Steve Andriole

I wrote a column last year on CRM (“A Little CRM, Please“) that generated a lot of reaction. It seems that lots of us think about CRM a lot — though usually from the perspective of customers. That column was the beginning of some thinking I’ve done about CRM and what I’ll call the price/value/service […]

In my last column, I talked about the effect politics has on technology decision making, and I got a lot of responses. Seems everyone relates to politics and the impact it has on corporate behavior. This time I’d like to expand the context discussion to include the rest of the variables that influence the technology […]

I teach an Executive MBA class at Villanova University on business technology optimization. The course looks at emerging business models, technologies and technology management best practices, and ways to optimize the interrelationships across all of these areas. Something happened recently in one of my classes that I think deserves some discussion. While wrapping up the […]

I’ve spent most of my career in industry, but I’ve also spent some years in academia. After some time at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), I started a software design and development company which I ran for eight years before spending some time at both George Mason and Drexel Universities — before becoming […]

Let’s challenge vendors to develop simple, cost-effective solutions to vertical industry problems with horizontal technology that’s customized for specific industries. For decades vendors have offered one-size-fits-all infrastructure technology that gets “tuned” by in-house or outside consultants after it’s deployed. Applications vendors have offered specific solutions to several industries for years. Manufacturing, financial services and healthcare […]

One of the steps more and more companies are taking is to conduct “optimization audits.” Great…just what we need: Another audit, another acronym (OA), and another question to answer when someone higher in the organization than you asks about how optimization audits work — and if they’re required by some government agency. They’re not required, […]

Anne Wilms, the CIO of Rohm & Haas, a leading global chemicals company, recently hosted a luncheon on behalf of a not-for-profit organization called NPower. NPower helps other not-for-profit organizations with their technology requirements.Michael Ferreri was also at the meeting. Michael is Microsoft’s Philadelphia boss. I bring all this up here because I got to […]

A couple of months ago, a friend of mine asked me a great question: “If you had perfect information about the trends that will affect business technology most over the next three to five years, what would it look like?” I told him that I needed some time to think about it, to think about […]

Does your company have a chief technology marketing officer (CTMO)? If not, then maybe it’s time to find one. If you’re a small company, then maybe a CTC (a chief technology champion) will do, but if you’re a large company — or (especially) a large public company — then you need to think about who […]

Everyone seems to agree that the form and content of “alignment” has forever changed. But all of the conventional arguments about business and technology “silos,” the commoditization of IT, and new technology leadership skill sets — while legitimate — miss some important points. Let’s look at the evolution of the business technology relationship from “alignment” […]