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    <title><![CDATA[Discussion on Cost-saving strategies: Automate clerical processes ]]></title>
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    <item>
        <title><![CDATA[Some definitions]]></title>
        <link><![CDATA[http://www.techrepublic.com/forum/discussions/14-141721-1549464]]></link>
        <description><![CDATA[When the persons performing the tasks request a solution so that they can be more productive that is sufficient enough for me to move forward with the request.  In this case, everybody wins except possibly the competition.  When management makes the same request, the question is asked as to how this either increases revenue, decreases costs, or adds to what the customer perceives as having value.  efficient - less time consuming, fewer errors, less individual frustration.productive - doing just about anything else that contributes to the organization moving forward and winning in competition.  Productive could also mean decreased overtime.  In this case they simply get to go home, and have a life.Waste ? not using a resource to it?s full potential, not allowing a person to enjoy their job, having personnel perform tasks that equate to splashing water ? even when they are very good at it.  This does not interpret as laying employees off.  That is a desperate act of a failed leadership strategy.As far as office productivity tools, everyone has a favorite brand.  I agree that office tools are not used effectively by most employees.  Your observation that these undeveloped skills are carried into management is right on target.  But, I was not focused on office tools, more on critical systems.For what it is worth, there is a difference between persons being picked as managers and real leaders.  The organization bestows the power of leadership on a manager.  Their continued leadership is based on the consistent attainment of strategic objectives.  Thus, quite different from those we usually look to for leadership, a natural leader.   One you may want to follow, and the other you are paid to follow.  What improvements?  It is sufficient to say that they are the key competitor in their segment and are enjoying increasing profits, still in business, and providing employment.As far as there being a whole new category of risks, yes I can agree risks always exist, some have even surprised me.]]></description>
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        <dc:creator><![CDATA[YourAverageManager]]></dc:creator>
        <pubDate>Wed, 12 Nov 2003 21:11:40 -0800</pubDate>
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    <item>
        <title><![CDATA[What &quot;improvements&quot;?]]></title>
        <link><![CDATA[http://www.techrepublic.com/forum/discussions/14-141721-1549123]]></link>
        <description><![CDATA[?It really is a sad state of affairs when eliminating waste and making improvements in efficiency are now viewed as a negative.? I can respond to that on two levels. First, as I pointed out originally, ?office automation? has not exactly distinguished itself as an efficiency improvement. I am the rare IT professional who worked my way through college as a typist (giving away my age)?and then got a degree in accounting. I?m pretty adept with word processors and spreadsheets. But for many people these are undeveloped skills, even after years spent hunched over a keyboard. And expecting managers promoted directly from line work to automatically have the people skills of a supervisor is in itself woefully bad management. The replacement of clerical staff and first-line supervisors by workstations, in my observation, has not brought about substantial cost or quality improvements and in fact has created whole new categories of risk. Second, what are the working defintions of  ?waste? and ?effiency?? Restructuring the job market with entry barriers to entire demographic groups is a waste of humanity. And allowing an entire economy to be run by leaders who never had an opportunity to develop people skills under the watchful eye of a supervisor is proving to be catastrophically inefficient.]]></description>
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        <dc:creator><![CDATA[DC_GUY]]></dc:creator>
        <pubDate>Wed, 12 Nov 2003 06:50:00 -0800</pubDate>
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    <item>
        <title><![CDATA[SEI CMM]]></title>
        <link><![CDATA[http://www.techrepublic.com/forum/discussions/14-141721-1548973]]></link>
        <description><![CDATA[Actually Level Zero is defined ... SEI Who??? Glen FordCan Da SoftwareIS Project ManagementBusiness Systems Improvement]]></description>
        <guid><![CDATA[http://www.techrepublic.com/forum/discussions/14-141721-1548973]]></guid>
        <dc:creator><![CDATA[PMPsicle]]></dc:creator>
        <pubDate>Tue, 11 Nov 2003 19:31:36 -0800</pubDate>
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    <item>
        <title><![CDATA[Keep people in mind...]]></title>
        <link><![CDATA[http://www.techrepublic.com/forum/discussions/14-141721-1548925]]></link>
        <description><![CDATA[Lets not mix automation with redundancy or loss of jobs.  Basically the tasks, duties, actions still need to be carried out, they are just in a different form than what they were before. Albeit streamlined, efficient etc.  This does not mean that an individual is no longer required in that organisation only that the organisation has an opportunity to grow and take with it all of its people to the next platform in the evolution in the workplace.Gani]]></description>
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        <dc:creator><![CDATA[gozturk@...]]></dc:creator>
        <pubDate>Tue, 11 Nov 2003 16:04:23 -0800</pubDate>
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    <item>
        <title><![CDATA[Sensitivities are Exposed]]></title>
        <link><![CDATA[http://www.techrepublic.com/forum/discussions/14-141721-1548846]]></link>
        <description><![CDATA[Present IT sensitivities are exposed at any indication of receiving or contributing to job losses.  The response is what it is, and appropriate.  Cold as it is, the article is just as appropriate.  Offering ways to cut inefficient costs out of a business was for a time considered a good thing.  Had those same clerks, secretaries, managers, or executive assistants initialed the contact, as they did in the past, produces a different feeling doesn?t it.  Grim Reaper, or efficiency enabler?  It is remarkable that difference in view over the last few years.Perhaps it boils down to expectations.  Before, the expectation was that the hours saved would be redirected to higher value efforts that utilized more of the intellectual capabilities of these impacted individuals.  We expected that these people would be better off by our actions.  The direction and size of the employee pool was never under our authority, we only had a hope in the integrity of their leadership.  Here is a positive, look at the human response, these are not cold uncaring IT guys at all!Presently painted as a commodity how else could IT individuals respond?  The answer is simple.  You are an individual operating in your own environment.  You know your surroundings and the forces at play.  Realize that everyone has some impact on the business succeeding or failing, it takes a group effort.  You alone can not individually effect that outcome.  You can contribute in the best way you know how.  Action or inaction it is either a plank or a bridge, either way you are walking it right now.It really is a sad state of affairs when eliminating waste and making improvements in efficiency are now viewed as a negative.  These are the things that keep the business competitive by offering the opportunity to invest the savings in labor or dollars into new initiatives.  I will stop here.  It is a very gray day.]]></description>
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        <dc:creator><![CDATA[YourAverageManager]]></dc:creator>
        <pubDate>Tue, 11 Nov 2003 11:51:56 -0800</pubDate>
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    <item>
        <title><![CDATA[Survival of the fittest?]]></title>
        <link><![CDATA[http://www.techrepublic.com/forum/discussions/14-141721-1548806]]></link>
        <description><![CDATA[[MS Word? If only!! If ONLY the MS monopoly hadn't killed WordPerfect. Trust me if you've never used it.] I have. Funny how that &quot;survival of the fittest&quot; thing doesn't really work when big money back ups the less desireable option in things like word processors, operating systems, etc.]]></description>
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        <dc:creator><![CDATA[thatboy]]></dc:creator>
        <pubDate>Tue, 11 Nov 2003 09:45:38 -0800</pubDate>
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    <item>
        <title><![CDATA[WordPerfect, yes!]]></title>
        <link><![CDATA[http://www.techrepublic.com/forum/discussions/14-141721-1548690]]></link>
        <description><![CDATA[Last I heard, it's still on the market. The company merged with Corel and now offers a suite of office software that competes with MS Office. This is good timing for anyone who wants to go up against the Jet City Grungeworks. Their security risks are getting a lot of attention and making a lot of people nervous, while at the same time appearing completely unsolveable. At least not by an organization dedicated to remaining at CMM Level Zero. (That's defined as, &quot;We can't even spell SEI CMM.&quot;) In addition to the Corel/WP campaign, Mozilla is picking up a lot of frightened IE users. Apple is aggressively courting the corporate sector, now that VirtualPC has stifled the complaint, &quot;But our business software won't run in a Macintosh shop.&quot;]]></description>
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        <dc:creator><![CDATA[DC_GUY]]></dc:creator>
        <pubDate>Tue, 11 Nov 2003 06:17:21 -0800</pubDate>
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    <item>
        <title><![CDATA[Well, what we _do_ is automation!]]></title>
        <link><![CDATA[http://www.techrepublic.com/forum/discussions/14-141721-1548671]]></link>
        <description><![CDATA[Your points are well taken but have to put in context.  (He said -- coming into this because the liberal arts degrees didn't pay the bills.)The second half of the 20th century with the rise of the information society mirrored the age of classical capitalism in the the U.S. in the second half of the 19th century in many ways.  We saw a large migration of a major part of the population from rural areas into metropolitan pink collar jobs.  If a secretary today can do the work of 10 secretaries in 1950, she isn't proportionally getting paid ten times as much as a secretary in 1950.  In fact, class disparities in income haven't been higher.  And the people at the top of the heap have not been so pompously happy about this since Herbert Spencer coined the phrase &quot;Survival of the fittest&quot; in describing his conjectures on _social_ Darwinism in the 1800s.  At the same time the bar to employment has never been set higher at a time when our schools are in crisis.But these are issues better addressed by Michael Moore than tech journals.[MS Word?  If only!!  If ONLY the MS monopoly hadn't killed WordPerfect.  Trust me if you've never used it.]]]></description>
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        <dc:creator><![CDATA[smchris]]></dc:creator>
        <pubDate>Tue, 11 Nov 2003 04:16:17 -0800</pubDate>
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    <item>
        <title><![CDATA[What we DON'T need right now is more automation!]]></title>
        <link><![CDATA[http://www.techrepublic.com/forum/discussions/14-141721-1548272]]></link>
        <description><![CDATA[Rather than letting the automation juggernaut continue to run rampant throughout our civilization, isn't it about time to put it out to pasture while we take stock of its (arguable) accomplishments? I've devoted my entire working life to IT but even I can see the down side of runaway automation. Just to limit the discussion to our own industry, the workstation revolution, rather than ushering in a golden age of better software with more functionality, is at the root of many of our most intractable problems. We &quot;don't need&quot; first-line supervisors anymore because it's &quot;so easy&quot; for managers to do their job. As a result no one in IT ever develops the people skills that come with supervisory experience and our organizations now behave like gigantic dysfunctional families. We &quot;don't need&quot; clerical staff anymore because it's &quot;so easy&quot; do do our own clerical work on these blasted workstations. Have you ever watched a busy executive waste half an hour pleading with MS Word to number the sections in a report correctly? How about the social costs of automation? We keep automating entry-level jobs out of existence and then wonder why there are so many young people who haven't matriculated into the labor pool. Eventually all of our products will be created by automation, guided by a few high priests -- a class each of us assumes will include himself. Who then will have the money to buy all those products? It's time to remember that moderation is the key to long-term success and prosperity.]]></description>
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        <dc:creator><![CDATA[DC_GUY]]></dc:creator>
        <pubDate>Mon, 10 Nov 2003 07:37:38 -0800</pubDate>
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