Category Archives: rants

It’s Illegal to Burn Money, But Yet Your Organization Does It Every Day! (So Find Out How to Do Something About It!)

Title 18, Section 33 of the United States Code says you shall not mutilate, cut, disfigure, perforate, unite or cement together, or do any other thing to any bank bill, draft, note, or other evidence of debt issued by any national banking association, Federal Reserve Bank, or Federal Reserve System, with intent to render such item(s) unfit to be reissued and if you do, you can be fined or imprisoned for up to 6 months. But yet, every day, organizations everywhere collectively flush billions of dollars down the drain, overpaying suppliers, including foreign suppliers, millions of dollars that can not be recovered and reissued by the organization for other business purposes.

If it wasn’t for the fact that the vast majority of these organizations don’t intend to overpay and waste money, since this money (and evidence of debt) flows through the American banking system, I would otherwise be inclined to argue that, technically, this gross incompetence in management of corporate funds is criminal.

For proof that the average organization wastes money, we simply have to look to the audit recovery industry which recovers, on average 1% to 1.5% of annual spend. And, typically, this is just what they can find with a quick, mostly manual, review of the top n suppliers that account for 2/3rds (66%) to 3/4ths (75%) of external organizational spend using a very loose interpretation of the 80/20 rule. And that’s just overspend. What about spend that should never of happened in the first place (because it was off-contract and 15% higher than contracted rates)? Or unrecoverable losses due to a key supplier not having mandatory insurance policies in place? Or gross violations of the T&E (Travel & Expense) policy (that border on criminal malfeasance) where the VP of Sales decides that a dinner costing 2K / head at the local strip club is a valid use of the organization’s P-Card?

But most of these situations are easily preventable by a Procurement system that is designed to not only enforce compliance, but make it easy. To find out how, check out Sourcing Innovation’s New White Paper on The Procurement Marketplace and the Power of Compliance (registration), sponsored by Vinimaya.

It’s Faster PussyCat; not Faster Idiot!

Fashion. Mobile Devices. Software. Everything is moving faster and faster. Maybe LOLCats need to move faster because their expected lifespan is one sixth of ours. But we don’t. We’re moving so fast that we’re bringing back infinite scroll and software mystery meat. We’re building mobile devices so thin that they bend, sewing new clothes after they are already out of fashion, and re-launching movies from the 80s because no one has time to even think of an original idea (so forget about taking one to completion).

There’s a place for speed — and it’s on the racetrack. And while first to market is nice, in the long run, it’s usually best to market that wins. The same goes for organizational technology. It’s not about being the first to have the shiny new toy, it’s about identifying and implementing the right technology the first time. A shiny new toy always looks good, but what good is a toy that sits on the shelf? And that’s exactly what happens when you buy a piece of software that looks good but doesn’t support organizational processes and do what needs to be done.

Slowing down isn’t just for buddhists and chess masters, it’s for anyone who wants to get ahead in business and Supply Management. While it’s important to be efficient and effective when doing non-value added tactical tasks, when it comes to important, strategic, activities that, if done right, can generate an ROI that is effectively multiples of the resources invested in the activity (but, if done wrong, can cost the company millions), speed is not of the essence. Getting it right is. If it takes an extra hour, an extra day, an extra week, or even an extra month to get it right, sometimes that’s the right thing to do.

And in each of the examples given above, the extra time would make a big difference. With enough time, developers would be able to research, understand, and build software that did what people want the way they wanted the software to do it — there’d be no mystery meat. And while the mobile iPhone version of your site might need to be infinite scroll because, let’s face it, you can’t click a button the size of a flea on a 4″ screen, no one wants that garbage on a regular 13″ laptop screen and they definitely don’t want it on a 27″ desktop monitor! You could take the time to research exactly how thin and light you could make a phone that was still resilient enough for everyday use and you could design practical, fashionable clothes that people actually wanted to wear, and not just wear the day a model walks them down the runway.

There’s nothing wrong with wanting to go as fast as you can, but going fast just for the sake of going fast doesn’t help anyone. It just makes your organization look stupid. So slow down once in a while, figure out where you are, figure out where you want to be, and work out a detailed plan to get there. The results might surprise you.

And now, to (software) developers everywhere who bring us infinite scroll and mystery meat on a regular basis, LOLCat has a special message just for you!


LOLCat says you're stupid!

NewsFlash: PR Perp, I Don’t Care What You Think! (Blogger Relations Part V)

It’s no secret. the doctor doesn’t like PR pros. To be specific, the doctor does not like “professional” PR pros who work for PR Agencies who believe that all they need to know to do their jobs is “best practice” PR techniques and that subject matter knowledge is not required. This really bugs me because even the best salesman knows that you have to have both some understanding of the product and a customer’s desire if you want to sell it. Thus, in order for a PR “pro” to sell a story to publisher, would it not stand to reason that she should, at a minimum, understand the product or service she is pushing as well as the interests of the publishers she is pursuing?

Apparently not. Apparently SI wants to write about website building using glorified Facebook profiles, physical therapy, the average ball player’s salary, lipstick, reality TV, and PR agency press releases! Anyone who took fifteen seconds of time to look up SI (and scan any post in the Blogger Relations series or any entry in the FAQ) would realize that the doctor disdains social media for the sake of social media (if you want to take selfies and poke, prod, and farmville your life away, go for it, but leave me out of it), only writes about supply chain, and has a general disdain for PR agencies so the last thing the doctor wants is to write about your recent press release on how you just released a new social media tool that is going to revolutionize the business world (not), how you just ran a campaign for client X that was revolutionary (and probably had no impact on actual sales), or how you just hired more more PR “pros” to increase the number of publishers you can spam with inane, irrelevant, bullsh!t on a daily basis.

And to make matters worse, they all have outreach press release syndication engines that not only blast you with the most ludicrous story idea you can think of, but that send two to four follow-up e-mails on a scheduled basis where they remind you of how great the story idea was, in case you missed it the first time. If you’re lucky, it will include an unsubscribe link, but it won’t matter, because they set these engines up with a thousand lists, and every time they get a new e-mail address, immediately syndicate to all of the other engines in their PR network, so that way, even if you manage to unsubscribe from the Reality TV in Atlanta list, you’ll still get the same story from the Reality TV in New York list, that cross-runs all of their stories from the Reality TV in Atlanta list to make sure all stories get as wide a reach as possible. In other words, these PR pros have taken the art of spamming to a whole new level! (the doctor bets that even the Nigerians are impressed!)

But even this isn’t what’s currently driving the doctor mental. What’s currently driving the doctor crazy is how every ridiculous story (which is an accurate term because this is the word many people use to describe fiction, which is probably the most accurate term for a good portion of what SI gets pitched, which is another accurate term because this is what should be done with most of the content suggestions sent SI’s way) comes preceded by the words I think this is a great story for SI because …

PR Pro: What You Think Doesn’t Matter! Not in the least. No one gives a sh!t. All the company paying you cares about is that you promote their product or service. And all the publisher cares about is bringing quality subject matter on topic to their audience. SI isn’t being consulted by beauticians who want lipstick advice, isn’t being consulted by agents to professional athletes who want insights on how much their clients should be getting paid, and I certainly hope that SI isn’t being read by PR Pros who want insights on how to do their jobs even more annoyingly! (Although it’s possible that with this rant SI just gave a few amateurs a few ideas they shouldn’t have …)

And at least where SI is concerned, you have an archive of over 4,000 posts to search to determine whether or not SI has ever written about the topic, a detailed 20+ (or is it 30+) page FAQ that answers many of your questions, and a Blogger Relations series that, if read appropriately, makes it quite clear on how to NOT be an idiot. So if you can’t get the clue that all SI wants is Supply Management / Supply Chain related stories* and keep sending him stories about lipstick and baseball, expect him to unsubscribe to every list associated to your agency and blacklist you — permanently. (And this means that if you ever do get a great story in Supply Management, just like no one would listen to the boy who cried wolf, no one here is going to listen to you!)

So please shape the hell up and put a little intelligence and insight into your job or get lost. Seriously.

*SI is quite willing to be pitched loosely-related stories that have a 1 in 100 chance of being written about as long as there is some, clear, relation to Supply Management / Supply Chain.

BYODD is the Norm, But What Should This Tell Us?

According to a recent post on Spend Matters, BYODD (Bring Your Own Damaged Device) is Now the Norm, and the doctor has to agree. Not only are mobile devices ubiquitous in today’s workplace and home-life, but so are damaged ones. With essentially one in two mobile devices in use being damaged in some way, this means that at least one in two employees are using a damaged mobile device.

According to the author, the solution is to follow the advice in the referenced 2014 ZAGG Device Damage Study. Specifically, if companies are encouraging employees to bring their own devices to work, then those companies should be buying screen protectors, cases, and other damage defense products for their employees to make sure that these employees not only have damage free products to work on but to represent the company.

That is sound advice, and a precaution that should be taken, but that’s not the solution. That’s a fix. The solution to the problem is to address the root cause, and the cause is the proliferation of devices that are, simply put, way too brittle. While the doctor is not suggesting that we all need to be carrying around military-grade tech that can withstand blows, high-impact falls, and desert terrain, we should not be carrying around phones that bend in our pockets.

In other words, the real problem is the proliferation of devices that are being made flimsier and flimsier in a ridiculous effort to make a device that is not only lighter than the predecessor, but, as far as the doctor can tell, lighter than (compressed) air. And while 23.6 pounds (which was the weight of the first portable computer) is a bit heavy for a laptop, we can easily lug around a laptop that weighs 10 pounds considering we used to carry around textbooks that weighed 5 to 7 pounds each. We don’t need a 3 pound laptop (which is the rounded weight of a Macbook air), especially when a gust of wind can shred it! The same goes for phones. We used to lug around cell phones that weighed almost 2 pounds. We can certainly handle a pound if that’s what it takes to make it resilient and reliable. At 4 ounces, it can blow away with the wind!

So just like we need to avoid developers who insist on putting look before feel and functionality, we need to avoid manufacturers who focus more on making devices featherweight then on making devices resilient and support those manufacturers who take a more balanced approach to device production. When the money stops rolling in, this will quickly convince all manufacturers to kick their obsession with making featherweight devices and get back to reality.

Twenty Five Years Ago Berners-Lee Proposed the WorldWideWeb Project and Web Software Still Sucks. Why?

Because too many software designers and project managers think “Look and Feel” stands for make it look awesome because then you’ll feel good when you look at it. They don’t realize that “look and feel” refers to the “feeling” you get from using it, not just from looking at it.

And that’s why software still sucks. When it comes to software, looking good is important, but not more important than being usable. If, as Thomas points out in this post over on Spend Matters on why you should “Understand Your Use Case First — Develop Later!”, it’s impossible to find the button or menu item you need, or determine if it even exists in the first place, as good as the software looks, it still sucks, at best.

Software has to support whatever process it was designed for, and it has to make it easy for the user to accomplish that process — if it doesn’t do that, then it fails — spectacularly! It might look damn good when it fails, but it still fails.

And as long as developers continue on this ridiculous hidden-menu, infinite scroll, more features than you need but none you actually use kick, software will continue to suck and keep us in the technological dark ages.

So what can you do? Shun software that puts look first and functionality second. Developers will get the message, and eventually so will their managers. Then software can continue to progress forward.