What is a ‘Prescriptive’ RFQ/RFP and why is it bad?

by Frank 22. July 2012 06:02

Twenty years ago our main way of competing for business was to respond to Request For Quotes (RFQ) and Request For Proposals (RFP). Our sales people and technical people spend months on end laboriously responding to detailed questionnaires and spread sheets with only a small chance of winning because of the number of vendors invited to respond. Luckily, this is no longer the main way we compete for business and we now complete only a fraction of the RFQ/RFPs we used to; much to the relief of my hard working sales and pre-sales staff.

Now we only respond to RFQs and RFPs if we have prior engagement plus the opportunity for questions and engagement during the process together with a good fit for our software and services (we sell information management software and services). We also heavily qualify every opportunity and the first step is to initially speed read and scan all proposal documents for what we call ‘road blocks’.

Road blocks are contractual conditions, usually mandatory ones, which would automatically disqualify us from responding. Sometimes these are totally unfair, one-sided and non-commercial contractual conditions and sometimes they are mandatory features we don’t have and often, the road block is simply the prescriptive nature of the request document.

By prescriptive I mean that the request document is spelling out in detail exactly how the solution should work down to the level of screen design, architecture and keystrokes. In most cases prescriptive requests are the result of the author’s experience with or preference for another product.

As we produce a ‘shrink-wrapped’ or ‘off-the-shelf’ product, the RecFind 6 suite, we aren’t able to change the way it looks and works and nor can we change the architecture. In almost every case we could solve the business problem but not in the exact way specified by the author. Because our product RecFind 6 is highly configurable and very flexible we can solve almost any information management or business process management problem but in our particular way with our unique architecture and our unique look and feel.

In the old days we may have tried to enter into a dialog with the client to see if our solution, although working differently to the way the author envisioned a solution working, would be acceptable.  The usual answer was, “Why don’t you propose your solution and then we will decide.” Sometimes we did respond and then learned to our chagrin that our response was rejected because it didn’t meet some of the prescriptive requirements. Basically, a big waste of time and money. So, we no longer respond to prescriptive RFQs/RFPs.

But, why is a prescriptive RFQ/RFP a bad thing for the client? Why is it a bad practice to be avoided at all costs?

It is a bad thing because it reduces the client’s options and severely narrows the search for the best solution. In our experience, a prescriptive RFQ/RFQ is simply the result of someone either asking for the product they first thought of someone who is so inflexible that he/she isn’t able to think outside the box and isn’t open to innovative solutions.

The end result of a prescriptive RFP/RFQ is always that the client ends up with a poor choice; with a third best or worse solution to the problem.

The message is very simple. If you want to find the best possible solution don’t tell the vendors what the solution is. Rather tell the vendors what the problem is and give them the opportunity to come up with the most innovative and cost-effective solution possible.  Give them the opportunity to be innovative and creative; don’t take away these so very important options.

Please do yourself, and your organization, a favour. If you want the best possible solution clearly explain what the problem is and then challenge the vendors to come up with their best shot. Prescriptive requirements always deny you the best solution.

Business Processes Management, BPM, BPO; just what does it entail?

by Frank 15. July 2012 06:00

Like me I am sure that you have been inundated with ads, articles, white papers and proposals for something called BPM or BPO, Business Process Management, Business Process Outsourcing and Business Process Optimisation.

Do you really understand what it all means?

BPM and BPO certainly aren’t new, there have been many companies offering innovative and often cutting-edge technology solutions for many years. The pioneering days were probably the early 1980’s. One early innovator I can recall (and admired) was Tower Technology because their office was just across from our old offices in Lane Cove.

In the early days BPM was all about imaging and workflow and forms. Vendors like Tower Technology used early version of workflow products like Staffware and a whole assortment of different imaging and forms products to solve customer processing problems. It involved a lot of inventing and a lot of creative genius to make all those disparate products work and actually do what the sales person promised. More often than not the final solution didn’t quite work as promised and it always seemed to cost a lot more than quoted.

Like all new technologies everyone had to go through a learning process and like most new technologies, for many years the promises were far ahead of what was actually delivered.

So, is it any different today? Is BPM a proven, reliable and feature-rich and mature technology?

The answer dear friends is yes and no; just as it was twenty-five or more years ago.

There is a wonderful Latin phrase ‘Caveat Emptor’ which means “Let the buyer beware”. Caveat Emptor applies just as much today as it did in the early days because despite the enormous technological progress we have all witnessed and experienced we are still pushing the envelope. We are still being asked to do things the current software and hardware can’t quite yet handle. The behind the scenes technicians are still trying to make the product do what the sales person promised in good faith (we hope) because he didn’t really understand his product set.

Caveat Emptor means it is up to the buyer to evaluate the offering and decide if it can do the job. Of course, if the vendor lies or makes blatant false claims then Caveat Emptor no longer applies and you can hit them with a lawsuit.  However, in reality it is rarely as black and white as that. The technology is complex and the proposals and explanations are full of proprietary terminology, ambiguities, acronyms and weaselly words.

Like most agreements in life you shouldn’t enter into a BPM contract unless you know exactly what you are getting into. This is especially true with BPM or BPO because you are talking about handing over part of your core business processes to someone else to ‘improve’. If you don’t understand what is being proposed then please hire someone who does; I guarantee it will be worth the investment. This is especially true if you are outsourcing customer or supplier facing processes like accounts payable and accounts receivable. Better to spend a little more up front than suffer cost overruns, failed processes and an inbox full of complaints.

My advice is to always begin with some form of a consultancy to ‘examine’ your processes and produce a report containing conclusions and recommendations. The vendor may (should) offer this as part of its sales process and it may be free or it may be chargeable.  Personally, I believe in the old adage that you get what you pay for so I would prefer to pay to have a qualified and experienced professional consultant do the study. The advantage of paying for the study is that you then ‘own’ the report and can then legally provide it to other vendors to obtain competitive quotes.

You should also have a pretty good idea of what the current processing is costing you in both direct and indirect costs (e.g., lost sales, dissatisfied customers, unhappy staff, etc.) before beginning the evaluation exercise. Otherwise, how are you going to be able to judge the added value of the vendor’s proposal?

In my experience the most common set of processes to be ‘outsourced’ are those to do with accounts payable processing. This is the automation of all processes beginning with your purchase order (and its line items), the delivery docket (proof of receipt), invoices (and line items) and statements. The automation should reconcile invoices to delivery dockets and purchase orders and should throw up any discrepancies such as items invoiced but not delivered, variations in price, etc. Vendors will usually propose what is commonly called an automatic matching engine; the software that reads all the documents and does its best to make sure you only pay for delivered goods that are exactly as ordered.

If the vendor’s proposal is to be attractive it must replace your manual processing with an automated model that is faster and more accurate. Ideally, it would also be more cost-effective but even if it is more costly than your manual direct cost estimate it should still solve most of your indirect cost problems like unhappy suppliers and late payment fees.

In essence, there is nothing magical about BPM and BPO; it is all about replacing inefficient manual processes with much more efficient automated ones using clever computer software. The magic, if that is the word to use, is about getting it right. You need to know what the current manual processing is costing you. You need to be absolutely sure that you fully understand the vendor’s proposal and you need to build in metrics so you can accurately evaluate the finished product and clearly determine if it is meeting its stated objectives.

Please don’t enter into negotiations thinking that if it doesn’t work you can just blame the vendor. That would be akin to cutting off your nose to spite your face. Remember Caveat Emptor; success or failure really depends upon how well you do your job as the customer.

Does the customer want to deal with a sales person?

by Frank 8. July 2012 06:00

We are in the enterprise content management business or more explicitly in the information management business and we provide a range of solutions including contract management, records management, document management, asset management, HR management, policy management, etc. We are a software company that designs and develops its own products. We also develop and provide all the services required to make our products work once installed at the customer’s site.

However, we aren’t in the ‘creating innovative software’ business even though that is what we do; we are really in the ‘selling our innovative software’ business because without sales there would be no business and no products and no services (and no employees).

We have been in business for nearly 30 years and have watched and participated as both technology and practices have evolved over that time. Some changes are easy to see. For example, we no longer product paper marketing collateral, we produce all of our marketing collateral in HTML or PDF form for delivery via our website and email. We also now market to the world via our website and the Internet, not just to our ‘local’ area.

Another major area of change has been the interface between the customer and the vendor. Many companies today no longer provide a human-face interface. Most big companies and government agencies no longer maintain a shopfront; they require you to deal with them via a website. Some don’t even allow a phone call or email; your only contact is via a web form.

Sometimes the website interface works but mostly it is a bit hit and miss and a very frustrating experience as the website fails or doesn’t offer the option you need. My pet hate is being forced to fill in a web form and then never hearing back from the vendor. Support is often non-existent or very expensive. From my viewpoint, a major failing of the modern paradigm is that I more often than not cannot get the information I need to evaluate a product from the website. This is when I try to find a way to ask them to please have a sales person contact me as I need to know more about their product or service.

I look forward to a sales person contacting me because I know what I want and I know what questions I need answers to. However, the sad truth is that I am rarely contacted by a sales person (and I refuse to speak to anyone from an Indian call centre because I have no wish to waste my time). However, experience with my customers and prospects tells me that not everyone is as enamoured with sales people as I am. In fact, many of the people I have contact with are very nervous of sales people, some are even afraid of them.

Unfortunately for me, we aren’t in a business where we can sell our products and services via a webpage and cart checkout. We need to understand the customer’s business needs before we can provide a solution so we need to employ high quality sales people who are business savvy and really understand business processes. It is not until I know enough to be able to restate the customer’s requirement in detail that I am in a position to make a sale. Conversely, the customer isn’t going to buy anything from me until he/she is absolutely sure I understand the problem and can articulate the solution.

So, in my industry I rely on a human interface and that usually means a sales person. But, do I really need a sales person and do my customers and prospective customers really want to speak to a sales person? Is there a more modern alternative? Please trust me when I say I have pondered this question many, many times.

Those in my business (selling information management solutions) will know how hard it is to find a good sales person and how hard it is to keep them. The good ones are less than ten-percent of the available pool and even after you hire them they are still besieged by offers from recruiters. Finding and retaining good sales people is in my opinion the biggest problem facing all the companies in our industry. They are also the most expensive of human resources and after paying a recruitment fee and a big salary you are then faced with the 80:20 rule; that is, 20% of the sales force produces 80% of your revenues.

Believe me, if I could find a way to meet my sales targets without expensive and difficult to manage sales people I would. However, as our solutions are all about adapting our technology to the customer’s often very complex business processes this is not a solution that can be sold via a website or automated questionnaire; it requires a great deal of skill and experience.

So for now dear customer, please deal with my sales person; he or she is your best chance of solving that vexing problem that is costing your organization money and productivity. All you really need to do is be very clear about what you want and very focussed on the questions you want answered. There is nothing to be afraid of because if you do your homework you will quickly be able to differentiate the good sales person from the bad sales person and then take the appropriate action. I never deal with a bad sales person and nor should you. I also really enjoy dealing with a professional sales person who knows his/her business and knows how to research and qualify my needs.

A good sales person uses my time wisely and saves me money. A bad sales person doesn’t get the chance to waste my time. This should be your approach too; be happy and willing to deal with a sales person but only if he/she is a professional and can add value to your business.

Sales people call this the value proposition. More explicitly; if the sales person is not able to articulate a value proposition to the customer that resonates with the customer then he/she shouldn’t be there. Look for the value proposition; if it isn’t apparent, close the meeting. Make each and every sales person understand, if they aren’t able to articulate a value proposition for your business then there is no point in continuing the conversation.

Dealing with a sales person isn’t difficult; it is all up to you to know what you want (the value proposition) and what questions to ask. Do your preparation and you will never fear a sales person again.

 

Have you considered Cloud processing? There are significant benefits

by Frank 6. May 2012 06:00

Most of us have probably become more than a little numbed to the onslaught of Cloud advertising and the promotion of the ‘Cloud’ as the salvation for everyone and the panacea for everything. The Cloud is promoted by its aggrandizers as being both omnipotent and omniscient; both qualities I only previously associated with God.

This is not to say that moving business processing to the Cloud is not a good thing; it certainly is. I just wish that the promoters would tone down the ‘sell’ and clearly explain the benefits and advantages without the super-hype.

Those of us with long memories clearly recall the early hype about what was then called ASP or Application Service Processing or even Application Service Provider. This was the early progenitor of the Cloud and despite massive hype it did not fly. The reasons were simple, neither the technology nor the software (application and system) were up to the job. Great idea, pity it was about five years before its time.

Unfortunately, super-hype in our industry is usually associated with immature and unproven technology. Wiser, older people nod sagely and then wait a few years for the technology to catch up with the promises.

As an older (definitely) and wiser (hopefully) person I am now ready to accept that all the technology required for successful and secure Cloud processing is now available and proven; albeit being ‘improved’ all the time so still take care not to rush in with experimental technology.

As with many new technologies the secret is KISS; Keep It Simple Stupid. If it seems too complex then it is too complex. If the sales person can’t answer all of your questions clearly and unambiguously then walk away.

Most importantly, make sure you know all about all of the parties involved in the transaction. For example:

1.    What is the name of the data centre?

2.    Where is it located?

3.    Who ‘owns’ the rack and equipment and software at the data centre?

4.    What are the redundant features?

5.    What are the backup and recovery options?

6.    Is your vendor the owner of the co-hosted facility or do they subcontract to someone else? If they sub-contract is the company they subcontract to the owner or are they too just part of a chain of ‘hidden’ middle-men? It is critical for you to understand this chain of responsibility because if something goes wrong you need to know who to chase.

There are a lot more questions you need to ask but this Blog isn’t the place to list them all. I am sure your IT team and application owners will come up with plenty more. If they don’t, wake them up and demand questions.

Most small to medium organizations today simply do not have the time or expertise to run a computer room and manage and maintain a rack of servers. There is also a dearth of ‘real’ expertise and a plethora of phonies out there so hiring someone who is actually smart enough to manage your critical infrastructure is a very difficult exercise made more so by most business owners and managers simply not understanding the requirements or technology. It often becomes a case of the blind hiring the almost blind.

Most small to medium enterprises also cannot afford the redundancy required to ensure a stable and reliable infrastructure. A fifteen minute UPS is no substitute for a redundant bank of diesel generators and a guaranteed clean power supply.

Why should small to medium enterprises have to buy servers and networks and IT support? It isn’t part of their core business and this stuff should not be weighing down the balance sheet. Why should they be devoting scarce and expensive management time to activities that are not part of their core business?

In-house computer rooms will soon be become as rare as dinosaurs and this is how it should be, they are an anachronism in this time and age; out of time and out of place.

All smart and business savvy small to medium organizations should be planning to progressively move all their processing to the Cloud so as to lower costs, improve service levels and reduce management stress. I say progressively because it is still wise to get wet slowly and to take little steps. Just like with your first two-wheel bicycle, it pays to practice with the training wheels on first. That way, you usually avoid those painful falls.

I like to think I am a little wiser because I still have scars from gravel rash when I was a kid. I am moving my RecFind 6 customers to the Cloud and I am moving my in-house processing to the Cloud but just like you, I am doing it slowly and carefully and triple-checking every aspect. I don’t take risks with my customers or my business and neither should you.

One last thing, I have the advantage of being very IT literate and of having a top IT team working for me so we have the in-house expertise required to correctly evaluate and select the most appropriate technology and options. If you do not have this level of in-house IT expertise then please take extra care and try to find someone to assist who does have the level of IT knowledge required. Once you sign up, it is too late. Buyer’s remorse is not a solution to any problem.

Are you running old and unsupported software? What about the risks?

by Frank 29. April 2012 20:59

Many years ago we released a 16 bit product called RecFind version 3.2 and we made a really big mistake. We gave it so much functionality (much of it way ahead of its time) and we made it so stable that we still have thousands of users.

It is running under operating systems like XP it was never developed for or certified for and is still ‘doing the job’ for hundreds of our customers. Most frustratingly, when we try to get them to upgrade they usually say, “We can’t justify the expense because it is working fine and doing everything we need it to do.”

However, RecFind 3.2 is decommissioned, unsupported and, the databases it uses (Btrieve, Disam and an early version of SQL Server) and also no longer supported by their vendors.

So our customers are capturing and managing critical business records with totally unsupported software. Most importantly, most of them also do not have any kind of support agreement with us (and this really hurts because they say they don’t need a support agreement because the system doesn’t fail) so when the old system catastrophically fails, which it will, they are on their own.

Being a slow learner, ten years ago I replaced RecFind 3.2 and RecFind 4.0 with RecFind 5.0, a brand new 32 bit product. Once again I gave it too much functionality and made it way too stable. We now have hundreds of customers still using old and unsupported versions of RecFind 5.0 and when we try to convince them to upgrade we get that same response, “It is still working fine and doing everything we need it to do.”

If I was smarter I would have built-in a date-related software time bomb to stop old systems from working when they were well past their use-by date. However, that would have been a breach of faith so it is not something we have or will ever do. It is still a good idea, though probably illegal, because it would have protected our customers’ records far better than our old and unsupported systems do now.

In my experience, most senior executives talk about risk management but very few actually practice it. All over the world I have customers with millions of vital business records stored and managed in systems that are likely to fail the next time IT updates desktop or server operating systems or databases. We have warned them multiple times but to no avail. Senior application owners and senior IT people are ignoring the risk and, I suspect, not making senior management aware of the inevitable disaster. They are not managing risk; they are ignoring risk and just hoping it won’t happen in their reign.

Of course, it isn’t just our products that are still running under IT environments they were never designed or certified for; this is a very common problem. The only worse problem I can think of is the ginormous amount of critical business data being ‘managed’ in poorly designed, totally insecure and teetering-on-failure, unsupportable Access and Excel systems; many of them in the back offices of major banks and financial institutions. One of my customers called the 80 or so Access systems that had been developed across his organization as the world’s greatest virus. None had been properly designed, none had any security and most were impossible to maintain once a key employee or contractor had left.

Before you ask, yes we do produce regular updates for current products and yes we do completely redesign and redevelop our core systems like RecFind about every five years to utilize the very latest technology. We also offer all the tools and services necessary for any customer to upgrade to our new releases; we make it as easy and as low cost as possible for our customers to upgrade to the latest release but we still have hundreds of customers and many thousands of users utilizing old, unsupported and about-to-fail software.

There is an old expression that says you can take a horse to water but you can’t make it drink. I am starting to feel like an old, tired and very frustrated farmer with hundreds of thirsty horses on the edge of expiration. What can I do next to solve the problem?

Luckily for my customers, Microsoft Windows Vista was a failure and very few of them actually rolled it out. Also, luckily for my customers, SQL Server 2005 was a good and stable product and very few found it necessary to upgrade to SQL Server 2008 (soon to be SQL Server 2012). This means that most of my customers using old and unsupported versions of RecFind are utilizing XP and SQL Server 2005, but this will soon change and when it does my old products will become unstable and even just stop working. It is just good luck and good design (programmed tightly to the Microsoft API) that some (e.g., 3.2) still work under XP. RecFind 3.2 and 4.0 were never certified under XP.

So we have a mini-Y2K coming but try as I may I can’t seem to convince my customers of the need to protect their critical and irreplaceable (are they going to rescan all those documents from 10 years ago?) data. And, as I alluded to above, I am absolutely positive that we are only one of thousands of computer software companies in this same position.

In fairness to my customers, the Global Financial Crisis of 2008 was a major factor in the disappearance of upgrade budgets. If the call is to either upgrade software or retain staff then I would also vote to retain staff. Money is as tight as it has ever been and I can understand why upgrade projects have been delayed and shelved. However, none of this changes the facts or averts the coming data-loss disaster.

All over the world government agencies and companies are managing critical business data in old and unsupported systems that will inevitably fail with catastrophic consequences. It is time someone started managing this risk; are you?

 

Project Management – just what does it entail?

by Frank 15. April 2012 06:00

In a previous career with mainframes I spent eight years as a large scale project manager and then a further two years as the international operations manager managing a number of project managers at troubled projects around the world. Those ten years taught me a great deal about what it takes to be a successful project manager and conversely, why some project managers fail.

Notice that I said why some project managers fail, not why some projects fail. It is cause and effect; projects only fail when the project manager fails to do the job required. This particular concept separates good project managers from bad project managers. Good project managers take full responsibility for the success or failure of their projects, bad project managers don’t.

Good project managers are ‘glass-half-full’ people, bad project managers are ‘glass-half-empty’ people. Good project managers are leaders, bad project managers are victims.

So the first piece of advice is to choose your project manager carefully. You want a strong willed, bright and energetic doer, not a facilitator or politician. You want a strong leader, not a careful and political follower; you want Jesus, not the disciples.

The next piece of advice is that you should set quantitative criteria for project success. No ambiguity or motherhood or weaselly words, as the Dragnet cop used to say, “Just the facts Mam.” In my day it was easy, we had to install the new hardware and software, convert from the old system, design and program the new applications and then take the whole system through a 30 day acceptance test with 99% uptime. There was always a contract and the conditions of acceptance were always clearly laid out and assiduously referred to by the customer. We knew what we had to achieve and there was no ambiguity.

Unfortunately, one of the problems with a lot of projects is that the conditions for acceptance and success are not clearly articulated or documented. But, a good project manager will always make sure that the scope and objectives and expected outcomes are clearly defined regardless before accepting the challenge. The bad project manager on the other hand is always happy that there isn’t a clear definition of success because the bad project manager wants to make judging his or her performance as difficult as possible.

I once fired a project manager who told me in three meetings in a row that he had not completed the requested project plan because the project was too complex. Obviously the more complex the project the more its needs a comprehensive project plan otherwise it will be impossible to manage. My failed project manager didn’t want to document the project plan because he didn’t want deadlines and he didn’t want to be judged on how well he was meeting deadlines.

It sounds like an over-simplification but if you want a successful project then choose a successful project manager, one who accepts full responsibility for all outcomes and one who is committed to success.

As part of the interview process, ask them what their philosophy of responsibility is. As an example, here is one I always used.

“Everything that happens is due to me because everything that happens is either due to something I did or something I didn’t do.”

I have never found a good project manager who had a problem with this credo. Bad project managers on the other hand, see it as anathema to their survival strategies. Good project managers accept full responsibility for success or failure, bad project managers do not.

Good project managers also don’t spend all day in an office playing with Excel and Microsoft Project. Nor do they spend all day in meetings or on conference calls. Good project managers integrate themselves into the very bowels of the project and ‘walk-and-talk’ on a daily basis.

Walk and talk refers to the practice of meeting with real workers at all levels of the project, especially end users. Good project managers make the time to talk to end users every day and because of this they know more about what is happening than any senior manager. They are ‘in-touch’ with the project and are constantly aware of changes, problems and successes. Good project managers who practice the walk and talk technique are never surprised in project or management meetings because they always know more than anyone else at the meeting and they always have the very latest information. This is probably why they are such good project managers. If you aren’t prepared to invest at least one hour of your time every day walking and talking to real users then you shouldn’t be a project manager.

Good project managers also always know how to select and manage their team. Because they are natural leaders, management is a natural and comfortable process for them. There is never any doubt in a good project manager’s team about who the leader is and who will make the final decisions and then take responsibility for them. There is no disseminated responsibility. The opposite is always true in a bad project manager’s team with disseminated responsibility and no clear record of who made what decision.

The calibre of the bad project manager’s team is always significantly lower than that of the good project manager’s team. This is because mediocre people always hire mediocre people and a bad project manager is afraid of strong capable staff because he or she finds them threatening. A good project manager on the other hands loves working with strong capable people and revels in the ongoing challenge of managing them. A good project manager is never threatened by strong capable staff, au contraire; he seeks them out because they make it easier for him (or her) to be successful.

There is no magical formula that will ensure a successful project, completed on time and on budget and with all contracted deliverables accepted and signed off. It also doesn’t matter what project management tool you use as long as you do use a project management tool. I don’t particularly like the latest version of Microsoft Project (and that is an understatement) but if required I could use it to manage any project no matter how big and how complex. It isn’t the tool; it is the person that counts.

This is simple advice like my favourite about how to do well on the stock market, “buy low and sell high.” If you want a successful project, always start with a successful project manager. He or she will take care of everything else.

The Importance of Document Imaging

by Frank 1. April 2012 06:00

 

Document imaging or the scanning of paper documents, has been around a long time. Along with workflow, it was the real beginning of office automation.

Document imaging did for office automation what barcode technology did for physical records management and asset management. That is, it allowed manual processes to be automated and improved; it provided tangible and measurable productivity improvements and as well as demonstrably better access to information for the then fledgling knowledge worker.

Today we have a paradox, whereas we seem to take document imaging for granted we still don’t utilize it to anything like its full capabilities. Most people use document scanners of one kind or another, usually on multi-function-devices, but we still don’t appear to use document scanning nearly enough to automate time-consuming and often critical business processes.

I don’t really know why not because it isn’t a matter of missing technology; we seem to have every type of document scanner imaginable and every type of document scanning software conceivable.  We just seem to be stuck in the past or, we just are not applying enough thought to analysing our day to day business processes; we have become lazy.

Business processes based on the circulation of paper documents are archaic, wasteful, inefficient and highly prone to error because of lost and redundant copies of paper documents; in fact they are downright dangerous. Yet, every organization I deal with still has critical business process based on the circulation of paper. How incredibly careless or just plain stupid is that?

Let’s look at it from the most basic level. How many people can read a paper document at any one point in time? The answer is one and one only. How many people can look at a digital image of a document at any one point in time? The answer is as many as need to. How hard is it to lose or damage a paper document? The answer is it is really, really easy to lose of damage or deface a paper document. How hard is it to lose or damage or deface or even change a secure digital copy of a document? The answer is it is almost impossible in a well-managed document management system.

So why are we still circulating paper documents to support critical business processes? Why aren’t we simply digitising these important paper documents and making the business process infinitely faster and more secure? For the life of me, I can’t think of a single valid reason for not digitising important paper documents. The technology is readily available with oodles of choice and it isn’t difficult to use and it isn’t expensive. In fact, digitizing paper will always save you money.

So why do I still see so many organizations large and small still relying on the circulation of paper documents to support important business processes? Is it a lack of thought or a lack of imagination or a lack of education? Can it really be true that thirty-years after the beginning of the office automation revolution we still have tens of thousands or even millions of so called knowledge workers with little knowledge of basic office automation? If so, and I believe it is true from my observations, then it is a terrible reflection on our public and corporate education systems.

In a world awash in technology like computers, laptops, iPhones and iPads how can we be so terribly ignorant of the application and benefits of such a basic and proven technology as document imaging?

Some of the worst example can be found in large financial organizations like banks and insurance companies. The public perception is that banks are right up there with the latest technology and most people look at examples like banking and payment systems on smartphones as examples of that. But, go behind the front office to the back office and you will usually see a very different world; a world of paper and manual processes, many on the IT department’s ‘backlog’ of things to attend to, eventually.

Here is a really dumb example of this kind of problem. I recently decided to place a term deposit with an online bank. Everything had to be done online and the website didn’t even offer the download of PDFs which would have been useful so you could read through pages of information at your leisure and find out what information they required so you could make sure you had it handy when completing the forms on the website.

I managed to find a phone number and rang them up and asked for the documentation in PDF form only to be told they were paperless and that everything had to be done online. So I persisted going from page to page on the website, never knowing what would be required next until the last page and yes, you guessed right. On the very last page the instructions were to print out the completed forms, sign them and mail them in. Paperless for me; much to my inconvenience and paper for them, again much to my inconvenience.  There is really no excuse for this kind of brainless twaddle that puts the consumer last.  Their processes obviously required a signature on a paper document so the whole pretence of an online process was a sham; their processes required paper.

Hopefully, when they received my paper documents they actually scanned and digitized them but I am willing to bet that if I could get into their back office I would find shelf after shelf of cardboard file folders and paper documents. Hopefully, next time I ring up they can actually find my documents. Maybe I could introduce them to the revolutionary new barcode technology so they could actually track and manage their paper documents far more efficiently?

The message is a simple one. If you have business processes based on the circulation of paper you are inefficient and are wasting money and the time of your staff and customers. You are also taking risks with the integrity of your data and your customer’s data.

Please do everyone a favour and look carefully at the application of document imaging, a well-proven, affordable, easy to implement and easy to manage business process automation tool.

 

Are you making the most of your application software?

by Frank 19. February 2012 13:05

I have been in the application software industry for most of my professional life. I started in bureaus designing and programming bespoke applications for a variety of clients then moved to mainframes and online and real time application software development and then to my own software company in 1984. I have worked with thousands of customers and hundreds of applications and I have never seen any customer use anything like one hundred-percent of an application’s functionality.

Whenever I visit my customers there is a common dialog that goes along the lines of, “It would be great if RecFind could do …….” To which my reply always is, “Actually it can, would you like me to show you?”

Yes, before you ask, we do provide detailed help screens and manuals and both classroom and online training. We also have a plethora of helpful information on our website including white papers, a Knowledgebase & FAQs, News, helpful hints, product descriptions, etc., etc.

We also employ inside sales people who talk regularly to our customers and we communicate via newsletters and emails and, of course, this blog.

There is no shortage of information on what our products can do. There is however, still a big gap between what our products can do and what our customers understand about the capabilities of our products. From my experience, the knowledge gap is common across all products and software vendors because no one has yet come up with a mechanism to continually train and remind the customer’s personnel about a product’s complete functionality and entire range of capabilities.

Nor, do I suspect, would the average customer’s end user be too happy about being bombarded with unsolicited information of this kind. The fact is people only have time to work on a need-to-know basis. They only want to know enough to get the job done and this is entirely understandable.

Customers have multiple application products to work with and unlimited work to complete in a limited time frame. Typical end users do not have the time to become expert in any one application product and nor do they have the time to explore all of its capabilities or even to keep completely up to date with an application product as its moves from release to release.

This is a common dilemma for all application software providers. The best they can hope for is a single ‘champion’ within each customer that does his/her best to keep up to date and informed.

The end result of the above reality is that no customer ever manages to get maximum value from its application software. No organization ever gets a full return on its investment. There will always be many things the application software could be configured to handle that would improve productivity, solve burning problems and reduce costs but the knowledge gap prevents this happening.

The only solution I can think of is for the customer to pay the vendor to provide a resident onsite application expert who continually looks for application niches where the software can add value. However, the two flaws in this approach are:

  1. Where does the customer find the money?; and
  2. Where does the vendor find the people?

Apart from these two minor flaws, it is the perfect solution except for the fact that the application expert would also need to also be an expert in the customer’s business. You have to understand the customer’s business processes before you can determine whether a particular application software product could be a solution. This means that our application consultant needs to be pretty clever and very experienced with bags of initiative and there aren’t a lot of these people around; which brings me back to flaw number 2.

Archimedes was supposed to have said, “Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.”

I say, “Give me enough smart people and I could automate the world.”

In both cases, we are missing the essential ingredient.

The difficulties don’t mean that we give up, au contraire; they force us to work harder at a solution. The vendor and the customer need to work together to find new ways for the vendor’s product to add value to the customer’s business. This is a mutually beneficial partnership.

Our product RecFind 6 was specifically designed and engineered to be able to handle multiple tasks simultaneously. It was designed from the outset to be a multi-application solution and to enable the customer to use the one piece of application software to solve multiple business problems. To be able to leverage off a single investment and use the one product for multiple business application needs.

We provide the high level tools free of charge with RecFind 6 so the customer can configure multiple solutions (e.g., records management, help desk, asset management, contract management, document management, email management, customer relationship management or CRM) using a single copy of RecFind 6. The tools also allow the customer to ‘partition’ the various applications so each group of users thinks it has its own solution.

However, despite the unique capabilities of RecFind 6, we still have the problem of knowing enough about our customers to be able to propose additional uses for our product. Maybe if all of our customers had their head office in North Sydney our task would be easier but I doubt it. As it is, we have customers all over the world in all time zones and in some very remote locations.

The Internet and Citrix tools like GoToAssist, GoToMeeting and GoToTraining largely solve the distance problems and do so in the most economical way without airfares, expenses and hotel charges. We use these tools extensively and our customers love the convenience and low cost of the solutions we are able to provide thanks to our friends at Citrix. But, there is still no substitute for being onsite and in face to face dialog to best understand a customer’s business processes and needs. It is a case of the old way is still the best way.

Our challenge in these austere times is to convince our customers of the value of our proposition. That is, that an investment in an onsite investigation of needs will always provide bottom line and productivity benefits; that it will more than pay for itself in the short term.

It is early days yet for our model but many of my customers are already using RecFind 6 to solve multiple application software problems. It is always a battle for both of us to find the time and resources for the investigation but it always pays off.

We are continually looking for new ways to simplify and systemise the processes required to determine where we can add value. We don’t have a perfect solution yet but we keep trying because the value proposition is undeniable; do more with less. Buy a single product instead of having to buy ten products. Learn how to use a single product instead of having to learn how to use ten different products. Deal with a single vendor instead of having to deal with ten different vendors. No integration required instead of having to integrate ten different products.

We know we have the right paradigm, now we just need to reach our audience.

Will you upgrade to Windows 8?

by Frank 12. February 2012 13:09

This is the question that keeps Microsoft executives awake at night and gnawing at their fingernails.

Will home users, corporates and government agencies rush in to upgrade their desktops to Windows 8? I for one don’t think so and this is why I don’t think so.

The Vista debacle is still fresh in every CIO’s mind and I have not spoken to anyone who is planning to upgrade to Windows 8 in 2012 or even 2013. Most of my customers are still using XP and planning to upgrade to Windows 7.

Microsoft released Vista two years before it was ready and in doing so it inflicted a huge cost and productivity burden on its customers. Those same customers have long memories.

This isn’t a debate about whether Metro is a ‘good’ UI or whether or not Windows 8 should have a start button or whether or not the ARM version should have/will have the option of switching to the classical UI. That particular debate is for the techies and bloggers, not business owners and executives. For serious people this is a debate about value, cost and risk avoidance.

  • What is the value proposition of Windows 8? What are the compelling reasons for upgrading to Windows 8? What are the benefits of Windows 8? What effect will Windows 8 have on the bottom line? How will the CIO compose a cohesive business case to convince the board to allocate scarce funds to a Windows 8 rollout?
  • What will it cost to purchase Windows 8? What will it cost to upgrade all desktops to Windows 8? What will the cost be of lost productivity as your users grapple with the changes and differences? What will it cost to retrain your users?
  • Will the initial Windows 8 experience be a repeat of the Vista experience? What is the risk of this happening? What is the risk of some of your current devices not working with Windows 8? What is the risk of some of your current applications not working with Windows 8? What is the risk that you will have to upgrade or replace some of your PCs? What is the risk that your will have to roll back to Windows 7 from Windows 8 as many customers had to roll back from Vista to XP?

Value Proposition

As a business owner I don’t believe Windows 8 has a compelling value proposition. I don’t see any reason to upgrade from Windows 7. Windows 7 works fine and I will follow the old but wise maxim, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!”

Cost

In my business, if I add up all the potential costs including manpower and retraining and lost productivity I come up with a minimum of $1,000 per desktop to upgrade to Windows 8 and that doesn’t include any hardware upgrades that may be required. And this cost assumes that Windows 8 is not a Vista and that all my current devices and application programs (like accounting, CRM and payroll) continue to work fine. The absolute worst case would be $2,000 a desktop if my assumptions are incorrect.

Risk

There is no reason to accept any risk. I will be recommending to my customers that they stick with Windows 7 and wait at least two or three years until Windows 8 has gobbled up a couple of service packs and proven itself.

Maybe Microsoft hasn’t noticed but most of the world is still in recession and every one of my customers, private and government alike, is still trying to cut costs and do more with less. I don’t know where Microsoft thinks the money is coming from to fund a Windows 8 upgrade.

From my perspective as a long-term Microsoft .NET application software developer I have decided not to redevelop my Windows applications for Windows 8 because of the huge amount of retraining, effort and money required to do so. I have been on the Microsoft treadmill for 28 years and have dutifully upgraded, redesigned and redeveloped my applications for each new release of Windows over that time. This time I do not believe the effort and cost is either justified or required. Instead, I am concentrating on converting all my application client functionality to both web clients (to run in a browser) and mobile clients (supporting smartphones and tablets). There will be some inevitable tweaking to do for Windows 8 but for the most part my new RecFind 6 clients won’t care if the user is running Windows XP, Windows 7, Windows 8, Linux, Apple OS, iOS or Android.

I actually can’t think of any good reason to redevelop for Windows 8 and have to believe that there will be lots of developers like me that will go the web client and mobile client route instead of spending scarce R&D funds and important developer time just to comply with Microsoft’s latest idea of how desktop applications should look and work. I already have enough trouble keeping up with the rapid changes in Android thank you.

It is every software developer’s dream to have just a single set of source code and to support multiple platforms with the same source. Unfortunately, this has never been possible but I still have to manage costs by minimizing the number of code variations I have to support. The advantage of a web client is that it is largely compatible with most operating systems and browsers and I can build and maintain my web client with a single set of source code albeit with a number of “ifs” to cater for variations in browsers and operating systems. I need separate source code for Both Android and iOS for my ‘native mode’ mobile apps so I end up supporting three development environments, browser, Android and iOS. This is fine because my customers are demanding web clients and mobile clients so I know that my investment in these three environments will pay off. No customer has yet asked for a Windows 8 compatible/certified RecFind 6 client but it is early times yet.

My applications (all based on RecFind 6) are in the Enterprise Content Management (ECM) sector and are designed for the records management, document management, document imaging and business process management sectors. As such we could best describe RecFind 6 as an information management solution and luckily for us this is an ideal application for the three environments we now support, browsers (web clients), Android and iOS (mobile clients).

My customers are also happy to use my products in these three environments so I have absolutely no compelling reason to redesign and rewrite RecFind 6 for Windows 8. My browser clients will run under Windows XP, 7 and 8 so there is absolutely no need for me to build a ‘native’ Windows 8 RecFind 6 client. Hopefully, my current Windows 7 RecFind 6 client will run with only minor tweaks under the Windows 8 ‘classical’ desktop so that my clients that still want to run my ‘fat’ client can still do so. However, there will be no need to do so because my RecFind 6 web client will be faster and easier to install and maintain.

What if a majority of software developers think like me and Microsoft ends up with a new desktop platform and very few ‘native’ applications, especially designed and written for Windows 8? Customers buy Windows to run applications, to do work. If Windows 8 doesn’t have the applications they need they will not bother with it.

Microsoft has thousands of very, very clever people and a marketing budget I can only dream of so we should never write them off. They proved they can get it very wrong with Vista and they have also proved they can get it very right with Windows 7. Fingers crossed that they again get it very right with Windows 8. But, they are taking a very, very big chance and with most of the western world still in recession they have not chosen an exactly auspicious time to launch Windows 8.

To reiterate, and for all the reasons espoused above, I do not see Windows 8 being the success Microsoft is hoping for.

Outsourcing will destroy the west

by Frank 5. February 2012 13:01

Many years ago when I was living in the USA I watched in amazement as US car companies in Detroit outsourced car production to Mexico and Canada and laid off thousands of workers. My mind struggled with the logic because surely laid-off workers wouldn’t be able to afford new cars even if they were made cheaper in Mexico?

The trend continued and accelerated over the years and each time I read about more outsourcing and layoffs I wondered, “How do they expect laid-off workers to be able to buy their goods?” “What is the point of reducing costs if at the same time you also reduce the size of your market?”

Have you been to Detroit lately? Have you seen first-hand what outsourcing can do to a city and communities?

The why is easy to answer; senior executives wanted lower costs to make the Wall Street analysts happy and to then earn them much bigger bonuses. Hedge funds and M&A companies wanted lower costs to make doing deals easier and more profitable. A small number of very greedy and avaricious people at the top were more than happy to destroy livelihoods, towns, states and even countries just to get even richer than they already were. This is an example of greed on a scale we have never seen previously. Lives are being destroyed by people with more money that they can ever spend savagely and uncaringly destroying others to become even more obscenely wealthy.

We all know that no developing nation can transition to a developed nation without a large, growing and healthy middle class. Why then are western ‘developed’ nations now destroying the middle class? In the USA the obscenely rich are becoming richer, the middle class is shrinking and the poor class is growing. Is this how we want to continue? Is this a recipe for success for a country or just an incredibly selfish recipe for success for a tiny minority? Why are we letting it happen?

I almost choked when I recently read Apple’s explanation of why it now manufactures everything in China using Foxconn. Basically, they said it wasn’t because of lower costs (rubbish!); it was because the expertise and supply chains were no longer in the USA. Doesn’t Apple realize that the expertise and supply chains are now longer in the USA because USA companies outsourced their IP and laid off the expertise in the USA? Apple originally outsourced because of lower costs and eventually this outsourcing destroyed the ability of the USA to compete. It is a case of cause and effect; the outsourcing came first and this in turn destroyed America’s ability to compete. Now we have a situation where Apple’s competitors are unable to match its manufacturing costs and the only solution for them is to also outsource to Chinese companies like Foxconn thus further eroding the US’s ability to compete. If this trend continues the USA will soon lose the ability to build electronic devices.

Because of outsourcing western countries have lost not only jobs but key skills and manufacturing capabilities that they will never get back. Smarmy western politicians blithely talk about re-training programs to solve the unemployment problem but what is the point of re-training people if there aren’t any jobs? How long before these same idiotic politicians mandate children staying longer in school and making college education compulsory just to make the unemployment figures look better? Worse still, we are borrowing vast sums of money from the same countries we have outsourced to to fund unemployment benefits and retraining programs. How stupid is that? Let’s exacerbate the problem by becoming impossibly indebted to the countries that have already stolen all our jobs and destroyed our economies? Is it just me or are other people struggling to understand the big picture? Why are we letting it happen?

Did you know that Australia no longer produces tyres? We closed the last local tyre producer last year and we now we rely 100% on imports. Surely tyre production is a strategic industry that we can’t afford to lose? More importantly, once that factory is closed and the equipment sold off or scrapped we can’t simply restart this industry. The workers too have gone along with their many years of irreplaceable skills and experience. Production facilities and expertise irreversibly lost. This same thing is happening in all areas of our economy, we are losing the ability to make things and we are losing our self-reliance. We are becoming more and more vulnerable each year and more and more indebted each year. Why are we letting it happen?

In the last 30 years we have seen the largest transfer of wealth and IP the world has ever seen. Western nations have transferred their wealth and their IP to developing nations and become massively indebted in the process. Where is the up side for the vast majority of citizens in western nations? We are we letting a tiny minority of the super-rich destroy our economies and steal our future? Why are we letting it happen?

My main fear is that the outsourcing trend has gone on so long that it is now irreversible; that the problem can’t be fixed. I don’t just worry about my retirement; I worry about the future of my children and grandchildren. What kind of world have we left for them?

I own and run a software company that produces what we call enterprise content management software, a broad term that includes applications like records management, document management, CRM, imaging, contract management, etc. At least once a week I receive some kind of proposal from mainly Indian firms to outsource my development and support functions. I tell them not as long as I own the company.

We do everything in house because that way we produce a far better quality of product and an infinitely higher quality of support. Outsourced development doesn’t work and neither does outsourced support. In my business, outsourcing does not product better quality, it produces rubbish. Outsourcing is never done to improve the product or services or to improve the client interface. It is only ever done by naïve and greedy senior executives to fatten their pay packets at the expense of their employees and long-suffering customers.

Why do you let it happen? Why do you support companies that outsource key functions and lay off Australian workers? Do you enjoy making support calls to Indian and Filipino call centres? Please think about your responsibilities and the future of your children and grandchildren. It may well be too late but I for one will be doing everything in my power to support Australian companies that don’t outsource and to remove my support from Australian companies that do outsource Australian jobs. We need to start taking action or we will not have a future.

Why are you letting it happen?

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