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.

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 LikeInsight^TM, 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, LikeInsight^TM 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 LikeInsight^TM 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

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.

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!

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.

To capitalize on this trend, however, IT leaders need to transform their IT group.  You have to create an inviting space for end-users to come to so that they can bring those ideas to the IT team.  You also have to evaluate and change your IT processes and procedures so that they are more enabling.  Rather than being threatened by end-users and their technology requests, progressive IT teams should be welcoming and look for ways to enable those ideas, not block them.  I find it frustrating when inside an organization and I see IT teams hiding behind corporate IT rules (often cloaked under the need for security) so that they can effectively block any good ideas that come from within.  Too often companies look to transform their IT groups by simply offshoring the support function for tier one support and having a bunch of runners to handle break fix issues.  Sure this reduces costs but does it allow for innovation.  In my experience the answer is no.

Instead of embracing that model, or being stuck in the old “IT-against-the-company” paradigm, begin the process to truly change your IT team from “break-fix” people, to thought leaders & enablers.  Carry out a strategic organizational redesign where you look to support the people in your company, not just the hardware in your data centre.  Done correctly, this new paradigm will unlock untold potential for innovation, yield efficiencies in your business and ultimately give you a greater competitive advantage in the market.

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.

I am going to use my favourite 2-by-2 matrices to perform two sets of analysis on a hypothetical risk list.  Let’s say you’ve completed a thorough inventory of risks within your own organization and have generated the follow list of risks.

1. Backup power not sufficient for long power outage
2. Data being copied onto USB sticks despite corporate policy
3. Security for server room doors
4. Data storage of backups not being done offsite
5. Lack of processes to audit IT usage of systems
6. Need for penetration testing for network
7. Redundant servers for email 2 years out of warranty; may fail.
8. Laptops are not encrypted; risk of data being comprised if lost

Risk Score

This is a hypothetical list and short one at that (I’ve seen some lists that have 20-25 items on them.  I’ve kept it short because it will suffice for illustrative purposes.  When you look at the list it’s hard to know where to start.  What’s most important?  The first step is to establish a Risk Score. For each item you ask yourself two important questions a) what is the likelihood that this risk will happen, and b) if it does happen, what is the impact to my organization.  Score each of those questions on a scale of 1 to 10 where 1 is LOW and 10 is HIGH.  Once you’ve done that, you can plot each risk on a 2×2 like the one I’ve embedded to the right (click to enlarge).  Immediately you can see in the top right quadrant the risks that should be keeping you up at night!  In non-technical terms, those are known as “scary risks”.  Now you might be tempted to just run off and begin tackling those items, but don’t do that.  Not yet.  Now we need to do the second piece of analysis.

Risk Prioritization

Remember how for each risk listed above we gave them a score, one for likelihood to happen and the second for impact if it happened.  Good, now add those two numbers together and divide by 2.  Now you have your Combined Risk Score for each item.  Now for each risk ask yourself this question, “how complex will it be to address this risk?”  In this question, complexity is a combination of how hard the work will be, how much time it will take, how much money it will take and how much change it might introduce to your organization.  Come up with a score between 1 and 10 for this Complexity Score.  When you’ve done that you can then plot each risk on a new 2×2 with the Combined Risk Score and the Complexity Score.  This piece of analysis will now provide you a snapshot on a single slide that easily depicts where you should start.  Risks that have a HIGH Combined Risk Score but a LOW Complexity Score are your low hanging fruit.  Typically, you should start there and develop the rest of your plan accordingly.

You can see that with only the first half of the analysis, you’d be faced with risks 2,7,8 all having a serious impact and high likelihood to occur.  What if you couldn’t do all of them though…where would you start?  By layering in the second piece of analysis, it becomes clearer that issues 2 and 8 are the easier to begin with in this example.

I hope that you found these two tools useful in prioritizing your own risk.  If you are having trouble identifying or prioritizing risks, drop me a line.  I’d be happy to chat and talk about possible ways forward.

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!

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.

Why Adaptive?

The best way to understand adaptive computing is to look at a real world example. In working with a 90 employee manufacturing client on the strategic use of IT, there emerged a need to implement a single email system across a number of plant locations. The traditional approach would be to deploy an internal solution like so many companies have done before. This would require an internal server, licensing of software for the server and for desktop computers. Added expenses for backups in the event of some disaster were also factored in. There was also the labour component to set everything up, test and finally deploy.

Now let’s examine an adaptive computing implementation. Companies like Microsoft and Google, for example, provide “cloud” based offerings for email. In the adaptive model, the servers, licensed software, backup infrastructure and labour all reside “in the cloud”, that is to say, it is being managed by another company for you. A simple monthly fee is paid on a per user basis. This manufacturing client had different types of employees.

There were employees who worked on the plant floor and only needed occasional access to email. There were employees who worked within offices carrying out administrative functions, and they had a higher need for continuous access to email. There was a small sales force that was out on the road and they had a need for mobile email. The adaptive model allowed for flexible licensing of services that provided email that was adaptive to the type of end user. Employees that worked on the floor accessed a special web –based email from kiosks, while the mobile sales force
was able to easily and securely access email from a variety of mobile devices.

From the above example, you can see the first reason why adaptive computing is an apt term – the technical benefits can adapt to best fit your organization’s needs. In developing strategic plans with manufacturers, it is important that the business needs drive the technical decisions. Adaptive computing allows for easy provisioning of services to best suit the various stakeholder needs within your organization.

This adaptive quality, however, goes beyond the technical aspect of the solution. The cost of the service is transformed from a capital expense to an operating expense. Rather than needing to invest $25,000 to $30,000 upfront for a solution, this manufacturer was able to turn the cost into a $1000 / month operating expense. This was achievable because the service was adapted to best fit the working needs of employees. Plant floor employees who required less access to email, and were given a slimmed down web version, paid substantially less for the monthly service.

Added Benefits of Adaptive Computing
Our example focused on email provisioning for one manufacturing organization. Adaptive computing, however, spans a wide array of IT services that organization can utilize, such as storage needs, backup, CRM, collaboration and security offerings. During the recent recession, adaptive computing service providers saw an increased need from businesses trying to improve their bottom line. This drove many technology industry players to strengthen their offering, which has been a huge benefit to companies both large and small.

The manufacturing sector has looked for ways to reduce costs and invest in technology that would give them a competitive advantage. Adaptive computing allows manufacturers to leverage best-in-class solutions, while not diverting your attention from your core business. This model of utilizing IT services is often a good fit for manufacturers because it can be scaled up or down depending on needs of the organization, it can be deployed without the need for additional IT headcount and it ensures that you are leveraging the latest technology without having to make large
capital investments every few years.

Pitfalls and Considerations
While adaptive computing offers many tactical and strategic advantages, there are a number of considerations that organizations need to be aware
of in order to mitigate risk and ensure success.

• Location of Data: When your organization decides to leverage an adaptive computing service, your data will now reside outside of your organization. You will need to consider any potential restrictions that might exist for your organization. Often, manufacturers may have agreements with customers that stipulate that their data needs to reside in the country of origin. Be sure you understand where your data will reside before adopting an adaptive solution.
• Security: Completing a thorough due diligence is of critical importance. Often service providers will provide security that far exceeds what an organization can do itself, but in some cases, security measures may be lacking. Selecting an adaptive computing solution that lacks best in-class security measures will leave your organization open to risk and liability.
• Exit Strategy: It is important to ensure that you have an exit strategy in the event that you want to move to another provider or potentially move the service back into your own organization. Avoid adaptive computing services that lock you into proprietary solutions that don’t easily allow you to reclaim your data.

Your Next Steps
If you are considering a move to adaptive computing, there are three key steps your organization can take to effectively plan for the initiative.

1. Inventory all your IT systems and upcoming initiatives so that you can identify potential targets that could be migrated to an adaptive computing model
2. Start with something that is less critical so you can gain some experience in understanding this new computing paradigm
3. Do your due diligence and check reference organizations to better understand what their experience was
4. Understand your current technology environment to ensure that there are no potential barriers to leveraging adaptive services such as insufficient internet bandwidth, lack of connectivity redundancy or other system dependencies.

In following those simple guidelines, you can ensure you mitigate risk, while potentially unlocking an enormous amount of value for your organization.

The app is News360 and it is really an excellent news aggregator app that learns what you like to read and continues to refine the stories it brings forward.  That is a lot like Zite.  What I particularly like about News360 is that you can link it to a variety of social media sites you might use like Google+, Twitter, Facebook.  You can even link it to your Evernote account!  Then News360 goes out and scans those sources and learns about the types of things that interest you.  Post a link on your Facebook wall about the new iPhone 4s and News360 will learn to bring you more articles about that topic.  Tweet something about the latest high speed internet stick for Rogers and presto, News360 will again begin to personalize your experience.

I like this type of application because it curates content for me but makes it simple to refine the criteria that goes into creating my personalized experience.  It is basically invisible to me and requires very little effort beyond the initial setup.  Add to that a wonderful looking user interface with some innovative ways to present stories (the 360 degree view is nice to have scroll by while you are working on something else and simply have your iPad resting on your desk) and you have a winner of an app!  Did I tell you it’s free.

It’s free!

So go grab it and start enjoying another personalized content experience on your iOS device.