Stories by Sue Bushell

The balanced scorecard, a tool that has become the core management system in some businesses, helps companies communicate, measure and stay focused on strategic goals

Traditionally, data has been so hard to get to that most users don't use it. Not any more. Savvy companies are learning how to make well-informed, information-based decisions

There's no "I" in a successful team

What is your company's information worth? In today's competitive environment, perhaps it's time to value it

Have a few jobs to fill? Don't be left hanging high and dry -- try recruiting on the Web

Things are changing rapidly for the staid utility companies, which were strangers to free markets until recently

It's the dirty secret hawkers of e-commerce would rather suppress: fraud is thriving on the Web, and the victims are as likely to be merchants as consumers

"If only Westpac knew what Westpac already knows." Westpac is not alone. Many companies have no idea just what they know, and they've turned to knowledge management to figure it out

Compared to the British, Aussie CIOs look like technology junkies. They're significantly more open to and interested in new technologies and more capable of handling them than their British counterparts. They're more responsive to the marketplace, more flexible and more likely to think proactively about change and how to manage it. But according to a pilot research study commissioned by CIO magazine from the Cranfield School of Management (UK), they also have a narrower and more limited view of their organisation than British and US CIOs and tend to think less corporately.

A well-informed customer has the power to annihilate your profit margin -- but both sides can win at this kind of information warfare. Inspire customers to give you the right information and you may be able to create customer franchise. And that has to be good, because a franchise customer never even considers doing business with anyone else.
The third in a three-part series on staying in touch with the customer

Until recently $10 billion global distribution company Inchcape Motors knew everything about cars but relatively little about people. Sue Bushell considers how the company is implementing CRM to change the way both it and five franchises do business

Portals have arrived into the corporate space. What has resulted from the emergence of this relatively new market is a tremendous amount of hype. But mingled with the rhetoric are some meaningful notions about cost-effectively sharing company knowledge

Cataclysm is usually defined in terms of disaster, but it can also characterise sudden change -- a lot of it and of a revolutionary nature. Think Internet, think cataclysm -- and both definitions apply

Five years ago there were about 5000 or so Web sites in the known universe, and most were renowned for doing such things as, well, just being there (though of course expressing their vast innate potential). Now the best have "mutated" and are vessels for nearly every sort of profitable interaction a business has

Knowledge management has become such a critical part of doing business in today's economy. But knowledge can be difficult to draw out in an organisation. If knowledge is power, those feeling the most powerless -- workers -- will certainly opt to hoard what little power they do have