JIRA is the baby version of Google Wave

Often the problem in development projects, especially those that involve many people and parties, is that a lot of the information and knowledge about current discussions and decisions is merely captured in emails. Emails, however, are merely chronological and often contain many strings of thought. New thoughts are copied into new emails with new mailing [...]

The Difference Between Consultancies and New Media Agencies

Comparing consultancies and agencies, the first impression is that they are very similar, almost the same. But there are some crucial differences. Based on these differences, I will present some recommendations for new media agencies to reduce risks and maximize the ROI.
Starting with the similarities:

Both sell manpower and rely on the knowledge of their employees [...]

Market Strategies for Service Providers

Take these sub-definitions of knowledge:

knowledge from the experience of past projects encompases process and client-specific knowledge. This deduces a higher probability of a successful implementation.
knowledge of technology and/or special skills increases the probability that the professional service provider is capable of implementing what he has promised and reduces the risk of time-consuming learning on-the-job [...]

When to Persuade Potential Clients

Which stages does a professional service provider need to pass successfully in order to receive a new job? With disecting this process you can identify the communication needs. 

Circumventing a pitch / tender
Getting on the short-list
Winning a pitch / tender

Circumventing a pitch / tender
Usually a new job (at least in the business of creative agencies) is [...]

Competency Deployment Needs Management Support

A prerequisite for value generation through knowledge is the proper identification of an employee’s comptetencies. However, this is only the first part of the deal. The actual deployment of these competencies can only be facilitated when the management is listening to the ideas of the employee and allows for changes. 
Any costs created by acquiring new [...]

Putting Things Into Perspective

Having just started at a new company, I can talk from fresh experience: Knowledge I have gathered throughout some time has helped me to ask different questions, new questions that helped my colleagues rethink and reword. At the same time, I find that knowledge I thought was very helpful and important seems uninteresting to them [...]

Does it Pay Off to Invest in Knowledge during Non-Billable Time?

During the time in which a consultant is being trained or does research, we can’t bill his hours, plus we might need to invest in off-the-job training. Will we need to increase the billing price for this consultant by 1.5$ for each dollar invested into his knowledge acquisition?

Can You Compare Employees to Inventory?

At my university, we had a discussion that a mere service provider does not have any inventory costs. In a physical sense – that’s true. But the amount of people you have at any specific point of time has similar characteristics to the amount of inventory.

Don’t Fake the Knowledge You Use for PR

As stated in earlier blog posts, I think publishing your knowledge is a wonderful PR technique. Now I have come across a new study that seemingly seems to prove my point: the blog ‘prmeasure’ cites a study of MarketingSherpa whereby whitepapers are one of the most effective means for lead generation (I’ll look more into that). But…
Be [...]

Microblog What You Bill

Those of us who bill manhours or mandays know the tedious drill at the end of every day (or if you’re lazy like me every week): write down what you did for whom for how many hours. Most of you will probably have a system for that, connected to some ERP system, with projects being [...]