eCommerce

Social media is nearly ubiquitous in every market. So far social media ventures have done extremely well commercially, if not in real money, well then, at least in some discounted financial value accounting methodology. This year the whole game, so to speak, goes up a degree with Facebook more than likely to go public with its IPO in late May according to latest reports. Forecasting what it...

NBN’s price model combines two different views of telecommunications market pricing: how the markets actually operate and; what the policy designers of NBN perceive it to be. Without complete agreement to resolve the price model, there are many problems being stored for the future. Inevitably these will affect NBN adoption, profitability and also the layout of the telco landscape. In addition they present challenges to organisations and entrepreneurs with plans to utilise the NBN. The current NBN price model also appears to stop the industry trend of falling prices for telecommunications services.

While it appears that every known test to evaluate cloud computing has been done, there are two which determine the accuracy of any savings claimed. Indeed, they could be applied to any evaluation of IT savings and not the cloud alone. To a large degree the tests discussed here challenge some processes of cost assessment, but IT executives ought to look for better ideas and arguments. It should be possible to ask questions of consultants and vendors in order to obtain better answers.

Web delivered applications, along with specific Web 2.0 tools, have created new, and possibly higher expectations of online interaction from users. As government, at all levels except local, continues to examine ways to deploy these tools and raise its interactive capabilities, it will have to develop customer-centric techniques and possibly behaviour too, or else stumble in the attempt. In evolving customised government channels the planning process will need greater attention than has hitherto been given to government channels and website content management. In addition, considerations of technology deployment will require a deeper level of strategic priorities and future proofing.

Despite better and more available government services online there are considerable gaps in service quality. These gaps, or dissatisfaction, with services are based primarily in users’ ability to deal with accessibility, navigation and understanding of government services and information.

Expanding Web 2.0 tools in government consolidates the current experimentation into a new range and reach of technology from established practices. Adoption of 2.0 tools may create new responsibilities and pressures for government agencies and consequently managers will have to review specific strategies and prioritise the deployment of 2.0 tools.

John Maynard Keynes is back in business. A version of his theories helped save the world’s economy last year. The English economist’s robust statement is the headline above, and it’s getting a lot of wear right now. It serves as a reminder of how being flexible is the basis of making the right decision.

Government does not only want to supply information and transactional services, it wants engagement from within and outside its ranks. But that ambition may be already too late.

Conclusion: More organisations are establishing explicit rules governing the use of social media. Any guidelines or functional principles for social media use should be comprehensive and practical. Most importantly, the rules should be drafted for the specific organisation, not taken from a generic template as they will lack specific and pragmatically understood rules within the particular organi...

The number of documents (reports, email, TXTs, other written material) managers read every day amounts to a huge amount of textual information. All of us are now 2.0-conditioned and are more used to absorbing sound or word-bites and less sympathetic to struggling through long documents. So you can be certain that, no matter how important the substance of your reports, your audience will not read them with as much care and attention to detail as you spent writing them.