Tag: China

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News You Can Use: 5/25/2016

sn_conference_Benjamin Child

  • The Future Of HR And Why Startups Shouldn’t Reject It

    A recent Motherboard piece took a look at the impact of no HR on company culture. It found that women are more often than not the most vulnerable employees due to startups’ lack of HR and general anti-harassment procedures. The article states, “Ultimately, these structural issues contribute to one of the greatest systemic problems facing working women today: barriers to advancement, known to many as the glass ceiling.” And over the years some of the biggest tech startups have had accusations of harassment levied at them.

    http://www.fastcompany.com/3059673/the-future-of-hr-and-why-startups-shouldnt-reject-it

  • Go Deep and Go Wide with Procurement Analytics

    Data unification is a two-step process that catalogs all data sources and uses that information about data to build a global reference that shows how all of the data relates to the questions at hand. This resource is typically built through a combination of machine learning and smart sourcing of human experts, and provides three clear benefits: making exponentially more data available for analysis, eliminating the biggest contributor to analysis time overhead – data preparation, and building in repeatability so any analysis that has been done can be rerun at anytime with no repeat of the data preparation.

    http://www.procurementleaders.com/blog/my-blog–guest-blog/go-deep-and-go-wide-with-procurement-analytics-617110

  • A 40 Hour Work Week . . . Really?

    Of course, I’m being a fit facetious here but I don’t think it’s all that far from the truth. Here’s a shocking business statistic: if you or anybody on your team wastes just one hour per day — and please understand that I’m also guilty of this — it equates to six weeks of wasted time per year! Isn’t that incredible? That’s a lot of vacation time. My advice: just work hard when you are at work. Of course, we all need some down time to handle personal matters but do so sparingly because you can’t get those hours back.

    https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/272480

  • Call me crazy (regarding conference calls)

    A conference call is over when someone uses one of the many conversational gaps, false starts, or “No, you go” truces to suggest that perhaps for clarity we should put our ideas in writing. As if to say, “Yeah, I guess flip-flops weren’t a good choice for this 5K run.” Acknowledging that we’ve engaged in the discourse equivalent of a toddler’s squiggle drawing. Hinting that next time we play Marco Polo we could try a swimming pool instead of the Indian Ocean.

    http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/05/16/hang-up-the-conference-call

  • Want to Improve Your Decision-Making? Shut up for 10 days.

    Insight meditation, also known as vipassana, is a method handed down by Gautama Buddha himself to his followers. Insight meditation focuses on maintaining a moment-by-moment awareness of our thoughts, feelings and bodily sensations, without judgment. Students first take a vow of silence. They then enter into a daily routine of sitting for as many as 11 hours per day, renouncing all other religious or ritualistic practices, eating only vegetarian fare and not speaking except during a short Q&A session with the teacher.

    https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/275536

  • How AI And Crowdsourcing Are Remaking The Legal Profession

    “If you were to download everything in the PACER system, it would cost you hundreds of millions, if not more,” says Lewis of Ravel Law, which has found an alternative by partnering with Harvard Law School to digitize its archive. “They’ve made an effort to collect every … court decision from every state and federal court over the last 200 years,” Lewis says. Ravel collects new information in real time. “The courts themselves are doing a much better job of pushing out today’s law,” he adds. Ravel has published the complete case law for California and New York. It aims to offer all U.S. federal and state law online by mid 2017, for free.

    http://www.fastcompany.com/3059725/how-ai-and-crowdsourcing-are-remaking-the-legal-profession

  • The Chinese Millennials

    We have heard the stories of changing and increasing wages. The migrant workforce in China’s eastern coastal cities is also changing. Today, young people coming to the factory towns from rural China are less open to the long working hours, constant overtime and poor working conditions. Today’s Chinese Millennials stand apart from their parents and grandparents. They have many new economic opportunities, they are focused on the present, they are interested in more work/life balance, and they have become conspicuous consumers.

    http://www.scmr.com/article/the_chinese_millennials

Photo: Benjamin Child

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News You Can Use: 11/4/2015

sn_terminal_Jordan Sanchez

  • Millennials: Death to the Cubicle!
    Open floor plans are not the answer, having worked in open spaces and cube farms – neither are good.  It is about the culture of the work place.  If the company has their people on the phone all day, you need enclosed places.  If you are developers that need to collaborate (and spent large portions of the day in quiet), open floor plans work nicely.  

    Millennials have grown up understanding that work is an activity, not something that happens in any predetermined time or space. Accordingly, they insist on having the freedom to choose where and when they work, and they want to be measured on performance — not face time or office politics. So how does that change the way our workplaces and workflows are designed?

    http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/252164

  • Federal IT outsourcing spend alarmingly poorly managed

    The GAO analyzed agency policies, procurement and contracting data, and interviewed agency and contractor officials. While leading companies strategically manage about 90 percent of the IT procurement spending, these government agencies strategically managed just a fraction of that. The U.S. Navy, for example, which spent $3.3 billion on IT services in 2013, awarded just 10 percent of that work via strategically managed outsourcing contracts, according to the GAO. The U.S. Air Force strategically managed 17 percent of its $1.4 million IT services spend, the U.S. Army did so with 27 percent of its $3.5 billion spend, and NASA did so with 35 percent of its smaller $855 million IT outsourcing investment. DHS was the best performer, sourcing 44 percent of its $2.2 billion IT procurement budget in strategic deals.

    http://www.cio.com/article/2999467/outsourcing/federal-it-outsourcing-spend-alarmingly-poorly-managed.html

  • 11 Tweaks to Your Daily Routine Will Make Your Day More Productive
    Listicles… there are some solid points in this post once you get around the trash:

    “Eating a frog” is the greatest antidote to procrastination, and the most productive people know the importance of biting into this delicacy first thing in the morning. In other words, spend your morning on something that requires a high level of concentration that you don’t want to do, and you’ll get it done in short order. Make a habit of eating three frogs before you check your e-mail because e-mail is a major distraction that enables procrastination and wastes precious mental energy.

    http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/251989

  • Software vendors – fear and loathing

    Why? Because the most successful software firms are masters at high-pressure, bullying sales tactics. Take Oracle. The company specializes in trying to convince potential new customers that its license terms and model are harmless and easy to use.

    Once the customer licenses the product, however, Oracle takes a new tack. The company launches software audits and then argues that there are license restrictions it did not talk about during the sales process but that the customer has now breached.

    How do Oracle and other vendors get away with these tactics? Path dependency. Software vendors know that once a large company has implemented an enterprise-wide or otherwise significant software tool it is hard to switch.

    http://www.cio.com/article/2997879/enterprise-software/software-vendors-fear-and-loathing.html#tk.rss_all

  • The Six Strategic Sourcing Samurai

    So who are these six strategic sourcing samurai? They are the six remaining companies that took the time and effort to not only research and build a solution, but take it to market and wait while the market caught up with the vision that a few pioneers had fifteen years ago — a vision of true best-cost global sourcing from a total cost of ownership (and, more recently, from a total value management) perspective.

    http://sourcinginnovation.com/wordpress/2015/10/30/the-six-strategic-sourcing-samurai/

  • 39% of L.A. millennials ‘chronically stressed’ about money, survey finds

    A new survey by Bank of America and USA Today found that L.A. millennials ages 18 to 34 say they have a clear understanding of their financial situation and 44% are prepared for a rainy day, with three months of living expenses saved up.

    But 75% say they worry about their finances “often” or at least “sometimes,” with 39% saying they are “chronically stressed” about money.

    http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-millennials-money-20151022-htmlstory.html

  • Are US tech giants harming national security by partnering with China’s firms?

    A report made public this week from a security firm with longstanding ties to the Defense Department, the Defense Group Inc., said IBM’s partnerships in China, which are part of a global initiative that the company calls Open Power, are already damaging US national security. “IBM is endangering the national and economic security of the United States, risking the cybersecurity of their customers globally, and undermining decades of US nonproliferation policies regarding high-performance ..

    http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/defence/are-us-tech-giants-harming-national-security-by-partnering-with-chinas-firms/articleshow/49606797.cms

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News You Can Use: 10/21/2015

sn_feather_CreativeVix

  • A FORMER GOOGLE RECRUITER REVEALS THE BIGGEST RESUME MISTAKES
    I will point out this one since I get into a disagreement almost every time I mention removing it…

    OBJECTIVE STATEMENTS ARE OBJECTIVELY BAD
    “These are a bit old school and are generally pretty generic,” Bacon explains. He believes they’re also typically too focused on what the candidate wants for themselves instead of what they can do for the company to which they’re applying.

    http://www.fastcompany.com/3052371/hit-the-ground-running/a-former-google-recruiter-reveals-the-biggest-resume-mistakes

  • Should Vendor Executives Be Held Personally Liable For Failed Implementations?

    What if company executives had to personally guarantee that they had performed a “capability audit” before entering into a contract, verifying that they could indeed deliver a working solution within the appointed time and for the agreed upon cost. This capability audit would then become the basis to hold not only the company, but the executives themselves, personally liable if said implementation did not occur has promised.

    https://procureinsights.wordpress.com/2015/10/13/should-vendor-executives-be-held-personally-liable-for-failed-implementations-by-jon-hansen/

  • China to consume nearly 30% of the world’s flash, 21% of DRAM

    “Increasing shipments of Chinese-branded PCs and smartphones in recent years have contributed to the overall DRAM demand,” said Avril Wu, assistant vice president at DRAMeXchange. “China’s top PC maker Lenovo and the global PC market leader HP are neck on neck on shipments, and this is an indication that the Chinese brand vendors’ purchasing power in the DRAM market is getting stronger every year.”

    http://www.cio.com/article/2994112/data-management/china-to-consume-nearly-30-of-the-worlds-flash-21-of-dram.html#tk.rss_all

  • Why You Might Want to Hold Your Next Business Meeting on a Boat
    Somebody needs to share this with the big boss… officially a trend setter.

    “It’s a perfect place to close a deal,” says Adrian Gradinaru, co-founder of Sailo, an online peer-to-peer boat rental marketplace where you can compare and book a boat for a day or even part of a day. “You tend to be a bit more open to things when you are really happy, so people tend to be happy on the water, looking at New York. You tend to be a little bit more cooperative when you are on the water.”

    http://www.entrepreneur.com/video/249693

  • 3 Tips to Develop a Balanced Supplier-Vendor Relationship

    While there is always room for caution, never approach a new partnership as if you are going to be cheated. Instead, remember that a bit of humility and humanity can go a long way. Even when negotiations do not go as well as expected, remaining positive can preserve partnerships for long-term success.

    http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/251578

  • Office “treehouses”…
    I am not big on the “resting places in the office” fad, be it a cocoon or a tree house or even a heavily pillowed area.  I don’t care how “cool” the work place environment is, if an owner or executive walks by and sees someone taking a powder… game over.  (But they are kinda cool)
    http://www.fastcoexist.com/3051747/open-office-getting-you-down-maybe-you-need-an-office-treehouse
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News You Can Use: 9/2/2015

sn_balloons_DanielaCuevas

  • The real reason why women are cold in the workplace

    Heating and cooling systems are based on a complex metric encompassing subjective feelings of comfort and an averaged metabolic rate—that of a 40 year-old man weighing 154 lbs. “When you turn it over to operations, that’s when it all goes downhill,” Brookshire explains.

    http://www.newsworks.org/index.php/thepulse/item/85293-the-real-reason-why-women-are-cold-in-the-workplace

  • China’s factory activity hit a 77-month low

    The “flash” measure of sentiment among manufacturing purchasing managers fell to 47.1 in August, the worst figure in 77 months and a decline from the index’s final reading of 47.8 in July, according to Caixin Insight and Markit Economics. Any number below 50 indicates a deceleration in the manufacturing sector.

    http://money.cnn.com/2015/08/20/news/economy/china-factories-growth-pmi/index.html?section=money_topstories

  • Common knowledge about procurement protests more myth than fact

    http://federalnewsradio.com/acquisition-policy/2015/08/common-knowledge-procurement-protests-myth-fact/

  • Why Tech Companies Share Costs

    Choosing internal shared services over outsourcing can improve risk management, performance management and collaboration―which can often be lost in a sourcing arrangement. Technology companies may be hesitant to migrate fragmented processes―which rely heavily on the skill and experience of the current staff to operate smoothly―to an SSC, but it may be worthwhile in the long run to cut that dependency. Outside of the substantial upfront costs involved with establishing an outsourced or offshore service center, recent concerns show that labor costs are rising in emerging economies such as India, China and the Philippines―which may result in the erosion of offshore benefits. Despite the appeal of a quick-fix, outsourcing should be considered a shift of service, not a solution. Consider resolving the issue internally before involving a third party. You may even find that automation improvements play a large role in partially or fully eliminating the drivers for outsourcing.

    https://www.chase.com/commercial-bank/executive-connect/why-tech-companies-share-costs

  • 84 Percent of Procurement Executives Unsatisfied with Insight from Company Data

    A majority of procurement officers (53 percent) named spend visibility as the data metric proven most effective in supporting their operations. However, 69 percent of procurement executives reported that they believe metrics used to evaluate their function drive the wrong behavior within their organizations.

    http://www.sdcexec.com/news/12108262/84-percent-of-procurement-executives-unsatisfied-with-insight-from-company-data

  • Think you’re agile? You’re probably wrong

    But while the study shows that businesses have a healthy respect for agility, their capacity for it is another story. Fifty-two percent of global respondents (and an equal percentage of U.S. respondents) say their business does not have an IT infrastructure capable of meeting competitive threats. In addition, 49 percent of respondents say they either cannot or do not know if they can shift workloads between public, private and hybrid clouds, or migrate on-premises applications to the cloud. Only 50 percent of respondents say they can develop, test and deploy new business applications for use on mobile devices within six months, with the percentage falling to just 30 percent that can do the same in a one-month timeframe.

    http://www.cio.com/article/2976980/agile-development/think-youre-agile-youre-probably-wrong.html#tk.rss_all

  • 3 Ways to Combat Stale Ideas

    This time, I knew I needed someone different. I hired the best coach I know who specializes in “Intuitive Action.” Of course I’m partial to the field of coaching, but in this case I knew I needed it more. While sometimes it makes sense to consult with friends, colleagues, mentors and others, working with a coach is different. Coaches are impartial and are there to challenge you and push you out of your comfort zone. There’s not a better place to find new ideas than in the unknown.

    http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/249929

Photo: Daniela Cuevas