By Leo Valiquette There is perhaps no marketing tool more disputed in terms of its ROI than sponsorship. From charities, to naming rights on community ice rinks and signage at industry events, there are always hard questions that must be asked about whether seeing your organization’s name in lights will, in fact, translate into greater awareness among the customers you are trying to reach and make the phone ring more often. What got me thinking about this was a recent news story about the National Capital Commission, the Crown corporation that administers federally owned lands and buildings in Canada's National Capital Region. The NCC ... READ MORE

Some employers are taking advantage of new technologies to keep a closer and closer eye on their employees.  They’re watching network traffic, reading emails, and recording computer screens. It’s been likened to “Big Brother." Even worse, it’s not just the IT guys looking at computer usage. Tesco is in hot water for putting electronic armbands on employees to track everything from how fast they walking to how long they spend in the bathroom. Invasive? That’s nothing. Professional athletes are being wired up heart rate monitors and GPS tracking to see how much they effort they give in games and practices. Employers have ... READ MORE

Workforce analytics is invaluable to promoting the productivity of your workforce. It assists and informs users on how to predict high performers, to sort a slew of resumes, and to compile business metrics that projects the workforce demand in the coming quarters. With workforce analytics, the efficiency of your business can undergo a transformation that boosts the happiness of your workforce, creating an efficient environment where each employee is perfectly essential to the company’s structure. The Purpose of Workforce Analytics We have the tendency to make decisions relying on intuition rather than on relevant data, especially when handling a workforce. This inclination ... READ MORE

Though it is no secret that businesses need to have organized finances, it can be difficult to keep track of the financial impact of each department. When it comes to IT, the costs of labor, equipment, research into efficient methods, training, and maintenance can all add up. Tracking these expenses can be difficult for even the most capable accounting department. This is where IT-specific financial software comes in. What It Does Depending on the program you decide to go with, effective IT financial software is capable of many things. You can automate and centralize budgeting and financial planning. You can also pull ... READ MORE

Working on a team presents a unique set of challenges — something that just happens when you put more than one person in a room and ask them to achieve a goal together. The challenges are as old as primitive man and include head-bangers such as: people don’t always pull their weight, roles and assignments are fuzzy, and team members have different views and work styles. This doesn't mean we have to accept these hardships and battle our way to the end. With a little self-examination and some good behavior habits, you can become a highly valued member of your team ... READ MORE

LTE roll-outs are taking place in America and Europe. Over-the-top players are likely to start offering large-scale and free HD mobile VoIP over the next 6-18 months. Steeply declining ARPU will be the result. The telecom industry needs new revenue: telecom revenue 2.0. How can they do it? 1. Become a Telecom Venture Capitalist Buying the number 2 or 3 player in a new market or creating a copy-cat solution has not worked. Think about Terra/Lycos/Vivendi portals, Keteque, etc. So the better option is to make sure innovative startups get partly funded by telecom operators. This assures that operators will be able ... READ MORE

Managing multiple approvals, eliminating bottlenecks, minimizing costly delays, and overseeing disparate workflows are all challenges you must navigate to get deals closed, and if there is a lot of complexity, it can be difficult to avoid stepping on your own feet. This is exactly why contract lifecycle management (CLM) software exists. Having recently released an update to our own CLM solution, we’d like to think we have a few good ideas about how approvals ought to be managed. So if you’re looking for a contract management solution that makes approvals easy, here are four things your contract management solution should do. 1. Your contract ... READ MORE

People learn best from failure. It drives lessons home like nothing else. Here is an email from a reader: From: **** [mailto:****] Sent: April 16, 2013 6:33 PM To: alex@appsconsultant.com Subject: Building a Centralized Architecture Dear Alex, Pursuant to our telephone conversation today, I did some internal research and we are mostly an Oracle ERP,EPM, (back office applications) with Microsoft and Linux OS, and SalesForce as our CRM. Our companies strategy changed to a more centralized vision, mostly because some big IT projects being executed by us the business went really bad. The following products: finance, procurement, hrms functionalities, were not functioning for days. Top management reacted and shutdown ... READ MORE

I was recently on a call with a potential customer, and, as we were wrapping up, my colleague asked if they had any more questions for us. There was a slight pause and then the prospect asked what questions he should he ask us. This was the first time I had heard a prospect pose this question, but the answer is very valuable. Making the Wrong Choice In 2012 a Forbes blogger outlined the massive costs of choosing the wrong vendor by referencing some infamous cases, including the $100 million Hershey lost on Halloween 1999 -- but you don’t need to read ... READ MORE

Everyone’s a salesperson when trying to explain the benefit of new technology to key stakeholders and those who will ultimately back the implementation project. It is very difficult at most companies to fund new projects, so hedging your bets early on with a rock-solid business case that outlines CLM best practices, pointing out benefits that are particularly pertinent to your company’s needs, is critical to getting project support. Here are a few key points to keep in mind as you being constructing your "sales pitch." Show enterprise-wide applicability A CLM deployment that is departmentally focused could shortchange your company out of the maximum ... READ MORE