Resolutions
We are approaching that time of year where all the trade rags and the popular magazines make their predictions and forecasts for the upcoming year. What I have read so far regarding CRM and Sales Effectiveness prognostication feels somewhat muted from past years. The most interesting article I ran across was suggesting that CIO’s make a few New Year’s resolutions given some technology trends for the upcoming 12 months.
My resolutions will be the following:
- Spend more time with my kids
- Do my back exercises more regularly
- Stop worrying about my poor diet
Not one of these is technology related, although I do need to get my 13 year old to stop spending so much time with his computer games.
There are some consistencies with regard to the IT predictions I have been reviewing. One is that there is going to be a cooling in the technology spending for 2007, which translates into potentially less budget for sales tools and the like. A second big trend in the press is the rise in collaboration, in this case referring to web-based collaboration of both work activity as well as societal interaction.
These two trends are going to have an interesting interaction, in my opinion. Most importantly, I believe that collaboration is something that does not have to require a lot of investment to make work. If CIO’s and other business managers were to make a resolution for 2007 that focused on these two trends it would be to resolve to leverage existing knowledge better with the tools and data already in place. It might be that a bit of work is required to clean up the data or organizing a better framework for capturing knowledge already gained. However, there is much to be achieved by taking stock of what is in place and how it can be better utilized while the business belts are tightened.