Stories by Thomas Hoffman

Think analytics for success, say authors

Thomas H Davenport is professor of IT at Babson College in Massachusetts and Jeanne G Harris heads Accenture’s Institute for High Performance Business. The pair have co-authored Analytics: The New Science of Winning, which advocates greater use of BI in organisations.

IT leaders are made, not born, say tech veterans

As a long-time IT management consultant and a facilitator of the US Society for Information Management (SIM) Regional Leadership Forum since 1994, Bart Bolton knows a thing or two about the qualities that go to make an IT leader.

Three questions for Warren Bennis

The era of the single leader is over, says Warren Bennis, one of the world's foremost authorities on organizational development, leadership and change. And if that's a surprise, it shouldn't be.

Three questions for Charles Feld

The former CIO at Burlington Northern Santa Fe and Delta Air Lines sees a bright 2007, where CIOs and CXOs fuse together to create 21st-century companies.

The evolution of project, portfolio management

As project management and portfolio management disciplines have matured over the years, vendors that support these functional areas have had to evolve along with them -- or die trying. One vendor that has survived is Primavera Systems. With 22 consecutive years of revenue growth and profitability under its belt, the company has adapted well to changing market demands.

Effects of blogging hard to measure

Many senior executives and marketing gurus believe corporate blogs are useful tools that can bring companies closer to customers and generate interest in products or services. But is there a way to calculate the return-on-investment (ROI) from blogs? Two analysts at Forrester Research — Chloe Stromberg and Charlene Li — believe there is and have been researching the ROI of blogs.

ICT in transformation mode at multinational

Supporting sprawling business operations seamlessly across 86 countries would challenge any ICT group, but Procter & Gamble, a company known for innovation, that’s not enough. Since the ICT organisation at the 169-year-old consumer products titan was melded into its shared-services business in 2005, CIO and global services officer Filippo Passerini has challenged the technology team to live up to the company’s reputation for creativity.

Building an ‘A Team’: how to find and keep top ICT talent

As the US economy continues to show resiliency and the job market tightens, it’s getting tougher to find and retain top ICT talent. According to a July survey of ICT chiefs from a group of 300 US corporate managers, 31% plan to hire ICT executives in the coming months. “Historically, that’s a high figure,” says Randall Neal, chief executive of Randall James Monroe, an executive search firm.

Tools can’t take politics out of project selection

A few years ago, when portfolio management software and techniques first came into vogue, many IT executives remarked on how the tools would remove politics from IT project prioritisation debates. They envisioned IT steering committees that would objectively rank the value of proposals by calculating their expected return on investment, strategic impact and other quantifiable criteria.

IT managers try to meet Sarbanes-Oxley demands

IT managers at several large companies said this week the software they now have should help them meet the Sarbanes-Oxley Act's internal documentation requirements on an ongoing basis. But analysts think many corporate users aren't so well prepared.

Study: Companies spend less on IT, more on outsourcing

The best-performing IT departments typically spend less on technology and personnel and take different approaches to outsourcing than do their peers, according to an examination of 200 customer benchmarks being released Monday by The Hackett Group.

Study: Demand strong for workers with Internet skills

Despite a steady rise in the number of IT jobs being outsourced, demand for workers with Internet-related skills such as Java and networking is helping to drive IT compensation higher, according to a report released today by Meta Group Inc.

The cognitive personal assistant

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University are developing a computer-based administrative assistant that draws upon artificial intelligence (AI) techniques to perform routine tasks such as scheduling meetings for busy managers and filtering and prioritizing their e-mail.

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