Shanghai’s Push for AI: Microsoft’s Role in Boosting Businesses

Katherine Hudson likes to have good, clean fun. But this was no situation comedy. After almost five years on the job, she knew Brady Corporation needed to focus on a complete overhaul of the way it made its “high performance” labels and signs. And she would need the best and

Brady may be basing the ambitious $30 million overhaul of its business processes on SAP software. But the label and sign maker declined to use SAP’s products in two key areas: product design and customer relationship management. The reasons are straightforward. Brady process engineers found the SAP platform lacking in

When the going gets tough, the tough sell metrics. Metrics, that is, that could help them sell more of their own products. With corporate budgets tighter than a tick, it’s not just consultants such as Gartner Inc. hawking analyses of costs of, and returns on, information systems. Increasingly, technology suppliers

Gregory Buoncontri joined Pitney Bowes, a manufacturer of postage meters and developer of mail and logistics software, after serving in a similar role at Novartis Pharmaceuticals, Sandoz Pharmaceuticals and industrial-technology company Asea Brown Boveri, Inc. At Pitney Bowes, he oversees an information technology department that includes 400 employees and a

In the more than 20 years I’ve been a chief information officer, I’ve found the most difficult thing in introducing new technologies isn’t putting in the hardware and software. It’s changing how people work that is difficult. When you don’t prepare people for change, that’s when you get breakage or

Lisa HambletVP, Business-to-Business E-commerceStaplesFramingham, Mass.www.staples.com Manager’s Profile: Prior to joining $10.7 billion Staples in 1990, Hamblet was a financial analyst at computer hardware company Data General. She has a BBA from the University of Massachusetts and an MBA from Bentley College. Her Responsibility: Hamblet sets strategy for stapleslink.com, a business-to-business

I remember the first time someone tried to persuade me of the business value of online chat. It was 1994, and a friendly bunch of entrepreneurs at a company called Ubique were touting a technology that allowed people to exchange not just text messages, but audio messages in real time.