Category Archives: Business & Technology
OneNote for the iPad
I’ve always been a fan of OneNote from Microsoft. It is an incredibly useful tool. Seeing that my iPad is an incredibly useful tool as well, what better app to have featured here on App Wednesday that OneNote for the iPad.
OneNote for the iPad lets you create a series of Notebooks, collections of information. You can integrate all kinds of content into these notebooks, making them versatile for many different types of daily usage. Within each notebook, you can create various sections to organize whatever content you are assembling. It has some decent formatting tools so you can make notes look good while working on the iPad. I also like the ability to email notes from the app on the iPad to another user. The email recipient receives an embedded version of the formatted note. It’s not a picture, which is good, because it means that the recipient can edit the content when they receive it (and they don’t need OneNote).
The app is free, and with that you can have up to 500 notes. If you want to go beyond that, you can purchase the upgrade for $14.99
If your organization is progressive and using Office365 then you can further find advantage to using OneNote for iPad. The cloud version of OneNote in Office365 gives you easy, secure access from anywhere. If your organization doesn’t use Office365, you can still take advantage of a cloud-based version of OneNote through Microsoft Windows Live.
Let’s hope that Microsoft continues to bring iPad versions of Office to the iOS platform. It would be a win for them and for consumers. Here’s hoping the current batch of rumours is true! In the meantime, grab OneNote and experience this great application for yourself.
Insegni Centre and Project X Labs Announce Joint Social Intelligence Offering
I’m so thrilled today to be announcing that Insegni Centre has partnered with Project X Labs to create a joint offering in the area of Social Intelligence, called LikeInsight.
Social Intelligence you ask? Think Social Media Data + Business Intelligence!
I look forward to sharing a more detailed post tomorrow with snippets from an upcoming presentation I am giving.
In the meantime, to read the press release, please click here or read below.
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TORONTO, Feb. 15, 2012 /CNW/ – Project X Labs Ltd and Insegni Centre Inc. today announced a new solution that brings together Social Media Data and Business Intelligence (BI). The solution, called LikeInsightTM, aligns Social Media strategy, social data and a company’s existing data assets to increase the insights available to organizations.
As with all BI visualization solutions, richness of data and relevance is crucial. Social data provides a level of relevance from some of the most active sources of data that enrich the sentiment analysis. Through this innovative solution, LikeInsightTM allows organizations to segment their Facebook fans based on their interests and motivations, developing a never before available picture of their customers’ online sentiment.
Leveraging a jointly integrated process for business intelligence strategy and delivery, Project X Labs Ltd. and Insegni Centre Inc. have a solution to enable social insight for organizations in a way that has not been previously possible.
“Everyone is talking about Big Data. Working together we have built a solid framework to readily take advantage of some of the rich data that is available for our clients,” said Stephen Hayward, president of Project X Labs. “By partnering with Insegni Centre we’re able to take their proven strategic approach and Social understanding, combine it with our Rapid Results business intelligence visualization tools and create real results for current and new clients.”
“Social media usage by companies has been predominately a one-way marketing channel,” said Michael Ianni-Palarchio, Founder of Insegni Centre. “The strategy of leveraging social media data has been an increasing business priority, and partnering with Project X Ltd and Project X Labs, a leader in business intelligence development and deployment, allows us to move clients from Social Media data strategy to Social Media Insight reality.”
For more information on LikeInsightTM and how your organization can tap into the insight of your customers’ social media data, request a demonstration and an initial consultation.
About Project X Labs
Project X Labs combines innovative product development with rapid results thinking to bring global customers business intelligence and data visualization software products. Focused on breaking down the barriers around enterprise scale software and delivering solutions that show results in weeks, not months, Project X Labs is redefining access to business intelligence for every size company. Project X Labs is a wholly owned subsidiary ofProject X Ltd. They can be found at www.pxlabs.ca.
About Insegni Centre Inc.
Insegni Centre is a strategy advisory firm that specializes in assisting organizations develop strategic positions across a wide variety of business technologies and solutions. With a focus on understanding business objectives and ensuring that IT initiatives are strategically aligned to enable those goals, Insegni Centre utilizes an approach that focuses on rapid innovation to obtain strategic differentiation. In the area of Business Intelligence (BI), Insegni Centre works to provide the strategic framework that allows companies to identify BI opportunities within their organization, develop their BI Vision & Objectives and define their BI Requirements. To find out more visit us atwww.insegnicentre.com .
For further information:
Stephen Hayward - shayward@pxltd.ca – 416.422.8900 ext 201
Michael Ianni-Palarchio - mip@insegnicentre.com - 416-900-1055 ext 100
Include Change Management to Ensure Strategic Success
A while back I posted a poll to gauge how effectively change management was being used to deliver IT projects. The results of that poll, while not surprising to me, point to a concern that should be addressed. You can see from the image to the left that change management isn’t a focus of many projects and that those projects end in failure. Of the over 7000 respondents, 40% didn’t have any element of change management and the projects were deemed a failure.
I have often spoken, written and practice that for IT projects to be a success, they need to be rooted in strategy. That being said, it’s imperative that change management is a part of that strategy. Be sure to include a discussion on change management at the onset of your strategic planning exercise and ensure that it is embedded a process throughout implementation.
People often think that change management is something to be done at the end of a project, if it’s done at all. This approach of tacking change management on at the end of an initiative is sure to cause bumps in your project deployment. The technology is often the easy part of any implementation, with the people part and gaining acceptance being much more challenging. While this is true, we often see the exact opposite in technology projects, where most of the attention is given to the technology, and the end-users are a secondary thought. On your next IT project, work to bring more balance to that effort and ensure that adequate attention and planning are given to managing the change that is being introduced to your organization. After the initiative has been completed, be sure to go back and measure how well you did not only in the technical aspects of the project, but also in the areas of change. If you do this, you will see the successes of your IT projects increase and that will make everyone in your organization happy.
The Creation of Insegni Centre
It’s been a busy few weeks since I ventured back out into being an entrepreneur and started my own consulting company, hence the lack of blogging. Besides being busy, it’s been incredibly exciting and I look forward to getting back to blogging to share technology and strategy insights with you. Stay tuned as well for some interesting announcements over the next short while!
Insegni Centre was created out of the idea that in order for companies to truly realize the value of technology, they need to approach it strategically. By starting with business goals & objectives and assessing where in the technology spectrum a company falls, the Insegni Approach to strategy will allow organizations to experience the rapid realization of value from their IT investments.
The word Insegni is Italian for “teach” and that is the crux of our approach, where members from our client teams teach us about their business and we in turn bring knowledge & resources for technology usage. Our goal is to learn quickly, foster mutual learning between our clients and our team, and to ultimately create innovative strategies for leveraging technology. It is a client-centric approach where we integrate members of the client team and the Insegni team so that an intimate understanding of the business is coupled with the best practices of strategic IT. The Insegni Approach delivers the rigor of classic strategy, coupled with a nimbleness and creativity that organizations demand in today’s dynamic marketplace.
As I said earlier, stay tuned for some follow-on exciting news including a new joint-service offering in the area of social media and business intelligence, the launch of an upcoming strategy book and the creation of an innovation centre where clients can come onsite and participate in our unique strategic workshops to create breakthrough innovation strategies for their use of technology to create new advantages in their businesses.
Thanks to everyone who have been so supportive and enthusiastic about this new venture!
Question of Change Management
I have an exciting blog post about the do’s and don’t of change management as it relates to IT projects. Before releasing that post, I’d like to get some input from you regarding your experience of the effective use of change management to ensure the success of IT initiatives. I appreciate the feedback/input.
Transform Your IT Group If You Want To Innovate
I’ve chatted before in my podcasts about the changing nature of IT groups within companies and thought I’d write a brief post about this emerging and important trend. Too often, I still find within organizations that IT resources are being purposefully kept 
as merely “break fix” resources, distant from the realities of the business and intentionally act as blockers rather than enablers to the business. Those organizations allow the IT leadership to perpetuate an older paradigm of IT where they were gatekeepers of technology rather than business partners within the organization, thought police rather than thought leaders.
This dated model of IT has been radically (and thankfully) changing within companies today where IT is viewed as a strategic asset rather than a necessary evil. Progressive IT leaders work hard to make their IT resources champions of innovation within organizations to ensure that business goals and objectives can be supported. We’ve all heard about the “consumerization of IT” – the idea that consumer technology (like iPads) is being brought into organizations and is driving what IT needs to support. This is true, but there is another exciting aspect to this trend. That is the “technifying of consumers“!
By technifying of consumers I mean this, that our end users in organizations are more sophisticated than they were before. They are more technical from the point of view that they leverage technology in numerous ways outside the organization. My strategic approach has always been to learn from my clients or the organization I’ve joined with regard to their business. The end user is always going to know more about the business than an IT person. The end user is the subject matter expert and now that they’ve been technified, as an IT leader I have this wonderful opportunity to recruit them into the strategic IT planning cycle. Today’s end users will brainstorm great ideas to how different technology can be used to enhance their business. That is a fantastic paradigm as it sets up progressive organizations to realize exponential value from IT.
Mitigating Identified IT Risk
You may recall that I wrote a piece back in September titled Identifying and Managing IT Risk. That article was well received and sparked some good discussion both here on the blog and amongst my clients. I also polled readers and found that 10% of them had a risk strategy for IT in their organizations, while another 10% had the strategy and were in the process of implementing. Even more encouraging was 30% of respondents who were in the process of developing a strategy now. One of the key points of feedback I got from the 40% that were still in the strategic phase/just starting implementation, was how to get their arms around the long list of risks that had materialized. As I’d suggested pulling together a risk inventory, many of them had done similar exercises, but were now faced with the daunting task of figuring out “where to start”. Time, budget, and resources are all limited and not everything can be started at once. Through the strategic process people begin to ask “What steps do I take in mitigating identified IT risk?”
That’s a great question. It ensures you don’t just run off and start at the top of your list or worse, in some reactive fashion just focusing on the latest fire. In today’s blog post I will provide you with a way to take your identified risks and do some analysis on them.
App Wednesday: Bloomberg TV+
One of the real strengths of the iPad is the ability to use it as a media device, to consume all kinds of various content, whether it be reading newspapers, reading books, surfing the web or watching videos. I’ve got a number of excellent apps that provide me with video content but wanted to briefly highlight one of them this App Wednesday because of just how robust it is.
I’m talking about the Bloomberg TV+ app – after having installed it a short while ago, I find that I am often opening it each day when I want to get some good business content. The content itself is excellent, but content alone doesn’t make a good app. The app itself has an excellent user interface to allow for a natural ease of use. It’s packed with various video feeds and dynamically updates itself. It gives you a mix of On Demand content but also the ability to watch live content. The other awesome thing is the ability to have video sent via AirPlay to my Apple TV when I’m using the app at home. Add to that the ability to create your own Playlists and you have a tremendous app delivering top notch content. Truly a great user experience.
I encourage you to check it out for yourself. Once you’ve had a chance to use it, please feel free to let me know what you thought of it via the comments. Getting end-user feedback is always a pleasure and highly valuable to me.
Happy App Wednesday!
Get Your Head Out of the Cloud: Why Adaptive Computing May Be the Best Fit for Your Organization
Amongst the many emerging technology trends of 2011, cloud computing has increasingly been mentioned in mainstream media. While not being a completely new technical paradigm, cloud computing has become strategically relevant to companies that span numerous industries. The term cloud computing, in my opinion, is a vague and 
misleading term. Historically “cloud” refers to the pictorial icon that network engineers use when representing “the internet”. When drawing any type of network architecture that involved the internet, a fluffy cloud was used to represent the ever increasing plethora of networks that make up the Internet.
I don’t like the use of cloud because it betrays the real value that businesses can realize by embracing this technical paradigm. Clouds are nebulous, immaterial and unstable things. The services that are now available for companies within the manufacturing industry are the complete opposite of those traits. Rather than using the term cloud computing, I prefer to use the term adaptive computing. Understanding this new paradigm can provide cost saving and growth opportunities for companies within the manufacturing sector. There is a real potential for manufacturers to leverage adaptive computing to provide them with flexibility in the way they procure and operate technology.
A Week of Using Siri
I wanted to put down a few thoughts on Siri now that I’ve used for over a week. By now you’ve no doubt heard about 
this voice recognition functionality that Apple has built into the iPhone 4S. Let me start off by saying that Siri is no gimmick. It’s not awkward voice commands that you need to memorize to try to do simply things like call a contact. The other mobile phone vendors, like Microsoft and Google, have dismissed Siri as being unnecessary, but let me assure you, after seeing it, I’m sure that both those two companies are feverishly working to try to create their own version of Siri to replace their simplistic voice command systems on their respective platforms.
I wanted to high light two aspects of Siri that I used repeatedly all last week that drove home the value of this new interface. The first is for setting reminders and calendar appointments. Looking back at my reminders from last week I set ended up setting 37 reminders that were a mix of work and personal items. Using Siri it is dead easy.
- “Remind me next Thursday that it’s parent teacher interviews at 7pm”
- “Remind me to pick up a new power cord when I’m near the Eaton’s Centre”
- “Remind me to mail thank you cards when I arrive home.”
- “Book a meeting for tomorrow morning at 9am to work on presentation.”
- “Remind me to email my presentation when I arrive at work.”
- “Remind me to pick up toast bread and juice when I leave work.”
- “Remind me everyday at 9pm to sign my daughter’s agenda book.”
- “Remind me to call [client name] when I arrive at the office”
- “Book a lunch meeting for this Friday with [name of person] for noon.”
The above is just a sampling of some of the reminders I set for myself. As if by magic, these reminders were set flawlessly. Correct dates and times. Some set up as repeating items automatically. Some set to trigger only depending on my location. It is as simple to set as it is to tell someone to remind you. It’s transformative. Calendar appointments that take 3-5 steps normally are done in a single sentence. Again, transformative.
The second is the ability to send text messages via voice. At first I thought that this would be very useful in the car. It is of course, as it means I don’t have to type while driving, which is unsafe and a legal no-no. What has surprised me however is that it is also useful when you are simply running around doing things.
For example, I was walking to a lunch meeting last week and my friend texted me “Have a table” and I simply spoke while crossing the street and said “Tell [person's name] I am on my way”. Siri then simply sent a text back to that person that said “I am on my way”. It was flawless. I didn’t have to slow down, glance down, finger type and send the text. I simply spoke as though on the phone. That scenario played itself out repeatedly last week with voice commands like:
- “Tell [person's name] Heading to meeting room A now.”
- “Tell my wife I am heading to the car now”
- “Tell my daughter I’m almost at the school.”
- “Tell [person's name] Running late. See you in five.”
It is these types of things, naturally spoken, that make Siri incredibly valuable. As people begin to experience this value, they will start to use Siri for other natural language commands and searches. It is the natural language search that has companies like Google and Microsoft terrified, and rightfully so.
