Published Articles

Changing Channels to Market  Channels tend to evolve over many years. Sometimes they evolve so slowly that companies fail to see the change and don't adapt their strategies based on where the trends are heading
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Alliance Partnerships  In recent years, as utilities focused on capital projects to meet projected load growth, managers of supply chains faced a two-front battle – investing in growth while managing existing assets.
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Managing Industrial Channels in Downturn  Developing a systematic approach to channel optimization can protect margin without sacrificing the top line
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Commodity Price Volatility  Over the next few months, more and more consumers will wake up to sharply higher electricity bills
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Energy Efficiency  Several powerful forces have combined to create one of the utility industry's most complex challenges: responding to rapidly growing...
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Getting Channel Marketing Right  More systematic approach to allocating marketing resources across sales channels drives top & bottom line value
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One Plan Many Pieces  Taking risks in the planning process is an excellent way to reduce other more significant—and potentially costly— risks ..
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Rate Shock: A Matter of If, or When?  Better communication will be required in an environment of volatile and rapidly increasing commodity prices.
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Winning Strategy Winning Culture  Faced with the challenge of developing a long-term strategy and engaging his organization, the CEO of...
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"The Gulf Coast Restoration Effort" — SPARKS, September 2005  The industry is adopting elements of a new, distributed delivery model. Several utilities are working with customers, partners and regulators to address a variety of hurdles to accelerate implementation.
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Freshening Up Strategic Planning: More Than Fill-in-the-Blanks  A primary purposes of any strategy development process should be to inject fresh thinking into the business:
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"Realizing Promise Of Strategic Sourcing Claims" — National Underwriter, March 2005  "Strategic sourcing" is a cost-reduction method that many insurers have attempted to implement. While they have had successes in lowering basic office management costs, these insurers have failed to recognize the greater potential savings of applying "strategic sourcing" methods to claims and underwriting functions.
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"Think Like a CFO, Part I" — Insurance & Technology, December 2004  After years of relative autonomy, senior IT executives at insurance companies are finding themselves increasingly under the thumb of tech-savvy CFOs charged with reducing costs. Newly recruited or promoted CIOs are at least as likely to find themselves reporting to the CFO as the CEO.
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"Think Like a CFO, Part II: Formulating Answers" — Insurance & Technology, December 2004  In the first installment of this article, we argued that today's CFOs are more comfortable than their predecessors with technology and more inclined to challenge IT professionals with tough questions before approving investment ideas. In this installment, we suggest methods of formulating answers to these questions.
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Reconstruct Your Business Around Your Customers  Despite all the positive changes internet technologies have brought to the business community, companies havehad little success in managing customer relationships across theirbusiness. They’re finding it hard enough to evaluate the progress ofindividual customer relationship management efforts; managingnumerous initiatives across multiple channels and back into therest of the business seems a Herculean task.
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Building a Solutions-Based Organization  Building a Solutions-Based Organization
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Leadership Learning  Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other
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KCPL Interconnects Enterprise  More than a decade ago, KCPL started an initiative to improve customer service and enhance energy efficiency...
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Negawatt  KCPL's Energy Efficiency forum was a catalyst for community conversation
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The Innovators  The pace and magnitude of change facing the energy industry...
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GPE Great Strategy  After a series of stumbles, Great Plains Energy has emerged as a model for the utility industry
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KCPL Embraces Scorecard  Providing reliable service at a reasonable price should be the goal of all utilities...
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Balanced Scorecard  A balanced scorecard is rolled as a key component of our winning culture
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