The tragedy at Virginia Tech has overshadowed events over the last week. Our hearts and condolences go out to the bereaved families and the Virginia Tech Community. University students across the country and their parents have been uneasy over the past week. Universities are supposed to be open places of learning and if NASA cannot prevent a 60 year old gunman from taking hostages and shooting just days later it’s just too much to expect Campus Security to prevent such acts. The reality is that Campus security, in even the highly endowed Universities, are barely able to cope with parking issues let alone gunmen on the loose. In any event, it has been a difficult week and time will heal but as a friend who is a loyal VT Alum told me this morning, the VT Campus will never seem the same again.
Collaborative Product Definition Management (cPDm)
After a very nice Easter weekend, I found myself stuck like an old record on my April 1,post about how SFA happens outside the company and does not depend on existing customer data or processes, particularly when you are looking for new customers. Applications that can be quickly deployed,used and benefits seen make obvious sense for folks who want to sell more units of the same old widget.Therefore the Gartner report for CRM does not come as a great surprise. But enough!
What happens when you want to handle the front end of New Product Development? This phase involves ideas, idea screening,concept and perhaps prototype development and concept testing. With global teams working simultaneously on projects web based PLM applications are a big hit. This Collaborative Product Definition Management (cPDm-interesting abbreviation) ) segment is doing great and fore casted at almost 14% growth and will have 13B$ sales in the 30B$ PLM market in 2011 according to this report -UGS corp is leading in this segment.
Once again, just as the SFA front end of CRM can be stand alone it makes sense that the cPDm front end of PLM is also finding a good market in stand alone SaaS applications.
Google did have a gag for April 1, 2007
Normally, the "festival of the day" is featured on the front page of Google. This time I had practically missed the April 1, joke from Google. I had seen the ad that Gmail would supply paper printouts of all your email,though. I remember wondering somewhat uneasily that the reason one uses Gmail is to avoid paper given the large storage and the easy search. In any case, I did not think about this in much detail because of the lots of other stuff I had to do. Till, the Gmail folks finally told after April 1, 2007 that this was a joke.
More incredible were the pictures that included vivid details , including a Gmail marked boxes being delivered ! It’s interesting that Google targeted account holders for a joke rather than placing it on the main Google home page. In any event, really enjoyed the "printout" joke from Gmail !
CRM -the front end of the Supply Chain
Today is April 1 and I wanted readers not to think of this post as some kind of a gag, at least not in it’s entirety!I find that the media including the Internet has been rather quiet on this "April Fool’s day". For example, while Google had a great search picture in 2000 on "Fool’s day (check here) this year was quiet. In any event,I thought, I ‘d start a new topic on this blog. This is the topic of CRM, the front end of the supply chain.
On the academic front I have been working for actually several years on some theory on how Sales Force Automation can be better adopted in organizations. In Supply Chain terms , the front end of the supply chain includes distribution and customer relationships. According to me, the acquisition of new customers, with no previous transaction history is- sales. If you truly want to mine your old customer data , you need to have past data in the first place. Ideally, a pretty solid data base of past dealings and interactions with the customer. There is an explosion of activity in the CRM space going by the number of companies doing something or the other. For example, Sugar CRM has come out with a Project management suite ; Sales Force.com has added a customer collaboration piece; Oracle’s Seibel is offering on-demand CRM as is Microsoft.
I have been having a challenging time explaining to a segment of my audience- viz. academics; that true CRM rests on the base of keeping track of financial transactions. Something must be sold and payment received to allow an entire back end of production, accounting, delivery, quality and satisfaction data to develop. If the customer has no prior "transaction" history, the prospect is that – a prospect and needs a Sales Force Automation (SFA) approach. It was only today that I checked Wikipedia for CRM and felt somewhat comforted that Wikipedia has declared the CRM pages as "This article or section appears to contain a large number of buzzwords and may require cleanup.". I thought I needed to put a screen shot of CRM from Wikipedia today- just to say that CRM , it’s conceptual definition and connection to SFA and the integration to the upstream Supply Chain will keep lot’s of people busy in technology and business for years to come. No kidding!
GTD and Knowledge Work
I found "Getting things done" (GTD) in the Time Magazine recently and have been studying and implementing it for the last two weeks. In fact, GTD has been keeping me away from this blog…
David Allen explains GTD in his book and this has really taken off as a great methodology to improve personal productivity-without stress. Consider that there is an aggregator GTD index website and numerous tagged sites. David Allen and his many "followers" are onto something interesting that’s probably looks appropriate for the emerging global knowledge economy.
GTD has simple principles and yet I find them profound for the knowledge economy and its workers -a tiny section of whom are also known as "Geeks". The point I am trying to make that in the knowledge economy you may not be a "hard core" geek writing code but you have to be somewhat geeky to even do the old world stuff. And what makes GTD remarkable is that it reduces mission and vision at the individual level to individual do-able action items. It also aggregates the new world view that you are "one person" at the individual level and "one organization" at the organizational level ( I owe this idea to a talk I heard at the GNHCC from Joel Podolny ) and might work from anywhere using cell phones,PDA’s, the Internet or by actual physical presence.
But most importantly, knowledge work is essentially unstructured particularly at the early stages and GTD lets you get your arms around it. Once you actually write down and classify everything you have to do then life can really become less stressful and much more productive… I have a long way to go- but have made a start.
Return from Vancouver and the tension between Web 2.0 and ERP
This is the 100th or centennial post of this blog and I thought I should write something hopefully in the "centennial" league! But first about my trip to Vancouver. The trip was great as was the in-depth exposure to SAP and the various Universities that have included SAP in the curriculum. On my way back I had the 11.20 pm flight to Montreal from where I was supposed to get onto the Hartford flight. But Air Canada canceled the flight due to non-arrival of the crew and I found myself on standby for the Toronto flight that finally left at 1.30 am and could get to New York La Guardia. My travels over the past one year have been always interesting with such changes coming up quite unexpectedly. This time, I thought positive and thought of the great scenery
at Vancouver and felt that I was far better off than the poor Jet Blue Passengers who were stranded on the iced runway!
Coming to the centennial bit of this post I have been thinking about how different the assumptions of Web 2.0 and the ERP world is. Web 2.0 is about open source, collaboration volunteerism and a certain element of uncertainty that can be tough if you are running a business and have to be accountable to customers,suppliers,employees and other stakeholders. That’s where ERP systems like SAP come in. Every transaction is recorded for posterity and links to every other part of the organization and it’s processes and therefore become more SOX compliant. Going forward global suppliers and customers would probably combine elements of the wonderful flexibility of Web 2.0 and the comforting rigidity of sound ERP systems and this blog will be watching the evolving "balance" with interest. ….
SAP NetWeaver in Vancouver
Reached Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada yesterday for the SAP Curriculum Congress 2007. This is my first trip to Vancouver and although the flight was grueling with 11 hours, two flight changes and three hours of time difference I found Vancouver to be really picturesque. I have photos but not the upload cable and will put up a slide show shortly. If you search for images on Google image search you’ll find this image and the photographer has really captured Vancouver well. The weather is balmy despite some snow showers overnight and the view from my room is just spectacular.
The SAP Curriculum Congress is about training faculty members with the various SAP offerings so that some elements might be incorporated in the curriculum. I joined the two day sessions on NetWeaver the new direction SAP is taking to make employees access the ERP database through a web portal. I think the idea is great because a huge problem with ERP systems is the difficulty in adoption across the organization. User friendly interfaces will help.
Software as a Service(SaaS) and the Liquor Control Board
I am a great supporter of SaaS ( Software as a service) simply because businesses should get going with business and IT should be a facilitator. In house IT departments should be focusing on the business application end of things. Several thinkers believe that software will become like electricity which started originally with generators at your factory and then moved to the distribution model that has electricity companies piping the electricity from the power station to your factory. Therefore, I was rather pleased to read the report that a SaaS based supply chain system as been developed for the LCBO. 
The LCBO or the Liquor Control Board of Ontario is apparently the largest buyer of liquor in the world with over 600 stores and 5 distribution centers in the Ontario region of Canada. The LCBO website is rather fun although the "Control Board" conjures up a somewhat stern image ! The story of the SaaS system appeared as a press release here. The company that has developed the web based supply chain solution is QLogitek. Since the whole system is web based suppliers can simply login and offer new products. Since wines are an important product category for LCBO one can visualize the endless vintages and now countries that are involved! With a web based system that connects suppliers in different countries with warehouses and retailers in Ontario by every product offering in real time should make life much easier for all concerned. Cheers to that !
Happy Chinese New Year !
Today is the start of the Chinese New Year and the year of the pig. The pig is a luxurious animal signifying the Chinese zodiac sign that indicates plenty and prosperity. This particular year of the pig is by some accounts the luckiest "Pig" year in 600 years ! I remember the festivities surrounding Chinese New Year from my time in Singapore where it is celebrated with gusto as it is in China and all places with the Chinese diaspora. I learnt from Chinese friends that the greeting is "Gong Chi Fat Chai" or "Wish you prosperity"- quite a natural for 2007 – the year of the pig !
As festivities continue for the entire week in the Chinese world , supply chain managers are gearing up to the cultural reality where you must pre-plan to avoid the entire week when things really pick up on the festival front but business practically is shut down. Workers travel back home and offices also slow down considerably. Planning ahead is imperative as this article suggests.
We wish "Gong Chi Fat Chai" ( i.e. prosperity ) to our readers in this Chinese New Year !
Valentines day and online trends
It was just yesterday that I started talking about "Relationship Marketing" to my B2B – Organizational Marketing class. Naturally, this is huge for business today.What with CRM on the front end and Supply Chain management software at the upstream of B2B relationships trying to keep things on track in the complex world of global B2B.
Relationship marketing and purchasing takes its theoretical cue from sociologists who argue that marriage and long term commitment (see Dwyer,Schurr and Oh 1987) are superior to single transactions for certain products and services. A topic such as this seemed even more relevant just before Valentine’s day.
One rather interesting development that has happened is the decline of online dating on the eve of this second most important greeting card day ( after Christmas). Bob Sullivan of the Red Tape Chronicles quotes Nate Elliot of Jupiter Research to conclude that 22 million people in the US are single and looking but are not willing to try an online dating site. What an intriguing technology adoption problem! Elliot concludes that these people will probably never use the online dating services which incidentally are quite profitable.
Then, I read about the anti-Valentine day movement which includes greeting cards and a substantial blog buzz on why Valentines’ day is no good.
The Valentine day festival has really taken off in many countries particularly in Asia. Apparently, in Japan ladies have to buy chocolates for the entire office, in India there is a huge greeting products boom and so it is in South East Asia and China. In any event, Valentine day makes things cheerful, particularly today in the North East US which has been otherwise icy and dreary. Happy Valentines day to all readers!