The Dolcera Blog

Excellent post from Andrew McAfee. Key points:

One of modern IT’s most underappreciated roles is as an enforcer of process discipline. Today’s enterprise systems make sure that complex, multi-step processes –  ones that involve employees, customers, suppliers, and other groups—are executed the same way time after time, location after location, with few or no exceptions.

Today, the parts of a business process that are executed with the assistance of IT are the easiest ones to control, monitor, and enforce. They’re also the easiest ones to reengineer with confidence…

The current issue of the Harvard Business Review has a fascinating study of patent sharks and their tactics. The authors make five recommendations to counter patent sharks. To that, I’d like to make a sixth: Use IP landscaping (samples on our wiki) to understand the key players and key inventions before jumping into a new field.

It seems like WalMart too has decided to go with the “tested and true” SAP platform. If this had happened 5 years ago, it would be considered a HUGE win. Today, WalMart doesn’t have quite the cachet… the aura is gone. But a big win for SAP nevertheless.