(re) blog: dialogue with Redemtech

As Economy Lags, Total Cost Of Ownership Becomes Crucial

Fall means back to school for many families, but at Redemtech, it also marks a time when we’ll be delving even more deeply than usual into the needs of our clients.

Why Improving IT Asset Management Requires Dealing With Grief Process

According to an old joke, change is hard only when it encounters human nature, which tends to resist most changes. In other words, change of any sort is hard.

Measure Twice, Cut Once

Perhaps you’re familiar with the old saying “measure twice and cut once.” It’s a bit of wisdom about the importance of planning, and how proper planning leads to fewer mistakes. Every good seamstress or carpenter understands this immediately. And while it might be less obvious in the IT asset management industry, it’s no less true.

How IT Asset Management Is Like Making Coffee

At Redemtech, we're in the business of business process outsourcing, or BPO in support of the lifecycle management activities necessary to effectively manage technology assets. Demonstrating how our service offerings improve the bottom line while insuring security and environmental responsibility is what I spend much of my time discussing with clients and prospects.

Proactive Beats Reactive Any Day

As I talk to prospective clients about responsible IT lifecycle management practices, there inevitably comes a moment when I can almost read the person’s mind. Sure, one more layer of regulations for me to worry about. One more layer of burdensome requirements that will drive my costs even higher.

Business Should Be Thankful for Technology

Every day, I remind myself of all the things that I am thankful for. Today, as always, I was thankful to wake to see another day. Next, I was thankful for the fact that my commute to work only required walking a few steps into the other room – and the dress code includes feetie pajamas.

Looking to Boost Data Security? Check the Lost & Found Pile

In the IT industry, we tend to get so wrapped up in high-tech, high-concept notions about data and network security. We go through periods of rapture about the latest software fixes that are guaranteed to finally lock down our networks and prevent incursions from malicious intruders.

Finally, Simplifying Things is Cool

A big, global IT hardware vendor, a brand name you’d instantly recognize, apparently has gotten religion.

Why It Pays To Help Little Old Ladies Across the Street

If you know anything at all about my employer, Redemtech, you probably know that it’s a business based on doing the right thing - for the environment, customers, shareholders, associates and the larger community. And part of doing the right thing in business, I believe, is looking very hard for a way to offer carrots to your customers rather than wielding sticks on them.

Being an IT Asset Manager Requires Endurance

Being an IT Asset Manager requires endurance ... just ask those ITAM professionals who trekked through the desert during the recent International Association of Information Technology Asset Managers (IAITAM) conference. The messages about software license compliance, data security and best practices told the story of even more daunting times ahead.

Here’s How to Stay Off Greenpeace’s Radar Screen

The problems with e-waste continue to grow. Not long ago, the Environmental Protection Agency estimated that “as much as 4 percent of municipal solid waste is e-scrap.” That number may have since risen to 5 percent. Fox News, meanwhile, reports that while “most Americans think they're helping the earth when they recycle their old computers, televisions and cell phones, chances are they're contributing to a global trade in electronic trash that endangers workers and pollutes the environment overseas.”

Business Week Highlights Our IT Recycling Partner, TechSoup

Influential Business Week Magazine, which recently underwent a significant redesign, last week published this interesting article on the benefits of dealing with professional refurbishers when companies recycle used IT equipment. Like most general business publications, it stressed the obvious environmental concerns that socially conscious businesses should take into account to avoid adding to the waste stream.

IAITAM Conference A Chance to Exchange ITAM Ideas

Wow, how time flies! It's already October and less than a month away from the annual International Association of Information Technologies (IAITAM) Conference in Rancho Mirage, Calif. I can hardly wait to connect with old and new colleagues to catch up on the latest innovations in their IT Asset Management programs.

IT Asset Management Requires Measurement

What to measure, how to measure, and why to measure various data capture points in the technology asset inventory management lifecycle is a challenge for today’s IT Asset Manager. Let’s identify some of the roadblocks to the success of developing accurate metrics.

Identity Theft – A Killer of Reputations

Consumer confidence should be an increasing concern for businesses that are keepers of precious personal information. Information such as Social Security numbers, addresses, driver’s license numbers, or even credit card spending habits can give criminals the information they need to kill your credit score.

Do Businesses Really Need a Chief Green Officer?

Do businesses really need a Chief Green Officer? Or is this role for executive CGO "O"verkill?

PC Technology No Longer Holds Mystique

Computer hardware technology no longer holds the mystique that it once held for me.

Old Habits Don’t Have to Die Hard

Old habits die hard.

You would think that after all of the lessons learned, failed implementations and wasted project efforts, things would change, and organizations would begin to understand what it really takes to successfully implement applications.

It has nothing to do with IT not delivering what the business asked for ... it has to do with businesses knowing what to ask for, before they ask for it.

Simple Tools Enable Customers to Help Businesses Reduce Costs

Recently I took my daughter to eat at one of our favorite restaurants, where I always admire the fantastically engineered process the management has designed for recovery of materials when people are done with their meals. The restaurant specializes in soups served in ceramic bowls and sandwiches balanced on glass plates, yet uses the basic fast-food set-up where customers stand in line to order and retrieve their food.

Responsible Businesses Don't Make Sustainability Choices - People Do

Everyone has a responsibility as an inhabitant of the Earth to do his or her part toward protecting and improving the environment. It is our duty, and desire as parents and grandparents, to do the right thing in support of future generations. 

Customer Service or Lip Service?

Customer Service is in the process. If organizations do not have processes that support the ultimate expectations of the customer, while maintaining profitability and environmental sustainability, they must implement those processes to support strategic goals. The desire to deliver and the capability to do so are separated by the processes and the measurements used to gauge satisfaction. Without support processes, the result is Lip Service.

Airlines Need Down-to-Earth E-waste Solution

The other day on a cross-country flight, I witnessed something that I found to be a bit disturbing. The airline, like many others today, has limited amenities. No meals, pillows, blankets, or first class seating. They did have, however, in-flight movies. In order to watch those movies, passengers either use their own headphones or they are provided headphones once onboard. 

So far, so good ... until it was time for our final descent.

Let the Software Police Own the Magic Decoder Ring

After my recent trip to the Gartner IT and Software Asset Management Summit, and my discussions with asset managers struggling with software discovery and translation, I started thinking about the process and effort required to translate discovered data. The Six Sigma analyst in me had me asking myself, what could be done to improve this process, not just for a single organization, but for every asset manager out there who has struggled to justify a program to manage this effort - a daunting, if not impossible task...