Diagonal Consulting

The Social Network

2011-01-27T08:23:00.003Z

New year, same me and today I am feeling both my age and a tad inspired. One of the pleasures of my role is that I get to hire really bright interns. I am constantly amazed by their enthusiam and skills. However this week was a wakeup call for me. Finishing up on an interview, I asked the candidate what they would find most daunting about the coming weeks. I imagined many different potential answers but didn't dream of the one I received

"Writing and sending emails"

Wow, I thought, perhaps this poor intern had been reading this blog that, in the past, has given email some pretty thorough abuse...but no. She told me that she never wrote emails and that all of her interaction was via Facebook or other social networking sites. Imagine that......the latest generation coming into the workplace are eschewing email that has been the core business tool for most of us in favour of social networking.

I guess we could simply shrug our shoulders and groan about "kids of today" or come to terms with what this means for my generation (the digital immigrants) and how we run our organisations; So two thoughts for now -

Just think about the deluge of email marketing that we pay to get designed and then send out. How many of our targets is this simply just going to bypass. What about the physical marketing we send out? Who is going to look at this when they can interrogate their network as to the pros and cons of any business proposition

Just think about how we are fostering collaboration between employees and even customers within our eco systems vs how this new generation will be using Facebook etc to collaborate. There is a whole new model there to consider

I'm not yet suggesting that our organisations all disappear into Facebook land for all forms of communication and collaboration. The thought of business mixed up with post pub status updates might be a little too eyewatering, even for me.

However, yet another shift in the way we do business is upon us and many of us will have to figure out pretty quickly how to embrace it. And I do mean embrace because coping wont be an effective strategy

Bah Humbug!

2010-12-22T16:56:00.000Z

Today, as yesterday my inbox is rapidly filling up with emails from every company that I seem to have dealt with in the last 5 years. Companies from whom I might have purchased one CD, through to recruitment companies....the list goes on........and on..........and on..........and on....

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from all your friends at annoying co. etc etc

I'm not sure how I am supposed to feel when I receive these electronic glad tidings. I am guessing that the senders were hoping that I would feel very warm and Christmassy (is that a word?) and that these warm feelings would somehow translate into favourable feelings towards the sender.

I am going to let you into a little secret........ I am not feeling particularly warm with the fact that you managed to access your CRM system, do some kind of mail merge and bombard me with spam. Sorry - thats the way it is.

This blog is pretty much technology focused but this is one area where technology is best avoided.

If you really want to wish me happy Christmas - pick up the phone and make like you mean it. You never know, we might even get on :-)

Merry Christmas

The Grinch

Oracle's biggest win of the year

2010-12-09T09:29:00.001Z

Last week Oracle achieved its biggest win of the year when it won $1.3bn in damages from arch rival SAP. Readers of this blog will recall that we have commented a number of times on the whys and wherefores of 3rd party maintenance of software products.

The award is far in excess of SAP's $160M provision for the case and is, in fact, more than half of the companies earnings for the year. There must be a huge sense of satisfaction at Ellison towers at the moment.

More interestingly the ruling shows that there is a recognition of the scale and damage that theft of intellectual property causes. With this in mind a quation arises as to how other companies providing 3rd party maintenance for Oracle, JDE, Peoplesoft and SAP can protect themselves from a similar type of lawsuit. All the main software vendors play fast and loose with access to their on line support portals. There must be a huge risk whereby 3rd party maintenance vendors who are likely to be employing staff who previously had legitimate access to vendor support portals who now inadvertantly compromise IP rights.

I suspect we shall see the big vendors starting to clamp down on access to their support portals in the very near future in addition to starting to hassle the 3rd party maintenence vendors with some speculative legal challenges. Remember that SAP now makes more money through maintenance than new product sales so this is one big issue that is set to run throughout 2011

Its snow joke

2010-12-08T09:20:00.001Z

Predictably the recent arctic weather in the UK has been followed by the usual rants about how unprepared the country is and how badly the economy has been effected.

As a regular commuter into London for rather longer than I would care to admit, I could see that the numbers of commuters funnelling into town on the 'snow' days was dramatically reduced. When compared with cold snaps 10, 15 and 20 years ago, it occurs to me that far fewer people are actually attempting to get into work and relying on technology to enable home working. This wasn't really an option even 10 years ago but the proliferation of Broadband, laptops and remote access means that the vast majority of my acquaintances are more than able to work from home for short periods.

Thus I would conclude that years ago we all tried harder to get into the office but these days we are more able to work from home. So beware those lazy press reports about how hard the economy is being impacted by the cold snap and the enabling power of technology is helping many of us just get on with doing the business.

A return to boom & bust - The ROK & Connaught story

2010-11-16T08:42:00.002Z

As we predicted further details have emerged around the collapse of ROK. Most alarmingly, however, are the similarities between the demise of ROK and Connaught. Both companies adopted a high growth strategy during the early part of the decade acquiring a number of competitors. Both companies moved rapidly into a more maintenance focussed operating model and both companies, as a result of the acquisition entered the downturn highly geared and with little cash to cushion the blow of any recessionary pressures.

With acquisition comes the headache of maintaining tight fiscal and operational control to the growing company as new and diverse businesses are added to the mother ship. We saw at ROK that accounting irregularities in its plumbing division were not immediately visible to the centre until it was too late.

Along with the challenge of control is the challenge of a changing operating model from one that was initially very construction focussed to one that was increasingly maintenance focussed. A change of this magnitude would suggest that any company would need to invest in ensuring that its processes, controls and governance that may have been sufficient in the past met the challenges of a new business environment.

It would appear that both ROK and Connaught failed to step up to these dual challenges leaving a trail of creditors and angry shareholders.

It will be interesting to see how the sector shakes out in the next year. We have well capitialised companies such as Mears and Morgan Sindell who seem well placed to pick up on many of ROK's and Connaught's contracts.

However, we can expect investors to take a hard look at other companies who, in addition to being highly leveraged, fail the two challenges described above.

Between a ROK and a hard place

2010-11-09T08:54:00.001Z

Regular readers of this blog will know that we take quite an interest in the construction, engineering and maintenance sectors. Having seen the lamentable decline of Connaught in the summer, yesterday's shock move into administration by ROK will be seen as a bodyblow to the industry.

Similarly to Connaught, the initial speculation is that government spending cuts are the reason for this shock decline but I suspect problems run much deeper. During the summer we saw the company announce problems with its accounting practices in the plumbing division that were never fully explained.

Recently Diagonal and Building Magazine ran a survey that suggested that planning, forecasting and budgeting were the least effective processes within the sector. Does ROK's demise point to this? After all, less than 5 weeks ago Garvis Snook (the CEO) purchased almost £100,000 of equity in the company - does that sound like a CEO that had full visibility of the organisations leading indicators?

Time will tell but, just the same as Connaught, several competitors (Mears, Lovells etc) are circling for the jucier contracts. Clearly someone can make money in this area.

Watch this space

Clash of the titans (The end of maintenance as we know it)

2010-11-08T08:50:00.001Z

Last week SAP and Oracle finaly faced each other in court over Oracle's allegations that SAP's now defunct TomorrowNow division illegally obtained software from Oracle's maintenance portal. SAP does not deny the claim and so the case should mainly rest on how large an award will be made to Oracle. Simple eh? Well not really.

The underlying issue is what are the rules for third party software maintenance? The TomorrowNow venture was designed to provide maintenance services to Peoplsoft, JDE and Siebel customers in much the same way as Rimini Street (also being sued by Oracle) has done in recent years. Companies like Rimini Street are offering to provide support for SAP and Oracle customers for way less than the 22% maintenance typically levied. The customer doesn't get the official patches and fixes but the 3rd party maintenance provider guarantees to keep the system both running and compliant by releasing their own fixes and patches.

Maintenance now generates more than double the revenue achieved by new software sales per annum so any degredation in this revenue stream would really hurt both SAP and Oracle.

Clearly at 22% of the original license fees, customers are effectively re-purchasing their software every four years and, despite the efforts of, amongst others, SAP's SUGEN programme, many of them feel aggrieved at the cost of maintenance and what they really get in return. If the value of maintenance is percieved as low versus the cost then 3rd party maintenance providers will become an increasingly attractive option.

If the 3rd party providers can stay on the legal side of sofware copyright laws it looks like the industry could be heading for a big shake out.

If you are in any doubt, cast your mind back to when only the official dealer network of your car could provide an official stamp and reset that annoying service indicator. Now everyone is at it and at a significantly lower cost.

Its not really clear how the big software vendors are going to play this one!

Can we fix it? Yes we can!

2010-11-03T14:21:00.002Z

One of the interesting outcomes of the comprehensive spending review (CSR) is how a reduction in some areas of expenditure almost guarantee in increase in other areas.

One such area could be schools. Depending on how you read the data, the shut down of the Building Schools for the Future programme along with the associated expenditure cuts is thought to have taken approximately 700 new schools out of the pipeline. The majority of these schools would have been to replace existing establishments.

Education departments and local councils have throttled back on anything but essential maintenance in the expectation of moving into a shiny new building in the near future. Now that this will not be the case and buildings have to be 'sweated' for at least another 5 to 10 years there will be opportunities for those companies that can adapt to this changed landscape. The question is who will be agile enough to benefit here? Specialist maintenance firms already in the sector or a new entrant, perhaps from the contracting sector?

Maintenance should continue to be a bouyant sector for the reasons above and, provided organisations don't opt for Connaught style growth, a good place to shelter from the continuing recessionary storms.

A standard PPQ! Whatever next?

2010-10-26T08:32:00.002+01:00

Last week Mark Prisk, the new business minister unveiled a standard PQQ format (PAS 91:2010) that the government eventually wants all central departments to use in their procurement process.

Having filled in literally hundreds of these documents over the years, this seems a really progressive, albeit way too late, step in the right direction. For example, it is currently estimated that the construction industry alone spends in excess of £250M annually in completing the many weird and wonderful PQQs that are currently doing the rounds. If we extrapolate the figure for the construction industry across the rest of the economy, the savings from just this, seemingly, small outbreak of common sense could run into billions.

In a post CSR world any savings that can be ploughed back into industry can only be a good thing. One small step and all that!!!

Amazon's Kindle -Darwinism for publishers!!!

2010-10-13T12:27:00.001+01:00

Back in the early part of the decade I had the privilege of working with one of the global music majors as the tsunami that was the digital music revolution swept all existing business models away. Organisations that had major business processes built around manufacturing and distribution found this investment redundant and a need for big bucks to be invested in a new digital supply chain.

In addition to the huge changes to business process and the IT that underpinned it, the powerbase in the industry heaved a seismic shift towards artist power and away from the music companies. Almost at once, artists were able to connect directly to their audience, cutting out the music companies. We saw recently Prince give away his latest CD but play 20 odd nights at London’s O2 arena.

The music companies have yet to return to anything like the profitability pre this digital revolution.

The question in my mind is what lessons can the publishing industry learn from the music business? The industry is basically structured around authors, agents, publishers and retailers. It seems to me that the digital challenge lies fairly and squarely with the agents and publishers and the opportunities lie with some of the retailers and some of the authors.

As the music industry learned, digital content allowed artists to bypass them and connect directly to the consumer leading to a major collapse in profitability. The other challenge the music business faced was the ease of piracy of digital content over and above physical media. Will these challenges mirrored in the publishing space and. If so how will agents and publishers respond? Will authors sign up directly to companies like Amazon for their digital rights leaving the traditional publishers with the less profitable physical media area for example?. Of course, in effect that might mean Amazon or perhaps Apple become de facto publishers or perhaps a publisher becomes a retailer

The availability of e-readers like the Amazon’s Kindle and Apple’s IPad has started to enable a shift in consumption of digital content. In the last year e-books made up 10% of the total book market in the US. It seems that the publishing industry is on the cusp of a paradigm shift and it will be interesting to see who moves to adapt fastest in terms of a new business model. Its going to be Darwin time again!!!

Yikes!!

2010-10-07T08:30:00.001+01:00

I was on the tube this morning and someone had left a copy of the FT behind and I happened to notice an article that made me laugh.

Now laughing is not something normally associated with the FT and, to be fair, it was not really a 'ha ha' laugh but one bordering on manic. The article was about the government's plans around ‘re-profiling’ the spending cuts and, to quote the FT, apparently an aide of George Osbourne said yesterday that ‘the spreadsheets underpinning the spending review did not factor in any re-profiling’.

Now we all know that spreadsheets have their place and how, used correctly, and for the right tasks what a useful tool they are. However we also know how dangerous big complex spreadsheets can be. How they can get unmanageable and all the other risks that go along with them particularly when you want to change them and start re-modelling figures. The main thought that struck me was ‘oh no’ is that how they are managing a multi trillion economy with a major defecit that is going to seriously affect all of us for the next 5 years and why are they not using some proper budgeting and forecasting software. Even SME’s can remove the spreadsheet dangers by running corporate performance management software that provides all the security and controls to remove the dangers of changing figures. These solutions allow you to run ‘what if’ or re-profiling of figures time and again without complex spreadsheet amendments.

Then another thought struck me, maybe he should just do it on the back of a fag packet, you never know the figures may look better!

Dear Mr Osborne - are you dumbing us down?

2010-10-05T09:08:00.003+01:00

We often hear of the need to get our kids reading more and watching less TV and playing computer games. A digital immigrant like myself has been, up to now, content with reading from paper media. Thats always been the way for my generation. However last week I took the plunge and purchased an Amazon Kindle and started to explore the world of online content. No doubt that the Kindle is wonderful device but I will save that for a later post.

What astounded me was that VAT (soon to be levied at 20%) is payable on e-books, e-magazines and e-newspapers. The physical versions are all VAT free.

The general prediction is that more and more of the population will be using e-reading devices in the future. This would especially apply to the digital natives (under 30 years old) that is precisely the group I hear that we want to spend more time reading. The current VAT rules are likely to be a financial dis-incentivise to reading and / or push more people into using illegal ways of obtaining media.

This doesn't seem a good outcome for individuals and the country as a whole so this week I would encourage Mr Osborne to have a re-think so that we can use the power of technology to encourage reading for all.

My new archive

2010-10-01T08:30:00.000+01:00

We had an interesting comment on the blog earlier in the week that talked about email as an audit trail. That got me thinking (which is a dangerous thing on a Friday morning). The point however is a good one. When I first used email back in 1995 we simply used it for communication. I can't even remember if it 'did attachments'. Nowadays my inbox has online shopping confirmations, credit card bills, bank statements, news from various organisations that I subscibe to. In fact a huge proportion of my inbox has very little to do with a two way conversation.

Maybe email is now becoming the archive to our lives, both within and outside the workplace. This plays back to the earlier comment on the blog about using email as the audit trail. Perhaps in our obsessively CYA world, this is what email has ended up as....the ultimate CYA and archiving tool.

Meanwhile real and productive conversation gets washed away in this tsunami. Maybe some bright person will work out how to separate the achive from the conversation...............err.....em,,,,,,,,,, wait - didn't someone do that already..........some fellow called Alexander Graham Bell I believe.

You've been cc'd

2010-09-30T11:53:00.001+01:00

Great - another email arrives with a cast of thousands in the 'cc' box. What is all the 'cc' about then. Well the term 'cc' dates back to the distant past when memos were typed and a copy made using carbon paper. Thus 'cc' stands for Carbon Copy. In those days we only sent memos on a special occasion unlike the volume of email today. Just a quick scan of my inbox tells me that I have more than 200 emails where I am only 'cc'd'

My thought for today is why are so many people cc'd on emails. I suppose the sensible answer is that it keeps people in the loop and all that good stuff but lets really think this through.

Do you find that on receipt of an email your first reaction is to see who is copied on it?. If this is the case, may I suggest that your organisation has started suffering from 'Dog & Ponyitis'. Dog & Ponyitis is where the content of an email is secondary to the audience. Dog & Ponyitis is a pernicious disease that, if left untreated, can paralyse an organisation with politics and posturing leaving customers secondary to internal issues.

So the next time you hit 'reply to all' or copy in a cast of thousand, why not ask yourself why.

It's good to talk

2010-09-29T14:07:00.000+01:00

[Guest Contributor]

Not a day seems to go by at the moment when I don’t feel old before my time. I seem to utter the phrase “why can’t they just pick up the phone” at least once, and it got me thinking…

As with a lot of things now, I feel like we are headed towards a reversion back to ‘simpler’ times, almost going full-circle with technology. In the relatively small timeframe from when emails started being used for business back in the 90’s (so I’m told!) to now, we seem to have completely forgotten how to simply pick up the phone and talk to someone - caught up in using the technology available rather than common sense!

I’m not pining for “the good ol’ days” when there was no such thing as email, webinars, BBM etc etc – in fact my working career only began 2 short years ago in the midst of the iPhone and Blackberry boom (now you can email on the move - ironically ON YOUR PHONE!)… but it still perplexes me why people prefer to ping various emails back and forth to get to the point, when a 2 minute phone call would suffice.

My opinion is that we are definitely headed for email overkill in the workplace - I wonder how long it takes before people finally get fed up of trawling through their inbox, and begin to re-opt for the phone?

After all, sometimes it’s just good to talk.

I'm going bankrupt

2010-09-27T17:42:00.003+01:00

I've had enough. I seem to have several thousand emails glaring at me in MS Outlook. This despite the fact that I religously archive every 3 weeks and do my best to answer as they flood in. And still they keep coming.......

I have decided that the only way out is to file for email bankruptcy. I am simply going to delete everything in all of my inboxes and start again. Just like financial bankruptcy, I get to wipe out all of my problems in one fell swoop. I simply tell everyone I am email bankrupt and they will know not to expect a reply.

I think this is an excellent idea. However, the only flaw is that unlike financial bankruptcy I wont be prevented from owning another email client for 24 months so I guess it will all start again tomorrow.

Enjoy the week

Steve's yellow scooter

2010-09-24T09:46:00.001+01:00

A couple of weeks ago I paid a vist to a friend of mine who had just moved to the middle of nowhere from London (OK...Kent actually). Finding himself 6 miles from the train station and mainline into London, he decided to buy a motor scooter for the short commute. When I arrived, he was unpacking the bright yellow beast from a wooden crate outside his garage.

Steve had decided to buy the scooter on the internet and had found this particular one in China. The scooter had been delivered to his door with the only remaining tasks being to fill it up with petrol and get it registered. I was impressed....it even started first time. What impressed and then got me thinking was the price. This brand new scooter had been manufactured and shipped from China directly to Steve's garage for the princely sum of £490.... yep thats correct £490. I tried working out how there was any margin for the manufacturer and really couldn't. Clearly there is a margin or they wouldn't sell them.

So why am I so interested. Well we have all seen the first wave of IT outsourcing, whereby 'commodity work' has been shuffled off to India, China and, more recently, Brazil. This has worked reasonably well. Additionally SAP, Microsoft and the like are now developing much of their software in the BRIC countries.

Surely the next step will be more and more packaged solutions being developed overseas and then sold to UK, US customers virtually cutting out the need for onshore IT implementation services as we know them. The horsepower available in the BRICs countries to build multiple industry solutions rather than locally configuring a generic SAP, Oracle or AX product to fit is likely to further revolutionise IT consulting. If it can be done with a scooter, why not software.

The challenge in the first world is going to be re-inventing how IT companies, especially in the large ERP space, rise to this next imminent challenge. What does the consulting firm of 2020 look like and who will be working within it?

I guess in the backs of our mind we all know about this challenge but it takes a 'Steve's scooter' moment to bring it all home.

Mind you - its a rubbish colour!!

Enjoy the weekend

Rubbish in Rubbish out or how to get a free trip to Los Angeles

2010-09-22T08:48:00.000+01:00

Last Friday I was travelling from Kuala Lumpur to Hong Kong. I checked in at Kuala Lumpur and made my way through the various security checks and immigration and into the Cathay Pacific lounge. As there was wi-fi available, I decided to check that my frequent flyer details were added to my Cathay booking. I flipped open the laptop, grabbed a coffee and logged on.

On entering the Cathay site I was puzzled to discover that it was asking me whether I wanted to check in. "Thats odd", I thought. So I took another sip of coffee and looked at my boarding card...........

I noticed that the boarding card was issued to someone with the same forename as me but with a compeletely different surname. I had a short dialema about what I should do and then decided it was best to contact the lounge staff to explain what appeared to be wrong. At the desk there was much scratching of heads and puzzled looks before they asked me if I had checked any luggage onboard. I had and I handed them the baggage tag. They looked even more worried and told me that my bags had been checked through to Los Angeles!!!!

You know that feeling when you think that you have lost your phone or wallet.......yep thats the feeling I had.

So lets recap - I have been given the wrong boarding pass, I have been through two security checks and immigration where the pass is 'checked' against the passport details.......and my bags on on the way to LA.

TO cut a long story short we end up with me standing with a Cathay stewardess at the top of the gate, speaking with a guy down on the tarmac on a walkie talkie as he unloaded all the bags until I could point out my one. He then re-tagged it and all was well.

However, it got me thinking. Airports have invested billions in sophisticated security, ticketing and baggage systems and yet I was able to get air-side with a boarding pass that didn't match my passport and bags that were going to a destination that I wasnt!!. It all went wrong with an innocent slip up at the start of the process and then people further into the process (security, immigration etc) clearly assuming that the system was foolproof.

Clearly we are not yet at the stage where systems are foolproof and we would all do well to design this into our business processes.

And the good news.........well my bag was upgraded to business class.........the bad news .....I wasn't

Conn - ought - The losers

2010-09-21T09:15:00.000+01:00

Recent press speculation suggests that Connaught's subcontractors are owed somewhere in the region of £40m in unpaid invoices. At the time of writing, it's thought that they are unlikely to see much more than 1% of this as an outcome of the administration process. Clearly this will have serious ramifications for the industry as a number of these contractors may not be able to cope with this loss.

At the time of writing 1,400 people employed by Connaught Partnerships have already lost their jobs and we can expect to see further job losses in the subcontractor community as a result of cash flow problems.

The fallout from Connaught is likely to create more nervousness in the market with subcontractors less willing to undertake work without some kind of guarantee which will, in turn, makes the industry less flexible and responsive. Thats the last thing we all need just now.

The big question is how Lovells (Morgan Sindell), Mears and Morrisons (who have bought up many of Connaught's projects) are going to manage them given that many beleive that it was the un-profitability of these engagements that was a major contributor to Connaught's demise.

This blog will watch with interest

CONN - OUGHT

2010-09-16T03:17:00.000+01:00

OK – it’s a play on words but quite relevant as we decide were we conned, and what ought Connaught have done to prevent its complete collapse two weeks ago. Readers of this blog will know that we take a keen interest in the engineering, construction and facilities sector and Connaught’s demise has some stark warnings for us all.

So how is it that a company with a share price of £4 with an order book of £2.6bn and £500m of assets end up virtually worthless? Well, it starts with how they became the size of company that they were. They did it by acquisition and with acquisitions come ‘goodwill’. Now companies rarely sell their businesses for what is known as ‘book value’ - that is, the actual value of its assets. They always want more. Thus company valuations often include goodwill. Here’s an example - If Connaught was buying a maintenance contractor that has £10m in assets (buildings, vans, tools etc), they may have to pay £20m, because the vendor values its loyal staff, its good reputation in the market at £10m. You can’t really put a precise value on these things, but they are seen to be what makes a business function. That £10m difference is what is known as goodwill and it is categorised as such on the company balance sheet. However it is not a tangible asset and a bank is unlikely to lend money secured against goodwill. Not a good place if things go wrong.

The next problem is that Connaught had borrowed money to finance its acquisition spree. That’s OK, many companies do that. In fact their debt was around £310m and against £500m of assets which is not too concerning .................................................except that £220m of the £500m on the balance sheet is goodwill meaning that Connaught’s debts were higher than its tangible assets. Now it’s starting to look iffy especially when you see what comes next!

The killer blows…..

The government start announcing delays and cuts to Connaught’s contracts.

Some contracts were also allegedly ‘suicide’ contracts whereby the company had bid so low that any small change in the cost base (such as inflation running at 5%) wipes out any margin.

These problems start to affect cash flow that is further impacted when savvy subcontractors and suppliers get nervous about the Connaught’s situation and start demanding payment up front for goods and services. Now there really is a cash flow crisis.

Oh yes, and guess what, remember all that goodwill? Well there are not enough assets in the business to refinance the company and so its ‘administration time’.

So in the cold light of day, two weeks after the collapse lets further debunk the myths around Connaught.

The biggest one seems to be that government cuts were a big factor, However, Richard Heis, a partner at KPMG, said upon his appointment as administrator that the Connaught’s problems were company-specific. Mr Heis said that at the time of Connaught’s original profit warning in June, public spending cuts “hadn’t kicked in yet so they didn’t have an affect on cash flow”. So in short it was loss making (suicide) contracts coupled with a balance sheet with a huge debt to tangible asset ratio and the news that Deloitte had been called in to review accounting practices thus panicking suppliers that killed Connaught.

So whilst shareholders walk away with nothing, Morgan Sindell (a company with £130m cash) purchased a large slice of Connaught’s business for £28m. Morgan Sindell believe that for this investment they can generate, at least, another £200m of revenue

So was it a con and what ought they to have done…….you decide

The Web reaches maturity – how was it for the consultants

2010-09-15T11:22:00.000+01:00

Yesterday we had a look at how the Web, at the ripe old age of 18, was changing (or not) the way in which organisations find and buy consulting. Today we’ll have a look at how the Web has affected consultants themselves.

One could come to a couple of conclusions. One is that customers have become much more savvy and thus making consultants lives much more difficult, whereas the other is that the tsunami of information on the Wed would make consultants lives easier. However I would argue that neither is particularly true.

From the customer perspective, whilst the Web is full of information, models and paradigms, the experience of applying such techniques is what seems to be the real value. Thus, in some ways, the Web helps organisations understand what they might want from a consultant but not how it can be delivered. In this respect the Web doesn’t seem to have modified to provide real value that clients get from consulting or how it is delivered.

When it comes to how the Web has affected the way consultants work, it’s worth separating out technology from the Web itself. For sure, MS PowerPoint has changed the way consultants work forever and, in my opinion, definitely not for the better! The familiar ‘deck’ of stock platitudes, client logos and three letter acronyms is depressingly ubiquitous in consulting engagements. I’m not even sure how and when they started being called a ‘deck’ which, when I grew up was the name for the top floor of a ship!!

But returning to the Web. The Web gives consultants access to the same information, models and paradigms that customers see. There is no shortage of information waiting to be re-packaged into MS PowerPoint and regurgitated as if it was sent down from on high. The brighter consultants realise that what customers want to see is experience, a safe pair of hands and the ability to work across a range of stakeholders. I have never managed to find these three things on the Web. You either have it or you don’t! All things considered, it would appear that the web has not empowered consultants in this respect either.

Undoubtedly, the web is a tool to be used, however relying solely on this gateway to regurgitate information does little but provide a generic (even bland) impression, that says little about character, ethos or experience.

So my conclusion is that whilst the Web has informed both clients and consultants, eighteen years in, the essence of great consulting still seems largely untouched by the Web.

Happy 18th birthday to the Web

2010-09-14T02:38:00.000+01:00

Depending on who you listen to, the Web is 18 years old this year which is a big birthday in anyone’s terms. This week we are going to take a look at how the Web has affected consultancy both in terms of its sourcing and consumption. Today we’ll look at whether the Web has changed the way that organisations find and then buy consultancy services

So it’s pretty clear that since 1992 the Web has revolutionised many elements of our daily life such as shopping, travel, media consumption. Social networking is the current micro phenomena powered the Web but what’s changed in the world of consultancy? Even time wasting is now done on the Web!! Those of you that read this blog will know that we tend to focus on IT consultancy so my next few thoughts are biased towards this angle.

Undoubtedly, technology has revolutionised that way that IT applications and services are provided and consumed and we are bombarded with terms like cloud, app and SaaS. Technology has fuelled the movement of work to the BRICs countries at a phenomenal rate but that’s not really consulting is it?

Has the Web really changed the way that consultancy is found and purchased?. I would argue, in the main, that it hasn’t. For sure, every consultancy has a very impressive website that paints exactly the same picture as each of their competitors. Just swap the logos and the collection of consultant-speak like ‘leverage’,’ delivery’ and ‘track records’ just blur into a sea of indifference. It’s therefore unlikely that the Web is where organisations go to choose their future consulting partners.

It seems to be that large scale procurement remains the province of the RFP that doesn’t seem to have changed much in 20 years. The sole contribution of the Web seems to be the ability to download these documents from a potential client’s website. Smaller scale procurement seems to be, as ever, based on previous experience and / or recommendations that bypass the Web completely. The large scale RFP doesn’t seem to add much value to either the client or the consultancy but procurement hasn’t come up with a better format that has been widely adopted…yet

So why do I think that the Web isn’t yet doing much to help organisations find and source consultancy?. Well having been in the consultancy business for the last 20 years, the best consultants I ever worked with were the ones that just did the simple stuff really well. You know the ones, doing what they said they were going to do when they said they were going to do it, being the energy and impetus behind whatever the project was trying to achieve and being fantastic stakeholder managers. Simple stuff but not easy to do and also that wouldn’t make a very funky website or strap-line but it is, in fact, what customers want and value. So a bit like the recommendation you had from your cousin about the fantastic firm that built her loft conversion, consulting seems to still be sourced very much on personal experience and recommendation.

Maybe there is a market for a ‘Trip Advisor type’ site that might bring the power of the Web centre stage into consultancy sourcing but I suspect it might be too gruesome a read for some.

Time to evaluate SAP Enterprise Support

2010-09-10T08:29:00.000+01:00

Its that time of year when organisations can make their annual evaluation as to whether to take SAP Enterprise Support or downgrade to SAP's Standard Support offer. We have said in this blog before that, provided that organisations take advantage of the enhanced range of services, Enterprise support is good value.

The 'no brainer' decision has to be for those organisations that are still running version 4.6c. Following this weeks announcement that extended support for 4.6c was itself being extended until March 2013 the gotcha is in the small print. Organisations on Standard Support will have to pay an additional 6% on their maintenance fee taking the overall maintenance charge to around 23% whereas there doesnt appear to be a penalty for those customers on Enterprise Support (22%). The clear decision is that if you are on 4.6c and not planning to upgrade in the very near future, Enterprise Support is the best bet.

We still beleive that the majority organisations are not getting all they can from Enterprise support and that is something that should be a focus for those responsible for SAP solutions in the forthcoming 12 months. For some its like joining a gym but never actually making the effort to go along.

Another maintenance extension from SAP

2010-09-09T10:13:00.000+01:00

SAP this week started to announce that it is extending the maintenance of its 4.6c product beyond the previously announced deadline of December 2010 into March 2013

As with all of the major software vendors, SAP seems to be struggling to get organisations on older versions of their solution to upgrade. There are a complex set of reasons as to why this maybe but the two that stand out are that money to upgrade is in short supply and many organisations struggle to compose a business case for an upgrade. Many organisations that I speak to would like to perform an upgrade to gain access to the impressive range of functionality in SAP ECC6 but find senior execs wanting to spend money in other business areas given the difficult economic times.

Faced with this dynamic, SAP has probably done the sensible thing in extending maintenance with a small hike in price. Whilst this gives SAP a headache in suppporting older versions, its probably preferable to a number of organisations opting to take the risk of running non supported software and this SAP losing all of that revenue stream and, maybe, forever.

There are already companies in the US that are prepared to provide support for out of maintenance ERP products at a fee significantly less than the vendor's maintenance fee and this is also something that SAP will be cogniscent of.

In the interim organisations that remain on SAP version 4.6c should use this haitus to construct a real SAP roadmap and then work with an experienced partner or SAP themselves to create a compelling business case

Benefits realisation

2010-09-06T18:11:00.000+01:00

Apparently benefit fraud costs UK taxpayers £1.2bn, whilst benefit errors costs us over £4bn.

Recently the government announced that a credit-checking company has been awarded a contract to find the fraudsters. Mmmmm let’s go after the £1.2bn, but not the £4bn.

Why are there so many errors? Well mainly because the services have been industrialised without understanding processes and thus deliver poor outcomes at high costs. The processes and systems we have put in place make it impossible for single person to own and resolve a single 'case' and so outcomes become the property of the system and not people.

How do the fraudsters work? Its easy you only have to know what to say over the phone and how to get the right documents into the ‘back-office’ to get the 'system' to ‘pay out’.

What improves the quality of benefits delivery is design of processes against demand with local services being delivered by people, face-to-face using a IT solutions that support but doesn't over control the way that the work is done.

Clearly this blog is usually dedicated to IT ........but IT is only part of the answer. Work has to be designed to be fit for purpose. Right now it looks like we are failing to the tune of £5.2bn per year in the benefits area alone.

Hopefully we can start persueding government to take a harder look at processes and the solutions that deliver benefits as halving the 'failure number' of £5.2bn could fund some work to remediate the situation and then deliver year on year savings

Its not about the bike

2010-09-06T17:00:00.000+01:00

"Its not about the Bike" was Lance Armstrong's first book where he described his journey from the brink of oblivion to a multiple Tour de France winner. In essence Lance was saying that it was the things he did externally to his equipment that gave him the edge. Dont get me wrong, Lance always has the absolute best in terms of bikes, clothing etc BUT he says that that isnt what gave him the edge. Conversely, he didnt say, "give me a postman's bike and I'll win it an eighth time" either.

It seems to me that there is a lesson to be learned from Lance for those of us in the IT applications space.

During the last few months I have seen a number of organisations asking questions about their ERP investment. Often the questions are around the feeling that "we aren't seeing the value we expected from our ERP investment so we want to look at other ERP solutions"

Why organisations still expect 'the system' to change their business over and above having great products, great people and effective business processes is beyond me. Just like Lance's bike, a great IT solution can give you the edge but not unless you have all the other boxes ticked.

Organisations should really be looking at how effective their processes are and how they could be improved and enhanced before embarking on an application beauty parade.

So the short message for today is that "Its not about the application"

The big year for enterprise mobility

2010-09-01T09:27:00.000+01:00

So we are all back at work after the school holidays and the sun kicks in!!! Typical

Over the weekend I was talking to a colleague who works in a professional services company. The company has hundreds of consultants performing work on client sites both in the UK and mainland Europe. As a senior manager in the company, Greg told me how that, at the end of the month he would gaze contentedly at the empty office safe in the knowledge that all of his consultants were out on site and billing. Greg's company has invested heavily in the past on an SAP ERP and CRM solution. However, at the end of each month invoicing was always delayed as consultants stuggled to get access to the companies ERP solution to record their time and expenses. This might be because they were travelling, the client where they were working restricting internet access or that they simply weren't able to travel with their laptop that day.

I guess that this is not an unknown phenomena for many companies that have an increasing number of mobile workers. The major IT investments of the past 10 years are typically constrained to within the office environment.

Of course everyone is familier with the Blackberry story and how RIM transformed the way that many people work with their solution for mobile email. However beyond email and into the world of line of business applications the landscape and options haven't been particularly clear.

However 2010 looks like the year when this is really starting to change.

Firstly there is the ongoing and exponential rise in the use of smart phones and their acceptance into the corporate environment to challenge the dominance of Blackberry.

There is then, the availability of a number of enterprise class solutions via the various Apps Stores that gives access to the more saas type offerings.

Lastly there is the move by the big ERP vendors to really put mobility at the forefront of their strategy. SAP's aquisition of Sybase is testament to this move. SAP's stragegy is to have 1bn users by 2014 and that this growth will be fuelled by the accessibility of the software on any device you choose.

After a number of false starts, this seems to be the time for companies to take a fresh look at enterprise mobility and how it can enable the ever more itinerant workforce to remain connected to the enterprise.

In the coming weeks, we'll use this blog to discuss areas of mobile strategy and look at some examples of where its working really well

Dealing with the upturn

2010-08-27T16:28:00.000+01:00

So finally some good news from the UK ONS. Growth is up with the construction sector showing an 8.5% increment. As regular readers of this blog will know, we are pretty interested in this sector and thus the recent figures probably warrant some comment!

Whilst the news is undoubtably positive, the lessons of the past need to be remembered. In the last big recession to hit the sector (early '90s), a significant number of firms went bust in the year after the recession officially ended. The big issues at the time were that companies had taken on 'suicide contracts' during the downturn just to keep things ticking over but as the economy started to pick up inflation on raw materials and labour sent project costs spiralling out of control.

Looking at the list of top contractors from 1992 is a bit like looking at the original particpants of the FA Premier League that started that same year... some familar faces that are still with us but quite a few that didnt make the journey.

It seems clear that the companies who can keep the best control on project costs and resources have a higher probability of surviving the upturn and perhaps growing at the expense of some of their more less prepared competitors.

We have seen that companies that can demonstrate good financials based on good project management and delivery coupled with a strong balance sheet are able to maintain credit lines and ride out the downturn and subsequent upturn. Compare this with Connaught Group.

Regardless of the route to their own individual crisis, the fact that the industry was seeing signs of distress from the group saw sub-contractors and suppliers refusing the company trade credit or requiring cash up front before agreeing to work with them. Once that happens the cash starts running out and the end is almost inevitable.

Companies should have used the downturn to sharpen up for the upturn. Yes that means the inevitable cost cutting, but without ensuring that management has the necessary control and insight into every aspect of the business in a timely manner means that the upturn is going to be a very rocky ride for some.

Oh yes, and if you are interested.............. the inagural Premier League table for 1992 was

Manchester United (C)
Aston Villa
Norwich City
Blackburn Rovers
QPR
Liverpool
Sheffield Wednesday
Tottenham Hotspur
Manchester City
Arsenal
Chelsea
Wimbledon
Everton
Sheffield United
Coventry City
Ipswich Town
Leeds United
Southampton
Oldham Ath
Crystal Palace (R)
Middlesbrough (R)
Nottingham Forest (R)

Something to do whilst watching the rain this weekend

2010-08-26T08:37:00.000+01:00

So here are a few facts to mull over whilst looking at the rain during the bank holiday weekend

- Over £40 million is lost everyday to fraud in the UK
- 80% of corporate fraud involves the collusion of an employee
- 90% of fraudulent employees have been with their employer for over a year
- 20% of fraudulent employees have been with their employer for over 10 years

So lets think about the password that you logged into SAP today with....

- Are you sure only you know what it is?
- Are you sure you didn't write it down somewhere?
- I bet the IT guy knows it!

So lets see now....is your password...... ....your wife's name.....your kid's name...........your dog's name............your favourite football team................the car you drive? Its easy isn't it?

So here is my advice, don't spend ALL weekend worrying about this. Just have a think on Saturday morning and then decide to implement a biometric security solution.

bioLock from Realtime North America and Diagonal Consulting might just be the solution that means you're playing footie with the kids on Sunday and not worring about security

Biometric Security for SAP vs your worst nightmare

2010-08-25T08:27:00.000+01:00

The global financial meltdown has littered the financial landscape with an ever growing list of casualties. Among the reasons for their death are, not least, internal frauds and control system failures. These failures can be prevented by implementing a biometric system.
Biometric systems make it more difficult for dishonest employees to repudiate, in court, the evidence against them. Companies need systems for detecting and holding accountable persons who are violating security and internal control system standards.

Following the billions of dollars of losses caused by dishonest or irresponsible employees, investors and voters should become suspicious in the future whenever executives or audit committees claim their companies cannot afford better security systems.

Biometrics authentication – The reliable solution for security

The International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) has published a new standard ISO 19092:2008 Financial services-Biometrics-security framework. “This standard establishes the security requirements for the implementation and management of state-of-the-art biometric identification technology within the financial industry.” It will make transactions more secure in the electronic era for the financial sector.

SAP users can mitigate fraud by using bioLock (from Realtime NA and Diagonal Consulting), the certified biometric solution using fingerprints.

Even if log-in passwords are obtained, the fraudster would not be able to do anything with the passwords because the biometric authentication system would deny them access to perform restricted transactions.

If an ERP system uses multiple passwords for each user to control access to specific modules, that approach is no match for a biometric system able to control access even to the transaction, field or data level. The biometric approach is crucial for maintaining segregation of duties when employees gain new responsibilities.

Societe Generale Bank – case study

Societe Generale Bank is a classic example of howfraud could have been prevented if they used SAP and a biometric system like bioLock for protection. What went wrong? Jerome Kerviel worked in the back office and in the middle office from 2000 to 2005, prior to becoming a trader. He had in-depth knowledge of their systems and procedures. He made a lot of effort for his fraudulent trades to be undetected by the system. He used:

• Fake email messages for justifying missing trades.
• Borrowed colleagues log-in credentials by using their passwords to conduct trades in their name.
• Forged documents. He created a fictitious Profit and Loss statement for 2007 reflecting the bogus hedges he had created for this period.
• Manipulated the bank’s proprietary system Eliot by deleting transactions and re-entering them after reconciliation.
• There were 75 warnings regarding Kerviel’s rogue trading. Yet, the authorities failed to detect Kerviel’s crimes until it was too late

What can organisations do in the future to prevent this?

According to Diamond Management and Technology Consultants, Inc. the fraud was due to deficiency in Societe Generale’s operational risk management. To avoid this situation Societe Generale needs to have automated processes, an internal controls culture, and IT access controls.

Improve and strengthen internal controls and risk management procedures

Banks and financial institutions need to build an internal controls culture that span the business from top to bottom and also extends across businesses. They need to improve:

• Controls for cancelled or modified transactions
• Controls for transactions over certain limits.
• Procedures to act on alerts.

Strengthen IT security

To prevent a recurrence of a fraud like this, financial institutions can improve security by adding biometric systems to their ERP systems or by replacing their legacy systems with SAP and bioLock.

Most biometric systems are used for access control, but bioLock goes beyond access control and is even able to control a field, function or value within the ERP system, such as the amount of an outgoing wire transfer.

The technology offers control for changes to transactions within SAP ERP and will prevent unauthorised changes. The special committee for investigating Societe Generale’s fraud recommended that to prevent traders from using one another’s accounts the bank should use a stronger biometric authentication system.

A system like bioLock would be the key to preventing the types of fraud discussed because

1. When Jerome Kerviel was promoted from middle office to front office, bioLock could be used to change his role and deny access to the backend systems in SAP ERP.

2. An SAP system requiring biometric identification using bioLock would not have allowed Jerome Kerviel to use others log in credentials to post his fraudulent trades in their name.

3. bioLock would also restrict access to Jerome Kerviel from deleting records of his trade transactions from the system before reconciliation.

4. There would be high accountability as the system would show that Jerome tried to use others passwords to enter his trades in their name.

5. As a result a technology like bioLock would deter fraudster’s from trying to commit fraud since they would be uniquely identified.

Conclusion

In today’s world, banks are required to comply with regulations and standards to protect them from fraud. To mitigate fraud, they need to supplement their internal controls compliance with biometric authentication. Biometrics will prevent data breaches of security. Fraudsters will not limit their fraudulent activities trying to perpetrate frauds using only an ERP system. Users of ERP systems must also secure email systems and any trading systems interfacing with an ERP system. This would tighten security and improve accountability.

Some other dude did it

2010-08-24T14:25:00.000+01:00

All companies want to increase their bottom line and they focus on increasing the revenue or decreasing cost. In the recent years a very important 3rd factor has been added to the list: NOT LOSING MONEY!

Fact is that the so-called White Collar Crime (Internal Fraud) is the fastest growing crime in North America. In 2008, the first single incident averaged $175,000 in damages. Every 4th incident was over $1Million and 9 cases exceeded $1Billion (Source: Certified Fraud Examiners). The average fraud damages were 7% of the revenue.

It takes an a few years to detect an internal fraud scheme and it is normally only detected and stopped by internal whistle blowers. Conviction and punishment, as well as sending the right message to the employees, is mostly very difficult. Many successful fraud cases are never even detected since the thief is smart enough to stop before being detected, but the damages are already done. Chances are that you have fraud cases that you don’t know about

In the case of UBS Paine Webber a time bomb was planted to disable 1000’s of computers. The business loss was never estimated, but exceeded millions of dollars. It cost $3.1 Million dollars to bring the computers back up and running. Everybody knew who was responsible but his lawyer established quickly that 40 people had a password for the logon that was used to cause the damages. The lawyer used, what is called the SODDI defense (Some Other Dude Did It). Sine it is so hard to convict internal thieves, there is no deterring warning message to other employees.

Everybody has access to everybody’s password and an intruder will ALWAYS use a different logon with extended authorizations to commit a crime. In fact, all Segregation of Duties efforts (making sure that John can’t purchase a new laptop for himself and then go in the finance system and pay for it) are based on the assumption that John can only log on as John and use his own authorizations. Customers will agree that this is a misconception and in the security world we know that John would log on as his supervisor anyway to purchase the laptop and then use a profile from the finance department to pay for it.

Password sharing is common practice and 82% of all passwords are written down (SAP Info). The solution is to uniquely identify the Actual User behind the User Profile.

So the question is.......how are YOU making sure that YOUR SAP solution is SECURE?

Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem

2010-08-23T08:52:00.000+01:00

In his recent blog on HBR, Ron Ashkenas asked if we were all in cahoots with complexity and whether this was hurting our ability to service changing customer requirements.

This is never more apparent in the increasing volume of IT spaghetti, that binds and entwines our organisations. Many companies that I work with developed and integrated complex solutions to complex problems that, in turn, allowed them to differentiate themselves from their competitors. However, often, that may have been 10 years ago and what was a differentiator, is no longer and they are left with and expensive solution to, what is now, a commodity service.

Some examples of this might be online hotel room bookings that, 10 years ago, was really innovative but now......well "so what". Another might me a solution for mobile workforce deployment that encompasses job allocation and dynamic scheduling. In both if these cases, to build this functionality at the start of the decade would have been complex, expensive BUT add real value to clients.

In essence the 'trick' is to constantly evaluate your IT estate to ensure that you commoditise legacy solutions and leave sufficient money available to invest in next year's differential service. The organisations that are able to pull this off are likely to be best placed to succeeed as the economy finally starts to pick up.

And.......seeing as you ask.... the Latin title comes from an 14th century English mathematician called William Ockham who, even then, knew that complexity was dangerous.

"Entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity"

How dangerous your password really is

2010-08-20T09:47:00.000+01:00

Everybody has access to your DATA!!!

White-collar crime is the fastest growing type of crime in North America, and co-workers and disgruntled employees have many motivations to cause damages or increase their wealth. Especially in the current economy it is every company’s responsibility to keep honest employees honest by preventing opportunities and temptation!

Typically, the first thing intruders do before taking any illegal action is to get access to another colleague’s user profile for extended access so that the other person will be blamed. In one instance reported last year a company had lost over $60 Million within a 4 year period. A director used one of his employee’s user profiles and passwords to commit the fraud in the SAP financial system. When the fraud was discovered, this employee spent half a year in jail for a crime that she did not commit. Eventually, her boss was arrested for stealing her password and committing the fraud.

BUT - Our executives still believe that passwords are secure even though their PA is propbably logging into systems on their behalf to file expenses and authorise procument spend!

We would not want to put anybody in the position to declare that they have significant control weaknesses, but we know that passwords are outdated and they are the weakest link within your controls. In a world of anti-malware scanners it is common knowledge that security threats evolve on a daily basis and that is why customers must update their anti-malware software frequently to be prepared for the latest attacks.

Passwords have been around since the first computers in 1963, and while they might have been fairly secure back then, technology is evolving and is making them more vulnerable on a daily basis:

• Password crackers get faster and more sophisticated, as well as the computers that run them

• Hacking tools are now legally sold in stores as Password Recovery tools (http://pcsupport.about.com/od/toolsofthetrade/tp/passrecovery.htm)

• Physical and logical key loggers have been invented and can be implemented without detection

• Hidden cameras and even cell phones tape passwords – surveillance cameras are everywhere

• Algorithms can decrypt passwords just based on sound

• Users have too many logons and passwords and are forced to write them down

• Systems require frequent password renewal (forcing users to write them down)

• Users are forced to create more complex and longer passwords (no choice but to write them down)

Biometric security for SAP solutions is now available and companies that take fraud and compliance seriously should be taking steps to implement a security solution that actually works!

Crossing your fingers - is this really the best strategy VS upgrading?

2010-08-18T10:46:00.000+01:00

As we all know there are two certainties in life, death and taxes. However for SAP users still operating SAP version 4.6C there is a third that is an upgrade.

The vast majority of companies see upgrades of any software as something to be avoided if at all possible. Given that version 4.6C is on the cusp of moving out of maintenance, companies should be planning one of the following strategies

- Upgrade from 4.6C to ECC6.0
- Plan to live with the risks of running on an unsupported software release

The majority of companies will not be comfortable with the implications of running on an unsupported software so the answer for most will be to construct a credible business case for the upgrade.

The business case can normally be broken into two main areas that are

- Benefits accrued from a technical upgrade
- Benefits accrued from taking advantage of the enhanced functionality in ECC6.0

Benefits that can be accrued from a technical upgrade often include a reduction in complexity of the solution leading to a lower TCO.

However thinking a little wider, maybe its time to consider the database version that is being used. Could it be time to switch from Oracle to a SQL database as there can be a big difference in licensing costs. Could it be time to consider moving from a UNIX based environment to a LINUX or Microsoft solution?.

The scalability and reliability of these solutions have improved massively in recent years and there are now many examples of large SAP customers running multi Tera-Byte systems on these technologies.

And finally, could it be time to consider getting your solution hosted and managed by a third party. Being on the latest version will greatly improve your choices and bargaining power if you choose to go this way.

All of these steps can provide year on year benefits for companies with the desire to make some decisions in the next few months.

Of course, you could always stay on an unsupported version and simply cross your fingers

What influences IT buying decisions?

2010-08-12T15:08:00.000+01:00

What influences IT buying decisions?

An interesting insight into this decision making process - Thoughts?

Getting the best value from your SAP support

2010-08-10T10:23:00.000+01:00

Back in February, SAP announced a change in its maintenance strategy that gave the majority of customers a choice as to the tier of support that they wanted to buy. SAP’s support now breaks up into two offerings: Standard (18% per annum) and Enterprise (22% per annum). SAP has announced that the vast majority of its customers chose to remain on Enterprise Support but are they getting the value?

Each September, depending on some qualification rules, customers have an opportunity to re-assess the tier of support they wish to continue with. This September it’s time to make sure that Enterprise Support is working for you. For example;

- How many customers, have taken up SAP’s offer of up to five days access to a Solution Architect who can analyse their solution and provide recommendations as to how it can be enhanced?

- How many customers are really utilising the Solution Manager toolset for both efficient and effective project delivery and support?

The answer to the previous questions is probably not many. However failing to leverage SAP’s services is not a good enough reason to trash Enterprise Support and move down to Standard. This September, organisations should be asking themselves the following key questions –

• Are you growing the use of SAP in the next few years?
• What is your overall SAP application strategy?
• Do you really know what licenses you have, who is using them and for what?

Provided that SAP remains on an organisation’s strategic roadmap, Enterprise Support seems the increasingly obvious choice but it will only pay dividends as and when IT departments begin to use the additional services that come with the service.

Diagonal part of the new 2e2-Morse Group

2010-08-02T15:56:00.000+01:00