Category Archives: My Courses

Using WordPress.com to build small business websites

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While WordPress is a hugely popular blogging platform, it is entirely possible to use it in order to create small business websites. Those who do not know or care to learn HTML, but who still want to go beyond basic text editing, can use WordPress.com in conjunction with Windows Live Writer to create multicolumn tables, galleries, etc.

If you do decide to go this way, I’ve written a brief WordPress guide for my students in PBA333 that you might find useful. The original Greek version can be found as: Οδηγός WordPress.com. The English version translated by by Manolis Diakourakis (thanks so much Manolis!) can be found in WordPress.com guide.

Here’s also some free advice: less is more, don’t try to go way beyond the typography and overall format that the theme designer is providing – these people are professionals and their livelihood depends on having a good taste.

Joomla may be more focused towards ecommerce, with it’s product categories and shopping cart infrastructure, and Squarespace.com can build some solid landing pages, but WordPress is definitely an option to consider.

Risks of outsourcing: poaching

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In our discussion on the hidden costs and risks of outsourcing, we discussed «poaching» (a term coined by Eric Clemons of the Wharton School) as a potential problem for firms. Poaching occurs when the outsourcer takes advantaged of privileged information for its own gain, at the detriment of the firm.

The example that I discussed in some length was of my consulting client (major Greek bank) suspecting that 3rd party call centers routinely poach sensitive customer information from financial institutions (banks, insurers, etc.) and sell it to competitors (or worse!). The suspicion is that customer info poaching is done by rogue employees, without knowledge by the outsourcer. My client used to take extreme measures to protect itself from such problems, such as insisting on using its own personnel on the floor and control room of the call center, for outbound calls.

Another good example of poaching accusations concerns the actions of iYogi, a customer support company that was managing live customer support for Avast, the anti-virus maker. According to Brian Krebs’ blog, Avast asserts that iYogi was using the live customer support calls to push for expensive support packages, by convincing Avast users that they had problems that they did not have.

In any case, poaching is a real problem that is expensive to monitor and even more expensive when the threat materializes…

Pic by barracuadz, Flickr (cc license)

Android Market vs Apple’s App Store

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We recently discussed major differences between how Apple’s app-store is set up versus how Google’s android market is set up, especially regarding the process (or lack thereof) of screening the applications that are offered through their markets.

Last week Symantec identified 13 different malicious applications in the Android market with 5 million combined downloads between them. Symantec’s announcement was, of course, highly embarrassing for the “self-policed” system set up by Google. However what was even more embarrassing was Ars Technica’s report yesterday that a week later, six of these applications were still available in the Android market!

I know that we explained in class that the process differences reflect fundamentally different strategies from Google and Apple in the management of their platforms, but it is getting very hard to justify Google’s complete hands-off approach…

Pic by Don, Flickr (cc license)

Advantages and challenges of contract manufacturing

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The Inditex (Zara) case that we discussed today, gave us an opportunity to expand on the role of contract manufacturing to modern supply chains. Even though your notes mainly mention cost savings as a major driving force behind contract manufacturing, It has been convincingly argued that Asian economies offer other advantages as well.

For example Apple has noted that if it were to manufacture its iPhones in the USA, it would need 9 months just to find the thousands of engineers that would be needed to oversee operations.

In addition, the amount of flexibility that Chinese and other Asian factories can display in production scheduling is beyond anything that can be matched by western firms. (read: How the U.S. Lost Out on iPhone Work including the memorable story about waking up 8,000 workers in the middle of the night to start the 12 hour shift for the first production run of the iPhone).

Unfortunately, such flexibility often comes by engaging in serious violations of ethical norms that most western firms adhere to and also serious violations of labor and safety laws. An article published 2 days ago in the New York Times does a superb job in describing these problems: In China, Human Costs Are Built Into an iPad

Pic by R. Donovan, Flickr (cc license)

Fake reviews, image manipulation and the efforts to stop it

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In our discussion on the increasing importance of consumer reviews we talked about businesses’ efforts to enhance and even manipulate their image online.  A collection of carefully staged hotel pictures can be found at oyster.com. Note that most these pictures are not digitally manipulated (photoshopped) and it is unlikely that we will soon be able to develop automated tools to detect this type of manipulation.

It is easier to detect photoshopped images, which are usually employed to sell beauty and lifestyle products. A recent scientific article on the topic can be found here and a relevant funny video (that also features a well known Greek pop-star @ 1:45) is available from you tube.

Researchers also try to develop tools that will analyze the language of text reviews and spot fakes. A nice article on this was posted in the New York Times.