This article on 37Signals explains something I have often pondered in the world of Business Solution selling. What is the difference between an experienced presenter or persales person and a novice. Why do some people need to prep for hours or days for a demo and others can just turn up and do it.
Today we have setup a systems@work Twitter Service which you can subscribe to at http://www.twitter.com/systemsatwork.
You will need to setup a Twitter Account (which will take about a minute) and I would recommend you turn on SMS updates (no charge) to get the full benefit.
If you are unfamiliar with what Twitter is all about then this Keynote from Mark Pesce at Microsoft AuReMIX08 is as good an overview as I've seen.
The systems@work Twitter feed is linked to our News RSS Feed our Knowledgebase RSS Feed and my del.icio.us Press Coverage Feed so you can consider it a clearing house for all things relating to systems@work.
Twitter is one of those services which can take a little time to "get" but if you persevere it opens up a world of opportunities. Some interesting Twitter feeds are.....
BBC Tech News
BBC Click
Barck Obama
Hilary Clinton
gcal (if like me you use Google Calendar this is a must)
Salesforce.com
I've always known that our Time Recording and Expense Management Software appealed to a particular type of organisation. Generally they tend to be dynamic companies, who have a forward looking outlook and see technology as a mechanism for productivity enhancement and an enabler for more effective management decision making.
I was particularly pleased to see two of our clients recently receive very positive comments in the press.
The renowned American Publication, FastCompany, recently published an article entitled the The Worlds 50 Most Innovative Companies. FastCompany is a publication I particularly enjoy. For those unfamiliar with its style, its a mix of The Economist meets Wired meets GQ.
At number 23 in their list for 2008 is Arup, one of the worlds leading Engineering Companies and a longtime user of time@work.
Closer to home, The Sunday Times Top 100 List's always make interesting reading and last Sunday it was the turn of the Sunday Times 100 Best Small Companies.
Listed at Number 13 is another longstanding time@work user Brand Learning who are a dynamic and highly successful Marketing Consultancy.
I would never be so bold as to suggest that our software was the reason for the success enjoyed by Arup or Brand Learning, however I do like to think that the attributes of these successful organisations and their attitude to Information Technology is reflected in their choice of systems@work as a Solution Provider and time@work as the software to manage their business.
I leave today for a short visit to San Francisco today where one of our new time@work Clients is based.
72 hours in one of my favourite cities (I lived there in the early 90's) is not a bad way to spend some time but I could happily do without the 24 hour round trip.
It has been a hectic few weeks for us as we just signed our first client in Moscow last Thursday (for an April 1 go live!) and the number of clients upgrading to Version 3 is becoming an avalanche.
Preparations are also well under way for the 2008 systems@work Conference on April 17th and the Registration Site went live on Monday. Its great that one of our expense@work users,Lloyd's, have allowed us to use the Old Library in the Lloyd's Building which is going to be a fantastic venue.
Much has been written on Microsoft's bid for Yahoo and the truth is, only time will tell how it plays out.
However something which really is quite daft are the theories coming from so called expert analyst's. Their simplistic models work on a false "synergy" theories which makes perfect sense if you accept their premise. Unfortunately they are wrong in the underlying assumption.
If you ever want to understand why Microsoft buying Yahoo is at best "a challenge" don't listen to the the '2nd and 3rd place coming together" argument. In summary it says, 1 chimp can't beat a gorilla but 2 might!
Instead consider golf as a better metaphor. If Ernie Els and Phil Mickelson decide to take alternate shots and play Tiger Woods, their chances of winning are just the same as if they were playing him individually (at best).
If Microsoft and Yahoo can't beat Google as separate organisations then there is nothing to suggest they will automatically do any better as part of a combined operation.
I'm not saying that Microsoft can't dominate in certain of it's chosen markets and only a fool would write them off. However Search is Google's turf and I see nothing in this takeover which will change that.
It appears that the long predicted consolidation in the Financial Software Market is continuing apace with Agresso making an offer for CODA. The offer is currently being considered by the CODA Board so its by no means a done deal.
We have many mutual customers with CODA particularly on the Expense Management side where our expense@work solution has proved a good fit.
Unlike many, I welcome further consolidation as it will lead to the development of standards for the storage of and access to financial data. Ultimately (perhaps 5 or 10 years from now) we will see a common unified data structure for Ledgers with the potential to move a Chart of Accounts and historical transactions between systems with ease.
Microsoft, SAP (certainly) and Oracle and Infor (I think) will probably be the last ones standing.
The recent high profile stories concerning problems with Employee Expenses at The National Audit Office and The Metropolitan Police has highlighted how important it is for organisations (both Public and Private sector) to have procedures and systems in place which manage the Employee Expense Management process.
Business Solution such as our own expense@work and time@work (and others too) are being used by organisations throughout the world for precisely this reason but the interesting point about Sir John Bourn's troubles is that a good expense management package would probably have come to his rescue rather than highlighting any misdemeanors!
Sir John is being publicly ridiculed for the £27,000 claimed on meals over a 3 year period and in many of the tabloids is being portrayed as a character reminiscent of Monty Pythons Mr Creosote. A rudimentary grasp of maths would tell you his meals averaged less than £200 per week and while this is unlikely to see him nominated for "frugal CEO of the month", it would barely register a blip compared to some of the claims I have seen in our work with clients over the years (I once saw a single expense claim for £28,000 on client entertainment).
I would have liked to know how his expenses compared with his peers in other government departments, then perhaps we could have judged his "crimes". If expense@work had been in place its something they could have found the answer to in under 30 seconds.
With the correct systems in place, the Control and Monitoring of Employee Expenses could ensure that these type of problems never arise:
Software Has No Emotion - It enforces the rules and does not care whether you are the chief exec or the tea lady. Limits can be applied by person, department or any other rule you care to enforce. The enforcement approach can range from a stern refusal (expense@work can stop the form being submitted), to a word in the ear of your boss (in the form of an alert to your manager) and also a friendly piece of advice (an alert to you which says "did you know you should only be claiming £200 per night rather than £300, are you sure?")
Software Asks All The Right Questions - "What class of Airline Ticket?", "How many of your colleagues were involved in the Client Entertainment?", "What was the purpose?"
Software Churns The Numbers - "How much is he spending on Entertainment each month?", "show me all employees who spend 10% above the 12 month average", "which employees always forget their VAT Receipts?"
Of course the other great advantage of an automated expense management solution is that it ensures that all your employee expenses are in line with Inland Revenue Guidelines. When the inevitable audit arrives you can continue to sleep well at night!
We are currently doing a lot of marketing and PR around Software as a Service and our recent decision to offer hosted solutions to our clients. Increasingly, potential users of our PSA solution time@work and our expense management solution expense@work are asking us about hosting options and "pay as you go" pricing models.
We sent the following letter to number of industry publications over the past few days. I will be interesting to see what the pickup is.....
"Once upon a time we all had computers that had to be connected to the corporate mainframe in order to be able to operate. Then we had computers that were distributed around the building and we all shared the processing workload on our PCs. Then we had something called ASPs where we were supposed to have a PC but all the software was somewhere else. That didn't catch on and we then had things called thin clients that did their processing back at the server – just like the once upon a time.
You might think that this is all a vicious circle – well it would be apart from the internet.
Given the internet and the worldwide web, that's Web 2.0 to some of you, there are now a host of applications that can be run from the equivalent of a phone, not even needing a full blown laptop.
The internet is here to stay. It's just too good and too useful to go away. It will just get quicker.
So Mr F.D. wake up! Stop thinking that you have to buy all the software that your company operates. If the product that you are considering does not offer the option of a 'pay as you use it' service, then the company you are dealing with will either go out of business soon or is a dinosaur waiting for it to happen!
In the coming 3 years, everything from expense claims and time recording, to accounting and project management software will be available as hosted solutions operating at lightning speed under a completely secure and robust internet based delivery platform. These services will be available from any terminal or device on the planet, wherever your staff need to use it.
If it isn't, don't buy it!"
Jim Schaper (CEO & Chairman of Infor) gave a very polished and impassioned speech at the start of inforum2007 in Las Vegas last week.
I did have some video footage of the opening moments posted here but unfortunately Infor asked me to remove it for copyright reasons.
He started by reemphasising the theme of the conference "Be Enterprising" and went on to congratulate his colleagues and customers for the scale of the event we were attending (6,000 delegates from 45 countries and 685 breakout sessions). Over 90% of the attendees had been acquired by Infor across the 31 acquisitions he has carried out as CEO. However it was not a speech of self congratulations and as an intro to his speech he acknowledged that customers only wanted to know one thing "Is Infor Committed To Me"?
Schaper articulated a clear Vision for Infor which I found credible and certainly left me with a much clearer understanding (and to be honest a more positive view) of the organisation than I started with. He used the familiar London Tube warning of "Mind the Gap" as a metaphor for Infor's positioning and led into their proposition by explaining that most purchasers of Business Software today found themselves between a "Rock and a Hard Place" and this "Gap" was where Infor sat.
Schaper's belief is that the choice of SAP/Oracle/Microsoft on the one hand ("difficult to implement, expensive and requiring extensive customisation") and feature rich niche players on the other ("lacking size, scale and resources") left customers in a no win situation. They could spend a fortune customising a high end solution or they could risk exposure and lack of scalability with a niche provider.
It will come as no surprise that Infor positions itself as providing the best of both, having the scale and resources to compete with the larger providers but running each of their product lines as independent business units with teams of developers and consultants who understood their markets and customers in the same way that the small niche players do. He announced that Infor would not be switching or consolidating customers onto one or more unified products sets and to gave a commitment that support and development would continue on the entire product range (which surprised me).
Schaper listed some impressive statistics to remind the doubters of their position as the 10th largest software company in the world:
(Note: The maths error is his but I don't know which one is wrong – I would guess Services)!
Schaper was very open about the stories being spun by competitors (Infor the aggregator, investment vehicle, cost slashing operation, IPO preparation etc) but he disputed each point and cited their 93% customer retention rate, 11,000 sales of additional licences and 1,700 new customers in the past 12 months.
When you analyse the numbers you can only be impressed at the scale of the business he has managed to build in such a short time. Their mantra "Infor is a 5 year old company with a 30 year old history" is certainly credible. The other key messages I took from his speech….
Schaper concluded by saying that Infor were committed to keeping the TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) for their products amongst the lowest in the industry. He reinforced his earlier statements that they were building to last and for the long term and were not being built up for a float or trade sale.
His final sporting analogy stuck in my head…..
"There is no finish line"
I'm attending the Inforum 2007 conference in The Sands Expo Centre, Las Vegas this week. The most striking aspect when I arrived last night for the registration reception was the sheer scale of the event. The Expo Centre itself is colossal in scale and Infor have pretty much taken all of it. The main conference room is about the size of 2 football fields (perhaps 3) and there are over 6,000 attendees.
It's very much what you would expect of an American run conference. Lots of glitz, loud rock music and very enthusiastic employees. Of course the scope of the event is more than just SunSystems but it does reinforce that the old Systems Union company is now part of a very substantial organisation.
In 1995 Larry Ellison (CEO Oracle) announced his "Vision" for the future of computing, "The Network Computer" or NC as it became known.
In the intervening years there have been many debates about what constitutes an NC but the fundamental concept was simple, (think Mainframe Terminal meets PC and plugs onto the Internet).
As with most Visions, this one was ahead of its time and for many commentators just a pipe dream. Their scepticism was probably justified at the time because it's true to say that the concept envisaged, a world where devices connected to the Internet, and where all information and applications were available online, was fanciful in 1995.
Fast forward to 2007 however and the situation has changed dramatically. Broadband speeds are now in the multiple MB's and only recently this Guardian Article revealed exactly where the future is heading.
What has struck me in the past 6 months is the number of clients I meet who are looking for time recording, expense management and billing solutions that are totally "Web Based" or "Zero Footprint". Such demands have historically never been easy to deliver, (put simply the technology was not up to it), but of late with the advent of AJAX and advanced browser scripting, the situation is changing rapidly.
When we launched time@work and expense@work we recognised that end users would be drawn to the simplicity and pervasiveness possible in a browser and so all our applications use Internet Explorer for time and expense capture. More advanced functionality (as required by Invoicing, Resource Planning, Budgeting etc) was simply not achievable using this zero footprint approach and so like all other software providers we developed a hybrid model comprising a thin client front end and a thick client back end.
About 2 years ago we began the embryonic work of migrating our back end functionality onto the browser and although it continues to be a hugely complex project, the experience gained over this time and the advancement in browser technology is enabling us to move into new and exciting areas of software design.
Our development roadmap for Version 3 and beyond was published earlier this year (email me for a copy) and through it we aim to shape the way in which our time@work and expense@work solutions will address these growing demands for a browser front end.
Such developments have understandably led to debates about the future of Business Solutions Software. Companies such as salesforce.com have championed "Software as a Service" and regularly proclaim that desktop applications are a thing of the past. Google's entry into the online apps market was for many observers another nail in the coffin of Microsoft and the other organisations who sell software as atoms.
For my money, the jury is still out. Performance, security and regulatory issues make this vision of the future a long term play. That said we will be launching a hosted Time Recording and Expense Management Solution later this year and the developments I mentioned earlier will only enhance our ability to deliver these solutions.
Interesting times ahead.
During my early days as a trainee at an American Company called Businessland we were drilled in that very 90's mantra "the customer is always right". It's rare to find myself straying from those principles but I did find myself having to tell a customer recently that they were just plain wrong.
The conversation concerned Professional Services Automation Software (PSA) and during the course of the presentation we were giving on time@work the customer remarked "a timesheet is just a timesheet". For the petrol heads reading this, it's akin to being told "an engine is just an engine" and for many of our clients who are Architects and Engineers I dread to imagine their response were I to say "a building is just 4 walls and some glass".
I'd be the first to admit that on the face of it a timesheet is nothing more than an electronic piece of paper. However the power in products such as time@work is that behind the scenes, numerous complex calculations are taking place in order to produce meaningful management reports which empower Project Managers and Directors to make informed decisions.
Understanding your levels of Utilisation and Realisation and ensuring that Revenue Recognition is handled properly can only be done if that "simple timesheet" has something of consequence underneath the bonnet and so as you consider your organisation requirements in this area here are some questions to ask of any potential system:
These are just a few examples of the real world questions which time@work enables an organisation to answer, all from a simple timesheet.
We've received a large number of inquiries and public/media interest since we announced the release of our Carbon Footprint Tracking Module. It's a very useful tool for organisations who wish to monitor and neutralise their Carbon Footprint as the module allows users of time@work and expense@work to see the Carbon Emissions being generated by their activities when they submit their expenses.
I was interviewed by IT Week reporter James Murray on Tuesday last and the following is an extract of the article which can be seen in full on the IT Week website.
Carbon reporting tools hit the business mainstream
Releases designed to help firms monitor and reduce their environmental impact
James Murray, IT Week, 31 May 2007
With firms under increasing public and regulatory pressure to limit their environmental impact, those keen to measure their greenhouse gas emissions could soon see the process automated following the launch of a number of new software packages designed to help firms monitor and reduce their carbon footprint.
Expense and time management specialist systems@work has become the latest software vendor to address the growing demand for environmental reporting tools with the launch of a new module designed to help firms calculate the carbon emissions employees generate when travelling.
The new customisable module is available as an add on to the company's expense, time recording and billing systems and automatically calculates an employee's carbon emissions based on emission calculations and the expense information staff input for flights, car and rail journeys.
"The new module will give people an easy way of calculating their footprint, " explained Michael Sheehan, managing director at systems@work. "You don't have to go through an extra stage of using an online carbon calculator; the carbon data is built into the process and is there in the employee's face."
Sheehan said the aim of the tool was to help modify staff behaviour. However, he added that firms were also interested in using the new module to bolster their environmental reporting metrics and provide them with carbon emission information they could then use to offset their employees' travel.
I spend about 20% of my working week in presentations. These usually involve presenting systems@work solutions (our time recording and billing solution - time@work and our expense management solution - expense@work) to organisations or business partners.
I always welcome tips or techniques which can assist my presentations and help me to communicate my message to the audience. The simplest and most effective of these was given to me only yesterday and in one sentence summarises the multitude of theories and training course techniques that I have seen over the years:
The 10/20/30 rule of PowerPoint: - "A PowerPoint presentation should have 10 slides, last no more than 20 minutes, and contain no font smaller than 30 points".
Your audience will be grateful!
I'd come across the work of Professor John Maeda previously and his book "The Laws Of Simplicity" makes worthwhile reading for those interested in reducing the "clutter" that now exists in all our lives. I'm particularly interested in using his ideas to simplify the way in which we interact with technology (and software in particular).
It was therefore a pleasant coincidence to open Metro this week find a piece entitled "Just Keep It Simple Stupid" which references his work in the context of a more general discussion on the "less is more" trend in technology development. The coincidence was that only 20 minutes previously I had been presenting time@work to a client who was particularly interested in our solution because of the simplicity and aesthetics of our user front end.
I'm passionate (some might say to the point of neurosis!) about avoiding clutter and keeping my inbox empty and like most of us I fight a daily and ultimately futile battle to avoid information overload.
Because of the nature of our business, the interface we develop in time@work and expense@work affects the working patterns of thousands of end users and consequently our development efforts focus heavily on the end user experience. Our products, by their nature, perform complex business tasks and it's admittedly very difficult to reduce that functionality down to a few simple buttons. That does not mean however that we can't make the solution easy to use and one of the significant design decisions made in the product was to separate the user front end from the administration module. This has enabled us to develop a browser based front end which is minimalist in design, very pleasing on the eye and highly productive.
The result today is an end user experience for time@work and expense@work which is unique and when we talk to new clients they are often amazed that we don't run any training courses for end users.
With these thoughts in mind I look forward to reading Mark Hurst's new book, Bit Literacy. The premise of Hurst's writings is that in an age of infinite bits, time and attention are the scarce resources. In our industry the related challenge is to develop software which is intuitive, fast and focused and which ultimately involves users spending less time working with our products rather than more. It's easy to add a button, much harder to save a minute.
As we continue the development of Version 3 of time@work and expense@work we constantly have to ask the question, "will every new button and function we add enhance or detract from a users productivity?" Packaged vs. Bespoke software is an argument whose path is well trodden. Suffice to say my hat is firmly in the packaged camp. As our user base grows and each new client brings their own unique wish list, we have to balance continuous flows of new enhancement requests with our passion for maintaining an uncluttered and intuitive solution.
Sometimes it involves challenging clients to think differently and to adapt business practices to suit new technologies and best practices. After all, why invest in new systems if all they do is automate old ways. It's often said that when an organisation has to change its practices to accommodate new software, that the software must be at fault or inflexible. I don't agree. Sometimes organisations should change!
I had some very positive news from my colleagues in Prague this morning regarding Vision support on time@work and expense@work. It would appear that Infor's announcement regarding the withdrawal of Vision 3rd party support only relates to interfaces that were managed directly by Infor.
While it is true that Infor are withdrawing support for the Vision products that SU had under its control (such as Axapta and Maximo) they are continuing to work with us on Vision over time@work and expense@work as these are a strategic part of their of Datalink Studio programme.
We have had a lot of success working with Vision in recent years and our time@work and expense@work Clients and Partners will be delighted with the news.
There is no doubting that one of the "big" issues at the moment is the environment. Not a day goes buy without some element of the media reporting on how we are destroying the planet with our excessive travelling and wasteful ways.
Until recently, I saw green matters as very much a "home" issue ("turn off the lights kids", etc) but recent conversations with clients led to the development of new functionality in expense@work and time@work which I genuinely believe will make a difference.
Those of you who work with our applications will be aware that they enable organisations to track expenses and the time spent by employees on various activities. Of course this enables users of expense@work and time@work to track the number of miles they travel or the number of flights, taxis or trains they take. But what about taking this a stage further? If software can calculate a consultants daily fee or the VAT reclaimable on an expense then why not have it calculate the CO2 emissions or Carbon Footprint score of an employee each month!
Of course our software rose to the challenge and the result is a new module in expense@work and time@work which will tell an employee exactly how much CO2 has been released into the environment by their activities. Behavioural scientists will tell you how feedback loops are a significant influence on behaviour. In case you are wondering, a feedback loop in this context is a score beside every line of an expense claim and a league table of the worst or best employees ranked by their CO2 score.
Of course software cannot save the environment by itself but to quote a bigger corporation than ours "every little helps".
Our PR people at ITPR contacted me this morning asking for a comment on a KPMG article about the Data Protection Act. Not really our area I thought to myself until I read the piece. Apparently public and private sector organisations that hold paper-based files will be in breach of the Data Protection Act (DPA) if they do not digitise their records by October.
When the DPA was introduced in 1998, files that already existed on paper and contained personal data were not affected by the compliance obligations, but in October that exemption will end and all information must be accessible within 40 days to a member of the public who requests it.
So what I hear you say! Well a few observations occurred to me:
More daft bureaucracy I'm afraid.
There is always a lot of speculation concerning what Microsoft is going to do in the Business Solutions marketplace. When asked for an opinion, my response is always the same, "whatever they want". If you ever wanted to understand why then reflect for a moment on Microsoft's recent quarterly earnings announcement which underline more than anything the true scale of this organisation.
Microsoft last week announced quarterly revenue of $14.4 billion and net income of $4.93 billion. A number of journalists and websites have converted this into a daily number ($55 million to save you time on the calculator!) and had some fun running comparisons with some other well known organisations.
It takes Microsoft about 2 weeks to turnover the same amount as Infor (owner of SunSystems) does in 12 months. If you wanted to compare Microsoft's $55 million in pure profit every 24 hours then consider the following. It takes Microsoft….
I have no idea what Microsoft will ultimately achieve in the Financial Systems Mid Market but its clear to me that they have the pockets to do whatever they want. As they tighten the integration between their desktop products and their Business Solutions offering, the opportunity for them to capture a significant (perhaps dominant) share of the market is considerable.
With expense@work and time@work our company is able to specialise in unique vertical markets where clients require a particular type of expertise which is not easily replicated and which is much harder to turn into a "me too" solution. It's something that helps me to sleep easier at night!
I was disappointed but not surprised to hear that Infor will be withdrawing support for the Vision product range operating over 3rd party applications or "competing products".
I've had a long association with the Vision Suite and it's a widely held view that Vision was a significant factor in System Unions success (some might say survival) during the late 90's. The decision to release a version of Vision which supported Financial Systems other than SunSystems was taken before Vision was acquired by Systems Union. However once they had absorbed Lasata (Visions previous owners) they supported the strategy and continued the model.
Extending the range of Financial Systems and Business Solutions supported by Vision was an ambitious strategy and whilst the execution was sometimes patchy (confusing terminology, some poor technology and barmy pricing), the result was a community of Vision users working with systems such as Great Plains, Navision, expense@work, time@work and SAP.
The approach could have given Systems Union/Infor a valuable position at the table of organisations that they would normally never come into contact with. Any product which provides this opportunity for a software house should be nurtured carefully (even if it is a loss leader) and to cut off potential influence and economic interaction (no matter how small) with users of "competing systems" shows a worrying and slightly blinkered mentality.
It is also ironic that as the world is moving towards open standards of integration and connectivity, Infor should choose to take Vision back to its roots as a proprietary tool.
What I'm still not clear on is which of these scenarios is driving Infor's decision:
Lets hope it's the 3rd
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