A long way

This interview of PwC chairman Dennis Nally from last week’s Wallstreet journal looks at some interesting trends in talent retention. One thought that clearly stood out of the article is how organizations are changing to adapt to the new generation. When a firm is trying to hire the best of young adults graduating from schools across the country, what is it that they need to do to cater to their interests? These are people who log on to facebook the first thing in the morning from their bed, those that cannot imagine a life without iPads and smart phones. As rightly pointed out, “If your HR policies aren't responsive to what they are looking for, they are going to go to a company that is.” 

From times when the sole reason many organizations considered installing web filters to block orkut and myspace, here stands the corporate world fully prepared to wholeheartedly embrace the new technology and the people addicted to it. It feels  like we have come a long way in a short span of time.

Social Media and Customer Engagement

There are times when we all fall for an ad campaign for the sheer creativity and the genius of its proponents :). Social media is a tool immensely powerful and the ways in which it can leveraged are only limited by our imagination. Here is a sampling of some very innovative social media campaigns from the recent times:

Burger King – WHOPPER Sacrifice : This campaign from 2009 is a true show stealer. Burger king offered free burgers for users who were ready to sacrifice ten friends on facebook! Users were quick to cash in and the campaign used the numbers to project how the temptation was stronger than friendship :P. It did however had to be rolled back following discussions with facebook. Nonetheless, brilliant idea there!

Starbucks – MyStarbucksIdea : The last time I checked Starbucks claims to have 23 million fans on facebook :O !!! To brighten their business the company launched a website to let its fans give actionable ideas for them to improve. The ideas were taken pretty seriously and the site did spread like wild fire across various social media. The clear message was “We’re listening!”

Nike – Destroyer Burrito : Another intelligently conceived and executed campaign. Nike ‘tweeted’ asking its fans to go to a place, ‘check in’ on facebook and ask for a ‘Destroyer burrito’… When they did, they won themselves a new Nike jacket :)

Dominos – Pizza King & Queen : This campaign launched exclusively in parts of Europe was a facebook app where fans could graduate to “superfans” by recruiting more fans and earn coupons and gifts. The winner was of course duly rewarded with freebies and the title of a ‘King’ :P

There are a number of others that I can keep going on and on about. But what really made me write this blog is a recent article that was quite critical of the trend. Do these campaigns, in the name of innovation, move away from marketing to entertainment? Nothing's wrong with that if we still are in sight of our ultimate goal (selling stuff) and achieve it... and we don't lose sight of the thin line of difference between popularity and success (measured only in terms of sales revenue). Indeed an interesting point. As the technology matures the 'silly' social media hopefully will perish and give way to a smarter one. 

Oxymoron!

Somebody the other day talked about a 'paper based system' long enough for me to realize that the word is an oxymoron... at least from the general connotations of 'system' !

Die, Pie !

In a class that I was in recently, the professor made a startling remark that shook us from our routine passivity. He declared that pie charts a very bad representation of data that are not appropriate for most situations. Yes, you heard it right! That goes against our most fundamental of beliefs... or at least Dilbert’s :)

But yes, there is sense in it. The arguments are convincing. Here is what i found -

• Steven's power laws states that visual area is perceived with a power of 0.7, compared to a power of 1.0 for length, making length a much better measure.
• Numerous experiments in visual perception have proved that angles are not easy or intuitive to interpret for the human brain. In fact, our brains are infamous for being prone to underestimating acute and overestimating obtuse angles, which is the basis for Poggendorff's illusion.

So next time you want to use the wedge jutting out of a pie because its fancy and alluring, remember that a series of bars is a lot more easier for the human brain to grasp!

Is ERP dying?

This is probably the longest blog I’d ever post, because this one’s actually an assignment (or rather a part of it) which I thought would make an interesting read. The views expressed are my own; But I may not declare this as my stand as I was actually making points for just one side of the argument. Nonetheless, post your comments if you want to disagree.

Is SaaS the next big thing in the ERP world?
Offering ERP as a service is indeed an impressive proposition and has its own set of advantages. With the service hosted by a third party, companies no longer need to wait for months or even weeks to see a working system. Not just the time for provisioning, the total cost of ownership also comes down to a great extent, as the hardware, software and the maintenance costs along with huge amounts spent on consulting and provisioning are all bundled up into the subscription costs that the consumers are well aware of in advance. Additionally, on a longer run, with a trusted third party vendor, scalability and reliability become less of a concern for growing businesses.
The advantages may be many; But the decision will be based on the answer to one pivotal question that a company has to answer- Can they trust an external private entity with such critical organizational data? As committed as the vendor may be to the security and confidentiality of customer data, it will be a huge leap for an organization, which is used to physically securing its servers and data centers with multiple layers of physical and network security, to decide to outsource critical systems that support functions like finance and accounting. Another equally important criterion that may drive this decision is whether the service supports the same level of customization as allowed by large ERP packages. It will be hard, if not impossible, for a generic ERP service to support the rich features and customizations, which are in most cases the reasons why businesses opt for the heavy and complex packages that come at a high price.
A hosted service model may be the best solution for small and in certain cases medium sized businesses that are looking for a minimal working system, at less cost, maintenance overheads and provisioning time. But the time when it can be looked at as a viable alternate to the sophisticated packages used by large enterprises is not very near.


What about SOA replacing ERP?
To look at SOA as a replacement for ERP packages is wrong at multiple levels. For starters, SOA is a software design paradigm while ERP refers to a specific software package. Bruce Richardson’s AMR research article predicted that traditional ERP packages would soon be replaced by loosely coupled applications built upon SOA principles. The reason for this is the general discontent among businesses in having to invest a lot of time, effort and money in customizing ERP applications to suit their needs. Therefore, an intuitive solution is to custom build all the required components individually on top of a basic ERP backbone. Doing so gives one the freedom of choice in deciding what their business needs and the flexibility to build it the way they want.
However, a solid ERP system still holds many points in its favor. Firstly, SOA components by no means are less complex or easier to implement than the customizations that are required on an ERP package. Hence claiming one as better than the other for enterprises, based on cost, time to provision, maintenance overheads, etc cannot hold true as a general thumb rule.  Secondly, SOA may bestow the ability to easily interoperate between various components and the data backbone; But achieving end-to-end process integrity with a custom built SOA application is much tougher to achieve than a traditional ERP system, which is known for ensuring this.
Not that the major ERP players are unaware of the existing disadvantages in their systems. SAP for example has a clearly stated strategy of rearchitecting their application in order to support SOA. The current Enterprise SOA support addresses the financials primarily to be able to customize them for industry specific standards and their future release roadmap holds a lot of promise in this area. 


Conclusion
Large ERP systems are here to stay; And for the good. Investment in ERP is a strategic decision driven by various factors. We may love to hate them for being huge, messy, expensive and time consuming. But no other alternative can offer the kind of business process integration and end-to-end visibility as a monolithic ERP system does as of today. The market landscape is evolving; Nonetheless large players like SAP and Oracle will be quick to adapt to trends: be it SaaS or SOA. 

Mordac's makeover

It should be extremely rare, if not impossible, to find someone who doesn’t find it a major pain to put up with the zillion odd rules that IT comes up with in the name of security. The passwords with special characters and sounds and what not, the firewalls that make sure that you can google for what you want but not open any of the search results, etc, etc. Are usability and security in perpetual conflict with one another? As someone from the IT side of things, I would like to think ‘no’. Such challenges at the best are great opportunities to innovate.

Why this talk all of a sudden? Not that I need a reason, but there is one this time. As I was looking at random Dilbert strips from the past to enliven a cold and gloomy afternoon, the image of Mordac (You’re right- Mordac, the preventer of information services) struck me. He looked very different  and it took some time to recognize. I had to go through a lot of other strips, to trace his evolution and see the makeover that he has undergone over the years.  Totally worth every second of it :). For some reason, i believe its not unintentional and the smart guy he is, Scott Adams must have had his own rationale - Something to do with the image of IT or the changes in technology and policies through the years? Here it is for you to see and decide.

Mordac in 2001: Old guy, too busy to care

Mordac in 2006: Angry middle-aged sadist

Mordac in 2010: Slick, youthful, evil!