Alex McLachlan
User experience of agile project: I have never known a project to develop at such a rate."
- Bio
Senior Consultant
I work mainly on Agile Change Strategy projects for our not-for-profit and commercial clients including Agile CIO roles, strategic IT reviews and IT system procurement support. I specialise in IT architecture, website strategy, CRM, website CMS and web services.
I regularly contribute to the Agile Business Change blog.
Before to joining IndigoBlue, I worked as a project manager, consultant and design authority for Logica across a number of market sectors. After leaving Logica, I worked for security X-ray company CXR/Rapiscan as a programme manager reporting at board level and systems engineering manager on the company's key £50m new X-ray product development project.
My Most Recent Posts
Mobile Web to replace Apps
13 FEB 2012 | Posted in apps, HTML5, internet, mobile, website | Author Alex McLachlanFurther to my previous post "Mobile web, mobile apps and mobile commerce", web usability expert Jakob Nielsen predicts today that mobile web will become preferred over apps in the long term.
Incremental Processes and the US Primaries
10 FEB 2012 | Posted in agile business process, agile value, business value, incremental delivery, incremental process | Author Alex McLachlanIt’s interesting to look at the US Republican Party presidential primaries as an incremental process and to contrast it with the incremental process at the heart of Agile software development.
CRM Strategy - Vision Statement
31 JAN 2012 | Posted in business change, business strategy, CRM | Author Alex McLachlan |
1 Comment
Implementing a CRM is a business change - usually a major business change - that will have a wide impact on the organisation. I've found it useful to provide a vision statement for the CRM Strategy, based on a common structure. I try to keep the vision statement to a single page to make it more digestible to different groups of staff, so keeping the individual topics as bullet points.
The structure and contents of the CRM vision statement I've used are:
There are a number of important differences between CRM in the not-for-profit sector and CRM in the commercial sector. It's vital that both NFP organisations and suppliers recognise and understand these differences to make sure that new CRM systems fulfil the organisations' needs.
Our most read blog posts and insight articles from the last year cover a wide range of topics.
I've compiled the 10 most popular posts (including a couple of very popular posts from the end of 2010 that top the 2011 most read chart) grouped into key areas.
LinkedIn's Challenge to Membership Organisations
03 JAN 2012 | Posted in communities of practice, knowledge, LinkedIn, membership organisation, online communities, social media | Author Alex McLachlanLinkedIn's groups provide the potential for informal communities that can pose a challenge to membership organisations.
What is the best way to respond to this challenge and how can membership organisations give their members the experience they expect?
Technology Predictions for 2012
28 DEC 2011 | Posted in CMS, CRM, internet | Author Alex McLachlanThree of Real Story Group's Technology Predictions for 2012 particularly caught my eye: big data meets web marketing; CRM and CMS on collision course; and new job titles emerge.
The Trouble with Forums
15 DEC 2011 | Posted in business value, social media | Author Alex McLachlanForums are excellent for online discussions to support communities with common interests and I often find great enthusiasm for introducing forums when talking with companies and membership organisations. The problem though is that often they are just thinking of IT solutions rather than taking a business led approach.
The main issue is - what is the business value of the forum?
Multichannel Contact Management
05 DEC 2011 | Posted in contact management, CRM, social media | Author Alex McLachlanSome organisations focus almost entirely on their website as the main means of communication with contacts to the exclusion of other channels, particularly email marketing. There are two dangers to this - it assumes either that users will visit the organisation's website of their own volition if they have visited before; or that they will find the site from Google searches if they haven't visited before.
MY RECENT BLOG POSTS
Further to my previous post "Mobile web, mobile apps and mobile commerce", web usability expert Jakob Nielsen predicts today that mobile web will become preferred over apps in the long term.
MY RECENT ARTICLES
There were three excellent presentations at yesterday's NFP seminar, and a stimulating and interesting debate about how to get the best out of what is likely to be diminished funding levels in the future. Summary notes and the presentation slides are:
MY RECENT BOOK REVIEWS
"The Future of Thinking: Learning Institutions in a Digital Age" gives a very interesting analysis of the how social media and web 2.0 could and should change the way that learning institutions structure and run their learning. The book is aimed at universities, but is equally applicable to any organisation concerned with learning or knowledge, particularly professional membership institutions, such as the British Computer Society or Royal College of General Practitioners.
The book was itself developed collaboratively, with an early draft being posted for comment and a couple of seminars to discuss the main points.