7 ways to keep IT workers happy

What does it cost to keep an IT worker happy? Perhaps the question should be asked, what does it cost if you don't? Some estimates place the cost of losing a valued IT worker at 150% of that employee's salary when all is said and done.

This is even more dramatic in IT when factoring in the time and costs of technical training, education, and certifications that can easily stretch into the tens of thousands. So, keeping your IT workers happy can be a definite advantage. Here are 7 easy ways to keep IT workers happy.

One way to keep workers happy that is not mentioned in the article is to make their work fun. Many of my customers tell me that m-Power makes programming fun again.

Of course, if you're interested in improving productivity, then try m-Power. Here's an example of a company that reduced development time by 98% using m-Power.

The next hot IT niche?

Application security has become an increasingly hot topic. It seems like I see new articles on the subject every day. Recently, Microsoft was in the news for putting a feature in Vista designed to annoy users and put pressure on software vendors to make their code more secure.

It seems like they may be on to something. According to an eWeek.com article, “75 percent of attacks are now targeting applications”. The article also speculates that developers who know how to incorporate security into application development will be in high demand, and easily command a higher salary.

You can read the entire eWeek.com article here.>>

If you're interested in developing secure java applications quickly, m-Power makes it easy. Here's a demo site that gives a good example of role based security, one the many security features that can be created with m-Power.

Managing IT Costs in a Weakened Economy--Improving ROI

In good times, 7 out of 10 companies look to keep IT costs down. If the economy weakens, the pressure to make deep cuts will soar. Will your CIO slash jobs or adopt other cost-reduction strategies? What are the best options for making a major difference to the bottom line in such cases.

Here's a quick presentation on improving your ROI through Web initiatives that can provide new areas to make money as well as save money.

If you'd like to learn more about improving your bottom line through Web initiatives, fill out this form.

Easily create "forward filtered" drop-down lists

When building a Web application, you may often find it useful to provide users with selection criteria using drop down lists that are "forward filtered" or dependent on each other.

For example, if you had drop-down menus for state and city, you could make them dependent so that choosing a particular state would repopulate the city drop-down menu to only include the cities in that state.

m-Power makes it incredibly easy to accomplish this. Here's how»

A sophisticated Web-based reporting system built in less than 3 weeks? IT Jungle shows how Boise Cascade pulled it off.

When Boise Cascade's management told them to develop a complex and comprehensive Web-based reporting system that could interface with multiple host systems...and then to do it in just three weeks time...they just about fell over. That deadline would be impossible to meet.

However, despite being short a developer, they not only got it done, but did it well! How? Here's what IT Jungle's reporter uncovered»

7 Top Tech Skills Employers Need

There is always a constant buzz around the hottest new areas of IT, but the savviest IT professionals understand that it's the core specialties that can provide solid career prospects.

Here are 7 Top Tech Skills That Employers Need»

And note #2. Many of our customers began teaching themselves Java application development using m-Power. Here's how one IT manager got started»

Corporate Darwinism: Using IT to create a competitive advantage

In his latest book, author Jim Champy studied 1,000 companies with double- to triple-digit growth, and then he produced a collection of case studies on the most innovative, growth-charged business models he found.

The common thread? These companies all drew on IT to produce substantial competitive advantages. Here's what else he found»

What Happened to Easy?

I can remember a while back when “free” meant something. It simply meant you were getting something and paying nothing. No longer. Now there are asterisks and fine print. To say an item is free these days invokes justifiable skepticism and spam filters.

Nothing is free.

A similarly disturbing trend is arising in the web application development world. “Easy” is going the way of “free”. When nearly every product claims to be easy, but nearly all aren’t, “easy” has been relegated to an overused marketing term.

So, what can I say? Is m-Power easy? Read our customer testimonials. Look through all the m-Power demos. Try our online lab.

You be the judge.

Modernization in 5 Practical Steps

This white paper lays out five key practical steps that legacy-based businesses should apply to modernize their systems, and how to do so using Java (much faster than PHP.)

The article demonstrates a practical application of these steps through a carefully detailed case study on how we modernized mrc's character-based mrc-Productivity Series legacy software into the fully Java-based m-Power solution, including all metrics, technologies, and timelines involved.

"Getting to Java in 5 Practical Steps" can be found in our white paper library.

Create a 'splash' for your Web applications

Splash pages are the pages that pop up in Web applications, most often to let the user know that the program is in the process of loading or processing their last request. But there are other areas where incorporating a splash page into your Web application can enhance your business. For example, you can:

• occupy a customer with useful information about your company's products or services that might interest them while they are waiting
  
• alert the user that he/she has submitted a form
  
• prevent your user from making the same request twice
  
• brand your products (or services) with an advertisement
  
• and more! If you know another way that a splash page can enhance your business, please share it in a comment to this post. I would love to hear your feedback.

This tip will help you see how easy it is to implement a splash page with our Web 2.0 reports.

Transfer data between databases in one step.

If your business has applications and business data housed on multiple databases, you know that transferring data between disparate databases can be a frustrating, problem-filled process.

Arduous steps are involved for IT and these steps often lead to transfer errors, impartial or incorrect data, and delays. And, when there are errors, you may not know it. That can spell big trouble for BI, reporting, order fulfillment and inventory management.

This new method gets rid of all of those troubles in just one easy step.

Ad-hoc reports aren't the answer to software package shortfalls. This is.

General Binding Company was in a bind. Their Movex software package didn't have the operational reporting capabilities they required and their IT department was being forced to create ad-hoc reports, taking time away from their more critical IT projects.

GBC knew it needed a better operational reporting system that could tie directly to Movex, but didn't want to make changes to the underlying core software package.

Here's how they did it»

20 things you can do in 20 minutes to be more successful

In just 20 minutes there are things you can do that can have a meaningful long-term effect on your IT organization, your career, your technology knowledge, your management skills and your relationship with the business.

I like #4 and #16, but then again, I've always thought asking the right questions is the key to those successes you never knew were possible.

Here's the list»

Northwestern University: Learn from the success of this Big Ten School

Northwestern University's Department of Athletics and Recreation always had a lot of balls in the air when it came to scheduling their facilities...and a lot of paper forms to track.

So, they decided to take it to the next level and develop a centralized Web scheduling system where users maintain their own accounts, individual facility managers are notified automatically with any changes to scheduling, and the system administrator assigns authorization so users only view the functions, menus, and facilities they have permission to.
See how cool it is for yourself». (Roll over menu items for more information.)

If you'd like to build one yourself, fill out this form»

Outsourcing: Executives value it, but watch out for shortcomings

There is no denying that sometimes using a third party to get things done quickly and efficiently simply makes the most sense in IT projects. But, there are also areas where CIOs need to be careful to pay attention to common pitfalls.

For example, this recent article on outsourcing reports that while 70% said they were either satisfied or very satisfied with their outsourced projects, more than a third felt they should have spent more time evaluating providers before signing on.

If you would like insights or questions into outsourcing application development, like knowing what questions to ask or where to start, let us know what you have on your plate. You may be unaware of some of the choices available to you.

Bring SQL's power to your application in a snap

SQL is a powerful language that many people use in their m-Power-generated Java applications...but many more can take advantage of it...and don't.

That may be because there's not a clear enough understanding of how easily m-Power's external object feature works with SQL. This quick article in the m-Power forum brings those capabilities home.

New web site content/feel

We recently added a new "products" section to our Web site that works a lot like the "hover" feature we've added to our web 2.0 servlets.

To check it out, first, go to http://www.mrc-productivity.com/products/

There's a new navigation in a menu bar directly below the main menu that now reads: Overview, Benefits, Demos, Testimonials, Specs, Pricing, Trial, and Contact.

If you want to find out more about what's on the screen, roll your mouse over the small gray icons.

Easy as pie.

If you'd like to incorporate this cool "hover" feature into your own applications, it's easy with m-Power. Just fill out this form for more information.

5 Innovations the CIO shouldn't miss

Here's a short list of five innovations that the CIO shouldn't overlook.

Note the fifth: AAA (Anytime, Anywhere, Anybody)and its expectation of pervasive mobility.

Really Simple Syndication - made simpler

If you use Yahoo, Google, or even a proprietary portal to subscribe to information on your favorite sports team, news, stock lists and financial information, or whatever interests you, that information is probably being put out there with an RSS feed.

Have you thought about how you can use RSS feeds to improve your business? Posting information about sales promotions, new products, technical support, and the like in a way where your customers, vendors, or employees can subscribe to it, can really help you get the word out quickly.

And now that is even easier. This document will show you how you can publish RSS information with your m-Power servlets.

If you would like to subscribe to our RSS feeds (which were built as described in the above document), click here to see how.

Three separate solutions in one.

One of our customers that had attended an ERP solution's user group event with the intention of finding one basic solution...found not one, but THREE different solutions to three very different business needs.

• They found a reporting solution that fit all of the criteria they were looking for over and above all of the usual players. Here's what they were looking for...Do you have the same reporting needs?
  
  
• They then created a series of wireless applications to allow their floor workers to quickly gain access to the information they needed from their blackberries.
  
  
• And, the icing on the cake was the shopping cart application they built with m-Power, like this one, that was custom to their wants and needs, that was less expensive (and took less time to implement) than the "canned" software package they were considering.

Fill out this form if you're interested in solving any of these problems in your business.