Amex CEO Glen Salow on measuring IT value

Grok Headline matches for Amex CEO Glen Salow on measuring IT value

Glen! Glen Glen Glen!

Glen! Glen Glen Glen! 07/02/2004 02:43 PM
Glen ! Glen Glen Glen! [QuickTime]

"Glen! Glen Glen Glen!"

"Glen! Glen Glen Glen!" 07/04/2004 02:41 AM

Glen Campbell Gets Jail Time for DUI
(AP)

Glen Campbell Gets Jail Time for DUI
(AP) 06/15/2004 09:34 PM
AP - Country music singer Glen Campbell was sentenced Tuesday to 10 nights in jail and two years of probation for a November drunken-driving hit-and-run collision.

The AmEx Example

The AmEx Example 07/27/2004 01:14 PM
The firm's travel services and other businesses are performing, but investors are still cautious.

Russell Simmons, Glen E. Friedman, the
WTC, the RNC, and a message.

Russell Simmons, Glen E. Friedman, the
WTC, the RNC, and a message. 07/22/2004 12:52 AM
Sean Bonner, with whom I co-curated the SENT phonecam art show, blogs:

Russell Simmons owns a loft facing ground zero. Since 9/11 there's been extremely limited access to the building, but this morning our good friend, photographer Glen E. Friedman get in for a few minutes to make a statement which will be up through the RNC. Here's a bunch of pictures from inside and out.

Link< /a> (And incidentally, Mr. Friedman was an invited participant in SENT. Some of his phonecam photos from the show are here.)

Sasser infections hit Amex, others

Sasser infections hit Amex, others 05/04/2004 09:12 AM
Security experts are continuing to issue warnings about the Sasser Internet worm as organizations struggled to clean up the damage caused by infected hosts.

AmEx vs. rec.humor.funny

AmEx vs. rec.humor.funny 04/14/2004 09:19 AM

AmEx Rides the Recovery

AmEx Rides the Recovery 01/27/2004 04:02 PM
Spending by cardmembers and an improving stock market fuel growth.

Amex and Delta among US firms hit by
Sasser

Amex and Delta among US firms hit by
Sasser 05/05/2004 06:45 AM
Computer Weekly May 5 2004 11:07AM GMT

Aegis Assessments, Inc. Provides
Additional Information on Application
for AMEX

Aegis Assessments, Inc. Provides
Additional Information on Application
for AMEX 01/05/2005 03:10 AM
Wi-Fi Technology Forum Jan 5 2005 7:13AM GMT

NASD to transfer control of American
Stock Exchange to Amex members

NASD to transfer control of American
Stock Exchange to Amex members 11/04/2003 04:56 PM
San Jose Mercury News Nov 4 2003 2:46PM ET

Still Needs Measuring

Still Needs Measuring 04/11/2005 01:42 AM

Here are some questions about the “Average Web Page”: How big is it? Does it have pictures? How many others does it point to? How many others point to it? Nine years ago I offered answers to those questions, with pretty pictures even (some included here), and those answers are still interesting, but it would be nice if someone would repeat the exercise for today’s Web. Plus, another reason to be mad at Microsoft...

Measuring Fragmentation in HFS+

Measuring Fragmentation in HFS+ 05/19/2004 01:39 PM

Measuring IT Health with the IT
Scorecard

Measuring IT Health with the IT
Scorecard 07/05/2004 11:25 AM

Measuring Your Web Site Traffic

Measuring Your Web Site Traffic 12/24/2004 12:53 PM
Do you know who's visiting your site, where they come from, and how long they stay? If not, then you are designing and tweaking your site in the dark.

C kick Here to Learn How to Measure your traffic

"Regardless of the statistics package you use, whether it�s provided by your web host or one you download and run on your own computer, it�s vitally important that you learn how to read your site statistics, and do it regularly. Otherwise, you have no tools to gauge how well your site is performing, and how well you are promoting your site � whether links from other sites are actually sending you traffic, whether search engines are finding your most important pages, etc."

Measuring the Value of Usability
Engineering

Measuring the Value of Usability
Engineering 06/19/2002 12:06 PM
"(...) why usability engineers don't measure the value of usability efforts, rebuttals to each argument, and suggestions for how to remedy them."

Measuring True Profitability

Measuring True Profitability 04/21/2004 08:41 AM
Ever heard of structural free cash flow? It's one of Tom Gardner's main tools for digging up Hidden Gems.

Measuring the Branding Impact from
SEO/SEM

Measuring the Branding Impact from
SEO/SEM 04/09/2004 04:06 PM
Indepth article: "When trying to carry out any kind of branding exercise in SEM/SEO, we usually have one distinct advantage over traditional online and offline advertising: users are looking to buy!"

Measuring IT's impact on productivity

Measuring IT's impact on productivity 05/20/2004 05:34 PM
Researchers and CIOs at the MIT Sloan CIO Symposium said they're starting to see quantifiable evidence of how IT is affecting corporate productivity.

Measuring Pollution In Humans

Measuring Pollution In Humans 12/29/2003 08:25 AM
CHaN_316 writes "Scientists have begun measuring pollutants in our body and the results sound like a chemical clean-up site. They've found things such as flame ...

Measuring Online Ad Effectiveness

Measuring Online Ad Effectiveness 11/03/2003 03:14 AM
New York Times Nov 3 2003 1:45AM ET

Measuring Programming Language
Popularity Again

Measuring Programming Language
Popularity Again 01/05/2003 12:10 PM
To keep up with employment trends in programming languages I have searched the most popular job search engines (monster.com, dice.com, and hotjobs.com) to catagorize the number of job listings by the programming languages mentioned in each listing. Each search engine is different. As such, a description of the search techniques is also presented. -- Eric Turner

As a comparison, here are the PHP equivalents taken 2 days after the above article was posted.

PHP Jobs (US)
  189      Monster.com 
  244      HotJobs.com
   30      Dice.com
=====
  463
=====

From this rough guide PHP jobs are about as popular as Ada or Fortran. Pretty good company for such a young language. Also if you assume that all web-based programmer jobs require knowledge of Javascript (1878 jobs), then the percentage of web developer jobs that require PHP is about 463/1878 = 25%.

If you have more statistical diarrhea, let me know. I have toilet paper ready.

"tri" FuzzyBlog< /a> sees a half-empty glass, but still prefers digging ditches to ditching PHP.

"zeldman.newsy"

J.D. Edwards Adds CRM to Measuring Stick

J.D. Edwards Adds CRM to Measuring Stick 03/14/2003 01:28 AM
J.D. Edwards has expanded its business value calculator to include CRM, enterprise asset management, project management, workforce management and real estate management. The calculator is a benchmarking tool that helps businesses compare their performance in certain areas against that of competitors or the industry average.

Measuring the Cost and Effectiveness of
Web Sites

Measuring the Cost and Effectiveness of
Web Sites 09/03/2004 02:24 AM
[PRWEB Sep 3, 2004]

Ratings Agency Says It Erred in
Measuring Web Site Use

Ratings Agency Says It Erred in
Measuring Web Site Use 02/23/2003 10:50 PM
That change moved Terra Lycos to the sixth-most-visited site in December, from seventh under the previous numbers, putting it in front of Google. ...

Ask MacSlash: Measuring Monthly Data
Transfer?

Ask MacSlash: Measuring Monthly Data
Transfer? 04/16/2005 11:45 PM

SEC gives companies latitude in
measuring stock options' value under new
rules

SEC gives companies latitude in
measuring stock options' value under new
rules 03/29/2005 08:09 PM
San Jose Mercury News Mar 30 2005 12:41AM GMT

MEASURING
ENTREPRENEURIAL SUCCESS

MEASURING
ENTREPRENEURIAL SUCCESS 08/27/2004 02:02 PM

(Twelfth instalment of the upcoming book Natural Enterprise. List of previous instalments here.) Enterprises today have a dizzying selection of performance measurements to choose from. While at one time measuring financial profitability, growth and asset management effectiveness were considered enough, businesses are now told that they need broader metrics to avoid the landmines that may not show up in a simple financial report card. How does an entrepreneur decide which measures to use? The decision ultimately comes down to which measures best reflect and assess the achievement of the enterprise's objectives. As we explained in an earlier chapter, in a Natural Enterprise these objectives are more personal and less restricted than in a traditional company beholden to absentee shareholders and creditors, whose needs usually (and tragically) trump those of the people who actually operate the enterprise. In fact, Natural Enterprise recognizes that each member/partner will have different personal objectives, and attempts to accommodate those objectives, unlike traditional companies that merely contract for services of employees and make no attempt to assess those employees' individual needs (often at the cost of their best people). Some individuals may want or need to earn a significant income to meet personal financial obligations, while others may be prepared to trade off income for more time for non-business activities, and still others may not care about either financial reward or time demands, as long as they're having fun working with people they love. Just as the selection of members for a Natural Enterprise is a self-brokered juggling act (ensuring members' skills are mutually exclusive yet collectively sufficient), so too is the measurement of Natural Enterprise success a balancing act -- choosing measures that assess each member's achievement of his or her personal objectives and needs, yet still ensuring that the enterprise as a whole remains viable and sustainable. For that reason the selection of measurements needs to be a collective decision, one that optimizes everyone's desires and needs in a fair and objective manner. If one member has a huge mortgage that can probably only be serviced if everyone in the enterprise works longer hours than they want to, for example, this needs to be hammered out early, to avoid inevitable conflicts (and resignations) later. While the measurement process described in this article is designed for Natural Enterprise, it can also work in any entrepreneurial business with a democratic spirit. Just be forewarned it takes a bit more work than the traditional business success measures, and requires a lot more accommodation of individual employees' needs and aspirations than most entrepreneurial managers are accustomed to! Although there are many accepted sets of measures that attempt to look at enterprise success holistically, in my opinion none of the widely-used templates is flexible enough to meet the needs of entrepreneurs who are not fixated on maximizing profitability and growth. My recommendation, then, is that you start by having each member of the enterprise articulate his or her own personal objectives for being part of the enterprise, and then as a group reconcile and optimize them to create a set of enterprise-wide measurements. I've developed two tools to do this, the Personal Enterprise Success Scorecard and the Enterprise Success Scorecard. Those who have worked in large organizations that use Norton & Kaplan's Balanced Scorecard will recognize this as similar to the process used to reconcile personal goals to enterprise goals, but with an important difference: While in traditional companies this reconciliation is a top-down process ("describe how your personal goals and improvement objectives for the next year will contribute to each of the organization's Balanced Scorecard goals"), in Natural Enterprise the process is bottom-up. Here's how it works: Have each member of the organization complete a Personal Enterprise Success Scorecard (see Fig.1), honestly and independently. Circulate these Personal Scorecards among all members of the enterprise, and allow time for one-on-one discussions and exchange of suggestions to ensure all Scorecards are fair, reasonable and consistently filled out. Get the group together to develop a plan that will achieve everyone's Minimum Need Targets, and get as close as possible to achieving everyone's Ideal Targets. This will require considerable consens us-building skills -- it has to be a highly respectful and accommodating process with no bullying, intimidation or reluctant compromise. You might even have to rethink your membership if you realize that no matter what you do, someone's going to be unhappy enough to leave. PERSONAL OBJECTIVE MEASURE TARGET (MINIMUM NEED) TARGET (IDEAL) Meet personal financial objectives Personal monthly cash flow (income) $X/month $Y/month Time for important non-work activities Average weekly work hours max. X hours/week max. Y hours/week Work hours flexibility Ability to choose which hours to work avoid working X-Yam and X-Ypm unlimited flexibility Work autonomy, authority, responsibility Ability to make decisions affecting my role $X spending authority unlimited autonomy Personal learning Time allotted for learning activities X hours/week unlimited at my discretion Creative outlet Time & $ allotted for innovation activities X hours/week + $X/month Y hours/week + $Y/month etc. Fig. 1  Sample Personal Enterprise Success Scorecard Drawing on the Personal Enterprise Success Scorecards, and adding other holistic objectives of the enterprise, compile an Enterprise Success Scorecard (Fig. 2). Put in place processes to capture the data (qualitative -- surveys etc., and quantitative) needed to assess the achievement or non-achievement of the collective targets. When a minimum-need target is not achieved, convene the group to discuss implications for individual members and remedial actions to achieve the target in future, or changes to the target. ENTERPRISE OBJECTIVE MEASURE TARGET (MINIMUM NEED) TARGET (IDEAL OR BENCHMARK) ACHIEVEMENT/ REMEDIATION INITIATIVES Meet members' financial targets Cash flow distributed/month Meet members' work hour targets Total hours worked/month High product/service quality Score per customer survey High business process quality Down time & wasted time High member/employee satisfaction Score per employee survey High customer satisfaction Score per customer survey Strong relationships Face time with members of networks High connectivity Number of contacts with networks High enterprise value Computed valuation High sustainability & agility Meet above targets even in weak economy Social & environmental responsibility Buy local, employ local, no waste/pollution Community responsibility Outreach to schools & charities High market/customer share % of total market in areas served High innovation % of sales from new offerings etc. Fig. 2  Sample Enterprise Success Scorecard (column headings based on Norton & Kaplan's Balanced Scorecard) Most of these measures are contingent on others. For example, a member may be willing to work more hours if he or she has greater flexibility over when those hours are worked. So optimizing the needs and objectives of all members is not only a balancing act, it's an iterative process. And over time the demand for and costs of the enterprise's products and services may change for reasons outside your control, which will require a re-optimization of members' and the enterprise's scorecards again. Some of the objectives in the sample Enterprise Success Scorecard above are quite grandiose and abstract, and sometimes you need to employ some more readily measurable intermediary metrics to get a clear idea of whether you are achieving, and will likely continue to be able to achieve, some of the higher-level objectives. For example, achieving a cash flow target means achieving certain revenues and/or cost minimization targets. So there is still a place in this measurement process for the traditional financial and operating measures like margin and turnover, and like 'eyeballs' and 'stickiness' measures of e-commerce sites. You can find information on some of these traditional measures at About.com, at NetMBA, or at the UK Small Business Service site. While these ratios aren't terribly useful to most entrepreneurs as raw data, they can be very useful in identifying trends that may indicate problems or opportunities, in diagnosing the cause of problems, and in comparing your enterprise to companies in a similar business that are outperforming the market. Trends in intermediary metrics can also have great predictive value: I know of several businesses who noticed modest drops in gross margin or inventory turnover, and discovered that they signalled important (negative) shifts in customer perception of their products, early enough to take vital remedial action. If you are interested in knowing how much your business is 'worth' (at least on paper), I published a Primer on Business Valuation last year on my weblog. Norton & Kaplan's famous Balanced Scorecard, which you can learn more about on their site, breaks the measurable enterprises objectives into four major categories: Financial, Customer, Internal Processes and Learning, Growth & Innovation. Many variations of these classifications have since been published, adding Knowledge (Intellectual Capital), 'People' (Human Capital) and Technology categories, among others. No matter what objectives you choose or how you categorize them, it is essential that they meet three criteria: Measurability -- If you can't measure attainment of the objectives, or even come up with compelling intermediary metrics that can serve as credible surrogates for what you're trying to measure, there isn't much point in listing it as an objective, because you'll never know if you've achieved it. Actionability -- You need to be able to identify remedial actions you can take if you fail to meet your targets. If your measures aren't actionable, there's limited value in taking them. Analyzability -- You need to be able to understand why you are, or are not, meeting your targets, in order to be able to act on them. My book, Natural Enterprise, will include some real-life examples of entrepreneurial measurement systems, and some success stories and horror stories about business measurement. I've spent much of my career being paid to measure enterprise success, and in my experience most entrepreneurs know instinctively how well their business is doing, and many rely on one overarching measure -- daily cash flow -- to confirm or challenge their business instinct. I'll be describing how to manage cash flow in the next article in this series. In the meantime, some final thoughts about measurements: Don't get obsessed with them -- they're a means to an end, namely the achievement of your business objectives (not your accountant's!), not an end in themselves. Make sure that the measures you use are timely, and that you take them continuously; I've seen businesses fail because they made decisions based on obsolete, misleading data. Make sure the measures are meaningful and the process used to collect them ensures accurate data. Before you make major decisions based on your interpretation of a surprising or disappointing measure, get some others to provide their interpretation. Choose a few, meaningful measures over a mass of numbers that are hard to digest. Don't focus solely on short-term measures -- they can make you too impatient, and cause you to over-react. It's been said that "what gets measured, gets done", and there is some truth to that. But nowhere in business is the 'conventional wisdom' so likely to lead you astray than in business measurement. Measure your success on your own terms. It's all that counts.

STIMULATING
AND MEASURING CANADIAN INNOVATION --
BADLY

STIMULATING
AND MEASURING CANADIAN INNOVATION --
BADLY 09/18/2004 05:31 AM

It is a strange irony that the people who study innovation seem to be rather unimaginative at finding ways to stimulate it and measure it. Two new Canadian studies retread tired old ground in this regard. First, a Canadian federal government National Summit on innovation came up with these 18 lame 'priority recommendations' (I'm paraphrasing): Strengthen business-university relationships More university research More government funding of commercialization Eliminate capital taxes Enhance research tax credits Enhance investment tax credits Accelerate deregulation Fund more literacy improvement programs Teach problem-solving in schools More student loans More university student capacity More training programs for minorities Facilitate more workplace training Ease immigration for students and professionals More encouragement of municipal innovation programs Improve networks between research organizations Expand broadband access More learning investment in rural areas Most of these brilliant ideas entail throwing taxpayer money at corporations, both directly and through subsidized public sector research that directly benefits private companies. The truth is that a substantial majority of Canada's largest companies are owned by foreign (mostly US) parents who mostly treat their Canadian operations as low-labour-cost branch plants that distribute products and services designed at head office and built in the third world. Although the research capacity in Canada is comparable to the world's best, and is cheaper than in the US or Western Europe, there's no way Head Office is going to move its precious research function to the Canadian boonies. Many, many Canadian subs are housed in shabby, poorly-maintained, cheap premises using machinery and software cast off from Head Office when they upgraded, and run by managers sent to Canada because they weren't assessed as good enough to run Head Office divisions. If you think that's harsh, talk to any of the millions of Canadians working for fawning, ineffectual foreign bosses. And despite these disadvantages, many Canadian 'branches' significantly outperform their Head Office divisions, largely because their Canadian workforces are smarter, more resourceful, and -- yes -- more innovative than the Head Office drones. So the real answer to Canada's poor innovation performance (according to the following measurements, about which I will talk in a moment) is to take back Canada's economy -- phase in 51% Canadian ownership and Canadian management requirements for all businesses over a certain size. Require profits made in Canada to remain in Canada, by imposing a 100% tax on cross-border distributions. Scrap NAFTA. And if you want to stimulate innovation, invest in the people that live and die by innovation -- entrepreneurs. Their profits stay in the community, get reinvested, and create jobs. By all means subsidize those entrepreneurs to do their research at Canadian universities -- you better believe that research will be focused on commercial opportunity. OK, now let's look at how the Science Council of British Columbia proposes to measure innovation, to determine whether we need more wringing of hands in another Innovation Summit next year over our 'poor' performance. You thought the Feds' list was bad -- check this one out: Percent of population completing university Science and engineering degrees per 100,000 people Grade 8 average math and science standardized test scores Research workforce per 100,000 people Science workforce per 100,000 people Percentage of immigrants with university education Total R&D expenditures as a percentage of GDP Sectoral R&D expenditure as a percentage of GDP Business funding as a percentage of university R&D Scientific publications per 100,000 people Patents issued per 100,000 people University technology licensing revenue Venture capital investment per 100,000 people Percentage of manufacturers deemed 'innovative' by Statistics Canada New business starts per 100,000 people Tax rate of people with $80,000 of earned income Corporate tax rate Percentage of R&D expenditures tax-subsidized Total business investment as a percentage of GDP Percentage of households using the Internet Percentage of households using home computers Percentage of establishments in 'high tech' Real GDP per labour hour in the private sector Real GDP per capita Employment rate Real average hourly earnings Total exports per capita If this is how government measures performance, it's no wonder people are jaded about government efficiency (though I confess I've seen corporate balanced scorecards that are just as bad). This list makes no mention whatsoever of entrepreneurship, which even big corporation defenders like Peter Drucker admit is the main driver of innovation. Even #15 is unrefined -- most new business 'starts' are numbered companies, very often affiliates of existing corporations set up for accounting or tax purposes, or passive investment holding companies. This is no measure of entrepreneurship. And a lot of business investment (#19) is in things like replacement equipment and building premises (in Canada, most often warehouses), so this index will tell you more about the price of real estate than the state of innovation. A more intelligent set of measures, as in the previous list, would include measures of true entrepreneurship -- the percentage of GDP generated by independent business (excluding franchises), and the number of graduating students starting new ventures, for example. Canadians are quite probably the most innovative people (relative to our size) on Earth. Many of the most successful software companies in the world were started by Canadians. We nearly dominate the ranks of the world's best comedians, female singer-songwriters, and women novelists. We have a disproportionate number of Nobelists. A recent survey found that on average each dollar invested by non-Canadians in a Canadian-invented patent generates $40,000 in revenue for the patent-buyer. We're world leaders in renewable energy research. I could go on, but that would be bragging, and that wouldn't be Canadian. So why do we beat ourselves up over meaningless measures of our innovation 'uncompetitiveness'? Perhaps because we're ashamed to admit that we sell ourselves short. We work hard for unappreciative and often rapacious foreign bosses who take the money we earn for them with our ingenuity and run. We have lost control of our own economic destiny, which may lead inexorably to a loss of our political and social autonomy as well. If we spent half the time and energy (and money) trying to stimulate and measure our economic autonomy that we spend trying (not very competently) to stimulate and measure 'innovation' we'd be much further ahead -- by any measure.

Grok Description matches for Amex CEO Glen Salow on measuring IT value
GrokA matches for Amex CEO Glen Salow on measuring IT value

Amex CEO Glen Salow on measuring IT value

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