Late Friday, a story emerged on the wires about 800,000 applicants information (including Social Security Numbers) being stolen from The Gap, a large US based retailer.  See link below.

Knowledge Infusion works with clients on a daily basis to help them get BTP (Beyond The Paranoia) of not letting data outside of their shops; a story like this doesn't help.  Before you go and lock your file cabinets and turn off all electronic access to anything, a few data points:

• The incidents that get this type of exposure are very rare and in 99.3% of organizations, never happen.

• Software as a Service applications are working in almost every industry worldwide without issue; lets not put our industry back on its heels because of a few incidents.

• Innovation and TCO being built into software today has a future of open access, social collaboration and trust; once again, lets keep that going as we will need it.  We are not all bad apples.

I have a feeling that this story is not over.  Taleo (a leading Talent Management vendor) even put out a press release on Friday saying "it wasn't us".

Stay tuned for more but know that amongst our 160 enterprise clients, this is very rare and should not change your overall technology strategy in the least.

Another infusion of knowledge...

Mind the Gap: Personal Info Stolen

Knowledge Infusion continues to work with organizations that think they can put new technology on top of old processes; or just tweak their old process a bit and make it work. 

News Flash:   You are missing a golden opportunity to change Human Capital Management forever!!

The linked article does a great job of talking about the 5 competence areas for process transformation.  They include:

1. Process Orientation

2. BPM Technology

3. Change Management

4. Process Improvement

5. Subject Matter Expertise

In many of our organizations we work with, we are recommending a Process Ninja who would be responsible for many of the above tasks along with facilitating subject matter expertise.

Stay tuned as the world of Software as a Service, Web Services, Web 2.0 continue to make business process transformation even more important.

You are no longer rolling out technology to a HR department, you are deploying it to a workforce and a community which is a whole new ball game.

Another infusion of knowledge...

Process transformation - perspectives on \"Business Process Management\": The 5 competence-areas for real process transformation