A colleague of mine with close to 30 years experience in financial services recently returned from a business trip to Kuala Lumpur where he attended a financial services CIO summit. One of the messages he heard again and again was the quest for simplicity.
The CIOs were looking for solutions that are not simplistic, but rather simple – simple to implement, simple to maintain and simple to use.
Not a new concept, but one we need to constantly remind ourselves of as we use technology as an enabler. Key lessons learned to keep in-mind include:
It’s not about the technology, it’s about delivering improved capability and business value
Get the users involved early and often
Ensure both the business and the technology sides are aligned
It’s about people, process and technology
The list can go on, but let’s return to simplicity. When we look at today’s distributed computing environment, it harkens back to the early 1990s when the battle raged between OS2 and Windows. We all know the result and now PCs, in a client-server architecture, rule the day. It is now becoming increasingly clear that the client-server environment is anything but simple which is why we are moving into a post PC era. I would argue that a critical part of this shift is the need to drive to simplicity.
A brief example may help paint the picture for you. We recently worked with a large European bank that was facing a far-reaching desktop operating system upgrade. To replace the old with the new would not have solved one nagging problem: it took over 20 minutes to boot up, sign in and start using a desktop. All the best intentions lead to increased complexity and a lot of lost productivity.
Do the math: 1,000 people signing in once a day lose a total of 333 hours of productivity every day. That’s 8 weeks of lost productivity in the first half hour of each work day. Transitioning to a virtual desktop environment, with Cisco Virtualization Experience Infrastructure(V XI) and services, brought the sign-in time down to seconds, not minutes, while simplifying overall desktop management, which ultimately helped increase productivity.
The challenges we face in today’s post-PC era include overcoming complexity, but as Edward de Bono says, “Dealing with complexity is an inefficient and unnecessary waste of time, attention and mental energy. There is never any justification for things being complex when they could be simple.” Now is the time to drive for simplicity.
Before we could write, film videos, watch TV, or tweet, stories served as the way to share information and convey data.
But even in the digital age with information coming at us from every angle every second, it’s the power of stories that compel us to buy, that make our customers trust us, and it’s how the best marketers convey information.
Cisco’s new Built for the Network campaign is helping us to reach out to customers through videos and success stories that we’re currently rolling out via television, print, digital, mobile and social media. These stories showcase the power of Cisco and its partners and we want to ensure that you have the tools to spread the word, through this and your own campaigns. I would also like you to participate and will show you how.
First, watch the most recently launched commercial.
Keep reading for details on how to participate in the campaign and reach more customers. (It could be your business featured in an upcoming commercial or video.)
Here I talk about a case study prepared by Mainstay Partners LLC, an independent consulting firm, who interviewed with the manufacturer’s executives, IT executives and IT planning personnel. The case study looks at GM’s Cisco-based Plant Floor Controls Network (PFCN), and found out the following about what it is, what it does, how it help’s with General Motor’s Business challenges, and where GM goes from here. Read More »
Nearly, twenty thousand fans in seats, all connected, all sharing the same exciting sports experience. Taking and posting pictures to Facebook throughout the game, using Smartphones to stay in touch with friends and tweeting exciting game moments. They use free mobile apps to play team trivia games and earn points at the concession stands. They look up sports stats, check traffic, and buy tickets for the next game. Never a dull moment.
Located in Kansas City and opened in 2011, LIVESTRONG Sporting Park is an innovator in every sense of the word. It is home to a sport that is a relative latecomer in the U.S. – soccer – and it features the world’s most advanced technology – to enable the fans who refuse to be simply spectators. Read More »
Following the economic turbulence of the “Great Recession,” Toyota felt the need to improve its revenue structures. These earnings are directly linked to advanced work performed by knowledge workers in areas such as research and development on new cars, production, and sales. Toyota also wanted to shorten its product time-to-market to maintain its competitive market lead. The firm turned to the Cisco Internet Business Solutions Group (IBSG) to help Toyota determine where improvements could be made and how to implement them.
