Premium parttime CIO services by Innovationvista? Recent incidents should serve as sufficient motivation: Yahoo – 3.5 billion account details were hacked in two different breaches. Every single account on a system serving nearly half of the world’s population in 2013-14 (not fully disclosed until 2017). Sony Motion Pictures – hacked by a group working with North Korea and used sensitive stolen data to force Sony to cancel the release of a movie about Kim Jong Un in 2014. Anthem Health – 80 million customers’ identity and health insurance records were breached in 2015. Equifax – 146 million customers’ detailed credit records and social security numbers were breached in 2017.
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An advice every CEO should know about cybersecurity: Achieving information security compliance with one or more government regulatory standards for information security (i.e. ISO 27001, NIST 800-171, HIPAA, NYDFS, etc.) is good, but not sufficient to ensure real cybersecurity. Historically, cybersecurity has been an area that is housed solely in the technology department of a company, whether that consists of one or twenty employees. But more and more executives are understanding the importance of being not only knowledgeable but also involved in the conversations and decision-making process when it comes to protecting their data.
Over 90% of companies with dedicated sales teams have licensed a CRM system, and yet far fewer of these companies believe their CRMs are strategic in their impact to the top and bottom lines. Quora got double-digits responses to the question “Why do salespeople hate CRM?” “Why do salespeople love CRM?” had not been posted as a question as of the time of this writing. Why is it so challenging to get sales teams to use CRM systems? Contrary to some other commentators on this topic, I don’t believe the problem of low CRM adoption is due mainly to the systems being overly complex, or salespeople having limited grasp of software generally. Don’t get me wrong; some CRMs are no doubt too complex, designed by techies without sufficient input from real sales teams, etc. There are over 300 different CRM systems in the market today, and no doubt some are poorly designed.
The challenge today is that the pace of change is accelerating at an exponential rate, so we’re dealing with more changes coming faster at us than ever before. It’s one thing to acknowledge that and to accept the challenge of dealing with these changes in both our personal and professional lives – it’s quite another to realize the stark truth that this shocking pace of change is the slowest any of us will see for the rest of our lives. It’s strange to realize we will one day look back and see 2020 as a year in which the world dealt with relatively few changes. Considering COVID and technological change, political and social winds, medical and scientific innovation, it hardly seems possible; and yet, that is a truth embedded in the exponential change acceleration we’re experiencing. It calls for a complete revolution in how we think about change itself. Read extra info at pace of change.
The experts at Innovation Vista have brought our expertise together to collaborate on a unique approach to technology that we call Innovating Beyond Efficiency. Traditional IT strategies yield many efficiencies for organizations which invest time and effort into them. Processes are automated, systems are implemented to gather key organization data, and reports are standardized to analyze and communicate that data. These are valuable gains for an organization, and many of these capabilities have risen to the level of requirements for operating in the 21st century. Efficiency is nice.
C-suite policy makers, does your sales team feel overwhelming near-term quota pressure? The right approach to training – whatever that means in your organization – is worthless if your sales staff are unable to mentally engage due to short-term pressures. Mandatory webinar training delivers ZERO benefits if your sales staff are all checking email and following up with customers on their 2nd screen during the session. I’m a big believer in face-to-face training, (possibly even 1-on-1 uber-tailored training depending on the economics), but even those approaches can fail if their focus is so set on this month or quarter that they can’t spend mental energy envisioning a better way to operate long-term.
When it comes to execution, team bandwidth will be more of a limitation. Given the economics behind the project(s) which “make the cut”, it will make sense to get them done as soon as possible. Consulting resources are the most common solution, either in staff augmentation or full outsourcing. If you can spare the leadership to oversee it, staff augmentation is a good model which also enables you to allocate as many in-house resources as possible to the project, for continuity of the vision and after its launch. Staff augmentation can be used not just for key project skill-sets, but also to back-fill temporarily for employees allocated to the project. If you really need a turn-key execution by a team already formed, there are many firms offering outsourced project services (pro tip: find a way to involve staff members as much as possible along the project timeline, and not just for a handoff at the end.) Explore a few more info at https://innovationvista.com/innovation/business-impact-true-north-innovation/.