Creative Management » Operations Management

EFTPOS scam costs Australians $80m

tschew — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 08:32:08 +0000

Credit cards with magnetic stripes are prone to cloning. Around the world, there is a great push for all credit/debit cards to be issued with EMV chip. The problem posted in this article will be greatly reduced when credit cards are replaced with EMV chip type. This will take time but it will happen. By then, will the criminals be smart enough to hack and copy the EMVchips just like the way they clone the magstripes?

IBM Takes Blame for Massive Bank System Failure

tschew — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 15:07:49 +0000

As in my previous blog entry. Outsourcing has its danger. You basically lose control and sight of your operations. I have seen how the operator works in the data center and I am not convinced that mission critical systems are well taken care of when it is being outsourced. First of all, the quality of the staff operating your systems are beyond your control. They are hiring cheap labors in large quantity to run 3 - 4 shifts in order to fulfill the SLA obligation! And I always believe that what you pay is what you get.

IT Organization is the greatest Security Hazard

tschew — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 03:19:24 +0000

I am a strong believer of weakening the power and authority held by IT department. For IT Operations, I would purposely weaken the amount of authority we have over data and accesses. We should put data ownership to the person that really owns it and not having a third person involved as a custodian. Of cause we can do that, but certainly not to be handed to the IT department. IT Departments provide the tools and means for the owners to work on their data. That's it!

Sustainable business

Vince Chew — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 01:04:35 +0000

We have great strategies from the top to see the business through the next few years. But how are these translated to operations guide and behaviour in the company? You know that a great strategy has gone wrong when Sales and business development folks go all out to cling deals to meet numbers without considering whether the company can cope with the demand. Once they got the deal, the company will go into panic mode when there aren't sufficient resources to achieve the business goals.

How to start implementing ITIL Service Management framework in your organization?

tschew — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 01:38:47 +0000

I have applied ITIL Service Management methodology extensively in my previous and current work capacity. Both organizations face the same pressing problem – staff are continuously firefighting and customer satisfaction is close to ZERO. Customers are so used to IT incompetencies that they either find their own solutions outside or they just live with it. In both organizations, the root cause of continuous firefighting (instead of continual improvement) is rampant unmanaged changes made to the IT infrastructure. Read on to find out the 3 basic rules of ITIL framework implementation and my real life experience in building up the framework from scratch.

Make Mistakes To Grow

tschew — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 01:31:58 +0000

To err is human. People make mistakes right from the day they were born. The numerous attempts to latch on for breastfeeding, getting burnt playing with fire, falling hard from bicycles or getting caught stealing. It is only through mistakes that we learn how to adapt and survive in our environment. To grow and do well in your career and business, you must be willing to challenge yourself, getting out of your comfort zone and start making mistakes.

Sensible Outsourcing

tschew — Thu, 21 May 2009 03:40:13 +0000

First, know what your business is all about? Next, only outsource what you know. Finally, get rid of the idea that outsourcing translate to immediate cost savings. Do your due diligence before making outsourcing your preferred mode of operation. I would recommend that organization first operate the “proposed outsourcing work” internally to get a feel of what needs to be outsourced. A wholesale outsource without proper planning will hurt bottom-line and impacts business performance. Plan as though you will be recruiting full time staff to carry out the tasks. Then where applicable, perform the activities in house and measure the performance.

Don’t be doomed by outsourcing

tschew — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 00:56:32 +0000

Business owners must treat outsourcing as a strategic move and not as an opportunity to offload “no-one-wants-to-do” activities in the organization. Carefully plan your outsourcing needs to avoid future repercussion on your business performance.

Outsourcing is not equivalent to transferring of responsibilities to another party. You, as the business and process owner, owns the entire value chain. Always manage all your outsourcing entities and business as though they are internal resources. This article discusses on the total cost of outsourcing and what it takes to manage a outsourcing relationship effectively.

Increase customer satisfaction with good incident report

tschew — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 10:14:50 +0000

Incident report is an important communication tool to keep all stakeholders aware of disruptions in a production environment. Timely report gives people the confidence that their business is in good hand. After a disruption of service that impacts business operations and performance, a customer would be keen to know if the IT team has taken steps to avoid recurrence. An incident report will provide information that give the customer assurance that their interests are being taken care of.

Respect Deadlines

tschew — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 04:50:50 +0000

The purpose of setting objectives that are tied to dates is to empower, motivate and to measure performance. Date is one of the easiest and achievable metric that we can set for measuring performance.