Food4Thought

Marketing Internally

2006-11-23T23:32:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was talking to a friend of mine, and she said something that stuck with me. She said, in effect, that : " We don't care about the Organization we represent, we don't care what impact our work will have on the Brand, the perception or the future prospects of our employers with the customer." And you know what, she is right. I have observed many times that as employees, we fail to see the larger purpose, we fail to see beyond the current realities. Haggling with customers and partners, we forget where the brick goes into the wall.

What am I driving at? I am driving at the problem of selling internally, which leaders are facing right now, and which will become more and more acute without focussed action. Generating enthusiasm amongst employees, and creating the buzz internally, making them believe in the vision that, lets face it, they are going to delivering is going to be the toughest job for leaders going forward. Every frontline employee is a marketer, and influence the perception of the organization in the customers mind. All the investment in careful marketing and PR is gone to waste if the customer facing personnel do not re-inforce the carefully crafted image. And no, you cannot legislate enthusiasm, cannot make a policy making it mandatory. It is a big problem, also a huge opportunity....

Contemplating Employee Loyalty

2006-11-07T23:11:00.000-08:00

CRM Mastery eJournal has an interesting excerpt from Employee Loyalty: What Makes them Stay?:

"Managers need to know how to create effective relationships. Supervisors need tools to help them identify the "value" in the life of employees. They can then use this information to begin to build relationships......

Here is a simple concept to consider. Use the CalibrationCoaching concept of the YMCA. No, not the silly dance song from the 70s, but the simple acronym that outlines how to coach in almost any situation:

Your Thoughts - open the conversation by listening to the employee's perspective on the issues.
My Thoughts - share your perspective with the employee. Explain the details and how they can change their behavior.
Calibration - discuss what needs to change -- choose no more three areas for focus.
Action - define expectations and set a timeline for change."

IMHO: Attrition levels are big concern for me, as I have written here, here and here. And yes, Managers do need to change the way they behave towards there reportees....treating them as a group, as a team, and reinforcing the precednce of the team's goals over personal goals. Also, at the same time, focussing on each individuals' own aspiration and trying to weave them into those of the team. Ultimately, it boils down to balancing the benefits equation: the higher pay, and the anxiety, time for settling in, from switching jobs, versus the trust, culture, and yes, familiarity of the current situation, but lower pay. Our job is to make sure that the latter part of the equation is always heavier.

Dave's Workday

2006-11-07T01:43:00.000-08:00

PeopleSoft founder Dave Duffield's new venture, Workday, has just released a new product, an HCM solution based on the SaaS model. From the press release:

"About Workday:
Taking a fresh, modern approach, the company aims to provide mid- to large-sized companies with a compelling alternative to traditional enterprise software.........

Workday Enterprise Business Services are comprised of four suites of services, the first of which, Human Capital Management, is being announced and is generally available today(6th November). The subsequent suites—Workday Financial Management™, Workday Resource Management™ and Workday Revenue Management™—will be rolled out beginning in 2007. All of the Workday Enterprise Business Services share a common foundation:

On demand: offers web-based delivery, multi-tenant architecture, 24x7x365 availability, and enhanced security
Agile and Global: quickly adapts to meet your changing business needs
Intuitive: built for today’s generation of information workers; offers native reporting and analytical tools to help businesses make more timely and informed decisions
Built-in Auditing: enables tracking of all changes for governance/compliance purposes
Web Services Integration: offers out-of-the-box, standards-based integration capabilities, minimizing complexity and implementation time

About Workday HCM:
Workday Human Capital Management (HCM), the first service to be offered by Workday, is an on-demand solution that helps businesses dynamically align their people and organizations to adapt to fast-changing business strategies. With Workday, organizational changes that typically require weeks or months of IT support can now be done independently in hours or days by authorized business managers.

Built around a flexible organizational model and capable of managing all types of workers, Workday HCM addresses key functional areas such as Staffing, Compensation and Performance Management and is generally available as of today, November 6, 2006."

IMHO: Well, haven't we heard this before? Sounds very similar to the pitch of all ERP, and specially SaaS, vendors. But Workday already has a couple of customers (Biosite, and KANA software, both Calif.-based companies), and has signed up a few more. The way Workday is trying to differentiate itself is by eliminating the need for developers to go from RDBMS to what they call an Object Management System and back. Here's more on this. Let's hope that, at least technologically, Dave gives us a product as satisfying to work with as PeopleSoft.

Oracle Releases new WebCenter

2006-10-25T23:13:00.000-07:00

From ZDNet:

"Oracle announced today WebCenter Suite 10g R3, which it describes as a "next-generation user interaction environment." It will deliver task-oriented, contextual, multi-channel interactions for information workers, bringing Web 2.0 technology to the enterprise," according to the press release. And, it's part of the Oracle Fusion Middleware. Not only that, Oracle WebCenter Suite is licensed as an option on top of Oracle Application Server Enterprise Edition for $50,000 per CPU.

....The demo of WebCenter given {this morning} at OracleWorld was impressive, with blogs, wikis, threaded discussion, widgets, instant messaging, search, VoIP, RSS and mashhups all rolled into one application development environment. However, two key components–WebCenter Composer, for creating and customizing the application user interfaces, business rules, profiles and policies, and WebCenter Spaces, which allows individuals and groups to collaborate and manage projects–are not available in the first release."

An attempt to bring Web 2.0 technologies to the Enterprise through the Fusion platform. For me, there will be limited impact of this addition to the stack, mainly because there are a lot of cheap options available for people trying to collaborate, like JotSpot. Maybe we'll see it bundled somewhere.....

Indian IT industry's (forthcoming) woes

2006-10-23T02:04:00.000-07:00

Vinnie has a great post up on India's inflexion point. To summarize, he brings out three trends in Indian IT services environment which might hamper their continued growth:

1. Labor Shortages
2. Failure to develop significant competence in the business/program management domain, as opposed to technical domain
3. Shying away from new investments (Vinnie says Capex, but I believe that except for human resources, more an operational cost anyways, there is no significant investment in any key area)

As an aside, an intersting conversation is going on at Infosys Blog on talent shortages.

IMHO: I have written about this before here, here and here. I would also include:

1. Lack of focus: All Indian IT vendors want to be everything to everybody, consequently lacking the depth to tackle specific challenges

2. Underutilization of resources: Efficiency and productivity are frowned upon as I have written here.

3. Short term thinking: Quarter numbers are the most important items on every agenda, punishment from the market deeply feared. This manifests as a lack of forward, longer term thinking and hence obstructs development of competencies to face future challenges.

4. Walking the Talk: The use of IT inside the industry is abysmal. HR systems, and to some extent Financial systems are used, but in silos. CRM technology, Web 2.0 technologies, and other newer technologies are severely underutilized. These are the same technologies that we sell.

All in all, while there is a lot of buzz about the industry, the shortcomings pointed out above dampen the long term prospects. Playing Safe seems to be the mantra. As Seth would say: Playing Safe is Risky!!!

PS: Just shifted to the new Beta Blogger. So some of the Category Links might not work correctly. Do drop me a note if you come upon any such links.

SaaS Snippets

2006-10-23T00:59:00.000-07:00

Am back after a long lay-off. Here are some relevant snippets:

SalesForce Winter Update: SalesForce announced Dreamforce (registeration required), which included the launch next year of its custom development platform called Apex. Apex is a SQL/ Java based proprietary language, which will allow customers to deploy there own code customizations on SalesForce. It is an interesting development, and one which pushes the SaaS model even closer to a hybrid with on-premise. Details of how this will be managed in a muti-tenancy model, as well as how upgrades and such things will work are still lacking though.

Oracle On-Demand: Staying with SaaS, Oracle announced the launch of On Demand offerings on PeopleSoft Enterprise suite, and Siebel CRM. Appears to be a watered down version of their on-premise software, the pitfalls of which have been well documented. Remains to be seen whether their self-proclaimed "leaders in on-demand" tag holds up.

Will try to keep up with regular postings. Keep visiting for updates....

Update: Netsuite has announced SuiteFlex, it's own version of a development platform. SuiteFlex is targeted at Service providers, developers and VARs, and allows building of vertical-specific functionalities and business processes. In addition, NetSuite has also launched SuiteSource Directory, a source of free, open-source Suitelets hosted on Source Forge. Well, these SaaS guys really know how to make things interesting....

On Complexity, Fear mongering and Critical Thinking

2006-08-18T01:29:00.001-07:00

Brad Feld has a post up on Critical Thinking, and why he thinks we don’t see too many instances of it nowadays. He points to the transcript of this speech by Michael Crichton, at Washington Center of Complexity and Public Policy. I have been a fan of Michael Crichton since I read State of Fear. I have written a brief review here. The amount of research that goes into his books is amazing, although the story is sometimes lame. He talks about the pitfalls of linear thinking and blind belief when we are dealing with complex systems, essentially everything around us. He provides convincing arguments for a change in the media propaganda, and of discouraging fear mongering and doom prophecies. Must read for anyone trying to make sense of things around him/her.

Meanwhile Atanu is having an argument over at his blog, on Sri Sri Ravi Shankar (of The Art of Living Faith, or is it the other way round?). Atanu essentially asserts that SSRS is a brilliant marketer who is packaging and selling ancient Indian Wisdom to whose who want it. So how does this fit in with them topic of the moment? Well, there are a hordwe of followers of SSRS (Atanu calls it his cult) who are offended by his non-belief in SSRS’ divinity. Blind Faith. Atanu’s opinion should not matter to someone who truly believes in SSRS’ qualities, he is of course entitled to having and sharing his opinion. We had a huge uproar on the release of the Da Vinci Code ( a movie) in India. Essentially, the author tries to put forth the thought that Jesus might have been human. His followers did not like that, and mayhem ensued. Ultimately, it made for a hugely anticipated movie. Blind faith at work again.

I think that religion, blind belief, cults are all mechanisms we humans have invented to explain things (complex systems) that we can’t understand, much less explain. Linear thinking, as Michael Crichton points out, also has a part to play. Well, all questions have to have one right answer, doesn’t it? Problems have one solution, don’t they? Well, we keep forgetting the “at least” part, and hence the militant defense of our way of thinking. If I am right, surely you must be wrong if you are taking a different way? That is what makes us intolerant, hard headed, egotistic. Humans are complex systems, groups of humans increase the complexity, sometimes exponentially. And, we are all looking for simple answers. In isolation. Out of context. For very complex problems. What results?

Well, on the matter of religion, and belief, I can’t resist posting this excerpt from an interview by Douglas Adams. He really articulates it well:

Q: Mr. Adams, you have been described as a “radical Atheist.” Is this accurate?

Adams: Yes. I think I use the term radical rather loosely, just for emphasis. If you describe yourself as “Atheist,” some people will say, “Don’t you mean ‘Agnostic’?” I have to reply that I really do mean Atheist. I really do not believe that there is a god - in fact I am convinced that there is not a god (a subtle difference). I see not a shred of evidence to suggest that there is one. It’s easier to say that I am a radical Atheist, just to signal that I really mean it, have thought about it a great deal, and that it’s an opinion I hold seriously. It’s funny how many people are genuinely surprised to hear a view expressed so strongly. In England we seem to have drifted from vague wishy-washy Anglicanism to vague wishy-washy Agnosticism - both of which I think betoken a desire not to have to think about things too much.

People will then often say “But surely it’s better to remain an Agnostic just in case?” This, to me, suggests such a level of silliness and muddle that I usually edge out of the conversation rather than get sucked into it. (If it turns out that I’ve been wrong all along, and there is in fact a god, and if it further turned out that this kind of legalistic, cross-your-fingers-behind-your-back, Clintonian hair-splitting impressed him, then I think I would chose not to worship him anyway.)

Other people will ask how I can possibly claim to know? Isn’t belief-that-there-is-not-a-god as irrational, arrogant, etc., as belief-that-there-is-a-god? To which I say no for several reasons. First of all I do not believe-that-there-is-not-a-god. I don’t see what belief has got to do with it. I believe or don’t believe my four-year old daughter when she tells me that she didn’t make that mess on the floor. I believe in justice and fair play (though I don’t know exactly how we achieve them, other than by continually trying against all possible odds of success). I also believe that England should enter the European Monetary Union. I am not remotely enough of an economist to argue the issue vigorously with someone who is, but what little I do know, reinforced with a hefty dollop of gut feeling, strongly suggests to me that it’s the right course. I could very easily turn out to be wrong, and I know that. These seem to me to be legitimate uses for the word believe. As a carapace for the protection of irrational notions from legitimate questions, however, I think that the word has a lot of mischief to answer for. So, I do not believe-that-there-is-no-god. I am, however, convinced that there is no god, which is a totally different stance and takes me on to my second reason.

I don’t accept the currently fashionable assertion that any view is automatically as worthy of respect as any equal and opposite view. My view is that the moon is made of rock. If someone says to me “Well, you haven’t been there, have you? You haven’t seen it for yourself, so my view that it is made of Norwegian Beaver Cheese is equally valid” - then I can’t even be bothered to argue. There is such a thing as the burden of proof, and in the case of god, as in the case of the composition of the moon, this has shifted radically. God used to be the best explanation we’d got, and we’ve now got vastly better ones. God is no longer an explanation of anything, but has instead become something that would itself need an insurmountable amount of explaining. So I don’t think that being convinced that there is no god is as irrational or arrogant a point of view as belief that there is. I don’t think the matter calls for even-handedness at all.

{emphasis mine}

Two points for clear, unconventional (critical?) thinking…

The Relevance of Data

2006-08-07T22:07:00.000-07:00

Guy Kawasaki and Seth Godin have a beautiful conversation over on Guy's blog. This caught my eye:

"Question: Why don’t you check your Technorati ranking?

Answer: Because the data won’t change my actions. Getting data for no good reason just drives you crazy. The secret is to get very flexible in the face of data you care about—changing your x every time you see y changes—and incredibly inflexible in the face of data you don’t care about."

Simple articulation, great meaning!! The whole conversation is worth a read...

Gearing Up for 2020

2006-08-01T23:08:00.000-07:00

Paul Kedrosky has up some findings of a June study by the RAND corporation, highlighting the key technologies for 2020, and the countries best equipped to deliver:

Standardization in Sales

2006-07-30T23:35:00.000-07:00

Vinnie has a great post up on Reengineering the Sales Process.

"I would break the product discovery process into 3 steps each with varying levels of customer self-service and vendor sales involvement:

a) From the thousands of RFPs vendors have already responded to, they should have an A,B,C analysis of most requested/somewhat requested etc. features. Expose that on-line to users (in a password protected area to keep from prying competitor eyes) using a requirements traceability tool. Let prospects navigate and fill their own feature/function checklists, if need be. Then it would be ok for vendors to refuse to fill out requests for 400 page feature lists in RFPs – encourage users to do so on a self-serve basis. And I mean refuse. JetBlue decided it was only going to have instant ticketing business model - no reservations on hold for 24-48 hours. I am sure they lost a few customers but they stuck to the model and it is becoming industry standard.

b) For horizontal functionality – common across verticals, geographies - expose major process flows in on-line demos, architecture in well structured documentation etc. so customers can self-navigate through the look and feel, flow etc. Make reps available by on-line chat, telephone – remotely - to answer questions. Organize product marketing collateral on those lines. This functionality should not usually require demos at the client site.

c) For more unique vertical or client specific functionality, invest in on-premise, scenario based demos. Vendors should encourage buyers to define likely real-life business scenarios and then diligently walk them through how their solution delivers it. And tell the truth – what is available as a standard feature, what comes from partner functionality, work arounds etc. Too many vendors fight scripted scenarios. Or they will only do them grudgingly if a competitor is likely to invest in them. This is where the sales person should be focused, because this is likely where the differentiation will be most acute."

IMHO: Vinnie has hit the nail on the head, yet again. There is a need for standardization, of greater automation in the sales process. We, especially in the IT services sector, need to cut down on this needless expense by leveraging already existing (at most places) technology infrastructure. It would also help us showcase the effective use of the very technology that we are pitching, lending credibility to our claims. The biggest benefit would be a smaller, more productive, more responsive sales force, and an efficient, trustworthy brand image. We also need to learn to say no to unrealistic expectations, be honest with our claims, and deliver a consistent, high quality experience to our customers. Standardization helps cut down inconsistency and wildly fluctuating results from Sales and Delivery alike.

Industry Concerns-Attrition Part 3

2006-07-26T05:50:00.000-07:00

This is the third part in the series on attrition. Part 1 and Part 2 dealt with teaming and recruitment, respectively. While I promised last time that I will spend some time on the role of HR, I will take it on at a later stage. Today, I will focus on something that has been a traditionally weak area for offshore services providers (some say a big gaping void)—Leadership.

From the outside, we see, hear and respect senior managers for Indian IT companies, icons like Narayana Murthy, Pai, Nilekani, Premji and their ilk. Great leaders all. They are a big reason that Indian IT industry is where it’s at. This post is not about them. It is about the leadership one level lower—the middle management. These are the realities:

This section of leadership is under intense pressure

They are the links for the downward flow of the vision of senior leaders
They are the future senior leaders
This section is the most fragile of all with Indian vendors
They are squarely responsible for high attrition rates at lower levels

Consider this cycle: Middle management is under tremendous pressure—to deliver, to get business, to groom AND to fulfill their own ambitions. Some of the cadre leave, and are replaced (as is the norm) by fresh MBAs or, worse, with fresh engg trainees. Hence, the remaining managers face increased pressure, and some of them leave and so on….Charming picture, isn’t it?

To tackle this a few cultural aspects have to be addressed:

Rhetoric: Morale killer. Leaders espouse things which do not exist, or grossly exaggerate the few good things that are done. People are not dumb, and will not be fooled by empty promises or threats, or the doctored results of a survey. Just repeating things will not make them true. My advice, be restrained in proclamations, and when you do make one, make sure that it is true and remains true. Kill cynicism and distrust in the bud.
Good News: In all my working life in the IT industry, I have never officially heard a piece of bad news. Good news abounds. Worse is the spin put on things which are wrong, making sure they will never be fixed. People picking up unsavory topics are discouraged. Only in a culture of transparency will an organization truly know where it is at, and can accurately plan for where it has got to go.
Communication: Employees take their cue from their bosses. If the bosses are not committed to the organization vision, nobody will be. It breeds skepticism. Keep the middle management in the know and get their commitment. They may disagree, but allowing them to voice their opinions is a big step towards getting commitment.
Compromise: Whatever be the short term stakes, do not compromise on quality of middle level managers, for the sake of long term health. Using unsure, not-so-confident, short-on-knowledge managers drives down everybody. It is like a steroid, it may allow getting benefits for the short term, but will return to haunt you.

Excellence in execution is predicated on having good quality, capable, happy managers. Remember too, that their confidence, capability and knowledge flows down and in turn creates more managers, unleashing a virtuous cycle. It is a fragile segment of resources, in high demand and under a lot of pressure. Let us admit that, acknowledge the importance of middle management and try to give them a positive atmosphere to work in. This will not only prevent them leaving, but also reduce attrition at lower levels. Easy to say, tough to do (ain’t they all???). It IS the most powerful way to arrest attrition up and down the chain. As more and more large deals get signed, the pressure will be on, and organizations will be caught wrong-footed. Then we will perforce have to take remedial measures too late in the day. Better fix problems while the going is good.

Next (and last) time, I will try and tackle the prickly issue of the role of HR. Don’t expect me to be gushing about the current HR practices or attitudes.

Oracle briefing for Investors

2006-07-24T01:03:00.000-07:00

Oracle hosted a briefing for investors on July 18. Some thoughts:

Oracle reiterates its commitment to develop further all acquired product lines. They provide timelines for general availability and what can be expected of the releases.

There is no comment on Oracle’s foray into OnDemand and how it plans to attack the SMB space and take on Salesforce.com and NetSuite.

Nothing new on Fusion applications, or how the development is progressing. But there is demonstrated movement on leveraging the capabilities of Fusion middleware with new application releases having close integration with BPEL, XML Publisher, Customer Data Hub and the like. IMHO, the whole application family is moving closer together and we may yet come to a situation where all modules will be hot-pluggable and inter-operable.

Some impressive numbers on Fusion vs NetWeaver, and the usual noises about how SAP is still proprietary and Oracle is moving to open-standards. They do deliver integrations with SAP products though.

SOA was a recurring theme as a growth driver. But demonstrated benefits through the use of SOA are still lacking, IMHO. In fact, I have not heard of a single large scale SOA deployment. SOA’s true potential can only be realized through large scale deployment and the network effect. I have written about this here.

The presentation is here. Notes on the event by James Woodrow also point out the Q&A that took place after the presentation. Vinnie has penned some questions here.

SalesForce Update

2006-07-18T02:06:00.000-07:00

Techcrunch has the news from Salesforce.com:

"Salesforce.com will undergo its seasonal Summer ‘06 upgrade on Monday and has released information for the first time about a developers component at their annual users conference.

This year’s Dreamforce conference will include a sub-conference October 9-11th for Web 2.0 developers interested in moving out of the consumer sector and into bringing applications to market for business use.

The Summer ‘06 seasonal upgrade of Salesforce will see general enhancements and include the following highlights:

SAP integration, a means of connecting on-premises SAP databases with web based Salesforce.
Partnerforce, a system for managing resellers.
Scripting module, as in scripted dialogue not program scripts, for use in scripting customer interactions through a series of logical steps for categorization.
Service entitlements, a feature for managing service levels as appropriate for your customers of variable degrees of ritzyness.

The company is also announcing that it has now seen 10,000 customer installations of 280 applications through its AppExchange, a community for outside developers seeking to integrate with Salesforce."

IMHO: Well, well, well. Marc Benioff keeps upping the ante, doesn't he? Salesforce is once again making all the right noises. A big concern with SaaS so far has been the inabilityto integrate with on-premise solutions and extensibility. They are now trying to fix that. They are trying to involve the developer community, which is a great move coming after AppExchange for getting people talking about the technology (they already are, and it can only grow louder). Scripts and Service Entitlements, well, those are pretty standard feature of most SFA/ CRM solutions. But it demonstates that Salesforce is thinking about gaps and fixing them. Lets see how these are in action. The interesting question for me is: Will we see an on-premise version of salesforce? Any bets...?????

On acceptance of Mediocrity

2006-07-12T00:12:00.000-07:00

Seth points to Andy Monfried’s post on lowering of standards. Great post, a must read, one to ponder on. Must warn you that the rest of this post bears no relation to what Andy says.

We live in a world which accepts mediocrity too easily. This is specially true for India, still feeling the after effects, after 60 years of independence, of British Raj and then the amazingly hare-brained Nehru Raj (Must say at this point that Nehru’s heirs have maintained the same “high” standards). We accept bomb blasts, corruption, poor infrastructure, poverty, impotent and stupid governance, and meaningless, inane rhetoric by the “rulers” as a matter of course. We condone the suppression of freedom of expression and right to equality, we keep restricting the growth of free enterprise and we keep electing the same nincompoops in government again & again. Sometimes I wonder if a democracy is geared towards mediocrity. Have the great western democracies prospered because of, or inspite of democracy? But, undoubtedly, it is the best system of governance available thus far, and more power to it. Enough ranting…the needless losses of life yesterday in Kashmir & Mumbai still rankles. It will go away soon; it always does, until the next time.

By the way, I bet that we won’t see any action to deter this from happening again, no getting at the root cause (I hope we know where the camps are) and effectively discouraging the abettors (read our friendly neighbor). What we will get, in plenty, is rhetoric, propaganda, hollow speeches, calls for calm and more security for our “rulers”. Well, we are not branded cheap just like that; life in India costs just the one local train ticket….

Google & Yahoo Discovery

2006-07-05T03:18:00.000-07:00

Niel Robertson surmises in his characteristic articulate way that Yahoo is, for once, positioned well to fight Google:

"....Google wants to be the entry point for any discovery activity on the web. This would surely explain Google search, froogle, Google Scholar, Google SMS (assuming “web” is taken in a generic sense as “the cloud”), Google Maps, etc.. You could even posit that Google’s acquisitions hold up against this test. Consider Writely and Google Spreadsheets to be simply the input mechanisms to create document and spreadsheet content which is then discovered on Google. If you’re going to create a spreadsheet, it’s more likely you’ll put it somewhere that it can be shared and discovered if you do it on Google. Even something like their Dodgeball acquisition, which seems totally random at first blush, sort of fits this mold if you think of it as trying to “discover” the location of your friends. And of course, by mashing all this stuff up (maps, calendars, spreadsheets, payments, etc..) you simply add exponential utility around all the secondary and tertiary activities that come after discovery. First, search for a restaurant, then map it, and then go onto Dodgeball and tell everyone you’ll be there at 8:00pm.

.....an interesting question: what if the primary discovery mechanism people use today starts to shift away from Google?Keep in mind that almost all your discovery activities with Google are personal (and thus singular) experiences. You go to Google, enter a search term, get Google’s view of the results, then maybe you share. Well, what if it (and you) didn’t work that way. What if the first thing you did was interface with the web in a non-singular way?

And parenthetically, Yahoo has bought every single leading company in this space. What I’m talking about is discovery through tagging, which is a fundamentally community-centric activity (your context is what the community thinks the content is about) and not singular activities (what you think Google might think the content is about). To be less academic and cerebral about it, consider for yourself how often you now go to del.icio.us, flickr, or whatever tag-based system you like to search for something before you go to Google?

With that all said, I think there is a short window here where Yahoo is actually positioned well to fight against Google’s hegemony and to fundamentally shift the dominant discovery paradigm (sorry, I just had to say it) back in their direction. With their recent web2.0 tagging acquisition spree, Yahoo owns half of the equation (the tagging sites) but has yet to fulfill the other side (discovery)."

IMHO: Wonder whether Yahoo will (have they already??) wake up to this opportunity. Or whether Google will step up its social networking, community collaboration initiatives and open another channel for discovery. They have the Blogger platform, Orkut, and Picassa. And they are good at extending the utility of their basic platforms. Most importantly, they have the eyeballs.

Oracle PeopleSoft Version 9

2006-06-26T23:13:00.000-07:00

Oracle today took yet another step in reassuring its existing PeopleSoft customer base:

"Oracle Corp. today released Version 9 of its PeopleSoft Enterprise application suite, an upgrade the company said will prepare customers to move toward a service-oriented architecture (SOA).Oracle, which completed a $10.3 billion buyout of PeopleSoft in January 2005, has told its customers that it will continue to support the products from its former competitor.The new release is integrated with Oracle's Fusion Middleware, a portfolio of server software that allows applications from different vendors to interoperate. The integration allows better use of other Oracle technologies, including XML Publisher, Business Activity Monitoring and Customer Data Hub, the company said.Oracle said the Version 9 release adds features related to corporate governance and compliance, CRM improvements for customer service agents, and enterprise-level planning. The company also expanded capabilities for areas such as the public sector, health care, financial services, communications and higher education."

Good news for PeopleSoft customers, although they are still being encouraged to retire their old code base to prepare for migration to Fusion. Read the full news here and here.

Oracle - Event-Driven Middleware Suite

2006-06-22T23:01:00.000-07:00

Oracle announced its Event-Driven Middleware Suite recently. Has not gotten the coverage we expect from bloggers though. Here are some excerpts from the press release:

"Oracle(r) Event-Driven Architecture Suite iscomprised of best-in-class Oracle Fusion Middleware products that allowcustomers to sense, identify, analyze and respond to business events inreal-time. EDA is a key component of SOA 2.0, the next-generation ofservice-oriented architecture (SOA) that defines how events andservices are linked together to deliver a truly flexible and responsiveIT infrastructure.

Organizations using an EDA can gain a competitive advantage by responding more rapidly to changing business conditions. Current infrastructures for processing and managing events, however, are limited and require complex and expensive software engineering. Oracle EDA Suite includes a design time environment to easily define and correlate events; Oracle Enterprise Service Bus to collect and distribute events; Oracle Business Rules to define business policies on events; Oracle Business Activity Monitoring to monitor and analyze Business Events; and pre-built solutions for Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) and other systems.

Companies in a broad range of industries - including financial services, commercial banking, securities trading, telecommunications, pharmaceuticals, retail, government and manufacturing - can now use Oracle EDA Suite to become a real-time enterprise by enabling them to build, deploy and manage EDAs. Leading manufacturing and distribution companies are using EDAs to optimize supply chain and vendor management; leading retailers are using EDAs to optimize inventory management using RFID; and global financial services institutions are using EDAs to optimize financial positions and hedging strategies in the financial markets.

Leveraging Oracle Fusion Middleware'shot-pluggable architecture, Oracle EDA Suite is interoperable withOracle Containers for J2EE and non-Oracle application servers includingBEA WebLogic Server, IBM WebSphere Application Server and JBossApplication Server along with messaging buses such as Oracle AdvancedQueuing, SonicMQ, Tibco Enterprise JMS and WebSphereMQ. The offeringincludes native support to create, process, analyze and manage eventsand provides a flexible, declarative environment to rapidly build andadapt event-driven applications"

IMHO: Sounds interesting, even with all the jargon thrown in. SOA's delivery capability on all it promises is still suspect, especially as the organization that deploys SOA does not reap benefits rapidly. Rather, a network effect is needed, necessitating widespread adoption, to unleash the full and supposedly immense power of SOA. Wait and see. The problem is that most target organizations for SOA might also adopt the same approach. SOA 2.0? Sounds very far-off to me.....

The flaw in the Software Services Business Model

2006-06-19T04:46:00.000-07:00

Robert X. Cringely writes:

"IBM is a disaster-in-the-making. Big Blue as a total enterprise is running primarily on customer inertia and clever advertising, which definitely isn't enough.

One aspect of IBM's malaise is the disconnect between the traditional public image of the company (basic research, advanced R&D, patents, patents, patents) and the fact that most of their revenue-generating businesses aren't about hardware or software products at all, but services. Why continue to spend all that money if you're mainly just a business/IT consulting company made up of IGS and Price Waterhouse? Why, indeed.Here's what's happening with IBM. The heart of a company culture can be discovered if you look at the compensation system. IBM's major incentives right now are for signing business and cutting costs. In many IT firms, IBM included, billable hours are important. This results in a system where little is done to improve service efficiency, because doing so would lead to fewer hours and less revenue. Efficiency kills, so at today's IBM it is generally avoided.

The result is that an increasing number of customers are unhappy with IBM, signings are harder, so there is less return business. To get that signing incentive, IBM's sales folks are now under-pricing deals. The people who do the actual work are still expected to show a profit though, even if one wasn't designed into the contract in the first place. So to still be profitable, they under-deliver on the contract, and this leads to an even lower quality of service. What I am describing is a death spiral that top IBM management either doesn't see or simply doesn't want to admit."

IMHO: Hit the nail right on the head there. But this the case with almost every Software Services firm. The flaw is in the business model, where the charge is by time, and not by the result of that time spent. More the time spent on doing the little bit allocated to you, more is the money you make. Of course it needs a certain bit of naivete in the customer community as well for this model to work, and whatever else they may be, enterprise customers are not naive. So, how come it is working? Because the costs are low, and the quality is higher than what one intuitively expects for that cost. At least in the offshoring scenario. I am talking about the direct, visible costs here. Because, my hypothesis is that opportunity cost of the time and effort of the client is seldom taken into account. Truth be told, I have a feeling, the cost would still be comparable to nearshoring.

While offshore vendors have invested in getting certifications galore, like CMMi and ISO and what not, the hazard still remains that quality/ efficiency/ productivity will always be second rung to billable time/ loading factor. The alternative is the Fixed Bid model, followed by pioneers like GE, in which the incentive shifts back to the vendor to deliver efficiently to derive greater returns. One surmises that the number of such engagements should increase over time. Time to beef up estimation expertise as well for offshore vendors who severly lack it, but that is a story for another day....

Forrester Chief on Emerging Trends

2006-05-10T03:49:00.000-07:00

George Colony, the founder & Chief executive of Forrester Research, on future trends:

SAP has a 10% advantage over Oracle, as it is not preoccupied with integrating PeopleSoft & Siebel

Companies offering software and services focused on technology that has not yet been developed for the commercial market (yet) will ride the next wave

The big players in the new wave will be the likes of Google, Salesforce.com and a number of other small start-ups, by way of leveraging the “executable internet”, which refers to a new level of interactivity online involving websites that function more like software and less like pages to read.

In the future, much business software will be free and funded by advertising; Google will be leading the revolution

The "extended internet" will supplant today's internet experience, with 14 billion devices connected to the internet by 2012

Between 1996 and 2006 every company connected to the internet, but from 2006 to 2016 every company will be connected to every product; for example, he says, in the future a company like Coca-Cola will know where every can of Coke is in the world.

Well, Mr. Colony is certainly bold and good with jargon like “extended internet” and "executable internet”. Whether these prophecies come to life is yet to be seen, and all of us know that research firms miss the point oftener than not. There are quite a few challenges for the likes of Google, before they can achieve a significant presence in the enterprise. While Microsoft should certainly be alarmed by Google’s progress, I don’t think SAP & Oracle have anything to worry about—yet. SalesForce, and its brethren in SaaS have a long way to go before they can take on the mega vendors. As I have written before, here, we might end up with a hybrid of the pure SaaS and pure packaged application models in the medium term. As far as tracking each coke can is concerned……

Protect, Extend, Evolve with Oracle

2006-05-04T23:30:00.000-07:00

Niel Robertson writes about the recent Collaborate 06 conference, where three Oracle Users Groups: Quest Direct (traditionally the JD Edwards users group but now extends to include PeopleSoft), IOUG (Independent Oracle Users Group) and OAUG (Oracle Applications Users Group) came together.

“…they have launched a new “Protect, Extend, Evolve” messaging campaign. This was clearly Oracle’s mantra at Collaborate.

And, as usual, Oracle messaging is not just rhetoric – they are actually trying to back it up with product announcements. A few notable announcements from the Collaborate conference:

PeopleSoft 8.48 is coming and PeopleSoft 8.49 is planned (a vague 2007 date was given)
PeopleSoft 9.x applications are coming and there is “commitment” to a release after 9.0 (although no specifics could be given by John Webb, VP Application Strategy who filled in for Jesper at Collaborate)
A new release of JD Edwards is now available with more features on the way
The Announcement of an “Applications Unlimited” program claiming Oracle will continue to develop all application platforms for the foreseeable future”

I have written about the Applications Unlimited program here.

Industry Concerns-Attrition Part 2

2006-05-03T04:18:00.000-07:00

This is in continuation to my last post on Industry Concerns. Today I will share my thoughts on the second area of focus to arrest attrition—recruitment.

RECRUITMENT: In any Service Industry focused on knowledge, recruitment of the right people and allocation to right roles is of utmost importance. I look around me, and the situation is despotic. Interviews are conducted over phone (face to face in some cases) for functional knowledge, masses are recruited from B-schools and engineering schools and people poached from other similar organization without discretion. BG checks are done in name only, and no thought is given to the persons aspirations when allocating roles. Pathetic!!! My hypothesis is that if we conduct a random sampling of people inside and outside the organization (in a busy mall, say) and rate them on a 5-point scale according to attitude, qualifications, previous experience etc., the proportions we get will be disturbingly similar. That usually means that the recruitment process is not discriminating enough, in fact not even required. We will probably achieve similar results if we open the office gates to everyone whenever recruitment is required, and closing them after the required number have walked in. Why spend so much of the shareholders’ money on something that just does not work???

In counterpoint to the above, there is high pressure on recruiters and the number of recuitees is very high in any timeframe. Hence, it is difficult to focus on quality and organizational fit, just meet the numbers. This in turn increases attrition and increases the recruitment numbers for the next time frame, forming a vicious cycle of never ending recruitment. Dante would have loved this scenario!!

As in any processes focus on the end goal is very important. Let us pause and think, maybe take example of an industry leader. Google, for instance, has a very rigorous recruitment cycle, almost like a 6-month long IQ test. Of course, they are an engineering company and it serves them well to have loads of braniacs cooking up innovative products all the time. This reflects in their attrition rate (Less than 1% for engineering employees). I am not suggesting that we go berserk over IQ of applicants, but we should have a criterion for people who will like it in this environment. An example might be “attitude” (psychometric testing is standard for evaluating attitudes). Recruitment must be geared towards sifting out everybody in the “poor” and “average” category, even if in the process we lose out on a few “above average” and “excellent” people.

Anyways, here are a few simple (:))) ways to improve recruitment:

Make recruitment specific. Too often we recruit first and allocate later, when the requirement arises, in order to have ready numbers quickly. The first step should be to recruit for specific requirements if we are to find the best fit of people. It is difficult in this highly competitive industry to predict requirements accurately. The resolution should be to have the best people serve the customer, or to not take the business at all. If this means cutting down on ad-hoc orders, or staff augmentation opportunities, so be it.

Involve performing practitioners. Second step is to reduce the workload of recruiters through the involvement of practitioners who have proven performance track record. Let them sift through the applications and pick out outstanding ones for further processing.

Screening before interviews. All screening should be done before the interviews take place, to avoid resource wastage and fraudulent entries.

Strengthen referrals. Employee referrals are very important if the right talent is to be attracted. While reward systems are already there, a high standard when referring and an informal procedure of reprimand in case an employee, once selected, turns out not to be what he was touted to be should be in place.

Above all, set high standards. Do not recruit just to make up the numbers.

Recruitment, especially of the wrong variety, has widespread implications. Teaming, Morale, Attitude, Culture—everything is predicated on recruitment. And yet, this is treated as HR domain. Effective recruitment is the job of everyone in the organization, and not just HR. You, me, the cheerful lady in the next cubicle, the slick HR guy we meet for coffee—everyone has a stake, and hence everyone has the responsibility. The role of HR is restricted to primarily recruitment in IT Services organizations. I am no fan of HR in IT, but even I think this is unfair. Next time, I will deal with the role of HR in arresting attrition. Do let me know your thoughts on this in the meanwhile.

Update: Seth Godin, the author of Permission Marketing & Survival is not enough, talks about Recruiting here. A super read for anyone remotely interested in the woes of the business world.

Oracle & Siebel CRM

2006-05-01T22:59:00.000-07:00

John Wookey talks about the synergy between Siebel and Oracle:

“There are four very strong parts of Siebel's business that made it an attractive acquisition target for Oracle.

One, obviously, is the core CRM technology. Siebel is clearly the world leader in this marketplace by all measures: customer success, market share and technology. The company has rich, deep CRM functionality and their success shows it.

But Siebel also has amazing industry-specific capabilities. I've come to appreciate that horizontal CRM is a fantasy. Dream CRM is about specific vertical marketplace requirements. Siebel took a very strong core set of functionality around service, marketing and sales, and developed best practices and specific capability around specific industries--such as high-tech, pharmaceuticals, and CPG. And they did it in an innovative way. They invested a lot in industry-specific domain expertise and built some very unique industry content and capabilities on top of the CRM components.

The third very powerful capability from Siebel is the company's business analytics. They acquired analytic technology about six years ago and really invested in it to create market-leading analytics capabilities. And of course, because they were an applications company, it wasn't just a BI engine. They'd invested a lot in building content-rich dashboards--again, by industry. That allowed them to go out and help customers understand what was happening in their business. And to do it from data sources beyond just Siebel applications--including other applications, and custom systems that customers themselves had created.

Additionally, the combination of Oracle and Siebel also created the world's largest and most comprehensive on-demand offering. The combined talents, expertise, and vision of the Oracle/Siebel organization will give customers access to the industry's broadest range of enterprise computing solutions delivered with a services-based approach. That means continued innovation and flexibility, but with additional options and at a lower cost.”

IMHO: Seems like Siebel will be leading Oracle’s CRM charge. Also, there has been speculation (confirmed???) that Oracle is going to segregate its CRM business from its other application businesses and treat is as different from other applications. Makes sense too, in that CRM technology is unique as far as Enterprise Applications are concerned. It deserves a dedicated, focused approach to development, implementation and change management. Another point to note here is that Oracle’s latter acquisitions—Retek and Portal—nicely complement and enhance the vertical specific functionality. I think they will form important pieces in Oracle strategy going forward, providing rich, deep vertical functionality and built-in best practices. Sounds good, but the challenge will be to seamlessly and efficiently integrate these disparate technologies.

We’ll see how it pans out, but for now Siebel seems to Oracle’s flagship CRM product.

Benefits of CRM

2006-05-01T22:15:00.000-07:00

The CRM Mastery E-Journal reports on a survey by CSO Insights:

"We asked participating sales executives to assess the impact that technology was having on their sales performance. A consolidated review of their responses found that 71.9 percent stated that CRM was improving their performance, 18.2 percent said it was having no effect, and 9.9 percent didn't know.

Initially we see that for more than seven of 10 firms there is a plus side to their CRM initiative. But these figures prompt a follow-up question: What exactly is different as a result of using this technology? To get a more definitive answer we asked these execs to get specific about what "better" looked like now that the CRM applications were in the hands of their salespeople.

The article includes a chart analyzing the "Benefits Resulting from CRM Usage." Here are the top 10 benefits:

Improved Communications - 60+%

Improved Forecast Accuracy - 50%

Reduced Administrative Burden - 40+%

Increased Revenues - 30%

Improved Best Practice Sharing - 25+%

Shortened Sell Cycles - 20+%

Reduced New Rep Ramp-Up Time - 20+%

Improved Win Rates - 20%

Improved Order Processing - 15+%

Increased Margins - 10%"

IMHO: Sounds good doesn’t it? But the problem is putting dollar numbers to improvement, and attributing some of the improvement to CRM. Having gone through a CRM initiative in my own organization recently, while I am a big proponent of the technology, I think CRM has a long way to go to fulfill the promise of “Customer Relationship Management” and more than the technology has to evolve to realize that. I will go into details of this soon. Do let me know your thoughts.

Oracle Applications Unlimited

2006-04-26T03:02:00.000-07:00

From ZDNet news:

“Oracle unveiled its Applications Unlimited program on Tuesday, removing a 2013 deadline for halting development of new releases of its PeopleSoft, J.D. Edwards and Siebel Systems software.
Under the program, Oracle will continue issuing new versions of PeopleSoft, J.D. Edwards and Siebel applications in the foreseeable future. It had previously said it would discontinue support for those companies' programs after 2013.

Right now, Oracle is melding their technologies into its next-generation architecture, Oracle Fusion. But the change means it will keep putting out updates beyond the anticipated debut of Oracle Fusion applications in 2008.

"This is a little added insurance for our customers and something they've been asking for," said Jesper Andersen, senior vice president of Oracle's application strategy. He added that some large PeopleSoft customers, for example, may need more time to roll out their applications across several continents.

In addition to removing the deadline, Oracle is dedicating development teams and assigning general managers to each of the three lines of applications, Andersen said. Customers of PeopleSoft, J.D. Edwards and Siebel will also provide input on the product plans for the software they use.”

IMHO: Analysts say that Oracle is feeling increasing heat from SAP, and that has precipitated this decision. But more than that, I think, it is just Oracle keeping options open and not killing off the cash cows it has. It has in fact pledged additional investment. The decision also reflects the will to reassure the existing customer base, and of course, to halt the SAP charge, or at least slow it down. Kudos to Larry Ellison for listening to his customers. When these new versions get delivered and what functional enhancements are provided is still not clear though, but with Larry at the helm you can always expect a surprising move or two from Oracle.

Industry Concerns-Attrition Part 1

2006-04-25T04:47:00.000-07:00

As a part of the Indian IT Services industry, I am naturally concerned with the high rates of attrition and the dearth of real talent here. The latest results highlight the issue, wherein all the Indian IT players reported attrition from 13-20%. That means that every 1 in 5 people that the organization invests in is leaving. That is an alarming number, but one that we have lived with over the past few years of rapid growth. More alarming though is that the middle management level is seeing high churn rates (If you have the numbers on this, kindly give me a pointer) and is stretched wafer thin.

The way the industry has traditionally tackled this issue is to hike salaries. The salaries offshore are set to grow 15-25% in the next fiscal, so the trend is continuing. I believe that this is the incorrect, very short term solution and will create problems going forward. We have to do much more if we are really sincere about arresting attrition, especially within the performers and key executives.

To even begin to address this issue, first there has to be a commitment to changing the mindset of looking at employees as statistics, as a number, and treating them like we would our customers—with transparent & consistent policies, quick issue resolution, no red tape, consistent & concise communication, and delivery on promises. Here are the things I would focus on from a long term perspective:

TEAMING: I haven’t seen, or heard of, any organization which has effective teaming practices. As humans, we tend to stick to our networks, preserve our connections. Here is what I propose we should do to promote teaming

Give people a clear goal. All good, cohesive teams are characterized by their striving towards a definite, clear objective which takes precedence on their own agendas. The goal should be finite, unambiguous and measurable. Choose the measures carefully. I will discuss this more fully in another post. This is half your job done.

Promote constructive dialog amongst people, providing a platform for free expression and positive conflict. Rather than artificial harmony, I would rather have honest conflict and difference of opinion. It is easier said than done, though, and the challenge is to encourage people to participate, to have an opinion, to share honest views rather than saying what they think their managers want them to say.

Inculcate trust among team members. Have frequent team meetings, where all members are encouraged to share good news, but particularly concerns and apprehensions. Demonstrate action on alleviating those concerns.

Encourage honest criticism and feedback. This will promote issue based actions rather than people based. This is much tougher than it sounds; people are sensitive to criticism and tend not to appreciate it. But to focus solely on the above stated goals without getting sidelined by personal issues, it is imperative that this be tackled.

Have clear, transparent accountability.

This is just one of the things that organizations need to focus on in order to arrest attrition. This is preceded though by recruitment, often the root of most, if not all, evils, which I will talk about in another post.

If you are interested in this topic, you might also find interesting this post by David Kirkpatrick on HCL’s innovative pratices on this front, this interview with Wipro’s Azim Premji and the Idea Market at Rite-Solutions. I have also written about this earlier.

Talk by Google's Eric Schmidt

2006-04-20T04:55:00.000-07:00

Rajesh Jain points to a VC Confidential post on a talk by Eric Schmidt. The key points:

“We live in a world of continuous distraction and multi-tasking. It will only get worse.

People's attention is the most important asset for marketers

The key to getting people's attention is targeted advertising instead of untargeted.

Society is trying to block untargeted ads with TiVo, spam filters, Do Not call lists and such.

Social communities will become more and more core to interactions and marketing on the web

Group dynamics, such as predictive markets (future blog), are fascinating

Study after study shows that groups collectively predicting/assessing dramatically outperform individual experts. He said that all decisions at Google are made consensually through groups. New ideas are broken out into three person teams

Predators, Phishers and other such elements are greatest threat and will always be there

Google is working on auto-translation products. This will allow content, trapped within a language such as Japanese, to be freed for consumption world wide by all

Not only is the world opening up as never before, but data is unbounded as well, with handhelds having access to all content in the world.

Furthermore, handhelds will truly be digital assistants. They will know location & preferences in order to deliver what you want, when you want and now where you want

We are at the early stages here. Over 1 billion people are online, but 5 billion are not (of course 2.6 billion people get by on less than $2/day)”

IMHO: Attention scarcity and domination of communities online are a direct effect of too many channels bombarding information (similar and dissimilar) at the consumer. Assimilation and search costs for information keep increasing due to this proliferation. Online communities keep this in check. Going forward, two things should happen: consolidation in channels (through consumer choice or economic selection) and reduction in casual information consumption (headlines & summaries as opposed to detail). Some of this is already happening. Look around you and how much information is there for you to digest. How long since you read the newspaper from cover to cover?

Google Enterprise Advances

2006-04-19T02:32:00.000-07:00

Came across this scoop on Google Enterprise on Business2Blog:

“You don't tend to hear much about Google Enterprise, which consists mostly of Google's search appliance that companies can install in their own data centers and use to index their corporate data. But you are about to hear a lot more. And it is because Google is starting to focus more on software than on its ill-suited hardware strategy.

Google is set to announce tomorrow a broad set of partnerships with enterprise software companies, including Cognos, Oracle, Salesforce.com, and SAS. The partnerships basically amount to Google and these enterprise software companies sharing APIs so that data from the various software systems can more easily be searched for through Google's OneBox corporate homepage. Instead of Google Maps, now you will have mashups with Oracle databases, Cognos business intelligence software, and Salesforce.com customer info.

So for instance, if an executive starts searching for "April sales" in his Google OneBox, it will automatically suck in data from Salesforce.com along with appropriate charts (assuming he is already a Salesforce.com customer), and display that Salesforce data along with other enterprise data and general Web search results. Think of it as the consumerization of enterprise software. As Salesforce.com vice president of developer marketing Adam Gross says:

“It is becoming more broadly recognized that the business market is not as impenetrable or IBMish as it was in the past. The search box is the new UI [user interface].”

But why would the enterprise software folks want to cede their own custom UI's (along with the customer) to Google? The answer is the same reason why any company would want consumers to find it's information on the public version of Google. The enterprise software companies hope to be able to pull more users and more usage into their proprietary software worlds through Google. If search is indeed the new UI, and your data does not appear in search results, then you might as well be invisible.”

IMHO: Very interesting indeed. Google hasn’t made much of a push for the Enterprise market till now. But if this is true, and Google gets a toehold, will we start seeing the same kind of innovation with internal data search as we have been on the web? Only time will tell, but if past record is anything to go by the move is well thought out and will be logically extended with time. Google Ahoy!!!

Interview with Azim Premji

2006-04-18T02:23:00.000-07:00

Knowledge@Wharton has an interesting interview with Azim Premji. Some excerpts:

“Aron: What demands do these new businesses make on your senior management? And what are you going to do to make sure that they are ready to meet those challenges?
Premji: Our managers need to have a strong integration of managerial skills and technical understanding. One cannot substitute for the other. That is not an easy combination to get, especially if you want to sustain growth. Technical people tend to be more "techie" and management people are more "managerial." To have strongly integrated managers who have a deep understanding of technology is a rare and difficult combination to build. You have to invest a lot in selecting and training these people.

Aron: You made an interesting observation about the difficulty of having technical folks do managerial work, and how it makes growth a challenge. This brings me to a question that is often asked about Indian companies. Today, Microsoft's revenues are more than 20 times Wipro's revenues. In your mind, do you see Wipro growing to the size of Microsoft or IBM?
Premji: It would be reasonable to assume that Indian services exports in IT and in BPO will grow cumulatively for the next five years at about 35%. They are now growing between 23% and 25% a year. I do not see any reason why leading companies like ours cannot grow faster than the growth of exports from India. After that, it is a matter of interpolation and desire. Do you keep scaling the organization? Do you use high-leverage models? Do you use productivity tools so that your headcount doesn't increase as fast as your revenues do? That is what we are trying to achieve, and it is not an easy challenge. How do you build maybe 8% productivity growth a year in your business model? To do that, you have to grow 8% a year in terms of revenues with the same headcount, or to grow 16% in revenues a year but with just an 8% increase in headcount.

Knowledge@Wharton: What leadership qualities do you look for in executives you hire at Wipro?
Premji: We have defined seven or eight leadership qualities. We have defined those because we needed some consistency in terms of what we measure against when we recruit; what we measure against when we promote; and what we want our training to be oriented towards in terms of the skills and competencies we want to build into people. Pratik, could you add more about the leadership qualities?

Pratik Kumar: We look for people who can work effectively in an unstructured environment, who have great adaptability and who can be reasonably comfortable in situations that are not crystal clear and where there is a level of ambiguity. We also recruit people who have a lot of self-initiative because these are qualities that will lead them to succeed in our kind of environment.

In addition, we have a clearly crafted list of leadership qualities with which we measure our own managerial talent and I will touch on those very quickly. One is customer orientation, because we believe that for an organization to be successful, this is a particularly important rule. Strategic thinking is becoming more and more important; we need people who can balance short-term and long-term goals, and who are ready to sprint and run a marathon at the same time.

Self-confidence is another quality that I think is becoming increasingly important. Many people have spent their whole lifetime working in environments which have been predominantly Indian. When they have to deal with people from different cultures and with different styles, it is important to see how well they are able to hold their own. Self-confidence also means your ability to take good news as well as bad news. How well are you able to do that? That is another important element. Other important leadership qualities we look for are commitment to excellence, willingness to groom other leaders in the organization, and the ability to work in teams. All these qualities are interwoven in everything we do in the organization.”

IMHO: Premji talks on a broad range of topics, from Wipro’s differentiation to the effect of & reason behind their recent restructuring. To me, two things stood out—one, his focus on correct recruitment & growing leaders from within, and improving productivity AND innovation. I have talked about how productivity will become a critical factor earlier. It is no longer an either-or situation between innovation and productivity; organizations need to manage to do well on both counts to thrive. Teamwork is another key challenge facing the Indian IT companies. More about this later.

Oracle acquires Portal Software

2006-04-17T23:39:00.000-07:00

Sadagopan says:

“…..Portal, the billing and Revenue Management solution provider for telecommunications and media markets is being acquired by oracle. The acquisition price is set at $220 million. On the face of it Oracle eBiz suite, Siebel CRM & Portal billing and revenue management nicely supplement each other. Telecom billing is not part of core offering for any standard enterprise player. Billing solutions are seen as a critical infrastructure for telco service providers and this is a fast growing high yielding market. Portal covers the entire gamut of billing creation, mediation and rating functionality with support for wireline, wireless, broadband, cable, voice over IP, IPTV, music, and video. The telecom industry itself is in the midst of massive transition. Besides heightened M&A activities, the dynamics and metrics of operator offerings towards end consumers are changing with numerous cross selling, up selling package options. With the increasingly felt trend of convergence of publishing, media, and entertainment services converge, a unified /homogeneous solution for billing, customer interaction, and management of digital services and content is indeed an attractive proposition.”

Here is the SAP view of the deal:

“Portal is an SAP partner and indeed there is a joint product offering to provide telco billing functionality. Portal covers the billing creation, mediation and rating functionality that SAP doesn't have in the core product. Other partners provide this functionality as well, but this is the only joint offering that I'm aware of.

With this acquisition, Oracle is able to offer a pretty complete billing solution to telco service providers. In addition, Siebel and Portal have a joint offering. Siebel has a strong presence in Telecom CRM market. The acquisition increases the Oracle CRM/billing advantage. SAP will likely need to concentrate on working more closely with other partners as its unclear what Oracle will do with the joint offering. (They may sunset it as it doesn't behoove them necessarily to have a product which expands SAP's functionality in telco).”

IMHO: Portal will certainly help Oracle on the way to realize the stated vision of verticalized offerings. These acquisitions of smaller, niche industry players will probably continue till Oracle is able to offer the whole technology stack—databases, middleware, and vertical-specific applications—to various industries.

TidBits- SAP, NetSuite

2006-04-07T02:25:00.000-07:00

Some relevant news:

SAP: Just bought Virsa Systems Inc., a maker of the regulatory compliance product suite Continuous Compliance. This shows SAPs willingness to grow through acquisitions, as well as expands its partnership with Virsa (they were reselling one part of the suite, the Compliance Calibrator) and adds important, proven capability in an area which is taking up a lot of mindspace with executives lately.

NetSuite: Another of Larry Ellision's pets, they are taking on SalesForce head on. Netsuite announced the launch of SuiteScript, what they call the "First SaaS platform for Business Process Customization." There has been a lot of talk of the lack of ability to customize OnDemand applications, specially with reference to SalesForce.com. I am sure we'll hear more and more about this as we go on. A very interesting move.

Fusion Thoughts

2006-04-07T02:19:00.000-07:00

Double dubs has an interesting post up on Oracle Fusion:

“When Oracle purchased PeopleSoft and thus the JD Edwards application as well, and then announced project Fusion, it didn’t take much thinking to assume that Fusion would fuse the best functionality for all the application suites and create a single super ERP.

Fusion is not only an attempt at releasing an integrated suite of applications from the Oracle, PS, JDE, and Siebel lines. In fact, that’s the least of what Fusion represents. The real goal of Fusion is to present a process integration layer that spans across all your organization’s applications, regardless if they are Oracle apps or not. Fusion middleware has already been released, and some Oracle applications have already been certified on the Fusion platform.

The core of Fusion is not more functionality in an integrated suite of products. The core of Fusion is actually an integration of processes throughout applications that are integrated only in the fact that they use the Fusion middleware. Obviously it’s much more than just bringing together functionality from PS, Oracle and JDE.”

IMHO: Double Dubs is right, but not complete. Oracle (as well as SAP) are trying to provide the underlying platform to developers which would let them create their own applications. I had written about this earlier here. You can also catch the original post by Niel Robertson here.

Offshore Product Development

2006-04-04T03:46:00.000-07:00

Sadagopan pens a brief note of Offshore Product Development:

“Today in an increasingly shrinking market, software product companies are reeling under pressure. The big gets bigger, the brutal market forces are punishing most of the players with reduced profitability, where it can be counted. While this happens, there is a concurrent pull effect that calls for widening the range of offerings, with reduced resource commitments. We now find that increasingly, in reality, gaining such an advantage through global product development takes a high rank in the order of important things.

Product development is normally seen as an expensive process for software companies. The ballpark estimates suggest that in respect of established vendors, anywhere from 5% to 8% of revenues may get ploughed back into software product development. While the cost structure of the various players may vary, it is generally seen that this would cover amongst other cost elements, personnel cost working across the spectrum of operations. Needless to say, with varying nature of operations & owing to multitude of factors, there would be potentially a wide range of value additions that can be measured relating to various types of operations. In such a scenario, the productivity equation becomes an important operational parameter for review. Like in all competitive industries, companies that can develop great products with defined /lesser budgets compared to peers gain a huge competitive advantage. “

IMHO: I had written earlier (here) that productivity will become a more & more contentious issue as we go along in the services industry, at least. But another problem that offshore, at least India-based companies (experience is limited in this regard, so bear with me) suffer from is the thinness of their competencies. All these companies offer a broad range of services, but there is no real expertise in the resources. The belief is to learn on-the-job-when-it-comes-along. Lack of specialization, high turnover amongst experienced specialists and the jack-of-all-trades attitude plague the industry. Productivity, and specialization, are positively correlated in the context of product development. This is a challenge that both the global big players and the smaller, but increasingly global in outlook, offshore players will have to deal with sooner rather than later.

Idea Market

2006-04-03T07:10:00.000-07:00

Rajesh Jain quotes an interesting NYT piece:

"At Rite-Solutions, the architecture of participation is both businesslike and playful. Fifty-five stocks are listed on the company's internal market, which is called Mutual Fun. Each stock comes with a detailed description - called an expect-us, as opposed to a prospectus - and begins trading at a price of $10. Every employee gets $10,000 in "opinion money" to allocate among the offerings, and employees signal their enthusiasm by investing in a stock and, better yet, volunteering to work on the project. Volunteers share in the proceeds, in the form of real money, if the stock becomes a product or delivers savings. Mr. Marino, 57, president of Rite-Solutions, says the market, which began in January 2005, has already paid big dividends. One of the earliest stocks (ticker symbol: VIEW) was a proposal to apply three-dimensional visualization technology, akin to video games, to help sailors and domestic-security personnel practice making decisions in emergency situations. Initially, Mr. Marino was unenthusiastic about the idea - "I'm not a joystick jockey" - but support among employees was overwhelming. Today, that product line, called Rite-View, accounts for 30 percent of total sales. "

IMHO: A very interesting way to proliferate ideas, very democratic--just that it seems to work in this case. Started me wondering whether this idea is scalable to large companies. A start could be to have a market for internal projects, mostly hated by employees and, from personal experience, where the returns are mostly eyewash for the organization. Can we incentivize internal teams, can we attract more talented people to interesting internal projects, can we to some extent dilute the subjectivity inherent in measuring the success (or lack, thereof) of internal projects? Would be an interesting experiment. Anybody listening?

Entellium on SaaS

2006-03-31T03:21:00.000-08:00

Recently, their were reports of information misrepresentation between two SaaS players—SalesForce and Entellium. Sadagopan points to the response by Natalee Roan, CMO of Entellium, who takes out time to respond, to what she terms as “inaccuracies and lack of integrity in the document.” She gives her take on “business practices she finds incredulous in this industry.” It makes for an interesting read from one of the industries insiders (albeit fairly new at this game). She says:

“Hosted CRM companies get to market a monthly fee and then charge a year or more before you even get started.
From my vantage point, the worst thing that ever happened to Customer Relationship Management is that it became productized into "CRM" so companies don't have to bother living up to the words behind what they are selling.
They turn the sale into a "features-functions" war rather than take the time to understand what you need. Even the way they arrange their product line is designed for the consummate "up-sell." By design, they leave out 1 or 2 key features that force you to move to the next product for a considerably higher price - and you can't mix and match the lower priced products with the more expensive ones.
The few that market Service Level Agreements (SLAs) offer a mere few paragraphs with no teeth - and the largest of them all only offers SLAs to a select few customers, despite numerous and lengthy down-times. Those CRM companies that do claim an SLA force you to keep track of uptime and chase them for your money. They also say nothing about back-up schedules, downtime notifications, incident resolution times….all critical items in Software as a Service, or hosted solutions.
The industry seems to intentionally avoid standardization just to keep their high prices in tact, with hundreds of partners waiting to take a bite out of the unwary buyer. Somehow we've been trained to think that it's acceptable to have to pay yet more people to get a product to work as advertised. And they've pulled the greatest marketing ploy of all - to make you believe your business so special that this extra work is needed in the name of "customization". The entire industry is a feeding frenzy on the customer.”

“Let me summarize: Even with hosted CRM companies that advertise "No Software" -You buy more features then you can possibly use, on a long-term agreement that you pay for up-front, with no service guarantees if something goes wrong. Further, you wind up paying them to support their own product, and needing them or someone else to make the product work the way they told you it would before you signed on the dotted line in the first place.”{emphasis added}

IMHO: SaaS still has some issues to overcome, but it is making big strides—and fast!! SalesForce’s trust site is one step in the right direction. There is a lot of innuendo and propaganda going around (where is it not??), and somebody needs to cut to the chase and clarify the picture for an industry which is built on customer trust. This is the currency they will not want to lose, cannot lose. They do and they are dead, especially with the big guns gearing up to take on the small guys.

Mistakes in Customer Strategies

2006-03-30T23:26:00.000-08:00

From the CRM Mastery E-Journal, few excerpts from the book Passionate & Profitable by Lior Arussy:

“After decades of relentless effort in putting the customer first, it seems that the holy grail of customer delight continues to elude big and small corporations alike.
In Passionate & Profitable (John Wiley & Sons), [Lior Arussy ] holds up a mirror to show executives the 10 fatal flaws their companies make -- from "putting lipstick on a pig" (hiding faulty business processes behind cosmetic marketing and customer service initiatives) to taking "technology shortcuts."
……………………….
Executives go to CRM seminars, read the right articles, learn the right things, but when it comes to the crunch they fail to act on their learnings. They know but they don't do. "Education without execution is just pure entertainment, and Lior illustrates this beautifully in his book," says Tim Sanders of Yahoo.
………………………….
However, all is not lost. Salvation comes from making the right critical choices, as many as possible from among the 10 in Arussy's list. From defining the role of the customer in your business and clarifying the kind of relationships you seek with customers to actually deciding which customers to select and which to drop. From avoiding silo-based ways of viewing the customer to adding innovation and value through post-sales dialogue.

A proponent of CEM (customer experience management), Arussy brings this all together in his chapter on customer experiences, which, as he rightly claims, are the building blocks of customer satisfaction and the catalysts for differentiation.

"Wow" customer experiences are delivered by inspired, passionate employees, but only when there is a lifelong commitment on the part of the company, not one-off initiatives with an eye on quarterly results or fashionable but soulless CRM programs. You can't fake it, either with customers or employees, Arussy says.”

Seems like a great read. Look forward to a review of this on this site in the near future.

John Wookey on Oracle's roadmap

2006-03-28T21:30:00.000-08:00

From a Computerworld interview with John Wookey, the head of app development at Oracle:

“Customers have been getting comfortable and conversant with what the [Fusion] plan is, and they’re translating what it means into their own current deployments in PeopleSoft or the E-Business Suite. We have very happy customers coming back and buying additional products. We’re doing very, very well going head to head with SAP.
……………………………..

Siebel had really good technology, and we’re embracing that in Oracle. [Another piece] on the CRM side is that we have integrated the organizations. We’re planning Siebel 8.0, with some enhancements and a service-oriented architecture. Siebel 8.0 is under way and targeted for late this year. In addition, we plan to work aggressively to integrate Siebel CRM capabilities into Oracle and PeopleSoft ERP systems. We’re looking at packaged integration, and we have a project under way, and this year, we’ll deliver integration. Horizontally, it will be around quoting and order management flows and integrating Siebel OnDemand into the PeopleSoft and Oracle ERP back-end systems. Vertically, Siebel has financial industry service sales force automation, and we’ll integrate it into our core banking applications. Also, their life sciences product had good [sales force automation], and they had a clinical trial management system similar to our own academic research applications and that will be integrated. It’s all laid out, but we haven’t announced specific timing
………………………………

Later this year, there will be a major release of the Oracle E-Business Suite, Version 12, and PeopleSoft Enterprise, Version 9. J.D. Edwards Version 8.12 will come out in the next few months. There will also be another release of J.D. Edwards, EnterpriseOne 9.0, approximately 18 months after that, focused on very specific customer-requested enhancements. We’ll also come out with J.D. Edwards World, No. A9.1, early next year. There is a major set of enhancements for both Oracle 12 and PeopleSoft 9 [CRM] coming out.
………………………………….

The year 2008 is when the Fusion Suite hits the streets. But, there are a lot of things happening later this year. We’re releasing libraries of Fusion reports. Using XML, customers can see how they can extract and manipulate information for reporting. We’re building libraries for reports on top of PeopleSoft and J.D. Edwards and the E-Business Suite that customers can use today. This will be the basis of Fusion reporting. And Fusion has much better tools for doing reports.”

IMHO: Oracle is progressing well on its way towards Fusion. While skepticism will remain, I think if anyone, Larry might just pull it off. In my view, Siebel will lead the Oracle charge in the CRM space which is really hot right now. This might just convince Oracle to treat its CRM business in a totally different way than the other package products it has. The CRM space, as far as Oracle is concerned, is pregnant with possibilities. Look forward to some interesting days ahead....

SaaS-IDC's Top 10 Predictions

2006-03-24T00:36:00.000-08:00

Jim Berkowitz covers the IDCs "Top 10 Predictions for 2006: Software as a Service":

The SaaS market will jump from $2.3 billion worldwide in 2003 to $8.0 billion by 2007, a 28-percent five-year CAGR.

IDC Top 10 Predictions for SaaS:

Large ISVs will spin off on-demand versions of products
Small and medium enterprises will remain a "tough nut to crack"
Microsoft will strengthen SaaS resolve
Software on-demand providers will focus on partnering
ini-ecosystems will emerge to extend the reach of software on demand
SaaS enablers will continue to aid availability of on-demand offerings
Merger and acquisition activity will continue
SaaS providers will concentrate on improving offerings and customer service
Hosted AM will become a stepping stone toward on-demand delivery
SaaS will help drive a software industry transition to subscription licensing

I have covered SaaS predictions earlier, here.

SOA-foundation

2006-03-23T22:57:00.000-08:00

SOA is a much touted term nowadays. So, here are my two cents. Let us start with some definitions:

Definition 1: “A service-oriented architecture is essentially a collection of services. These services communicate with each other. The communication can involve either simple data passing or it could involve two or more services coordinating some activity. Some means of connecting services to each other is needed.” {Source}

Definition 2: “A service-oriented architecture (SOA) is the underlying structure supporting communications between services. In this context, a service is defined as a unit of work to be performed on behalf of some computing entity, such as a human user or another program. SOA defines how two computing entities, such as programs, interact in such a way as to enable one entity to perform a unit of work on behalf of another entity.” {Source}

Now, while the definitions, and most of the chatter seems to focus on technology, we got to understand that technology is only there to support business objectives. In effect, the shape of the technology is directly derived from the focus of the businesses it is going to serve. So what is the impact of SOA on business?

In a Service-oriented model, it becomes easier to just “plug and play” different applications. Interoperability increases, since you are already publishing services, and hence the effort for integrations go down. The technology becomes more adaptable to changing business needs, and hence the quality of applications increases. SOA also helps you leverage existing sources of data. For example, if you are publishing you customer (or consumer) information as a service, any new application using which needs this data can just consume the service. Hence, discrepancy in records is avoided by having just the one source of information.

SOA major benefit is what I choose to call ‘future readiness’. As an organization moves towards SOA, its readiness to handle changing business scenarios (and evolving business processes) increases. This also reduces the cost of future development, and the implementation time & effort. Quality of the applications increases as well.

That was just one side of the coin though. There are numerous challenges to SOA as well. Specially in large organizations where disparate legacy systems exist, unaware of one another, or at least integrated point to point on a need basis. If such organizations don’t have some “backbone” applications, it becomes difficult to manage and maintain the SOA, because there is not sufficient communication between the different development silos.

Interesting perspective on SOA, here and here. Do let me know your thoughts.

SaaS- SF.com

2006-03-22T01:52:00.000-08:00

Niel Robertson writes:

"In the last few weeks, Salesforce.com has made two pretty subtle but important announcements. First, they announced the concept of Salesforce.com sandboxes. A sandbox is essentially a copy of your production data which can be used for development and testing. As SF pushes AppExchange and users start to experiment with integrating 3rd party components, there is clearly a need to be able to "play around" in a development sandbox before releasing integration or application changes straight to production. Also, as SF.com applications become more complex and critical, you can imagine a testing phase similar to UAT (user acceptance testing) becoming part of the standard SF.com development cycle. All of this I find very ironic, as one of the key benefits of SF.com is that it does not have a development cycle and multiple environments. This is one of the curses of the packaged application infrastructure, where an implementation is not just production but development, testing, and in many other cases 1 or 2 more systems (e.g. DMO in PeopleSoft or Pristine in JDE). Any features must be systematically moved from DEV to TST to PROD in a labrious release process.

The second, more recent announcement is that SF.com (and SugarCRM) now are part of the Eclipse IDE movement. This means you can get SF.com plug-ins for Eclipse and develop composite SF.com apps in the same way you would develop other applications. So, whether we like it or not, the VP of Sales is no longer becoming your key SF.com developer, its headed back to the IT department. "

{emphasis is added}

IMHO: I had covered SaaS earlier, here. In my opinion, although SaaS is gaining, and will continue to gain, momentum it will be more due to the alternate pricing mechanism, rather than due to quicker development cycles or reduced complexity or higher efficiency. I see a convergence back towards the packaged application way of development, but the pricing and the pay-for-use model will make it an enticing option in the future.

Book Review-"The Five Dysfunctions of a Team"

2006-03-21T01:25:00.000-08:00

Just finished reading “The five dysfunctions of a team” by Patrick Lencioni. Nice book. Although it does not present rocket science, it does help you see your team in a different light, and put some words to that uncomfortable feeling about the team. The text is simple, and presented in a story-like format to make it fit for quick consumption. The language is crisp, and the focus clear.

The story is set in a Silicon Valley start-up which is plagued by team problems. The problems are presented through discussions within the team, and it is explained how the dysfunctions are all related and feed on each other. The dysfunctions range from Lack of Trust to Inattentiveness towards Results. Any team leader, or manager, or even team members will definitely relate to it.

There is also a questionnaire to help you assess your own team (Insert Evil Grin here!). Coming soon, the results of the experiment on my team.

Product Review-Oracle SQL Developer

2006-03-20T21:13:00.000-08:00

The SQL Developer is the latest application that Oracle has to offer. It is a querying tool, a tool to write and check out your Stored Procedures and PL\SQL programs. A graphic interface is provided to browse through your database objects.

The SQL Developer is written in Java, which seems to be the product of an in-house Java Development project in Oracle (Project Raptor). The entire app is coded in Java, in order to be able to provide a cross platform tool. The App runs on all platforms Mac OS, Linux, Windows which have JRE. For those who don’t have Java 1.5 JDK they have provided it at the site.

Developers who have used TOAD and other high end querying tools won’t find anything new in this. But the thing to look out for in SQL developer is the ‘Delivered Reports’ features. More about this later in the post.

The App uses the normal JDBC for connection to Databases - but it isn’t ‘raptor’ enough, so they didn’t release it as Oracle Raptor and stuck to Oracle SQL Developer. It uses the thin JDBC drivers so there’s no need for any installations as such, which makes it one of those unzip and use applications.

About the interface, it’s pretty much a nice piece of art. Got a cool bluish look and nice icons and stuff- if it was not Oracle it definitely would have come with Skins and Themes.

Well, making a connection is painstaking; of course JDBC connectivity doesn’t come that easy. You have to give the Host name, SID and all to get your connection, developers who are already spoiled by tools like TOAD which reads from your tnsnames.ora would find it a big pain with the connectivity.

But once you get connected it’s pretty much ‘do-anything’ feel in SQL Developer. You have the tree structure which lets you browse through the objects in the Database, the filter options for your objects are very limited- that’s one thing you’ll miss from Toad

The Create Object option in the right click Context menu, though, is quite cool, no need to remember those long syntaxes, just a few entries, some check boxes and click ok your object gets created.

Oracle is moving slowly to the drag drop culture that you see in MySQL Query Browser with the-drag your objects and get your query feature.

The query outputs can still be exported to various formats like CSV, XML, and simple TXT etc.

There is this Snippets feature that comes with SQL Developer that gives you your Aggregate functions, your datetime functions etc that you use in your everyday queries. The PL\SQL Programming techniques was quite a surprise, with syntaxes for FOR loops etc.

The best feature of Oracle SQL Developer is the Data Dictionary Reports which gives you pretty much anything you want to know about your database. There is this provision for User-defined reports which adds a bit more value to SQL Developer.

Well to sum it up all, I still feel it’s an application not for the Developers it’s an application that kills the developer. It’s taking all the fun of coding from the Developer, of course you might argue that the logic will still remain with the developer but the whole drag and drop thing might not work for the contemporary developer. It makes him or her feel like Schumacher in a fully automatic F1 car, it’s too damn boring. I wouldn’t say it’s fast, there are high end query tools that query much faster than this. No wonder they dropped the whole Raptor theme.

Verdict: A nice tool for beginners to start with their SQL and PL\SQLs.

Hat Tip: Bijou.

I had written about the SQL Developer earlier here.

GIO 2.0-The future of the enterprise

2006-03-20T03:26:00.000-08:00

(Via Sadagopan) IBM’s Global Innovation Outlook brings together a diverse set of contributors from many disciplines and areas of influence to examine each of the focus areas. For 2005 & 2006, 248 thought leaders from nearly three dozen countries and regions, representing 178 organizations, gathered on four continents for 15 “deep dive” sessions to discuss three focus areas and the emerging trends, challenges and opportunities that affect business and society.

A very interesting report to read (available here). The focus areas were:

The Future of the Enterprise

Transportation, and

The Environment

Some startling patterns emerged. For instance, for the future of the enterprise:

Enterprise-free as against free enterprise. Activities driven by a common set of interests, goals or values will glue together the involved entities, with the traditional organization playing the role of facilitator.

Job fluidity is here to stay. In the 21st Century, the workforce will be much more comfortable with changing jobs frequently. As a consequence, an increasingly “specialized enterprise will emerge.

Smaller is better. Large businesses will learn to inculcate the flexibility and adaptability of smaller businesses, becoming in effect, an aggregation of small specialized enterprises.

Leaders will need to be very different in the new business world. Maybe some pointers can be gained from the very popular MMOGs. They will have to deal with a high level of complexity, uncertainity, and will have to make rapid-fire decisions.

Innovation will have to be ingrained into every fiber of the new enterprise.

Social Networks, collaborative innovation, are themes that pervade the report.

IMHO: Though it might seem paradoxical, the focus is shifting from the enterprise back to the individual, just as we saw in marketing some time back (a shift from mass- to one-on-one marketing). Social networks are predicated on the individual, and the new-age enterprise will have to find something beyond the traditional ESOPs, bonuses etc. to bind together its workforce. Traditionally, Indian firms have been slack at this, and it shows in the high rates of flux in the workforce. They have to tighten up in this area, and guard there intellectual capital zealously, otherwise with the demand side competition increasing, attrition will only go northward.

A summary of the report is also available here.

The $100 PC

2006-03-16T22:28:00.000-08:00

Dan Farber reports on the $100 PC:

"At PC Forum Novatium Solutions demoed its $100 PC appliance (without keyboard or display, which adds about $75) for emerging markets. The Nova netPC and Nova netTV are based on thin client (server-based, zero administration for users) and mobile phone technology. "We have the guts of mobile phone and use the business model of phone industry," said Rajesh Jain, co-founder of the Mumbai, India-based company. "We reduce the price of the thin client by about 50 percent, moving away from the Intel architecture, and change the business model to suit emerging market customers." It's like a cell phone in square box and a bunch of I/O ports.

…………………..

Software is provided at $10 per month, and supports Unix and Windows terminal services. The license for Windows software and terminal services has to be purchased separately, but an open source, Linux-based desktop stack is available for free.

……………………..

Novatium has 20 pilots underway in India, the U.S, South Africa, Mexico, Austrailia, New Zealand and in some European countries. The official product launch is in April, Jain said. …….. "The real opportunity is in the annuity business, and we have not decide{d} to work with partners or do it ourselves," Jain said. Service providers could also serve ads on the devices as part of the revenue generation scheme, he added."

If anyone sees a review of this, be kind enough to point me to it.

Oracle's SQL Developer

2006-03-16T22:02:00.000-08:00

Oracle has just released the production version of it's SQL Developer. Says Oracle:

"{SQL Developer is a} graphical tool that enhances productivity and simplifies database development tasks. With SQL Developer, you can browse database objects, run SQL statements and SQL scripts, and edit and debug PL/SQL statements. You can also run any number of provided reports, as well as create and save your own."

I have been seeing Toad and similar products till now. Look forward to a review of this on this site soon.

On SaaS

2006-03-13T05:15:00.000-08:00

Rajesh Jain points to Amy Wohl's predictions about the software-as-a-service market:

"1) This market is growing in a serious way. I would expect a company of anysize to be able to purchase all of the software function it wants and needs as a service, rather than as traditional software, installed within its own firewall, within 3 to 5 years.

(2) Of course, I don't expect every company to want to move all of its IT needs to the SaaS platform in that time period. I do expect even large companies to move functions that are used only occasionally or only by small numbers of users to an outside service provider.

(3) SaaS will increasingly look like a great solution for commodity problems like Email, for companies of any size. Remember, having Email supported by SaaS means outsourcing your Spam problems, too, and most of your virus problems as well.

(4) Look for large traditional software players to start to seriously offer SaaS-based alternatives to their traditional software offerings. These have to be serious, full-function alternatives rather than Microsoft's recent foray into on-line services, offering incremental services to Office users, but still requiring the customer to install Office on every workstation and multiple Microsoft servers within the firewall.

(5) Watch the innovator companies like Google figure out how to be SaaS vendors beyond the consumer function they offer now. Inevitably, they'll offer software to the small business market and they may decide to move beyond that into services that appeal to the remote workers of large companies, for example."

Demanding more from IT

2006-03-10T05:29:00.000-08:00

Sadagopan writes:

“IT today consumes more than half the capital investments around the world and software alone consumes more than ten percent of global capital investments. Obviously, the rigor that goes into traditional investments would begin to get applied in future IT related investments. With the exalted status that IT enjoys with business, it was probably the case; hitherto IT got away with liberal treatment. While SAP routinely claims, companies that run SAP are 32% more profitable, Nicholas Carr points to a to be released report assessing the relative profitability of SAP customers from Nucleus research with key findings therein –“SAP customers are 20% less profitable than their peers”. Carr writes, “Nucleus Research looked at the 81 public companies that SAP lists as customers on its own website. It determined the return on equity (ROE) earned by each company, based on formal financial filings, and then compared that number with the average ROE for the company's industry, as calculated by Hoovers. ………….
Clearly time to demand more from IT – not for damning IT but for finding better business models for IT companies and more importantly to make user organizations optimize better to get better yields.”

Google Acquires Writely

2006-03-10T04:25:00.000-08:00

Google has acquired Writely, a maker of MS Word-like word processor which runs in a browser. It lets the users collaborate online, share documents instantly within their browsers. This positions Google better to take on Microsoft in the desktop application space. With the launch of Google Calendar (they are testing it now in selected regions), a Microsoft Outlook Calendar type application, called the CL2 they have created another small component to take on MS. Writely fits perfectly into the mould. It is still in beta, but you can expect more from it pretty soon. Really looking forward to testing it out. Look out for a review on this blog as soon as I can get my hands on it.

Against Eve Teasing

2006-03-08T23:50:00.002-08:00

Atanu Dey points to a project in Delhi, Mumbai & Bangalore (as well as online) seeking to deal with Eve Teasing:

"Blank Noise Project: The project seeks to recognize eve teasing as a sexual crime and establish the issue as something that may be normal, but is unacceptable. The Blank Noise project works both online and on the streets of Bangalore, Mumbai , Delhi. We invite you to come along "

Invention Vs Innovation

2006-03-08T04:53:00.000-08:00

Knowledge@wharton on Innovation vs Invention:

" Many companies spend a great deal of time and effort on measuring innovation, according to Jim Andrew, senior vice president and head of innovation at the Boston Consulting Group. “While none of these measures individually may be perfect, a suite of measures allows you to get your arms around measuring the progress of innovation,” he said. “It allows you to learn and change as it becomes necessary.”

.......

According to Andrew, many different ways exist {to measure innovation}. “We have found in our work that companies should measure three main things,” he said. “First, you should track the outputs of the innovation process. Next, you also need a set of measures to track the inputs. This is where innovation can be most precisely measured. People track the amount of money they spend on research, and they also track specific people. In our experience, human capital is in much shorter supply than financial capital. The scare resource is always your best people. The third area is the effectiveness of your process. To sum up, you’ve got to measure inputs, outputs, and process performance.”

.......

To understand innovation, you first have to distinguish it from invention; too many people confuse them, according to Linda Sanford, an IBM senior vice president. A company’s portfolio of patents reveals its smarts as an inventor. IBM, for example, remains formidable in this regard, racking up record numbers of patents for the last decade. But patents aren’t enough. Their technology has to find its way into products.

Not all innovations are created equal. Paul Schoemaker, a Wharton adjunct professor of marketing, pointed out that many people cite only of “hits” like the Blackberry or Starbucks coffee shops when talking about innovation. “But some companies don’t play that game,” he said. “They play a percentage game of incremental innovation, like Toyota. And some companies aren’t really innovators at all. They play a loss-avoidance game."."

A very interesting read. Innovation is a term much bandied about nowadays, just like TQM or TPM or Six Sigma in the recent past. Fear is that it is not that well understood. At my organisation, an attempt at measuring innovation is there, but again it is not well understood. Ambiguity and subjectivity in measurement, making it impossible to get a bird's eye view in all areas of business for the organization, is another roadblock to effective measurement. Wonder how we can improve in this area?

Dashboards as a Mgt Tool

2006-03-08T04:51:00.000-08:00

Businessweek on dashboards:

“The dashboard is the CEO's killer app, making the gritty details of a business that are often buried deep within a large organization accessible at a glance to senior executives. So powerful are the programs that they're beginning to change the nature of management, from an intuitive art into more of a science. Managers can see key changes in their businesses almost instantaneously -- when salespeople falter or quality slides -- and take quick, corrective action. At Verizon, Seidenberg and other executives can choose from among 300 metrics to put on their dashboards, from broadband sales to wireless subscriber defections.
………………….
Still, dashboards have drawn some flak. Critics say CEOs can miss the big picture if they're glued to their computer screens. Other critics fear dashboards are an alluring but destructive force, the latest incarnation of Big Brother. The concern is that companies will use the technology to invade the privacy of workers and wield it as a whip to keep them in line. Even managers who use dashboards admit the tools can raise pressure on employees, create divisions in the office, and lead workers to hoard information.
…………………..
Still, most management experts think the rewards are well worth the risks. They caution that executives should roll out the systems slowly and avoid highlighting individual performance, at least at first. They also underscore the need for business leaders to spend time up-front figuring out which metrics are the most useful to track. But that's a question of how to use the technology, not whether to implement it.”

IMHO: the most important line in the above is “spend time up-front figuring out which metrics are the most useful to track”. The decisions you make depend on the quality of the measures you choose. If you are choosing metrics which objectively display the various facets of your business, dashboards will work. They will bring transparency, accountability and objectivity to the decision making. But the downside is that if the incorrect metrics are chosen, it will hurt just as much. Risk & Rewards—works every time!!!

Box.net

2006-03-06T23:18:00.000-08:00

Paul Stamatiou writes (Via Rajesh Jain):

“School work, business proposals, universally accessible storage, data backup, important documents - there are many reasons why you might want to have secure online storage. Having all of your important files online is more convenient and safer than toting around a USB memory stick. A relatively new and revamped web service called Box.net plans to make online storage as easy as possible without skimping on the features. With 1GB of storage for free and up to 5GBs for a small fee, you can easily safekeep files and share them with contacts....Online storage is a volatile industry. Server space is at a premium these days. The only way Gmail is even able to cope with their outrageous offerings and large user base is by compressing their data. Assuming each person uses their ~2.5gigs of storage (not that anyone ever uses the entire thing, attachment size is limited to 10MB) with text, Google can compress that space to only a few hundred megabytes. However, with Box.net users are encouraged to store all types of data and media. Nothing will be compressed and that is a secret to why the service is so fast. New users can get 1GB of box space for free with paying users getting 5GB for $4.99 a month.”

First Mover Advantage

2006-03-06T21:17:00.000-08:00

Seth Godin Writes:

"There are a million markets. Markets of one, or markets of small groups, or markets of cohorts that communicate—the market often belongs to the first person who brings you the right story on the right day.

The market is splintering more than even some pundits predicted in 1998 (that would be me). Which means that the idea of monolithic marketing messages to monolithic markets makes no sense. The race is now to be the first mover in the micromarkets where attention matters.
Of course, those micromarkets are leaky. People don't cooperate. They talk to each other. So pretty quickly, that splintered market coalesces into something bigger."

This ties in perfectly with what I covered on the Long Tail earlier.

Globalisation & Complexity

2006-03-03T02:39:00.001-08:00

This was the theme for PwC’s 9^TH Annual Global CEO Survey, which throws up some important findings.

A brief about the results:

Globalisation will have a positive effect on most businesses in the coming years
Over-regulation, trade barriers, political instability and social issues are the most pressing challenges to globalization
BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China), not in that order, are the most interesting emerging markets for the CEOs
Cost cutting is only one aspect of globalization. Other incentives include finding new customers and better servicing existing ones
Complexity is rising, being an inevitable by product of doing business today
The advantages of going global, though, outweigh the disadvantages

Satyam’s Chairman B. Ramalinga Raju is interviewed. He talks about Globalisation and what it means for India in general and for Satyam and other Indian IT companies in particular. He says that Indian companies are winning large deals (when asked about global companies willing to take up smaller deal) and hence, the playing field is level. He also talks about the capabilities that Satyam is building to prepare for the future—leadership, entrepreneurialism, adaptability, delivery excellence and tech/domain competencies. A very interesting conversation, do not miss it.

Other CEOs interviewed are Raul Calfat (Votorantim Int.), Dr. Li Lihui (Bank of China), Fred Hassan (Schering-Plough Corp.), and John Stewart (National Australia Bank). Specially liked Dr. Li Lihui’s talk.

ACM on offshoring

2006-03-02T22:13:00.000-08:00

(Via Sadagopan):

ACM released a new report - methodically researched and compiled professionally – result of several months of efforts. The report focuses on issues and trends centered on tech job migration and how it relates to economies governments, funding and educational systems. The New York Times reported on it saying,” The study concluded that dire predictions of job losses from shifting high-technology work to low-wage nations with strong education systems, like India and China, were greatly exaggerated”….

The report finds that thirty percent of the world’s largest 1000 firms are offshoring work, but there is a significant variance between countries. This percentage is expected to increase, and an increase in the amount of work offshored is consistent with the expected growth rate of 20 to 30 percent for the offshoring industries in India and China. The report does an assessment of various national policies towards offshoring and finds almost all are reasonably progressive except China, which the report finds as the most protectionist of the countries studied here in terms of trying to protect its emerging domestic IT market from foreign competition. The report concludes,” The future, however, is one in which the individual will be situated in a more global competition. The brightness of the future for individuals, companies, or countries is centered on their ability to invest in building the foundations that foster innovation and invention”.

Ray Lane at TiE Bangalore

2006-03-02T04:51:00.000-08:00

Via Sadagopan:

I have been tracking Ray Lane's perspective on the enterprise software space for sometime and found Ray's presentation titled – "KPCB In The Software Industry" equally interesting. Ray lane builds on the growth opportunities in the enterprise software space –web enabled enterprise opportunities and enterprise software adoption.

Ray Lane is a General Partner at KPCB. He is also an ex-president of Oracle. This one is an enlightening presentation on the state of the Software/ Services market. Salient points:

Although industry growth is slowed, it is continually evolving (because of it???)

Top 15 companies in the space account for 85% of the revenue, and the big are only getting bigger

Focus will be more on innovative business models, moving from Product to Service model. This will have an impact on all the attributes of today’s business—from Architecture, Product & Release Mgt, to Pricing & Licensing and Customer Service.

India and China become big influences

Great presentation. From the TiE Bangalore Event.

Naming Conventions

2006-03-02T04:20:00.000-08:00

Atanu Dey on the idiocy of naming “conventions” in the subcontinent:

Isn’t it a marvel that India actually has roads, airports, ports, parks, colleges and universities, hospitals, research labs, theatres, governmental programs, non-governmental institutions, monuments, etc etc, all named after those who were primarily responsible for the disaster that is India? It is something that I often find myself puzzling about. Why are Indians so slavish in elevating those who were arguably bad for India? Here is what I mean. Have you heard of Aurangzeb Road in New Delhi? When they named the road, did they even bother with the fact that Aurangzeb was a tyrant and butchered the people of the land? Do you think that the Jews will ever name streets after Adolf Hitler?
Actually, the Indian subcontinent has that amazing ability to elevate as heroes those who screwed them over. See Pakistan, for instance. They actually name their weapons after those whose armies raped their women and their lands centuries ago. Those plunderers are worshipped in the land of the Pure (Pakistan) as their liberators. Take Bangadesh, for another example. The Pakistani army slaughtered anywhere between three and six million East Pakistanis and yet Bangladesh today considers Pakistanis to be their heroes. What is the matter with these idiots?

Well, what’s in a name, eh? A lot, apparently. Especially when it comes to the collective IQ of the people of a land. Next Step—General Musharraf Road, coming up in your neighborhood.

If MS packaged iPod

2006-03-01T01:02:00.000-08:00

YouTube - microsoft ipod packaging parody . Hilarious.

Preparing for Change

2006-03-01T00:43:00.000-08:00

From The Art of Possibility:

"A shoe factory sends two marketing scouts to a region of Africa to study the prospects for expanding business. One sends back a telegram saying, SITUATION HOPELESS STOP NO ONE WEARS SHOES. The other writes back triumphantly, GLORIOUS BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY STOP THEY HAVE NO SHOES."

While change, constant, unceasing and plentiful, has gotten a lot of columnspace, specially in the context of technology implementations, most of the times recognizing the need for a change is not so straight-forward. When talking about large, lumbering organizations it is at least as difficult to identify and prepare for change, as it is to actually go ahead and change them. Having been closely involved in a CRM product implementation within my own organization, I will try and share what I think are the necessary ingredients (within Organization Leaders) to preparing for change.

The first has to be Vision, the ability to see into the mid- to long-term future and what the organization wants to do with it. That will dictate what assets have to be developed, how they will be utilized in the future that we are talking of, and hence, the competence needed to actually make that utilization. This is the most important step towards identifying and preparing for change. Once you have identified the end state objectively, it will be much easier to chart out a way to get there.

Secondly, breadth of perspective. If a small part in the bigger scheme of things is tweaked, changed, fine-tuned it is bound to affect other related parts. So, it is very important to realize how that small cog interacts with all the other cogs that make the organizational wheel go round. This also helps in identifying the related aspects to change, apart from the primary change we are driving towards, which might not directly help the organization in achieving the end state but can very well stall the march if not changed.

Third, and we will end the discussion for the time being with it, is the focus and courage to embrace short term pain for longer term benefits. While a lot of convincing is needed for people to buy into the change, there has to be total commitment to change from the top if the change has to succeed.

So in conclusion, for any organization wide change to succeed, well thought out, coordinated action preceded by a lot of reflection is needed, once it has been decided where the organization wants to go.

Online presentations

2006-02-27T21:00:00.000-08:00

This is a cool one. Thumbstacks lets you create presentations, slideshows etc on the web. It is slightly buggy, but they are just starting off and will only get better from here. Still, it has most of the features we are looking for –support rich text, sound, video, images and seamless sharing on the internet. All you need is a browser. Here is a presentation about them.

Book Review - State of Fear

2006-02-27T03:19:00.000-08:00

I was just reading “State of Fear” by Michael Crichton. Nice book. It is a discourse on the state of the environment rolled into a thriller. The story is not too great, but as we have come to expect from Crichton, the research is good, and the presentation is lucid. He takes up the issues which have troubled the human society over the recent past, like Global Warming & Abrupt Climate Change, and tries to present both sides of the picture through historical data. He also presents a philosophical case for his view which slightly tilts towards branding all the brouhaha as smoke without a fire.

The best thing about the book is that though the author provides his views from time to time, he ultimately leaves the readers to make up there own minds. A very satisfying and informative read. Highly Recommended. Next in line, my favorite—Ayn Rand.

Diminishing Returns

2006-02-24T03:06:00.000-08:00

Neil Robertson combines the “Increasing Returns” theory with “The Long Tail of software” to create “The Increasing Tail”:

Becoming a runaway leader is not really about how you win the first 50% of the market, but how you conquer the second 50%. First, you have to have a platform. Second, you have to drive adoption of the first 50% of the market by seeding the market with the most popular content (or applications). But in the end, the reason users stay locked in is directly proportional to their access to content (and applications) in the tail. As I’ll hopefully show, real runaway leaders do everything they can to drive the creation of content (applications) in the tail. With much respect for both Brian and Chris’ work, I’ll call this economic string theory of sorts “The Increasing Tail”.

He also uses the theory to explain the rise of Microsoft and the current threat to them from the likes of Oracle, SAP and Salesforce.com.

It started me thinking on the future position of Indian IT Services providers, in the economic sense. The “Law of Diminishing Returns” applies to Services, and each additional variable input unit (Human Resource, in this case) will produce less output. Also, a high investment will be needed periodically to scale the support infrastructure to keep up with the growth in numbers. As companies grow big, they become cumbersome, and addition of each resource brings in less advantage. IMHO, in the near future the focus will shift from number of resources to productivity. Right now, systems and processes are lax and the bench is large. It will progressively shrink, recruitments will be fine-tuned, and structured ways of working will emerge.

As the focus shifts, it will create lots of opportunities for people with the right skill-sets and attitudes. Start cultivating “can do” if you want to exploit these opportunities.

On Funnels

2006-02-24T01:03:00.000-08:00

Seth Godin writes on the Google Funnel:

You can write copy (for AdWords) that gets lots of clicks, or more specific copy that gets fewer, but better clicks. Traditional marketers believed that attention was free, and the more the merrier. But Google charges by the click, so new marketers realize that they are willing to pay extra for folks a bit farther down the funnel.

Once you see the funnel, it's easy to understand how valuable your existing customers are, and easy to think about how you want to spend time and money in promoting and building your site. Most marketers are running a flat campaign. Embracing the funnel changes the way you treat people. And treating different people differently is what consumers demand.

Just another way Google is changing business thinking.