News & Views

January 2012 from CAmagazine and written by Michael Burns – “Anyone who has been involved in selecting software knows the road is strewn with pitfalls — many of which we covered in “The top 10 software selection mistakes” (www.camagazine.com/selectionmistakes). But how do you avoid those mistakes altogether? In the next few columns, we hope to shed some light on the subject…”

June 2, 2011 from BusinessFinance – “It’s rare a singular metric like turnover or a customer survey score is by itself a good measure of an organization’s performance. Most of the more meaningful measures on dashboards of executives today are indices, made up of three to five submeasures. I review the nine most useful and creative performance measures I have seen in government and business organizations over the last few years…”

180 View – The article does contain a few good ideas such as a Distraction index which summarizes employee time in 3 categories – Job (Tasks that are directly part of doing one’s job), Administration and Programs (Projects).

I teach a graduate course which includes performance metrics. The theory is that metrics should be SMART – Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Relevant, and Timely. Without being specific, the numbers are ambiguous and there can be many ways to interpret the results. You should not choose metrics that can’t be measured accurately or take a huge effort to obtain. Actionable means that the metric is easily understood and that it ties back to a specific team that is being measured. Relevant metrics are linked to strategy. Companies that need to wait a month or more for their metrics are in deep trouble. Real-time should be the goal, but accuracy objectives will cause delays.

Financial metrics are inherently lagging indicators, which tell you about historical results – sales, gross profit … The most important metrics are leading indicators, which foreshadow things that could happen. For example rising error rates in shipping or longer time to ship often precede declining customer sales.

January 2011 from Aberdeen Group – “Today’s business decision maker faces a conundrum that challenges even the most analytical minds. In one hand, more data is available to support business intelligence (BI) tools and techniques than ever before… On the other hand, that growth in data volume and complexity can become the enemy of expedience…

The research shows that by delivering on-time business insight, these top performers are able to drive substantial performance improvement in key operational metrics…”

180 View – The article does make a number of good points. In our software selection projects, BI is always included as a requirement. The vendors often show multiple BI tools providing different and overlapping views of information. The pendulum has swung from not enough BI to too much. The article also pushes the notion that real-time or close to real-time information is the way to go.

December 20, 2011 from Computerworld – “With the year drawing to a close, one thing seems abundantly clear: There are still an awful lot of ERP and other software projects running off the rails out there.

Software project failures are no fun for anyone involved. They lead to piles of wasted money and effort, heaps of accusations and recriminations, and even to lawsuits. Here’s a look at some of the highest-profile problem projects to surface this year…”

180 View – One of the 10 biggest failures is “the attempt to provide electronic health records for all of the country’s citizens.” This is not an ERP system. Another of the 10 was for a company with 20 employees. It seems to me that the author had trouble finding big ERP failures in 2011.

November 15, 2011 from The Enterprise System Spectator – “I attended two days at SAP’s SapphireNOW conference in Madrid earlier this month, at the end of a month-long trip to Spain and Italy. The trip to Madrid gave me a good opportunity to catch up with the latest developments with SAP since the Sapphire conference last May in Orlando.

Jim Hagemann Snabe gave the Wednesday keynote, which I found tighter and more balanced than similar messages delivered in Orlando. Back then, the keynotes seemed to overly emphasis HANA, SAP’s new in-memory database technology. Although HANA is still hugely important to SAP, the message is now more balanced between SAP’s three focus areas of innovation: mobile, cloud, and in-memory computing…

My consulting team at Strativa recently evaluated ByD (Business ByDesign) in a competitive deal and came away favorably impressed. Customer reference checks during the Madrid conference were also encouraging. I believe SAP has a winner with ByD: both for subsidiaries of its large customers and in net-new small business deals. Those who question the viability of ByD at this point should reconsider their assumptions…”

180 View – Although the author, Frank Scavo, was paid to attend the conference by SAP, Frank did a good job in providing an unbiased opinion about the conference. What was also interesting about the article was what was not discussed – mainly SAP ERP, SAP Business All-in-One and SAP Business One. SAP ERP and All-in-One are the same system except that All-in-One is preconfigured for a specific industry. It seems that SAP is betting on in-memory computing for these systems – “From an economic standpoint, in-memory computing is a sustaining innovation for SAP. SAP can use in-memory computing to continue to sell big-ticket licenses to big-ticket customers and receive large annuities in the form of maintenance fees.” But there was no mention of SAP Business One, which is conspicuous by its absence.

October 10, 2011 from CPA Practice Advisor – “As with most organizations, nonprofits vary in size and scope, and their software needs vary, as well. As an accounting professional, you know that the software needs of the local animal shelter will vary widely than the needs of the United Way.

While this may be a drastic comparison, it really highlights the wide range of organizations served by nonprofit software vendors. Entry-level, off-the-shelf systems are intended for different types of nonprofits than the top-line, robust solutions. This is not a one-size-fits-all market… The review includes the following systems with their ratings:

• AccuFund – AccuFund Accounting Suite for Non-Profits (Overall: 4.75 Stars)
• Blackbaud – The Financial Edge (Overall: 5 Stars)
• Blackbaud – Fundware (Overall: 4.5 Stars)
• Cougar Mountain Software – Denali Fund+ Accounting (Overall: 4.75 Stars)
• CYMA Systems, Inc. – CYMA Not-for-Profit Fund Accounting (Overall: 4.75 Stars)
• eTEK International Inc. – eTEK Fundamentals (Overall: 4.5 Stars)
• Fund E-Z Development Corp. – Fund E-Z Accounting (Overall: 4.5 Stars)
• Intuit Inc. – QuickBooks Premier Nonprofit Edition (Overall: 4.5 Stars)
• Sage North America – Sage Fund Accounting (Overall: 5 Stars)
• Sage Peachtree Premium Accounting for Nonprofits 2012 (Overall: 5 Stars)
• Serenic Software – Serenic Navigator (Overall: 5 Stars)”

180 View – Although all the systems have a high rating and the rating seems somewhat arbitrary, the article should benefit a not-for-profit organization seeking a new system. However there are many more systems available. For example, check out Unit4 and Tyler Technologies, both of which are good high-end solutions.  You will also find that many of the well known ERP systems have either built not-for-profit functionality or have partners that have extended their system with not-for-profit functionality using the same tools and database as the core product.

April 2011 from Oracle – “Organizations face a number of challenges when moving their HR applications into the cloud. Companies seeking solutions like talent management and compensation must ensure that Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) offerings in these areas can integrate seamlessly and cost-effectively with their existing infrastructures, and provide a unified view into employee data and the workforce lifecycle. Global employers require cloud solutions that not only support compliance with employee and data privacy regulations in foreign countries, but also deliver multicurrency functionality for processes such as performance and compensation management. And cost-conscious organizations everywhere need to thoroughly evaluate the total cost of owning a SaaS solution versus a hosted or on-premise application, to determine what deployment models will reduce costs and risks not just one year from now, but throughout the entire application lifecycle…”

180 View – The article is clearly biased as Oracle is pushing its own Oracle Fusion Human Capital Management system. But the article also contains some good definition of terms and discusses what Oracle considers myths and reality. For example – “One of the most controversial policies with a SaaS-only model is the forced upgrade policy. Niche SaaS providers tout their ability to deliver frequent ―vendor-managed upgrades that deliver innovation. In reality, forcing customers to upgrade to the next version of the application on the vendor’s time frame can have negative downstream effects, resulting in additional costs and complexity.”

December 14, 2011 from Industry Week – “…The very successful companies, the leaders in their industries, generally have senior executives and management teams that understand it’s not people screwing things up, it’s the processes that are not up to the challenge of today’s business complexity, and it’s the processes that need to be improved. This is where they focus their continuous-improvement efforts, and they encourage the organization to identify the anomalies so they can be addressed… As a result, they have not enabled the organization to continuously improve its processes…”

180 View – Our methodology for our business process improvement and software selection projects include the notion that every problem is an opportunity and employees are encouraged to expose any problems. The only time that employees may be reluctant to expose problems is when they think that a more efficient process/system might lead to their position no longer being required.

December 2011 from Project Times – “…In a recent webinar, Joseph Grenny hypothesized that the root cause underlying these and other problems in projects is failure to effectively hold crucial conversations.  It is the Abilene Paradox in action, where silence or avoiding difficult confrontations robs the project team and its organization of the ability to either avoid the causes of failures or to catch the causes early in their life to turn the project around or end it when that is appropriate…”

180 View – Interesting perspective but I don’t think it’s possible to have a root cause for project failures. There are as many causes to failure as there are different kinds of people. However encouraging the project team to express their concerns is a very good idea. More than that, I would encourage project managers to seek out the naysayers and ask them for their opinion about the risks, probability, impact and most importantly what should be done about the risks.

180 View – There are many comments about this video. One of them was “This is a beautiful video. It says so much about how the smallest things we do can make a huge difference in someone’s life. Little acts of kindness can have far-reaching effects that we may never see, so next time you think you aren’t helping to change the world, just watch this video and maybe you will think differently.”

December 2011 from CAmagazine and written by Michael Burns – “Few complex projects are undertaken without some estimating being done. Whether it’s a construction company that needs to do a custom project or an accounting firm that needs to prepare a proposal for a complex audit engagement, someone (often several people) will have to take a stab at calculating the effort and cost required to finish the job…”

November 14, 2011 from BusinessFinance – “As Workday continues to expand and the likelihood of its IPO becomes a more frequent topic of discussion, so does the movement of ERP systems to the cloud. Thus far, only a minority of companies have chosen to put their ERP and accounting systems in the cloud, but the numbers are growing and there’s evidence of success. NetSuite, for example, reported a 26 percent increase in its revenues to $145 million in the nine months up to Sept. 30, 2011. To be sure, this is not close to Salesforce.com’s size and growth rate over the past decade, but it does indicate a growing acceptance of the cloud for this software category…

Those identified as cloud vendors that publish financial statements are currently showing strong growth. Yet what we mean by “cloud computing” is likely to evolve, as will the incumbents’ offerings. The big vendors have big resources, they have (or will have) cloud offerings and are pursuing broader platform strategies that may provide compelling advantages to some customers. The smaller vendors are showing flexibility. The cliché of the fat lady has yet to sing applies to the current environment.”

180 View – Our view is that it is futile to resist the cloud. The major vendors have jumped on the cloud bandwagon and will soon offer cloud-like alternatives. We find that many small and midsized businesses are ready to take the leap into the clouds and believe there is a business case and that the cloud vendors will protect their data.

December 7, 2011 from Bloomberg Businessweek – “SAP AG, the largest maker of business-management software, agreed to buy SuccessFactors Inc. for $3.4 billion in cash, stepping up competition with archrival Oracle Corp. in the cloud-computing market…

The deal extends SAP’s reach in the market for cloud computing, which lets customers rent software delivered over the Web rather than install it on their own machines. The company is promoting the idea as a safe way to outsource data centers and reduce the need for hardware. The SuccessFactors acquisition comes six weeks after Oracle agreed to buy another cloud competitor, RightNow Technologies Inc., for $1.5 billion…”

180 View – If you had any doubts about the future of cloud computing, follow the money.

October 19, 2011  from Industry Week – “I have often been asked whether continuous improvement (CI) is possible without technology change, and I tell people that CI is about making changes to business processes, not necessarily technology. Without a doubt, technology change is often an enabler that allows CI to occur, but it is not a prerequisite since it is often working on different aspects of the business. We tend to think of technology change in relation to things like information systems, new product developments and refinements or radical new production processes, while CI is focused more on changes to our business processes…

What you should not do is allow yourself to be stopped from your goal of continuous improvement by others throwing out the red herring that you can’t do anything because it would require substantial changes to the technologies used in your business. It usually doesn’t, so don’t let arguments that they will  stop you on your CI journey.”

180 View – We agree that technology is not the only enabler  of  business process or continuous improvement. The article is not specific about the other enablers that we would include, namely simplifying the business process, changing motivation, improving HR and improving the facilities. However just as money can’t buy happiness, but it sure helps. The same goes for IT in that it does not ensure efficient and effective business process, but it sure helps.