Change Agent CTO Podcast Episode 6

In this episode of the Change Agent Podcast I had a conversation with John Dyck, the CEO of CESMII, the Clean Energy Smart Manufacturing Intuit. We talk about how Industry 4.0 motions need commoditization, lower cost of entry, and how CESMII is helping.

by Nathan Lasnoski May 23, 2021

Service Management In The Executive Suite – Part 3

This is part 3 of a running series on how to pull together key service management activities to support executive business decision making. Part 1 provided an overview of a 5-Step approach for pulling together actions and data for executive decisions. Part 2 addressed how to identify company services. Part 3 now takes a look at a very critical piece to identify the underlying assets, or “bill of materials” that support each of those services. This discusses the concepts of service discovery and mapping.

by Randy Steinberg May 21, 2021

Service Management In The Executive Suite – Part 2

As the 2nd Part in this series, we continue with the 5-Step approach first outlined in Part 1. This approach leverages Services Thinking. It allows for sound business concepts that can be leveraged to change the dynamic for how IT manages itself and works with the business. In Part 2, we will examine how to build a portfolio of all current IT services used to support the business. This is not as simple as it sounds. Business people understand services from a business perspective, but not an IT perspective. IT people will understand technologies and platforms, but not necessarily understand how these support the business.

by Randy Steinberg May 19, 2021

Service Management In The Executive Suite – Part 1

Many IT organizations have yet to recognize that the traditional IT operating model of delivering IT to the business in the form of bundled capabilities and assets is now wearing thin in an age of cloud computing, on-demand services, virtualization, outsourcing and rapidly changing business delivery strategies. While there is great value in establishing processes, tools and organization responsibilities for Service Management, there is tremendous opportunity for providing much more value at the senior leadership level. This is Part 1 of a series that describes a practical 5-step approach that IT organizations can use to quickly align themselves with the business by grasping their IT services, creating business cost transparency and establishing service strategies.

by Randy Steinberg May 17, 2021

Predicting Future Incident Counts - Use Regression Analysis!

Predict incident counts before they happen! This describes a powerful approach for forecasting what incident volumes may look like in the future. The approach is very effective at showing a business case that gets executives and management on board to fund improvement initiatives for better service. Presented here is a step by step Regression Analysis approach that uses past incident volumes to model future incident volumes using an actual scenario from a very large IT organization.

by Randy Steinberg May 12, 2021

Prioritizing Service Improvement Projects Using A Scoring Framework – Take Out The Emotion!

Far too many times, IT organizations struggle with finding a fair means to prioritize the service improvement projects they will invest in. These sometimes turn into near war zones where each business unit fights to get their pet projects into the mix. Company politics may divert funding to those business units with the most clout versus what may be truly best for the business. Managing the portfolio can be done more effectively with use of an agreed scoring system based on key criteria. Through this, decisions can be made based on facts and scores versus raw emotions and competing business agendas.

by Randy Steinberg May 11, 2021

Radical Incident Reduction – The 30-30-30 Program

Want to pump up your IT delivery with a program that excites executives, provides great business value and greatly lowers unplanned labor costs, incident volumes and service outages? The 30-30-30 Program is a fast-paced attention getting program that targets a 30% reduction in incident counts, 30% reduction in resolution times and a 30% increase in support staff skills for getting to root causes and eliminating the incidents they cause. This presents how the program works and presents some examples used in a large IT organization. The approach described can be used in any IT organization.

by Randy Steinberg May 10, 2021

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Names Concurrency, Inc. a Winner of The Southeast Wisconsin Top Workplaces 2021 Award

(Brookfield, Wisconsin, May 10, 2021) – Concurrency, Inc. has been awarded a Top Workplaces 2021 honor by Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Top Workplaces. The list is based solely on employee feedback gathered through a third-party survey administered by employee engagement technology partner Energage LLC. The anonymous survey uniquely measures 15 culture drivers that are critical to the success of any organization: including alignment, execution, and connection, just to name a few.  

by Stephanie Siewert May 10, 2021

Re-Thinking the Service Desk – From Call Taking To Strategic Service Delivery Center

The Service Desk has been traditionally viewed as the IT organization that helps employees of a company with the computer related problems. It has generally been accepted as the primary customer interface and touchpoint where people can get help with IT issues, problems and requests. This is a very limited view of what the Service Desk can be. In fact, the Service Desk is the only organization within IT positioned to be the strategic service management nerve center across the entire IT enterprise.

by Randy Steinberg May 7, 2021

Metrics That Matter – A Model For IT Decision Making

Many IT organizations mistakenly start their IT metrics efforts by looking at their monitoring and reporting tools and then backing into the metrics that those tools provide. Improvement focus then becomes limited to the tool sets available versus what is really critical to success. We’ve also seen the monthly IT service reports or web portal that few look at. They are frequently ignored because the metrics in them have little meaning or significance for the audience viewing them. There is opportunity to provide value to IT leadership by giving them the visibility to make timely accurate decisions using a metrics model that supports decision making.

by Randy Steinberg May 6, 2021

10 Ways Manufacturers Can Do More with Less in 2023 - Part 1

As we enter the new year, manufacturers are assertively focusing on how they optimize their business during uncertain economic conditions.  The goal of most manufacturers is to do more with less, or at minimum optimize their ability to execute their mission for their customers.  Working with many manufacturers, I am seeing a variety of ways that companies can leverage technology to do more with less year. 

Part 1 of this series outlines the first five ways that manufacturers can do more with less.

by Nathan Lasnoski Jan 17, 2023

10 Ways Manufacturers Can Do More with Less in 2023 - Part 2

As we enter the new year, manufacturers are assertively focusing on how they optimize their business during uncertain economic conditions.  The goal of most manufacturers is to do more with less, or at minimum optimize their ability to execute their mission for their customers.  Working with many manufacturers, I am seeing a variety of ways that companies can leverage technology to do more with less year. 

Part 2 of this series outlines the second five ways that manufacturers can do more with less.

by Nathan Lasnoski Jan 25, 2023

10 Ways Financial Services Organizations Can Do More with Less in 2023

As we enter the new year, financial services organizations are assertively focusing on how they optimize their business during uncertain economic conditions.  The goal of most businesses is to do more with less, or at minimum optimize their ability to execute their mission for their client.  In working with many financial services organizations, I am seeing a variety of ways that organizations are able to leverage technology to do more with less this year.   

by Nathan Lasnoski Jan 10, 2023

Integrating ChatGPT-like Capabilities into Your Business

ChatGPT-like capabilities can make a difference in your business RIGHT NOW.  This is not science fiction, this is science fact and your competitors are reaping the benefits.  Many have felt that AI/ML is an aspirational “someday” goal, but businesses that have invested in targeted efforts are rewarded with real ROI and absolute efficiencies.  This means adopting real-world improvement made possible through commodity AI, data science-oriented initiatives, or even the recently available Open AI service that powers ChatGPT.  Let’s dive in.

by Nathan Lasnoski Jan 26, 2023

Using the Union Operator in KQL

Sometimes it is difficult to use and remember operators in KQL. Today we're going to look at using the "union" operator to combine tables into one space.

by Joseph Dutton Feb 20, 2023

Cultivating an Inclusive Workplace: Best Practices for Ramadan

Having Muslim team members, and being Muslim myself, I have always struggled with how to integrate a productive workday during the holy month of Ramadan. I’ve been lucky to work with some amazing employers who aren’t afraid to ask questions and have been overwhelmingly accommodating during this time and it is my top priority to do the same with my teams!

by Reem Alzubeidi Mar 17, 2023

Modernizing our approach to MFA

Traditional passwords haven’t been sufficient for protecting accounts and assets for some time now.  From simple brute force attacks to spear phishing and pharming threat adversaries continue to develop novel methods for credential theft to add to their toolbox of existing tried and true approaches. Microsoft’s Group Program manager for Identity Security and protection, Alex Weinert,   has previously stated that MFA, when deployed properly, can end up blocking 99.9% of automated attacks.

by Adam Clifford Feb 1, 2023

A Holistic Approach to Zero Trust

Zero Trust architecture isn’t another security fad, and it’s not a technology you can implement, but rather a security model that’s foundational on every step of the journey we at Concurrency help our clients in travel along the path of modern workplace maturity.

by Chris Blackburn Feb 10, 2023

Manufacturing: Building Resiliency to Navigate Market Volatility

Manufacturers have navigated a turbulent environment for several years. Some unlocked exponential growth opportunities due to surging demand while others struggled to stay afloat. Now, most manufacturers are bracing for a recession. In the U.S., 62% of manufacturers expect a recession to start in 2023, anticipating several months of contraction followed by growth. U.S. manufacturers expect to increase revenues by year-end an average of 5.5%, down from 9.3% in 2022.

by Ralph Babusci Mar 2, 2023

OIDC vs. SAML

When trying to set up authentication for an application, you might hear people talk about “OIDC” and “SAML”. This is especially true when you have a lot of different applications that you want the end user to be able to use the same username and password for; for example, inside of a business, you might want your employees to log into an HR application, a task-tracking board, and CRM software with the same credentials. So what do these two four-letter abbreviations mean, anyway? What are the differences between them? And how do they help you authenticate your users? 

by Nick Woods Feb 23, 2023