Category Archives: Miscellaneous

Analysts, Schmanalysts

According to Gartner’s latest blog post (in Thursday’s thoughts), the super secret formula to gaining information about a vendor’s product is the “scripted demo”.

Here’s the Big Idea: you ask the vendor how to accomplish the “applicable tasks you do most often”, and then you ask the vendor to demonstrate, step by step, how to do them.

Well, that’s a terrific idea if the vendor has nothing new or innovative to show you, and if both of you are as dull as dishwater. If all you want the vendor to do is show you how to accomplish some mundane  business task that you already do every day, then you’ll never see anything the least bit interesting or innovative. Plus, given time, the vendor will “polish” that part of the demo so it looks much more impressive than it really is.

Here’s some free advice to business and technology analysts who have to evaluate products:

  1. DON’T ask the vendor to do ordinary things.Ask the vendor to show you extraordinary things. Sometimes those extraordinary things can be quite ordinary on the surface, like making it possible for ordinary users to employ highly complex technology successfully and usefully. Problem is, you actually have to understand what’s going on under the covers to figure out whether it’s extraordinary, or just something that’s actually quite simple, or even something that’s just plain technically impossible, and therefore a load of bull (see point 3, below). If all you have is an MBA, chances are that you can’t make that evaluation.
  2. DON’T count mouse clicks.Count innovations that could really make a difference for your clients and their businesses.
  3. DON’T assume that you know anything about technology.Instead, hire (or rent) someone who does, to save you from drawing uninformed conclusions about stuff you don’t (and might never) understand. If you bring someone to the party who can’t be buffaloed by technobabble and a pretty UI, then you don’t have to worry about “scripted” or “unscripted” demos.
  4. DON’T test for “100 features and often many more — up to 500 features” to finalize a rating.That’s just “checklist testing”, and it’s not very useful. Fact is, only a few features matter; the rest are bells and whistles that nobody cares about. You need to do a deep dive on what’s important, not worry about who has the longest checklist. It’s exactly this “please the reviewer” attitude that contributed to bloatware like Microsoft Word — a product that, after years of introducing new whiz-bang features that only ever half-worked, still couldn’t get basic bulleted lists to function properly as late as Word 2003.

The other Big Idea in the Gartner article is References. Well, references are a slippery slope. Does the reference customer understand the technology? Probably not. Does he understand what else is out there? Almost certainly not. Does he think his (pick one: RFx engine, spend analysis tool, contracts management system, etc.) is the greatest thing since sliced bread? Maybe, but who cares? He could be using a crappy tool of marginal value in comparison to what he could be using and have no clue. You could interview him until the cows come home, and not learn a thing, except that he’s a happy lemming with no idea he’s about to run off a cliff.

Fact is, the old model of analysts running around interviewing and briefing the vendors that pay them, and then running off to interview the customers that the paying vendor has teed up, and therefore thinking that they’re somehow “getting a feel for what’s out there and what’s good”, is so … over. All you end up creating for your final report is an unappetizing mashup of the marketing nonsense of all the big vendors.

No wonder everyone is running to the web for guidance. Or running for the hills.

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If You Really Want Communities to Work, Encourage Them!

The Harvard Business Review recently ran a well written and well argued article on how to “harness your staff’s informal networks” (subscription or purchase required) that was thought provoking, but a little too involved for my liking. While the methodology may be appropriate for many organizations, it violates the KISS principle. You don’t need an eight (plus) pronged methodology to make communities work. It can be as simple as one-two-three.

  1. Provide a home for the community.If you’re a multinational, make sure the participants have the online tools and technologies they need to meet and collaborate. If you’re a small company in a single building, make sure there are rooms available on a regular basis. There’s no one-size-fits-all home, so it’s important that you buy the right one for the community you want to create.
  2. Enable participation.Don’t just encourage participation, enable participation. Make sure your people have the time to contribute. Take a lesson from Google, and make sure your employees have 10% to 20% of their time free to focus on community projects and initiatives. That’s how you create communities that innovate and generate real results.
  3. Recognize and reward contribution.Recognize those who maximize their community contributions and those who go beyond the required commitment levels, regardless of whether their contributions get used or not. The true value of a community materializes over time as it’s collective knowledge, and knowledge base, enables and inspires others to greater heights. Even an almost-there solution has value, especially if it contains a distinct idea or process that can be applied to a similar problem that arises down the road.

That’s all there is to it. Really.

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Is Decision Making Really a Seven Step Process?

While some decisions are difficult, I always thought the process of decision making was itself pretty straight-forward:

  1. Identify the Decision that Needs to Be Made
  2. Identify the Alternatives
  3. Select the Best Optionconsidering the advantages, disadvantages, facts, and goals

but according to a recent article in the Supply Chain Management Review, “putting the structure in decision making” is a complex seven step process:

  1. Frame and describe the situation about which a decision is to be made.
  2. Define the objective(s) of the decision and the criteria that define the objectives.
  3. Extract obligatory criteria.
  4. Creatively identify decision options that meet all obligatory criteria.
  5. Gather information on decision alternatives, and develop the judgment table.
  6. Assign weights to the obligatory criteria.
  7. Rank alternatives.

Wow! No wonder some organizations can never make a decision! If they even make it to step for, they’re too exhausted to continue!

Identifying the alternatives and figuring out which is best overall against multiple criteria is often hard enough — don’t make it harder than it has to be!

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Forget the Champagne – The Real Gift is the Visionary White Paper

In conjunction with the IFPSM (International Federation of Purchasing & Supply Management), BravoSolution just released a brief 18-question survey determined to deduce the current state of sourcing and procurement initiatives globally. If you take just a few minutes of your time to fill out the survey and define the priorities driving your organization’s initiatives, the level of integration that currently exists between your organization’s procurement/sourcing and ERP systems, the applications you currently use, the services you currently use, the benefits you have seen, and the level of value you expect to see, you get entered into a draw to win a free bottle of champagne.

And if you are also willing to fill out an 8-box registration form, you can get exclusive access to the new Sourcing Innovation white-paper on The Future of Optimization!

Even if you are a visionary early adopter who is leading the way in the use of decision optimization who thinks she has a firm handle on where optimization is going, I guarantee you’ll learn a lot from this paper. Even though decision optimization in strategic sourcing has been around for ten years, which would make it a mature technology, in many ways it is still in its infancy. Most solutions barely meet the four pillars that define the basic requirements. Despite the increasing number of players who have started using the term “optimization” in recent years, the doctor still only recognizes six providers as having true strategic sourcing decision optimization solutions. Furthermore, the average solution doesn’t handle complex Bills of Materials, multi-variate trade-off objectives, or true make-vs-buy analysis, which would now seem to be a basic requirement for complex (outsourced) manufacturing. But even this is just the tip of the opportunities iceberg.

So take the survey, fill out the form, get your copy of The Future Optimization, and be the first to get some groundbreaking insight on eight directions that strategic sourcing decision optimization is likely to take in the decade ahead!

How to Build a Bat House (Repost)

Once upon a time, there was a beautiful old wooden hotel in the North Country. The owner had coaxed an award-winning chef with a new family away from the hurry-scurry of the big city, so the food was fabulous. The staff were locals imbued with the history of the region and an encyclopedic knowledge of hiking trails, scenic vistas, off-the-beaten-track cross-country trails, and so on. The cleaning staff took pride in ensuring that floors and woodwork were polished, the rooms were well-equipped, and bathrooms were spotless. The fixtures and furniture were old but functional, and the atmosphere was charming, down to the homemade quilts on the beds, each one individually selected.

Eventually the owner, beset with health problems, sold the business to a bright young entrepreneur. Several years later, there was an economic downturn, and revenues fell off. The new owner seized the opportunity to cut costs. He replaced the chef with the sous-chef, at a much lower salary. He revised the menu to remove the most costly items. He instituted a retirement buy-out for the original staff, replacing them with rent-a-clerks and teenagers. He replaced the maids with a commercial cleaning service, and traded the difficult-to-clean quilts for store-bought linens and coverlets. He was able to decrease the room rates by 25%.

To the new owner’s dismay, revenues continued to fall. Former customers were turning up at the local Best Western and Holiday Inn franchises, whose newer buildings and minimalist rooms consistently undercut his prices, no matter how much he lowered them. He was forced to close one wing of the old hotel, then another, and more of the staff were let go. Finally, he had to shut the business entirely. After a while, windows blew out and bats moved in, hence the title of this story.

About six months later, the young man met the old owner for dinner. “I’m sorry about what happened to the old place,” he said. “The economy tanked, and no matter what I did to cut costs and lower prices, we just couldn’t recover.” The former owner stared into his wine glass for a while. Then he shrugged, looked up, and asked, “What reason did people have to stay in your hotel? The food was mediocre; the rooms had lost their charm; you fired everyone who cared about the guests, or who could help them enjoy their visit; and poorly-paid commercial cleaners will do the bare minimum, if that.” The young man asked, “What should I have done?” The old man shook his head. “Who knows,” he said. “But people always need vacations, and when times are tough they want an extra-special place to stay. I’d have made it more special, not less special; and I might even have increased my rates and my advertising. Heck, if someone is paying $200 a night for a room, $220 isn’t much of a sacrifice.”

The young man smiled tolerantly. “Yes, but this downturn is different. Everyone’s in trouble. Businesses are failing left and right.” The old man refilled his glass. “I’m sure you’re right,” he said. “Who can say whether my strategy would have worked?” The two men began applying themselves to their meals. Between forkfuls, the young man asked, “So, what are you doing with yourself these days?” “Oh, ” said the old man, “nothing special. The doctors eventually figured out what was wrong with me and fixed it, so I got restless and bought an old ski lodge about a year ago. We renovated the rooms, brought in a French chef, put in an outdoor 4-season pool, and recruited a bunch of savvy locals to run the place.”

“How are you doing?”

“We’re booked solid.”

Editor’s Note: This post, contibuted by Anonymous, originally ran on March 31, 2009. It is being reposted because too many businesses are still building bat houses. If this trend continues, it’s likely that there will be no avoiding a double dip recession that everyone is so fearful of. Just like Marketing is NOT optional, neither is forward advancement. There is no holding pattern in business. There is victory or death. Choose one.

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