More Than Tech

SAP has paid $8B for Qualtrics. That's a massive investment and one of the highest value acquisitions for a cloud software provider. What is Qualtrics? Qualtrics is the market leader in  "experience management" (EM), which is basically feedback, think of customer feedback, end user feedback, product feedback, etc. Experience (feedback) has become so central to our lives today, just think about Google reviews, Amazon reviews, Yelp reviews and just think of the reviews and surveys you get exposed to in every day life. I get sent surveys every time I fly, rent a car or even when I call my ISP customer support.  Although I'm no expert on the EX market, my experience as a consumer tells me that companies are spending a great deal of money and effort to gather this data. That said, I'm not convinced that they are always taking full advantage of the EX data they are gathering.  From qualtrics.com: Over 10,000 enterprises worldwide, including more than 75 pe...

I first read "The Goal" in the 1990's wen I was consulting. I wanted to deepen my understanding of factory scheduling, but I got so much more from it. Eli Goldratt believed that writing text books as novels made them easier to read, so The Goal is written in that format. I was fascinated and consumed the whole book in 3 evenings. Reading this book will teach you how to schedule a factory, but more importantly, it will teach you how to understand a system through understanding its bottlenecks. You will learn the Theory Of Constraints, which will help you understand constraints or bottlenecks and how they really are the key to process improvement. Whether you are a beginner to process improvement or a six sigma master black belt, The Goal will improve the way you look at processes. If you read one book this year, select The Goal. I re-read the Goal or I listen to it on audible once every few years and I recommend it widely. you can buy it here: https://www....