RIS Reveals 2012 Mobile App Award Finalists

Mobile apps have become huge in retail and are continuing to grow in popularity at a rapid rate. They are becoming ubiquitous in the retail landscape from both a consumer and corporate standpoint.

Retail Info Systems News (RIS) has just revealed their 2012 Mobile App Award Finalists, categories include: Enterprise Excellence, Innovation, Shopping, and Store Operations.

A few facts based on recent RIS research were also included in the article:

• More than half (a total of 57.2%) of responding retailers update their mobile apps every three months, or more frequently, 42.9% every two to three months, and 14.3% every month
• 50% of consumers return to the retailer's app at least once a week
• Mobile app budgets are on the rise among nearly three-quarters of surveyed retailers
• Among those with growing budgets, the average increase is 50%

The finalists, and the above facts, speak to the advancement and innovation occurring in the retail mobile app space. Retailers are starting to pick up on this so the next year should be interesting...

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Corporate Mobile Application Strategy

In the March/April edition of Exchange Magazine, Ideaca's Brad Blaskavitch wrote an article around creating a Corporate Mobile Application Strategy for your business.

In this article Brad outlines five essential technology components for a successful mobile strategy:

1. Mobile Devices: Smartphones and new generation tablets are more powerful and capable than ever before, and keep evolving at a rapid rate. Their power allows for more advanced applications. The ability to store data when network connectivity is lost, has been critical to corporate mobile application initiatives.

2. Mobile Applications & Platforms: Previously, organizations delayed investment in mobility for fear of tying themselves to a single hardware vendor, causing paralysis. Today's mobile computing platforms and development tools have advanced to the point that device OS/manufacturer is no longer significantly relevant. Mobile applications can be developed once to run on Android, Apple iOS and Blackberry.

3. Network/Carrier Infrastructure: Wireless telecom companies have made tremendous investments to improve the speeds of data transfer and expand their geographic coverage. We have seen the transition from 2G to 4G networks. These improvements allow mobile applications to have more capability and perform at acceptable speeds.

4. Corporate Technology: Many companies have invested heavily in corporate systems and line of business applications to improve operational efficiencies in administrative functions, systems such as Enterprise Resource Planning, Financial, Customer Relationship Management and Business Intelligence. Organizations now have the key internal infrastructure to support a true corporate mobility strategy and extend these capabilities to their mobile workers in an integrated solution.

5. Cloud Computing: While many will argue that it isn't a core requirement, cloud computing has allowed many organizations to scale their technology footprint without incurring the significant capital costs of a more traditional on-premise hardware strategy. The ability to scale up or down the computing power of an organization, eliminating hardware and IT resource constraints, has freed up capital and IT resources to focus on value add solutions to increasing the organizations competitiveness.

For the rest of the article, click the link below to check it out on page 32-33. http://www.exchangemagazine.com/currentissue/ExchangeVol29No4/

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Beyond Project Management to Project Leadership

Check out this recent post on Project Management from Ideaca Partner, Evan Hu's blog "at the intersection of innovation, entrepreneurship and leadership". Evan goes into detail about why projects fail, and what you can do to ensure future success.


Beyond Project Management to Project Leadership

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How Corporate Collaboration Strategy Affects Profits for Retailers Event

Last week Ideaca teamed up with Microsoft to put on an event focused around Corporate Collaboration and Store Portals for Retailers.

John Torella from J.C. Williams Group, gave an inspiring talk that made our attendees realize they need to keep with today's emerging technologies by being a differentiator.

"Surprise and Delight your Customers".
- John Torell

 Rob Alexander-Carew from Microsoft Canada, discussed how to Resolve your Retail Business Challenges

Valerie Prendergast and her team from Ideaca gave an impressive demo showcasing Store & Corporate Collaboration in Practice

The event was a great success, and motivated our retail audience to consider making impactful and necessary changes to their corporate collaboration strategy.

If you missed out on this event, don't worry! We are hoping to have a recording of this session up on our website in the near future. Stay tuned!

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The Resurrection of Canadian Manufacturing

The crash of the financial markets threatened to eliminate the importance of Canada's manufacturing sectors. With over 300,000 jobs having been lost as a result of the financial crisis, economists were reluctant to paint a rosy picture of the future of manufacturing in Canada. But according to the Financial Post, the manufacturing landscape in Canada is beginning to flourish, particularly for businesses whom had managed themselves well enough during the economic collapse.

Interestingly enough, businesses that were able to survive the crash did so without succumbing to off-shoring practices; rather, they innovated at home to continue to illustrate their strength as a business. In order for manufacturing firms to innovate and withstand some of the issues that arise with an ageing labour force, they will need to invest in proper on-boarding solutions and other technologies that not only encourage a younger workforce to thrive in their business, but also allow them and your business to continue to innovate and become best-in-class leaders in their field.

Click here for more details about how we can help your manufacturing firm become best-in-class leaders.
 

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Budgeting & Planning for Strategic Leadership

National Executive Series: 

Budgeting & Planning for Strategic Leadership

Photo from 02/28/12 - Waterloo Event - Ideaca

Ideaca completed its first stop on the 2012 National Executive Series event tour: Budgeting & Planning for Strategic Leadership, yesterday in Waterloo, Ontario. This series is designed for senior finance leaders to connect and engage in the changing landscape of corporate finance and discuss new strategies for success in an increasingly competitive market. This event was originally sponsored by the Toronto Board of Trade as an offering to its 500+ partners, and has since been transformed into a national tour to accommodate the overwhelming demand for information on this critical topic.

Presenter Brad Blaskavitch said of yesterday's Waterloo event, 

"What a fantastic group of senior finance leaders - It was exciting to help provide them with ideas on budgeting, planning and forecasting as a catalyst for leading strategic change. I'm really looking forward to the next few stops on this tour, and connecting with business leaders from around the country."

Ideaca still has four more upcoming complimentary events and has limited spots open for those who still wish to register. Our next presentations are in Toronto, Edmonton, Vancouver & Calgary. Please visit  http://goo.gl/UX2mD  for more information on the National Executive Series, or to register today. We look forward to seeing you out at an upcoming event near you!

   

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The 2012 Professional Services Maturity™ Benchmark Report

Last week, Service Performance Insight released The 2012 Professional Services Maturity™ Benchmark. SPI puts out this report every year to help Professional Service Organizations compare their yearly results to their "benchmark of peers". There was significant growth in the last year, and the results show that the technology professional service industry is booming!

SPI mentions that some of the year's highlights include:

Revenue growth: the leading indicators for growth — annual revenue growth, headcount increases, size of the deal pipeline and percentage of revenue in backlog — were all up in 2011, almost recovering to the pre-recessions highs seen in 2007. Year-over-year revenue growth (13.7%) has consistently outpaced year-over-year headcount growth (10.1%) which means PSO’s are continuing to ratchet up productivity.

Salaries are up: After three years of layoffs, headcount and salary freezes, base salaries and incentive compensation increased across all major job categories. The average base salary for seven job titles (senior manager, project manager, business consultant, technical consultant, solution architect, account manager and training specialist) rose 4.8% in 2011 on top of an 11% rise the year before.

Productivity continues to improve: The percentage of billable staff compared to total staff has risen every year from 67% in 2007 to 73% in 2011. At the same time average billable utilization across all global geographies and verticals has increased to 70% in 2011 up from 65% in 2008

One of our Partner's Gord Smith, speaks in the article about how Ideaca benefits from using the PS Maturity Benchmark report:

“We have used the PS Maturity Benchmark for many years to measure key aspects of our firm and to gauge the progress we have made. We have made some fundamental changes based on the benchmark to improve our firm’s overall results. I have not been able to find data as comprehensive from any other source.”

Gord Smith
Partner

Have a look at the press release featured on Business Wire and check out

www.spiresearch.com for more details on The 2012 Professional Services Maturity™ Benchmark Report.

 

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