key business

Yahoo to cut workforce

Judi Hasson — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 20:35:21 -0400

Google may be sailing along, but it's another story for Yahoo. The company said this week that it will cut at least 10 percent of its workforce, or about 1,500 employees as a cost-cutting strategy. Yahoo has a total of about 15,000 employees.

The reason for the staff reduction is strictly bottom line. Yahoo said that its net income for the quarter fell 64 percent, to $54 million from $151 million a year earlier.

"As economic conditions and online advertising softened in the third quarter, we remained highly focused on our 2008 strategy to invest in initiatives that enhance not only our long-term competitiveness, but also our ability to deliver for users and advertisers even in this more difficult climate," Jerry Yang, Yahoo's chief executive, said in a statement.

Analysts said Yahoo is struggling in its two key business segments: Search and display advertising. Yahoo is attempting to address these issues. It signed a search advertising partnership with Google in June, but that deal is now under review by federal regulators. Yahoo has been talking with AOL about a possible merger to create a powerhouse in display advertising, as well. So far, the companies have not been able to agree on a price.

For more on Yahoo:
- see this New York Times article

Related Articles:
Yahoo goes with Google
Google-Yahoo ad deal delayed

eBay's secret to innovation

Mon, 13 Aug 2007 06:59:57 -0400

Just how do you maintain a competitive edge, stimulate innovation and align IT with key business objectives? James Barrese, VP of systems and architecture at eBay tackles some of these issues in a think piece for InformationWeek. His credentials for offering some prescriptions are impressive. eBay serves 233 million users and is growing at a rate of 130,000 users per day. It hosts 100 million concurrent listings, which are updated at a rate of 500 times per second and are searched 3,800 times per second.

So, how do they do it? The key is to establish global, automated and interdisciplinary solution development teams. The company has moved away from the more traditional "waterfall" solution development cycle in which you start with a business concept, create a list of requirements, and hand them off to engineers for implementation.

The technology group at eBay has been restructured into global, cross-functional teams, which include business-unit representatives, a product management group, technology staff, and customer service representatives. In addition, these teams are physically integrated. Barrese writes that the company rolled out the new process and organizations in the first quarter of this year with positive feedback from both the technical and business teams.

For all the details on eBay and innovation:
- learn more in the InformationWeek article

Help shape good IT candidates

Thu, 03 May 2007 20:01:36 -0400

Instead of complaining about the dearth of good job candidates, why not lend a hand by teaching a course or two at your local university? Computer science programs often struggle to align with the needs of IT organizations because they focus too much on programming, and teach students about tools that are obsolete by the time they graduate. CIOs can help fix that, while teaching key business skills that IT organizations are seeking. What's more, a dose of real world experience can change students' perspectives and can help foster enthusiasm. If you can't teach a course, at least consider being a guest lecturer.

Read more about teaching important skills to tech students:
- read the article at TechTarget

Communicating with the CEO

Mon, 23 Apr 2007 20:01:36 -0400

When taken to task by the CEO for increasing IT costs or other key business issues, you can either agree and make the necessary cuts, or fight back. As an officer, your job includes arguing for IT despite resistance from other officers, including the CEO. So in response to the CEO's statement, you can try to explain the nature of IT expenses and use the meeting as an opportunity to make your case. You could agree with the CEO, followed by an explanation of why costs are being increased and how the results have benefited the company. The best result would be for the CEO to finally understand that IT is not really a cost center but rather, a department that enables the other parts of the company to do things more efficiently or to do things in a different way. IT is an investment rather than a cost.

Read more about communicating with the CEO:
- read the column at ComputerWorld

ALSO:
- read this on working with your CEO
- this on teaching tech to your CEO
- and this on forging a good CEO-CIO connection

Clawing your way to the top

Wed, 21 Feb 2007 19:01:39 -0500

Getting to the vaunted level of CIO is a real accomplishment, but is that the pinnacle? How viable is it to think about becoming a COO or CEO someday? It's certainly been done, but a CIO doesn't make the jump nearly as often as those from finance and marketing. Many CIOs have what it takes do become CEO, however, with their understanding of key business issues. It might seem puzzling, then, that it's not happening more often, but a plethora of misconceptions and prejudices certainly aren't helping. The CIO is a fairly new role within a corporation and many don't understand or respect it. They are, in effect, somewhat of an unknown leadership quantity.

Read more about making the jump to CEO:
- read the article at ComputerWeekly.com

Using tags to track mail service

Thu, 19 Oct 2006 20:01:37 -0400

Customer and client satisfaction is a key business target for every business, including postal operations. That's why Australia Post is using radio frequency identification tags (RFID) to track and assess postal delivery operations. The new RFID approach replaces a manual process to ascertain whether letters and packages are arriving at the expected service time. Postal officials believe the new technology will also help identify any issues that may exist in the mail network.

For more on the RFID strategy:
- check out the report at News.com