August 28, 2009 – Mark Foster 

Well, here we are – ending the month of August with the weather still treating us very well indeed! September is right around the corner and already signs of vacations coming to an end are apparent. Business seems to be picking up a bit, as some of the companies I have spoken to recently about a collaborative management approach to running their business/projects, have made the decision to implement. Great to see – people jumping down off the fence en masse. It’s a positive sign that we are getting back to business as usual after a more than turbulent year.

July 31, 2009 – Mark Foster

I came across an interesting study on the cost effectiveness of PPM Tools. Forrester ( no relation – misspelled, or otherwise ) interviewed and surveyed 22 vendor and user companies to create a return on investment (ROI) model based on its Total Economic Impact analysis framework. Click below to download this report to find out how an investment in a comprehensive PPM tool can provide an ROI of more than 250 percent.

Click here for a copy of the complete study.

July 22, 2009 – Mark Foster

In response to an email commenting on the challenges of gettting team participation in a collaborative management environment I replied with the following – then thought it would make great blog content.

“The keys to it I have found are, first a clear message from management that the site collection method of working is the new way and the only way to work – setting a projected date for total transition is mandatory. Second is that the Task/Issues/Risks Status Report keeps a daily email in front of the team – but also and in addition – the same Tasks/Issues/Risks are on the Workspaces providing clear evidence of those with some hesitance to participate fully. Third, there is a series of Alerts that can be easily instituted to provide clear vision of document reviews, task completions and even alerts to indicate new contacts have been reviewed. Lastly, I have also found that if  keep the training sessions short and sweet teams are always happy to report that it is working well – as it does not overwhelm nor take them away from their respective work days! 

In other words , we help build and insulate the teams acceptance. All this comes down to having a plan from the start as to how to create enthusiasm within the team to gain acceptance in the long term.”

July 21, 2009 – Mark Foster 

2.  I have spoken to many organizations from mining, to real estate development, to non-profits, to both large and small government and they all have one thing in common. This economic downturn has provided the opportunity to measure the impact that the tidal bore of technology has had in recent years. And now, in these quietest of moments, they are weighing their operations against the ever increasing mass of information created to run things. The most cost effective, most up-to-date method of keeping on top of business reaches back to simplified collaborated systems. Technology in business has been sorely based on a plethora of software packages and finding an effective means to once again integrate the departments within an organization is on the agenda.

 3  It’s still down to the power (and implementation) of information folks! Say what you like about the automotive industry when the dust settles it will be a better run industry – you know we all know it. Why because the focus has left prudent management in recent years. They/we have to manage whist trimming the fatty paunch gained over the last couple of decades. Excess is out – replaced by keen edged dedication to function.

4.  Despite the drilled-down, cross-drilled access of information, a Dashboard View across many different sectors/facets of business and the projects within them, are a necessity and easy to operate. It’s one thing to have all the information at your fingertips but you don’t want to spend the bulk of your day sifting through it nor learning new software. Try a condensed one page view of all operations. Much more effective.

5.   Take heed, as this recent slump – brought to us by the makers of fine mortgage products –  is fleeting and the best you can do is retool for the future. That said please drop me a line if you would like to expand on any of these points or if you have questions.

Either way, it’s great to see some enthusiasm out there again!

Increasingly, businesses are becoming painfully aware that whilst there are plenty of outsiders who would like to steal some, if not all of their information (people’s views as to what is the good stuff vary rather), those with the greatest access, the insiders, are the biggest threat.
This is what is called, rather pleasantly, information leakage. It’s a bit like picking up a handful of dry sand. It’s difficult to stop it slipping through your fingers. And information leakage is like that, because important information usually comes in little bits, glued together with lots of unimportant information.
Information leakage has been going on for years, sometimes with tacit acceptance by management – mainly because in the paper world you couldn’t readily walk out with a lot of information because it was too heavy to carry! Enter the 32 Gigabyte flash drive. That’s got enough space on it to hold all the movies you want to see for a while! And if you want to steal a bit more information they will soon come in 1 Terabyte (1,000 Gb no less) sizes as well. Fits in your wallet or purse, and holds as much information as a small mainframe computer.
Information leakage has stopped being a nuisance and started to become a menace. In the past the salesmen might take a key customer list with them, or the sales training manual: but now they can take the whole list, trading history, contacts, phone numbers – and still have plenty of room for product documentation, guides, competitive analysis, corporate financial analysis, and even a few interesting emails.
Some of your information has to be protected by the IT people – databases, backup tapes and things like that.
Typically, IT uses encryption in order to prevent the unauthorized from having access to information. But encryption has a major weakness when it comes to information protection. When information has only been encrypted, once it is decrypted the authorized user cannot be prevented from doing whatever they like with the information. In fact, it is totally impossible for the sender of encrypted information to prevent its misuse by the authorized recipient, and quite impossible to ever prove piracy by an authorized recipient. So whilst encryption controls are extremely valuable in some situations, they are not the answer to all the questions.
Further, IT uses access controls to try and protect information for which it is the custodian. Access controls only really work inside the enterprise. Once you get outside the enterprise network it is almost impossible to maintain that control. Further, because access controls were invented back in the mainframe era, they are simple, all or nothing limitations – read, write, append, delete, execute. They have none of the granularity of DRM. If you have access, then it is total and unmanaged.
Also, access controls work at the file level rather than the content level, or at the record level in a database. Neither of these fit the requirement of controlling subsequent use and distribution, which is what DRM is all about (even though it is possible to argue that DRM is nothing more than significantly revised and enhanced access controls).
And what IT can’t protect is the information that has to be made accessible to both insiders and outsiders, but is still valuable or confidential – service manuals, competitive analysis, investor guidance, markets analysis, training courses, sales manuals, personal data needed for client meetings and so on.
Also IT can’t necessarily protect key internal information such as board minutes, internal briefings, filings with professional advisers, mandatory disclosures, internal research documents. And this is only a short list of the really good stuff that insiders often have ready access to. There are some who say that IT should not have access to this information anyway.
Often important information has to be taken off on laptops or made available to others to see, and then it goes outside of the control of IT anyway. And that is where DRM comes in.
DRM controls provide a continuing control over information that has been distributed, no matter where it is located or what kind of medium it is stored on. DRM controls prevent unlicensed users from having access, even if they can obtain both protected files and licensing information.
That is not to say that security can be total and absolute. If something can be seen on a screen, it can be photographed, and then copied. But DRM controls allow you to add watermarks that identify the authorized user, even on-screen. That doesn’t stop copying, but it makes it unattractive to the authorized user to have their name linked to pirate copies, especially these days when prosecutions for illegal game sharing are proving successful as a reality – not merely as a deterrent.
Another essential area of control for DRM is the prevention, or control of printing. In an ideal world printing would be prevented, because any printing means that information can be readily copied. However, if you must allow printing, then you should be able to limit the number of copies that can be made, and provide dynamic watermarking that identifies who the source of the copy is in a way that makes it difficult to remove. Recent successful prosecutions for file sharing in the United Kingdom show that if pirates can be identified they can be prosecuted.
So one of the most effective ways of preventing or significantly reducing information leakage is to implement a DRM control system over the documents containing information that you need to control.
A DRM control system should make it easy for you to protect relevant documents, and simple (preferably transparent) to license regular users of controlled information so that your administration effort is reduced as much as possible, and the need to involve the IT department also minimized.
Finally, a DRM control system should allow you to switch off authorized users at a moment’s notice if leaks are discovered, or the responsibilities of authorized users change or laptops are lost or stolen. With those features you should be effectively in control of your information.  – © LockLizard Ltd 2008

April 20, 2009 – With the amount of information available to you, consider that your only edge over your competition is your ability to learn it, integrate it and manage it! Your competition, the people that you start everyday in high pursuit of, are doing just that. It is the only way you can hope to stay ahead of the pack. A great company, with a fluid business plan, coupled with the innate ability to turn the technology to your advantage = Winner’s Circle!!

April 12, 2009 – FFS Clients - Later this month, EPM Live will release an update, to improve some of the existing features, plus add some exciting new ones! Stay tuned!

To arrange an online demo, to see the potential of a Site Collection for your own collaborative online management  - click here!

It was a particularly interesting interview with Harry Dent last night - in case you did not happen to see it. If you have read and enjoyed Harry S. Dent’s economic projections in the past you might like to check out – The Dent Method

 Are You Prepared for the Great Depression Ahead?

(Sounds nasty – but if not now? When?  If not us? Who?)

For two decades, Harry Dent has been making uncannily accurate predictions.

According to a 2008 IDC study, organizations had huge cost savings when they implemented an end-to-end collaborative solution online:

•    Cost per project fell by 37%
•    Redundant projects dropped by 78%
•    Project failure rates decreased by 59%
•    Time-to-market for revenue generating initiatives dropped by 33%

In a Gantry Group study, key findings included “savings of 6.5% of the average annual budget by the end of year one, and 14% (NPV) over a three year deployment period. Collaborative online software helped organizations:

•    Improve the annual average for project timeliness dramatically by 45.2%
•    Reduce management time spent on project status reporting by 43.2%, reclaiming 3.8 hours of each manager’s workweek
•    Reduce management time spent on labor capitalization report by 54.7%, recouping 3.6 hours per report
•    Decrease the time to achieve financial sign-off for new projects by 20.4%, or 8.4 days