I have been in the Applications Outsourcing Industry for the most part of my career and would like to spend a few minutes on expressing my concerns on the 'Landed Resources' penomenon.

 It is a phenomenon in itself as IT industries today are sending rookies with little or no experience and negligible exposure.

Some of these poor lost souls are thrust into sensitive client facing situations without being equipped with the necessary skills or cultural tact to handle them. 

I have heard of situations where clients have tried their level best trying to 'team up' with these strange extended teams that they are having to work with by offers of buying them beers only to be let down with dismissive refusals because the new member is a tee-totaller vegetarian and takes offence on even being asked!

While most companeis make claims of putting these teams through cultural orientation programs, I have never seen them be practised in a real project situation where the requirement for an additional resource is always 'yesterday'!

Also, the work culture is dramatically different. 

 On Behalf of Mark, thanks for sharing your content for ebizvitals.

Few in business would argue that the success of CEOs like Sam Walton, Fred West, Herb Kelleher and Jack Welch has been pretty amazing. They have delivered some pretty outstanding results for their shareholders. But, unlike many CEOs they have delivered this through customer understanding rather than pure financial and risk based management approaches. The result is that not only are costs kept under control for enhanced productivity, but sales revenues have grown impressively above the norm too.

In the current climate there is much focus on Process of Business Process and the how and why it is needed in order to improve and transform business. For the most part however the responsibility for doing the work and delivering the results has been delegated down the organisation, or in some cases outsourced altogether.

There is no doubt that a well managed process centric company is more agile, more able to keep costs under control and to better understand the value of any investment they might make. But, are they in a better position to deliver real growth? It is this author's contention that in the final analysis it is revenue growth that will deliver the ultimate long term returns that investors are seeking, as well as providing the security of employment that employee seek. To merely utilise Process Management in any form purely as a cost or risk reduction strategy, is to squander the real competitive advantages that it can bring.

Watch IBM present their offer for Telelogic. As per my initial analysis the main area for IBM to focus is around acquiring Telelogic products in area of Enterprise Architecture. They have also mentioned about how Telelogic's products can help them combine synergies in areas of systems development so rhapsody is a good fit there as well as DOORS for Requirements Management. The main overlap is around configuration management with Synery and clearcase being serious competitors in the same space. IBM is right to point out that both products have large userbase, infact companies like Nokia/phillips have a huge dependance on synergy for CM. It would be an interesting piece to watch over a period of time as to how IBM managed to keep afloat both products.

Several stories in the news recently bring hope that at last increasing numbers of firms are "getting it!" They are seemingly starting to understand what the real benefits of embedding BPM thinking can do for /will mean to them. For years we have been bombarded with marketing messages and TV commercials proclaiming "Me, me, me", the objective being if we keep telling people how wonderful we are then surely they will buy or keep buying from us. But, of course in a world of extreme competition the rules have changed and it no longer matters how good your company thinks it is – it is what benefit I can gain from using you rather than your competitor that counts.

For years the giant Coca Cola Corporation has traded on the slogan "Coke, it's the real thing", but alas as the company continues to see itself in decline it has decided to change its image and its slogan. It has now launched its new slogan "The Coke side of life" in attempt to appeal to a wider audience and of course play more to people's emotions. Of course there are those who might argue that it is madness to tinker with one of the world's top brands. However if your sales have been in reverse for 5 years then surely the message has to get through sooner or later – it is madness to keep doing the same things the same way and expecting different results! It will take quite some time to see how it works and more importantly whether they are using this message as part of a bigger internal transformation initiative. From an outside perspective it will be very interesting to see whether this change mars the end of traditional internal management controls and measures to an outside view, looking in on the business from the customer's perspective and focusing their efforts on reorganizing around the customer. So Coca Cola are going to switch to playing more on the emotions of their customers (and hopefully their staff too), meanwhile another well know brand has also switched its external messaging.

Posted: on behalf of Mark

For this month's postcard, I thought it might be interesting to share some thoughts and provide a heads up on the subject of Six Sigma. Originating at companies like General Electric and Motorola, Six Sigma can best be summed up as an approach that helps you try and achieve perfection. Traditionally, Six Sigma has been viewed as a statistical approach to quality suitable only for manufacturing, but things are changing.

What about the Customers?

Quality Companion from Minitab

I wanted to tell you about a new piece of software I have been playing with and that has impressed me greatly. Those that know me will know that tools in the process space do not easily impress me!

Telelogic today announced their takeover by IBM . I feel a bit amazed for Telelogic to take this decision considering the fact that IBM has many overlapping products and this will surely mean chopping down some products of Telelogic.