Paul Millhouse

Matulovic would be best served by sticking to his guns and adhering to the protocols of the new priority management system. This system is there to perform just that function – assess the priority of projects. If specific projects are brought to his attention that for one reason or another the creator feels should garner “special treatment”, and…[Read more]

Alan great points. I have similarly been in situations where I was concerned about the breadth of oversight. When I worked at Globus we would periodically present our product ideas to a handful of superiors. The collection of people in the room however was generally made up of those with business backgrounds and people close to David Paul. I…[Read more]

In reading this article I was struck by the number of IT services changes VW had gone through. Starting in 1992 and for the following decade they outsourced all IT issues to Perot Systems, then in 1999 gedasUSA was created as a wholly-owned subsidiary of VWAG to provide IT services, and finally the internal BPTO business unit was created. I was…[Read more]

Alan that is interesting and you are fortunate to have such a CEO. Making IT purchasing decisions is always difficult because you never know what might be “right around the corner” that you miss out on by purchasing today instead of waiting a few months. It’s just like purchasing a home computer – we all need one at some point, but of course we…[Read more]

Alan I agree wholeheartedly because an effective EMR is one of the items that all hospitals should ideally have in the near future. Also your model makes sense because why purchase a “comprehensive” package that gives you everything and the kitchen sink, including stuff you’ll never need, when a handful of independent softwares perform the same…[Read more]

It is difficult to get IT just right and I believe most places under-invest in technology. For instance I was at Advance Auto Parts today because my car battery died. There were only a few people there, a couple of us waiting in line. Despite just one person ahead of me, I stood waiting for at least ten minutes. Certainly the clerks were somewhat…[Read more]

Michael, thanks for the comment. Partnering with the credit card companies is a great idea if they pay with plastic. Another idea is that maybe they could only review if they’ve “checked in” there on Facebook or actually visited the coordinates on Google Maps or something similar. Yelp could even introduce their own “check-in”-type feature on…[Read more]

Remember when I took you to Toys R Us before Christmas so you could tell me which toys you wanted? Remember how you picked out some toys you said you would like and other ones you said you didn’t want? Imagine if Toys R Us had a website (I’m assuming that children of this generation will be familiar with the internet) where a whole bunch of little…[Read more]

Andrew I am in the same boat in that I have never used either Uber or Airbnb. I first heard about Airbnb a few years ago when I told my friend if he was gonna be in NYC one weekend when I went up. He said no and his place was posted on Airbnb; I checked out the website and thought “wow, great idea!”. Similarly I heard about Uber one night while…[Read more]

I disagree with some of the above posts because I like Yelp and feel that it provides a valuable service. I think the difference of opinion lies in the degree of trust we assign to one source. Believing Yelp unwaveringly is akin to getting your news from one channel. Then when that one source (Bryan Williams) is shown to have some slight…[Read more]

Josh I enjoyed reading your comment and similarly feel that a dialogue should be opened with the hackers. In reading the case commentary after the article we learn that only the CEO recommends paying the extortionists. Neither of the other two authors – a business school chair and a dept of computing chairman who’s also the chief information…[Read more]

Alan I agree they should resort back to the old system as it worked and everything is kept locally – access to your own paper records can’t be blocked! Sunnylake transitioned to the EMR just three years ago, it should not be difficult to switch back temporarily as most employees will still be comfortable with this system. This solves the problem…[Read more]

This was a very interesting (and scary) case. The security breach at Sunnylake involves some party accessing the accounts and blocking all user access. Also, the same attack seems to be happening over and over. It does not sound like the hacker is deleting or copying data; rather just blocking system access for a ransom. Going by the other…[Read more]

This is a response to the second while touching on the first. Clearly technology has made our lives easier is many ways. Equally as obvious is the fact that technology and the internet have also introduced new risk – new ways to obtain and steal data, new ways to duplicate and mimic information, and so on. Really this is a trade-off: increased…[Read more]

I do not think retailers are doing enough to prevent fraud. Before reading the Target article, I had no idea that fraud was such a big concern. Certainly we know it happens, and we all have heard stories about “identity theft”, but I was under the impression that was the exception and happened very infrequently. The Target and the related CIO…[Read more]

Certainly they should have foreseen at least the potential for fraudulent, unscrupulous, our outright criminal behavior before creating the service, and frankly I’m a little surprised they went incident free as long as they did. A mechanism should have been in place to deter and address, if not prevent, such behavior. Some things they should have…[Read more]

I’m sorry I meant PriceGrabber.com. Unable to edit the post..

Both look like great options. Thanks guys!