Roadblock: The CFO

THE OBSTACLE Investments in new technology don’t always pay off, and that means, these days, the hardest person to convince of the validity of taking on a new project is the chief financial officer. Even when a project is on track, financial pressures within a company can result in an

Product Lifecycle Management: A Primer

What is it? A collection of software that tracks all the electronic information about the life of a product. A Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) system links together all of the processes required to design, build, deploy and maintain the product. Why would I buy it? To save money and improve

Baan: Back From the Brink

During the mid-1990s, Baan was one of the top four makers of enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, along with SAP, Oracle and PeopleSoft. But the Netherlands-based company fell behind in the technology and marketing race, to the point where it faced bankruptcy by 2000. That same year, Baan accepted a

Establishing Proof of Life(Cycle)

After years of dithering about just what makes up product lifecycle management (PLM)—in fact, after not being able to agree on what to call it, how to pitch it, or what to do with it once you have it—companies are finally realizing the value of connecting the various phases of

The Bottom Line Per … Roger Hull

Title insurance is something you don’t think about until you buy a home. When it comes time to get it, paperwork for the insurance adds to the processing bottleneck. Hull, CIO of First American Corp., wants to change that. He supervised a staff of 100 to build a single system

By the Numbers: January 2003

Where the Jobs Are A poll of 1,400 chief information officers projects little change in first-quarter trends over Q4 02. Security professionals are among the most-sought candidates, says survey-taker Robert Half International. Tech Budgets Increase! Ok, Not Really. After a year that seemed to bring fresh market woes with each

Look What 3-D Design Software Is Cooking

Gary Millard used to have a standard recipe for cooking up new kitchen designs for his clients. The chief executive of Wooden Thumb, a Milwaukee full-service kitchen design and construction firm, would typically sit down with clients and go over their shoe-box full of ideas. His design team would then

Voice of Experience: Dan Vantucci

Dan Vantucci ITT Fluid Technology VP, CIO Saddle River, N.J. www.ittind.com MANAGER’S PROFILE: In the information technology field since 1967, Vantucci came over to ITT from Xerox in 1991. Has a sign in his office: “Don’t Forget: Value Is Not Technology—Value Is Process.” And process, he says, “is people, information

Gotcha! Creating Effective Visual Sales Tools

Did you know that: 3-D images need to be intimately tied to data about the products they represent. In office design, this means that changes to the visual representation of a layout must be instantly reflected in a product and price list. But it also means enforcing configuration rules so