A Business Technology Place

Media subscriptions – Where do you spend your media dollars?

Posted on by Posted in Ideas, internet marketing, Technology Leave a comment

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal about Bloomberg charging for access to their content reminded me digital content providers are competing for my wallet-share. In 2015 I cut the cord with cable/satellite and haven’t regretted it. Now, the digital content I consume for video is based on month-to-month subscriptions. I choose the content valuable to me or that I consider worth paying for. No obligations. Easy. My current list: PlayStation Vue (Core) – This one has access to live sports Netflix – Original content – No commercials Local High Definition Channels via centralized house antenna – One time cost for antenna Increasingly, news and media providers are also moving to subscription models for their digital content. As the number of subscribers for paper content decreases the media outlets need sources of revenue to sustain themselves. Currently, I don’t pay for online news, data analysis, and opinion articles. I

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Root cause analysis for team building

Posted on by Posted in Business Process Management Leave a comment

Early in my career we used a process that loosely resembled a root cause analysis after a severity 1 production outage. The intent of the process was to determine why the severity outage occurred and then fix the problem so it didn’t happen again. No one liked process and the documents we produced were rarely used to influence process improvement. It was a checkbox and an exercise to fill-in-the-blanks to say we completed it. I always thought the name post-mortem was bit odd as well and we were certainly dead to the process. Looking back, I see post-mortem efforts can be valuable if championed and executed correctly. But there is a better way. Twenty years later, we are learning to implement root cause analysis (RCA) into our recurring operational procedures. Like a post-mortem exercise, a RCA is typically done after an event has occurred with the intended benefit to prevent

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A note to self

Posted on by Posted in Career Leave a comment

Dear me, Don’t be quick to discount new ideas. All improvements for humanity and business started with a new idea. Someone saw opportunity and imagined a better result, a stronger product, or a faster way. Someone acted and made their opportunity a reality. They were not afraid of failure. They overcame doubts. They made peace with uncertainty. Why? Because their image of a better result made failures look like stepping stones to success. Because the promise of a stronger product made doubting look like an admission to defeat. Because the benefits of doing it faster outweighed the results of the status quo. So give new ideas a chance. Challenge the status quo. Dream a little. Keep moving onward and upward! Sincerely, Me

Learning from customer service experiences

Posted on by Posted in Customer Focus Leave a comment

I’m documenting some customer service experiences from the last two weeks. They had an impact on my actions and they serve as a good reminder of reflection for customer service actions that we provide to others. People do notice words, attitudes, and body language. While on vacation at a location where the number one industry is tourism: Trolley Driver My wife and I rode a trolley as a means of public transportation. By chance, we were the only passengers. We used the time to talk to the trolley driver and he provided some valuable information to us. As we were leaving he mentioned that he would like to discuss more with us and to look for him on the return trip. We did find him for the return trip and we were able to ask a few more questions. The result? We felt appreciated as tourists spending time and money

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