Let’s break it down:
| Drug Lord | Apple |
| Sells Crack that addicts can’t live without | Sells iPhones and iPads that addicts can’t live without |
| Obscenely Rich | Obscenely Rich |
| You need the Untouchables to bring them down | Untouchable |
What do you think?
Monthly Archives: June 2010
Beyond the Clouds …
… lies asphyxia, hallucinations, brain-damage and death.
Depending on where you are on the planet, cirrocumulus, cirrus, and cirrostratus clouds can form as high as 60,000 ft. At this height, atmospheric density is half that at sea level. Or, each breath contains roughly half the oxygen you’d be breathing at sea level. At sea level, oxygen level is 21%. At only 19%, a normal person has a decreased ability to work strenuously and impaired coordination. At 15%, respiration and pulse increases, coordination decreases further, and perception is impaired. At 12%, you have a further rate of increase in respiration and pulse, bluish lips, and poor judgement. At 10%, which is what you are effectively breathing at 60,000 ft, you have nausea, vomiting, mental failure, fainting, and in the weak, unconsciousness as you slowly asphyxiate and begin to hallucinate your way to brain damage, and, eventually, death.
Remember this next time one of those valley solution providers offers to take you beyond the clouds!
Does NDA Stand For “No Discovery Anymore”?
While the life expectancy of the average human in many developed countries now approaches 80 years, the life expectancy of the average company is much shorter. Only 44% of companies make it to the 4 year mark, and only 31% to the seven year mark. Only a handful of the tens upon tens of thousands of companies started every year will live to see the end of their fifth decade.
Why is that? Well, while it’s hard to succeed, it’s easy to fail. Perhaps the product isn’t appealing to enough prospects. Maybe the marketing team isn’t reaching the right audience, or the sales team isn’t conveying the right message. The price could be too high. There might be a sudden cash flow crisis due to an unforeseen dip in sales. The entrepreneurs could be poor managers. The investors or owners may become too greedy, and stifle innovation. And so on.
Even if a company survives long enough to bring a product to market and reach a point where it is cash flow positive, its chances of survival increase only marginally. In order to stay in business, it has to keep selling. That means it needs to offer a product that the market wants. That means, especially in some markets, that it has to keep coming up with new products and services. It has to keep innovating, and keep discovering. While some companies can do this, many can’t. Like Rick Astley, they are effectively a one-hit wonder, and if you buy their product you’ve been rickrolled.
One of the ideas I’ve been tossing around is how best to identify when a company reaches the point where it stops being an innovator and starts becoming a renovator. In other words, when is it that a company essentially offers the same solution that it offered last year, only with a fresh coat of paint. For many companies, this is the beginning of the end, since if you can’t innovate you’ll die. Of course there are some companies who specialize in buying up and renovating end-of-life products, getting a few years of new revenue and maintenance out of each acquisition (until the customers finally get fed up and migrate to a different solution). But we’ll leave such bottom-feeders out of the equation.
After studying the rise and fall of a number of software companies, particularly in the e-Commerce and Supply Chain space, I think I’ve found an indicator of the turning point. I think it’s when a company insists that you sign an NDA before it shows you a product that has been released into production. Why? Well, let’s think about it. What is the logic behind requiring an NDA before doing a demo? Obviously there are many people using the application, and it wouldn’t be terribly difficult to look over a shoulder or two if one really wanted to. So there are no secrets to protect, because the application is out there working, and presumably it’s being sold to anyone with a check book.
Maybe in order to show the application, the company has to show “real” data from a “real” customer. Well, yikes. I don’t want to see those data, and they shouldn’t be showing them to me. If a company can’t figure out how to sanitize a data set for demo purposes, it probably can’t write decent software either.
So what is being protected? Well, if I were running a company that was simply slapping a new coat of paint on an old offering every year, I’d be pretty nervous about showing it to the media — unless I locked them up with an NDA. That way, if they discover that I’m pawning off the same old s**t as last year and the year before, they can’t say anything about it, because they’re bound and gagged. On the other hand, if I were running a company with an offering that had substantial new features every year, I’d be eager to show it to the media. Good press is worth its weight in gold.
So, from now on when I hear “you need to sign an NDA,” I’m going to think “No Discovery Anymore”. I can only conclude that the fire of innovation is gone from your company, reduced to embers which are about to go cold and dark. And I’m going to look elsewhere for inspiration, because there’s no point in writing post-mortems. Just like pointless dumb conversations, that doesn’t help buyers with their needs.
I Guess Some Companies Still Can’t Do Simple Math!
I was shocked by this recent headlin on CNet that said that companies conserving water [are] surprised by savings. After all, simple math alone demonstrates the savings potential.
Let’s say you have a chain of 50 small hotels that each use 1,000,000 gallons of water per month. That’s a monthly utility bill of roughly $100,000 (in the US). That’s a yearly utility bill of $1,200,000. Let’s say you installed water efficient bathroom fixtures, washing machines, and appliances and cut water utilization by 30%, which is not unreasonable. That’s an annual savings of $360,000! Now imagine you’re a larger hotel chain or an international brewery. Simple math and you quickly see that it’s a multi-million dollar opportunity.
So don’t be surprised next time a sustainability initiative generates massive savings. That’s ultimately what sustainability means.
Trade Extensions Trades Up its UI … Again
Last fall, I provided you with an update on Trade Extensions and how they traded up their UI across their sourcing suite, making it easier to use while making it easier on the eyes. Well, barraged by constant feedback from users who wanted it to be easier still for the creation of “simple” optimization models, as they transitioned from a “full-service” to a “supported” to a “self-service” model, Trade Extensions decided to trade up its optimization UI again, especially around rule generation and scenario creation.
The Trade Extensions UI and platform was impressive because it’s constraints, or “rules”, are template-based, which permit them to be saved, copied, and applied to any relevant scenario and because it’s filters, which can be used restrict application of the rules, can be defined on bidders, lots, bids, plants, lot fields, and any other defined dimension in the system. Unlike many platforms where the buyer is limited to fixed constraint templates, the Trade Extensions UI allowed the buyer to build her own. However, defining a complex constraint and adding it to the scenario could be a complex multi-step process. For example, if you wanted to restrict allocation to European suppliers to 40% of the total award in Europe and Asia, the buyer would have to:
- go to the filters screen
- add a new filter that defined the European suppliers
- add a new filter that defined the European and Asian locations
- go the rules screen
- create a new allocation rule that restricted total supply by volume to Europe and Asia by European suppliers to 40% by selecting the rule type, defining the limit, and selecting the filters
- go to the scenario screen
- add the newly created allocation rule
While certainly doable, the process was cumbersome for simple constraints like “limit the award to The Wonderful World of Widgets to 40%” or “spilt the award between 3 suppliers such that no supplier gets less than 20%”.
In the new UI, which is based on a lot of ingenuity and even more AJAX, you can define the constraint and add it to the scenario from the scenario screen, which lists all the currently associated rules, which can each be enabled or disabled with a single checkbox. Clicking the “New Rule” button brings up a new Rule Creation screen for the scenario which allows you to define a constraint by:
- selecting a constraint template from the drop down, which organizes constraints by category
- specifying the bounds
- adding or defining any required filters on the fly
- selecting any required modifiers by way of a drop down
So, in our example above, to define the constraint you’d:
- click the “New Rule” button
- select the “Allocation (%) to Specified Suppliers is at most X
- select the “European Suppliers Filter”
- fill-in-the-bound with 40(%)
- add the “Restrict To Lot” modifier
- select the “European and Asian” lots Filter
- save the constraint
Then you’re returned to the scenario screen, with the new rule at the bottom of the list, where you can edit the parameter and filter selections on-screen, as well as turning the rule on-and-off. It makes the creation of even moderately complex rules quick and painless. And if your constraint is complex, or not accounted for in one of the dozens and dozens of pre-defined templates, you still have the classic method where the complexity of the constraint is limited only to the confines of your consciousness.
They’ve also traded up their reporting as well. In last fall‘s post, I told you how they had just released the ability to view scenario results in their new OLAP engine, which is the basis of their spend analysis offering. In the current release, the entire reporting framework has been shifted over to the OLAP engine which not only allows the buyers to slice and dice the award scenarios any way they like, but, with the new report builder, build pretty much any cross-tab, pivot-table, or roll-up report they like on both award dimensions and derived dimensions (which can also be exported to Excel if the buyer so desires).
The UI for defining a new report, which is also based on AJAX, is as simple, and powerful, as the new rule creation UI. To create a new report, the user:
- gives the report a name
- specifies the bidders, lots, and bids to use, possibly by way of filters (from existing rules) (which can be inverted)
- selects the associated dimensions (which can include any associated dimension from the RFX, Auction, etc. such as brand name, division, and historical spend for the lot; name, location, and number of allocated bids for bidders; base currency, date, and bid number for bid)
- defines the facts (derived dimensions), such as total spend by supplier; year-over-year savings by category; etc.
- selects the scenarios and/or phases to include (which can range from 1 to n), depending on the type of (comparison) report
Plus, the user can also create reports by joining one or more report definitions. If the user wanted to see payment and savings by allocated bidder and the user had a Payment and Savings report and a Allocation per Bidder report, the user can simply run both reports at the same time. The system will calculate the appropriate union of bidders, lots, bids, dimensions, and facts and create the appropriate report.
Finally, they are converting all of the standard reports to templates that can not only be used to run the standard canned reports, but copied and modified to serve your buyers’ needs. It’s an impressive improvement in usability such a short time-frame.