Case Study: MapSherpa
"We have been fortunate enough to have worked over the past nine months with Francis Moran and Associates to deliver virtual CMO services for our company, and so far it has been highly effective. With this relationship, we get access to a level of experience and expertise which would be unaffordable to us if we were to hire a full-time equivalent." Dave McIlhagga, Founder and CEO
Case Study: Singletouch
"When I hired Francis Moran to lead our marketing efforts in 2011, I had very high expectations. We needed to completely rebuild our marketing from the ground up. Francis and his team not only met those high expectations but exceeded them. He brought a very high level of strategic thinking, professionalism and creativity to our organization that will be felt for many years to come in our quest to build a successful IT company." Marty Hilsenteger, Founder and CEO
By inmedia
At inmedia, our belief is that it’s about more than just the technology, it’s about the business case for the technology. According to today’s CIO Insider, this is a mindset that too few IT departments have yet adopted. If you are concerned about the business case for the IT purchases at your company, there are good lessons to be learned in the article “Three Tips for Creating a Business-Savvy Information Technology Staff.”
By inmedia
For one reason or another, we just received the October 15 issue of eWeek. Regardless of its tardiness, the green issue is full of interesting news about what technology companies are doing to improve energy efficiency.
“An inconvenient IT truth” by Michael Vizard is shocking. Here are some quick facts I pulled from the piece:
-Surveys show that 48 percent of IT budgets are spent on energy
-By 2008, 5o percent of today’s data centers will have insufficient power and cooling
-By 2009, energy costs will become the second-highest operating cost of a data center, behind labor
-By 2010, half of all data centers will have to relocate or outsource applications to another facility
Vizard’s conclusion is simple: “Unless IT organizations take a proactive approach to green computing, they will not have the necessary dollars needed to invest in the system.”
By Francis Moran
I couldn’t resist snapping this picture earlier this week of the eponymous statue outside my hotel, the Sheraton Commander, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. When a statue of the commander of the Continental Army, old George Washington himself, is rooting for the Boston Red Sox, you know they’re going to go all the way. As of Tuesday, when I took this picture, the BoSox had won only the American League pennant; as of writing this post, they’re two games up on the Colorado Rockies and clearly the favourites to win the Fall Classic as it moves to mile-high country.
George would be proud.
By Linda Forrest
I watched a fascinating documentary last night on the CBC called The Selling Game, which talked about the changes in the marketing and advertising landscape, consumer-created content in advertising and myriad other issues that both marketers and consumers are facing in the digital age. Custom made television advertisements that factor in your preferred hotel chain, credit card, airline, and hobbies are already airing, created by an ad agency called Visible World. This sort of narrowcasting is doubtlessly going to be even more pervasive in the years ahead.
It was interesting that experts in the documentary said that studies have shown that the “big brother” aspects of marketers and advertisers having access to personal information and the inherent privacy ramifications are really only perceived as a problem by those in their 40s and older, whereas the younger generation is used to living their lives online, providing immense detail about their lives to whomever wants to see it, via social networks like Facebook, myspace, twitter, Flickr and so on. The convergence of mobile technologies and social networking certainly change how marketers reach their intended audience. Consumers can expect to be the targets of much more sharply-focused personal campaigns that will reach them where they are with marketing messages tailored to their specific buying habits and personal preferences.
By Jill Pyle
Starting a new job is never easy. As the new person in the office, there’s always an overwhelming amount of information to absorb. If you’re hired by an organization with a formal and thorough orientation process, consider yourself lucky. I’ve had some employers that expected me to learn by osmosis. Others have been kind enough to hand off a stack of dusty binders or offer a computer where I can navigate the depths of the company web site. I’ve come to the conclusion that orientation processes are often reflective of how organizations manage and share knowledge.
Typically, when I enter a new work place, I spend the first week getting to know my colleagues and volunteering for all the dreadful jobs they’ve been putting off, like “washing through” a list of 10,000 contacts. When I joined inmedia, I was assigned a unique introductory task. They asked me to write the employee manual.
I bet you’re thinking, as I was then, they must be crazy. Well, not exactly.
As a long-standing and close-knit team, they were too entrenched in the inmedia process to convey it to a newbie in any orderly or efficient fashion. Everything that was new to me was second nature to them. I had to become an observer.
inmedia, like many organizations, needed someone new and unbiased to take a fresh look at their process, collect information and transfer it somewhere safe. The task seemed daunting at first but with the help of a wiki, I created a home for our explicit and tacit knowledge.
Our wiki-based employee manual will always be a work in progress; that’s the beauty of a wiki. For the overwhelmed new hire assigned the role of wiki editor, here are my best practices:
October 25, 2007 by inmedia
By inmedia Your IT guy just might be the next big movie star! For those of you toiling away in a tech job and dreaming of becoming famous, here’s an article from this morning’s Computerworld that should encourage you not to give up your Hollywood dreams. Click to read Geek stars: The secret (nerdy) life […]
Read more... -October 24, 2007 by Danny Sullivan
By Danny Sullivan Following on from Linda’s piece on acronyms last month, I recently stumbled upon Ade McCormack’s Digital Business Glossary on FT.com. One of the more frequent challenges faced when working with a new IT client is to come up to speed with the range of terms (more than just acronyms) used in their […]
Read more... -October 24, 2007 by Linda Forrest
By Linda Forrest Unlike a few of my colleagues here at inmedia, I fell backward into public relations. The first professional internship position that I held just happened to be in publicity and I quite unintentionally ended up staying on this career path. For the duration of my career, I have been working in media […]
Read more... -October 24, 2007 by inmedia
By inmedia Today’s CIO Insider newsletter features an eye-opening article about the lessons companies can learn from the many costly product recalls that have taken place in recent years. The cases highlighted in this article certainly prove the business case for manufacturing intelligence systems like those Sciemetric Instruments provides. Click to read “Beyond Peter Pan: […]
Read more... -October 23, 2007 by inmedia
By inmedia According to eWeek’s Channel Insider, executives and analysts were asked at this week’s Gartner Channel Vision what they think the channel will look in 2010. SAAS (software as a service) and partner collaboration were heralded as the “way forward.” Click here to read the full article.
Read more... -October 22, 2007 by inmedia
By inmedia If you’re in the market for a new PDA, you might want to consider the iPod Touch, says ComputerWorld. According to the article, its “cool features, everything from Web browsing over Wi-Fi to VPN access and a host of enterprise-useful apps” make it a viable solution for business. One very exciting feature that […]
Read more... -October 19, 2007 by inmedia
By inmedia Do you ever wonder what the media are reading? The staff at PC Magazine have put together a list of their favourite blogs. Click here to see which blogs made PC Magazine’s top 100 list.
Read more... -October 19, 2007 by inmedia
By inmedia Further to our earlier post about Canada lagging behind the U.S. on cleantech investment, two current headlines caught our eye this morning: one in the Globe and Mail about Canada declaring “Investors slowly warming to clean tech” and the other on CleanTech.com about the U.S. with the heading “Smart energy gets smart money.”
Read more... -
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