Dynamic Case Management: Business Benefits Wrapped in Cold, Dead Fish

I and others have been saying for years that if you let many if not most technically focused people open a sushi bar, the sign outside would likely say something like "cold, dead fish for sale." It's a metaphor for the unfortunate fact that technical people are often…inconsistent in their abilities to communicate the value of their knowledge and efforts to the non-technical.

In this context, I absolutely HATE the term "dynamic case management." In case you haven't yet heard said term, DCM is currently a Hot Thing among growing numbers of pundits and observers. It's supposedly the way that decision makers in marketing, customer care and related areas will develop and leverage that real-time, 360-degree view of everybody who matters to the business, or at least its revenue stream(s).

So far, OK. Now, here's where the cold, dead fish comes in.

In the first place, I am a customer, partner, prospect or competitor, and therefore the focal point of a relationship to be nurtured. NOT a "case" to be "managed." Ugh!

In the second place, there's way too much focus on the technologies that enable and support DCM, and too little on the goal itself. And that goal is not DCM, or the implementation of any specific DCM-related technologies.

The ultimate goal of DCM and related initiatives such as those focused on customer experience management (CEM) is to improve relationships with customers, partners and prospects, and the value of those relationships to the business. Specifically, this means ensuring that every interaction with your business is optimized, for those interacting with your business and for your business. (I call this online experience optimization or OEO.) It also means ensuring that the knowledge generated by those interactions can be channeled in ways that improve and refine the business processes that drive and support future such interactions. (I call this business knowledge optimization or BKO.)

These are all business goals that are human-centric and process-driven. To the extent that DCM efforts share these two characteristics, their chances for success are improved. To the extent that they do not, their likelihood of failure is increased. Whatever you want to call it, and whichever technologies you consider or deploy.

DCM is not the destination. It is an important step in the journey toward making your business more agile, more responsive, more social and more successful. DCM is also both a challenge and an opportunity for those seeking to make their companies more human-centric, process-driven. The goals, challenges and opportunities surrounding DCM require committed, focused collaboration among all key leaders and decision makers within an organization. The benefits are there to be had, if there is sufficient will and focus. And more plain-language business talk. And a lot less cold, dead fish.

Inventory Management: New Collaboration Opportunities

Inventory management? What's that got to do with collaboration? A fair amount, it turns out…

What do pundits and observers like me repeat almost as often as the answer, "Well, that depends?" How about "IT and 'the business' must work together more closely!" Heard that one before?

Well, that's another type of collaboration. When it works, it drives higher levels of corporate agility and responsiveness, lead and prospect conversion, customer satisfaction, revenues and profits. When it's not? Well, you've probably seen that before…

But how to decide where to focus efforts intended to increase and improve collaboration among "the suits" and "the geeks?" I submit that a great starting point is anyplace you can identify that costs the company money, leaves money on the table or both. I further submit that one such opportunity is…inventory management.

Why? Because it's how customers perceive and determine how agile and responsive your company is. Which means everything that supports good inventory management is critical to your company. Because getting it wrong costs your company money, leaves money on the table or both.

And remember, your customers, partners, prospects, competitors and purchase influencers are all increasingly participatory inhabitants of "the mobile, social cloud." Which means that what you do well gets trumpeted widely almost immediately, as does all that you do wrong. Such as not getting what your customers want to them in a timely fashion. Inventory management again.

And let's not forget the IT connection. After all, it's your technology infrastructure that makes it possible for you to monitor social media, be more responsive and agile, and manage your critical inventories. But at many if not most businesses, 60 to 80 percent of the IT budget is being spent on just keeping what's already in place working with what's already in place. Not much room to take on new initiatives such as improving inventory management.

What to do?

Do what you need to do to get sales, marketing, operations and IT around the same table to discuss the challenges and opportunities presented by inventory management at your company. Determine how and how well inventory is being managed now, and where improvements might be found most quickly. Then, identify and road-test some premise-based, cloud-based and cloud-enabled inventory management solutions that show promise for your company.

A jump start: several worthy candidate solutions appear in an article published by Inc. in May 2011. My favorite: Fishbowl Inventory. It integrates with Intuit's QuickBooks and offers options that can take a company from better inventory management to more and better sales, fulfillment and resource planning and management, as recently covered by eWeek.

We in the punditocracy blather on incessantly about how business and IT have to get better at working together. A great way to foster such collaboration in meaningful ways is to focus on areas that avoid leaving money on the table while improving customer satisfaction, corporate perception and revenues. Improved inventory management can do all of these things.

A Special Offer: If you're interested in Fishbowl Inventory, drop a line to vip@fishbowlinventory.com. I've negotiated a relationship with the company that guarantees that every one of my readers who uses that e-mail address will get priority treatment and help getting started with their free trial of the software. And if you promise to share your feedback with me for possible inclusion in future blog posts or research (anonymously if you prefer), you'll get undying gratitude from me -- AND a five-percent discount from Fishbowl if you purchase Fishbowl Inventory! A win for everybody!

Unified Threat Management Solutions Now: Chatting with Lisa Phifer

As more and more business collaboration takes place online, threats to online security become greater threats to business agility and efficiency – and continuity. Herewith, some key take-aways from an online audio discussion and chat about unified threat management or UTM devices. These are basically computer-hardware-and-software "appliances" that automatically protect business computing and networking facilities from multiple threats, such as viruses, spam and unauthorized network intrusions. Their all-in-one design makes them affordable, manageable options even for small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) and small or remote facilities of larger enterprises.

This online chat featured Lisa Phifer, president of security and networking consultancy Core Competence. She has been involved in the design, implementation, and evaluation of networking, security, and management products for more than 25 years. She was formerly a member of the technical staff at Bell Communications Research and senior staff architect at Unisys. She teaches about IT and security, has written extensively for numerous publications, and is a featured speaker at leading conferences.

The event, "Choosing the Unified Threat Management Product That's Right for Your SMB," was part of the Online Audio Series at TheSecureSMB.com, which is open to everyone with complementary registration. An archive of the audio portion of chat with Lisa is available at http://tobtr.com/s/2173127. Many thanks to The Secure SMB team and all of the chat participants for their great questions, some of which generated Lisa's guidance as summarized below.


UTM, the cloud and new network client options: One chat participant asked how UTM appliances can help companies to deal with the growth of "the mobile, social cloud," remote working and "BYOC" ("Bring Your Own Computer") initiatives. Such initiatives create an even greater role for network security solutions and their management, because business can't necessarily put security measures on every authorized device, Lisa replied.

However, "[UTM appliances] that do have the ability to fit into some type of NAC [network access control] architecture can leverage endpoint health and integrity inspection [features] to protect the net from infected devices," Lisa said. Some of those UTM appliances also offer intrusion protection features that can detect and help to "quarantine" infected device activities, she added.

Business and technology decision makers should strive to ensure close integration of the management of their chosen UTM and security solutions. Those decision makers should then invoke all of the available features of those solutions that make business sense and maximize protection against infection, Lisa affirmed.

UTM appliances vs. point solutions: Another chat participant asked, "Is it better than to have multiple devices than one device? This way you can upgrade pieces as they become the slower devices on the network [and] the costs can be managed over time," especially for cash-strapped smaller businesses.

"Multiple devices add latency and points of failure. They are also costly to replace," Lisa replied. "The idea behind UTM is to give you one device to reduce latency, management complexity, and points of failure. However, you do create a potential bottleneck – one that you can manage by upgrading the UTM [appliance] or replacing it with a larger model." Another option is to use load balancing, a feature included with some UTM appliances, to divide threat management across multiple UTM solutions.

YouSendIt: Ensuring that Your Files are “Signed, Sealed, Delivered*”

YouSendIt has announced release of the latest iteration of its cloud-based file-sharing service. With this new release, the YouSendIt platform becomes a far more powerful cloud-based collaboration solution for businesses large and small.

In business, everyone collaborates, whether with colleagues, customers, partners or prospects. And much of that collaboration relies upon a typically large and inconsistently managed shared store of documents. These can range from text files to full-motion, full-color high-definition videos, but they share some common characteristics.

Specifically:

• They need to be kept current, up-to-date and consistent, so everyone's working with the same version of the same information.
• They need to be accessible to authorized users anywhere, anytime, on any device and connection type.
• They need to be tracked and secured, regardless of where they are and who's using them.
• They need to be easily authorized via signature whenever necessary.

The new YouSendIt platform answers these needs admirably.

• Save and sync – YouSendIt users can save and sync content in the cloud with unlimited storage.
• Anytime, anywhere access – users can access files and folders in the cloud anywhere, anytime via desktop or mobile devices.
• Secure sending and sharing – users can collaborate with co-workers and business partners through secure file and folder sending and sharing, while the companies that own the contents of those files and folders can securely track those contents.
• Simple signing – users can review and sign business documents online, at a desk or on the go via a PC or mobile device. (The signing feature is very, very cool on a mobile device, by the way.)

There's more. Changes to files and shared folders are instantly update and synchronized across all devices, and users are notified of changes in real time. Documents and shared folders can be saved to and accessed from the YouSendIt cloud-based folder, from or to any device. YouSendIt also allows for multiple levels of sharing permissions – read and write, read only and read only without login.

You and your colleagues have to send, share, sign and synchronize documents to do business anyway. Some of you or your colleagues may be using YouSendIt already. The basic version is free, and the company claims more than 20 million registered users. (Paid single-user plans with more features and higher capacities than the free version range in price from about $10 to about $15/month. So-called "Corporate Suite" plans range from about $1,000/year for five users, or about $17/user/month, to $3,000/year for 25 users, or about $10/user/month. Greater discounts are available for larger deployments.)

Whether or not you've looked at competing solutions, this latest release of YouSendIt is clearly worth your perusal – and I'd love to know your feedback.

*With apologies to the great Stevie Wonder. :-D

Bamboo Solutions: Taking SharePoint Beyond Collaboration in the Cloud

My understanding is that Microsoft is seeking a new, improved cloud strategy. (Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer e-mailed the company, telling everyone that 23-year veteran Bob Muglia, president of the company's Server and Tools Business and gatekeeper for its evolving Azure Cloud strategy, is stepping down.) I have a modest recommendation. That strategy should focus on starting with what users are already using and build upon it, in ways that are easily accessible and affordable.

This is precisely the strategy adopted by a Microsoft Gold partner I've recently discovered and find intriguing – Bamboo Solutions. The company has built a number of offerings atop Microsoft SharePoint, a collaboration tool in use at and apparently delivering business benefits to many companies. Bamboo adds to Hosted SharePoint features for functions ranging from project and requirements management to sales and customer support.

Bamboo Cloud Applications include BambooCRM (which incorporates sales and customer support features), BambooSupport and BambooRM for requirements management. You can learn more and sign up for free trials at http://cloud.bamboosolutions.com/freecrm/. Pricing for BambooCRM starts at $29.95/user/month, billed quarterly on three-, six- or 12-month contracts.

Bamboo is delivering cloud-based collaboration tools that address specific business needs, build upon a known, proven and widely adopted platform and are available under clear, straightforward terms. They aren't going to be appropriate for every company of user, but they're worth looking at as examples of what to look for in such solutions. And they offer a glimpse at what might be possible if Microsoft were to take a similar tack with its hosted offerings – or at least to promote the ones that seem to "get" users' needs and desires with a bit more enthusiasm and clarity…