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Mid-Market CIO Panel: Strategies for Improving Vendor Relationships — presentation and summary
Mid-market CIOs and their strategic IT vendors experience a lingering disconnect and often disappointing relations. But there is a growing mutual interest to forge stronger partnerships in preparation for economic recovery. Download the presentation and summary from the July 15 panel call at: http://cioec.com/s/ye3mmr
Mid-Market CIO/IT Vendor Relations Playbook — FREE EXCERPT
This is an excerpt, essentially the first 10 pages, of the 45-page Playbook, which offers experiences from CIOs at over 100 mid-market companies on how CIOs and their IT vendors can build better partnerships.
Secrets of Successful Vendor Contract Negotiations for the Mid-Market
Sept. 16, 2009, 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM U.S./Eastern (GMT-4)
On this free public Council teleconference, Matthew A. Karlyn, attorney at Foley & Lardner in Boston, will share tips on negotiating tactics and new, creative contract terms to help mid-market CIOs make better deals.
Executive Competencies Assessment Tool
Assess Your Business Leadership Skills with the Council's new benchmarking tool. Rate yourself in change leadership, strategy, customer focus and more.
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April 21, 2008 — IDG News Service —
Driven by increasing economic activity, centers offering basic computer training have begun to spring up around Freetown.
Market observers say the development has been prompted by stiff competition among banks, cell-phone companies and ISPs, and also among foreign organizations that are increasingly taking an interest in Sierra Leone capital.
"There is a higher demand for IT professionals," says Austin Odia, an IT consultant who between 2000 and 2003 handled the training of more than 650 ex-combatants in the Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration (DDR) program. "You know we are getting more banks, NGOs, etc., which need their services. Also, there are more government projects that are being financed by foreign donors which have to be monitored."
Last year, the Institute of Public Administration & Management (IPAM), an arm of the prestigious Fourah Bay College of the University of Sierra Leone, became the first institution to get accredited for the Cisco Certified Networking Associate (CCNA) qualifications in Sierra Leone. A private institution, Sam-Kam, followed.
From hardware and basic networking to core networking courses, more entry points are being provided for technically minded professionals wishing to extend their area of professional competence into computer networking. Courses addressing the fast pace of modern information and communication technology are also being designed, in an effort to help interested students recover from the country's decade-long civil war.
More university graduates are enrolling in these courses, having realized that computer literacy is an advantage for job opportunities in any sector of the economy.
"Many have discovered that the IT line is getting more marketable by the day, either as an independent practitioner or on employment basis. Even the demand for mere data operators is on the rise," Odia added.
But like every other African country, the issue of poverty still plays a role in Sierra Leone's ICT situation. Many people do not have the necessary resources to be computer literate.
"For ordinary Sierra Leoneans, it is not affordable," Odia said. "It will cost about [US]$1,500 to be qualified as an IT person. That is why most IT managers around are electrical engineering graduates."