In the late 1980s and early 1990s, no baseball team won as much as the Oakland A's. Their roster was headlined by superstars such as Rickey Henderson, Mark McGwire, Jose Canseco and Dennis Eckersley, and they played in three consecutive World Series.

The A's also led the league in player salaries. But in the mid-90s, that changed.

A new ownership group took over in 1995 and slashed payroll. The superstars all left, leaving the team's leadership with some tough choices:

"What will we do without X?" and "How can we compete?"

As big banks spend millions on customer-facing computing software, gobble up online customers and continue to shift customer expectations, many credit union execs may feel the same way when considering their software options.

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A vendor-client relationship is just that, a relationship. And all relationships require open and honest communication.

How does that develop between vendors and clients? It starts with the vendors themselves – and more often than not, the vendors that have the best relationships inside their own organization end up with the best relationships with outside clients.

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Video game giant Electronic Arts released a highly-anticipated update of its "SimCity" game last month – and it probably could not have gone worse.

The highly anticipated new version of the classic PC game had a new feature: It required gamers to be connected to the internet to play. EA's servers quickly were overloaded, frustrating hundreds of thousands of players who had paid $60 or more for the game – but couldn't play it.

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