Deploying a content management tool at an enterprise level requires a buy-in from users (bottom up). In a bottom up flow, it is important that top level commitment is present for the tool and that the tool is successfully installed and implemented.  This will benefit the organization and yield the desired results which were envisioned. Some interesting facts and market figures were revealed during the Business Process Management Summit in London. According to Mark Gilbert, Director – Consulting, Gartner, more than 40 percent of enterprises do not properly consider process and organizational issues when implementing ECM. He further adds that many companies underestimate the issues of installing an ECM, especially when it comes to the change management factor.

Organizational users generally have the tendency to utilize their own tools for information dissemination between departmental colleagues or across departments in an enterprise. The newly acquired content management tool must be approved by these users before it is implemented. (more…)

With the world becoming connected through social media platforms and the use of internet more extensive than ever, there has been a massive explosion of data and content. This has led to an unprecedented need for scaling solutions that store and process data. The traditional approach to address such data growth is to buy progressively more powerful hardware until the database can serve all the traffic.

Even larger companies have dealt with the horror of this scalability as they resorted to using traditional relational databases, eventually hitting limits that were unviable both financially and operationally. Google once ran off of 40,000 MySQL installations and Facebook was at one point spending $1M per month for specialized database hardware to serve their pictures.  These unviable solutions led to a re-evaluation of existing database technologies and led to the Not-Only-SQL (NoSQL)  movement. (more…)

Recently, I was accompanied by Boris Evelson of Forrester Research and Ajoy Kumar, leader of Virtusa’s data warehousing and business intelligence practice for a webinar on Pervasive Business Intelligence.  In the webinar, with attendees from industry and blogging community, Boris and Ajoy discussed the issues associated with pervasive business intelligence as well as best practices and benefits organizations can expect to derive from BI.

Before Boris (@bevelson) began his session, I asked him “what is your definition of pervasive BI?”  His answer was a company in which BI is everywhere, data and information are readily available, and an organization which is poised to compete not only on the basis of its goods or services but on the quality of its decisions as well.  That definition places a culture of “informed decision making” at a premium and views BI as a vehicle to deliver the information upon which critical decisions are based.

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The last few years of the millennium have seen old business models giving way to new ones. Customer needs are transitioning from those of pure consumption-oriented to those of convenience-oriented with the coming of age of the digital native. Organizations big and small are being affected by the onslaught of myriad of factors including enlightened and demanding customers, newer modes of communication, technology advancements with user dependence on mobility and small form factor devices, and the power of collective intelligence – blogs, wikis, user generated reviews and feedbacks, etc.

So has the meaning of value literally changed from what it was in the earlier days to the present? Or has Value in its representation evolved to “Value 2.0” i.e. becoming more user-oriented, keeping in line with the changing times? How are businesses upgrading themselves to meet the evolving juggernaut of customer needs and wants?

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Haven’t started planning for ICD-10 implementation yet?  Think that you have a lot of time before the implementation compliance date of October 2013?  Feeling that you don’t have the budget now but may have it in 2012 and 2013 and can start your planning then?

These are some common sentiments of practically everyone in the healthcare industry who is affected by the ICD-10 mandate. More and more questions are starting to arise about the process that requires solid answers. Organizations must determine how long they can wait before starting the implementation process and must assess how the mandate will impact them.  Some organizations are also assuming that they are going to get a reprieve and that there will be an extension to the implementation deadline. However, the probability of this happening is very low, so it’s advisable not to factor it into your thinking and planning.

Following are 10 key considerations to think about if you have not begun your ICD-10 planning (more…)

An Enterprise Content Management (ECM) system offers a platform to provide transformational value and change in any organization. However, all ECM implementations must start with the right note and the right sponsorship combined with an achievable plan to make them successful. Otherwise, failure is inevitable. In this post, based on our experience in providing ECM solutions to global clients, we highlight the top 5 reasons why ECM implementations fail in an organization and provide our suggestions/recommendations to better plan ECM implementations and thus avoid failure. (more…)

Recently, I was joined by Clay Richardson of Forrester Research and Virtusa’s own Vinaykumar Mummigatti for a webinar that examined the challenges associated with BPM projects. In the fall of 2008, Elise Olding of Gartner speculated that “over 50% of BPM projects will fail by 2011”. Two months into 2011, we have observed that her estimate, as controversial as it was at the time, was actually low. Virtusa has observed the failure rate to be somewhat higher due to a variety of reasons.

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