In the increasingly competitive space of marketing and creative design, accomplishing much with as few resources as possible has become many manager's biggest challenge. At IOI, we've noticed creative operations managers increasingly forced to assign team members duties related to implementing new Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) or Project Management software that falls outside of their core competencies. Requiring team members to "wear a new hat" can lead to a situation where, even though you've invested in a new system, somehow, deadlines are missed, and team members don't know what they should be working on daily. So, while you are doing more with fewer people, have you gained efficiency, accomplish more, and are you getting a solid return on your investment?

This article is from Eric Fulmer, VP of Operations at ShotFlow, an IO Integration Alliance Partner and we think our readers will find it informative. Retail, Fashion, and Apparel (RFA) brands face a new and intimidating digital commerce landscape requiring rapid transformation to survive. One of the key strategic initiatives for RFA brands is building a modern and complete Marketing Technology (“Martech”) Stack. For those unfamiliar with the term, the Martech Stack is the collection of technology tools and platforms enabling Marketing effectiveness. Hot new trends such as data personalization, “big data” metrics, online assistants, “Shop The Look,” and related initiatives cannot be achieved without significant upgrades to the brand’s technology suite.

Every year I have the opportunity to travel to Kehl, Germany, to join my fellow DALIM professional colleagues from across the world at DALIM’s World Wide Technical Meeting. WWTM is not only an excellent opportunity to share ideas and network with my fellow engineers but allow DALIM the chance to share near term software releases and future concepts for their products. DALIM spends the first two days presenting their vision of the future of ES and TWIST then provide us with two days of intensive training on existing and soon to be released products.

One of the central concepts of many eastern philosophies is that two contradictory forces are always in balance. The part of this concept that is most striking to me is that balance is not a single point, where each opposing force is offset by the other at a neutral fifty-fifty ratio. Instead, it is the concept that at any point, the two forces create a whole regardless of the strength of one force relative to the other. The Chinese yin-yang symbol is perhaps the most well-known and poignant visual example of this concept.

This Article by Josh Ulm, Vice President of UX Design at Bluescape, originally appeared on the Bluescape Software Blog and we think our readers will find it interesting. Remember your last brainstorming meeting? Everyone at HQ gathered in a conference room and your colleagues in London, Sydney, and Tokyo dialed in to participate, right? A lot of notes were scribbled on the conference room whiteboard. Someone wrote them down and promised to send them in an email to everyone, but he missed a couple of design sketches. When that meeting was over, the next group walked into the conference room and erased everything you wrote on the board so they could use it for their meeting. Rinse and repeat. Let’s face it: creative work is inherently quite messy. That’s what makes it creative.

Creativity for All. That was the positioning statement for this years’ Adobe Max in Los Angeles. The evolution of creativity and technologies that come out of that were on display everywhere and it was an action-packed nonstop tour for three days. The vibe was great, and the passion was contagious.