Another great post from Stefan Töpfer, this time on concerns related to "data fragmentation," a process that has accompanied many of us in the move to take advantage of the benefits of big data and cloud-based software .  His first reason, the double entry of data, is one that is easy to overlook when you've moved only part of your data to a new system, but still must rely on an older or more compliant system as well.  Head over to the full post to see the other four concerns he has.  IT Business Edge has some great statistics on data fragmentation that you may find useful if attempting to tackle it in your own business.

We spotted this infographic at the Small Business Blog.  It highlights especially the impact of scheduling technology, but the points can be applied to other intraoffice and interoffice applications as well.

Amongst our office support products, AGi frequently establishes and staffs call center operations for businesses and the federal contracts.  This YEC article on Small Biz Trends highlights a number of call center best practices that we'd like to recommend. Especially this point:

“Do your research, and shop around. We have found that there is a huge difference in the way call centers handle their calls. Some read word-for-word from a script and some use more of a roadmap to steer the conversation in a general direction while relying on their employees to make judgement calls and ask probing questions. We have had much more success with that second model. “ ~ Phil Laboon, Clear Sky SEO

Click through to read the other pointers.

Brent Leary at Small Business Trends interviews Dane Atkinson of SumAll, an analytics company that's gained a lot of recent traction recently despite still being in beta.

[Steve Hoover, CEO of PARC] likens today to desktop publishing decades ago when it started to reach the masses. At the time, some people thought, "That's for the den mothers to make their monthly newsletters," he said. Of course, it turned out to be much more. Self-publishing technologies allowed people to more easily become creators, which in turn gave consumers more content choices outside of mass media. Fast-forward to today, and you can see how much the media world has changed because of technology that gave individuals the tools to publish on their own.

Marcus Chan, writing on "Innovation in 2013," for Bloomberg