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Radcliff Group LLC Receives 2010 Best of Lake Norman Award
U.S. Commerce Association’s Award Plaque Honors the Achievement
NEW YORK, NY, May 17, 2010 -- Radcliff Group LLC has been selected for the 2010 Best of Lake Norman Award in the Business Consulting category by the U.S. Commerce Association (USCA). The USCA "Best of Local Business" Award Program recognizes outstanding local businesses throughout the country. Each year, the USCA identifies companies that they believe have achieved exceptional marketing success in their local community and business category. These are local companies that enhance the positive image of small business through service to their customers and community. Various sources of information were gathered and analyzed to choose the winners in each category. The 2010 USCA Award Program focuses on quality, not quantity. Winners are determined based on the information gathered both internally by the USCA and data provided by third parties.
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From Baselinemag.com
This cascading nature "provides a line of sight between each individual, what they're working on, the unit they support, and how that impacts the strategy of the whole enterprise," says Michael Radcliff, CTO of Ingersoll-Rand, which recently worked with Gold to set up an IT scorecard.
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Meanwhile, at Owens Corning, Mike Radcliff, CIO, says:
"Our staff has to be able to work with incredible ambiguity, be self-confident, simplify and trust others, because we have an absolute interdependency with other departments.Most of all we have to embrace 'good enough' reengineering, good enough that we can progress ... not necessarily what we'd do in the ideal world."
Cool Tool For the Hyperlinked Organization
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CIO MICHAEL RADCLIFF leaves all software development to his vendors.
Michael Radcliff, CIO of Ingersoll Rand, the industrial manufacturing company (2001 profit margin: about 4.5 percent).
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 | Radcliff says he lets vendors
deal with software development.Instead of customizing software in-house
or allocating staff to develop programs, he gets his vendors to do the
development and customization work on applications as often as
possible.That way, the cost of development is not borne by him, and
there's an immediate ROI, Radcliff says."It keeps the capital investment
on the vendor's balance sheet.And if we're not spending money on
development, we can put those funds toward deployment." |
Radcliff is rolling out a new finance initiative that will add options for customers who want to lease, rent or buy items such as golf carts, air compressors or construction equipment from Ingersoll Rand business units.When he bought the software from a vendor (he declines to say which one), he gave its representatives a list of customization requirements and let them do the development."We don't have a lot of discretionary spending, so we have to be very, very careful where our money goes," Radcliff says.
Hunt Down Waste and Kill It Some of the hidden costs of IT are not exactly IT-related.But that doesn't mean you can't find savings there.
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Shortly after Owens Corning implemented SAP R/3 for its core domestic operations late last year, its IT organization moved from being mainly a back-office group to one involved in a broader range of core business activities, says Michael Radcliff, former CIO and now VP of Owens Corning's new System Thinking Information Group.Within the new group, IT has become the linkage point with all our customers and suppliers, he says.
System Thinking is more than just a name for a corporate organization-it's a trademarked name for how Owens Corning does business.Instead of separately selling shingles and various roofing vents, for example, it now sells products, processes, services, and technical support for complete roofing systems.We're at a point where business and IT goals are the same, Radcliff says.
Among the post-ERP technologies Owens Corning is putting in place is a data warehouse that analyzes the wealth of new data generated by its SAP system.The warehouse provides valuable information on customer profitability, product-line profitability, sales performance, and supply-chain activities.
Radcliff is also looking at warehouse automation and tighter ERP integration with shop-floor process control.
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From Spherion News
"This alliance integrates the expertise of technology, skill and experience of two leading providers of legal support services," said Mike Radcliff, president of INTEGREX."By working together, each company will now be better positioned to serve as a single source for a wider range of services to our clients in both law firms and corporate legal departments."
"The two alliances that we've formed this year with Interim Legal Services and Merrill Document Management Services, will allow our company and our alliance partners' companies to meet our clients' needs with speed and flexibility," states Radcliff."We are now an organization that is aligned with industry leaders to offer the best people and the best technology to meet our clients' requirements."
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Strategic Outsourcing: It's your move...
All the moves we've made could be classified as tactical, and they sound that way when I describe them, says Mike Radcliff, vice president and CIO.But they have been central in letting us move forward the strategy of Owens Corning, the business.These are alliances with companies that have enabled us to enter new markets and new geography, introduce new products, and jump ahead of the competition in service..
Just how did Radcliff achieve this goal.For starters, his outsourcing arrangement costs less than supporting his ancient systems.Those savings, he says, have allowed him to adopt new technology, which provides new capabilities, faster.Another piece comes from the variable cost structure he negotiated for his legacy systems.There, the less he used the old systems, the less he paid for them.And finally, by outsourcing the maintenance and distribution for every PC, server, and network in 180 locations, he replaced Owens Corning's infrastructure in less than one year, speeding up the adoption of SAP.That's a clear example of cycle time with direct productivity benefits, says Radcliff.
If I had any advice, my first suggestion would be to keep the time frames smaller, preferably in the three to five year range, he says.I've also learned over the years that it's important to clearly articulate the basic principles so that both parties can win.You won't have a successful or friendly agreement if one party thinks it's losing or can win only at the other's expense, Radcliff says.
Or to paraphrase Hamlet : The relationship's the thing.Forget about that, and you might find yourself and your company in deep jeopardy.
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"ACS' reputation in the BPO and IT marketplace for quality service and technical expertise were two of the reasons we selected them," said Mike Radcliff, Ingersoll-Rand's Chief Technology Officer."In addition, the ACS business plan and company culture support Ingersoll-Rand's outsourcing strategy."
Ingersoll-Rand expects to realize savings of approximately $70 million over the course of the seven-year contract.
ACS' reputation in the BPO and IT marketplace for quality service and technical expertise were two of the reasons we selected them," said Mike Radcliff, Ingersoll-Rand's Chief Technology Officer."In addition, the ACS business plan and company culture support Ingersoll-Rand's outsourcing strategy."
Ingersoll-Rand expects to realize savings of approximately $70 million over the course of the seven-year contract.
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ToolBase E-News
Mike Radcliff, president of Integrex (www.integrexventures.com), said HOMExperts is just one aspect of a corporate strategy by Owens Corning through Integrex to redefine the boundaries of how a traditional manufacturing company can generate growth with a portfolio of services not found in any other single source.
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From The Cluetrain Manifesto
Meanwhile, at Owens Corning, Mike Radcliff, CIO, said (also in InformationWeek):
Our staff has to be able to work with incredible ambiguity, be self-confident, simplify and trust others...Most of all we have to embrace "good enough" reengineering, good enough that we can progress... not necessarily what we'd do in the ideal world.
But it's not just systems that are imperfect.More important, so are we humans.Say it with me: humans are imperfect.
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