The Savvy CIO

Every morning I walk about a mile from the train station to the office. This morning around 6:30am I was traversing the gray streets of Chicago when a guy I’d never met sidled up beside me.

He greeted me and I returned his greeting.

“Why’s everybody so wrapped up in themselves?” he asked.

I stopped. We talked for a little while. This fellow lived on the street. He had his own reasons for trying to get me to stop, of course. But his sense of isolation was palpable.

I’ve heard it said that one of the worst parts of poverty is being cut off from relationships. Everyone is “so wrapped up in themselves” because we don’t want to be taken advantage of, because we fear what a conversation might bring, because we believe our time is better spent at the place we’re headed to, whether work or home. It’s easier not to stop, not to listen, not to look others in the eye.

It’s hard to tend to and care for people.

At the risk of diminishing the importance of this man and the problems of poverty, can I suggest that this lesson applies in business too? read more »

Working at a tech firm, I’m surrounded by a lot of very technically savvy people.

I find, in general, very technically savvy people tend to be paranoid about privacy and security on the Internet.

This worries me.

What do they know that I don’t know?

So in a toast to technically savvy Internet paranoia, here’s a trio of Firefox browser add-ons designed with the security paranoid in mind. read more »

Check out this great story about how open source crisis-mapping software has saved lives in Haiti, Chile and elsewhere. Two people wrote the program in a few days during the 2008 Kenyan post-election violence. The result?

The Ushahidi program provides a way for volunteers to collect information from sources like text messages, blog posts, videos, phone calls, and pictures, which are then mapped in near real time. It can be used to plot everything from disasters to wars. And unlike older forms of crisis-mapping software, Ushahidi is advanced enough to paint an accurate portrait of events while remaining incredibly user friendly and easy to build on.

This is open-source software at it’s best: fast, powerful, extensible, user-friendly and leveraging existing platforms instead of reinventing every wheel.

Kudos to the folks at Ushahidi. What great work.

The Ushahidi site and a photo of the software are after the jump. read more »

Darren Rowse over a ProBlogger has some good thoughts about website and blog content for click-happy browsers. It’s a short and funny read.

Darren experimented with a video chat site called ChatRoulette. The site randomly paired him with another person, and either person can click away to a new partner whenever they want. Darren couldn’t even get others to acknowledge him before donning a clown wig.

Applying his experience to the people browsing his blog (and your website), he offers this summary of visitor behavior:

• They don’t stay till long - they’re always clicking
• They are always looking for the next best thing
• They only pause if they see something that is interesting, intriguing or completely relevant to them
• They are ruthless
• They are impulsive
• They will judge what they see within a split second of arriving on a site
• They rely upon instinct and first impressions

He has some take home lessons for interacting with this type of person on a blog or site, but it’s important to note that not every site or blog (especially business ones) should plan their web strategy around this type of visitor. read more »

We recently programmed a client’s business-to-business e-commerce site to display competitor pricing alongside their own pricing.

Sound crazy?

We don’t think showing your competitor’s pricing is smart for everyone. But the idea behind it is embracing the truth that you can’t hide information from shoppers. Most visitors already know the lowest prices for the items they’re buying, or can double-check in under 10 seconds. There’s no hiding anymore.

Last week I found myself at an enormous, local mall hunting for a pair of shoes. Like most shoppers, I had a set of assumptions in my mind about what was important to me in my purchasing decision. In my case my criteria were, in order:

read more »

I’ve spoken before about Mr. IT Fix It. Mr. IT Fix It is an outsourced technology consultant who gets paid for fixing your technology when it breaks.

Hiring a Mr. IT Fix It appears to be a good way to keep costs down as you only pay when you need his assistance. But this relationship can actually end up increasing your technology costs because no one is tending to the regular maintenance of your technology to prevent problems and reduce costs.

Which is cheaper: installing a new battery in a smoke detector or dealing with a house fire?

I know, an extreme example, but it illustrates the point.

Mr. IT Fix It makes almost nothing for installing a battery but can make a lot for putting out a fire. In contrast, a Managed IT team–paid a flat monthly fee–will gladly spend a lot less time and energy performing this kind of necessary, low-profile work because it means they (like you) won’t have to deal with a time-consuming crisis (during which, like you, they will not make any money).

In short, you want your outsourced IT to care for your technology as if they own it.

The key question: is your relationship (and compensation structure) with your outsourced IT treating them like Mr. IT Fix It or like Managed IT?

Here are five lessons learned from homeowners about how business leaders want their outsourced IT to behave.

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So says Forrester’s Research Chairman and Chief Executive Officer George Colony. (HT The Magic Software Blog)

Business leaders need to know finance. They need to know the pulse of marketing and sales and operations. But too often when it comes to technology, leaders can be content to let “that guy” handle it.

Such an approach made some sense 10+ years ago, when technology was on the periphery of many businesses. But today technology is so closely intertwined with business goals that it has become mission critical.

This underlines Colony’s main point, that technology has ceased to be primarily about information and is now about business.

Colony stresses that business technology:

1. Increases revenue
2. Reduces overhead
3. Expands market share

These are core concerns of a business leader, and in today’s business world they require familiarity with business technology.

You don’t need to be a techie. Frankly, it’s probably best not to be, so there is no temptation to get into the details of the technology itself. There’s no need to be able to parse SaaS or LAMP. But there is a need to know what relevant business technology is out there for your company, so you can drive innovation.

Where do you start?

Get an educator.

Someone who can explain technology in business terms instead of technology terms. Yes, they need to speak the language of technology, but they also have to speak business and plain English.

Technology is mission critical, and it’s not OK to be ignorant anymore.

A video of Colony’s presentation is below. read more »

Suppose your sales staff write really bad proposals. What do you do?

Track down advance copies of Word 2010 to solve the problem?

Of course not. The writing will still be bad!

Yet business leaders are often tempted to think new technology can fundamentally improve sales or customer service or operations or fulfillment, when the root problem is a shortage of quality skills and processes.

Sales are down? Bring in a Sales Force Automation system!

Customer satisfaction is low? Deploy a Customer Relationship Management database!

Online revenue is slipping? Upgrade the e-commerce site with improved business intelligence metrics!

These businesses will fail. Why? read more »

In a typical arrangement, your outsourced IT technicians and consultant gets paid when things break. It doesn’t have to be this way, but this is still the predominant model. This arrangement is counterproductive and can breed distrust and frustration between you and your IT consultants.

What if instead of being rewarded (i.e. paid) when things break, your outsourced IT was rewarded for regular, preventative care and planning?

Consider the way we take care of our own homes:

read more »

We develop, customize, build, integrate and host web applications and web sites, and we do it almost exclusively on open source software.

Why open source?

There are several reasons, but here’s a big one:

Open source saves you money.

That’s you, the client. Open source saves you money. read more »