savings accounts, insurance) with either a traditional (regulated bank or carrier) or alternative financial institution (such as a microfinance institution). Approximately 90% of the unbanked live in Asia, Africa,...

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Categories: icici, mobile money, m-pesa, gcash, smart money, grameen bank, Executive Decisions, unbanked    

The Secret to Making Effective Change

by Donna Fitzgerald  |  July 28th, 2010  |  4 comments

I was just doing some research on change management and I had another light bulb moment.  The article I was reading said you needed to make a business case for change, and my immediate gut reaction was "on what planet?  Nobody ever makes a change for the sake of change."...

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Categories: Organizational Development, PMO    

Are we bringing about infosec climate change?

by Jay Heiser  |  July 28th, 2010  |  one comment

The CSIS (Center for Strategic and International Studies) Commission on Cybersecurity for the 44th President has released a whitepaper, A Human Capital Crisis in Cybersecurity: Technical Proficiency Matters, which quotes an authority as saying that we have an immediate need to train 10,000 to 30,000 cybersec ninjas. Wow. The subtitle...

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Categories: skills, CISA, CISSP, career path, IISP, Strategic Planning, security, security    

IT as a percent of margin

by Mark McDonald  |  July 28th, 2010  |  3 comments

Just about everybody can tell you the relationship between the IT budget and company sales.  Percentage of sales is a common and quick metric for benchmarking and describing your IT organization,  CIOs see it as handy because in most cases the number is rather small.  IT spend as less than...

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Categories: IT Value, Metrics, Value of IT, CFO, CFO, Leadership    

I’m offended by companies who think I’m dumb

by Nick Jones  |  July 28th, 2010  |  5 comments

I don’t mind marketing, but I really hate companies whose marketing assumes I’m a total idiot. I just received a mailshot from Starwood offering me the uniquely generous opportunity to sign up for a Starwood Preferred Guest Credit card. And they’re kind enough to state on the application form that...

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Categories: Rants    

When Government Clouds Become Stormy

by Andrea Di Maio  |  July 27th, 2010  |  3 comments

Those who have been watching with interest the largest and highest-profile deployment of cloud-based email in a government organization will have welcomed recent news about difficulties that Google is encountering in the city of Los Angeles with mixed feelings. As reported here and here, the migration from Novell to Google...

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Categories: Google, cloud