Customers at the whim of public software company

Thomas Wailgum, writing about Oracle’s 2009 1st quarter results, makes some telling comments.

it becomes clear that Oracle is trapped in the age of foolishness and epoch belief that shareholders are more important than customers, while those customers are in the worst of times and full of incredulity.

Oracle’s profits rose by 4 percent year-over-year to $1.12 billion, but revenue fell by 5 percent to $5.1 billion … New software license sales fell 17 percent … A neat trick, did Oracle pull: Increasing year-over-year profits while revenues fell … Oracle’s enterprise software maintenance- and support-related revenues grew 11 percent to $3.1

In effect, Oracle is telling its customers that they, the source of the company’s revenue, are not as important as the shareholders. The way Oracle has increase revenue is by increasing software maintenance that its customers pay.

The question those customers should be asking is “what value are they getting from increased maintenance.” In other markets, a supplier would lose customers if it treated them in the same way.

Of course, there are alternatives. Privately-held software companies are not accountable to external shareholders and have a long-term perspective, rather than the short-term one that drives public companies who rely on stock markets for approval.

Can you say ‘stop’ when customers ask too much?

I differ from Kimberling’s blog Four Reasons Why ERP Projects Take Longer Than Expected, that ERP project timelines are due to software vendor sales people under-estimating issues and implementers finding unexpected customisation needs.

It can happen with some projects, but in my experience it is unrealistic expectations by customers of when the implementation should be completed and what to be included.

On The Art of Project Management blog, there are some good points on the whys and hows of Saying No.

It’s not easy to say ‘stop’ or ‘no’ but too many projects have got into trouble because either of those words weren’t said often or soon enough.

Just how important/valuable is certification?

The question of whether IT certification has value has come up again via an article by Andy Klee. This issue has been debated on Twitter and elsewhere before.

In my opinion, certification is useful to the individual, in terms of having to understand the concepts and techniques that the technology requires; and to a company to show that the person has grasped those concepts and techniques.

But that is where it stops. Anyone who has worked on IT projects for more than a few years has met people with certifications but little practical and useful experience and knowledge. The opposite also applies – I know of people who are superb at what they do but don’t have a long list of certifications.

One of the mistakes a customer can make is to use the certification credentials of an IT provider as a measure of risk mitigation.

That gadfly of commentators, Dennis Howlett, has made his own comments about the certification article, and I tend to agree with him regarding its value to vendors who make big money out of charging for exams.

Some vendors – like Microsoft and SAP – make a big deal of certification, and probably have big teams drawing up new certifications. Other vendors – like Oracle’s JDE group – probably have not been given the same resources, with the result that Andy discusses.

Evaluating desktop search

As a result of a problem with a previous desktop search, I have been testing out some desktop search applications available. My PC runs Windows XP so I didn’t include the Vista search. The three I tested were:

• Windows Desktop Search
• Copernic
• Google Desktop Search

Of the three applications, the Windows search has the best user interface in my view. It searches file/email titles and contents, and search results are quick. My major problem with it were the search applications that run on the PC. There were several times when two programs - searchprotocol and searchfilterhost – took over the CPU and memory of my PC, rendering it inoperable for 15 minutes and longer. After a particularly bad experience when I could hardly use my PC for a day, I deleted Windows desktop search, and that’s when I started looking at other solutions.

I was made aware of Copernic via a comment on Twitter. The user interface was reasonable, but the free version I downloaded only searched file/email titles, not contents. After a short experiment, I deleted Copernic.

I turned to Google’s desktop search after another comment on Twitter. The user interface is browser oriented, which while not the best for me, it is acceptable. It searches file/email titles as well as contents. From a performance persepctive, the Google desktop search programs run surreptiously and don’t consume CPU or memory. The only problem is that Google have not made it easy to change the location of the search index. However, I found the following article on how to change the index location.

After a few weeks, I am still happy with the Google Desktop Search. I am interested in testing other applications if anyone wants to send me the information.

Project Communication

A couple of posts on Paul Rasmussen’s blog prompts me to make my own comments about communication between members of a project team. In The Problem of Communication in Project Management Part 2, Paul discusses the types of communication currently used, which are meetings, phone calls and emails. In Part 3 he mentions new communication technologies – smart phones, wikis and social networking.

Having just been through two projects, I have found that the old ways of communication, particularly face-to-face, are the best for project communication. As we all know, more than 50% of our communication is non-verbal (ie, body language, voice tone), and also as we know, projects success is highly dependent on communication. So as in the case of one project manager, most communication was by email, then mis-understandings can happen. Our company has now instituted a directive that email is not considered adequate communication.

We have tried collaborative tools, such as Basecamp, to help with dispersed team members, but there seems to have been some reluctance to try these new tools. I find that interesting, considering we expect our clients to adopt new tools in the form of ERP solutions. So whether we would benefit from new communication technology is up for debate.

Email can be used to confirm and document facts and issues, however in my opinion, nothing replaces personal contact when it comes to communication.

Why are ERP consultants needed?

In a blog on the ITtoolbox site, Steve Phillips comments that companies are moving away from using external ERP consultants in favour of using in-house expertise – Why ERP Software Consultants Cannot Save The Day.

His view is:

The ownership philosophy is about controlling your project destiny and built on some fundamental principles. … 1) It is possible to take internal responsibility for project management. 2) It is possible to develop and/or acquire internal software expertise to the point outside application consultants are rarely needed. 3) It is possible to become much more educated and less reliant on the false sense of security an army of consultants can bring. 4) It is possible to realize ERP benefits by developing better software and business process solutions with fewer outside consultants. 5) It is possible for internal personnel to do up to 70% of what many pay consultants to do.

Except for item 4, in my experience, I haven’t found any companies that can do what he suggests. I suspect it is a function of certain factors – a primary one being the size of the organisation. But I also believe that business maturity, and the availability of knowledge and experience play a significant part.

In the South African market, most businesses fall into the small-to-medium (SMB) category. Employees in SMB companies tend to take on more than one role (debtors and creditors, pre-sales technical and sales, production planning and management) which leaves them little time to focus on issues which are not directly relevant to the job they must do. So finding time to acquire software expertise is difficult or requires after-hours learning. In time, and if a person stays in the same job, they might become “more educated and less reliant.” However, given their time constraints, it is highly unlikely that people will have the time or knowledge “to do up to 70%” of what a consultant will do.

Also skills and expertise are in short supply in this country, so someone who develop technical skills may easily find themselves moving out of their business job and into a technical or consulting role. Similarly, project management requires experience and time to spend on it, which senior staff in SMBs (e.g., finance managers and directors) rarely have. Companies will tend to have a less senior person overseeing the project, but all the details and work that goes into project management has to be done by someone with the background and time allocation to do it – in other words, a consultant.

In the South African context, therefore, most average companies (not large ones over 1000 people) do not have the people, skills or time to take on an ERP implementation themselves. The cost of bringing in consultants outweighs the risks of failure in trying to do the project in-house.

Movie pirates beware

A company I know in Johannesburg recently received an email from Paramount Pictures in Los Angeles – and it was not good news.

Someone in the company had downloaded a Paramount movie from a file sharing site. The scary thing was that the time between the download and the email to the company CEO was less than 4 days.

Paramount had got the IP address, traced it to S.Africa, contacted the service provider, who had identified the company owning that address, and Paramount then got the CEO’s email address and contacted him directly.

Apparently there is no law suit pending but the CEO has to inform Paramount what follow-up actions the company will take.

So if you download copyright material (movies, music) from file sharing sites, be careful. You could be in for a nasty shock.

SYSPRO announcements

SYSPRO recently made some performance improvements and new release announcements for Service Pack 3.

I suspect that developers controlled the news release, because they were not clued up enough to consider announcing these while SAP’s SAPPHIRE was on – ie, do some ambush marketing.

SP3 enhancements

Toolbars, menus and forms – lots of easy customisation given more functionality and made even easier
SYSPRO Workflow Services – a platform based on the Microsoft Windows Workflow Foundation, will include:

in-process workflow host engine,
a designer,
workflow controls,
code editor,
persistence and tracking of workflow processes,
rules engine,
notification services,
will also be web-service enabled.

Inventory optimisation enhancements
More warehouse management functionality, including automated control and orchestration of warehouse tasks
Manufacturing unit of measure
Real-time General Ledger
SYSPRO executive dashboards using Xcelsius 2008 (so paying SAP/Business Objects)
Quality Management System – will enable product quality control by allowing the configuration of multiple measurement metrics as well as inspection points per inventory item
Actual cost tracking – required by companies that use materials which have large cost fluctuations over a period of time

Performance testing

SYSPRO’s performance testing was done using HP’s LoadRunner. This puts SYSPRO up with the majors in terms of large-scale deployment capability.

Hardware specs
Dell Power Edge R900
- 4x Intel 6 Core processors (2.6GHz) = 24 Processors
- 64GB RAM
- Windows 2003 Server Standard Edition x64
- SQL Server 2008 Standard Edition x64
- 1Gbps network connection

What was tested
Total Number of Users: 510
- 125 Users: Sales Order Entry
- 60 Users: Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable
- 325 Users: Inventory movements

Test results (transactions per hour)
Sales Orders:               1133 (average of 39 lines per order)
Inventory movements: 4387
Invoices (AP, AR):         1593

The lean approach applied to information

An article in the Manufacturer.com discusses how the lean approach used in manufacturing can be applied to information.

The article starts off by pointing out how companies have invested in expensive systems,

only to discover that getting the information they want exactly when and where they want it actually becomes a barrier in process improvement initiatives.

It lists some points that information system must meet in order to be called ‘lean’.

1. Accessible
2. Available
3. Timely
4. Pertinent
5. Concise
6. Complete
7. Legible
8. Accurate
9. Consistent in access method/path; in presentation form and terminology

We are going to see how we can apply these points in a new project.

SAP’s Social Media Guidelines

SAP have done a very interesting job of publishing guidelines for its employees when using social media, like blogs, Twitter, Facebook – SAP Social Media Guidelines 2009.

There are some very good points that anyone using social media should adher to:

- Write in the first person
- Identify yourself
- Be Honest
- Be Respectful
- Separate Opinions from Facts
- Add Value
- Be Engaged and Be Informed
- Aim for Quality, not Quantity
- Don’t Pick Fights
- Protect Your Privacy

Update: I have been alerted to Intel’s Social Media Guidelines as well, which has some sensible Rules of Engagement:

- Transparency
- Be aware of legal issues
- Write what you know
- Be careful how you are perceived
- Value add
- Responsibility