The market indicator numbers are bleak and getting more bleak with each passing week. We are no longer surprised when firms announce massive layoffs, Sun Microsystems being the most recent company in the technology industry to make such an announcement.

Read more

Leading and managing teams in a geographically distributed work environment presents a unique set of challenges. We are witnessing the start of the twilight years of hierarchical management, massive corporate buildings and employee relocation requirements.  These Industrial Era command-and-control functions are increasingly being readdressed by firms as they seek to streamline processes and improve efficiencies, meet tightening budgets, and find and retain top talent.

Read more

The Naturally Boulder Days 2008 conference was this week. The tour on Wednesday afternoon was incredibly interesting. It included visiting the CU Chancellor's home to see its role in the Xcel Smart Grid city project, a tour of Udi's Bakery and a trip to a gourmet, organic chocolatier manufacturing facility, Seth Ellis. The tired cliché regarding Boulder and organic is just that, a tired cliché. Boulder is the global epicenter of innovation in the natural and organic market spaces.

Read more

Green businesses tend to inherently support virtual business processes. Teleworkers reduce commuting emissions. Taking advantage of hosted, managed, or outsourced services tend to reduce a firm's physical infrastructure requirements thereby reducing power draws and cooling requirements.  Utilizing thin clients coupled with software as a service eliminates a company's server farms, the power consumption and the internal toxic chemicals used on the servers' as well as computers' boards.

Read more

Virtual customer care is more than just remote contact center agents.  Virtual care includes the entire relationship life cycle from initial product or service consideration to collaborating on future products, features and even new market opportunities.

Read more

Chaos.  Turmoil.  Crash. Each of these terms has been used to describe the extreme financial market fluctuations of the past few weeks. There has been a whole lot of doom-and-gloom splashed across all of the media outlets.  I suggest we look at the financial situation from another point of view. With the intelligent application of virtual business process technologies I see opportunity, thinning out the weak, and even a providential market situation.

Read more

As the global economy tanks we have to wonder just how far away we are from seeing signs of a turnaround. Everyone is scrutinizing their personal situation, evaluating job security, debt load, and savings. If we keep in mind that market chaos is an opportunity for massive changes in the business, the net result can be extremely positive.

Read more

Last week I pointed out the Employee Evolution web site; an on-line community and career center site aimed at Gen-Y, also known as the Millennial generation. An author at the site had developed a Top 10 list on how this up and coming group would change the way we work and play.

Read more

I am a huge proponent of virtual businesses and what it means to be a virtual business. Consequently, I read everything I can find or get my hands on regarding trends in business, technology, employee perceptions and generational attitudes. Within business there is a substantial amount of sociology that also comes in to understanding trends. In my recent research efforts I came across a list of ten items that define the mindset of the Gen-Y population when it comes to business.  Many of the items were standard fair for corporate America, but other items on the list were utopian in nature.  I wrote those off as the collective group being plainly naive regarding the business world.

There are approximately 70 million Gen-Ys, also known as Millennials, in the U.S. today according to a 2007 BSG Alliance Concours Institute’s research study. This population is defined as those born between 1980 and 2000. This population compares to 79.6 million boomers in the U.S., according to the 2000 U.S. Census. Boomers are those born between 1946 to 1964.  It is safe to say that the boomers have set corporate policies for the past two decades and will continue to set corporate policy for the next two decades.

The Millennial mindset list, appearing at Employee Evolution, a Gen-Y on-line community and career center reads like this:

Read more

Hello. I’m the new kid in this blogosphere. I’m going to share a bit on why I was asked to join this space, and then I am going to ask you to talk with to me. What topics do you want to know more about? I’ll be happy to do some legwork for you and share it here. Tell me how or even if an emerging technology applies to the real world in which you operate.  Our goal is to tear down the ivory tower and get to the reality of technology applied in business.

I’ve been around the block once or twice. My career started off in the late-80s in a sales capacity. I sold networking equipment as a channel partner for a variety of products.  The company was progressive in the sense that they were interested in promoting planning and design strategy, part of what we call professional services today, over the physical infrastructure boxes. It was a good gig and allowed me entrée into some bleeding edge environments like defense-centric federal government and pharmaceutical, still visionary verticals today.

From sales I migrated to the analyst research space.  I worked as an analyst 14-plus years.  I have covered physical boxes, management tools and technology, outsourcing, hosted and managed services, along with various other technologies. I’ve co-authored three books on virtual business processes and the underlying-enabling technologies. You can find them at the on-line bookstores. I’ve also authored dozens of articles, along with white papers and marketing content for clients.

Read more