Part II
Analyzing Strategy
Analysis include 4 areas:
Assess business context: helps define company's boundary positioning by analyzing the industry’s trend's and disruptors, by defining what opportunities can be pursued and their associated risks, and sorting out the opportunities that will not be pursued. It provides the high level of industry understanding. It helps framing choices concerning company's boundary’s positioning. It also include analysis and identification of IT trends, disruptors, opportunities and risks.
Analyze customers: includes analysis of current and future customers by identifying pressing customer's problems and determination how existing and future products and services can resolve these problems. It is done by talking and observing customers, involve them in designing the products. The goal is to help framing the choices regarding a company's market positioning. IT solutions for collection the a real time data and interact with future and current customers is an important foundation for market positioning decisions.
Analyze competitors and substitutes: helps understand what alternatives customers have, which firms offers different solution, how different this solutions are, how much customers are willing to pay. The goal is to help framing the choices regarding a company's product positioning. IT can serve as a source of differentiation and proprietary advantage.
Assess the business network: analyzes the network of suppliers, distributors and other partners who will be included to implement the strategy. It helps frame more choices regarding the role a company plays and its positioning within business network.
Resources:
L. Applegate, R. Austin, D. Soule. Corporate Information Strategy and Management, 2009
Sunday, September 11, 2011
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
LEVERAGE IT TO CREATE BUSINESS ADVANTAGE
PART 1
A good business model is essential to every successful business.
During the previous century the well-established business model was used by most executives to drive their companies. Dot-com era destroyed this model. In today's global network economy new business models are emerging. Radical changes how companies create value within industry requires a new management tools to define strategy and its execution - framework of a business model. IT has great impacts on the three components of a business model - strategy, capabilities, and value. It plays bigger roles in transforming business models.
Business Model definition:
A business model defines how an organization interacts with its environment to define a unique strategy, attract the resources and build the capabilities required to execute the strategy, and create value for all stakeholders.
There are fundamental principles how to run a sustainable business. Using these fundamentals is very important during the turbulent time. An enterprise's business model frames these fundamentals. It can be used for strategic analysis and decision making. It also used to assess the IT impact on the business.
Strategy:
According to Michael Porter, strategy is a set of choices that determine the opportunities you pursue and the market potential of these choices.
These choices define strategic positioning along four key dimensions:
• Market positioning - customers to serve and channels to reach the customers
• Product positioning - products and services to offer and the price to be charged
• Business network positioning - role within extended network of suppliers, producers, distributors, and partners
• Boundary positioning - markets, products, and businesses that will NOT be pursued.
A successful positioning attracts many copy cats. Sustainable advantage happens when barrier for entrance is high and it is difficult for competitors to imitate.
Business model audit can by done by analyzing strategy, capabilities, and value created for all stakeholders.
A good business model is essential to every successful business.
During the previous century the well-established business model was used by most executives to drive their companies. Dot-com era destroyed this model. In today's global network economy new business models are emerging. Radical changes how companies create value within industry requires a new management tools to define strategy and its execution - framework of a business model. IT has great impacts on the three components of a business model - strategy, capabilities, and value. It plays bigger roles in transforming business models.
Business Model definition:
Strategy:
These choices define strategic positioning along four key dimensions:
• Market positioning - customers to serve and channels to reach the customers
• Product positioning - products and services to offer and the price to be charged
• Business network positioning - role within extended network of suppliers, producers, distributors, and partners
• Boundary positioning - markets, products, and businesses that will NOT be pursued.
Business model audit can by done by analyzing strategy, capabilities, and value created for all stakeholders.
Resources:
L. Applegate, R. Austin, D. Soule. Corporate Information Strategy and Management, 2009
L. Applegate, R. Austin, D. Soule. Corporate Information Strategy and Management, 2009
Sunday, May 22, 2011
New aspect of looking at innovation - say no to 1000 different things and concentrate on the essence.
Steve Jobs: Get rid of the crappy stuff, Article by Carmine Gallo, Forbes
Main thoughts that I liked in this article are:
- Get rid of the crappy stuff and focus on the good stuff.
- While anyone can learn the principles that drive Apple’s innovation, few businesses have the courage to do so.
- A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
- Your customers demand simplicity and simplicity requires that you eliminate anything that clutters the user experience — whether it be in product design, website navigation, marketing and advertising materials and presentation slides.
- Innovation is saying ‘no’ to 1,000 things.
Main thoughts that I liked in this article are:
- Get rid of the crappy stuff and focus on the good stuff.
- While anyone can learn the principles that drive Apple’s innovation, few businesses have the courage to do so.
- A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
- Your customers demand simplicity and simplicity requires that you eliminate anything that clutters the user experience — whether it be in product design, website navigation, marketing and advertising materials and presentation slides.
- Innovation is saying ‘no’ to 1,000 things.
Friday, May 20, 2011
Microsoft Project 2010 and Team Foundation Server 2010
Resource: TecEd
Tech Ed provides the most comprehensive technical education across Microsoft's current and soon-to-release suite of products, solutions and services.Tuesday, May 17, 2011
Cool Image Zoomig Resizing Service
While browsing I have bumped to this site that provides a chip and interesing cloud service to host your high resolution images with Acamai. You can embed the code to your website to see, resize or zoom your images. I have signed up for the free account. The plans start from $9 per month for 100 images for zoom.
Zoom:
Resize:
1. Size 1024x768
2 . Size 500x375
3. Size 100x75
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Zoom:
Resize:
1. Size 1024x768
2 . Size 500x375
3. Size 100x75
Saturday, May 7, 2011
Spectacular Chihuly show at the Boston Fine Art Museum
 | During my visit to Boston prior to Dreamcore 2011 conference we spent a fantastic weekend in Boston and New Hampshire. The wide gamma of colors and unstoppable imagination of Chihuly show was a great beginning. I sent this picture from my phone to the blog. Now after I have setup my iPhone I will be able to blog from my phone and post directly. Diving in sitecore products and projects took most of my time for the last 10 month. Looking at blogger and switching to other Google items amazed me with the "mushrooming" of different new staff on Google "more" staff. |
Now I am really interested in exploring the latest Google projects and utilization of possible gadgets. For example: Google Code Playground: http://code.google.com/apis/ajax/playground/ I also found an interesting book: | |
Saturday, March 19, 2011
Project Professionals on the Job Hunt
According to Michelle Bowles (1), on the current job market a solid experience is not enough to earn a candidate an interview. To secure the competitive edge, project professionals need to blend their experience with formal education and certifications. Especially it is a proven practice if a project manager is moving beyond implementation roles into director roles. Experienced project mangers without formal education or educated project managers without experience can find themselves unable to advance.
Professional certification like, for example, Project Manager Professional(PMP)credential is an evidence that captures experience, skills and competence of the job candidate. Admission to the rigorous exam for this certification requires on-the-job experience and formal education. The exam itself as a process is a high barrier for the non-experienced candidates. It also validates a high level of knowledge.
The human component of the experience, especially interpersonal skills and emotional intelligence are of the utmost importance. There's no better chance for "negative learning" of the best management lessons than watching horrible managers and learning how not to do things. Being agile and react quickly to problems can be acquired only in the workplace along with the ability to quickly adopt to the critical situation, not overreact, and stay calm and collected.
Being formally educated in project management makes a project manager to go through the process of problem-solving by using collection and observation of facts, reflection and critical enquiry.
The whole package of careful balance of job experience, professional certification, and recent, relevant formal education provides the best chance for happy landing on the great job for a project manager seeking employment.
Resources:
1. Michelle Bowles, The battle of the resumes, PM Network, March 2011
Professional certification like, for example, Project Manager Professional(PMP)credential is an evidence that captures experience, skills and competence of the job candidate. Admission to the rigorous exam for this certification requires on-the-job experience and formal education. The exam itself as a process is a high barrier for the non-experienced candidates. It also validates a high level of knowledge.
The human component of the experience, especially interpersonal skills and emotional intelligence are of the utmost importance. There's no better chance for "negative learning" of the best management lessons than watching horrible managers and learning how not to do things. Being agile and react quickly to problems can be acquired only in the workplace along with the ability to quickly adopt to the critical situation, not overreact, and stay calm and collected.
Being formally educated in project management makes a project manager to go through the process of problem-solving by using collection and observation of facts, reflection and critical enquiry.
The whole package of careful balance of job experience, professional certification, and recent, relevant formal education provides the best chance for happy landing on the great job for a project manager seeking employment.
Resources:
1. Michelle Bowles, The battle of the resumes, PM Network, March 2011
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