Published on the 01/05/2013 | Written by Clare Coulson
Welcome back. A little piece of trivia crossed my desk last week informing me that the first website ever was published just 20 years ago – it’s hard to believe what’s happened since. The site (info.cern.ch) has been resurrected by the scientists at CERN to “preserve some of the digital assets that are associated with the birth of the web”. It’s hardly Lest We Forget, but it is a quaint milestone…[View emag]
INSIDE: Features: Outsourcing to China a hitchhiker’s guide, Fibre future the dark truth revealed, BYOD avoiding disaster, Marketing smarter win with automation, Social media does it really suck for B2B? Best case scenario – better business cases. IT success stories by industry: Manufacturing, Engineering, Retail, Distribution and Fabrication FROM THE EDITOR: The changes that the internet has wrought on our lives since are truly staggering. There has never been such a period of social change in history and it has opened up the world for us in many remarkable ways. Its power to create real-time interconnectedness on a global scale allows us to proliferate relationships, but amongst all that, we really must never forget the human touch. This came through loud and clear in our cover story on manufacturing in China. While technology has certainly sped and streamlined the process, Richard Chirgwin discovers that nothing can beat building relationships on the ground. Kids fashion icon Pumpkin Patch also discovered the power of partners going the extra mile when they re-engineered their supply chain solutions. The same need for human connections could be said for marketing automation and the use of social media. These new processes and channels make it easier to build and maintain customer relationships on the customers’ terms, but without good content and appropriate nurturing relationships will be empty ones. Our featured case studies show how important technology has become in B2B, particularly for ASB Marketing. The human element also came through strongly in our research into how to prevent IT project failures. The answer, according to the Better Business Cases model, is to take everything, including the softer human benefits, into account. All this is happening against a backdrop of vigorous debates on the best way to deliver ultra fast internet connectivity. This issue we have asked a number of pre-eminent telecommunications commentators, including Paul Budde and Paul Brislen, to shed some fibre optic light on what we can expect from ultra fast broadband and what we need to do to get our hands on some. One wonders if we will ever tire of the need for speed. I hope you enjoy the human touch we have brought to this issue but don’t forget you can find more on our website. And Twitter. And LinkedIn. And SlideShare. And… And… Happy reading, Clare Coulson
Editor
