A Discussion about Content

A buddy of mine were having a great conversation about what is a key differentiator between consulting companies?  Is it the quality of the consultant,  the offerings, the branding.  What is it that gives a consulting company an edge?  After discussing for a bit, we narrowed the parameters a tad.

1.  Type of consulting business is important.

For the sake of this discussion, we were speaking about those “high end” consulting groups that can truly reengineer a companies business process.

2. Type of technology.

This became irrelevant as we went on, but we were consumed by the typical ECM vendors, and ERP vendors

What became paramount regarding success, was the fact that you needed to have all of the obivious pieces,  Here I ranked them,

1. People
2. Processes
3. Technology
4. Branding

The debate or rather our discussion really focused on technology versus people.  His company is struggling to enable high end business processes for his clients.  The blame seemed to center on the technology.  This is what started the whole thing.  ”The damn software is to hard to configure”  Which given my modicum of understanding of their products seemed like an odd statement.  He went on stating that there were missed requirements, that the software couldn’t be configured, and that they continue to struggle.

As I dug deeper, it appeared, that the there were far more issues upstream in the process than just the software configuration.  I let him get the product bashing out of his system, and started to ask questions.  In terms of what was sold to them? what were the requirements?  etc.

To keep things in perspective, we are talking about a fortune 100 company he was working for, enabling a front end billing system.   His solution was new to the the company, and his team had sold to the CIO.  This should start to highlight some of the problems.

When starting anything that is significant to a companies income stream, where should you start.  I’d suggest with that business owner.  In this discussion, they had started with the CIO, and the sales team had sold a “platform” play.  Sure what CIO doesn’t want the fastest most configurable platform in their quiver of solutions.  Most are seen as cost centers, so anything that can lower the TCO of the software is music to their ears.  But this traditional sales approach for IT solutions misses the boat when enabling mission critical solutions.

Where is the miss?  I’m sure your thinking but isn’t that the point, the platform should enable mission critical applications?  Sure, but there is a catch.

The miss is in the sale, and the expertise to illicit the appropriate requirements.  Meaning??

Okay so in this case, which I have seen in the past. Of course i’ve simplified the steps here. but stay with me:

1. Software is sold based on its features and Functions
2. Software is marketed to the CIO’s
3. Software is delivered

The selling premise is look at all of the features the software has; the sales cycle is something like ” you need them all, our competitors don’t have every single feature so go with our product”  Then the product is sold, and then all hell breaks loose. The question becomes what do i do with this….  So your starting to see a shift in the sales processes.  Now it is, i’ve got these “solutions”  these “quick starts”  etc. etc.  Marketing is starting to move a way from the product features and functionality check list, and moving towards here is how I can save you money by enabling your processes better faster quicker.

This is exactly where my friend stood.  His issue was that the software couldn’t do what it promised, and that it couldn’t be configured to do what the client wants.  Now this is where it gets really sticky, because if your selling a “solution” based on a product that you can quickly configure, then you need boundaries on what should be configured.  In other words you can’t have an infinitely configurable solution, because then your back to a custom offering.

So where is the gap?? I’m glad you asked.  The gap in this case is in the people.  Given the paridigm shift, from software to solutions, there also needs to be a shift in the minds of the  people selling and the people implementation.

When you get to a solution, you need to truly be leaders on that solution.  You must have the wherewithal to lead the customer through what they should do, which isn’t generally what they want to do.  What customers tend to want to do, is what they are already doing.  And this is what separates the men from the boys.  Is that leadership to say, Here is your solution, now lets sit down and show you how to configure this for your business versus, Mr. client tell me what you want, and i’ll figure out how to make the solution do it.

The latter gets you into trouble every single time!

Tim

2010..  Personally i think it is going to be a good year.  But that is just me, thinking forward, looking ahead.   But then i look back on 2009, I see quotes from the Queen of England that it is a year best forgotten.  Sure there has been turmoil, uncertainty, and market woes, unemployment, and multiple wars.

What needs to be remembered is that everything is cyclical, everything has ups and downs, and in some weird sort of way I think our ingenuity is more effective when we have our backs against the wall.  It is times when we need to use our creativeness to live, that make us truly succesful.

Going forward there are things that will improve,  i’m sure unemployment will drop, and we will start see the creative juices that we were forced to leverage in 2009 come to fruition in 2010, putting people to work, and ensuring our economic rebound.

T

What a whirl wind the past couple of weeks have been.  I’ve found myself in a variety of client meetings, internal meetings, and my airline, hotel, and rental status’s all upgraded.  Perhaps that is a sign that i’ve been traveling far to much.  For the moment I find myself behind my desk in my study, catching up on my thoughts.

• A couple of items that i’ve taken from travels is that truly ECM is becoming commodity.
• Service Business are suffering where there is no clear articulation of value.
• Emerging Technologies have a long road to haul if they can’t marry themselves with business value.

Over the next couple of posts, I’ll be exploring this commodity phenomena of Enterprise Content Management, and the impact that is having on ECM Companies.

For this morning it is nice to be taking some moments to think.

T

The evolution of ECM is almost as interesting as where it is going.  I’ve been spending much of my time in recent weeks with very large clients and Gov’t Organizations that dwarf the fortune 10.  I find it fascinating that they don’t seem to have clear vision on the value that ECM can bring to their organization.

Perhaps it is the size, we all understand that small organizations can turn on a dime, can adopt new strategies faster, and generically understand how to leverage technology to meet their needs.  Perhaps it is out of necessity that small organizations can do this.

The only hope that large organizations have are:

1.  Leadership that is infused with visionaries.

2. Understanding what small changes can have appreciable impacts.

Sure the first is obvious, someone in any organization needs to make a decision that ECM or any software for that matter can make a difference.  Almost to the extent that it could be a game changer.  Second, well it is rare that sizable organization take on a fundamental change, implement new strategies, or entirely change direction.  More to the point it is about making subtle changes that have significant impact.  Thus implementing a cohesive strategy one little change at a time.

T

From presidential campagns to the growth of any business strategy is pivotal.  If you don’t have a strategy how can you measure your success?  How can you claim victory?    The bottom line is that you can’t.

I’ve been traveling to a variety of clients and it amazes me the ones who demand a strategy and those who just want to rush straight into deployment.

Oh yes before you say it, there is the execution of the strategy…  but lets start small.

I had a client last week tell me that they need to get started, that they have to have something to show ASAP.  That users need to be using the system. They wanted quotes and timetables for the implementation.  Sometimes you can reign these clients in,  sometimes you can’t.

In this instance they wanted to implement a global solution, going across their organization deploying ECM, WCM, and integrations to SAP, and other software.  They had no concept of business process re-engineering.  They admitted that their existing solution suffered from a lack of preparation, and couldn’t see that they were repeating themselves.

After point that out, and asking them what would define success in three years, (of which they couldn’t answer) we got them to commit to doing some proper planning, and we are now laying out a strategy.  We got them to take a look at what defines success.  In this case how can they leverage their ECM solution to differentiate themselves from their competition, defining tangible ROI, and how it will position them to open new markets!  This is why I do this.

My other case and point was a government agency that came to us and said.  We have budget (who in government doesn’t??  i suppose California may not but I’ll leave that for another discussion)

This agency CIO and I met to discuss what they need and how to go about it.  During the meeting the CIO said, treat us like Neophytes we have no idea how to do this right, she was convinced that she could do it wrong.  We talked in depth about planning, and how this would transform the agency over the next several years.  We talked about how and what they would get out of our planning sessions.

Bad or No Plans = failure..

It isn’t rocket science  you must understand why you are undertaking the effort, you need to understand  how your going to define success in the long run.  Did  you know that CIO have an average lifespan at a company of only 18 months..   Think of how hard it will be to explain why your doing a multi-million dollar implementation to a new CIO with the goal of saving your job.

Think about your success, plan for it, then execute.  Failure to think and plan will end in failure.

Ready Aim Fire  = Think Plan Execute.   So many companies are getting it wrong.

This week I had an opportunity to visit one of my favorite customers.  Not because they are easy to deal with, not because they are nice guys,  but because they are fair, willing to work through issues, and it is still a place where a handshake means something.

On this occasion I had the opportunity to sit in with a bunch of executives as my colleagues articulated a  solution that was near and dear to my heart. It has been almost 5 years since I had deployed this solution, and for me it was sort of an awakening.  As the presentation progressed, a flood of memories came rushing back, almost as if I was transported back in time to some of my own integration meetings. 

It was also odd that the technology, while improving, hadn’t substantially changed all that much.  Fundamental concepts remained true, and the proverbial how wasn’t as important as to WHY they needed this.

The client team, conceptually got the message. Archiving off the transactional content, would save their ERP system from running out of space, help with performance etc.

It wasn’t untill I noncholatly articulated why we did it at my previous company and the value it brought. That the truly got it.  WHY does this add value?  WHY should you invest the time, energy and money. 

The challenges with companies like mine, is that everyone is so enthralled with how things work, with how the technology can make things easier and better, that they have a hard time translating that to business benefits.    To be fair, you need both, people like me that can articulate the business benefits, how the technology will improve bottom line performance, and those fantastic technologist that can make it work. 

Yes indeed it was a good week!

Tim

In the midst of the a client crisis the best thing to do is keep your cool.  One of my many roles has been the escalation point for my clients.  Perhaps it is the fact that i just don’t get emotional and can deal with the facts.  Perhaps it is my experience having been a client for so many years that the empathy comes naturally.  What ever the reason, let me give some tips on how to deal with an escalation.

1. Focus on the solution: The moment you get the frustrated, irate, or irrational client on the other end of the phone, your primary mission is to get it resolved.  Don’t get into the blame game at that moment.  I can’t tell you how many times I have seen people go directly into blaming a 3rd party, the client, the consultant or whom ever, just to wash their hands of the problem. Fact is this figure out what the problem is, deal with the solution, and worry about laying the responsibility of it on someone, once you have the facts, and the crisis is over.  99.9% of the time there are mulitple responsible parties for the issue.

2.Facts, you must deal with facts: when a client is spewing venom at you for screwing up, missing a dead line, deleting a vital file, or taking his daughter to a rave.  you need to be clear on the facts. I personally like to develop a time line, it makes articulating the facts into an emotionaless event. It also helps to isolate the issues in questions, and the decisions that lead up to critical issue at hand.

3. Documentation: This is key, especially when there is generally a monetary settlement.  Detailed meeting minutes, and status reports, are critical for articulating the facts, it keeps the he said she said out of it.

The best advise I can give, is stay calm, don’t engage in harsh words, or even raise your voice.  If someone is screaming, frustrate and lashing out, be the punching bag, tell them your the guy to solve it, and that your going to bring ever resource to bear to the problem.

Once you’ve hung up the phone, don’t be a hero, get help.  Escalate to your management they are going to want to hear about the problem from you before they hear about it from the client.

Bring multiple heads together to get the solution.  Many people working on a problem can generally fix it faster than one person.

Keep your eye on the prize: I can’t tell you how many times that I see people trying to fix the wrong issue, or multiple issues.  Focus on the task at hand.  I had a team that was trying to fix an XML publish issue, and they decided to also fix some formatting issues.  NO! Fix the critical issue, you can always go back later to find other issues.

Prioritize: When a client comes to you with a list of issues, you need to prioritize them, determine the most critical issues, (with the client) and tackle  them first.

Communicate:  Establish a regular communication plan.  If it is impacting a production environment, you may have to give updates 2 to 3 or even 4 times a day.  In these instance you can’t communicate enough, not communicating is the fastest way to exacerbate a client.

Plan: Develop a plan of attack with your team,  It helps with the communication to the client, it shows structure and competence when you have a plan.  Even if you succeed, you can point to the action taken, and then if necessary you can move forward with a new plan.

Tim

In this best practice segment I’d like to discuss the importance of a robust change management plan.  As I’ve mentioned in previous posts that the implementation of an ECM platform needs to be treated as program.   I may also have to correct myself in that earlier  post I felt that project management is the first thing to be cut in the implementation of an Enterprise Content Management solution.  In thinking about it even more, that was true, because generally no one takes Change Management into consideration, thus if it isn’t budgeted for it can’t be cut.

Concept: If your investing in a software platform, you need to ask yourself why?  In general terms its because you want to find some efficiency someplace in your organization.  If your going to improve the efficiency of a process, that means you will need to change that process.  If you change that process that means your going to change how people work.

It is a fact that humans are creatures of habit. Even if a process they use today, is inefficient, cumbersome, and plan out stupid.  They will fight you if you try and force them to change.

Reasons people resist change:

• Ownership
• Pride
• Scared
• Security

Bottom line is that if a person or a group of people know a certain process there is a sense of security in knowing that, 99% of the time when they get told a new system is being implemented, they fear for their jobs.  This is especially true now given our current economic situation.

Also don’t forget that someone created the existing process, if you barge in with a new one, they again are more than likely have a negative emotional reaction.  They will think your attacking them, putting them down, and again threatening them.  The reality is, that the process your effecting was put in place with antiquated tools, and its inefficiencies are due to other environmental factors.  Meaning that the did the best they could with what they had to work with.

Case and Point:

When I was deploying documentum for a large fortune 500 company, I was in charge of their entire ECM program.  In the early days of the program I was so focused on the deployment and the development that I too made the critical mistake of ignoring change management.  Sure we collected requirements, fields for the forms, people for the workflows, and defined a robust security model.  When we got done everyone was proud of themselves, right up until we took it to the business, where they flat out rejected it.

Sure at the time the technology wasn’t elegant, so usability was a concern, but the reaction I got from the users was volatile.

Mistake 1.  Didn’t involve them in prototyping: Had we involved them in the design and development stage they would have understood how the new process would have worked, and could have provided us feedback along the way, as to why some of the design elements wouldn’t work.  It would have cultivated the relationship, they would have felt ownership, and would have gone along way to lead them through the change.

Mistake 2. Failed to convey the value of leveraging the solution: This was something that I thought they would just get. “Is the why we are doing this?”  I thought the value to the organization would be obvious, but it wasn’t. Once we started to explain the value, not only for their group, but for the other groups leveraging the content downstream (i.e. via our integration to SAP), only then did they get a sense for the importance of this implementation.

Mistake 3. Didn’t assuage FTE Reduction fears: This was something we worked with their management, to show just how these improvements would allow them to work on far more value add tasks within their department.

The key to turning this around was a rapid adaptation to the situation,  We worked with them and immediately got them involved in the rework, which  turned out to be a minor revision of the system, I worked with the management team to communicate that their jobs were safe, and that they could now focus on other important items within their department, and while doing both of those we started to reinforce the overall importance of the solution.

This example represent just one business process.  You can get an idea of just how important it is to have a change management plan in place if your effecting several groups simultaneously.

The deployment of ECM is truly where the Business and IT intersect.  Be sure to have a plan to include them during the design,  articulate the value, and most of all communicate!

Tim

Unfortunately the twitter account enterprisecm, is not working properly. It wasn’t working with hash tags ‘#’ and no one could find it.  So I’ve switched to my original account known as “timfives”  please feel free to follow me using that account.

Tim

There is a myth among IT leadership that goes something like this.  We’ve spent millions on software, and we have an enterprise solution.  Only to find out that what they’ve done is to build silo’s around their information, and yes their million+ dollar investment has only replaced organizations shared drives.

I see this a lot, with companies  I work with have an established ECM platform, and are not getting any appreciable value out of it.  The question is simply why.

Many of the issues that they suffer from are:

• Finding their information
• Duplicate Copies
• Managing Records
• Low end user adoption

All of these concepts go back to the fundamentals.  How do you expect to gain value from your ECM deployment?  Many companies go forward without a strategy, heck they can’t even articulate what success is.  When you haven’t defined your success criteria, what happens is your ECM “program” becomes a cost center, and is extremely hard to justify its value.

This industry is full of technologist selling and marketing fantastic software.  They can hype the software to such heights, only to leave the company who just paid through the nose, to figure out how it dovetails into their business strategy.

I’ve stated before that the implementation of ECM is a program, it is not a project.  There needs to be a clearly articulated vision, there needs to be plans and road-maps that show the progression of the program, and can be used to measure the success of program along the journey.

Tim