Backblog

With Halloween swiftly approaching we thought it would be a fun idea to share with you some of the marketing lessons that we’ve learned from years of trick or treating.

Manitoba has announced a funding program for EMRs. Until this announcement, provincially certified EMRs were available in the province of Manitoba, however no funding had been made available to support physician adoption of EMR systems.

Embarking on an ERP implementation can feel like going to battle: the process can be grueling and time consuming, money and jobs are at stake, and the odds are stacked against you. In months past I’ve blogged a lot about ERP failures and we have heard a great deal in the news about failed ERP projects and their resulting lawsuits. I’m going to pause my blogging about ERP failure for just a moment and instead of talking about it, I’m going to offer a solution and an opportunity for companies, regardless of size, to take the first step towards executing a successful ERP implementation project.

Yesterday’s post, “Does Your Company have a Social Media Parachute?” highlighted the importance of implementing a social media strategy and gave some statistics on the state of social media strategies in companies today.

I'm presenting on another Focus.com webinar on November 3. This one is sponsored by Panasonic, and is titled "Top 5 Signs an SMB is Ready for an IP Phone System".

Followers of my blog will know that I was at the Partner Conference for Interactive Intelligence last week. I've already shared some thoughts about it there, as well as on the UCStrategies portal.

Okay, I'm in my second year of PhD studies and I still haven't settled on my exact research area let alone the research question. So I need your - anybody's really - help in finding a good research area. So I'm wondering if anyone can provide me an example of mobile social media apps/sites. I'll get into the specifics...

So you’ve looked at multiple ERP systems, selected an ERP vendor, negotiated a sweet deal, and are excited for the possibilities. Time to call in the vendor’s consultants and start the ERP implementation, right? Well, not really…

NDP MP Charlie Angus has tabled a motion before the House of Commons focusing on the need for the government to support open source software, particularly through public tendering processes.

Here at Marqui, we get tons of requests from people who need or want help with their Search Engine Optimization. Some people have a pretty good idea of what they should be doing and just want a little bit of advice on how they can make the appropriate change. On the other hand, we also get a few people who come to us for help who either have very little idea of what they should be doing, or, are doing things actively wrong.

Only 5 percent of companies have a Cloud Computing strategy while just 20 percent have the resources internally to develop one, according to a survey of more than 140 global IT decision-makers conducted by TPI.

Here's is a paper I wrote for a class a few months ago on how Canada is (not) using the Internet sufficiently to engage citizens in the political process. I survey the options and consider online deliberation as a form that would help improve Canadians' democratic participation.

One of the first steps in an effective ERP selection process is to determine the type of enterprise system you’re looking for. There are lots of buzzwords out there – Tier I, Tier II, SaaS, the cloud, best of breed, and various others. What does this all mean and how do you make sense of it all? And more importantly, which is the right type of ERP system for you?

In this article, Dr. Michael Koriwchak, an ENT specialist in Georgia discusses cost savings from their EMR that are quantifiable. He does a very good job of breaking out the savings (some of which are totally applicable to the Canadian setting). He also describes a very good triage workflow for incoming telephone calls which could easily be adopted in practices of 5+ physicians.

A few weeks ago, one of our blogs focused on the pros and cons for companies choosing to leverage best practices and pre-configured manufacturing software systems. As we pointed out, while a useful starting point, best practices are not always relevant and cannot guarantee that an implementation will be easy or successful.

We have been building a thesis that, regardless of the recent deceleration of economic growth in the US economy, the enterprise IT sector is on a bit of a roll that should persist for the next several quarters. Investors may want to look at business/enterprise IT technology for overweighted returns. Please note that 26% of the aggregate market cap of the sector is in cash and/or equivalents.

Here’s a quick list of things I wish I had known when setting out to create a business blog:

A Quebec court has enforced a billion dollar award that Facebook obtained against Adam Guerbuez, a Montreal-based spammer.  Facebook was awarded US$843 million by a court in California in 2008 and the social network proceeded to ask the Quebec court to enforce the judgment.  The court granted the request, ordering Guerbuez to pay Facebook C$1,068.928,721.46.  It also ordered Guerbuez to stop all Facebook related activity, including creating, maintaining or using a Facebook account or profile.

Part of my firm's DNA is to make work fun (again). From my years in higher education administration, I discovered the energizing effects learning has on how work gets done, and how well it's done. Walk into a work environment that has a ton of energy. Look closely. Chances are it's because the worker bees are creating a ton of value and continuously learning how to do so. They're doing so with the help of each other. There's a 'we're all in this together' mentality.

The following question was received from a colleague in Ontario regarding online backup solutions:

"I am a specialist in Ontario and considering switching from paper to an EMR. I have a question about online backup such as i365, Carbonite, etc.? Do you have a similar evaluation or rating system for online-backup solutions as you do for EMR's?"
Thanks, Dan C