marketing

The right IT skills get you a job

Judi Hasson — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 21:33:08 -0400

The state of the IT job market may depend on where you sit, and more importantly, the skills that you possess. Jim Lanzalotto, vice president of strategy and marketing at Yoh Services LLC, a Philadelphia-based staffing agency and outsourcing vendor, said there are plenty of open jobs for software developers with experience building wireless or embedded applications.

"It's a dead-on market for those guys, with unemployment rates of less than two percent," Lanzalotto told CIO.com. He also said IT workers and consultants who have SAP know-how, or are familiar with rival ERP applications such as Oracle's PeopleSoft human resources software, are in high demand.

SAP AG has estimated that about 30,000 more technical specialists are needed worldwide to fill a skills gap for its apps. Lanzalotto said companies in the hiring mode now are typically trying to use IT to help boost their revenues, not to make internal improvements.

For more on the job market:
- check out this CIO.com article

How to cut IT and stay competitive

Judi Hasson — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 10:30:02 -0400

The economic downturn is putting the squeeze on IT departments, but there are ways for CIOs to reduce costs, while at the same time creating efficiencies and making the business more competitive.

At least that is the view of Bob Riddell and Eric Ullman of Alvarez & Marsal Business Consulting, a firm that specializes in information technology. They write in CIO.com that making smart economies "may reduce the impact of budget cuts on IT and, at the same time, drive performance improvement and enhance the value of IT to the overall enterprise."

The consultants offer tips they say are typically overlooked by many IT departments. They include focusing on what the business wants and needs from IT; recognizing and articulating how technology can be used to move the business forward, as well as in leading the improvement initiatives; pruning the projects and services portfolio to focus on what is needed to improve the health of the company; tightening vendor management; upgrading the staff, setting goals and releasing those not meeting expectations; and internally promoting and marketing IT's contributions to the business.

For more tips:
- see this CIO.com article

Customer data should drive IT decisions

Mon, 09 Jun 2008 06:59:58 -0400

Michelle McKenna, the CIO at Universal Orlando Resorts, has some advice for her members of her profession--think like your customers and use your data to focus on your company's markets.

"In today's contracting economy, it's more critical than ever for CIOs to study market trends and find ways to maximize business opportunities,'' McKenna said. Although her IT unit always has had valuable market-defining customer data, McKenna said she didn't always know how best to leverage it.

"Fortunately, I've been able to work closely with executive peers to implement business intelligence that triggers a more analytical, customer-centric approach to marketing and sales,'' McKenna said.

And her knowledge of her company's market, she said, has helped her "drill down into our data to understand what is really happening in our business.''

To read more on the CIO's role as marketer:
- see this CIO.com article

For more tech stories from the FierceCIO network:
> Encryptor 2.0 spotted at 1024-bits. Article
> IBM turns to water to cool processors. Article
> Intel shows off atom processors. Article

WD Velociraptor is fastest drive ever

Mehan Jayasuriya — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 10:33:32 -0400

What's faster than a Raptor? A Velociraptor, apparently. Western Digital has gone and bested their existing Raptor line of speedy drives by unleashing the Velociraptor, a drive that they claim is the world's fastest mechanical hard drive. The 300GB drive connects via 3GB/s SATA and spins at a blazing fast 10,000RPM. What's more, it's actually a 2.5" drive but because of its massive heatsink, needs to be placed in a 3.5" drive bay. So, is the Velociraptor a marketing ploy or the fastest drive ever? The folks at Maximum PC set out to find the answer and their benchmarks (versus the old Raptor X and the previous king of the storage hill, Samsung's HD103UJ) present a compelling case. "[W]hen it comes to consumer-level drives that are both affordable and practical, you cannot beat a Velociraptor."

For more on the Velociraptor:
- check out the benchmarks over at Maximum PC

Keep your IT job safe in a recession

Mon, 28 Jan 2008 06:59:59 -0500

With the economy on a roller coaster and every company looking to cut costs, it is probably the time to take a few steps to protect your IT job, according to experts. "Right now, in this day and age, if anyone is working in IT, the closer you work on relationships with customers, the better the opportunities you're going to have," said Jim Lanzalatto, vice president of strategy and marketing at staffing agency Yoh LLC in Philadelphia. If you are a project manager for a bank or a financial services company, you are in a precarious place right now because those industries are having a tough time. But if you are working in consumer products, it is much more stable, he said.

In the tech, engineering and scientific communities, there's pent-up demand from customers. There are projects in the pipeline and budgets have already been set, so those are big pluses in the marketplace "because that work is already under way," Lanzalatto said. "The current demand is still strong, and that's where the optimism comes in." Remember, companies will always be looking for ways to streamline an operation, so make sure you are an essential part of their team.

For more on protecting our IT job:
- See this ComputerWorld article

Bank customers shrug off security threats

Thu, 25 Oct 2007 06:59:59 -0400

A new Gartner study finds that the public is more concerned about high banking fees than they are about security to protect their bank accounts. More customers switch banks because of fees than because of security issues. One out of five moved to a new bank because of "excessive" fees. Just one out of 25 consumers switched banks because of security worries, according to a poll of 5,000 online adults in 2007. Perhaps customers take security for granted in the wake of marketing dollars spent telling consumers that their money is safe in bank accounts, because it's clear that the banking public is more interested in lower fees than they are in anything else.

For more banking and security:
- see InformationWeek article

The power of wikis

Thu, 17 May 2007 20:01:38 -0400

Can the open-source movement in content creation live side by side with other forms of communication where we like to have the final word? Whether it's for a product or a project, a wiki can organize information and archive contributions much better than blogs, and users need very little expertise. It's also moving into business and marketing. Wikinomics, a book by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams, extends the topic into an online chapter, using a wiki. The authors ask readers to write the chapter and join the discussion. Readers can add new content, do some fact-checking and make the chapter relevant to their own experience. So now that wikis have blurred the lines, it's time for internal, external, brand and corporate communication to get involved.

Read more about wikis in the enterprise:
- read the article at TechNewsWorld

ALSO:
- read this on wikis in the enterprise
- and this on getting a grip on wikis and blogs

ITIL's new version: More business-focused

Sun, 06 May 2007 20:01:38 -0400

The newest version of ITIL, a best practices framework, will be more business-focused, according to ITIL architects. ITIL 3.0 will reflect the fact that line is blurring between service management and ITIL; as a result, the new version will discuss topics like facilities management and will include a case study of how to use ITIL outside of IT. Also, ITIL will no longer stand for the IT Infrastructure Library, but will be referred to as "ITIL - IT service management practices". ITIL 3.0 will also address gaps in current ITIL certifications to make them more helpful and appropriate to individuals' career development plans, and will include help on how IT staff can make marketing statements to the CIO and CEO.

Read more about how ITIL is changing:
- read the article at ITWeek

ALSO:
- read this on why ITIL may not be ready for prime time in the midmarket
- this on the ROI of ITIL
- and this on putting business ahead of technology

Finding key information fast

Sun, 01 Apr 2007 20:01:36 -0400

Missing valuable information is an unfortunate byproduct of today's massive corporate data stores. To make sure you can find information wherever it resides at a moment's notice, first understand if you're dealing with structured or unstructured data. Data from a company's logistics, finance or marketing activities can be pulled into a database that can then be fed to executives using a reporting system or dashboard. For a dashboard to work, though, a reporting system has to integrate data from separate systems, which must themselves be sophisticated enough to export it. The alternative is to move to a single platform with built-in reporting capabilities. And once you've moved to a unified platform, you have to persuade the employees to use the new system. But the biggest challenge of all is collecting tacit information that exists in people's heads. Depending on the size of the company, wikis, blogs and corporate social networking software could be a way forward.

To learn more about information access:
- read the article at Silicon

Making your customers happy

Sun, 25 Feb 2007 19:01:39 -0500

Long considered the responsibility of marketing and sales, customer advisory councils are now being broadened to include IT--a long overdue change, many believe. Without valuable feedback on what both internal and external customers consider important, IT runs the risk of offering up products, applications and services that don't fit anyone's needs. To make sure that your customer advisory council is successful, define only a few highly specific objectives, such as determining the gap between what the organization has delivered and the needs, pricing, service and overall performance of the company. It's also important to get feedback on the pitch presentation and guidelines from both sales managers and trusted customers and to budget at least 60 percent of the agenda specifically for feedback. Finally, make sure to get input from high-ranking executives as well.

Learn more about the value of customer advisory councils:
- read the article at CRMBuyer