Optimisation is brilliant. It can turn increase profitability, reduce risk, increase output and even turn an non-viable project or factory into a viable one. It can save time, produce less waste and better utilise inputs so that costs are reduced.But it’s difficult, right? That’s why so few people pay real attention to it, why so…
…and a lesson about business process optimisation that you should learn The New York Times recently posted an incredibly interesting article about Google, providing more detail about their current search algorithms and processes. Google Keeps Tweaking Its Search Engine is definitely worth a read. Reading the article made we wonder for a moment whether Google…
When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. I first heard this quote when dealing with performance measurement and remuneration structures for senior management. In that scenario, the danger is that you get exactly what you measure rather than the good behaviours related to or driven by the metrics chosen.…
Apparently, it was Benjamin Franklin who said “In this world, nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” Without going into a detailed analysis of whether death is certain, and whether there are tax-haven countries with sufficiently low taxes to stretch the point a little, I have some comments to make on…
Gold Fields purchased Western Areas (through a share swap) and thus inherited the notoriously “toxic” hedge-book of Western Areas. This event is worth considering in the light of my previous blog on hedging. Let’s apply some analysis and critical thinking here. First, some real-world imperfections. The hedge book was created in the time of the…
Entrepreneurs are hailed as saviours of modern society. The current international paradigm (and one which is growing ever stronger in South Africa) is biased towards the idea that career success requires one to create something new and build up something from scratch – head out on one’s own and conquer the earth. OK, this doesn’t…
I’ve said before that I’m not an expert on Search Engine Optimisation, but it certainly is an interesting area where businesses of all sizes can reap definite benefits from applying a little analysis, maths and science to the problem. Have a look at this article explaining, in reasonably simple terms, some of the background behind…
SEOmoz.org provide some great resources on search engine optimisation (“SEO”). Recently, they performed a really interesting analysis comparing actual site traffic for 25 sites that volunteered their data against indicators from a range of competitive intelligence metrics from sources such as Google PageRank, Technorati Rank, Alexa Rank and SEOmoz.org’s very own Page Strength Tool. The…
