Preparing Marketing Plans – Sample one for Amazon.com – A handy tool for strategic IT managers
Overview Amazon.com offers Earth’s largest selection of online products. Being the #1 online retailer, it offers the most advanced and innovative ways of e-commerce that...
Theory Of Constraints (TOC) – A Case study (AOL, FCC, Verizon) based analysis
All organizations strive for excellence. The Theory of Business (TOB) of any company is considered the deciding factor, which determines the degree of excellence and...
M-Commerce? How could your company take liverage out of it?
Its my pleasure to introduce you to the emerging world of m-commerce and how your company can take a competitive edge by harnessing this technology...
Force Field Analysis – How could IT managers use it?
Force field analysis is a tool used for analyzing the supporting and opposing forces behind a change process. Managers use it to identify the stakeholders...
Technology Cycles and Innovation
Technology cycles and innovation are two useful phenomena that can be used to explain how competitive advantage of companies can be maintained over time. Technology...
Costs and Benefits of Planning
Planning has advantages as well as disadvantages. This means that even though planning aids in improving organizational and individual performance, it might not work very...
“Cognitive Dissonance” and how to ease it
Cognitive dissonance is an insecure feeling, or lingering doubts, consumers sometimes have after making large purchases. One way to reduce Cognitive dissonance (CD) is to...
Influencing Problem recognition of customers
The consumer can be influenced by exposing him to some stimuli that makes him realize about his potential need or desire for something. A good...
Market segmentation
Market segmentation is the process of separating the varied market into segments, each of which has similar characteristics. For example, a cosmetic company may segment...
Simple NPV & ROI calculation (Example 001)
Case: A company invests $15000 and receives a $11000 cash benefit at the end of the first year and a $12100 cash benefit at the...
Accounting Vs Financial Management
Accounting can be considered as an information system that provides various tools to summarize financial performance or economic activities of an individual, family, organization or...
Balance sheet and Income Statement? – Another baisc stuff that IT manager need to know
Balance Sheet gives the snapshot of the business’s financial position at a particular instance. It basically measures the wealth of a business firm at that...
Assets and Liabilities for an organization – Yes basic stuff for anything including IT strategic planning
Assets and liabilities are the two major entities that find an entry in a business’s balance sheet for measuring its wealth. Assets are items owned...
Process Control and Process Improvement
Process Management has its relevance when managers begin to conceptualize business activities as interdependent processes instead of functions and tasks. The basic requirement towards effective...
Adopting "Systems View" while Process Improvement
Systems view refers to analyzing a problem situation as a system of interdependent processes that exchange input and output. This view helps to identify the...
Equity Theory – How could we motivate effectvely in an organization
Equity theory states that a person is motivated when he perceives that he is treated fairly. He usually picks a colleague who works with him,...
Different kinds of diversity in organizational settings
Two major types of diversities is notable in an organizational setting, which every IT manager should take into consideration – Surface level diversity are those...
Working as team, not always good in an organization
Working in teams does not always ensure positive results. Two possible disadvantages are large number of employees quitting the job and “Social Loafing”. Teams require...
Managers and their focus on diverse work force
Managing diverse workforce is a crucial skill for a manager since there exists both surface level (demographic, cultural and language) and deep level (personal differences...
Current usage and future of XML Database Management Systems
Deepesh Joseph April, 2009 Purpose The purpose of this document is to present a management report that analyzes the current usage of XML based Database...
High Tech Worker Immigration Issues
Deepesh Joseph Kristen Schmidt Raja Sekhar Tunuguntla August 9, 2007 High-Tech Worker Immigration Issues Introduction The United States has a long history of immigration, right...
Future Trends in Enterprise Architecture
1. Introduction Enterprise Architecture (EA) has been in practice since last 3 decades and it is considered as the key enabler of Enterprise business success...
Be informed, Gain knowledge!
One of the core aspects of human life is its need to be informed and thus gain knowledge to act wisely, conscientiously, responsibly and intelligibly....
Basic differences between managing information and managing knowledge? Is it necessary that we try to “get inside people’s heads” to capture it?
Information and Knowledge are two interrelated concepts. Information is processed data that has the capacity to give form or shape to a matter or to...
Motivation studies indicate that not all people are motivated by the same factors or rewards
Motivation is a very important psychological driving force that every individual require to complete an effort. An effort well done, leads to better performance and...
Reengineering New York Public Library (NYPL)
After analyzing the NYPL website (www.nypl.org), it becomes clear that the Digital Library project is a part of a bigger reengineering initiative that has been...
Personal Internet Usage at Workplace
As a Director of Security for your organization, what policies or plans could you implement that might help control or diminish personal Internet use at...
Spend Money or Lose It
Viscione’s article (as in Refernce section) pictures out how important is designing and implementing a continuously improving budget process, for any business firm to survive....
Strategic Alliances – Review and Case Study
The goal of Milne et. al. article is to study how non-profit alliances lead to shape environment policy and market behavior. Focusing on this goal,...
Strategic Planning
Strategic Planning – An analysis from view points of Mintzberg and King 1. The way strategic planning originates: Mintzburg states that strategies can originate as...
Personal SWOT Analysis
Personal SWOT analysis is a good “data collection and analysis method” that we can use to arrive at high performance goal oriented plans. I feel...
About surveys on International Business – Are you World-Minded?
One interesting thing that I have noticed about is that most of the business case surveys that deal with world-mindedness, stresses more on religious, cultural...
Interesting business case review – Taking a Business Decision based on Ethical intensity and Social Responsibility
This review of a chapter from a famous management book reflects on a sample business case when a company which was moving towards bankruptcy was...
Applying Wanous Study to a Real Life Example in an organization
Employee resistance due to cynicism will be a major factor in any organizational change process. The negative affectivity (NA) (Wanous et. al, Jun 2000 )...
Handling Employee Negativity in an Organization- Review of Case study
The Wanous study (as in referred article) brings out the importance of considering negativity of employees during an organizational change and find remedies for it....
Motivation studies indicate that not all people are motivated by the same factors or rewards
Motivation is a very important psychological driving force that every individual require to complete an effort. An effort well done, leads to better performance and...
Interesting business case review – Taking a Business Decision based on Ethical intensity and Social Responsibility
This review of a chapter from a famous management book reflects on a sample business case when a company which was moving towards bankruptcy was...
Theory of Business (TOB) – What is it? Explained with case study of Sassy Scrubs
The main problem areas that Doran focuses on are Money management and Planning. It would be interesting to reflect on how the lack of a...
SWOT -Putting yourself back to when Peggy Piontkowski first created Sassy Scrubs
Put myself back to when Peggy Piontkowski first created Sassy Scrubs. If she would have done a SWOT analysis, what might she have listed in...
Assess Barnes and Noble’s response to the substitution threat from Amazon. How did Amazon respond in turn, and to what net effect?
Barnes and Noble’s Response: Barnes and Noble had started studying online business during late 1994. It was not in response of Amazon.com’s going online that...
Traditional bookselling and Online bookselling – Comparing a customer’s willingness-to-pay
Traditional book selling and Online book selling – Comparing a customer’s willingness-to-pay for books supplied in these two business models. (i.e. Do they expect to...
Separation of Stores and Online Operations for Barnes and Nobles
Separation of Stores and Online Operations for Barnes and Nobles: Was this a good idea?? What was its intent and did it work?? The case...
The Price Cut in amazon.com: Was this a good idea? What was its intent and did it work??
Price cuts are market strategies that companies introduce when they enter into competition. Barnes and Noble’s and Amazon.com’s case was no different. As seen from...
How USPS Overcome Substitution Threat
Considering substitution threats, our US Post Office is faced with a serious threat from email and online banking. Their proposed solution is to raise the...
Amazon Vs Barnes and Nobles – How both companies differ in online book selling business
Since 2000, the competition between http://www.amazon.com/ and www.barnesandnoble.com/ has become intense with the entrance of competitors such as Borders and Books-A-Million Inc. Currently, as per...
Information Architecture and future view
So far we have seen some aspects of IA as related to website design (which indeed is one of the main strategic enterprise information management...
Information Architecture and security
Information Architecture, in general, should be implemented in such a way that it makes the user feel safe and comfortable while surfing through the site....
“Not only is shopping melting into everything, but everything is melting into shopping”
“Not only is shopping melting into everything, but everything is melting into shopping” (The above sentence is taken from the referred article) The article ‘The...
“Hedgehogs see what is essential, and ignore the rest”
“Hedgehogs see what is essential, and ignore the rest” (The above sentence is taken from Jim Collin’s famous article – ‘Are You a Hedgehog or...
Strategy follows structure – While designing strategy oriented websites
This topic is very relevant when we realize the importance of aligning Information Architecture (IA) with the business strategy. The topic that we reflect on...
Get Customer Perspective First
“Instead of creating a clever new product before trying to sell it to customers, the anthropological approach requires companies to look at the customer perspective...
"Farmers Vs. Cowmen"
“Farmers Vs. Cowmen” – Is a sentence from the referred book and below is my review, recommendations – I found this topic very interesting and...
User’s impressions of a Web site and Website’s Design
“User’s impressions of a Web site—about usefulness, ease-of-use, and how enjoyable the experience is—are formed by the Web site’s visual design” (The above sentence is...
“Navigation Systems aids us to chart our course, determine our position and find our way back” – While designing good websites
“Navigation Systems aids us to chart our course, determine our position and find our way back” (The above sentence is quoted from the referred book)...
"When information is stacked in time, it is difficult to understand context and evaluate relationships" – While designing good websites
“When information is stacked in time, it is difficult to understand context and evaluate relationships” (This is based on a sentence as referred in the...
Scent of information
“..Scent of information..” (This is based on a reference sentence as seen in Krug’s User experience book) The above extract from Krug’s book caught my...
“Integrating searching with browsing” – While designing best websites
This is one of the important aspects of (Information Architecture) IA that directly improves usability of websites by supporting information seeking behavior of users. As...
“Elements of User Experience”
“Elements of User Experience” (My reflections on the referred article from Garret) Garret’s presentation of ‘Elements of User Experience’ touched all vital aspects of web...
Web site design rule of thumb – “Your Goal should be for each page to be self explanatory”
“Your Goal should be for each page to be self explanatory” (This is based on my reading from the referred text, my insights, recommendations) The...
“Practicing Information Architecture in the real world”
“Practicing IA in the real world” (This is summary of what I read from the referred book and my thoughts, recommendations) For me, the most...