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{ Category Archives } business

Striving for guru status

One of my favourites from Jessica Hagy’s daily scribbles on index cards:

2007 05 12 Sandy Kemsley Comments (0)

How things go ’round and ’round

I had an email yesterday from my friend Robb, which I have his permission to publish here. Robb used to work for me — in fact, I think that I hired him a total of three times — and whenever a company seeking to hire him calls me for a reference, I always tell them [...]

2006 11 16 Sandy Kemsley BPM
Software design Comments (5)

Passion in entrepreneurship

I went to a literary reading last night that paid tribute to author Barbara Gowdy, who read from her novel in progress after we heard readings from five other great authors about their views and experiences of Gowdy. Catherine Graham, one of the other authors who spoke, made the most amazing statement in her short [...]

2006 03 09 Sandy Kemsley Comments (2)

Very personal banking

Almost a year ago, I wrote about a borrowing and lending exchange called Zopa that had just launched in the U.K. — a sort of peer-to-peer lending service where individuals participate directly with each other rather than through a bank or other financial institution. Since most of my clients are financial institutions, I found this [...]

2006 03 06 Sandy Kemsley Comments (1)

Choosing “same old same old” over “new and exciting”

I met with a friend today who works for a large bank (a former client of mine). That is, he used to work for the bank until his division, which provides institutional financial services through some pretty amazing application of technology, was spun off in a joint venture between the bank and an equally deep-pocketed [...]

2006 01 13 Sandy Kemsley Comments (0)

Business discontinuity

I’ve been developing something recently for a customer on business continuity planning, and it put me in mind of how a former customer handled a disaster without the benefit of much BCP. It was the ice storm of 1998, and this small financial company had their main processing site in downtown Montreal. Although the storm [...]

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2005 10 05 Sandy Kemsley Comments (1)

Clearly…good customer service

Since I am often involved in helping my customers improve their business processes and their customers’ experience, I’m always on the lookout for examples of good and bad customer service in any industry. I deal with a lot of suppliers for business and personal items, mostly online, and rarely does one jump up and surprise [...]

2005 04 21 Sandy Kemsley Comments (0)

A lesson in disintermediation

I recall learning the real meaning of the word “disintermediation” in the mid-90′s, when I was helping mutual fund companies build systems to do exactly that: cut out the middle-man (the broker or dealer) in some of the transactions that they have with their end-customers. The primary vehicle for this disintermediation is, of course, the [...]

2005 03 22 Sandy Kemsley Comments (0)