Business Insight Home Page

Auditors count on Lotus software

2010-07-26T17:16:48

“[Lotus Sametime] means senior auditors can interact with junior auditors over our network and meet auditing requirements, yet be geographically independent, with the cost benefits that come with that.” Ross Schamburg, Queensland Audit Office CIO

Baycorp slices and dices at speed

2010-07-26T17:30:27

"Our business is driven by data - we have huge volumes through the information we collect as part of our day to day activities - and analysing and using it to influence strategies is a key part of what we do." - Alex Cruden, Baycorp IT&T manager

Cognos software delivers concrete-maker solid data

2010-07-26T17:35:55

Firth is using IBM’s Cognos business intelligence software to keep tabs on the concrete-maker’s financial performance and fleet of concrete delivery trucks.

Wendys serves up faster sales figures

2010-07-26T18:10:03

'It was a very powerful demonstration. We had all of our management team in... and straight away they saw the potential of this tool.' James Irvine, Wendy’s financial controller

Salvation Army hits new Notes

2010-05-12T19:29:09

"We've never looked back - now I don't understand why everyone doesn't have Lotus Notes.", Mark Bennett, Salvation Army information systems group manager

CPIT does its ICT homework

2009-12-17T15:28:51

“This isn’t in any way about ICT leading the business into ICT solutions. This is about understanding and getting people to think about what the business needs and us enabling it.” - Mark Marshall, Director, ICT Division , CPIT

WHK does sums on IT merger

2009-09-09T17:06:36

An IBM-developed IT integration strategy for national accounting group WHK is delivering enormous cost savings.

More for less at Noel Leeming

2010-01-12T10:37:44

"It was a very, very successful rollout — we never really faltered." Noel Leeming Group CFO Mark Conelly

Zero One ups managed services ante

2010-03-17T08:23:26

“To do what we do we really need a quality of infrastructure that is best-of-breed … high-speed, high-performance systems.” Zero One general manager Suraj Keshvara

Queenstown council seeks clearer view

2009-12-17T15:48:49

Queenstown Lakes District Council uses IBM's Component Business Model to map relationships internally and between its various agencies to improve information flow.

Jericho prospers as recession bites

2010-03-15T13:13:10

When Jericho faced spectacular growth, it needed to rebuild its computing model. The result is equally spectacular.

A new lease for Aotea College

2010-07-26T17:51:57

“We need a reliable solution. We have a tight budget but the pedigree of the equipment is important — we do not want cheap-and-nasty.” - Rob Brown, IT manager, Aotea College

Kelston Boys powers up

2010-07-26T17:52:25

“Our IT solution is critical as most services used by teachers and students are now delivered via the network and run on the server infrastructure.” - David Leckey, IT manager, Kelston Boys’ High School

Easy access at Rangi Ruru Girls’ School

2010-07-27T10:25:59

“In the good old days the challenge for schools was getting enough server processor power but now the issue is how much reliable, high-end storage you can provide.” - Barry Baughan, IT services manager, Rangi Ruru Girls’ School

Retailer cashes in on IT leasing

2010-08-20T14:13:21

Fast-growing Queensland-based Super Cheap Auto Group has used a combination of IT leasing and close management of its IBM-supplied infrastructure to maximise return on investment and system uptime.

Chemical company creates stronger global business ties with IBM servers and storage

2010-08-20T14:12:38

Koppers Australia needed a reliable hardware platform for its new ERP system, which would enable the company to centralise its Asia-Pacific operations and report to its United States parent company. It also wanted to lower its operational and IT management overheads and minimise downtime.

Innovation Index of New Zealand

2010-03-18T09:38:49

New research reveals that the rate of innovation in New Zealand has been stagnant for almost a decade - which has to be a worry for a nation seeking a step-change improvement in economic growth.

Synchronising the Business for Competitive Advantage

2010-02-25T11:38:02

In turbulent economic climate, companies are coming to the realisation that integrated systems are the key to creating competitive advantage through flexibility, agility, adaptability and access to real-time information for effective decision making.

Converting 'Noise' into Knowledge

2009-05-28T15:35:19

The Collaborative CxO: Today, organisations spend a significant proportion of their IT budgets on storing, governing and securing their corporate data. In all these efforts, it is often forgotten to capture and leverage the business value of their corporate intellectual property. Enhancing the value of information by turning it from just 'noise' into knowledge, however, is the crux for the creation of strategic advantage.

NZ – The Land of the Long White Cloud?

2009-08-03T14:00:00

CIO's and Executives alike, agree that today's business operations are heavily dependant on technology. Supposedly "simple" business requests such as up-scaling IT production, changes in business processes to meet customer demands or to achieve productivity gains, and the integration of new/existing services, often reach the boundaries of organisations' IT abilities.

Cloud computing reduces costs

2009-12-17T13:05:07

An emerging computer model—cloud computing—has evolved to address the explosive growth of Internet-connected devices, and to complement the increasing presence of technology in today’s world.

What are the government's plans for the environment

2009-12-17T13:18:41

The ETS is being renegotiated, the biofuels obligation has been repealed, old-style light bulbs are back … the National-led government has undone a fair bit of environmental legislation in its first few months in charge. We asked Hon Dr Nick Smith, Minister for the Environment, what he plans to replace it with. By Nick Smith

Blah, blah, blah

2009-12-17T14:02:16

Traditional marketing is all talk and no trousers. Your customers don’t care what you say, they want to know what you do. By James Hurman

Creative serfs

2009-12-18T16:48:16

Ideas are free—and ideas people can be bloody cheap too. Gena Tuffery looks behind the corporate façade and meets the creative interns getting by on company handouts and whatever’s left in the fridge.

MayDE in China

2009-12-18T16:55:48

Although its name suggests serenity, there’s nothing calm about St Lukes Shopping Centre in Auckland. That concrete retail rotunda heaving with people lugging kids, groceries and chain-store bags jammed with stuff? Yeah, that’s the one.

Poor Fortune

2009-12-18T16:56:23

It takes a Kiwi to think of something this nutty. Take left-over meat from New Zealand abattoirs, mix it with unwanted kiwifruit pulp, dry the result, package it into a sachet, and then sell it as super-food to the world’s poor and starving. Oh, and as a sideline, flog the sachets at a premium to Californian body builders.

The rise of the smartocracy

2009-12-18T17:03:10

Of all the differences between people, one factor has a greater bearing on income than any other: intelligence. And IQ scores show that each generation is getting smarter. Jamie Cullinane examines the rise of the smartocracy

Not for kids

2009-12-18T17:01:35

Who would have thought that infrastructure was the most interesting part of the Internet? Welcome to cloud computing, where big pipes and big iron create a second—no, third—generation of Internet entrepreneurs.Matt Cooney asks: could New Zealand become the land of the long net cloud?

Goodnight nurse

2009-12-18T17:05:24

If the idea of R2D2 changing your bedpan isn’t appealing, you can be sure it’s one job that nurses won’t miss. It’s just one of the tasks that a robo-nurse is being designed to do in a collaboration between the University of Auckland and local artificial intelligence experts at Robot-Hosting.

Forecast: Cloudy

2009-12-18T17:17:48

Who would have thought that infrastructure was the most interesting part of the Internet? Welcome to cloud computing, where big pipes and big iron create a second—no, third—generation of Internet entrepreneurs. Matt Cooney asks: could New Zealand become the land of the long net cloud?

Why the wheels fell off

2009-12-18T17:17:46

Mountain Buggy looked like a model company for New Zealand’s design-led future, yet in January it reported debts of $22 million and the receiver was called in. What happened to one of our brightest export prospects? Mike Booker discovers why the wheels fell off.

The Unlocker

2009-12-18T17:25:16

Cory Doctorow makes a living from his words, though he happily gives them away for free. The founder of the über-influential BoingBoing blog and author of sci-fi books like Eastern Standard Tribe and Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town, he’s at the forefront of the cyber-revolution and a merciless critic of the megacorporations that seek to control creative content.

We have the technology

2009-12-18T17:25:14

… but tech is only part of the problem. As hybrids, electric vehicles and hydrogen-powered cars arrive in showrooms, the biggest barriers to adoption are infrastructure and politics—and both can be solved with some judicious marketing. Idealog meets a New Zealander who is helping US President Barack Obama with his alternative fuels plans, and another laying the groundwork for our fossil-friendly future. The catch: one is pushing plug-in electric, the other hydrogen. Is there room for both?

Attract great staff (and keep them)

2009-12-18T17:30:06

For employees, every extra skill they can master makes them more employable. For the employer, though, it can be a challenge to get training and development right.

A shot in the dark (or light)

2009-12-18T17:30:09

James Madelin left investment banking to become a photographer—and found that he’s an inventor, too

Who you callin' green?

2009-12-18T17:39:24

Like it or not, the landfill economy is coming to an end—and New Zealand needs to get real. Gena Tuffery uncovers the Kiwis who are doing us all a favour and living up to our undeserved reputation. Just don’t use that ‘G’ word

Get networked

2009-12-18T17:39:17

Facebook, Bebo, LinkedIn … what’s the big deal? If markets are conversations, social networks are the biggest markets around. Here’s how (and why) to get involved, without getting in the way

The power of Babel

2009-12-18T17:50:58

Want a short cut to innovation? Employ the United Nations. Or at least fill your office with people of diverse ethnicities, genders, disciplines and histories, and let them muddle their way to the bank. That’s the advice from Swedish-Cherokee-African, Harvard-educated, entrepreneur Frans Johansson. He’s also author of The Medici Effect, a best-selling business book about the power of organised diversity. Johansson dropped by Idealog HQ (well, the lobby of the Sheraton) to explain how by emulating the Medici family’s ability to combine diverse influences—from Dutch artists to Indian mathematicians—companies can spark their own private Renaissance

The Pokomen

2009-12-18T17:44:54

If you can draw your idea, Wellington startup Ponoko can probably make it—and find buyers for it too. Peter Griffin meets the New Zealanders at the forefront of the handmade revolution

Profiling Picasso

2009-12-18T17:53:12

Throw away your de Bono, ignore your critics and embrace your appalling personality. Sometimes it pays to be crazy—just look at Picasso. That’s the advice from Dr Margaret Boden OBE, author of The Creative Mind: Myths and Mechanisms and lecturer at Sussex University on the process of creativity. Lauren Bartlett seeks the science behind Boden’s ideas

Little Kiwi battler

2009-12-18T17:54:55

North & South magazine once facetiously asked if Kevin Roberts was God. Others just thought he talked too much, and plenty regard his Lovemarks books as too eeerk for words. But after 850,000 book sales and 11 years in As Saatchi & Saatchi global CEO, Roberts is still winning business, singing the praises of New Zealand, and seeing love and rugby everywhere. Vincent Heeringa talks to the world’s most irrepressible optimist, starting with why he’s right and Vincent is 850,000 times wrong

Dancing with elephants

2009-12-18T17:58:30

You've got a hot new idea for a product or service that will slot neatly into an existing infrastructure. You can create it quickly and build on someone else’s audience. But are you living on borrowed time? Will your carefully developed and devised offering survive, if it piggybacks on someone else’s service and is at the mercy of business decisions that you have no influence over?

Become design-led

2009-12-18T18:00:56

Apple, Icebreaker, Fisher & Paykel, Dyson, Formway … it’s design that lifts these companies — and their profits — above the ordinary. But how do you encourage your company to become design-led? A survey of the best-designed companies finds four key qualities that they have in common

A word in your ear

2009-12-18T18:04:48

Eight years ago nothing much was happening in mobile gadgets: the cutting edge was a ringtone with a tune. But there were those who could see past the unprepossessing mobile landscape.

Show us the money

2009-12-18T18:04:43

New Zealand venture capital desperately needs a hit - an investment that pays back, big time. Without it, our venture capitalists struggle to fund creative Kiwi companies. Mike Booker discovers why we're sadly used to hearing 'no'.

Cleaning up a storm

2009-12-21T08:52:50

If you saw students hoofing wheelie bins of water from a roof, you'd probably write it off as another hilarious jape by the underemployed. But back in 1996 when Greg Yeoman, Mike Hannah, Brendan Poole and their co-conspirators were tipping bins, they weren't targeting unsuspecting passersby. They were busy testing the EnviroPod, a storm-water drain filter they had invented.

The secret of our success

2009-12-21T08:55:09

Think you're talented? Creative? Dare we say it: outstanding? Good for you - but if Malcolm Gladwell is right, that'll only get you so far. In his latest book, Outliers, Gladwell turns his focus on the very nature of success itself, making some intriguing connections between The Beatles and Bill Gates, Canadian pro hockey players and Asian rice farmers. He's looked at the traits of successful people and found what they have in common: hard work and happy circumstance. So how do the merely talented get ahead?

How to … tune up your ideas

2009-12-21T08:55:14

Even companies with great ideas usually don't know how to analyse them. Bill Wilmot makes sure ideas get scrutinised - ruthlessly. Here's how he helps kill bad ideas and give great ideas a tune-up

Looking over the horizon

2009-12-21T08:59:34

Today's 'eco-friendly' designs just delay the inevitable. It's time to plan ahead...

The Black Room

2009-12-21T09:04:50

Some companies have a secret place, hidden from day-to-day business, where adventurous staff plan a radical makeover.

Carbon farming

2009-12-21T09:06:42

Air miles? Bah. Branka Simunovich’s olives are carbon-positive, thank you, and she has the papers to prove it. Andy Kenworthy visits a very ambitious eco-venture

Clean billions

2009-12-21T09:10:26

The shift to a low-emission, low-carbon world is introducing high-value business opportunities.

Real leaders

2009-12-21T09:32:57

Want to be a good boss? Consider stroppy chef Gordon Ramsay your role model.

Business at the speed of slow

2009-12-21T09:32:53

Londoners refuse to be rushed by an upstart from the colonies, but you can do business at British pace.

Sweet science

2009-12-21T09:31:22

Our kiwifruit industry was built by combining the Chinese gooseberry with Kiwi know-how. Now a New Zealand company is returning the favour, working with Chinese growers to raise the plants needed for its natural, healthy sweetener. But they need to step carefully, reports Bette Flagler—Big Sugar is watching

Profit motif

2009-12-21T09:43:56

Quick test. Who said this: “I think it's wrong to ask people to lose money.” Warren Buffett? Donald Trump? Bob Jones? Try Bill Clinton. The former US president spoke those words during a press conference in May for his own charitable organisation, the Clinton Foundation.

First do no harm

2009-12-18T17:39:46

Holding the balance of life and death in your hands isn’t a game—except when it is. New Zealand-based GoVirtualMedical has finally replaced the medieval med-student practice of practicing on a prone body with a professional multimedia version of the battery-powered board game, Operation.

This Way to Happy

2009-12-18T17:33:14

Money can’t buy us love. The Beatles knew it, but it took a recession to remind the rest of us: what really makes us happy has little to do with money. Even better, what makes us happy is good for the whole country. Good explores the new economics of happiness and discovers that changing the way we think about wealth and success can have a profound impact on our lives

Green initiatives in uncertain times.

2009-12-18T17:27:13

How to extend your data centre lifespan and reduce energy use.

Virtualization Server

2009-12-18T17:22:21

I’ve got some good news and some bad news about your computer. The good news is that a new idea called “virtualisation” can reduce the number of computers you need to buy and operate, which will reduce the complexity of your organisation and trim your electricity consumption.

A new, remote approach to IT maintenance is better than insurance.

2010-01-25T13:50:40

There’s often a misconception that maintenance support services are only about onsite repair or just an insurance policy for when something breaks. Today, a proactive approach means that more than two-thirds of service calls can be resolved remotely, preventing problems before they can occur.

Green IT is about more than IT

2010-01-25T13:59:34

Greening the IT function is only one aspect of Green IT explains Graeme Philipson. It is important to minimise IT’s power consumption, but the real advantages come with IT’s ability to help reduce the carbon footprint of the whole organisation.

How to identify ways to make the most of the cloud

2010-03-01T16:11:01

Some experts are calling cloud computing a paradigm shift in technology.

Cloud services may be a game-changer for business

2010-07-16T14:56:21

Midsized companies are moving toward an infrastructure that is optimized and responsive to help them meet new business demands. This article looks at the short- and long-term benefits of cloud computing and how midsized companies can start integrating some cloud services into their existing IT environments.

Adding It Up: Virtualisation Reduces IT Costs

2010-08-12T12:49:16

Does it take either a significant service outage or a sea change in your business, like a major acquisition or a downsizing, to get business leaders to re-examine seriously whether your Information Technology infrastructure and resources are performing efficiently and effectively? All too often, businesses only re-examine their IT infrastructure and resources when a major snafu has occurred or some external force has turned the business model on its head.

X-Force report launch

2010-08-12T12:53:51

An elite team is scanning your internet security for the slightest flaw. Luckily, they work for us. Be among the first to hear the latest findings of the IBM X-Force team and discover the issues that can leave your business exposed.

IBM MAXIMO

2010-08-20T13:51:49

Having come through the global financial crisis, organisations around the world have been under intense pressure to reduce costs and, perhaps more importantly, increase utilisation of the assets...