Any discussion of value in business leads us to benefits.  We talk about them all of the time in IT.  But what are they really?  My good friend and business advisor, Professor Bill Robinson, has developed a methodology to classify …

I just finished reading the RIS News/Gartner report on Retail Technology.   As always Jeff Roster of Gartner does a terrific job navigating the numerous trends that he and Gartner have been so ably tracking.  I was stuck by the overwhelming need …

We all fall victim to this. It’s the easy thing to do. It’s harder to put on the brakes. An urgent request comes to IT. After a quick brainstorming session, it is determined that a small change/fix or updated process …

What’s the right way to tackle the problem of the creeping overnight cycle?  There are two answers; 1) Throw money at the problem, or 2) Retool. Throwing money: The easiest hardware upgrade to get approved is the one that solves this …

What is MDM? Master Data Management – according to wikipedia: MDM comprises a set of processes and tools that consistently defines and manages the non-transactional data entities of an organization (which may include reference data). MDM has the objective of providing processes for …