Backblog

When helping clients evaluate and select the right ERP systems for their organizations, choosing the software is just one piece of the puzzle. The next steps are to develop a comprehensive and realistic implementation plan and to identify the best ERP implementation partner to help make the selected software work for your business.

During a recent vacation I had an opportunity to test my own decision making with respect to the value of consumer ratings. Deciding where to dine out is always one of the pleasant challenges of any holiday.

Yesterday was the deadline for parties to the CRTC's hearing into usage based billing to submit their comments. Bell stole the show by dropping its wholesale UBB proposal and substituting it with a new acronym - Aggregated Volume Pricing (AVP) - that should allow independent ISPs to retain some flexibility when it comes to their Internet service plans.

I'm not afraid to admit it I haven't had cable tv in over 8 years - until recently that is. Partly this is due the ubiquitous crap on tv and it's partly due to the fact that I'm a horrid tv addict.

Facebook recently patented “Curated Search”  , which is expected to use algorithmic search results similar to Google or Bing, then weight those results by what users in or near your Facebook network have shown interest in.

Later today, it appears certain that the government will lose a non-confidence motion, spelling the end to the current Parliament and sending Canada into yet another election. There have been some legislative and policy successes since 2008 including the Anti-Spam law (C-28), a law involving ISPs and child pornography (C-22), and the recent launch of open government and open data initiatives.

One day after formally launching a Canadian open data portal, the federal governmental on Friday unveiled a new Open Government initative.

The 2011 ERP Report shows some interesting trends that began last year and continue into this year. For example, the accelerating adoption of SaaS and the increased focus on business case and benefits realization are both trends that aren’t too surprising in this economic environment.

I was offline yesterday and thus missed the official launch of the federal government's open data portal.  Like many, I think is great that the government has finally moved on this issue as Canada has trailed far behind many other countries in making government data openly available for reuse for far too long.

Several weeks ago I posted the first installment of a 2-part blog that explored what the proliferation of Cloud-computing solutions means for contact center services, and I touched on the array of appealing offerings on the market today. Can the many potential Cloud-based solutions be beneficial for contact centers? Are truly virtualized operations achieveable? I encourage you to read part 1 if you haven't already.

With new fiscal budgets and renewed momentum in place, the early part of the year is when we see a lot of demand for our ERP negotiation services.  Over the last two weeks in particular, I have been helping a number of companies negotiate contracts with their ERP vendors.

(Republished from the CanadianEMR Newsletter March 9, 2011) Once you have selected an EMR, signed your contract with the vendor, applied for funding according to provincial protocols (if you qualify), and scheduled a date to implement the system, the real hard work begins. Implementation can be a smooth and streamlined process if you are well prepared or it can be disruptive and difficult.

A simmering battle over governance of the Internet is set to take centre stage in California this week as the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a California-based non-profit corporation charged with the principal responsibility for maintaining the Internet's domain name system, holds one of its regular meetings in Silicon Valley.

In the wake of social media’s influence on the political events in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt, social media has now stepped up again to help inform the public about the situation in Japan since the tsunami hit last week.

Issuing a request for proposal (RFP) and selecting a service provider partner is a big deal, especially for services that can materially affect the way — or even whether — you do business. You want the investment in time and focus to be worthwhile, resulting in the right services with the right partner at the right price.

Interesting launch today from Rogers here in Toronto. You don't usually associate wireless business services with cable companies, but Rogers is no ordinary cable company. They've long been one of Canada's major cable operators, but they got in the mobile game very early, and are #1 up here. Cable is a regional business by nature, but wireless gives them a national footprint, and that's where things get interesting for SMBs.

I've been quiet lately - but busy. Busy is good, but sometimes that means no blogging. Gotta make a living, and I'll have updates as things move along. One item to quickly share - Fonolo had some nice news yesterday with Sirius Canada. Aside from my being an Adviser - gotta be transparent about these things - this is good news on a few fronts.

It was chilly today so I didn't feel like getting out of bed to attend the conference I registered for. So I didn't. I just turned on my computer and laid back in cozy warmness. Yes, the Internet has truly allowed me to not only stay in my pajamas while working, but now to not even get out of bed. Most enjoyable conference experience ever.

According to Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary, a community is defined as, “an interacting population of various kinds of individuals (as species) in a common location.”

In this podcast, Steven Forth and I discuss our respective takes on the importance of improving the effectiveness of sales conversations and pricing negotations.

One of the common misconceptions of ERP systems is that they provide out-of-the-box best practices that can be easily implemented.  In other words, the idea is that there is no need to re-engineer business processes when you can simply use the pre-configured best practices and let those drive new workflows.  As a CIO looking for ways to simplify your ERP implementation and mitigate risk, this is exactly what you want to hear, so it must be true.  Right?

Two articles published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal (February 22, 2011) bring into question Canada's national health IT strategies.

Yesterday I blogged about how the Canadian Recording Industry Association has broken with creator groups and the Canadian Independent Music Association on the issue of an iPod levy.  While the creator groups continue to express their support for the levy, CRIA's Graham Henderson told government officials on September 27, 2010 that he disagreed "with some creator groups who are advocating for an associated levy on digital media storage devices."

Most organizations likely place social media responsibilities primarily (or solely) with marketing, but a recent interview with Cisco’s Marketing Director on WebWorkerDaily, now part of GigaOM provides some insightful tips and makes the case for spreading it throughout the company, especially to customer service:

From what I can tell, Backbone is Canada'a longest running magazine focused on technology, especially in terms of how we use in everyday life, both at work and home. Last night they hosted a 10th anniversary event here in downtown Toronto, and I was an invited guest.