become a ciber thought leader
We are always seeking talented and innovative people. We have IT careers open all around the globe.
Technology Funding Through the Department of Education
Ron Gaskins, Director of Higher Education Strategy : 27 January 2010 / 1:44 PM : 0 
A recent article in Campus Technology featured Mount Ida College and $2.1 million in three grants received by the four year, independent institution in Newton, MA. Most significant of the three was a $1.72 million Title III grant from the Department of Education through the Strengthening Institutions Programs. David Healy, Vice President for Finance and Administration at Mount Ida, states that the funding will be used to bring the college into a new millennium through enhancements to the technological infrastructure and implementation of a new student information system.
Healy further stated that Mount Ida has a strategic focus on first-generation college students and a vision that centers on taking those students from potential to achievement. This initiative is another reason he states that the technology overhaul is needed. He envisions a system that allows professors and administrators to track a student’s progress.
Healy provides five intuitive hints for grant writing. These can be found at the end of this posting.
Of significant relevance is that Mount Ida received Department of Education grant funding for hardware and software improvements. A closer look at the Department’s website provides insight into the continue reading 
Posted in Higher Education on 27 January 2010
More by this author
Tagged: Admissions/Recruiting ARRA Business Intelligence Higher Education Information Management Stimulus Funding Student Records/Registration Student Systems
Business Drivers and IT Strategy
Gregg Powers, Senior Management Consultant : 20 January 2010 / 12:13 PM : 1
In the last blog entry, we looked at some of the first principles of IT strategy – things that should be addressed within an IT strategy document. In this blog entry, we explore in more detail, some of the fundamental aspects of tying IT strategy to the business. A key relationship that develops over time, although not immediately recognized by IT executives, is IT organizations inability to objectively define their value proposition are often viewed as an expense to be minimized. Hence, there is a linkage between the view of IT within the organization as an expense and IT’s inability to define its value.
IT organizations have historically been challenged in defining their value proposition; the reason? In many cases, it is because there is no objective foundation upon which IT products, services, and activities are delivered. In less mature organizations, business executives (including the CEO/COO) may not ask the critical questions which would require a planning and measurement framework to answer such questions.
Having said this, businesses are in business (for the most part) to make money. We see the emergence of ever more information technology savvy corporate executives and as such, IT is expected to behave as any other part of the organizati...
Posted in Enterprise Integration & IT Strategy on 20 January 2010
More by this author
Tagged: IT Planning IT Strategy IT to Business Alignment
How to increase loyalty program participation?
Dr. Nicole Wieberneit, Senior CRM Consultant : 14 January 2010 / 4:05 PM : 1
Increasing the participation in a loyalty program is like building a stable house that can be extended step by step in the future.
The foundation of every successful loyalty program is an attractive value proposition for the consumer and integrated loyalty analytics. It is more and more important for companies to have very special rewards, so called WOW!-Factors. These rewards shall not only encourage customers to stay engaged, but to spend more money more often just to reach the once-in-a-lifetime experience, premium merchandise or lifestyle-themed reward that appeal to a member dream. Further elements in successful reward designs are soft benefits and personalized rewards. Soft benefits like special access and unique privileges are an important factor for differentiating oneself from the competitors.
The second part of the foundation is to cluster your customers in homogeneous segments based on the gathered transactional data. These segments are addressed with the appropriate customer strategy and, thus, make the most out of the marketing expenditures. The sheer amount of transactional data combined with the customer entity should give enough business insights to promote the right merchandise to the right customer. Therefore it is crucial to have several KPIs set up to see if activities are steering in the right direction or if a change is necessary. Your customer strategy is...
Posted in CRM on 14 January 2010
More by this author
Tagged: Business Value CRM IT Strategy IT Value Multi-Channel Retail Social Networking
The Importance of Infrastructure Design Early in ERP Implementations
Tom Hughes, Business Development Manager : 15 December 2009 / 1:05 PM : 0
Designing an infrastructure solution to fit a client’s new ERP solution is much more than a “sizing exercise”. It is an inter-related project of its own that is key to the success of the overall ERP project. To ensure a successful completion, a client’s unique needs must be considered. Issues including database cost, goals and objectives surrounding required uptime and disaster recovery, new technology trends, virtualization, existing workloads and multi-environmental transitional plans required by a new ERP system are only a few areas of discussion that need to be taken into account.
To achieve the greatest benefit, the involvement of infrastructure experts, such as those from CIBER’s Technology Solutions Practice, in the solution design discussions early in the process is critical. Listed below are highlights of key discussion points that would be addressed and steps to be taken, to ensure a successful ERP implementation project.
High Level Understanding/Discovery Discussions:
Posted in Servers, Storage and Software on 15 December 2009
More by this author
Tagged: Enterprise Architecture ERP IT Planning IT Strategy Lawson Oracle Technology Architecture
Master Data Management
Ashu Bhatia, Director of Delivery : 08 December 2009 / 11:05 AM : 1
Master Data Management
Master Data is the fundamental business data in the company, typically long-lived and used across multiple applications, inherently including the subset of Master Reference Data.
Master Data, including Reference Data, is not to be considered “Metadata”. Metadata is data about data. It describes data content but it is NOT the content. There is no formal and universal definition of how deep to take the definition from a content perspective. Only those metadata whose management will bring more value to the enterprise than the cost of the labor needed to create and maintain it should be managed and integrated formally. For example, “Master Data” definitions (customers, suppliers, products, organization, etc.) which will be the most ever-present and shared data across an enterprise will be most critical.
Master Reference Data is used to understand, navigate and query information based on or related to the Core Master Data from various business level and/or user level perspectives.
Value Proposition of MDM:
Revenue
Posted in Enterprise Integration & IT Strategy on 08 December 2009
More by this author
Tagged: Business Architecture Data Architecture Enterprise Integration Information Management SOA & Data Architecture
CRM 9.1 Events Management Includes Needed Business Processes
Ron Gaskins, Director of Higher Education Strategy : 03 December 2009 / 1:50 PM : 0
During Oracle Open World I attended several sessions on the Oracle CRM 9.1 release. I was impressed with the enhancements in all modules but the one that really caught my attention was Events Management.
Vendors have provided constituent relations solutions in many different colors and flavors over the years. But...comprehensive, enterprise wide event management functionality has always been lacking. Management of events has been a labor intensive, expensive and complex activity in higher education. Even after allocation of institutional resources the results often did not meet desired expectations. And what is worse, the data and/or tools needed to evaluate the results were not available.
I am confident in saying that the Oracle CRM Product Management Team sought out and listened to client input. The result is a comprehensive solution that addresses the business challenges of managing and evaluating the success of events.
The enhanced events management solution in CRM 9.1 provides the ability to manage costs through capabilities such as on-line registration and payment, waitlisting, incorporation of Campus Solutions tasks and other workflow functions.
The 360 degree view that includes relevant information from Campus Solutions greatly improves an institutional representative’s ability to provide information and execute appropriate actions f...
Posted in Higher Education on 03 December 2009
More by this author
Tagged: CRM Enterprise Integration Higher Education Social Networking
A Way towards Nirvana - Embracing Social CRM is Key
Thomas Wieberneit, National Manager CRM Practice : 30 November 2009 / 11:46 AM : 0
We trust those sources most, who are like us.
“A company like me”, as Paul Greenberg dubbed it last year in an article for destinationCRM, is a vision that depicts a trustworthy, almost human, company; maybe this vision is not an achievable one, but it still is a very good one since easily related to and understood. It clearly shows the path to the ultimate goal of each company: To get more loyal customers by being trustworthy.
Having more loyal customers directly translates into an improved bottom line since loyal customers have a higher value than irregular customers. Loyal customers furthermore often act as ambassadors for “their” companies and brands thus providing a free-of-charge marketing- and sales force which results in a better top line.
As a matter of fact and as stated in several blogs before, people – customers – are more connected than ever. They get information they trust on products and services anytime and anywhere via their personal networks and can easily confirm or prove wrong all information that is pushed out by companies. They achieve this via usage of services like Epinions, TripAdvisor, Facebook, PriceMe, and so on. Customers use these sites from their home computers and via their smart phones, so that they even take ...
Posted in CRM on 30 November 2009
More by this author
Tagged: CPG CRM Multi-Channel Retail Social Networking Twitter
What is the state-of-the-art of loyalty management in the retail sector?
Dr. Nicole Wieberneit, Senior CRM Consultant : 18 November 2009 / 9:30 AM : 0
The retail industry is one of the biggest loyalty players after the airline industry and financial services. The airline industry has the most sophisticated loyalty and customer strategies and technology support. Where do we see loyalty management within the retail industry?
First of all in the worldwide retail market environment we can find three different distinct loyalty models - Everyday low price (EDLP), classic loyalty models and hybrid models.
Within the EDLP model a retailer is relentlessly focusing on the lowest category prices. This leads to low customer service, low in-store experience and unimportance of customer relationships. Unfortunately just one retailer can have the lowest prices within one category and therefore going down this path can only lead to a disaster for most of the companies. The resulting price competition needs to be offset by increased efficiencies, which is only possible to a limited extent.
To avoid this path other retailers attract consumers to their stores by focusing on differentiated customer relationships (loyalty model) or by providing members only wholesale prices by taking membership fees (hybrid model).
Companies that build their strategy on a loyalty model take actions using recognition- and rewards tactics to identify their customers and to monitor and to track their behaviour. This data is collected in a ...
Posted in CRM on 18 November 2009
More by this author
Tagged: CRM IT Strategy IT to Business Alignment IT Value Multi-Channel Retail
CRM Done Right
Thomas Wieberneit, National Manager CRM Practice : 16 November 2009 / 4:37 PM : 0
After some blogs on the buzzing topic of social CRM I recently came to thinking about the way to make CRM projects successful.
An initiator to this thinking was the opportunity to speak at an SAP user group meeting.
As a part of this thought process I came across the most recent Chaos Report of the Standish Group, which got released in April 2009. It shows that the success of projects is on the decline again with the project failure rate soaring since 2004.
While the project success criteria used by the Standish Group are not optimal since they are defining success if a project is on time, on budget and delivers the required functionality it still gives a good idea: Most IT projects do not deliver up to expectations or promises.
Why do I now say that the success criteria are not optimal? The answer simply is that there is no mention of delivered value. In a business context, and then especially in a CRM context, a project that delivers the required functionality on time and on budget still may be a failure! This project is a failure if simply the wrong things got implemented in the course of the project.
Each time you ask yourselves one of the following questions when interacting with a company you have an example of a poor CRM...
Posted in CRM on 16 November 2009
More by this author
Tagged: Agile CRM IT to Business Alignment Project Management Project Methodology Risk management
SAP Real Estate Crisis, necesidad y oportunidad. Tiempos de Re-evolución
Ignacio González, Director Adjunto Zona Centro en CIBER España : 06 November 2009 / 11:09 AM : 0
El presente artículo ha sido co-escrito junto a Manel Hernàndez, Director del Proyecto SOCIMI / REIT, Financials Business Consulting & SAP de Hewlett-Packard Enterprise Services.
Introducción
Durante estos días se empiezan a percibir mensajes de mejoría de indicadores económicos en mercados internacionales. Esto nos hace pensar en un próximo horizonte de recuperación estable, aunque para España, los cambios se presentarán con una cierta latencia.
Mientras los gobiernos van estableciendo medidas que estimulen las economías, las Organizaciones tienen que reaccionar adaptándose a estos momentos difíciles, y en estas situaciones es donde las ideas vs necesidades son los motores de generación de oportunidades.
Uno de los sectores con mayor necesidad de ideas es, por su peso específico en nuestra economía nacional, el sector inmobiliario; y si importante son las ideas para afrontar las rutas, no menos importantes son las necesidades que nos permitan definir los medios con los cuales llegar.
La situación actual respecto a la gestión ‘Bienes inmuebles’ por parte de promotoras, constructoras, entidades de financiación, empresas públicas y privadas, etc. han generado unas necesidades de herramientas de Tecnologías de la Información (TI) que den respuesta eficiente e integral.
En dicho apartado es donde CIBER aporta su valor como Partner SAP ...
Posted in CIBER España on 06 November 2009
More by this author
Tagged: ERP
|
