BlogBlog
Views on the state of anything and everything in the business and IT world from Nick Cassidy, Nanagram's director.
Why are there still so many briefs with Flash requirements?
- Created on Friday, 28 September 2012 11:02
- Written by Administrator
I am amazed at the number of requests for proposals that still include a Flash requirement. I don't know how to break this to you without sending half the design community and several would-be customers into shock, so I'll be blunt. Flash is dead. Kaput. No more. If Monty Python wrote the dead parrot sketch today, it would be about Flash.
To be more specific, if you are a game developer or in the business of streaming media, then ignore me, but for general website use, it never was a good idea. Now it is sheer lunacy to use it for animated page content. It never did work on Apple mobile devices and there will be no more releases for the Android platform. These products are now outselling desktop computers, so if you want to exclude half your potential audience at the same time as severely compromising SEO and increasing page load times, then go ahead.
For me, this comes down to our role as suppliers. Do we respond to briefs as specified, because the customer thinks something is a good idea, or do we challenge requirements and adopt a more strategic role with our clients? I have always chosen the latter course; it probably loses me some business, but it undoubtedly reinforces my relationships with the ones I win.
Encourage risk, allow failure
- Created on Thursday, 19 July 2012 07:26
- Written by Nick Cassidy
For years businesses have spent their time looking at where they have been, not where they are going. Counting your pile of cash might be reassuring (or not), but it is an outcome of past performance and no indication of what you are going to achieve in the future. If you think that repeating what made you successful before will do it again, then you have been living on the moon for the past ten years. Big names are going to the wall every month in that mistaken belief.
To succeed, you have to innovate. To innovate, people have to have great ideas and put them to the test. The organisation has to support that, and for many this is a fundamental culture change. Managers can no longer tell people the best way to do the job, everyone has to know that it's their remit to continuously work out a better way of doing whatever it is they do, then sharing that knowledge so everyone learns and benefits. Innovate, execute, measure. Then do it all over again.
Social Intranets: From publishing to collaboration
- Created on Tuesday, 19 June 2012 14:29
- Written by Administrator
We need to collaborate. We need to share knowledge. We need to provide our people with the tools to help them do these things.
Unfortunately, the organisations that most urgently need to embrace a social culture are the ones whose leaders dismiss this as irrelevant. Right now there is the most significant natural selection process occuring in the history of business and the organisations that are about to be consigned to the scrap heap won't have a clue what hit them even after it has happened. This isn't about IT, it's about people, but while you can't change anything with IT, you can't change much without it either.
Harnessing the intellectual horsepower of people in an organisation to continuously work out better ways of getting the job done, nurturing innovation and improving the customer experience is at the core of competing successfully in today's information economy. This is the people part, these facts must be embraced by business leaders and made their highest priority. Managing corporate culture is no longer optional. Social intranets serve both as a catalyst to this process and to facilitate it.
Read more: Social Intranets: From publishing to collaboration