The “Hudson’s Bay Company”:http://www.hbc.com/ (HBC) is in the process of deploying a common business intelligence (BI) sales reporting system across its major retail The Bay department stores, “Zellers”:http://www.zellers.com/ discount stores and “Home Outfitters”:http://www.homeoutfitters.com/. In this article on ITbusiness.ca, they openly share their implementation difficulties for this large integrated project, which involves over 5,500 end-users.
Kudos to HBC for sharing. I suggest you “read the full article”:http://www.itbusiness.ca/it/client/en/home/News.asp?id=40609, but here are my three major takeaways.
The first takeaway is that the days of defining functional requirements and handing these over the wall to the Information Technology (IT) department are gone. For complex, integrated projects, business people need to bring IT into the loop early in discussion so that the tradeoffs between business and IT requirements are worked together, not as salvos fired back and forth about what business can and can’t have. A major cultural change on both parts, this is easier said than done.
Month: September 2006
On the theme of “major corporations missing the boat”:http://www.onedegree.ca/2006/09/10/kraftca-the-20-character-home-page – I received an email promotion for a “GM Canada”:http://www.gmcanada.com/ contest this morning that is a terrific example. The “email itself”:http://gmcanada.4kci.com/2006/pontiacG5/en.html wasn’t bad once I downloaded the images but it was all downhill from there.
The email encouraged me to “Feel Energized” by entering to win a Pontiac G5. Heck, I’m as happy to win a new car as the next guy (or gal) but when I clicked through to the contest site I was treated to three distinct flash movies before I even had the chance to enter:
* First, a “feel energized” presentation that encouraged me to use my mouse, keyboard and speakers to “feel energized” but doing those things had no effect on the movie, just distracted me from what was on my screen. I wasn’t energized – I was bored and frustrated.
* Next I had the opportunity to “build my G5”. The process was cool once I figured out the somewhat obscure interface but I don’t know what it had to do with the contest – I don’t think that’s the G5 I’ll win. If it is, that wasn’t made clear.
* After I’d built my G5 I was taken to a photo gallery of G5 images that had nothing to do with the car I had just finished building.
* FINALLY I was taken to the contest entry page. The entry page required me to scroll down one full screen before I could find the actual form. And then, to add insult to injury, there was no opt-in anywhere. I was very courteously asked what language I’d prefer to receive further communications in, but not given the option to decline those communications. There was a line buried in the brief privacy statement at the bottom of the form stating that I could change my preferences simply by letting GM know – but no instructions on how I might do that and no, the phrase “let us know” doesn’t link to anything.
The increased access to timely, rich, insightful information on the Internet and the rise of “unconferences” like CaseCamp and BarCamp will soon have traditional business and tech conferences on life support.
Discuss after the click.
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