Backblog

Over the last year, I have been researching and contemplating usage of the location-based mobile application Foursquare. A one-time avid user, my own usage has lessened significantly over the last few months. This is due to the loss of novelty for me, a lack of critical mass of my friends using it, almost non-existent financial incentives, and Foursquare's interface limitations.

Industry Minister Tony Clement told a University of Alberta audience yesterday that "We asked (the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission) to review their decision, and if they come back with the same decision the cabinet would overrule it because it wouldn’t be consistent with government policy...promoting competition and choice."

Despite the fact that social media is rising in popularity and sophistication, most businesses still have some common misconceptions about the basics of social media marketing. Social media isn’t right for all organizations, but those that aren’t taking part because they have the wrong idea about certain aspects may be selling their online marketing short.

The topic of location-aware mobile applications are certainly a growing area. Whether an application used more for fun and reviews such as Foursquare or to find nearby businesses such as the Yellow Pages app, I believe this type of technology will become increasingly ubiquitous and embedded in an increasing number of applications and online services.

As public frustration with the state of telecommunications services such as Internet access and wireless competition mounts, a relatively obscure government consultation on spectrum deserves far more attention.

Peter Nowak has a terrific post that responds to ten frequently heard myths about usage based billing.

Over the last two months, we have facilitated a number of our ERP Boot Camp sessions to train clients how to select and implement ERP software in a world-class fashion.  One of the topics that consistently stimulates great discussion is when we look at executive and employee satisfaction for the leading ERP systems.

I was talking with a colleague last week about EMR adoption. He expressed his frustration at the lack of coding and interoperability standards between different EMRs available in Canada.

I’m sure that most internet marketers have heard of the lead nurturing process and can recognize its importance to pushing leads through the sales cycle. One of the most overlooked parts of this process, and, in my opinion, one of the most important is content mapping.

Kevin Davis' new book, Slow Down, Sell Faster, thoughtfully explains how sales people can speed up business-to-business sales by slowing down to get into synch with each customer's buying process. The key to this, in Davis' view, is to match the focus + timing of sales efforts to each buyer's needs.

Managers of contact center operations as well as their counterparts in information technology and other areas are looking to the next big horizon in service delivery: Cloud Computing. As they look to take that next step, the key question is whether the “rainbow” on that horizon is true virtualized reality for contact center operations.

As is often the case with House of Commons committee hearings, yesterday's Industry Committee hearing on usage based billing saved the best for last.

Dr. Rob Schertzer is an opthalmologist in Vancouver and regular contributor to CanadianEMR. He is passionate about the use of technology to improve patient care and will be a guest blogger on CanadianEMR in the future.

Blog posts should be optimized just like any other content on your website and that includes making sure that your blog posts are search engine friendly.

I've been a member of the Internet Society for a few years. They sponsored my participation in the Internet Governance Forum at Hyderabad, India. The Internet Society (ISOC) is a non-profit, international organization that helps develop and promote Internet standards and policy. They work actively with governments to ensure that the Internet remains free and open.

Just as we released some initial data from our 2011 ERP Report showing that ERP implementation costs declined again in 2010, ERP lawsuits continue to proliferate through the industry. For example, Marin County filed a lawsuit against their system integrator in 2010 and Lumber Liquidators blamed a botched SAP implementation for their financial woes late last year.

My colleague Kevin Smilie recently wrote of the importance of an integrated, centralized IT Service Management (ITSM) system dedicated to demand management, capacity management and service integration in order to maximize the benefits of Cloud Computing. These elements will become even more important in the future as the very nature of Cloud Computing enables the growth of healthy new “tensions” in the sourcing landscape.

Yesterday [February 1, 2011] was a remarkable day for those following the usage based billing and bandwidth cap issue. In the span of 24 hours, an unlikely political consensus emerged that left little doubt that - at a minimum - the CRTC's UBB decision will be reconsidered.  Prime Minister Harper expressed his concern with the decision, Industry Minister Tony Clement hinted at overturning the decision, and both the Liberals and NDP expressed strong support for overturning the decision.

What is SEO? Some of you might be rolling your eyes at this one, but is actually still an enormous number of organizations that know little or nothing about SEO and the come to us to find out what it is and how it can help them.

One of the most useful functionalities of an EMR is the ability to electronically prescribe medications. True e-Prescribing is more than drug interaction checking at the time of a visit with the generation of a printed prescription.

If you’ve followed our blogs and thought leadership over the last several years, you probably know that I’m skeptical of marketing hype and academic theories from industry analysts that don’t necessarily reflect reality.  Software as a Service, or SaaS ERP, is one of those trends that I’ve been openly skeptical of.