Innovation pays off for Synchrony Financial

Few companies can simultaneously trace their roots to the Great Depression era and consider themselves “digitally native.” Synchrony Financial, the $13.6 billion consumer financial services company and private-label credit card provider, is one among that unique bunch. Synchrony spun out of GE in 2014, right smack into the surging world of fintech that now includes…

10 top-paying cloud skills

10 top-paying cloud skills Image by Getty Images Though overall tech salaries leveled off in 2017, demand for specialized skills remains hot, with salaries for IT pros versed in cloud computing, process management, big data and others rising, according to the 2018 Dice Tech Salary Survey. In these areas, where skills are outpacing the national…

What is a business analyst? A key role for business-IT efficiency

What is a business analyst? Business analysts are responsible for bridging the gap between IT and the business using data analytics to assess processes, determine requirements and deliver data-driven recommendations and reports to executives and stakeholders. The International Institute of Business Analysis (IIBA), a nonprofit professional association, considers the business analyst “an agent of change,”…

7 tips for battle-testing new technologies

Courting new technologies is a risk for IT leaders, who must wisely allocate finite budgets to hardware, software and services they believe will support business operations. Bad bets can set the company back years and ultimately prove catastrophic for CIOs. This is particularly true in the digital era, as a proliferation of newer technologies such…

10 dirty secrets of CRM

CRM products have been around for nearly 30 years, and the SaaS vendors have been selling their CRM wares for nearly two decades. Despite all that experience, powerful myths and misconceptions about CRM still catch customers by surprise. Author’s note: While much of this article’s advice applies to any CRM system, I’ve focused on the…