By 2020, customer experience will overtake price and product as the key brand differentiator, according to a recent Customers 2020 Report. Increasingly, customers of small businesses may be expecting owners to know their individual needs in detail and go out of their way to personalize offerings and the shopping experience. When this is done properly, repeat business can be the result.But what happens when you please the cu...
A recent study, The Principal Financial Well-Being Index, found that business owners generally have positive vibes about where they stand financially. Almost half are optimistic about the 2016 economy—and with good reason. Sixty-four percent feel their financials have improved significantly or somewhat from last year, and 74 percent have built a surplus of cash.I asked three small-business owners—Sarah Jacoby, owner of danc...
Small-business activity is on the rise, according to the National Federation of Independent Business’s chief economist William Dunkelberg. Not counting seasonal variations, 55 percent of owners have recently hired or are planning to hire new staff, 23 percent are raising worker compensation, and 11 percent plan to create new jobs.I asked four small-business owners how they are taking their enterprises to the next level this...
As most of you know, I don’t work in IT – I just write about it. I do try to look out for trends, so when I kept seeing this word, Hadoop, popping into my Google Alerts, I thought I’d better pay attention.According to a recent survey from TDWI, overall Hadoop adoption by enterprises is on the rise, with 60 percent of respondents planning on having Hadoop clusters in production by the first quarter of 2016. But what exactly...
Want to be marketable? Consider sharpening these in-demand competencies.Computerworld’s 2016 Forecast study has identified the hottest skills for IT professionals. The top five include IT architecture (42 percent of IT hiring managers seek this skill), application development (40 percent), project management (39 percent), big data (36 percent), and business intelligence/analytics (34 percent). And business intelligence and...
In 2016, millennial IT professionals aren’t working in back offices. Increasingly, they are finding themselves in the CIO role. I chatted with IDC’s Christopher Chute, who is vice president of the SMB Cloud and Mobility Practice, about his recent study assessing how millennial CIOs are investing in digital transformation. Here’s a recap of our conversation.Chris, what does digital transformation mean to millennial CIOs? Clo...
Over five years ago, I wrote one of my first posts for the Fast Track blog. The article was about how I was able to hold down four paid jobs in addition to raising a toddler. Fast forward to today, when I am working on at least a dozen paid jobs and am responsible for an additional child. I’m still using the same system, and it’s still working.One of the things I mentioned in the article is how I leave two hours per day for...
The Career Advisory Board that I established by DeVry University recently released the fifth annual Job Preparedness Indicator survey. This year’s findings indicate hiring managers are receptive to candidates changing careers, especially if their previous experience can be applied to the new position; but above all else, integrity is the No. 1 trait that candidates should possess.
Our annual research surveys 500 hiring m...
Artificial intelligence has been in the news a lot lately, specifically related to machines’ ability to deep learn, or more closely mimic the actions of a human brain. In the near future, will a computer’s algorithms be able to do the project manager’s job as well as you can?It started in 2011. Stanford professor Andrew Ng holed up at the Google X Lab at the company’s Silicon Valley headquarters and initiated a project dubb...
PMI’s 2015 Earning Power survey reveals that current project management compensation varies widely.The Project Management Institute’s 2015 Earning Power report, which is based on a survey of more than 26,000 respondents in 34 countries, detailed 12-month salary trends among 15 demographic variables and shares important insights on roles ranging from entry-level project managers to senior executives.Overall, most participant...