Economy – PCIS Ltd.

It’s hard for enterprises to adopt emerging tech. Here’s a way to do it

June 23, 2019

There are some truly amazing emerging technologies out there. AI and chatbots. Blockchain. Cryptocurrencies. Augmented reality, virtual reality… we’re all in a new kind of reality. Enterprise companies don’t want to leave these technologies in the hands of the startups that will disrupt them. But is is a huge challenge even for experienced CIOs to get a handle on how to bring these technologies in-house, integrate them with legacy systems and beat the competition. Why startups have the edge with…

Digging for gold in your company’s data

October 22, 2015

Thought Leadership

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You’ve probably heard about ‘Big Data’ and ‘Predictive Analytics.’ These are the big buzz words floating around today. These terms sound very technical, futuristic even… and expensive. Perhaps you were informed that you need to start a project that incorporates these concepts, but you have no idea why or how you would embark on such a mission. Let me give you an example of why you should do just that. Most likely your company has customers. Hopefully the information about…

School district IT departments need help

The state of technology in Canadian school districts

September 7, 2015

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In May, PCIS conducted a market survey to gather insight on the state of technology at school districts across Canada. IT Managers and Directors from over 300 school districts were invited to complete a survey. The results revealed some common issues that resonated throughout the country while some highlighted challenges unique to their particular district. Because education is regulated and governed at the provincial level, it was not surprising to learn that districts that operated within the same province shared…

Top 5 reasons why school district IT strategy plans fail

August 11, 2015

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So you think you have a good IT strategy for your school district. Well, do these problems remind you of… you? Let’s say you’re in year two of a five year plan. However, budget cuts hamper your ability to complete the rest of the plan. To make matters worse, declining enrolment is expected for the next few years. Budgets will shrink. That means fewer resources to execute your plan. You throw your hands in the air. You wonder why you…

Uber has some Über problems

December 10, 2014

Thought Leadership

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Uber, the controversial startup taxi company has been shaking up the taxi business in cities around the world and growing rapidly. Uber has now raised even more money to fund this massive expansion with this financing round valuing the company at $40 billion (http://g3t.ca/UCQ68e) Uber has grown to 250 cities from 60 cities a year ago and operates 50 countries worldwide up from 21. This growth wouldn’t be possible without the customers to fuel it. It seems that the customers…

What do real estate and dating have in common?

November 26, 2014

Thought Leadership

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As mentioned in the previous post, last week I attended the Data Leadership Summit – http://www.datasummit.ca in Vancouver. It brought together a diverse audience to see speakers from different industries with different perspectives and experiences. In my opinion, there were two presentations which were particularly compelling. One was from real estate brokerage Redfin, the other from the online dating service Plentyoffish. I found it interesting that both shared many common themes. For instance, the level of exaggeration when one describing…

The Big Question About Big Data

May 12, 2014

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Predicting the future isn’t quite a mug’s game anymore. It was once the province of futurists who talked like evangelists and fortune-tellers who paradoxically could never seem to leverage their predictive abilities with a lottery ticket at their local convenience store. Today, lots of folks are into the prediction racket these days – “predictive analysis”, anyway, with an eerie degree of accuracy. It’s all thanks to Big Data – that ambiguous little term every vendor is using to sell their…

The search – can we find the truth?

April 21, 2014

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Mathias Dopfner, the CEO of Axel Springer, raised the issue about the uneasy relationship between Google and publishing companies. Axel Springer, a German media powerhouse, publishes over 200 newspapers and magazines; and derives 62% of their profits from their digital business. As you can imagine, Axel Springer depends heavily on the traffic supplied by search engines, most notably Google. Mathias (quite rightly) points out that the search results and ads serving algorithms are not transparent; and anyone with a business…