Three years ago in June, Toyota and its Lexus brand took the top spot in 11 out of 19 vehicle categories in the J.D. Power and Associates' automotive quality survey. Yet less than a month later, Toyota President Katsuaki Watanabe bowed deeply in front of the world's press, publicly apologizing for the numerous quality problems that had been plaguing Toyota automotive products.

If a factory is torn down, but the rationality which produced is left standing, then that rationality will simply produce another factory. If a revolution destroys a government, but the systematic pattern of thought that produced that government are left intact, then those patterns will repeat themselves... There's so much talk about the system, and so little understanding.

If a factory is torn down, but the rationality which produced is left standing, then that rationality will simply produce another factory. If a revolution destroys a government, but the systematic pattern of thought that produced that government are left intact, then those patterns will repeat themselves... There's so much talk about the system, and so little understanding.

If a factory is torn down, but the rationality which produced is left standing, then that rationality will simply produce another factory. If a revolution destroys a government, but the systematic pattern of thought that produced that government are left intact, then those patterns will repeat themselves... There's so much talk about the system, and so little understanding.

Creating and maintaining a social endeavor is as much art as it is science, and after a decade of working with online communities and social networks, I have come to believe that they can't be managed but only influenced. In many cases, the communities are left to police themselves. A good example of this is the SAP developer community (called the Business Objects Community) with more than 70,000 developers a day participating.

Creating and maintaining a social endeavor is as much art as it is science, and after a decade of working with online communities and social networks, I have come to believe that they can't be managed but only influenced. In many cases, the communities are left to police themselves.

If you're of the same generation as I am, you probably remember the TV show "Dragnet" and Sergeant Joe Friday's famous line "Just the facts, ma'am" (his actual words were, "All we want are the facts, ma'am," but that's a different story).

If it can be done, there is little that can beat a colocated and relatively homogenous team for cohesion, establishing a sound group dynamic, promoting communication in both verbal and nonverbal ways, and ensuring understanding. However, the real world is not always like that. In some cases, virtual teams are a fact of life and offer compelling advantages.

If it can be done, there is little that can beat a colocated and relatively homogenous team for cohesion, establishing a sound group dynamic, promoting communication in both verbal and nonverbal ways, and ensuring understanding. However, the real world is not always like that. In some cases, virtual teams are a fact of life and offer compelling advantages.

Back in April, I discussed MapReduce and its open source implementation, Hadoop (see "Hadoop, MapReduce, Cloudera, EC2, and BI," 14 April 2009). At that time, I said that I thought Hadoop offered exciting possibilities for enterprises to carry out large-scale data analysis and mining.

Back in April, I discussed MapReduce and its open source implementation, Hadoop (see "Hadoop, MapReduce, Cloudera, EC2, and BI," 14 April 2009). At that time, I said that I thought Hadoop offered exciting possibilities for enterprises to carry out large-scale data analysis and mining.

Abstract

Conventional wisdom holds that it's difficult, if not impossible, to cost-justify a technology project, particularly if the project is primarily technology infrastructure.

The shift in power from the CIO/CTO to the CFO for technology project justification is a fact of life that all of us in the technology industry are familiar with. We no longer have to sell the techies on the value of new IT projects, we have to sell to the financial part of the organization: the business.

Only recently have organizations, and business schools for that matter, begun to realize the need for effective strategy execution to enable competitive business advantage. For decades, the focus has been on strategy. Thanks to transformational thought leaders such as Larry Bossidy, Ram Charan, Lawrence Hrebiniak, Don Sull, and the like, a shift has begun that finds both academics and practitioners across the globe extending research and practice to help address the gap between strategy and organizational performance.

Reverse logistics is making a comeback as a supply chain opportunity, but this time it has a new style. The fundamentals of cost reduction, supply chain velocity, and flexibility in responding to demand fluctuations, which were in vogue in the past, are being refashioned to leverage the process to foster new insights and better collaboration with customers. This makeover is starting to catch the attention of companies that are trying to build greater customer intimacy.

 

This installment of CBR focuses on an often-neglected issue: reverse logistics. To help us better understand the potential of the reverse logistics process, and keeping with our standard process, we recruited both an academic and a practicing professional. Our academic on this issue is a returning contributor, Kathryn Brohman, Assistant Professor of Management Information Systems at the School of Business at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario (Canada). Kathryn and I share an interest in customer service systems and IT-enabled service.

SURVEY DEMOGRAPHICS

This survey examined how organizations are using IT to better manage their reverse logistics process and whether opportunities exist to leverage an improved reverse logistics process to reduce costs, develop better relationships with customers, and capture knowledge that may be critical to the development of new products and services.

No Pain, No Gain

IT governance requires a rigorous, structured approach to ensure IT’s delivery of value. There are no easy answers.

Keep It Simple

IT governance should be simple, involve business, and apply common sense. It shouldn’t require comprehensive frameworks and complex processes.

No Pain, No Gain

IT governance requires a rigorous, structured approach to ensure IT’s delivery of value. There are no easy answers.

Keep It Simple

IT governance should be simple, involve business, and apply common sense. It shouldn’t require comprehensive frameworks and complex processes.

IT governance is one of those subjects around which, at one level, it is easy to reach a consensus: IT governance is a necessary and important process by which an organization makes decisions and assigns responsibilities for the appropriate strategic and operational allocation of shared IT resources. However, at another level -- the level of specifically describing the scope of IT governance and the details of IT governance as a process -- consensus is more difficult to achieve.

IT governance is one of those subjects around which, at one level, it is easy to reach a consensus: IT governance is a necessary and important process by which an organization makes decisions and assigns responsibilities for the appropriate strategic and operational allocation of shared IT resources. However, at another level -- the level of specifically describing the scope of IT governance and the details of IT governance as a process -- consensus is more difficult to achieve.

GOVERNANCE: A MUCH-MISUNDERSTOOD TERM

Governance is one of those difficult words. Ask different people to define it, and you will get a range of answers. Ask business leaders what it means, and their responses will probably revolve around regulation and compliance, with an emphasis on the 21st-century demands of corporate governance.

GOVERNANCE: A MUCH-MISUNDERSTOOD TERM

Governance is one of those difficult words. Ask different people to define it, and you will get a range of answers. Ask business leaders what it means, and their responses will probably revolve around regulation and compliance, with an emphasis on the 21st-century demands of corporate governance.

 

Effective IT is essential for modern business performance. Since the mid-1990s, our company has accumulated a database that now contains data from over 230 organizations. In the database (which we discuss in further detail in the next section), business dependence on IT has been measured since 1990, and the average organizational dependence scores have increased from the low 4s on average to about 6.5 on a 7-point rating scale.

INTRODUCTION (AND CONFESSION)

IT has taken a place next to finance and human resources as a critical and pervasive discipline in just about every enterprise and government body. Yet practices and processes for successfully directing and managing IT (i.e., governance) have proved difficult to implement and even more difficult to sustain. This has not been for lack of trying -- many of the ideas, approaches, and techniques recommended today were originally proposed 30 or more years ago.