Remove Cost Center Remove Marketing Remove Operations
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How Cloud Computing Is Changing Management

Harvard Business Review

The complex calculations of the field known as Operations Research were enabled by mainframe computing. The cloud is also a common repository for the collection and analysis of new data, and the place where an increasing number of artificial intelligence operations, like image and speech recognition, are conducted.

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There Are 4 Futures for CMOs (Some Better Than Others)

Harvard Business Review

These executives have responsibilities we might expect to reside within marketing. That leaves Chief Marketing Officers with a decision — do you see the rise of these roles as an opportunity or a threat? Marketing faces a particular challenge since customer engagement has traditionally been considered its domain.

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The Internet Shouldn’t Run on Dirty Energy

Harvard Business Review

In a recent, high-profile example, HP announced in July that it will power all of its Texas data centers with wind energy for 12 years while lowering its operating costs. Here’s why now is the time right to invest in renewable energy sources for the internet: Renewable energy can help reduce a cost center.

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How One Company Made Its Analytics Investment Pay Off

Harvard Business Review

The ABU was set up as a centralized profit center with ambitious targets and with direct reporting to the chief operations officer; most often, similar units are organized as cost centers with no specific targets. Targets and accountability. Support from the top. Communicating with strategic goals in mind.

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The First Step to Fixing U.S. Manufacturing

Harvard Business Review

But while the largest US firms have seen their domestic revenues grow more than twice as fast as the sector average even in the domestic market, their smaller suppliers—the firms that provide them with the materials and components they depend on—have experienced negative growth. manufacturers are taking notice.

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Shadow IT Is Out of the Closet

Harvard Business Review

An impatient marketing or finance manager would, on the sly, secure some extra budget money and hire a contractor to build a little database that tracked mailing addresses or top-line financials. Slowly but surely, as the little database grew bigger and bigger, the manager would wedge the cost into her operating budget.

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Develop Your Company’s Cross-Functional Capabilities

Harvard Business Review

You’ll often find customer relationship management within marketing, budgeting within finance, supply-chain management within operations, outsourcing within procurement, training within HR, and new product development within R&D. Some of the first business functionaries were railroad telegraph operators who managed schedules.