
Recorded June 2, 2016 A conversation about the VirtusaPolaris InsightLive software development tool between TAC founder and chairman Alan Guibord, and VirtusaPolaris executive VP of…

Recorded July 24, 2015 A conversation about Demand Management between TAC president Peter Schay and TAC expert Patrick Savard, who consults with Fortune 500 businesses…

We still have only twenty-four hours in a day, seven days in a week, and to-do lists that continue to grow. Large companies get around many time limitations by buying more time in the form of employee man-hours, but not all of us can afford to do this.

Which should you consult for advice, an analyst or an expert practitioner? It depends on the information you are looking to get.

Traditional advisory services companies are not really advisory companies; they are research companies. They don’t give actionable advice, they provide “forward-looking information” based on research and the past performance of clients and other companies. In other words, they are in the “past and future” business.

Instead of a PowerPoint presentation, I offer a highly personalized discussion on their issues, their problems, and how we help clients. We talk to each other using their “real-world what-if’s” instead of me talking at them about how great my company is (and we really are great – call and find out).

While the Federal Government seems to want to act out the final scene from “Thelma and Louise” with our economy, we can’t wait for someone to hit the brakes. Regardless of what the government does (or does not do) in the next few days to avert the fiscal cliff, we do know that taxes will go up on those making at least $400,000, including small businesses.

Windows 8 really doesn’t bring anything new to the table of advantage to the enterprise. From a productivity standpoint, why introduce change and a learning curve, steep or otherwise, that returns no net return on productivity? The new Metro “Apps” have no useful place in the enterprise and were designed primarily for the consumer market, and for administrators, locking down these apps looks daunting.

Ideas are the result of the exposure to a certain piece or pieces of key information in an environment conducive to solving a perceived or subliminal problem at a critical moment in the thought process. In other words, ideas happen in much the same way babies “happen”; it’s a matter of being in the right place at the right time doing the right things to produce them.

Social media sites have flourished and withered on a regular basis (witness Myspace, for which News Corporation paid $580 million in 2005, and then sold in 2011 for $35 million). The younger crowd gets bored easily and have a herd mentality. They will follow the crowd to the next hot thing. You can already see this by the Facebook demographics. The average age of members is getting older by the day. The advertisers see this as well, and it’s only a matter of time before they move on as well.