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  Joseph Ezenwa March 24, 2016 12:21

  Boris, I had course to go through some of your whitepapers.

  I noted this on the whitepaper on 7Productivity Myths- When you free people from the tethers of the office, amazing things start to happen: productivity rises, borders and barriers disappear, innovation replaces enervation, and the quality of work improves as employees’ quality of life improves.

  On the whitepaper on Breach Detection: What you need to know, I noted the following; Motivated by the challenge, not profit, hackers like Mitnick served more as nuisances to corporations and government agency security teams, than the economic and national security threats they were often portrayed to represent.

  Today however, the game has changed. Today’s “hackers” are not the avant-garde lone wolf technology enthusiasts of the 80’s and 90’s but highly organized professional cyber-criminal organizations motivated by greed and nation-state actors with strategic political, military and economic objectives

   

   

   

   

   

   

                                             
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  Joseph Ezenwa February 21, 2016 9:59

  Boris, Global Risk Community has this time around presented wonderful whitepapers that everyone need to read and gain new knowledge.

    On Stress Testing: View from Trenches, I have noted the following:

  1.What’s more, stress tests and their underlying scenarios can be of considerable value as a strategic management tool to a financial services company of virtually any type or size.

  2.Best  Practices Framework for stress testing;

  • Adequate levels of management attention and resources to stress testing within the firm, and, externally, to relationships and communications with regulators.
  • Comprehensive, centralized data repositories and libraries of risk factors and scenarios.
  • Gaining added strategic value from stress testing in such areas as risk appetite, capital and liquidity management and underwriting.

  3.Financial institutions have introduced changes to their business in re­sponse to test results, particularly in   the area of risk. Those with highly mature stress-test processes were more likely to report that they have made changes based on test results

  On 5 Proven Ways to Motivate and Retain your Technology Team, I made the following notes; 

   1.One of the biggest problems that plagues IT is burn out and too much work.  It’s an   industry     of triage and when something breaks, you can bet IT is on the call. That   can easily lead to over-   stressed workers and, ultimately, a mass exodus.

   

  2. If there’s one thing that is certain, the intellectual prowess of the geek must be challenged. It’s not enough to be left to the daily grind of develop, deploy and repair. No. Employees must be put to the test in the classroom (or virtual classroom) as well. Of course, the education of your staff has the added benefit of giving your team even more skills with which to pull from and allows them to produce more quickly and efficiently while staying on top of best practices and the latest technologies. But above all, employees consider paid training a solid benefit.

  3. HARDWARE/SOFTWARE PURCHASING PROGRAMS Purchasing programs are an outstanding way to prove your dedication to your staff. These types of programs allow your staff to purchase hardware, software and other goods through channels they may not have access to outside of work. For example, the Los Angeles Unified School District offers their employees the ability to purchase products at reduced costs from companies like:• Microsoft• Adobe• T-Mobile• Verizon Wireless• AT&T Wireless• Sprint• Apple• Dell• Lenovo.

  On Financial Institution Advantage and Optimization of Information Processing, the following were noted;

  1. If a financial institution is able to set a strategy based on its assessment of its current and potential future competitive advantage, where information-processing capabilities form the core of that competitive

  advantage, it must be able to conduct that assessment quantitatively and with a significant amount of rigor.

  2. For an institution to effectively manage its analytic resources, which consist primarily of modelers and models, it needs to have a timely and comprehensive source of information about those resources.

   

  On Business Process Automation,RFI, I noted this;

   While a broad array of functionality is available, from BPM suites to custom applications that meet specific business needs, different solutions have differing capabilities and strengths across a variety of categories. In the following RFI, we’ve honed in on eight key areas for business process automation success to help you evaluate the quality of the platforms you are considering – and to ensure that the system you choose is agile and flexible enough to meet your business needs.

  ooo5 proven ways to motivate and

   team

   
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  Joseph Ezenwa February 9, 2016 10:48

  Boris, You Have done well in availing us these two new whitepapers-The Rise of Machine Data: Are you prepared? And Four Key Trends Impacting Mobile Infrastructure Strategy
  On the Rise of Machine Data: Are you prepared? I have noted the following:
  1. Millions of people rely on the Internet to socialize, collaborate and conduct
  business worldwide. But these numbers are eclipsed by the multitudes of Internet connected objects—more than 10 billion wirelessly connected devices today, with
  over 30 billion devices expected by 2020.
  2. Machine data typically comes from logs or sensor output. But machine data can be
  broadly defined as any information that is automatically created from a computer process, application or other machine without the intervention of a
  human. Such sources include health monitors, security cameras, computer networks, call detail records, financial instrument trades and more.

  On Four key Trends Impacting Mobile Infrastructure Strategy, I have noted the following:
  1.An enterprise mobility solution that is made up of a combination of hardware, software, and services is expansive, providing competitive, productivity, and profitability advantages for enterprises that have the capability to successfully deploy a well-conceived and well-executed mobile strategy.

  2. Growth in the mobility hardware, software, and service markets speaks to how organizations are prioritizing mobility.

  3.Strategically aligning technologies and services to leverage as a foundation upon which to build a
  mobile strategy requires insight and guidance.
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  Joseph Ezenwa January 21, 2016 13:38

  Boris, Happy new year. You started the year with great whitepapers. On the whitepaper on BUSINESSS TRANSFORMATION DOESN’T NEED TO BE A LONG DRAWN-OUT PROCESS.I made the following notes.

  1.When driving any major change within an organization, strategy and execution are intrinsic to a project’s success. Nevertheless, closing the gap between strategy and execution remains a challenge for many organizations, as explored in a recent Process Excellence Network report: “Shift Business Excellence  Into High Gear: Drive Strategic Performance Through Process Excellence. Companies tend to focus more on execution than strategy for quick results, instead of taking the time needed to understand the parts that make up the whole, so the right execution plan can be put in place to deliver the best outcomes.

  2.In addition to slow implementation cycles, many BPM systems focus only on internal business operations and core processes. Modern BPM solutions need to also streamline the untamed processes that hold these core processes together, which often involve a mix of unstructured content, such as emails, collaboration portals like SharePoint, and social streams. BPM solutions need to be able to integrate with these collaboration points, in addition to line-of business systems and cloud file-storing services like Box, Dropbox and Google Drive.

  3.K2 Drives transformation ,growth and revenue through business process applications with minimal disruption while providing the business with immediate value.

  4.Business process applications minimize hand coding and speed up development and delivery cycles with visual tools that can be utilized by business users and developers alike.

  5.The reusability of the building blocks that make up K2 applications also helps with standardization.

  For example, K2’s Smart Object technology ensures that once a connection to an external system, like SAP or Microsoft Dynamics CRM, has been established, that integration point can be reused across any number of interfaces and processes, instead of developers having to build a new integration point every time a new application is built that requires access to that particular system. This makes it quick and easy to pull together information from disparate systems into a single view for easy approval, analysis and decision making.

  6.Another plus is that all integration points with external systems look and behave in the same way, making it easy to utilize data from disparate systems – such as SAP, Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft CRM, Microsoft SharePoint, Sales force, Oracle, Box, Google Drive and more – without having to learn the nuances that pertain to a particular technology.

  On the whitepaper on FOSTERING A CULTURE OF COLLABORATION ,I noted the following:

  1.Delivering technological solutions is considered a core mission to most IT teams. Similarly, most enterprises are very familiar with creating and updating collaboration processes – for example, assigning collaborative tools to the right users, requiring team meetings with regularity, and providing “best practices” for meetings.

  2.Those enterprises that are Collaborating with a “big C” consistently point to culture as the most critical variable in establishing a successful Collaboration program.

  3.In order to enable today’s knowledge worker to collaborate effectively, across borders, intuitively, and without exorbitant cost, many enterprises have deployed a range of technologies.

  4.Some are embracing open seating models, creating “collaborative space” intended to foster both in-person and virtual collaboration.

  5.The primary solutions used by today’s knowledge worker – email, IM, and conferencing solutions – do an excellent job at driving volume, but very little to ensure quality.

   

   
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  Joseph Ezenwa December 12, 2015 13:31

  Boris, I have to thank you for these two well articulated Whitepapers.
  On the whitepaper on HOLISTIC RISK MANAGEMENT-ORGANIZATIONAL MEASURES TO CREATE A STRATEGIC VIEW OF RISK,I took the following notes:
  • There is evidence that a holistic and strategic approach to risk management pays off.
  • A 2015 PWC survey ‘’ Risk in Review’’ shows that over the past three years 55% of companies deemed leaders in risk management recorded increased profit margin of more than 10%.
  • There is a strong linkage with aligning risk management and strategy to driving performance.
  • The aim of risk management measures is to improve cross-organizational communication and to link risk management controls to strategic objectives of the company.
  • One of the first steps towards achieving a holistic view of risk is to get internal audit and compliance teams within individual departments as well as departmental managers to collaborate effectively with the risk management function. This means opening lines of communication between departments that might not otherwise interact.
  • At Logistic Company UPS, for example Mohammad Azam, Vice President of corporate internal audit ,compliance and ethics ,meet regularly with an enterprise council comprised of some 25 top representatives from every large function in the corporation including treasury, insurance and HR to discuss risks and assign the right experts to work on solutions.
  On the whitepaper on A HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW ANALYTIC SERVICES-NEW TECHNOLOGIES TRANSFORMING FINANCE FUNCTION.I noted the following;
  • CFOs need to reshape finance function and their role.
  • Advance technologies such as big Data, cloud computing, mobile devices and enterprise access to in-memory platforms, predictive analytics and planning software can help CFOs make better and more sophisticated use of data, influence decisions and take practical timely action.
  • Finance organization of future will become a central hub that ties corporate business functions to financial measures and helping companies make better decisions throughout their operations.
  • 87% of finance leaders must analyze performance data more quickly to meet growth targets.
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  Joseph Ezenwa November 13, 2015 12:27

  Boris,I  have always appreciated the work you are doing in this community.

  I went through the Whitepaper on THE IMPORTANCE OF DECOMMISSIONING IN ASSET INTENSIVE INDUSTRIES and I noted the following:

  • Key to decommissioning is delivering projects and milestones on time and within budget.
  • As the number of moving parts in a project increases so does the difficulty in maintaining visibility and control.
  • Asset management can be broadly looked at as the design, construction, operation and decommissioning of plants, equipment or facilities.
  • It is the responsibility of management to ensure that from an assets conception to retirement that maximum value is realized and that cost is minimized.

  I also read the whitepaper on FINANCING ACQUISITIONS WITH SBA LOANS  and noted the following:

  • SBA means Small Business Administration
  • SBA loan programs are specifically designed to meet the unique and evolving financing needs of small business owners.
  • The SBA does not engage in direct lending ;when a small business applies for an SBA loan, it does so through a lender that participates in SBA programs not through SBA itself.
  • While the lender provides the loan , the SBA provides a limited guarantee giving the lender lower risk and borrower more favourable terms..
  • SBA loans offer small businesses the opportunity to benefit from longer terms  ,more repayment options, lower down payments and improved cash flow versus conventional lending alternatives.
  • SBA financing can be the most attractive option for  a growing small business making and acquisition. This really  a good financing option for small businesses and i will want this tried in Nigeria.
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  Boris Agranovich November 11, 2015 17:27

  Travis,

  Thanks for your information. We were not aware of the argument but will take it into consideration from now on when we prepare our resources review.
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  Travis Middleton November 11, 2015 17:15

  Zane is already aware of rebuttal argument but insist on moving forward with a business model that is suspect.  My complaint is directed at GlobalRisk for placing this type of disputed strategy out to unsuspecting member of the GlobalRisk Community that may not be aware of the fines and penalties associated with this action.
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  Boris Agranovich November 11, 2015 16:34

  Travis,

  I think that the best way to protest about a whitepaper content would be to contact with the authors.

  In your case it will be http://www.zanebenefits.com
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  Travis Middleton November 11, 2015 16:19

  How would I protest a whitepaper dealing with incorrect information concerning reimbursement of individual health insurance?  The IRS has stated and published rules and fines for a company reimbursing the employees for an individual health insurance policy.  In conjunction with the IRS ruling on a Federal level this has been illegal in Texas for many years.