Archive for Business
Business Strategy: CRM Total Cost Of Ownership
Learn how commercial Open Source CRM (customer relationship management) delivers faster business results at lower cost.
Compare the total cost of ownership between three generations of CRM implementations based on price, integration, and flexibility. Pricing a CRM solution should go beyond the initial license and maintenance cost.
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Lockergnome has joined forces with TradePub.com to offer you a new, exciting, and entirely free professional resource. Visit us today to browse our selection of complimentary IT-related magazines, white papers, webinars, podcasts, and more across 34 industry sectors. No credit cards, coupons, or promo codes required. Try it today!
The Less Paper Office
I would like to better understand what it takes to convert my business into a paperless office. What do I need to buy? What does it cost? –Samuel
With very few exceptions, it would be impractical to become a true “paperless” organization, but the “less paper office” is certainly achievable.
Converting or maintaining information in a digital format has many advantages (just think about how digital photography has changed the way we store and share photos), but the stark reality is that our digital world has encouraged us all to consume more paper.
In the early days of the personal computer, it was thought that computers would reduce the amount of printed paper, but the opposite has proven to be true.
According to Xerox, from 1995 to 2005, the amount of printed documents doubled. E-mail and the Internet have generated an exponential explosion of readily available information and we all love to print it out.
There is also a psychological barrier to overcome, because most folks just plain prefer printed pages over electronic ones. (Look no further than all of the failed attempts to replicate newspapers online and defunct e-book concepts.)
Paper is entrenched in the way most of us currently function, so start by making sure that your desire to go electronic is not going to actually reduce productivity in your business cycles.
Another mistake associated with “the paperless office” is that it will create organization where none exists. The reality is that technology is never a substitute for organization. In order to adopt any of the paperless processes, you must have a very clear organizational structure in place to develop the plan (or you will never be able to find anything once it has been digitized).
Filing items in the real world is a physical activity that everyone is familiar with; however, filing documents in the virtual world has little continuity between most users, so you will need to set clear standards and guidelines.
Some of the more benign paperless office processes that you can adopt (or may have already) include using a scanner in place of copiers, which also allows you to electronically transmit the document instead of a traditional fax and distributing large multi-page documents and brochures on CDs or flash drives or via the Internet instead of the traditional printed version.
Another side benefit of keeping large documents in digital form is that it’s much easier to make changes and redistribute the information.
If your intent is to convert the boxes of archival paper information that you are storing around your office into digital form, you may be better off hiring a company that specializes in it (search for “paper storage conversion services” in Google).
If your incoming mail is one of your targets, you may want to consider a company like Earth Class Mail which can take all of your snail mail and convert it to a digital online format.
One other thing to remember as you move your information to a pure digital format: BACK UP. Your old paper documents are currently your backup system, so once they are gone, it is critical that your electronic backup system be very solid with lots of redundancy.
Ken Colburn
President of Data Doctors Computer Services, Host of the award-winning Computer Corner radio show, and Author of Computer Q&A in the East Valley Tribune newspapers.
Green Computing Beyond The Datacenter
Discover how to lower computer energy costs by reducing workstation power consumption without impacting user productivity.
Most organizations considering green computing initiatives start in the data center, but the cold hard truth is that in many organizations more computing power and heat waste is generated outside of the data center. Saving energy, power, and cooling also involves desktops, peripherals, and wiring closets. Therefore, in order to succeed with green computing initiatives, all areas must be addressed. This white paper demonstrates how to implement green computing across the entire IT environment, including how Faronics Power Save can help achieve a reduction in energy costs and usage.
Lockergnome has joined forces with TradePub.com to offer you a new, exciting, and entirely free professional resource. Visit us today to browse our selection of complimentary IT-related magazines, white papers, webinars, podcasts, and more across 34 industry sectors. No credit cards, coupons, or promo codes required. Try it today!
Document
Document is the source for hands-on strategies and solutions for managing print and electronic transactional documents such as invoices, policies, statements and other customer communications.
Document strives to help you manage and strategize your effective customer communications. Nothing in your enterprise brings you greater ROI than this — the transactional document! Whether your company produces printed or electronic bills, statements, policies, etc., Document helps you produce them more efficiently and effectively. Driving down operational costs is the goal of every business, and Document provides you the best, most relevant and cutting-edge information that is out there in the industry! With your subscription you get six issues packed with information from the leading experts, analysts and consultants. In addition you receive the annual Who’s Who guide to the document industry and you will receive the electronic newsletter, eNotes.
Get your free subscription to Document!
Lockergnome has joined forces with TradePub.com to offer you a new, exciting, and entirely free professional resource. Visit us today to browse our selection of complimentary IT-related magazines, white papers, webinars, podcasts, and more across 34 industry sectors. No credit cards, coupons, or promo codes required. Try it today!
Accelerate And Secure Your Software-As-A-Service Solution
As adoption of software-as-a-service solution grows, the boundary between a company’s corporate network and the Internet is disappearing, making enterprises more vulnerable to a new generation of security threats that can detrimentally impact your business operations.
This white paper will examine the business implications of the SaaS movement, and how a growing number of companies are safeguarding and accelerating these on demand applications with proxy-based wide-area network (WAN) application delivery solutions.
Lockergnome has joined forces with TradePub.com to offer you a new, exciting, and entirely free professional resource. Visit us today to browse our selection of complimentary IT-related magazines, white papers, webinars, podcasts, and more across 34 industry sectors. No credit cards, coupons, or promo codes required. Try it today!
Making The Move - What To Do When You’ve Outgrown QuickBooks
Before you spend a lot of your valuable time shopping, learn the 37 essential tips for evaluating and purchasing new accounting software.
QuickBooks provided the basic bookkeeping capabilities you needed to start your company. But things have changed. You have more customers. More employees. More complexity. In short, your growing business isn’t so small anymore. The decisions you need to make aren’t either.
Download this white paper to uncover the 37 essential tips for evaluating and purchasing software to manage your business. Here are just a few of the tips we will share with you:
- How to create an accounting system needs analysis
- What to consider and whom to consider when setting your objectives
- How to uncover the features you can’t live without
- And more
Lockergnome has joined forces with TradePub.com to offer you a new, exciting, and entirely free professional resource. Visit us today to browse our selection of complimentary IT-related magazines, white papers, webinars, podcasts, and more across 34 industry sectors. No credit cards, coupons, or promo codes required. Try it today!
An Assessment Of Oracle’s Applications for Midsize Organizations
This paper examines Oracle Accelerate to determine whether it has what it takes to deliver genuine value to midsize organizations.
Oracle Accelerate does a remarkably thorough job of addressing the issues that midsize organizations wrestle with on a daily basis. Based on a comprehensive and pragmatic approach, Oracle Accelerate offerings may meet the requirements of these businesses in ways that are superior to those of other vendors. Accelerate has the potential to deliver solutions that combine “big company” functionality with “midsize company” simplicity and pricing.
Request your free analyst report!
Lockergnome has joined forces with TradePub.com to offer you a new, exciting, and entirely free professional resource. Visit us today to browse our selection of complimentary IT-related magazines, white papers, webinars, podcasts, and more across 34 industry sectors. No credit cards, coupons, or promo codes required. Try it today!
NetLine’s RevResponse Partner Program
Here’s a short note that might be of benefit to those of you who have your own Web site or even just like to blog regularly.
I’ve been working with NetLine’s RevResponse partner program and have been pleased with the content it provides for my audience and with the revenue I’m able to generate. I think you could benefit from its program and I encourage you to check it out! Here’s where you can sign up or get more information.
Have a look and let me know what you think!
ON Magazine
ON Magazine is a publication for C-level executives involved with the challenges and opportunities of information technology.
ON Magazine is about, by, and for CIOs and any business and IT executive interested in reading engaging stories, opinions, and news from the frontier of information technology. ON is a platform for discussions of the management challenges and the business opportunities, today and tomorrow, that are arising from the rapid growth of digital information worldwide.
Get your free subscription to ON Magazine!
Lockergnome has joined forces with TradePub.com to offer you a new, exciting, and entirely free professional resource. Visit us today to browse our selection of complimentary IT-related magazines, white papers, webinars, podcasts, and more across 34 industry sectors. No credit cards, coupons, or promo codes required. Try it today!
Too Many Choices
Too many choices cause headaches rather than satisfaction. I admit one of my weaker areas is the inability to make decisions. Do I want to do this or that? Do I want this or that? Should I go to this? Should I get this or that?
Visit any restaurant and the menu typically contains too many choices. When I bought an MP3 player for my kid, I debated which color to get. Tennis shoes, tennis racquet, all-in-one printer, cochlear implant (small vs. regular), volleyball socks. These were all subjects of recent decisions.
My mom decided to get a digital camera for my older two kids as gifts. The oldest has an old camera of mine, but it takes faded photos every now and then — and she takes tons of photos. The SD30 wasn’t for them, so I did quick research (dreading it as I know I could easily spend hours on cameras). I found one and the price was right. Told Mom and left it at that.
Thankfully, another Web site confirmed I made the right decision. Had it the site contained poor reviews, I’d scramble and start the search again. This is exactly what happened when I almost bought an all-in-one printer.
I have a crowded small office. As an organized person, everything has its place. An all-in-one would give me breathing room as I could pass on my color printer and scanner to my oldest. Well, I did that and I have a little more room — and the fax remains since this new all-in-one was a minus one — no fax.
I’ve been reviewing Web sites stepping into the target market’s head as I work around each Web site. The problem with many is they provide too many choices. A site should have no more than one call to action on a page. The navigation — it’s as if the company is afraid to cut out items thinking the visitor would want them. They can’t miss what’s not there.
A good resource on this topic is Barry Schwartz’s The Paradox of Choice. Sadly it sits on my shelf unread as other books get first dibs.
Do we need so many choices?
Sleep And The 14-Hour Employee
In the last few companies I worked with before becoming a full-time content maven, we knew and heard about colleagues who work over 12-hour days on a regular basis. I’ve put in a couple of long hours over my career, but never on a daily basis. Based on experience, it doesn’t make sense why companies encourage and reward employees working long hours.
And it’s a common problem in the IT field where computers and systems must run 24/7 and tasks done after hours when the fewest number of people are signed on the network.
With each passing hour after the tenth hour, I became less effective. What took me two hours to do during overtime would take me only 20 minutes to do when I’m fresh and well-rested. When I two hours less sleep than usual, I become sluggish for the entire and tend to procrastinate (and I’m not a procrastinator by nature). Things I remembered easily slipped my mind five minutes after thinking about them.
I talked to a client, a vice president, a couple of nights ago. He was about to go to sleep and we started chatting about sleep. He couldn’t understand how people perform well on so little sleep as he needs sleep like I do.
Early in my career especially before the kids came along, I worked longer hours whether or not I needed to because management viewed it as a good thing. Good thing equals promotions and opportunities. The other thing I noticed — working from 9am to 7pm was viewed more positive than someone who worked from 7am to 5pm even though they’re the same number of hours.
Of course, we won’t see a culture change in the near future toward returning to the 9am - 5pm work week or providing more vacation time. Not with the worries of losing your job to India or another country where its people work for less money and longer hours. However, many articles report that Generation X and Generation Y want more work-life balance.
I belong to GenX. In the mid-’90s, I wanted to climb the ladder and fast. By the late ’90s and early 2000, the ladder lost meaning. Of course, I wanted to get promotions and such, but not by sacrificing my family and life outside of work. This change didn’t come because of GenX, but rather parenthood. Folks in my generation weren’t even having kids yet — so there wasn’t a Gen X influence.
However, I also value enjoying my life and experiencing new things and making friends. We reflect more on memories from outside of work than work. Sure, I’ve got fond memories of something I accomplished at work or a screw up that I can’t forget in spite of trying — I think more about memories involving family, friends, and activities.
Cliche’ but true — how many people look back on their lives and wish they had worked more? When people ponder their past and wishes, work-related regrets rarely come up. It’s more “spend time reading, spend time with family, travel…”
Sales And The Checkout Process
I shopped on a site because I saw a few items on sale in the store’s ad that came with the Sunday paper. According to the ad, the sale applied to the online store. The store’s site marked ALL blankets at 40-50% off. In looking for the blankets, I noticed they were not marked down, so I went to “Today’s Store Ad,” turned to the last page where the blanket ad appeared, and clicked on it to buy it online.
As I weaved my way to the blankets from the ad, the prices were correctly marked down. But when I added them to my basket, the price shown was the regular price. Furthermore, when I returned to add another blanket of another color, the regular price appeared again.
I spent too much time trying to make it work. Finally, I stopped and emailed customer service. Got an immediate reply (auto-responder) saying the company will reply within 24 hours. Autoresponders for orders work well because it confirms your order went through the system (unlike on another site where I thought I submitted an order and received nothing… no receipt, no confirmation — turns out there was no order in the system).
The next morning, I already had a reply waiting for me (directly copied… so the “suppose” is the writer’s error):
If your prices are not coming out with the sale prices, please put in the special order instruction box what the prices are suppose to be. Once we receive your order the prices will be correct or you will be contacted with the problem. We do apologize for any inconvenience that this may have caused.
One problem — the instruction box was only two short lines (like a gift card, which it wasn’t), but I managed to explain it with as few words as possible.
I had been looking for blankets for a long time and this was a good deal. Otherwise, I would’ve just moved on, so the company got lucky with this order. Business to business companies have a greater challenge since their purchases aren’t typically small nor cheap. Some may not have a check out process — but regardless, verify the usability of the checkout process and make sure the specials also work.
ON Magazine
ON is a publication for C-level executives involved with the challenges and opportunities of information technology.
ON magazine is about, by, and for CIOs and any business and IT executive interested in reading engaging stories, opinions, and news from the frontier of information technology. ON is a platform for discussions of the management challenges and the business opportunities, today and tomorrow, that are arising from the rapid growth of digital information worldwide.
Get your free subscription to ON today!
Lockergnome has joined forces with TradePub.com to offer you a new, exciting, and entirely free professional resource. Visit us today to browse our selection of complimentary IT-related magazines, white papers, webinars, podcasts, and more across 34 industry sectors. No credit cards, coupons, or promo codes required. Try it today!
Forgotten Login Password
“Forgot password?” should be instant. The site should simply request the user to enter the email address and immediately let the user know if the email address is in the system or not. Otherwise, you could lose out on ordering opportunities.
We tried to order dinner online and Paul (SO) forgot his password. He entered the email address and the response page said it was mailed. Nothing came in after ten minutes of checking. He tried a second time and still no avail. The place’s competitor also has online ordering and we could easily switch our plans.
Another time I was trying to order an item. I registered and tried to purchase the item. But when I signed back in (after not receiving an email within ten minutes), my account didn’t exist. The site would not accept any of the information I entered.
The next time, I registered and confirmed it worked by logging out and back in. Then I tried to order the item again… no luck. Moral: Make sure your order forms and forget password process work.
Giving up, I emailed the company (it had the best deal) and got a reply a few days later suggesting I call. I wrote back saying I prefer to order online because I’m hard of hearing. No reply yet. Another lesson: Reply to customer emails within 24 hours with the only exception being when the office isn’t open. Lesson #2: Offer the customer multiple ways to contact your company.
Make It Easy To Unsubscribe Or Pay The Price
I was unsubscribing to emails and notifications from an email account I no longer use. One of the Web sites used “Cancel” to mean unsubscribe. This could confuse the visitor because it could be mistaken for cancel the whole process and leave things as it is. “Unsubscribe” or “Remove” do the job.
Another newsletter that I never subscribed to (the owner subscribed me when he contacted me) provides an unsubscribe link, but it isn’t easy to find. The link doesn’t appear within the newsletter; I found it on the Web version of the newsletter. However, clicking on it does nothing. I verified my browser wasn’t blocking a script and it continued not to work.
It may be obvious as to why some publishers make it difficult to unsubscribe, but they end up losing not the readers. Readers who can’t find a way to unsubscribe to a newsletter will just delete it every time or set up a filter to go straight to the junk folder. The more newsletters a publisher sends, the higher the cost and the longer the process. Therefore, sending it to folks who trash it hurts the publisher’s wallet, server space, or both.
Designing Newsletters For All Email-Kind
Recently, a client who supported Web standards worked to design her newsletters to use cascading style sheets (CSS) for layouts instead of tables. Designers cheered. Readers jeered. One problem with this approach: email clients.
Outlook may dominate, but how many of us have second or third email accounts with Web-based email clients like Yahoo!, Hotmail, Gmail, and so on? Then you have email applications on handheld devices, and those on corporate networks using applications like LotusNotes. Some people use their Web host’s Web-based email client so they can check email from any computer, typically with one of three: SquirrelMail, Horde, or NeoMail.
Then there are those who opt to use different computer-based software like Thunderbird, Mozilla, Eudora, PocoMail, The Bat!, and Pegasus.
The problem
With only a handful of email clients, newsletters come across perfectly; when using the majority of email clients, newsletters are readable but not perfect; with other email clients, newsletters render a mess. To understand why this happens means understanding hypertext markup language (HTML) and CSS.
Instead of going into tech-speak, think of the DVD player. Any DVD can work in any DVD player, for the most part. True, all DVDs may not be compatible with every type of player, but let’s just say: DVD players look different and have their unique features, but they all do the same thing — play DVDs. Think of email clients as DVD players and emails as DVDs. Also, think of Web browsers as DVD players and Web sites as DVDs.
To continue the analogy, HTML is the language that enables different DVD players to play the same DVD. In a newsletter, it specifies how the design should look. The CSS tells the DVD player how to present the images, sound, and titles. In a newsletter, CSS defines how the content appears in the newsletter complete with colors, fonts and layout.
The way email clients and Web browsers work is that the “DVDs” play, but not the same way. One might play email or Web site in grayscale. Another translates the text into a different language. Another doesn’t play images.
See Figures 1 and 2. Figure 1 is what the newsletter is supposed to look like. Figure 2 is how it “gets read” by GMail, a Web-based email client. The images have been pixilated out of respect for the publication — as the poor readability is not the fault of the publisher.
[Click images to view larger in a new window]
The options
What can you do to have your newsletters be easily read? Keep the HTML design as simple as possible. The more bells and whistles, the more different it will appear than the original design. The first thing to do is accept that your newsletter will not look identical to every subscriber. Once you let go of the concept of a perfect layout, you’ll feel more at ease and know your newsletter’s style will vary.
When designing an HTML-based newsletter, you have three approaches to take:
- Plain HTML: Use only HTML to style every item in the newsletter and no CSS.
- Internal CSS: The CSS appears in the head of the newsletter’s HTML template.
- External CSS: The CSS appears in a separate file that lives on a Web server. If the user is not connected to the Internet, the styles won’t appear.
As reported by E-Zine Tips, Lyris conducted a test and discovered that inline HTML had the best render rate at 94 percent. In the test, Lyris used three items with 36 email clients, both Web-based and computer-based. These results aren’t surprising.
Therefore, an external CSS is strongly advised against because it relies on a live Internet connection and the Web server working. You never know when readers view your emails, especially if they save old issues. If you delete the external CSS from the server and they try to read an old newsletter, it’s going to get messy.
Internal CSS don’t have the Web server problem. However, many email clients don’t correctly translate CSS based on W3C recommendations. And there’s the problem of when users update their software-based email clients, since updating software in companies isn’t usually an easy and smooth process.
The compromise
How do you ensure your newsletter comes across well? The ideal way is to offer HTML and text versions of your newsletter. Also, having online newsletter archives works great. When you have archives, potential readers can check out your newsletter to see if they want to subscribe.
Another work around is to include a text line at the VERY TOP of the newsletter that says, “Having trouble reading this? Read it online” and include the link to the online version of the newsletter.
If offering a choice of HTML and text isn’t possible, a simple newsletter created with clean HTML should work fine. Again, the newsletter may not look identical to all your readers, but the important thing is that the content is there and readable.
Checking Content Readability
While earning my degree in education, I learned about the Fog Index, Flesch-Kincade, and other ways to measure comprehensibility. This helped us understand how to measure content to determine its reading level.
Along the same lines, Denny Hatch [Link from Cincom Expert Access] introduces colleague Bob Scott. Scott uses Robert Gunning’s Fog formula to make writing clearer and more comprehensible. He explains how to use the formula, which is based on two qualities that Gunning believed important in determining readability:
- Average number of words in a sentence.
- Percentage of “hard” words.
Microsoft Word comes with a feature that calculates readability scores based on Flesch Reading Ease and Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level. To use it, click “Tools,” “Spelling & Grammar” and ensure there’s a check in the checkbox next to “Show Readbility Statistics.” Run the spellchecker and after it goes through your document, a pop up box appears with the Counts, Averages, and Readability.
I admit I don’t think about this when I write articles. But I would use Word’s tool more often if we could get the readability scores without running the spellchecker. I’d love to have the tool sit on the toolbar next to the word count.
For non-Word documents, Flesh is a freeware Java-based application that calculates Flesch Reading Ease and Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level. Juicy Studio has an online tool to check a Web site’s readability.
This entry’s Flesch Reading Ease: 50 (easily understood by 6th and 7th graders)
This entry’s Flesch-Kincade Grade Level: 9.8 (probably doesn’t help that I need to use words like “comprehensibility” and “readability.”
University of Texas has a nice table adapted from Flesch’s The Art of Readable Writing showing what the scores mean.
“Vote for Me” And “Forward This” Messages
Have you received a request from a newsletter or a blogger asking for your vote in a favorite, best, or some other contest? How about a request to “Forward This” newsletter in the subject line or at the top of the newsletter before you get to the goods?
Does it bother you? Or am I reading too much into this sort of thing? On one hand, readers may not know about a contest unless the blogger or publisher notifies them. But then should they say, “So ‘n so Web site is asking for votes on best of such ‘n such. You might want to vote for your favorites” rather than outright ask for your vote?
Isn’t asking for your vote implying the newsletter publisher or blogger thinks a little too much of themselves? Then again, politicians running for elected positions ask for people’s votes and that’s considered normal for the process.
One business said it felt pressured to give an award to a Web site because of the power its owner wielded. To turn it down would mean losing that person as a contact. Not all awards have political challenges, but some do. Some companies behind the awards nominate their best vendors or advertisers.
Then those “Please Forwards” in subject lines or at the start of a newsletter give me the impression they’re more interested in the number of subscribers than providing subscribers with valuable information. I believe “Forward this” is an important and acceptable element to have in a newsletter, but in the Subject line?
IT Investments Riskier Than Ordinary Capital Investments
A study of Fortune 1000 companies shows that investments in information technology carry higher risk than other capital investments, according to the Management Insights feature in the current issue of Management Science, the flagship journal of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS).
Management Insights, a regular feature of the journal, is a digest of important research in business, management, operations research, and management science. It appears in every issue of the monthly journal.
“Investigating the Risk-Return Relationship of Information Technology Investment: Firm-Level Empirical Analysis” is by Sanjeev Dewan, Charles Shi, and Vijay Gurbaxani of the University of California at Irvine.
Investment decisions are guided by both expected returns and incremental risks, the authors note. Yet, outside of anecdotal evidence, very little is known about the riskiness of information technology (IT) investments, which make up an increasingly dominant component of firms’ capital asset portfolios. This paper attempts to fill this gap by analyzing a large-scale data set of IT capital spending by Fortune 1000 companies.
The authors find that IT investments are substantially riskier than ordinary capital investments, and that IT risk is associated with a substantial risk premium. This risk premium is driven in part by the lost option value of making irreversible capital investment decisions.
A key implication of the findings is that managers should apply a substantially higher discount rate when evaluating IT investments relative to other types of less risky capital investments. Furthermore, the results suggest that the timing of IT capital investment is a critical factor in managing both the risks and returns of IT investments.
The current issue of Management Insights is available here. The full papers associated with the Insights are available to Management Science subscribers. Individual papers can be purchased here.
The Insights in the current issue are:
- Performance Contracting in After-Sales Service Supply Chains by Sang-Hyun Kim, Morris A. Cohan, Serguei Netessine
- Implications of Breach Remedy and Renegotiation Design for Innovation and Capacity by Erica L. Plambeck, Terry A. Taylor
- Implications of Renegotiation for Optimal Contract Flexibility and Investment by Erica L. Plambeck, Terry A. Taylor
- The Role of Pre-Entry Experience, Entry Timing, and Product Technology Strategies in Explaining Firm Survival by Barry L. Bayus, Rajshree Agarwal
- Conditions That Shape the Learning Curve: Factors That Increase the Ability and Opportunity to Learn by Eelke Wiersma
- Selecting a Selection Procedure by Jürgen Branke, Stephen E. Chick, Christian Schmidt
- Consumers’ Price Sensitivities Across Complementary Categories by Sri Devi Duvvuri, Asim Ansari, Sunil Gupta
- A Framework for Reconciling Attribute Values from Multiple Data Sources by Zhengrui Jiang, Sumit Sarkar, Prabuddha De, Debabrata Dey
- The Machine Maintenance and Sale Age Model of Kamien and Schwartz Revisited by Alain Bensoussan, Suresh P. Sethi
INFORMS journals are strongly cited in Journal Citation Reports, an industry source. In the JCR subject category “operations research and management science,” Management Science ranked in the top 10 along with two other INFORMS journals.
The special MBA issue published by Business Week includes Management Science and two other INFORMS journals in its list of 20 top academic journals that are used to evaluate business school programs. Financial Times includes Management Science and four other INFORMS journals in its list of academic journals used to evaluate MBA programs.
B2B Blogging
It’s no surprise that blogs are catching on with B2Bs (business-to-business). BtoBOnline confirms it by referencing a Knowledgestorm and Universal McCann survey.
“Blogs are the perfect forum for business and IT professionals — readers want to hear about a company or a product from ’someone like them,’” says Matt Lohman, director of market research, KnowledgeStorm. “And technology buyers seem to be more than happy to pass along relevant information from blogs — 70% of survey respondents recommend or pass along content from blogs at least once a month.”
Benefits of Business Blogging
No one can argue the benefits of business blogging especially when it helps with the following:
- Credibility and expertise: Thoughts do the talking.
- Becoming part of something big: Blogosphere and networking.
- Updating the site more often than if it had no blog.
- Easy way to gain word of mouth (mouse) considering 70% recommend or share content from a blog.
Tweaking the BtoB Blog
I’ve been installing blogs for PSJ (Professional Services Journal) and another BtoB web site. In working with the publisher, he asked me to change the terminology of coming blogging terms:
- Comment: “Post a comment or read other comments”
- Trackback: “Other sites referring to entry”
- Tags: “Related Topics”
- Removing permalink and other entry footer items from individual entry pages so the only thing that appears is comment.
These go against the standards us long-time bloggers have taken for granted. My publisher has a good point though. Blogs are new to BtoBs, but I told him that they may be new in the BtoB arena… there could be BtoB bloggers or readers who have been reading blogs for a long time.
Besides, I remember a few folks tried to rename RSS and got more complaints than support. So I wondered if the same thing would happen if we tried to change the names to something more understandable. Are the standards said and done? Or should BtoB blogs take a different approach?
In setting up these BtoB blogs, we’ve taken an approach to turn the blog into a web site slash blog rather than pure blog approach. PSJ’s blog matches the newsletter which it’s based on and adds a few bloggy components including subscribe, archives, categories, related topics (tags), and comments.
Are we off the mark and asking for trouble in modifying the verbiage? Or could we be taking a step toward change to things others have taken for granted?
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Information Technology aid for Windows, Linux, and OS X users, solid SysAdmin advice, troubleshooting links, job assistance, and more for technology pros.
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