Strategy Driven

DECEMBER 15, 2010

Optimization involves designing a system or process to be as good as possible in some defined sense. He has co-authored numerous papers including: What’s New in Optimization with SAS/OR, Exploring System Performance with SAS Simulation Studio, and Five Steps to Resource Optimization. In each case the answer is it depends.

Resources 50

Resources Process Constraint Objective 50

Harvard Business Review

AUGUST 14, 2018

The big question around self-driving cars, for many people, is: When will the technology be ready? In other words, when will autonomous vehicles be safe enough to operate on their own? And where will this technology work best? Cars are heavy, fast-moving objects, operating in public spaces. ” Insight Center.

Technology 8

Technology Environment Operations System 8

Harvard Business Review

APRIL 13, 2017

Cognitive computing and artificial intelligence (AI) are spawning what many are calling a new type of industrial revolution. While both technologies refer to the same process, there is a slight nuance to each. A cognitive system can perceive and infer, reason and learn.

Technology 9

Technology System Learning-by-Doing Video 9

Harvard Business Review

JUNE 4, 2015

These have multiple causes including the shift of the economy to services and information-intensive activities, productivity growth, the appearance of new products and services, demographics, and continued offshoring that now includes services ranging from call centers to medical procedures. Technology to the rescue?

Technology 8

Technology Offshoring Marketing Health Care 8

Harvard Business Review

JUNE 13, 2018

One of the most recent automation technologies to emerge is robotic process automation , or RPA. It is frequently used to automate financial processes, such as comparing invoices with shipment notices, or transfering data from email and call center speech-to-text systems into transactional systems of record.

Process 11

Process Six Sigma Company Technology 11

Harvard Business Review

AUGUST 22, 2011

The next time a customer service rep says, "The computer won't let me do that" or "The system tells me what to do," remember this: Behind every such phrase is a set of processes designed, or at least endorsed, not by computers but by human beings somewhere in the corporate hierarchy. Any chance of a dialogue vanishes.

Call Center 13

Call Center Offshoring Policies System 13

Harvard Business Review

JUNE 7, 2017

Management teams often assume they can leapfrog best practices for basic data analytics by going directly to adopting artificial intelligence and other advanced technologies. So how can companies tell if they are really ready for AI and other advanced technologies? Automating basic processes.

Company 11

Company Telecommunications Retail Supply Chain 11

Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 10, 2017

In Precision’s case, good tactical performance required developing rules, checklists, and standard operating procedures and then following them closely. military says, volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity , where technology and strategy changes rapidly. We made a number of operational changes to the call center.

Organization 11

Organization Tactics Call Center Metrics 11

Harvard Business Review

JANUARY 28, 2015

Coordinating the infrastructure, technology, and messaging in a way that appears seamless and fluid to the customer is, to be blunt, a logistical nightmare. If it’s all about the operations then you lose sight of the customer. Based on this data, operations recommended marketing cease actively trying to acquire these customers.

COO 8

COO Planning Metrics Call Center 8

Harvard Business Review

AUGUST 31, 2018

Is digital technology a democratizing force, allowing smaller, newer companies to compete against giant ones? Despite those trends, our research suggests that technology can in fact provide an advantage to small and new firms. Pivothead is a firm with 25 employees producing wearable technologies to help the blind and visually impaired.

Technology 9

Technology Agility Fixed Costs Software 9

Harvard Business Review

APRIL 25, 2018

Today, monitoring technologies are increasingly inexpensive—and staggeringly expansive. These technologies run the gamut, from body-worn cameras and closed-circuit televisions, to traceable identification cards and keystroke trackers. Raymond Gehman/Getty Images.

Travel 8

Travel Airlines Transportation Call Center 8

Harvard Business Review

MARCH 17, 2016

Exponential technology change. The CHREATE teams developed a topography based on the degree of the democratization of work (the impact of the first three trends above on an organization) and the degree of technological empowerment (the impact of the latter three trends), shown in the figure below. Today, turbo-charged. Work reimagined.

Human Resources 8

Human Resources Technology Globalization Trends 8

Harvard Business Review

JUNE 16, 2016

Our research and client engagement experience has shown us that generating strong returns from the digital sensors, wireless communications devices, digital cameras installed in buildings and other smart, connected devices does not come down to writing big checks or being technologically savvy. The call center logs customer complaints.

Productivity 8

Productivity Products Wireless Technology 8

Harvard Business Review

AUGUST 3, 2017

Systems that provide automated investment advice from financial firms have been referred to as robo-advisers. Sponsored by DXC Technology. The next best action system at Morgan Stanley, then, is focused on three separate objectives — only one of which is common in the robo-adviser market. Crossing the Digital Divide.

System 8

System Short-term Industry Advice 8

Harvard Business Review

JUNE 2, 2015

make your own operations more efficient. create the opportunity to invent new operations. defend against “attack from beneath” and maintain your reputation for ethical operations. Joseph , a scrap-metal recycler, in order to secure supplies for its operations. Insight Center. The Future of Operations.

Supply Chain 8

Supply Chain Contract Manufacturing Outsourcing Operations 8

Harvard Business Review

AUGUST 28, 2017

And AI success stories are becoming more numerous and diverse, from Amazon reaping operational efficiencies using its AI-powered Kiva warehouse robots, to GE keeping its industrial equipment running by leveraging AI for predictive maintenance. While investment in AI is heating up, corporate adoption of AI technologies is still lagging.

Survey 10

Survey Execution First-mover Advantage Technology 10

Harvard Business Review

DECEMBER 6, 2012

This is to say that you don't have to wait until the end of the decade for some breakthrough technology to emerge; it's already here, albeit in bits and pieces. will require aligned goals and supporting systems to manage work between partners. To speed operations and improvement, Process Strategy 2.0 is all about: 1.

Process 8

Process Examples Strategy Six Sigma 8

Harvard Business Review

APRIL 20, 2017

Leaders need a clear-eyed way to think about how these technologies will specifically affect their organizations. Start with the work, not the “job” or the technology. For example, RPA will seldom replace the entire “job” of a call center representative.

Supply Chain 9

Supply Chain Outsourcing Call Center Organization 9

Harvard Business Review

MAY 30, 2017

In the first month, 15% of those new leads were “lookalikes,” meaning that the people calling the dealership to set up a visit resembled previous high-value customers and therefore were more likely to make a purchase. Could Liberate 50% of Managers' Time. Here's what they should focus on.

ROI 13

ROI Tools Marketing CRM 13

Harvard Business Review

AUGUST 15, 2016

.” That’s when Callahan’s team took an unusual step: The team created and linked an employee feedback system to its customer feedback system, in order to flag interactions where customers and employees had different perceptions. Insight Center. Companies rarely connect the two systems.

Survey 8

Survey Retail System Automotive 8

Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 26, 2015

For a long time, technology gave big players a competitive advantage because no one else could afford to be big. If you were Walmart, no one else could afford the complicated technology required to track the demand logistics from shoppers in Peoria to production plants in China. Minimum efficient scale is getting smaller and smaller.

Competitive Advantage 8

Competitive Advantage Pharmaceuticals Industry Trends 8

Harvard Business Review

MARCH 26, 2012

To understand my point, let's think about how big companies have developed scale advantages through information systems. Despite this modularization, managers still relied on one support system to unify a set of seemingly smaller value chains; information. In today's world, you don't need to have scale to enjoy scale.

Porter 12

Porter Competitive Advantage Safe Harbor Efficiency 12

Harvard Business Review

AUGUST 19, 2013

This perspective created the industrial economy lens through which most managers perceive their operations. IT professionals need to recognize and embrace the Serendipity Economy in order to better understand the impact of technology investments, improve employee engagement and drive business transformation.

CTO 8

CTO Franchising CIO Short-term 8

Harvard Business Review

JULY 19, 2016

At the high end of artificial intelligence are systems like cognitive computing that are allowing driverless cars and other machines to develop the capacity to learn from their experiences in the world — by incorporating nuances, remembering outcomes, and adapting to mistakes. First, let’s get our bearings.

Company 8

Company Insurance Call Center Bottom-up 8

Harvard Business Review

AUGUST 5, 2014

Talk about how complex marketing has become is very much in vogue, but there’s much less discussion about the operational (and diplomatic) muscle CMOs need in order to get things done. A customer may go online, compare products, scan a bar code, search, and call an agent. Customer journeys are complex and crisscross the organization.

P&L 9

P&L Banking Marketing Call Center 9

Harvard Business Review

FEBRUARY 7, 2013

While companies have outsourced low-value work such as payroll processing and call centers for decades, today they farm out critical activities. And Indian mobile phone provider Bharti Airtel uses IBM to manage its computer systems and Ericsson to operate its cell tower infrastructure.

Organization 8

Organization Supply Chain Team Outsourcing 8

Harvard Business Review

MAY 5, 2016

But more strategic responses identify the essential ensembles of people, processes, and technologies that provide the most valuable — and valued — user experience (UX) for customers and clients. This clean-sheet customer experience prioritization over more traditional call center KPIs had a huge effect.

Levitt 8

Levitt Disaggregation Kaizen Call Center 8

Harvard Business Review

AUGUST 8, 2013

Let''s examine one specific aspect of Otis Elevator, a unit of the Top 100 innovator United Technologies Corp. The 161-year-old Connecticut company is the world''s largest designer and builder of vertical transportation systems such as escalators and elevators. Offshore Outsourced Product Development.

Engineering 8

Engineering Globalization Innovation Marketing 8

Harvard Business Review

DECEMBER 6, 2011

Fixated on that challenge, retail chains have invested heavily in sophisticated inventory management systems. Yet at one large retail chain we studied (pdf) , those systems didn't seem to be doing the trick. It wasn't that the system's numbers were wrong. At best, they vary staffing levels based on sales forecasts.

Retail 15

Retail Merchandising Succession Taylorism 15

Harvard Business Review

MAY 13, 2015

The core disruptive concept is that the “pipe” created by the cable MSOs (multiple system operators) no longer provides the sole gateway to consumers’ television screens. Think about messaging: We’ve relied on mobile phone operators (AT&T, Verizon, et al.) to send text messages. ” Data.

Brand 8

Brand Disintermediation Media Metrics 8

Harvard Business Review

JUNE 20, 2013

Messages back and forth are also private and can take many forms, including texts, instant messages, email, phone calls, or whatever. The camera''s table sits in a virtual cloud, running on an operating system called CloudOS , which is programmed with KRL , or Kinetic Rule Language. Customers Marketing Technology'

CRM 8

CRM CIO Marketing Call Center 8

Harvard Business Review

DECEMBER 27, 2017

Early results of an experiment at The Gap provide hope that there might be a remedy for one of the most controversial labor practices in retailing and other service industries, such as hospitality, health care, and call centers. But it requires the adoption of a whole new operating model.

Retail 8

Retail Survey Operations Sharpe 8

Harvard Business Review

JUNE 27, 2013

Other companies pray that technology can save them. Sixty-two percent of our panelists report that technology advancements drive their firms'' innovation activities. But technology for technology''s sake can end in disaster. Imitation may be the highest form of flattery — but it''s not innovation.

Innovation 8

Innovation Forrester Business Model Long-term 8

Harvard Business Review

JANUARY 8, 2015

As the CEO of a British bank confided at last year’s World Economic Forum, “We all know it’s important to be empathic, but how do I galvanize 48,000 people in my UK operations — most of whom think that empathy is for wimps?” The highest performing company was LinkedIn.

Emotional Intelligence 8

Emotional Intelligence Media Sample Banking 8

Harvard Business Review

NOVEMBER 6, 2015

In August, Apple disclosed developer support for “Content Blocking” on its new mobile operating system, IOS 9. (There is also controversy around Adblock Plus’s business , which involves taking money from some whitelisted companies.). Expect other forms of content blocking to follow.

Advertising 8

Advertising CRM Long-term Short-term 8

Harvard Business Review

MAY 8, 2017

Today AWS accounts for just 10% of Amazon’s $150 billion in revenue, but generates close to $1 billion in quarterly operating profit. In 2011 the board selected as the new CEO one of its own members, Heinrich Hiesinger, a Siemens executive with experience supplying technology to many industries. Microsoft is a case in point.

Franchising 14

Franchising CEO Business Model Strategy 14