John's Jottings » Business

CRM CEOs

john — Thu, 29 Jan 2004 07:32:33 +0000

I’m in San Diego this week for Oracle Appsworld and today was the day (well yesterday now I guess) Larry Ellison did his keynote. This was the first time I have had an opportunity to see him speak and I came away impressed. He comes across as smart, passionate and having a good sense of humor. With leadership like that I can understand why Oracle is such a success story. See it for yourself if you want.

I’ve had the opportunity to see some other CRM CEOs speak; I think Ellison impressed me the most.

Craig Conway of Peoplesoft is a polished speaker who seems real and trustworthy. Tom Siebel of Siebel comes across as a neurotic, drunken buffoon. OK, maybe he wasn’t drunk. Bill Gates of Microsoft lays out a good vision but his speech seemed scripted and I couldn’t get past thinking of him as nothing but a geek.

Frankly I’m surprised to be saying it, but I’ll take Ellison over that group.

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CRM CEOs

Whether you like it or not

john — Tue, 02 Dec 2003 13:56:30 +0000

This turkey really has legs is an article from Fast Company on a small family owned business selling smoked turkeys, mostly over the holidays. This article has inspired me to buy one.

But therein lies the problem for Greenberg Turkey.

One of the key points in the article is how old-fashioned the company is. They don’t run marketing campaigns and they don’t take credit cards. They send out the turkeys with a bill and depend on the customer to pay promptly. And that has worked for them.

“Why would I want to take credit cards? Why would I want to do a marketing campaign? In fact, why would I add more products to the line?” Greenberg asks. “The people I would get from doing all that, well, frankly, I don’t want those people.”

Well Mr. Greenberg I hate to tell you this but that Fast Company article you agreed to do was Marketing 101 and the result is going to be a lot of those people you say you don’t want.

Hopefully this was a shrewd move on Greenberg’s part and not the downfall of a small business. I’ll let you know how the turkey was.

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Whether you like it or not

Amazon Search Needs Work

john — Sat, 25 Oct 2003 15:52:37 +0000

Everyone else is commenting on Amazon’s new Search Inside the Book feature so I guess I’ll throw my hat in the ring too. First of all, it’s an incredibly ambitious project. And one that I can see will definitely be useful when working well. Which it isn’t, yet.

Here’s an example. This morning I needed to quote an excerpt from one of my favorite stories in literature, the “Biscuit Story” from Douglas Adams’ So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish. In the past I would have used Google for this search as it is the sort of story someone would surely have retyped and posted somewhere on the web. But the prospect of ensuring a 100% accurate quote coming from a scanned page on the world’s foremost book store? What a perfect use of Amazon’s new search function.

Now I’ll be the first to admit I haven’t RTFM on Amazon so it is completely possible this isn’t the best way to formulate the search, but this format works on Google so I expect it to work else. I searched for arthur dent biscuit train. The first result in the list was a book on Sherlock Holmes. The next was a book on King Arthur. A quick scan of the first page revealed nothing from Douglas Adams. The “Sort by” feature has no new values that make sense when using search, and there isn’t a quick way that I can see to further filter the list on author or any other attribute.

Of course trusty Google gave me exactly what I was looking for in the top two results for arthur dent biscuit train.

If you haven’t read the book and don’t know the story, check out the Fun_People archive page and search for the second instance of Douglas Adams on the page. Right below that is what appears to be a faithful retyping of the story. One of my all time favorites.

Search Inside the Book is going to be a great resource and continues to widen the gap between on-line and brick and mortar bookstores. While I doubt the feature itself will result in a noticeable direct impact to sales I do think it is just another reason why people will think of Amazon first when it comes time to buy a book. And that’s smart business.

[UPDATE] – After writing this up I looked a little more on Amazon and found that this book is not on the list of scanned books, so that is no doubt the reason why I didn’t find it – not something wrong with Amazon’s search. Still, knowing that Amazon is not going to be comprehensive I still will be starting my searches on Google.

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Amazon Search Needs Work

Salesforce.com Eyes Siebel

john — Tue, 21 Oct 2003 12:23:52 +0000

Last Week I mentioned that Siebel had purchased UpShot and that I thought this was actually good news for Salesforce.com. No surprise here, but sf.com is featuring this news rather prominently on their home page via a flash ad titled “Discontinued Siebel UpShot.”

They are offering free migrations for existing UpShot customers, or rather “discontinued Siebel UpShot” users, via their SureShot program. “Discontinued Siebel UpShot” appears no less than seven times in their press release. I think we get the point!

Don’t know why but I find this rather funny.

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Salesforce.com Eyes Siebel

IT Leadership

john — Sat, 11 Oct 2003 04:51:43 +0000

We are looking for a CIO at work. Hopefully he/she has already managed the Secrets to Managing Techies. A good refresher for anyone managing within IT. I’m sure she will start with a governance model in place such as the CobiT Plan and Organize Overview. It will be necessary to make the business process changes we require. I am sure one of the first tasks will be to do some business process mapping utilizing techniques such as swimlane flowcharts. Hopefully we’ll get the business process management tools we need to get the job done!

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IT Leadership

Conference Tips

john — Tue, 09 Sep 2003 14:52:34 +0000

I’m in LA for the Gartner CRM Fall Summit. It is the first Gartner conference I’ve been to and I’ve been pretty impressed with how they have run it. I’ve attended, worked and spoken at similar conferences and I know how difficult they can be to do well. Here are a few things I like and wish all other conferences did:

Prior to the conference Gartner made available almost all of the presentations via a website for registered users of the conference. This is nice because it makes it easier to plan out which sessions you want to attend. Make presentations available prior to the event.
Upon arrival at the conference Gartner provided a CD containing the final draft of all presentations. While most conferences these days do supply the presentations to attendees many do not provide them for several weeks after the conference. That is pretty much useless. When I get back on Thursday I want to start sharing what I learned right away and by having the presentations on CD from Day 1 it is very easy to do that. After a couple of weeks that CD would most likely get shelved and never used. Provide a complete presentation archive on CD to attendees at the start of the conference.
Throughout each presentation Gartner utilizes “question runners” who walk around the room carrying placards with a big question mark on it. If you want to ask a question you flag down one of these runners and they record your question, which then gets asked during the Q&A at the end. If that was all they did it would not warrant a mention but what Gartner does which I think is key is they provide an expert to ask the questions of the presenter. This is excellent because the expert is able to quickly sort the questions in a logical fashion and reword the questions in a way that may result in a clear and better answer. Have an expert facilitate the Q&A
One last thing I really like is that each day is actually packed with sessions. There are sessions of one sort or another running from 7:00AM to 6:30PM each day. Like many conferences of this nature they have a sponsor showcase area but rather than blocking out half a day where there is nothing else going on except for the showcase they actually run it concurrently with real sessions or lunch. Attending conferences is an expensive proposition in terms of money and time – it is critical that conference organizers provide full days that provide value. Plan full days.

Many of these are pretty common sense and most conference organizers already do them well. But you would be surprised at how many conferences fall down in many of these areas.

If you attend a conference and don’t like something, tell them. Maybe they will listen to you for next year. If you organize conferences please listen to what people ask for.

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Conference Tips

Ad Revenue

john — Fri, 01 Aug 2003 05:14:25 +0000

I received an interesting email today asking me to quote how much I would charge to include an advertising link on my site. This was not a spam, it was a real attempt by a real person representing a real service that actually has some relation to topics I have covered before. As I would not mind adding a secondary income stream this is an offer I have to look into as who doesn’t want to make a little more money?

The email reminded me again of Google’s AdSense program which allows web developers to easily integrate “unobtrusive” Google ads into their pages, reminiscent of the ads within Google’s own search result sets. You can see what the ads would look like by filling in any URL on this page on the Google Weblog by Aaron Swartz. I went back there because I wanted to see if AdSense agreed with the vendor who contacted me and in fact it did – a number of the ads that Google served up for my site were related to that company’s business.

While I was on the Google Weblog I noticed Aaron had posted about receiving his check for June from the AdSense program. $973.43! Not too bad. And unlike Amazon’s program which actually requires someone to buy something for you to get paid (I’ve made about $10 from this site, thanks to the handful of you) AdSense pays you just for clickthroughs. How late nineties!

I just signed up for AdSense for the heck of it, although I doubt I’ll get accepted. And if I did I doubt I’d post the ads, although the thought of even a tenth of what Aaron got intrigues me.

I find it interesting that in their list of restrictions on what sort of sites will not be admitted into the program they include sites which include “gambling or casino-related content” – particularly since that’s the vertical my unnamed vendor contacted me about, and as the Google Weblog shows, or at least does at this moment in time, Google itself is more than happy to surface gambling related ads via AdSense.

The best way to maximize your Adsense income is to use Adsense Channels to identify your top-paying articles.

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Ad Revenue

City Planning and CRM

john — Sun, 29 Jun 2003 13:15:49 +0000

I’ve often described my approach to building CRM systems as akin to building Rome rather than Brasilia. Rome is beautiful, revered, respected and something that was built up over the centuries to suit the needs of it’s citizenry. Remember, Rome was not built in a day. Brasilia is a planned city designed for cars, not people. It is the anti-Rome. I’ve been using this analogy long enough that I can’t remember if I borrowed it from someone or made it up myself, but since I don’t know much about Brasilia other than it is a planned city I suspect the answer is the former.

Thanks to the links pointed to in his article Brasilia, James at Ordinary-Life has helped add some interesting photos and color to this analogy for me. Some of the photos are eerily depressing, reminding me of an episode from the Twilight Zone or a future envisioned by George Orwell. Others admittedly are beautiful. There are a lot of good links for anyone interested in learning more about this city. I was particularly interested in learning that the design for the city was the result of a contest.

So is my analogy to Rome meant to deliver the message that it will take years to implement a CRM system? No, although in the end it certainly can take that long for it to morph into something deemed usable by users. More correctly I use the analogy to describe the rapid development, continuous improvement cycle that I try to advocate in any development effort. Release early, release often. The thinking with the analogy is this – there are more than a couple of ways to build something for people but two main ones are:

1) The perfect plan. Design, plan and build a solution around what the users tell you they need and want. Spend some long period of time delivering something that meets those specifications exactly.
2) Release early, release often. Strive to get something functional up as soon as possible and build close feedback ties to your users to listen to what is working and not working and adjust quickly. Continuous improvement.

The reason why I think the second approach is the way to go is that it has been my experience that people can convince themselves what the want but only until they start using something do they really know what they need. Often times until someone starts doing something do they realize what works and what doesn’t. So it has been my experience that while a little planning is of course critical it needs to be focused only on the planning around getting something up quickly – not on how to get from point A (today) to point B (desired future state), because sure as heck once you put that humongous plan in action you’ll find something that hadn’t been considered and you’ll be asked to change something anyway so you might as well plan for that approach from the start. It’s more true than ever these days that we are being asked to show ROI earlier and earlier in project cycles and to effectively do that you must plan around a continuous improvement approach.

Building a model of rapid development wrapped around a strong commitment to customer service and listening enables a true continuous improvement model that in the end delivers something that works for the users.

Interestingly enough it seems as though Brasilia is taking the continuous improvement approach to heart, as evidenced in this FAQ on Brasilia. I’m glad to hear they have decided that stoplights are now a good thing. Perhaps in a few more centuries it to will be as beautiful as Rome.

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City Planning and CRM

Oracle’s win/win ploy

john — Sat, 07 Jun 2003 05:58:00 +0000

This morning Oracle shocked Wall Street by announcing it intends to launch an unsolicited $5.1 billion tender offer of rival PeopleSoft. The announcement comes on the heels of a similarly surprising bid earlier in the week by PeopleSoft of J.D. Edwards, a deal that was roundly touted as strengthening PeopleSoft against rival Oracle. The tender offer was at a paltry 6% premium from the previous market close – PeopleSoft shares responded by gaining 17% on the day.

The audacity of Larry Ellison, Chairman and Chief Executive of Oracle, to make this offer is quite stunning but the timing couldn’t be better and the result is a win/win situation for Oracle.

Just by the simple act of making this announcement Oracle has introduced FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) into the minds of Enterprise software buyers around the world. Anyone who is currently negotiating with PeopleSoft or evaluating their software will naturally slow down or even stop. Why waste the time if Oracle buys PeopleSoft next month and immediately sunsets the products as Ellison has said they would? June is the last month of the second quarter for PeopleSoft and in this market the last few weeks of a quarter are critical. PeopleSoft has had some license revenue weakness recently but as the market and economy seem to be turning around a bit it would not be surprising to hear they have a full pipeline for the quarter. Not any more; gentleman get ready to start using the word “deferred.”

Even worse for PeopleSoft this now puts their company as a takeover target in people’s minds. Many buyers of this sort of software are asked to go with the big dogs for protection against this very thing. Nobody wants to invest in a company only to have it get bought and devastated out from under them. Therefore companies like Oracle, Siebel, SAP and PeopleSoft tend to make the short lists on that fact alone. This announcement is a wake up call to remind buyers that PeopleSoft’s future is not secure – and that will scare buyers away.

Even if the deal doesn’t get done Oracle wins because they have mortally wounded a key competitor by freezing their pipeline and removing a key rival from some future competitive situations.

If the deal does get done Oracle becomes an even stronger player no matter how they incorporate PeopleSoft. I find it hard to believe Oracle would not leverage a lot of PeopleSoft’s applications – the applications side of Oracle tends to get a bad rap and PeopleSoft has some very good and maturing products. They’ve also got a terrific application development environment.

Additionally the combined power of Oracle and PeopleSoft may give them a leg up on Siebel, a company who for me would make more sense to be making moves on PeopleSoft as it would get them into the full front and back office suite where they do not currently have an offering. But Oracle has eight times as much cash in the bank as Siebel so I don’t see it happening.

Deal or no it’s a win for Oracle.

But is it a win for the consumer? I don’t think so, and I don’t think the deal will happen for that and other reasons. PeopleSoft has a strong offering, many people believe stronger than Oracle, certainly in CRM and HR. Oracle has a strong offering, especially in financials. The choice of one over the other is a good thing. Allowing Oracle to remove one of the only other vendors providing decent front and back office applications is not good for anyone but Oracle.

This is the classic definition of a hostile takeover. Check out some of the responses from the CEO of PeopleSoft, Craig Conway:

“It was like Larry was driving by, spotted a really nice wedding in progress, crashed it with a shotgun and said, ‘This bride’s going to marry me at the end of a barrel,”‘ PeopleSoft CEO Craig Conway said in a telephone interview from London.
…
“It’s a pathetic tactic even by Oracle standards,” said Conway
…
Oracle is demonstrating “atrociously bad behavior from a company with a history of atrociously bad behavior,” Conway said in a press release.

Rumor has it Tom Siebel bought Scopus because Scopus was going to win a head to head deal with Siebel and he couldn’t stand to see it happen. Siebel learned under Ellison – it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if that was the case here.

I think the whole matter stinks if Ellison is playing a game. If he is serious about the offer and makes it happen it will be a shame what would happen to PeopleSoft – in that clash of corporate cultures there is no question the PeopleSoft employees, and ultimately customers and prospects, would lose.

It’s a funny business.

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Oracle’s win/win ploy

Selling to the CIO

john — Sat, 24 May 2003 12:44:37 +0000

If you sell technology products or services chances are you have been taught to sell to the business unit leaders instead of the IT(Information Technology) leadership such as the CIO or CTO. The reasoning for this is a belief that IT will be too enamored with the technology behind your product rather than the ROI to the organization. Unfortunately this stereotype is correct often enough that you probably are better off to skirt IT if at all possible.

It’s IT organizations that are solely focused on technology that lead to articles like IT Doesn’t Matter in the current Harvard Business Review. As someone who makes his living in IT and who believes in the importance of IT to organizations articles such as this disturb me, even as I recognize the reasons for why they exist.

Bob Evans from InformationWeek has written a couple of articles referring to the HBR article, the latter one including a couple of choice quotes from GM’s CIO Ralph Szygenda:

“Nicholas Carr may ultimately be correct when he says IT doesn’t matter,” Szygenda began. “Business-process improvement, competitive advantage, optimization, and business success do matter and they aren’t commodities. To facilitate these business changes, IT can be considered a differentiator or a necessary evil. But today, it’s a must in a real-time corporation.”

“…But the application of information systems in a corporation’s product design, development, distribution, customer understanding, and cost-effective Internet services is probably at the fifth-grade level.”

Well, if IT doesn’t matter, I guess they’ll just stay stuck at that fifth-grade level.

On the other hand, if the focused and strategic applications that they support and that Ralph is describing do indeed matter, then there’s plenty–plenty–of progress to be made.

The best run IT organizations are technology-savvy but are business-savvy as well. They serve as the central nervous system to an organization which allows each business unit to focus on their own business while IT serves to unify the business requirements leveraging technology solutions where appropriate. They focus on business process improvement, considering the overall needs of the organization as they do so. The use business process management tools such as swimlanes. They utilize framework such as CobiT and ITIL (see CobiT definition blog). The best IT organizations recognize that technology is not always the answer.

Do your best to get to the Cxx level execs when selling your stuff but if you do get stuck with the CIO or CTO do recognize that it’s not always a bad thing – you may just be selling to someone that’s more than a tech-head and who may actually understand the needs of the entire business and who may just be your strongest ally, if you have the right stuff.

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Selling to the CIO

Telecom Vendors Suck

john — Tue, 06 May 2003 04:40:00 +0000

I was the Director of IT for a smallish ($30-40 Million) software company from 1999-2001. During that time I learned to literally hate the various telecom providers I got to deal with, be it local, national or international. From my perspective nobody did it right, they were all out to screw the customer for as much as they could get and anything short of begging would result in no service. Begging didn’t always work either. Amazing considering the amount of money a company that size spends on telecom.

I particularly like Henry’s pledge:

I know you don’t make diddley-squat on my voice calls so I’ll use you for every one this company makes, local and long distance. However, I can get my data cheaper and better from other vendors. You’ll never have it, you squinty-eyed toads. May you ride into corporate America history because of your pathetic loser billing system from Hell — the figurative place where your company belongs, your assets sold at pennies on the dollar to a telecom that can actually find its ass with both hands.

Here is a real-world example of the sort of “service” that inspires such vehemence. When I took over in 1999 we had moved from another building about six months early. In 2000 during some routine audits of our telecom bills I discovered we were still being billed for an ISDN line terminated in the old building. Of course getting a credit for that was like getting blood from a turnip but we managed to dredge up a copy of a letter requesting termination of service, which was our saving grace. Without that letter we may never have gotten the credit, even though we hadn’t occupied the building for over a year by that time.

It gets better; fast forward to 2002. My company has been acquired and we close another office, this one in Rosemont, Illinois. Now fast forward again to last week. As a larger company we now have the luxury of having a person who does nothing but analysis telecom bills and deal with telecom vendors (sure wish I had had that!). Last week she discovers two lines between our old office closed in 1999 and the Rosemont office closed in 2002, that we have been billed for since 1999! And she’s having to fight with them about payment despite us not occupying one of the buildings in four years because we don’t have the record of request for termination, although clearly they do.

It boggles the mind. Thank goodness I don’t have to deal with them anymore.

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Telecom Vendors Suck

Sales Compensation

john — Thu, 01 May 2003 04:07:19 +0000

In the May 2003 issue of Inc. Magazine, Norm Brodsky writes in The Sales Commission Dilemma:

Over the course of 25 years in business, I’ve developed my own system for handling sales compensation. I’ve also become convinced that the way most companies do it is a recipe for trouble.

I’m referring, of course, to the practice of paying sales commissions. Unless you’re very careful about how you use them, they almost always have the effect of undermining any sense of unity and common purpose in a business. How? By putting the salespeople in a separate category, by making them stand apart.

I like his model for moving to a salaried salesforce but personally I would take it one step further – to one accountable not only for revenue but margin as well.

First, a disclaimer. I’m not a salesperson and I’ve never been one. I don’t manage salespeople and I’ve never even hired one. I was a waiter once and could upsell with the best of them, but that hardly counts. But I’ve been involved in my share of 6 and 7 figure deals from both sides of the table and have worked and interacted with many salespeople of different levels, abilities and egos and I’ve learned enough to be able to form an educated opinion on the topic.

Brodsky brings up a number of salient points in his article. In implementing a few CRM systems I have been amazed at the difficulty that many salespeople have with centralizing their contact information. The 360 degree view of the customer is a myth until you can start getting people to share that information and for many people, usually in sales, that is anathema.

You also have to cope with the great fear all owners have that their salespeople will leave and take customers with them. That’s actually more likely to happen with a commissioned sales force than with a salaried one. For salespeople on commission, the customer represents security. As long as they have that connection, they think they have a means of earning a living. Consequently, they have a strong interest in making sure the customer belongs to them rather than to the company. They resist letting anyone else have a relationship with the customer.

If moving to a salaried model removes barriers to leveraging CRM or SFA systems then it’s a good thing. Brodsky makes clear in his article that moving to a salaried model takes time – when he hires salesreps he gives them the salary+commission plan they expect. After a couple of years he identifies the people he wants to keep and gets them to see the virtues of going all salary, which for Brodsky means an organization that works together for the right reasons, resulting in a more cohesive company.

If I had my way I’d want to compensate the salesforce based on the margin they bring to the business. At my company our divisions are measured on the contribution they bring to the business – the earnings they generate after expenses are taken into consideration. In such a model would you rather have a rep who hits his $1,000,000 quota with $100,000 in direct expenses or a rep that blows away his quota by $250,000 but generates another $300,000 in expenses by dragging an army of pre-sales reps across the country everywhere he goes? If I was a business owner I’m pretty sure I would want the former – but we tend to base our compensation plans on the latter.

I’m sure the argument is that those revenue dollars will eventually grow significantly larger at a cheaper cost since it is so much cheaper to sell to an existing customer but I would be cautious with that thinking. Maybe that worked in the late nineties but I don’t think it does now. Cautious growth with en eye for the bottom line will rule the day.

Brodsky’s model works for him, has it worked for others? Does anyone know of a company who holds its salesforce accountable for margin? I’d love to hear about it.

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Sales Compensation

Home Depot Self Check-Out

john — Mon, 28 Apr 2003 05:44:42 +0000

My local Home Depot recently added some self check-out lines, which are a very welcome addition for me. I shop there quite a bit (two different trips just today) and for those times I just need a few items being able to check myself out will be a very nice feature, especially if they are essentially empty as they were today. I suppose that will change once people get used to them.

It appeared to me as though they were able to put four of the self check-out kiosks in the space two normal lanes occupy. There was one Home Depot Associate watching over the area, although since it was very slow it is possible there are normally more. From what I could tell his role was to help answer questions and assist with scanning issues. I did not see him check anyone’s bag and match the items up with the receipt ala Sam’s Club, although I’ve got to think they watch closely and do spot checks.

The interface was very clean, simple and easy to use, as was the hardware setu It can handle cash, coin and credit/debit card. I forgot to see if they handled personal checks. The one problem I did have on my first trip was that it did not feature a hand-held scanner, and I had a flat-cart with three bags of fertilizer buried under a dozen bags of mulch. I was about to walk away when the Associate brought over a hand-scanner and did it for me.

My initial thought was that this would appeal to a younger more technology-savvy demographic but CRM Daily mentions a reason why it may appeal to all ages – older folks embracing it because it allows them to go as slow as the want, double-checking the prices as they go. Certainly there is a large group of people who don’t trust cashiers, spurred on by various news stories on the topic, and so I can certainly understand this as something those people would enjoy.

According to ComputerWorld the check-out system runs on Microsoft Windows, using NCR hardware and software from 360 Commerce.

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Home Depot Self Check-Out

Executive Adoption

john — Sat, 05 Apr 2003 11:48:20 +0000

Critical to the success of any internal IT project is Executive Sponsorship. But there is another equally important concept and that is Executive Adoption. If you have been part of any failed or successful IT project I think you’ll recognize the importance of both.

Depending on the size and scope of your project and your company an Executive Sponsor can take many shapes. It may be the VP for a department in a department level project, or it could be your COO or CEO for an organization-wide effort. The role of the sponsor is two-fold – to stand up for the project in the C** level meetings where the cost and benefit of it will invariably be discussed and to help drive the change that will effect the people within their particular group.

Especially so in today’s hostile business environment of shrinking budgets and reductions in force it is absolutely critical for the continued success of your project to have that sponsor there speaking for you when the discussion of the company’s resources are discussed.

Most projects of this level will require an employee to change the way they do business and most employees by nature do not want to change. “We’ve always done it this way”, they will say. With a strong Executive Sponsor those barriers can be broken through. Often times it might mean a willingness to let those go who do not want to change and bring in others who do. You simply can’t achieve that without a sponsor.

But sponsorship alone is not enough. You must have Executive Adoption as well.

By Executive Adoption I mean an executive who not only understands your project at a high level but also is an active user. Clearly most large scale projects have a goal of having all of the executives eventually being a user, but I’m talking about getting this to happen early in the project cycle. And the closer your executive adopter is to being a super user the better. By using the product or service your project is delivering the adopter will be in a better position to understand why you are asking for more money to implement “Feature X” – he will have already felt the pain. Having an adopter means you not only have someone speaking for you but often it means you have a demo person as well. And a darned well paid one at that. But nothing sends a clearer sign to the troops who are being asked to make change than an executive sponsor who is first in line.

The most successful projects that I have been involved with had strong Executive Sponsorship and Adoption. In fact we had such strong adoption across the top level management that you could almost say they all were sponsors. When you have a project that is adding clear value and is actively used by all levels of top management do you think there are ever any problems getting additional funding for the project when necessary? No – it’s an easy sell. Only by being an adopter can an executive (or anyone for that matter) truly understand the value of a project. The more high level adopters you can get the easier job your sponsor (and yourself) will have.

If you are in the midst of any large scale project ask yourself three questions.

“Do I have a strong, well-placed Executive Sponsor?”
“Is my sponsor a current user of my project deliverable?”
“Do I have other executive adopters?”

If you can answer yes to all three I guarantee you are running a successful project. Congratulations! If you can answer yes to the first two then you are well on your way to success – see what you can do to influence the adoption across the other executives. A yes to the first question only is typically all that is required in project management circles but I would argue you are looking for trouble if that is the case – you must find a way to get that sponsor to be an active participant. An Adopter. Finally, if your answer was no to all three questions please pack up your bags, do not pass go and do not collect $200. In other words, try something else because your project will not succeed in the long term.

Executive Adoption is key to the success of your project. Get it.

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Executive Adoption

Cube Life Letters

john — Tue, 18 Mar 2003 13:44:06 +0000

Pud has posted some pretty funny internal memos this week:

Visual demonstration of a CLM(Career Limiting Move)
Don’t even bother reading through this entire memo, you’ll get the drift after the first paragraph or two. The guy just goes on and on and on bitching and moaning about this and that, in a memo he has sent to a widespread and most likely completely inappropriate mailing list. At the end he invokes the Federal Whistle Blower law as if the government set the program up to protect losers who don’t like the fact his company uses metrics to run the business and at times expects more out of their employees.

On a positive note this internal memo does give some interesting insight into AOL(America Online). You can just picture the Save Coaches running around on the Save Floor, trying to Connect with their Members so that they trust them for a Lifetime, and not just for 30 or 90 days.

Don’t make up words when writing about professionalism
What could be funnier than someone writing an email to complain about people shooting rubber bands in their cubes (the gall!), threatening to place a warning in everyones personnel file since they don’t know exactly who the perpetrator is, and threatening “penalty” if it continues? How about making up the word “Professionality” to describe the behavior you want to see people display. Dude, you could use some professionality yourself.

My Star Wars figurines are NOT porn stars
I don’t even know what to say about this one, except he has to know that following this email it’s just going to get a lot worse. Certainly barnyard animals will be introduced soon. Perhaps the figurines provide the spark and creativity he needs to get through his work day, but unless he wants to give in and appreciate his co-workers humor he had better bring them home, where he can comfort them in the evening.

I sure wish Pud didn’t charge so much for access to all of his memos. $45/month is really a barrier to entry. But I certainly do enjoy the teasers.

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Cube Life Letters

The Next Big Thing

john — Sun, 09 Mar 2003 14:19:10 +0000

photo credit: hypertypos

If you read my previous article you can imagine that our investment club has been having more than a few discussions on what will be The Next Big Thing that will return the markets back to the boom of the go-go Nineties. While many believe we’ll never get anywhere near that again I believe differently. Trading volumes are way down and people are being much more cautious but I believe that in the end greed will prevail and when things do start turning around in the economy things will start to ramp up in the market, and if the Next Big Thing arrives we could get back to another boom.

So what will be The Next Big Thing? According to Charles Piller in Five Reasons to Hope [ via DUH BLOG] there are five new technologies that could generate the “radical, disruptive business models” that will define the future:

Electro-bio Convergence
Micro-sensors
Nanotechnology Processors
Flexible Electronics
Mining Unstructured Data

All of that adds up to one possibility for The Next Big Thing: Virtual Sex. You heard it hear first.

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The Next Big Thing

Upsize Minnesota

john — Wed, 05 Mar 2003 12:25:05 +0000

Running a business magazine has always been a risky proposition, even more so these days (witness the recent death of Red Herring, and other magazines coming in with 50 pages that used to carry 250), so it was quite refreshing this fall to be sent the debut issue of a new business magazine, aimed at the small-business community, called Upsize Minnesota. Glad to see some people still have the courage of their convictions to start such a venture in the face of such a difficult environment.

If you don’t live in the Land of 10,000 Lakes (more like 15,000 depending on what you call a lake) don’t be put off by the title – the editors pack a lot of great content into these pages.

The articles are what you would expect to see in such a magazine – the founders of XIOtech discussing their successful sale and new entrepreneurial adventure, advice on getting capital, tips on creating business plans, advice columns, etc. Admittedly it’s got a lot of local flavor that clearly will appeal to anyone working or living in Minnesota but while we are no Silicon Valley we’ve got a lot of interesting stories too – and you would find yourself reading them here first.

I particularly like the Business Builders section which contains a number of brief stories on topics such as Strategy, Banking, Technology, Law, Management and Marketing.

The magazine is clean and easy to read, but has enough graphics in it to make it visually appealing as well. Probably won’t appeal to the artsy-fartsy crowd but too bad for them, they’ll miss out.

Upsize Minnesota says their mission is to help small-business owners build bigger and more profitable companies. Small-business owner or not, Minnesotan or not, I think you’ll appreciate the content in this magazine and encourage you to give it a try.

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Upsize Minnesota

The True Cost of Software Maintenance

john — Sun, 23 Feb 2003 12:32:17 +0000

Software is expensive. Enterprise software even more so. The licenses themselves? Sure – they are expensive. But where you can really get into trouble is in the annual maintenance you pay on your software. For most enterprise software you’ll find yourself paying 15-20% of what you spent on licenses for something usually referred to as “Maintenance” which gives you two things: software updates and technical support. Depending on the company you are buying from and how much you pay in maintenance you may get full blown support with direct contacts in the support organization, or you may get an email address to send questions to. But that 20% hits you year after year, and of course there are usually increase clauses written into the contract so it grows a bit every year too, and as you add licenses it gets even bigger.

Some companies charge maintenance based on the list price of the software, regardless of how big a deal you were able to negotiate up front. Be especially wary of this. In this economy as companies struggle to remain afloat you will see them offer huge discounts to keep the dollars coming in. Maintenance is an annuity that keeps software companies afloat and if you are considering buying from a company who charges maintenance on list price, consider this example. Let’s say you are looking at buying $1,000,000 (list) of some software and you are able to negotiate a 75% discount. Cool – license fees of only $250,000. But guess what – they charge maintenance of 20% on list price, meaning you get hit for $200,000 that first year and a quarter of a year into the second year you’ve already spent more on maintenance than what you paid for the software. And it’s all down hill from there.

This is particularly devastating when you consider the impact to budgets and the ability to hire new people necessary to fuel the innovation and growth our companies pay us for. In his article “Software Complexity and Deflation of IT Value“, Brent Sleeper addresses this issue and asserts that this burden negatively effects corporate productivity:

I’ve been doing some macro-analysis that shows two things, one well understood and the other less so: (1) there is indeed an empirical connection between IT investment and corporate productivity, but (2) when new application development is constrained by maintenance costs, these productivity benefits begin to lag. In fact, when maintenance costs peak relative to cyclical software investment, productivity growth plummets.

To benefit from the productivity increases that software promises it is imperative that your software investments are continually evaluated to be sure the productivity gains you hope to be getting are actually being seen. If they are then you are one of the lucky ones. If not, it’s a hard hole to dig out of because to fix the problem will most likely require people and your budget is constrained by the growing line items of maintenance and depreciation (that’s an article for another time).

The true cost of software maintenance is the risk that you will be trapped – trapped into keeping the status quo and unable to deliver the productivity your business requires. To pull yourself from this quagmire is expensive so don’t fall in if you don’t have to.

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The True Cost of Software Maintenance

Microsoft Technical Support

john — Sat, 22 Feb 2003 06:07:42 +0000

I used to run a Technical Support organization for a mid-sized software company. Working in Support can at times be a thankless job. You make all of the margin but someone else spends it. The developers look down at you. Hell, even QA treats you as second class citizens. Thank God for IT. But working in Support can be a great career and for many it isn’t just a stepping stone. With an organization that fosters communication, teamwork and respect between different technical groups, the true value of Technical Support can emerge.

But that’s not what I want to write about tonight. I want to write about a recent experience we had with Microsoft Technical Support, an experience that opened my eyes to how much they have improved since I last interacted with them, probably three years ago. My experience then could probably be encapsulated by searching Google on microsoft technical support sucks. The people seemed incompetent, they were more interested in closing the call than resolving the problem, and getting someone to call back was nearly impossible.

It’s a testament to Microsoft’s focus on improving their Support website that my team rarely has a need to actually talk to anyone at Microsoft, but last week we needed to. The support we received during that time and the follow-up since then has been absolutely fantastic. The closing email, which I will be detailing below, is in my opinion a road-map for how it should be done.

Frankly I don’t know for sure that this is Microsoft standard and not just some rogue super-star Support rep, but I suspect the latter.

Dear xxx, yyy, zzz,
It was my pleasure to serve you during your Microsoft SQL Server issue. I hope that you were delighted with the service provided to you. My goal is for all my customers to be very satisfied with my handling of their support call. I am providing you with a summary of the key points of the case for your records.

Providing a detailed summary is an excellent way to ensure their was no miscommunication between the support rep and the customer.

ACTION:
You are running into an Access Violation.
RESULT:
This matches the following footprints:
* Short Stack Dump
* 00846112 Module(sqlservr+00446112) (rcSetFastKey+00000098)
* 005265CB Module(sqlservr+001265CB) (lmlink+0000016E)
* 00526338 Module(sqlservr+00126338) (sort_addpage+00000043)
.
.
CAUSE:
This is a known issue with SQL Server, as documented in “314003: FIX:
Query That Uses DESC Index May Result in Access Violation”

Now you might be tempted to think this level of detail is useless. Obviously we already knew all of this. But you would be wrong – this is very important. Maybe not so much in our case where we had only one case active with them, but you’ll appreciate this level of detail when you have multiple cases open with Support.

RESOLUTION:
Provided necessary Hotfix
You tested it on your Test Server
You applied it on the Production cluster server and everything is
working fine.
As this is a known issue, we are not charging you for this issue. This
case is being marked ‘non-decrement’.

I’m sure the Microsoft cynics out there are thinking that he is providing this info as a CYA, but for me it says he really understood the problem we were having and it’s impact to our environment. He paid attention – I like that.

USEFUL LINKS
Information on Slammer Virus and post SP2 security hotfix for SQL Server 2000

http://www.microsoft.com/security/slammer.asp

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/treeview/default.asp?url=/technet/security/bulletin/MS02-061.asp

http://www.microsoft.com/sql/ SQL Server’s Home Page
.
.

This is like the inverse of the Sales mantra “Always be closing.” It’s “Always be Supporting.” Proactively providing this information will result in fewer calls into Support thereby increasing margins, thereby making everyone happy. Including their customers.

Based on our last conversation it appears that this case is ready to be closed. If this is premature or you are not Very Satisfied with all aspects of this case, please let me know as soon as possible. Please remember that just because I closed your case it does not mean you cannot call me back if a problem relating to this case reoccurs in the near future. You can always call me directly, and I will assist you with your case.

A good closing, right? Well, that’s about the only part I didn’t like! I like the personal touch, and perhaps they have internal processes designed to prevent calls falling into the ether, but when you’ve got an ACD you should use it. Inviting direct calls will eventually result in a poorer overall support experience. If you’ve worked in support you’ll know what I mean – once a customer has your direct line they will latch on to you like a leech and the best reps will quickly become consumed.

I hope our recent experience with Microsoft Technical Support is the standard they now follow and is the level of support we can expect in the future. Assuming it is, well done Microsoft!

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Post from: John's Jottings

Microsoft Technical Support

On Consultants

john — Wed, 22 Jan 2003 11:20:53 +0000

I’m currently going through the process of unwinding a team of consultants who I have had working on a project since the beginning of last year. This project, an enterprise wide application implementation, has been the first project where I have employed a consultant for longer than three months. It will also be the last.

The reasoning behind augmenting my team with consultants seemed sound at the onset. New application, huge global issues, and a ship to keep afloat with my current people. We instituted a model where the consultants would implement to a group, hand-off to my team, then roll on to the next. The team we brought in are fine people, and we have made decent progress, although not as much as we had forecast – but that’s really been more of an application issue.

The budget we had for implementation last year was extremely tight. So much so that in hindsight I should have raised more red flags than I did. Hell, I should have raised the white flag. But we marched on. As we built our plan for 2003 it was apparent we just couldn’t keep that burn rate going – we had to cut it off despite having a ton of work to do.

As usual Scott Adams has been spot on recently:

Here is what I would do differently with the benefit of hindsight:

Before hiring a consultant consider carefully the endgame. If your project is one where the skills your team will acquire during the project can be spun off in other areas, especially on the revenue generating side, then build a model for hiring more people instead of consultants. As an example let’s say you work for a software company who builds products that could be used by companies who have implemented a certain CRM product. Let’s say it is that CRM product you are looking to implement internally. Hire more people and build an implementation plan that focuses on the CRM application and the integration of your own products. By the end of the project not only will you have the implementation done but you will now have a team of people who are likely the leading authorities on integrating and implementing the two applications. You have built an extremely valuable team.

The resource will vary depending on the number of consultants you hire, but be sure to have someone on staff who is responsible for the consultant’s work and who has been budgeted with the time it will take to do it. it is all too easy to fall into the trap of simply reading the project updates each week. Don’t do it! Put someone in charge directly in their midst.

Chunk your projects out both in terms of time and in the number of consultants. Ensure no project goes longer than a quarter with no more than three consultants on each project. This means you will need to break the problem down into sub-projects but that’s a good thing.

Look for a consultant company who will not only provide you with project updates but comes with a system (if you don’t already have a solid one) that improves communication of their projct across the organization. I mentioned one possible way I’d like to see this done in Weblogs @ Work.

Finally, take a look at the consultant hiring practices of the Minnesota Department of Transportation and do the opposite of what they do. That story just broke this weekend here in Minnesota and there is going to be hell to pay.

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On Consultants