The sign of a smart IS decision... The sign of a smart decision about information systems isn't based on technical details alone; it's based on how well that decision contributes to the overall success of the business. If you want to make your firm's investment in IS really pay off, you need to approach IS from a truly managerial perspective. Now with Paul Gray's Manager's Guide to Making Decisions About IS, you'll learn how IS can help the organization as a whole, and how to make key decisions on whether to undertake, upgrade, or decommission large software systems. You'll also learn about the capabilities of IS, such as the many uses of a data warehouse and using IS to gain competitive intelligence. See the big picture. The Manager's Guide to Making Decisions About IS first focuses on big picture issues, such as hardware, software, and the Internet; strategic uses of IS; aligning IS with the business; types of applications; and inter-organizational systems. Make decisions on big-ticket applications. Gray then provides you with essential knowledge that will help you make informed decisions on big-ticket applications, including electronic commerce, enterprise requirements planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), data warehousing, knowledge management, and business intelligence. Explore current IS issues. Finally, the Manager's Guide to Making Decisions About IS examines the IS issues that managers are currently facing in today's business, including outsourcing, systems integration, supply chain, people issues, mergers and acquisitions, infrastructure, and privacy, security, and ethics. Armed with this knowledge, you'll have the confidence and understanding you need to sign-off on IS decisions that will have a valuable impact on your organization.

Are you a customer success or support executive curious about adapting industry best practices to your organization? Are you a newly-promoted customer success or support manager with plenty of ideas, but not much management experience? Or are you an executive with no hands-on experience with customer success, but wanting to learn more about how to decrease churn and improve revenue expansion from existing customers? The Art of Support is a practical guide for managers and executives that answers your questions. In it, you will find: - Best practices for customer success and support, from designing customer lifecycle journeys, to managing day-to-day activities, to measuring results. - Nuanced recommendations to build or improve your organization. - Dozens of practical tools you can use right away such as customer scorecards, sample support portfolios, hiring checklists, decision trees for selecting support models, job ladders, and budget templates.