Category Archives: Technology

SI’s Policy: No Time Limit and No Fixed Schedule on Briefs

One week ago today, Spend Matters (“SM”) announced (in its Friday Rant) that it was limiting briefings to a one-hour-and-twenty-minute interval on Thursdays and a two-hour-and-30-minute interval on Fridays. SM stated that briefings would be limited to 40 minutes, including 10-15 minutes of introduction/background, the remaining time to be spent on “the presentation or announcement”.  SM further stated that it requires reference contacts for a follow-up call, and that it is limiting follow-up demos to 30 minutes.

While it is not Sourcing Innovation’s place to comment on the policies of other blogs in the space, the doctor would like to take this opportunity to make SI’s policies, most of which are very different from the above (and laid out in the FAQ), very clear.

  1. SI will schedule briefs at times of mutual convenience. If this means after hours, that can be arranged.
  2. Although initial demos are usually limited to 60 or 90 minutes, SI does not impose time limits of any kind on briefs. If a brief needs to be continued, then it will be, for as long as it takes. SI is interested in your solution. Very interested.
  3. SI is not interested in “announcements” or “presentations.” Rather, SI wants to see your solution in action. Plan on a deep dive into your solution, followed by an intelligently-written post, assuming that the doctor believes that your solution solves areal problem in our space. Note that the doctor is very respectful of any software solution that solves a real problem, because he knows what it takes to bring such solutions to market, having done it himself on multiple occasions.
  4. SI is generally not interested in making reference calls*, because the doctor doesn’t care about your Marketing department’s ability to find customers who think your solution is the greatest thing since sliced bread. He is interested in your solution, not third-party opinions about your solution. This is not People Magazine or Gartner, so the opinion of a random “celebrity” customer, regardless of how prestigious his or her corporate logo may be, is irrelevant here. Lemmings are plentiful, and they come in all sizes.

Finally, SI sees no issue in trying to “keep up with” vendor products and announcements. Although many vendors make routine “exciting” announcements about new functionality and so forth, in practice these announcements are usually just marketing noise, having little to do with important functionality changes and enhancements. SI is confident of its ability to cover real enhancements and real innovations when they really occur, and can see no immediate danger of running out of cycles to do so.

For vendors who require a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) before providing a demo, SI is not interested in reviewing your solutions. the doctor’s assumption is that organizations requiring an NDA before doing a deep dive for a reviewer are irrationally hiding functionality that is released and in the public domain anyway, so their motives for trying to conceal that functionality are suspect.

Thank you for your attention.

* The exception being when you make a strong claim about savings, ROI, etc.

Saving on Systems Integration Costs

If you’ve ever bought an enterprise system, you know that the sticker price is usually only a small fraction of the total cost of ownership and that the implementation and integration costs can dwarf the sticker price by an order of magnitude. As a result, integration costs often present supply management with an opportunity to save six or seven figures. But how? Especially when 70% of enterprise projects fail to deliver on their initial promise?

In a word, planning. According to several experts in the field, the most common problems that arise when companies set out to integrate procurement, distribution, warehousing and communication systems come not in executing their plans, but rather in conceptualizing them. The reality is that if your plans are good enough, you can get a junior team fresh out of an India technical school to implement them successfully*. But if the plans aren’t good enough, you might as well take that money to Las Vegas, because those 10% odds of success are better than the odds of your project succeeding.

Not only do you need a shared view of success at the enterprise level, as discussed in this article on “drawing the lines on system integration”, but you need a detailed plan that describes what systems will be integrated, what modules will be linked, what data will be exchanged, what functionality will result from the integration, and what success cases look like. Coding is rarely the challenge. It’s usually knowing what to code.

* Unfortunately, the doctor has never seen plans this good. It is possible to create them, but it seems that companies never spend enough time in the planning stage anymore …

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Before You Take to the Clouds

… where you are likely to experience asphyxia, hallucinations, brain-damage, and death, make sure you secure your rights, namely:

  1. You own your data,
  2. you’re entitled to the service levels you are promised, and
  3. you have a right to come down when you’re ready to breathe again!

As per James Urquhart’s “Cloud Computing Bill of Rights”, your data is your data. This means that the vendor:

  • must never claim any ownership of any data you upload, create, generate, modify, host, or otherwise associate with your IP;
  • must always provide you with APIs that not only allow you to upload data as needed, but to download all of your data in a standard format at any time; and
  • must inform you where your data is being hosted and must host only at those locations you agree to.

Furthermore, while it is your responsibility to undertake any integration and perform any necessary maintenance that may be required, from time to time, that you agree to, it is fundamentally the vendor’s responsibility to meet the service targets they promise. This means that vendors:

  • must do everything in their power to meet service level targets;
  • must monitor service levels and give customers access to the same metrics and logs they use to monitor those service levels;
  • must not terminate your contract for any reason not explicitly stated as grounds for termination in the contract; and
  • must not invoke “act of nature”, “act of god”, or force majeure clauses except for true force majeure events which could not be predicted or prevented against (occasional loss of power from the main provider or loss of internet from the main provider is to be expected and power, internet, and other key systems must be fully redundant, etc.).

But most importantly, you have a right to come down when you’re ready to breathe again! The vendor, subject to the terms of the agreement:

  • must let you extract all of your data and end the contract whenever you have the right to;
  • must not charge you to download your data; and
  • must not charge you any additional fees other than any early termination penalties you agree to.

It’s your data. It’s your solution. It’s your business. And if you decide down the road that you don’t want to experience asphyxia, hallucinations, brain-damage, and death, that’s your right!

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Want To Speed Up? Slow Down!

I really enjoyed this recent article in the Harvard Business Review on “the acceleration trap” and how corporations often take on more than they can handle when faced with intense market pressures by increasing the number and speed of their activities, raising performance goals, shortening innovation cycles, and introducing new management technologies or organizational systems at a furious and frenetic pace until employee motivation is sapped, the company’s focus is scattered in various directions, and exhaustion and resignation blanket the company which enters a rapid downward spiral.

It happens more often than one might think. And even if it doesn’t bring a company down, it can bring down a department. The worst scenario is when a company, after waiting, waiting, waiting almost forever to upgrade antiquated and failing systems decides it is going to do a big-bang upgrade in record time and decides to go, go, go before anyone plans, outlines, or even thinks about what they are doing. (There’s a reason that at least 70% of technology initiatives fail to some degree. This is usually it.) That’s why sometimes the best way to speed up is to slow down, take a step back, figure out what’s important and needs to be done, develop a plan of action, and then attack it with zest, but not so much zealousness that all of the employees will burn out before it’s done and success is achieved. Otherwise, you might be the next FoxMeyer.

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What’s the ROI of Online Collaboration and Communication Technology?

It’s hard to say, as it depends on what the technology is, what it can do, and how readily (and often) it’s embraced by your people, but it’s probably worth it. Video conferencing reduces travel (which not only takes up time, but costs money at an average of over 1,000 a trip per person), online document sharing reduces wait-times (when you have to rely on mail or courier), and online inter-enterprise information sharing reduces issue resolution time (as compared to phone and fax tag).

If the tools enable collaboration, and you use them with the intent of collaboration, they certainly have ROI, as evidenced by this recent article in Talent Management on “What’s Your Return on Collaboration?”. According to the article, an implementation of an online meeting and conference solution at SAP generated the following returns for the company:

  • a reduction of the average meeting time by 20% which reduces the average amount of time an employee spends in meetings each week by over an hour and a half
  • a reduction in meeting start-up time by over 85% which can save another hour a week if an employee has to attend between 7 and 10 meetings
  • a reduction in travel costs by over 33% which is generally more than what you will save if you just negotiate better rates
  • a 4-fold increase in collaboration attempts — when it’s easier to try and work with someone than work alone, collaboration happens

Now, this is only one case study, but it’s still impressive. Make it easy for your employees to work together, and they will.

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