THE WELCH COMPANY
440 Davis Court #1602
San Francisco, CA 94111-2496
415 781 5700
February 8, 2002
03 00050 61 02020801
Mr. Jerry Nord
CSG Systems Inc.
2525 117th Avenue
Omaha, NE 68138
..
Subject:
Business Planning for SDS
Dear Jerry,
Thanks for
your letter
today. Glad to hear SDS is still on the radar screen.
..
You might note comments by
Judge Douglas
on using SDS for jury duty, to see how it aligns with your recent
experience serving as a juror.
.. The challenge of getting things done, where you mention
in your letter today
poor productivity in meetings, reflects a larger problem that
in the 21st century communication has become
the biggest risk in enterprise. The market opportunity is to
turn communication into an intelligence asset.
.. Your analysis on December 13, 2001 showing loss of $40K per day from
failed communication is multiplied many times over in
aerospace,
DOD,
Microsoft,
Enron,
Intel,
etc.
..
SDS technology provides visibility to overcome limited span of attention. It
obtains relevant, accurate and comprehensive information when needed for doing
the work, and it provides a flexible structure for capturing the record, adding
intelligence, and planning follow up, so there is a continual supply of
organizational
memory available later
to guide doing the work. It doesn't do much good to have a
powerful technology
for looking things up, if there is not, also, an efficient way
of generating intelligence that is worth the time to look up.
All of these elements must be
integrated,
so that each supports the other, in
order to be effective. That is why Lotus Notes and other management systems,
like Outlook, the Palm Pilot, Knowledge Management, etc., have not been
effective. Better management requires intelligence, which is an integrating and
synthesizing process supported by SDS (see for example report by
US Army Corps
of Engineers .. Recent remarks at the War College (Department of Defense) by
Don Rumsfeld
on the need for proactive management to
strengthen national security, and growing calls for better
accountability
in business, both show a rise in demand for intelligence enabled by SDS.
.. Look forward to hearing from you when time permits.