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A post from my personal programming blog that my colleagues at Edgewater asked me to share…

How often do you perform project triage?

A quick google search shows that the medical concept of triage is commonly applied to evaluating IT projects and other major business initiatives. 

The concept of triage comes from medicine, and in particular medical treatment under difficult circumstances—war, epidemic, disaster—where the number of people needing treatment exceeds the resources available. In such situations, the sick or injured are typically assigned to one of three groups.

 In the business context, it usually means allocating scarce cash and human capital under difficult economic conditions, when the number of ongoing projects exceeds the level available resources.

Project Triage Framework

In the current economic climate, it probably makes sense to perform a mini-triage of your project portfolio quarterly, with an annual triage as the last fiscal quarter approaches.  In addition, you may be faced with the need to triage in emergency situations such as a sudden shift in business strategy, in the face of a new acquisition, or when presented with an across the board budget cut. Periodic review is a cornerstone of an effective project portfolio management strategy. This regular triage can be a valuable form of project insurance. Preventative medicine is always less costly than crisis treatment.

Your triage team should include your senior IT management as well as functional business leadership. Performing project triage is easiest if there is regular, reliable status reporting from the project teams, on their milestone and budget status.

Triage is also easier if your project initiation process includes a business case that assigns a business criticality score to the project. It’s entirely possible that business criticality of a given project might change over the course of the project’s lifecycle, and a master project status tracking document helps the triage team keep track of this.

After reviewing the health of individual projects and their alignment with current business needs, triage will place them into three groups which align perfectly with the medical definition of triage:

1. Persons who are likely to live even if they don’t receive immediate treatment—projects going well that need no additional intervention

2. Persons who are likely to die even if they do receive immediate treatment– projects that you should suspend NOW before they chew up additional resources

3. Persons who are like to live only if they receive immediate treatment– projects that need you to perform an immediate intervention

Our next blog post will cover specific diagnostic tests you must perform on projects that fall into the third group. In the meantime, let us know your apporach to project triage by answering this poll:

How often do you perform project triage?

Calculating the ROI of an IT Project

ROI communication & calculation can make a difference in a project getting funded or not

In today’s economic climate justifying the cost and benefits of an IT initiative has become more important than ever. Often the fate of an IT project depends on the justification of benefits and recuperation of the costs. Therefore calculating, presenting, and demonstrating the benefits of a project in an appropriate manner can make the difference between getting a green light and getting stuck in an endless review cycle.

Value-statements can help bridge the communication gap

During my interactions with various IT departments I have noticed that the IT staff values a project differently than the business sponsors or executive team. Calculating and communicating the value of an IT project puts the IT staff in an uncomfortable and unfamiliar role which requires financial, sales, and technical skills. Quite often even when the IT staff tries to focus on business benefits they fail to align the benefits of a project to the business concerns in a manner that resonates with the executive team. The use of appropriate terms and prioritization of business concerns is key to grabbing the attention of the business sponsors and the executive team. A value statement [i]can be a useful tool to summarize and contextualize benefits of a project in almost all circumstances. Sometimes there are cases when ROI is not clearly defined, is impossible to define, or simply not that important to the stakeholders. Under such circumstances a value statement can be instrumental or even a must. They help overcome resistance, bind together stakeholders, and focus the project around delivering real business value. To summarize, they help you see the forest from the trees where as ROI calculations help you count the trees.

A value statement can take many shapes and formats depending on the context of the project and audience reviewing it. However, it is always a good idea to try and tie it back to the mission or value statement of the project. For example consider the following sample value statement:

The benefits need to be tied back to the capabilities by linking them to preferably operational measures. Financial measures although are more accurate they typically lag operational measures.

Calculating ROI

When calculating direct [i]and indirect [ii]benefits of a project it is important to keep three important aspects in mind:

• The Rate of Return of the Investment
• Capital Recovery Horizon
• Variance Potential

The rate of return of the investment is not just returns exceeding the original investment plus the cost of capital but it should also include compensation for the risk of undertaking the project. For example if a project returns 20% and cost of capital is 18% then the additional 2% may not be sufficient justification even for a “sure shot” of a project. As a very rough rule of thumb ROI of less than twice the cost of capital should be considered high-risk. A ROI of 4 times or more of the cost of capital is considered ideal. Capital recovery horizon is the time that a project will need to generate enough benefits to recover the original investment. The rapid pace at which technology, business environment, trends, and preferences change (especially in the IT industry) pose a significant risk of future benefits not being realized. Changing market conditions and new competition can create new more lucrative opportunities as well diminish the value of existing ones. Therefore it is highly desirable to recoup the original investment as quickly as possible to minimize exposure to sudden changes in market conditions. The ideal recovery time can vary significantly and depends significantly on the market conditions and maturity of a given vertical. For fast moving verticals recovery time of 1 to 2 years is ideal. Variance potential portrays the risk associated with changes or variances in the calculations and estimates of the future benefits of a project. Indirect benefits are hard to calculate accurately and are most susceptible to errors and variances. If indirect benefits constitute a high percentage of the overall benefits or a project then the variance potential for the project is high and vice-versa. Indirect benefits that are less than 50% of the overall benefits are ideal whereas a number of 90% or more indicates high risk to the project.

Calculating the ROI with appropriate level of rigor can be a daunting task. Coming up with a justification for a project is not a “one size fits all” exercise and does not always have to result in punching numbers and formulas into a spreadsheet. Depending on the type of project and the company the right type of benefits calculation has to be tied to the appropriate level of rigor. Sometimes a clear and well articulated value-statement can be sufficient while at other times you have to have hard numbers to backup your claim. A simplified ROI sheet that ties the benefits to the operational levers (operational capabilities) is presented below.

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[i] A value statement focus more on the qualitative aspects rather than the quantitative ones, it is simply narrates the benefits without tying it to the bottom-line.

[ii] Direct benefits are the ones that are only one step removed or are a direct consequence of the implementation of the project (e.g. hardware/software/staff consolidation, time savings, inventory reductions, increase in revenue, etc.).

[iii] Indirect benefits are the sub-consequence of the change brought about the project implementation or are the unquantifiable side-effects (e.g. improvement in morale & good will, more knowledgeable support staff, increase in revenue, etc.).

Fast Track Your Enterprise CRM Selection

CRM systems, in one form or another, have been around for as long as selling has.  And, to tell you the truth, they haven’t changed much over the past decade or so.  Technologies and vendors may come and go, but leads, accounts, contacts, pipelines, and so on are constants.  That’s the way sales works after all.  What this means is that vendors already have their required functions, features and application layout identified.  So they can spend the bulk of their time slickening their technology; figuring out ways of streamlining the sales process for salespeople; and providing relevant information for executives. 

So, if we assume that most vendors have the features, why do so many CRM software selection processes begin with matrices of 1000 or so features, when we all know that a vendor in the running has what we need?  And if something like pie charts vs. bar graphs makes the list as “high”, you’re left with your eye on something other than the ball, the scales are tipped to pet features, and you’re left trying to pry Act! or Excel contact lists (or whatever) out of your sales-peoples’ hands and they say big brother’s cramping their style.  6 months down the road you’re trying to explain why adoption is such a challenge.  Was the wrong software selected?  Many wise analysts then say:

“it’s got nothing to do with the software, it’s…lack of executive support; or poorly defined business processes; or looking back vs. looking forward; or not tying use to compensation”.

Of course, these things have left many a CRM project DOA, but picking the right software does matter.  If you focus on a technical fit for what you’re trying to accomplish as opposed to consensus building with overwhelming weighted matrices, you can get rid of lots of noise and make a good decision.  Here are things to weigh heavily, in order of importance:

Think Vendor Before Software

There are literally thousands of CRM vendors, but in the enterprise space they can be whittled down fast.  (These folks, Gartner,  and others provide lots of insight).  If you’re an SAP or Oracle Applications Shop (that includes Siebel), the playing field is NOT level (see Be Realistic… and Integration… and Data Conversion… below).  Save yourself some time and focus on implementing your CRM module effectively.  Those camps aside, if you go with a small or middle market vendor, or one that’s losing market share, you run risks of:

• your developers not being able to Google sample code (if you don’t think this is important, ask your developers),
• poor support,
• bad/incomplete documentation, or
• (not least of all) poor perception of quality/or importance of the initiative from your sales force.

Salesforce.com and Microsoft Dynamics CRM are almost always left standing.  It’s hard to justify the exclusion of market leading Salesforce.com (unless you’re in the process of getting rid of it because it’s too expensive), and Microsoft is gaining ground because everyone out there has at least half the Microsoft infrastructure stack in place already (an unfair advantage, but one that shouldn’t really be overlooked).

Selecting an established, top software vendor that tracks with your IT strategy can help your implementation team tremendously and as such reduces your overall risk.

Integration Is Huge

OK, so back to “what you’re trying to accomplish”.  You’ve probably been involved in at least one “360 degrees of the customer” project.  That’s because it’s what everyone needs.  Not least of all sales.  Having the whole picture in one place provides incredible benefits and efficiencies.  So often “integration” is a line item buried in the technical section of a selection matrix that’s covered as an afterthought by techies once the real decision makers have left the room. 

The reality is that the ability to leverage all of the data you have about your customers IS competitive advantage.  And CRM software alone won’t provide that since all the information you need will probably not live in your CRM system.  You won’t regret putting a good amount of early, detailed, thought into how integration could work with each vendor’s solution:

• What data will not/can not be in CRM
• do salespeople need it
•  if so how and where will they see it
• how much data are we talking about
• is real-time access required
• what are performance requirements
• what changes will be required to my integration architecture to provide this access
• what programming languages/techniques will we need to know to provide this information

Odds on you’ll spend well over half of your time and money developing and testing integration code when you get into the project even though this will likely represent only a fraction of the functionality.  But those little snippets can make a game-changing difference (e.g. this customer that you’ve called 18 times over the last 5 months and is just about to place a monster order hasn’t paid their bill since last July – they should probably be on another contact list. OR, this customer that has always needed our stuff and was almost broke was just bought by Sun, which was just bought by Oracle and they could probably use about two and a half bajillion of our widgets asap). 

Detailed thinking about how the integration will work with a CRM technology can lead you to the right software and hosting option.

Be Realistic About Your Technology Competency

So maybe you’ve got it down to Salesforce.com and Dynamics CRM.  They’re comparable products, market leaders, they look good, and the sales team could go either way.  But the technologies that can be used to customize and integrate these solutions are quite different.  It’s a good idea to take stock of your technical skills to make sure you understand what development and support will look like.  On the upside, both technologies provide Web service interfaces which provide a good level of interoperability with other systems and a broad range of tools.  From that point forward, however, it’s a good idea to consider your internal development skills. 

Dynamics CRM developers will spend a good amount of time using Microsoft Visual Studio with either C# or VB using a Web service API.  Within the administrative UI, quite a bit of JavaScript is used, iFrames are pervasive, and a good amount of custom code may be implemented with CRM Plug-ins which can be a bit quirky until you get used to them.  The Salesforce (SFDC) model has support for a broad range of programming languages in addition to C# and VB.  Developers have a choice of online or an Eclipse-based tool with which to develop.  SFDC has a relatively mature cloud development model relying on their Apex programming language (similar to C# and Java) which does have an associated learning curve.  Of course, both tools are Web-based and as such require developers to have HTML and JavaScript (JScript) skills. 

So, if you have MS developers and go with MS CRM you’ll have an easier curve and you’ll probably find that your developers are comfortable and productive quicker.  If your developers are a curious bunch that tends to sink their teeth into new things and have a demonstrated ability to produce as they learn, they’ll like SFDC.

In the realm of mature, best of breed CRM packages, it’s impossible to say that one is the best in all situations and for all organizations, but you can pick the one that’s best for you.  Being realistic about your technology competency can drive you in that direction.

Don’t Underestimate Data Conversion

Data conversion effort and approaches seem to consistently get under-sold and under-thought.  If you’ve boiled it down to either MS Dynamics or SFDC, you’ll probably find that the online conversion tools will not work for you in real world scenarios, which will leave you with Scribe on the MS side and the APEX data loader for SFDC, which are comparable products.  Starting early and getting a solid idea of what you’re up against (in terms of complexity and performance) will pay off big, especially if you’re able to do some strawman testing as part of the software selection/evaluation process.  Performance for each of these conversion tools will not come close to approaching performance of loading data with straight SQL– an option that’s only available to the best of my knowledge with the MS on-premise tool.  

So just consider, for example, that if you’ve got 2 million records and early testing on comparable hardware to your production system is indicating .5 seconds per customer record with a tool like Scribe or Apex DL, you’re looking at 12 days for a one time conversion.  Compare that to a similar load using SQL and you’ll see that this can be very significant.  Another thing to remember, you’ll have to load data more than once: you should account for associated entities like opportunities and orders, mistakes, updated/delta data, multiple environments, failures due to inconsistent data, mapping issues, network and hardware failures, lack of disk space, etc.., 

If you give data conversion a good deal of detailed thought early on, you can significantly reduce downstream risks by understanding technology options, planning the project effectively, and synchronizing conversion milestones with other efforts.

Be Creative With The Feature Comparison

Of course, the process of feature comparison is important.  But software can be weak in surprising areas; and limitations can be hard or impossible to uncover when reviewing feature matrices.  A better approach, and one that can help those involved in the selection process visualize strengths and weaknesses, is to create demonstration scenarios that focus on business processes and usage patterns that are unique to your business.  SFDC and MS Dynamics are both very easy to customize and demonstrate, and both offer online versions for demonstration purposes.  Investing a few days early on to identify, configure, and review CRM use cases specific to your business is well worth the effort.

Focusing your efforts on demonstrating software as opposed to creating detailed matrixes can help your users visualize the future state and can underscore software weaknesses that wouldn’t otherwise be obvious.

Narrowing your CRM software search early to top players can save lots of time, keep momentum up, and set you up with technology that you can sink your teeth into.  Whereas going through the motions – that is, letting a weighted matrix make the decision for you – can result in skewed priorities, lack of clear focus, and could result in you and your company struggling with mismatched technology.  Detailed technical thought during the selection process takes time and effort but can ensure that you get on and stay on the right CRM track for your organization.

Straight Through Processing: BUILDING A STRONG SOLID FOUNDATION

Some great feedback on my previous post – “Straight Through Processing & Underwriting  -  The Starting Point”.

Many thanks to those who responded with your comments and feedback.

In that post I stated: “STP helps to drive efficiency and consistency” throughout the life cycle of all policies and that insurers need to start with their underwriting process.  Many of you posed the question “What about the new business process as well as workflow processing — why are these not part of the starting point well?”  A+ – Congratulations – THEY ARE!!

Fact: Underwriting is a set of guidelines that determines the eligibility of a client to receive an insurer’s product. New business rules determine if the client meets the product’s prerequisites as defined by the insurer.   One differs from the other, yet both compliment each other in the final decision process.

Fact: New business coming in the door for an insurance carrier starts the business process for new policies.  It only makes sense then that this starting point for building a solid STP business models resides in both underwriting and new business processing.  They support and complement each other hence the need for both to be worked concurrently.  Supporting these two functions is a much needed workflow management process/system.  All three business functions forms the foundation you need to continue to build your STP process.

Working extensively with our clients to forge a path to a full fledged STP business model, we begin building this foundation by reviewing and dissecting both their underwriting and new business processes.  We also begin the much needed workflow analysis and build process.

Underwriting Guideline Review

The focus here is to concentrate on the underwriting guidelines that support each product within a given product portfolio.  We review manual and automation processes.  We determine what guidelines are consistent within the portfolio and what guidelines are unique to a specific product within the portfolio.  Once we have a clear understanding and have the details we DOCUMENT!  Documenting this process is no easy task and is often what prevents insurers from this review process.

New Business Rules Review

As with the underwriting guidelines, the focus here is on the new business rule sets that support each product within the portfolio.  This tends to be more grueling since each product in the portfolio is unique.  We look first for common business rules across all products in the portfolio, then determine what rules are unique by product.   Again once we have a clear understanding and the details we DOCUMENT!

Workflow Review

Often overlooked in the early stage by insurers is the need for a detailed review and possible re-alignment of workflow procedures.  Workflow is what moves your policies through the new business and underwriting process and is critical to the success of your STP initiative.  This step must occur concurrently with the underwriting and new business reviews.

Figure 1 below depicts the business process model that can be followed to develop that solid core foundation needed for your STP.

FIGURE 1

With that stated I hope this helps to address the questions and comments from my previous post.  Now I must end with asking this question – if you have your core foundation what is your next step in the STP process?  From my perspective the next step that I take with my clients is ……. to be continued….

Is your IT department the last to know?

Remember the last time you needed a real person to give you directions?  Some people provided milestones and markers, making it easy to find your way.  Others were a lot more vague and in the end, not very helpful.  How often did you end up completely on the other side of town, nowhere near where you wanted to be, and you had to go back and retrace your steps trying to figure out where you went wrong?  This only resulted in increasing your stress level and causing you to be late.  Such was was life before the wonderful technological advancement of auto GPS systems.

You’ve spent a lot of time selecting a vacation spot on the beach you’ve never been to before.  Your flight has arrived and you’ve picked up your rental car.  Now what?  How do you get to your final destination?  Do you just drive until you hit the coast and start searching?  No – you were also smart enough to plan and have a GPS to help you find your way.  Your final destination has been input and the course plotted.

With proper preparation, your IT department  can be like the GPS in your car — planning the best route to your destination, avoiding slowdowns and getting you to the beach by lunch.  However, if IT doesn’t have all the information to plot your company’s course, or is not given the information in a timely manner,  you can end up bogged down in traffic or taking the scenic route instead of the interstate, ruining your trip with frustration and disappointment.

Carrier IT departments need to have a firm understanding of where the business wants to go so they can design their target architecture in order to plan the best route to get there.  As you know from adjusting your car navigation system, the best route to your destination isn’t always the most direct, or the fastest.  Traffic jams of requirements documentation, technology learning ‘S’ curves, and poorly timed stop lights can make the most direct routes take the longest.

Management should not decide to venture into a new line of business, issue a policy, and drop the policy off with IT to enter into a non-existent system.  The result can only be chaos in a poorly planned and hurried repository saturated with wasted money and time. Without proper notification and planning, a carrier’s IT department becomes reactive instead of proactive, definitely limiting their capability to support the business and help the organization grow.  This dramatically increases the difficulty to introduce new lines of business and does not  improve your company’s ease of doing business for your agents and customers, pushing them further away.  Even the most strategic, brilliant, masterful business plan fails if you don’t have the technical infrastructure to support it.

By keeping IT part of the business planning process, they can help plot the best course and work with you to build a platform for the future that can support your growing organization.

Assessing an Acquisition’s IT Capabilities: “What’s in Your Portfolio”

Why do I need to think about assessing the IT capabilities of an acquisition?

So you just acquired a company as part of your growth, diversification, or some other strategy. The new company along with its LOB (line of business) expertise comes with an entire IT infrastructure that was thus far responsible for supporting the acquired company’s information needs only. While a great deal of due diligence goes into understanding the viability of the business and its value the same level of rigor is typically not applied to evaluating its IT infrastructure and support staff. In order for the two companies to work together well it is important to understand the capabilities of the two IT infrastructures and how to best integrate or not integrate them. If a detailed and careful plan is not put together to understand the capabilities and assets of the new acquisition you risk inheriting a vulnerability that can spread throughout the larger organization or risk stifling a capability that really should be promoted to the larger organization.

Why you need an independent perspective?

Sometimes companies use their own internal staff to assess the target or recent acquisition. The problem with this approach is that these assessments can be tainted by hidden agendas, lack of impartiality, and departmental politics. Entrenched interests can also slant information one way or the other as it passes up and down various departmental hierarchies.  I was part of a software company which wanted to acquire another software company with similar technology. Our own internal research and development department was tasked with the assessment of the company’s technology. Quite understandably the leaders in the R&D group thought it was inferior to what was developed in-house even though that was far from the reality. The key decision makers involved in the deal, including the CEO and the board of directors, were getting conflicting accounts of the reality and did not know whose version of truth to trust. This is where an independent perspective from external consultants can come in handy. They often face less resistance when digging around and are able to see beyond the personal bias and the “ugly baby” syndrome. A fresh perspective can also help see the forest from the trees which can sometimes be missed by the people who are working on the trees on daily basis. I came across another post acquisition assessment where the management was told that acquired company’s technology and custom developed software was topnotch. Upon further investigation we discovered that the most of the custom software was developed in a little known RAD development environment and less than a handful of people in the company knew how to maintain it. While this creates tremendous job security for some it creates a significant risk for the company. In another situation credit card numbers and all other consumer related information was stored in a database unencrypted!  Stories like these are all too common and point to the need for an independent perspective.

Is it too late to do an assessment after the deal has been signed?

During my days as a consultant I have primarily come across two types of assessments: pre-acquisition and post-acquisition. Pre-acquisition assessments are important where IT infrastructure is a primary part of the value of the business being acquired (software companies, online businesses, etc.). The focus of a pre-acquisition IT due diligence assessment is primarily on ensuring that the IT assets are as good as they have been portrayed,  that they are capable of supporting the business objectives associated with the acquisition, and that there are no hidden risks that will require significant expense to remedy after the buyer takes ownership. For example can a wildly successful but local online service be introduced in a new geographic region with a new language, currency, tax and privacy laws, etc? Post-acquisition assessments are important when the prime value of the acquisition is derived from the LOB (e.g. selling insurance policies, financial management, etc.). The focus of this type of assessment is typically ensuring that IT infrastructure is solid enough to continue to support the business; there are no vulnerabilities that can jeopardize the combined entity, finding areas of excellence to propagate, finding redundancies, and figuring out an integration plan. It is always good to get an outside assessment done before the deal is inked however, if that doesn’t happen it is still very important to at least get the post-acquisition assessment and planning done.

What kind of acquisitions can benefit from an assessment?

These days even small companies whose business does not directly intersect with information technology rely on some sort of back-office IT infrastructure to run their day to day operations. A back-office infrastructure may contain email servers, phone/fax servers, internet gateways, website servers, database servers, LOB applications, etc. A front-office infrastructure may contain client facing applications, online portals, CRM applications, LOB applications, etc. As the number of servers and employees grow the need for proper management and use of sound practices to manage them become more important. If access to IT infrastructure such as LOB applications, databases, email, website, etc. is essential to the daily operations of your business it is vital to ensure that proper assessment of the potential risks is done and the IT assets are managed properly.

What are some of the key aspects that should be examined during an assessment?

Start with creating an overall blueprint of the IT assets and how they interact with each. You would be surprised to learn how often such a fundamental document does not exist. Look at the hardware/software redundancy needs to provide the needed uptime to the business. Determine what disaster recovery plans exist, when they were last tested, and what kind of situations they can handle. Examine the security risks and ensure that the security practices match or exceed the required level of protection warrant by the business. Does the infrastructure have the capacity meet or exceed the demands placed by the peak loads and growth in the business? Examine the hosting environment for security, redundant power, redundant internet, redundant cooling, proper fire suppression, etc. Ensure that hardware and software assets are not so old that they are longer supported and can’t be upgraded. Is the technology stack compatible with the umbrella company’s technology stack? Are they any strange or esoteric practices or standards that could introduce risk? And never forget to identify practices, technology, and people (centers of excellence) that can benefit the entire organization and should be propagated to the entire company.

Reviewing security policies and procedures is another key aspect of the assessment. The risks associated with a weak security structure are obvious and too numerous to describe here. You need to not only think about electronic and online security (firewalls, virus and spam filters, internet intrusion attacks, etc.) but also about physical security. Most companies tend to neglect one or the other and sometimes both. In today’s environment the physical as well the data security should be considered a top priority for any IT assessment. The risks are high no matter what business it is, including legal consequences and public embarrassment.    At a fortune 500 company where I once had the privilege to work became a victim when half the office noticed that there computers were running slower than usual. Upon further examination it was discovered that each computer was missing half the memory chips that they had. Someone had simply walked in after hours before the lock-down, removed memory, and walked away. At another client site we discovered that they have neatly documented their security policies and key passwords but the passwords for all the accounts were exactly the same!

Depending on the industry you work in you may also have to worry about compliance and regulatory issues. For health care industry you have to worry about HIPAA compliance. All personal information and medical records have to be protected according to the guidelines of the HIPAA act. All publicly traded companies have to be in compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley act (SOX). Even though the SOX act never mentions the word software the audit trails and record keeping required by the act ensures sizeable investment in IT infrastructure and processes to manage it. There are various other acts and standards like the Patriot act, DOD 5015.2, SEC regulations, ISO standards (9000, 15489), etc. that may apply based on the industry and business practices. Sometimes the process may be even more confusing and harder when acquiring companies in different countries or different states where the local laws are not the same. All of this means that you must ensure that your new acquisition does not expose you to compliance issues that you didn’t have to worry about before.

How do we plan for the joint future?

Now that you have good handle on what you just acquired you need to plan how you are going to move forward. You need to think about cost saving opportunities by consolidating sites, hardware, and other resources. You need to think about standardization of software, hardware, and operational practices. You will have to decide how want to handle common branding and identification issues such as email domain names, website, central call-in numbers, etc. You will need to examine what support contracts and license agreements exist and how they need to be modified as part of the larger organization. The integration with the umbrella organization needs to phased in and timing needs to be planned carefully to minimize impact to the business. A combined successful and seamless existence doesn’t happen on its own it needs to be planned and carefully executed. If your company is planning to grow through acquisitions you may want to create a process for assessing and integrating new acquisitions based on your current experience.

If the business you are acquiring is being carved out of a larger parent company, you also need to plan for a migration plan off of the services that the parent company is offering during the transition period.  There are further complications if you intend for your new acquisition to be platform company to which you will add other newly-acquired companies over time.

Augmented Reality – What a great idea!

First a confession is in order – I’m not a big fan of cell phone cameras.  In the corporate world, they are sometimes banned or considered a nuisance.  In talking around the water cooler, cell phone cameras are terrific for documenting car accidents, especially when you aren’t at fault.  However an exciting use for cell phone cameras has emerged from Europe – augmented reality.  If you are unfamiliar with the concept of augmented reality, think of the Terminator movies.  When the robot looks at a person, scene or object, there is a set of facts or augmented information presented as a layer on top of the picture.  For fighter pilots, the heads up display while looking forward out of the canopy is another good example of augmented reality.

The idea that you can point your cell phone camera at the scene in front of you and immediately through a “reality” browser see overlays of information about shops, restaurants and other facts is exciting and potentially game-changing for tourism, advertising, and mobile browsing in general.   Using the location-based services for cell phones, especially smartphones with built in GPS features, the software creates a “layer” of information on top of the picture.  In fact, the company, sprxmobile, driving this capability has a product called Layar that enables real time digital information on top of reality through the camera of a cell phone.  Their web site lists 87 available layers in many verticals including real estate, healthcare, transportation, tourism, entertainment, weather, schools and universities, and local search and directory services.  Today, the new software is limited to the Android operating system used in Google-oriented cell phones, but hopefully the idea will grab mainstream attention and move to other major smartphone operating systems.

Clearly, adding this reality layer service to browsers has broad applications beyond cell phones, however there are immediate applications for mobile users that come to mind.  Standing in front of a house for sale, pointing the camera at the home and seeing the price, number of bedrooms, etc. would be great.  Even better would be the ability to compare augmented information from a snapshot of a home up the street.  The application could capture the location based information from the cell phone with the picture and enhance the search experience.  Think about the impact of digital photography to grab GPS coordinates for adding information automatically or posting location information to Flickr, for example.

Augmented reality may be the “killer” application for smartphones beyond the obvious contact and calendar management.  The ability to add the value of layers of actionable information to where you are immediately located could revolutionize personal computing as well. The ease of adding this type of service to a browser demonstrates the power of both web services and mash-ups. My hope would be that it doesn’t simply add more advertising to our world, but ease traveling, shopping, navigating universities and large sporting venues and bring us actionable information in real time.  It is an exciting technology that needs to be nurtured and adopted for mainstream cell phones.

6 ways to get your web presence and infrastructure in shape for 2010

In this lingering recession, everyone is looking for new ways to better position themselves to compete and grow revenue. A lower level of consumer and business spending will require efficiency, careful optimization and leverage of low cost assets and methods. It’s time to get into shape! Here are 6 ways to revamp and strengthen your web sites and infrastructure on a modest budget:

Revamp your web strategy for a web 2.0+ world.

The internet world has dramatically changed in the last 3-4 years. Social networks, user communities, user generated content, twitter, the iPhone and other mobile devices, GPS and location aware devices and the other components of Web 2.0 completely altered the way businesses and users communicate and transact online. Each of the Web 2.0 components come with their own set of opportunities and challenges. They provide new channels that enable communication at a fraction of the cost while demanding a new approach to openness, transparency and interactivity. Regulatory, security and governance concerns are not always easy to address. Chart a path in these new waters by rethinking your Web Strategy and redefine the role that the web and other digital channels will play in the company’s future and put a plan in place for its execution.  

Implement a social media strategy and measure its value

Social media tools are a great way to build honest online relationship with customers and other audiences. Doing it right is not always easy. A social media strategy will force you to think through and define where to be and what is to be communicated, set the tone and nature of interactions, set guidelines on how to respond to negative feedback, factor in legal and regulatory implications, address intellectual property and security issues and many other aspects need to be thought through. In addition, measuring the impact of these activities is not always easy. Building a model that can assess and provide value guidelines is very important. 

Reduce costs by Leveraging open source and Cloud web infrastructure components

We have a client who recently came to us asking advice after a planned $3M Oracle e-business implementation turned into a projected $15M 3 year project. We recommended they look at OfBiz and other open source e-commerce frameworks. Open source enterprise level software , SaaS and Cloud Computing have matured to the level that major organizations are leveraging these low cost scalable solutions to build a robust infrastructure that can replace big investments in hardware, software licenses and data centers.  

Take control of your content – Deploy a Content Management Solution

For many companies, fresh content is key to repeat visits. As sites scale, managing and maintaining them becomes an expensive and difficult task often dependent on IT or external resources. Content Management Systems (CMS) provide business users with the ability to modify and update sites and global structures that make graphical changes easy to implement. They also provide ability to segment users, add personalization and social features such as Blogs and community without the need for additional software and services.

User Experience Redesign

If your website has not gone through a redesign in the last 3 years, chances are that it looks dated. What looks fresh and relevant changes all the time and the key in the last few years has been incorporation of user engagement and interactivity, quality content that speaks more directly to the users, content targeting and using sites as relationship building tools rather than one way communication streams. Sites need to add rich content, video and mobile support as well as dynamic interfaces. All these changes contribute substantially to improved website ROI

Optimize sites for goals and conversion

It’s crucial that every marketing and search dollar is well spent. To do this, websites need strong web analytics so that sites can be continuously optimized to maximize conversion and be careful to avoid the main pitfalls. Web analytics capability allows businesses to test new ideas, layouts and promotions and to quickly refine them to drive sales and traffic as well as optimize search and marketing spend. With Google analytics and other low costs services, setting great analytics does not have to mean big bucks.

Begin at the end … ensuring data quality success!

posted with permission from Data Quality Chronicle

Due to the fact that data is there before a data quality project, and it is there after a data quality project, data quality is not as clear an impact on the business as a traditional application development project.  This is particularly true of customer data management oriented data quality projects where the primary objective is to “de-dup” or consolidate the data.  After all, in the end there is just less data.

When this is looked upon purely from a software perspective there’s not much difference.  Sure, there are cost savings associated with the reduction in the storage requirements.  There might even be some increased performance in dependent applications due to the reduced volume.  However this is hardly a justification for the investment that a typical data quality initiative requires.  This is particularly inconvenient considering most of the investment is in software and other technology related resources.

However consider the impact of a data quality project which consolidates customer data from a business perspective and see a different side of things.  Consider the benefits of less, unnecessary, possibly inaccurate customer data.

• fewer mailings to reach the same customer providing a direct cost savings
• fewer mailings to reach the same household providing a direct cost savings
• fewer mailings required overall providing a direct cost savings
• fewer failed mailing attempts due to address validation providing a direct cost savings
• fewer customer service requirements due to single view of the customer providing a direct cost savings
• more accurate perspective of customer product portfolio providing a direct increase in marketing opportunities

Now (re)consider the substantial impact that can be realized from a consolidation effort.  Furthermore as long as data quality initiatives are implemented into ongoing operational data services, these cost reductions extend into the future producing benefits in the long term.  This further justifies the cost of implementing data quality services into an organization as a long term solution.

This is why it is critical to the success of a data quality project to have clear goals that are aligned with a business initiative.

However this is not the end of the line when it comes to ensuring success.  To do this you have to start with goals like the ones listed above and define ways in which these types of goals can be measured.

For example the first bullet point is a data quality goal tied to the business initiative of reducing duplicate customer data. To support this, a data quality matching process can be defined that uses criteria to identify redundant customer transactions and consolidate them into a survivor record.  The affect the data quality initiative has on this business process can be measured in terms of the reduction in total mailings required to complete a marketing campaign.  More importantly, it can be measured in terms of a reduction in total dollars required to fund the new and more concise direct mailing campaigns.  Now the data quality process and its results can be linked directly to a reduction in budget.  Clearly metrics like these make it obvious that a data quality initiative that merely reduces data has a tremendous amount of value.

If you define a list like this with business stakeholders driving the process, before the data quality project is implemented, there will be a clear path to success as well as an easy way to quantify it once the solution is deployed!