A Business Technology Place (Since 2008)
What does the history of man and the advancements of civilizations have to do with business? I recently followed a recommendation to read Jared Diamond’s book Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. The book was the winner of the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for general non-fiction and provides Read More …
Server patching is one of those infrastructure tasks that most business owners and infrastructure managers don’t link to the eCommerce portfolio. Operating system patches, virus scanner updates, database patches, etc. are all system level software not directly related to the code line of the eCommerce team. Infrastructure managers can certainly create a Read More …
I love the idea of social commerce. I’ve worked for years in and around eCommerce operations and expect to continue to do so for the remainder of my working days. eCommerce is an engine that drives revenue for a business while providing a touch point for customers to a brand Read More …
An engineer turned CEO is a story that attracts attention. The recent news that former Google engineer Marissa Mayer is filling the role of CEO at Yahoo! is a great example that traditional career paths in a functional silo are becoming a thing of the past. It should come as Read More …
I don’t like process waste. Who does? But how many of us really try to change processes to eliminate or reduce waste? In my experience this is a tough topic, and I dare say an unwelcome one, most of the time. The problem is that in an organization processes are Read More …
There are two groups of people in your eCommerce organization that are on the front-line of dealing directly with customers each day: the help desk and the call center. Yet when we think about the software development release cycle, it’s easy to focus all of our attention on the planning, Read More …
The work of eCommerce deployments doesn’t end with go-live sign-off. If you work with eCommerce platforms then you know the happiness of after go-live deployments. The actual events of go-live deployments can be an adventure when unplanned events ‘happen’. But the work doesn’t end with the final sign-off and completion Read More …
I recently made a return to Costco for a misbehaving GPS unit. My experience was made easy in large part because of Costco’s friendly return policy. The store clerk didn’t give me a hard time or ask me any detailed questions. I didn’t even need to fill out a form. Read More …
Much of my working life has revolved around eCommerce sites. I’m both a practitioner and a customer and I look for patterns and features of a site that add value and utility to the customer experience. I was thinking about a few of my “lessons learned” over the past several Read More …