Business Ideas

The Art of Post M&A Integration One of the many questions that companies face in a post M&A environment is "How do we identify and manage access rights to existing and new systems that are in place?" Corporate IT is faced with the challenge of determining what systems and projects require new levels of approval. Not only do new approval processes need to be established, but providing a common platform to define and execute… View More

The Challenge: Managing change while meeting compliance needs Increasingly, management, governance, and auditors are relying on IT to support enterprise planning, risk management, and performance. Compliance in general – and Sarbanes-Oxley compliance in particular – is crucial to the ability to meet shareholder expectations and government regulations. Design, execution, and monitoring processes and their controls all are… View More

We are Only Human Business processes exist to serve very humanistic purposes. After all, businesses are created by people, for people, and are kept alive and nurtured through the effort of its people. Despite that, processes are best optimized by utilizing best practices drawn from very inhuman sources: technology, computers, and machines. There is a distinct dichotomy between humans and technology, and finding the… View More

Paperless Workflow or "The Paperless Office" sound like great ideas but surprisingly, many businesses, large and small still rely on paper-based communication to manage requests, complete forms and even communicate (interoffice mail envelopes are still in use). At last estimate, 5 million tons of office paper were still being used each year in the U.S. alone. Resistance to… View More

When we talk to businesses about workflow automation for the first time we often hear that for a long time they A) didn't know they had a problem and B) had no idea what to do when they realized they actually had a problem. We think this is understandable given that "workflow" isn't necessarily something people spend a lot of time thinking about unless they're in a business that centers around… View More

Every large organization maintains a portfolio of applications that help get things done: Accounting, CRM, MRM, ERP, etc. Each of these enterprise applications does what it does extremely well. Some do several things very well, for instance, an application like NetSuite does a laudable job across CRM, accounting, ERP, etc. However, it's likely that even organizations using something like NetSuite are also using several other enterprise tools… View More

Corporate transparency has been a hot topic for a while now, with some companies completely embracing the idea of sharing all things all the time and others simply trying to find ways to be more open internally and externally. On the internal front, some companies believe there is tremendous value in breaking… View More

Cloud-based workflow management can have a dramatic impact on the productivity and efficiency on any organization. In some cases you may be replacing manual processes with an automated system. In other cases you may be moving from a legacy application like SharePoint or Lotus with limited workflow capabilities. In either case great things will happen. Here are five results you can expect. More Focus on Core… View More

Life hacking and all-around uber-helpful site LifeHacker.com published an excellent article about how we use email improperly called "Top 10 Ways You're Probably Using Email Wrong." Everyone who uses email (which would be, essentially, everybody) should go read… View More

Working with clients can be rewarding, exciting, fulfilling, and, yes, challenging. In our new feature "The Shortlist," we're sharing a quick list of tips on how to deal with those challenging clients whether internal or external. In the end, it's all about being a consummate professional no matter what. Say "I don't know but… View More