The three Cs of IT failures

I have the pleasure of interacting with business and IT leaders on a regular basis.  At times I am asked to evaluate a company’s IT organization and provide feedback.  When failures are observed they often go back to what I refer to as the three Cs:  Commitment, Communication, Capability.

Commitment.

Too many IT organizations have adversarial relationships with the rest of the business.  Sometimes you will find these IT teams secretly investing in projects “behind the back” of the business, running with their own priorities instead of the ones that the rest of the organization has.  The excuse for the behavior is generally that the business does not understand the importance of the “secret” project and that IT will be thanked later….

Unfortunately, the truth is that leadership, or the lack there of, is the core problem.  Business and IT leaders must come together as leaders of the overall company, not leaders of their individual organizations, and agree to invest their finite resources in the same direction.  This is critical for success.  If you find these secret projects underway it generally comes down to one these problems:

• The CIO cannot effectively articulate the importance of these technology projects in relationship to the other business projects.
• The CIO has effectively communicated the importance of the technology investments.  However, in relation to the other business priorities they still fall short. 
• The CIO is an effective communicator but the other executives simply do not value IT projects.  This is actually fairly rare.

In all of the examples above the right thing to do is to invest in the agreed upon priorities, not to invest in these “secret” projects.  Organizations can only be successful if they are able to openly communicate and focus on agreed projects and goals.  No matter how much you disagree with the direction, you are only adding to the likelihood of corporate failure if you go your own way.

Communication

This will often go hand in hand with commitment, or the lack thereof.  The typical reasons for poor communications are often:

• Lack of commitment to the overall goals (see above).  I see too many organizations that stop communicating about key projects.  In one case I literally had e-mails and phone calls ignored because I was asking about the status of a priority project (in another company) and the IT people did not feel it was their priority, so they ignored my questions.   In the end the problem was resolved but it was painful.
• Lack of knowledge.  This goes hand in hand with capability (see below).  When you do not understand what is going on you tend to avoid talking about it.  Too often this is a reality when people are promoted beyond their capabilities.

Capability.

Capabilities, the know-how to solve problems, is sometimes the cause for failure as well.  In my personal experience this is less of an issue than the leadership challenges discussed above but it will sometimes be a part of the problem.  When you think you have issues in regards to capability, find out:

• Are there training issues? If you’re dealing with people failing to follow processes it is often a training issue.
• Are their morale/performance issues.  Are people actually capable but lack motivation?  We all know how to deal with these cases, seek improvement but know when the situation cannot be resolved.
• Are you resource challenged?  In other words, do you need more people?  Sometimes the people in the organization are capable,  you simply need to hire more people to fill in gaps.

What issues have you seen in your organization or in others?  What would you add?

John

Behind the CRM Thought Leaders: Esteban Kolsky

Esteban is another one of my favorite CRM Thought Leaders and he recently took the time for this interview.

Q.  Esteban, you spent some time at Gartner, what did you focus on in that role?  How has that shaped your current opinions of CRM?

I came to Gartner with the idea of creating a research agenda for eService (keep in mind this was in 2000 – very little existed).  I spent 2-3 years building the research agenda, the main documents (market and vendor briefs, magic quadrants, best practices documents, presentations) and rode the growth in the market from a few million dollars in revenue to over 2 billion at its heights.  Careers at Gartner are cyclical, once a market is mature you can choose a new one if you have the expertise.

Back in the days of high school and early college years in Argentina my father had a consulting practice to which he added a market research arm, including political polls.  It eventually became one of the largest ones in Argentina. I used to work there in the summer and after school learned the art of surveying.

24 years later I saw a necessity for businesses to complement the empty promises of holistic customer knowledge that CRM attempted to deliver by complimenting it with Surveys.  I wrote the first paper on Customer Feedback Systems in 2003, and later renamed it to Enterprise Feedback Management for wider market acceptance (working with Jeffrey Henning at Perseus, a pioneer in the EFM world).  The next three years were spent growing that market from few million dollars in revenue to what today is the hottest opportunity for organizations.  Feedback is the future, even if they still don’t see it like that.

When I came to Gartner my experience with CRM was from running projects and creating strategy (the end user version of strategy) for a couple of companies.  Gartner amplified that by giving me access to vendors, practitioners, and end users in quantities I could have never imagined.  My understanding of CRM changed dramatically from being a technology that you implement with some business needs attached to becoming a strategic discipline that can make or break an organization.  The Job at Gartner was the most amazing experience of my life and would recommend to anyone to work there if they can.
 

Q.  How do you see Social CRM evolving in the next 3 – 5 years?

First, I don’t fully support the concept of SCRM.  Let’s just say that I am going along for the ride.  There are two ideas behind the concept. 

First, multi-channel CRM that has been maturing for some time and is beginning to show results.  I expect we will see some cross-channel measurement and tracking deployments that will create justifications for cross-channel deployments. 

Second, the concept that Paul Greenberg calls Generation C (generation connected).  Getting people to connect to each other and to corporations – the S in SCRM.  I expect to see a quiet societal evolution that will culminate with a radical change in the way customers interact with organizations and with other customers. 

Communities are the basis for it.  Organizations will migrate from the current 1-M (one-to-many) or even 1-1 (one-to-one, personalized) setup to a M-M (many-to-many) architecture where organizations, partners, and customers will engage in common platforms to interact

It is going to be very cool what we are going to accomplish.  Before you laugh me off, remember that I predicted in 2005 that collaborative customer service was going to be a major force for CRM in 2010.  It is printed somewhere.
 
Q.  If you could do anything else with your career, something that is not technology focused, at would it be?
Medicine.  No doubts. 

The only thing more complicated than a computer is the human body.  The intricacy of the fine balance of protein chains that are supposed to react to each other if off balance is something your body does every day in millions of combinations with infinite accuracy.  Can you imagine being able to control that computer?  Or work with the brain?  Fascinating! 

Q.  I know you earned a minor in economics when you went to college.  What was your interest in economics at that time?

I had it in my mind that I wanted to be an investment banker, and read somewhere that the best place to work doing that was Wall Street.  And the best way to get to Wall Street was through economics.  In addition, I grew up in the wild economy of Argentina (we were the first country to have a currency of 1,000,000 australes – the name back then – and that is worth about 1.E26 cents now), and economics was a very intriguing thing. 

I started to read and learn and realized that what is not a guess is a wild-guess in the world of economics.  The only thing that I found interesting back then was that people move economies with their beliefs.  An early version of wisdom of the crowds, and I still believe in the power of the crowds to move mountains. 

Q.  When you are not working, what do you like to do to relax?

I don’t have any hobbies per se, but technology always interested me. I picked up my first computer when I was 16 and to me technology is a hobby.  I am a tinkerer, always looking for new ways to do things with technology, always trying new things.  I have to have the latest toys as soon as they come out and figure out how they work without the help of a manual.

 
Q.  Are you interested in sports?  What’s your favorite sport?  Favorite team?

Of course, you expect me to say Soccer (Football to the rest of the world), but I hate that sport.  The only time I watch it is during the world cup or they would take my citizenship away.  I don’t really enjoy watching sports, which is ironic if you knew some of the events I attended in my life.
 
Q.  Have you read any interesting books lately? 

Let’s see.  I just finished re-reading the first six books of Harry Potter before going to see The Half Blood Prince.  II also have a kindle with about 10-12books all the time and jump around between them.  I am now reading 1984 and Treasure Island on the kindle, and just downloaded a new book from Dr. Joseph Michelli (The Ritz Carlton Way), which I am browsing through. 

My ultimate goal is to have my own book in my own kindle and read it.  Someday.

Social CRM is about more than social channels

With the CRM Conference taking place in New York this week I wanted to take a moment and cut through some of the hype I see associated with Social CRM.  Much like Web 2.0 the phrase is already being co-opted by marketing organizations everywhere as a way of saying “we’re hip, we’re doing the social thing”.

I have, thanks to many people in my twitter community, read several articles that do a good job of describing social CRM.  However, here is my short list of what is important about Social CRM:

• Social CRM is CRM Next, a superset of what we consider today’s CRM solutions.
• CRM is not just software.  It is people first, process second, tools third. (thanks ggruber for noting my original mistake of process first, people second).
• Social CRM is not just Twitter Integration.  You must be able to engage your customer and potential customers where they are.  This includes:
  • Social networks like Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, etc..
  • Blogs
  • Your web site
  • Conferences
  • and much more…
• Social CRM will take the inputs from all of these conversation and enable all parties (the company, the customers, partners, etc..) to make decisions that lead to mutually beneficial relationships.

That’s it.  Nothing more.  The rest are details and fluff.   Do you agree?

John

Great team building event

You and  your teams are working hard, you need to if you want to be successful.  However, it’s critical that you take time to recognize the great work that everyone is doing.  While many people tell me that a job is reward enough (and people should not underestimate the value of the job they have) you need to do more for your team than simply give them a job.  Take time, occasionally, to thank them by doing something special.

On Friday night our team went out for a great team building event, something very different from our day to day jobs…..  We went to a culinary center where we split into teams and competed in a food competition, having to deliver an appetizer, dinner, side dish, and desert, all from a basket of random ingredients.

I’ll be honest with you, I am not a spectacular cook.  However, watching people create impressive deserts like tortes and mousse, meals with steaks, ribs, shrimp, showing creativity, working together to get the dishes created, was a blast.  The food was delicious and the time was enjoyed by everyone.

Will an event like this truly make us a better team?  No. This event enabled us to see our teammates in different ways, appreciate the creativity that they demonstrate in all that they do.  This event enabled us to relax and have conversations about topics other than improving clients business processes, delivering new product releases, managing system upgrades.  We were able to see each other as something more than teammates, we connected over a common challenge and we will all remember the fun we had.

On second thought, maybe the shared moments, beyond the walls of the office, will help us be a better team.   Shared experiences make teams stronger.  Learning to communicate while dealing with various challenges is also critical for team success..  We may have actually accomplished something after-all….  I guess time alone will tell.

John

Mentoring for college students

I went on a college visit today with my eldest daughter, checking out the University of Rhode Island.  My daughter is fairly sure that she wants to study marketing and we have been checking out local schools to determine who provides the best options.

My daughter, like most incoming High School seniors, has no idea of what college will be like.  Her expectations are shaped by TV and movies, regardless of the reality we attempt to provide her.  She has no clue.  When I came to Boston University from my home state of Vermont I too had no clue.  I struggled with the new location, new people, challenging subjects.  I survived but it was a constant uphill battle.

Back to the tour today…  As we toured the campus we learned about an interesting program called URI 101.  This class/seminar brings incoming freshman together with upper class mentors and professors to help them understand, and better deal with, the new world they are now a part of.  This investment in mentoring must better prepare freshman which not only benefits the freshman but the school, as students are better able to focus with college distractions and become a strong part of the college community.  Kudos to URI for this program.

This is a great program for the university and is a great program you should ensure you have in place at your company.  Do you have formal training/orientation plans for new hires?  Do you assign mentors to the new staff?  If you have the capacity consider making this investment.  It will benefit the company and your new hires greatly.

John

Behind the CRM Thought Leaders: Prem Kumar Aparanji

With extensive experience in CRM, business process management, quality assurance, and solutions & innovations management, Prem Kumar Aparanji leads the Social CRM/CRM 2.0 initiatives at Cognizant Technology Solutions. In addition to his deep interests in the social web and the free/libre and open-source technology movement, Prem also writes frequently on rice. On Twitter, where he appears as @prem_k, he’s commonly engaged in — and often leading — conversations using the #scrm hashtag for “social CRM.”
 
Prem, thanks for taking the time to do this interview.
 
Q.  We frst began chatting on Twitter when you invited me to follow the Social CRM discussions (#scrm), what has motivated your passion for this topic?

John, thank you for taking a risk with me & doing this interview. I am overwhelmed by the recognition that #scrm has got me and I am a bit pleasantly surprised too.

To understand my passion for social CRM, I need to give you a glimpse into how I got into this. It was part destiny, part innate need to get my five minutes of fame.

I have been using IRC, IM, forums, chat rooms, blogs, wikis, social networking sites and other social media & their precursors for more than a decade now since near the end of my college days.

I was lucky enough to have had the opportunity back then since we did not have much internet penetration in India in those days & it was very expensive to get a connection or even use the cyber cafe, if accessible. I was  enamored with the fact that I was connecting in real time with some students far away in a country I had only read in Geography called Romania.

Being a geek, I was not exactly a socialite in my college days & was more comfortable with the Internet & the communication possibilities – in this, I am a bit like Brent, but am neither an introvert nor an extrovert. The other aspect that drew me to the net was the ability to publish ones own content. I latched onto geocities pretty early in my Internet days. I was also the first (along with my fellow student) to setup a web site for our college back then.

So together, the ability to communicate across geographies & publish your own content, pushed me deeper into the precursors of the current social media.

After college I joined Cognizant as a fresher & got into Pegasystems, which was positioned as a workflow automation system, especially for call centers, back then. I lived in a new city as a bachelor in my own pad (I was in a hostel in college). So my social circle grew smaller still. However I was getting almost non stop access to computers & if lucky, the net too. At office. So, slowly my time was spent more & more on the net, reading, researching, experimenting and socializing. In fact, I contacted my wife over the net & our initial interactions were over emails.

But even at office the net was not for everybody. When it was made available, it got me into blogging in 2003. But then this was short lived too since websense was applied and the access though now available for all, was restricted to business related sites. I had to wait till my Switzerland stint where I had net connection at home too. When I returned to India in 2004 broadband was making inroads. In mid 2005 I got one at home and got very busy on Orkut that I had joined in 2004 just to be geeky. I had also created a community for Cognizant on a lark. In 2006 college recruits started joining the community & asked a lot of questions that freshers typically ask. These are folks not yet initiated into the corporate world and are unsure of what to expect when they join us. I helped them with whatever information I could provide and counsel them to the best of my knowledge. Over a period of time the community grew and now has over 17500 members, most of them joined as freshers – the talent market for Cognizant. I do not know if this can be considered social CRM, may be social HR?

Then in 2006 our then CKO & current Innovation head, Sukumar, launched our internal blogs that was open & available for each and every employee of Cognizant. This was when I started using enterprise social software. I took a few months to join it but then went on to become a top blogger. I was successful in creating a very lively & thriving community of open source enthusiasts in an organization that was predominantly dependant on proprietary software for its own usage as well as revenues. Siebel or Pega dont come for free now, do they?

I got into CRM & BPM QA, where we defined our own validation & verification processes to suite the requirements of the Siebel & Pega projects. AFAIK, we came with a complete testing life cycle & processes customized for CRM & BPM for the first time in India, and possibly the world too. I built a test & defect management suite built using open source tools and also built some rudimentary social integrations with wikis & forums. This was when I transitioned from a user of enterprise social software to builder of such systems.

By mid of 2007 I had built a stack of social software using open source as well as then recently launched Lotus Connections. But I had problems proving their worth in a CRM or BPM context. We did integrate Siebel with Lotus Connections, but we did not have compelling business case. That was when my quest from a business perspective for use of social technologies in CRM.

In early 2008 when I joined Twitter, I had know idea what I was gettign into. This was yet another social technology that was the hype and I had to try it out. I slowly realised that other people were also discussing about social media in the business perspective and started following a lot of social media mavens and that is how I found Brent. Then I got to know the rest over a period of time, Paul, Graham, Mitch, Jesus, etc. Brent in the meantime has created the #scrm hashtag to just collate his social CRM related tweets. I intuitively started using it & tried to get others to use that hashtag when they tweeted about social CRM. I had many doubts since I had been listening to only the social media marketing type of folks, mostly the agency people. And when I asked my doubts on #scrm they would lead to many insigfhtful discussions between the gurus! I learnt & correlated with my own experiences in both CRM as well as social technologies and my own ideas about their integration. And the rest of the story is known to you. The number of people just grew & somewhere in June or July it reached a tipping point and now its got very popular for social CRM aficionados. And since most of the folks were initiated into it by me, am fondly remembered & I am thankful to you all for remembering me.

So as you can see there was no one reason to motivate me to be passionate about social CRM in general or #scrm in particular. Good Karma you could say.

 
Q.  How do you see Social CRM evolving in the next 3 – 5 years?
 
Crystal gazing? I have never done that, but always wanted to for the fun. So I will try, but dont hold me against it if I am way off! After all the world was supposed to need only 5 computers!

Currently most businesses implement half cooked social media initiatives, ones that are limited in scope and do not fit into the overall business strategy of the organization. I am only considering big businesses here, since I do not have any experience with small businesses. The initiatives are still siloed and are not overarching. But over a period of time I see a more strategic implementation & even the internal organization structure evolving to adopt to the new ways of working. Enterprise 2.0 will happen internally in a disjoint manner in the near term, but eventually it cross paths with the social CRM initiatives and may be after 5 years they will both meld together. Well, that’s at least my wish, if not a prediction.

So I see a death for social CRM as we comprehend it currently. In its place will be something unthinkable currently, but these would remove the boundaries between employees, partners & customers. Everyone would be working collaboratively together, across geographies & timezones.

But do not despair. The investments business make now for social CRM, either for creating a strategy or defining new business processes or organizational change management or the technology implementations, will all be in good stead. Just like the traditional CRM systems are not going out of the window to incorporate social CRM, the future model that will replace social CRM will also leverage the investments made in social CRM as well as the current Enterprise 2.0 technologies.

 
Q.  If you could do anything else with your career, something that is not technology focused, at would it be?
 Hmmm … some thing in the food business. Both my mom & wife are excellent cooks. So am sure they would be awesome in running a food business. Who knows it may come to pass as yet.

Q.  If you were to start a food business, what kind of foods would you make?
It would be a not at all hoity-toity restaurant with a cafe, where many people come to socialize as much to eat. May be have a section for some romantic minded folks too. Cuisine would be mostly ethnic Indian, especially south Indian, with some north Indian and easy continental recipes thrown in. It would even have books in there for folks to read. The habit is dying thanks to Orkuts & Facebooks.
 
Q.  When you are not working, what do you like to do to relax?
 Books, movies, family. No specific order but I guess my wife will say that this is the order I follow.

Q.  Are you interested in sports?  What’s your favorite sport?  Favorite team?
Not since I went to college. I used to play football, cricket, badminton, roller skating, cycling.

Q.  I always ask Peter Thomas about Cricket as I think it’s an interesting sport.  Do you follow it at all?  If yes, what’s your favorite team?

I used to follow Cricket very passionately until a few years back. In my school days I was a spinner, but very bad with batting or fielding. I had to undergo a nose surgery due to an injury while fielding when I was around 9 years old, guess that put a fear of the deuce ball in me. Currently the T20 version of Cricket (much like what Twitter is to Blogs) has made me watch it a bit again, but that’s because the frenzy is too high to avoid them! Favorite team is easy, India of course. I don’t follow the County, Ranji or other league matches, so wouldn’t be able to even name such teams.
Q.  Have you read any interesting books lately?
I now mostly read SF&F (science fiction and fantasy) and a splattering of business books in between. I finally read the sci-fi classic Dune recently and in business I read Tribes & Tipping Point a month back.

The one-way blog… A waste of time?

As a group bloggers tend to be a bit opinionated.  We preach as if we are wiser than most people and exect our words of wisdom to be dead-on most of the time.  If this were high school we would surely be the kids being shoved into lockers somewhere.

Even with these deep character flaws I know that most of us value conversation, debate, and most of all learning.  Why then, would any of us write blogs where comments, the very core of conversation, are not easily received?

I blog here and also have been occasionally blogging at eFactor, a very good site containing great resources for Entrepreneurs.  I started blogging there for a number of reasons:

• Ego.  I was flattered that I was asked to join.
• More readers.  Who would turn down thousands of views for my eFactor articles.  I have had great viewing numbers, kudos to the eFactor team.
• The right readers.  While I have truly random thoughts on a number of topics, they tend to be on subjects entrepreneurs could most appreciate. 

The results have been great.  Thousands of views, a great team at eFactor who is truly passionate about the community, and more…  Why have I slowed down blogging there?  The lack of comments.

Community blogging sites generally want people to sign-up to leave comments.  It makes sense, of course, as their goal is to grow membership.  However, my goal is to engage in conversation, to learn daily.  My goal is not to simply have great readership view numbers.

What do you think?  Is my thinking different than yours?

John

Why are developers so bad at software estimation?

I read an article by Zeichick this morning discussing the reasons why developers are poor software estimators.  While I have my own strong opinions on the subject I would love to hear what all of you think.  I’m looking for opinions, not necessarily statements of fact so don’t hold back.

I’m looking forward to your votes and your comments.

Thanks,

John

p.s. For the record I do not think we’re really that bad at estimating software projects.

Offshoring updates: Getting rolling

After a couple of months of negotiating with a potential off-shoring partner we were finally able to come up with a reasonable agreement.  It’s one that I hope is mutually beneficial for both of us and I wanted to share with you some of the key points to get your feedback. 

• We have a six month pilot period where both of us can demonstrate that this is a mutually beneficial relationship.  If it’s not working for either side we walk away with 2 weeks notice.
• All work is done project based with up-front estimates being provided and approval required before work begins.
• I have to sign-off on all members of the team, interviewing all of them before they can join the team.  I will not keep this restriction in place forever, but it is a critical piece of starting this relationship.

We’re starting off on the right foot.  How does this compare to your approach?

John

Reflecting on startup hiring

I have been focused on hiring this week, as I’ve already discussed.  I love the entire process, from writing the job posting to reviewing resumes to chatting with people on the phone.  It’s a great way to meet people.

I read an interesting post on The “Top 7 Hiring Mistakes for Startup Businesses” which does a nice job of summing up the process;  I’d recommend giving it a read.  My only disagreement with the post is point # 4 which recommends against hiring generalist.  This is dangerous advice.  Start ups are full of ups and downs and there are times you must lay off staff to make ends meet.  It is far from ideal, in fact it’s horrible, but it is a reality.  I have seen this in every start up I have worked in (4 total) and we  were fortunate to have these jack of all trades on the team.  It made it possible to have people that would write code, design UI, and write help.  It made it possible to have people producing marketing materials, making sales, and even answering the support lines.  Would we have been better off with specialist?  Yes… If we had the money.  The generalist saved the day.

Since I’m on the subject of hiring, I wanted to share with you a few mistakes to avoid when it comes to the job application process.  I have seen all of these this week:

• Applying for a job and not including your resume.  I have received almost 40 applications through craigslist and 4 of them were sent without the resume attached.  I will not e-mail you back.
• Sending an application e-mail without any attempt at writing a cover letter.  Come on, make an effort and tell me why I should open your resume.  If you don’t make the effort, I will not either.  I received five e-mails with no message.
• Having typos in your resume.  While not a deal breaker you are failing to make a good impression.  Spell check please.
• Including the names of your references in the resume.  While not a bad thing when I know that your middle school vice principal is one of your references I have to ask myself how successful you have been in the first few years of your career.

How is your hiring going?

John