News & Views

May 2008 from CAmagazine and written by Michael Burns – “In last month’s column, we looked at why it is so difficult to integrate different systems, whether they be inside or outside a company. Some of the problems, such as gaining access to data from different systems, can be solved using technology such as open databases. But when it comes to other hurdles — integration with trading partners, in particular — Web services and extensible markup language (XML) are now being held up as the best solution…”

March 26, 2008 from AMR Research – “What do software and golf have in common? A lot, actually…Companies can buy all the enterprise software they want, but unless their companies are performing well to begin with, as Tiger Woods is, that software isn’t going to help a whole lot. To most companies, these investments are a cost without an ROI…”

180 View – The article does make a few good points as to why ERP systems fail to deliver ROI and is interesting. However, it’s not clear whether the conclusions drawn can be generalized based on the surveys conducted. Were the surveys for organizations spending millions of dollars or done 5 years ago or for companies with complex processes not found in a typical survey?

Another problem is the suggestion to improve the operational efficiency of the business processes before purchasing new software otherwise you will just have an automated mess. The implication is that organizations should re-engineer their business processes before implementing a new system. This is bad advice for most companies. You could develop the best processes and find that the costs of their implementation would be prohibitively expensive. Why not leverage the business processes already implemented by the ERP vendors than start from scratch? Why re-invent the wheel every time? There could be a few unique processes that make an organization successful, which may require some new processes, but there is a lot of similarity between companies in the basics.

May 5, 2008 from IT Business.ca – “SAP and Research in Motion have teamed up to bring SAP’s back-end business applications, beginning with CRM, to BlackBerry devices… SAP’s CRM is the first application that will run natively on the BlackBerry, but eventually the companies plan to build mobile versions of SAP’s applications — including ERP (enterprise resource planning) and supply chain — for BlackBerry devices, said Bill McDermott, president and CEO of SAP Americas, Asia Pacific and Japan.”

180 View – ERP in the palm of your hand with access anywhere anytime sounds good to us. The only concern is ERP will need to be dummied down to make it easy.

May 8, 2008 from itWorld Canada – “Installing SAP applications is not easy. Employees who are capable of deploying and maintaining SAP software are in extremely valuable and practically form a whole profession by themselves.

SAP, which built its reputation with ERP software, is rarely chosen by enterprises for one-off applications, AMR Research analyst Jim Shepherd notes in a report this month titled “The five SAP strategies that you need to understand.” “For huge organizations, this is typically a multiyear, multimillion-dollar effort to transform the business,” he writes. Unfortunately, executives often pay little attention to SAP installations after they are deployed, he adds. That’s a big mistake. Let’s take a look at the five SAP strategies Shepherd details in his report, and how they affect your technology decisions…”

180 View – Despite bad press, SAP keeps on truckin. The thing is they had the vision and ability in early ERP days to build systems that would work across large organizations with complex business and infrastructure. Decision makers are risk adverse and think that if it works for the best companies (as the SAP ad says), then it will work for me. Another compelling reason to go to SAP is that the most well known and trusted consulting and accounting firms were on board and would help with the implementation.

SAP won the first ERP War fought over automating business across departments, Client/Server technology, and support for multiple databases and operating systems. We are now in the midst of the second ERP War being fought in the trenches of ease of use, web based architecture, SaaS, embedded BI and CRM, customization outside of source code and integration tools.

April 3, 2008 from Baseline – “The good news is that technology to support business process management (BPM) has become widely accepted, with a majority of enterprises having BPM projects, according to a pair of recent surveys.

The bad news is that implementing BPM—which requires real process change to succeed—is no slam dunk. In fact, in a recent survey from Forrester Research a majority of IT professionals at 142 companies reported the type of mixed results from BPM more closely associated with a three-pointer.”

180 View – Another misunderstood acronym is BPM. BPM is software to improve business process. Just like all new technology, there is the usual hype and implementation based on the potential merits of technology. It’s not surprising that there are lots of problems if the technology is purchased for the wrong reasons. It could also be difficult if the tool is not integrated with the existing systems. The article says “The most unexpected finding… was the frequent use of BPM technology as a tool to support new product development and innovation”. Our view is that BPM does make sense when creating new processes from scratch. You have a clean slate and don’t need to worry about integrating existing systems, data or processes.

May 20, 2008 from AMR Research – “It’s hard to make predictions, especially about the future.”—Yogi Berra” – Trying to predict the future based on current trends and conditions invariably misses the mark. The problem: conditions always change. If, in 1945, you tried to predict the success of a hotel chain like Holiday Inn without considering the creation of a national highway system, you would have thought it a bad idea and been dead wrong.”

180 View – It’s true that conditions change, and that the smart ones notice and take advantage of it.

June 1, 2008 – “Today Adobe launched the free public beta version of Acrobat.com, a Web-based supplement to its popular PDF document creation application. The new site offers an array of services to help businesses share and collaborate on documents. It also supports basic Web conferencing (including desktop sharing) and limited free conversion of documents to PDF format.”

180 View – Richard Morochove wrote this article for PC World, and if Richard says it’s good, then it must be.

May 14, 2008 from CFO.com – “There’s little doubt that electronic spreadsheets are the most widely-used financial software application. But they are also the most-abused.

It takes some effort — often a lot of effort — to develop and maintain sound, proper, and effective spreadsheet practices. The spreadsheet’s very ease of use encourages sloppy habits, and even seasoned finance professionals can find themselves falling into bad habits. At its worst, spreadsheet sloppiness, reflected in poor design, difficult manipulation, and lack of documentation, can lead an auditor to declare that a company has ineffective controls over some aspect of financial reporting. But even less serious spreadsheet follies can cause major headaches….”

180 View – A reader of the article commented online with the following – “A comprehensive set of Best Practice Spreadsheet Modelling Standards and Conventions are available at www.ssrb.org. The Standards aim to promote discipline and consistency amongst spreadsheet model developers. They Standards are quite comprehensive and can be applied to any spreadsheet modelling task.” I had not heard of ssrb.org before but did take a quick peek at their free 77 page document. If you have time to wade through it, please let us know what you think.

2007 from INSIDE.CRM – “…According to technology market analysts at Forrester, the CRM market is poised to hit nearly $74 billion in sales in 2007. CRM applications represent about $21 billion of that market, with services making up the rest. With so much money to be made, it’s no surprise the CRM landscape features scores of players, from up-and-comers to industry stalwarts. Key vendors include Amdocs, PeopleSoft, Salesforce.com and Siebel Systems, to name a few…”

180 View – The article is about a year old but does provide a few insights on the differences between Hosted vs. On-Premise CRM.

May 2, 2008 from an article by Robert McGarvey published on internet.com – “Keeping key employees really comes down to finding out who they are and what they like. And it’s more important than ever.”

180 View (written by Lawrence Young) – If you are Canadian, you undoubtedly have heard of the giant steel maker Dofasco. Why if you’re Canadian-because Dofasco always ends their radio and newspaper ads with the byline “Our product is steel. Our strength is people”.
I must say that this catchy phrase has always stuck with me, and in part is responsible for Human Resource Management being one of the areas of specialty in my consulting practice. And the more I advise companies on how to attract, manage and retain great people, the more I realize that for the most part, HR management is all about doing the simple stuff.

In fact, the two bestsellers of all time are my guiding lights on HR management. The Bible tells us to ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you’. And Dale Carnegie’s 1936 book called “How to Win Friends and Influence People” tells us to ‘Put yourself in the other guy’s shoes and ask yourself what’s in it for him’.

In this practical, down-to-earth article, Robert McGarvey says us that ‘the secret to retaining your best employees starts with knowing who they are’. HR expert Beverley Kaye suggests that we get to know them by proactively doing a ‘stay’ interview instead of reactively doing an ‘exit’ interview. She suggests that ‘when stay interviews are part of the culture-and this a practice in very few companies-attrition of the people you don’t want to lose plummets’.

So what do you ask in a stay interview? The simple stuff. Ask your employees simple questions, like ‘what can we do to keep you?’ Ask them what they like and don’t like about the company and their job. And be honest with them. ‘If the employee asks for things you cannot deliver, be direct in acknowledging it but also indicate what you can do. Know too that that just by talking to employees in this way you are scoring points because it’s something that just does not happen in most companies’.

At the end of the day, human resource management comes down to this – you either believe, like Dofasco, that one of the greatest strengths of your company is the people you employ. Or you don’t!

If you are a believer, then continuously do the simple stuff. Show your valued employees that you care about them. Treat them with respect. Say what you mean, and mean what you say. And above all, make it easy for them to tell you how they feel, and listen to them with an open mind.

And if you are not a believer, then…good luck to you!