As many of our longtime readers know, our company uses the Net Promoter Score (NPS) to gauge customer satisfaction. The NPS focuses on one simple question: “How likely are you to recommend MIPRO Consulting to a friend or colleague?” That’s it. That’s the central focus and the key metric with respect to how good a customer’s experience was with us.

The respondents answer this single question on a scale of 0 to 10 (0 being most unlikely to recommend again, 10 being most likely), and there is an optional comments option. Customers who score us a 9-10 are considered Promoters, Passives are customers who rank us 7-8, and customers who score us 0-6 are considered Detractors. The responses are taken in aggregate and compiled into a total organizational score of 0-100%. Anything over 50% is considered excellent. For some rough context, the best and most efficient companies running the NPS model are firms like Apple (72%), Costco (77%), Wegmans (78%), Trader Joe’s (82%) and USAA (87%). That’s the rarefied air.

(Incidentally, for more details on the Net Promoter Score, see here.)

MIPRO’s last score was an astounding 76% — falling somewhere in between Apple and Costco. We do a lot of talking on this blog about how our culture stresses doing what’s right, how a consulting company can actually be a valuable business partner, and why customer experience is at the crux of everything we do. When we see our customers give us a 76% aggregate NPS score, it’s amazing. It means we’re doing something right.

Along similar lines, in doing some research around the topic of customer surveys, I discovered an interesting article, The Six Laws of Customer Experience. It basically posits the following six axioms and their bottom line interpretations:

1. Every interaction creates a personal reaction.

Bottom Line: You need to understand your customers, personally.

2. People are instinctively self-centered.

Bottom Line: Make the shift from self-centeredness to customer-centeredness.

3. Customer familiarity breeds alignment.

Bottom Line: An external focus is an antidote to internal politics.

4. Unengaged employees don’t create engaged customers.

Bottom Line: Customer experience depends on employee experience.

5. Employees do what is measured, incented and celebrated.

Bottom Line: Don’t blame employees, fix the environment.

6. You can’t fake it.

Bottom Line: If you’re not committed to customer experience, you can only fool yourself.

MIPRO lives and and breathes many of the recommendations of the Six Laws: customer feedback is our key metric; employees are empowered; we don’t sell things, we help customers buy them; we gain a clear view of what our customers need, want and dislike to align decisions and actions; employees buy-in to what MIPRO is doing and are aligned with the efforts. The article is a quick read and I think it offers some really good insights into striving for and achieving positive customer experiences. The most striking quote in the article is this:

Profit and growth are stimulated primarily by customer loyalty. Loyalty is a direct result of customer satisfaction. Satisfaction is largely influenced by the value of services provided to customers. Value is created by satisfied, loyal and productive employees.

For many companies, especially in the consulting realm where there are so many horror stories, customer experience is something you read about in marketing material. For us, it’s in our DNA.

And our customers have noticed.

We couldn’t ask for anything more.

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More links:

MIPRO Consulting main website.

MIPRO on Twitter and Facebook.

About this blog.

I know it’s Monday. I know. But you have 12 minutes to spare, and I encourage you to spend them watching this talk by Shawn Achor about why we’ve been viewing happiness — and success — completely backwards.

Trust me. It’s a great way to start your week.

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More links:

MIPRO Consulting main website.

MIPRO on Twitter and Facebook.

About this blog.

In part one we identified some of the main reasons large PeopleSoft projects fail.  Now let’s discuss how we mitigate these risks and implement for our clients successfully.

Risk: The solution is not tied to the business objectives.

• As outlined in previous blogs, one of the first activities we conduct is the BluePrint Workshop. The workshop identifies all of the project objectives, classifies them as strategic or tactical, prioritizes all of the objectives, identifies how we are able to measure each objective (after all, if you can’t measure it, it is challenging to determine if it was met).  Finally we attach project success criteria to the objectives.  These objectives are a part of the project charter which is expected to be signed off by the executive sponsor.

Risk: Scope is not managed.

• Every project has a well defined scope change management plan with appropriate escalations and approvals.  Preferable is the approach that any change to scope once the fit/gap is completed requires a change order whether it is the smallest seemingly insignificant change or a very large change.  All changes have must be approved by project management and executive sponsorship to be fully approved for the project.

Risk: Organization is not prepared for change.

•  A full time organizational change management lead who is experienced with preparing organizations for change associated with PeopleSoft engagements should be deployed on the project.  Organizational change preparedness is so much more than simply communication in that is requires its own discipline, expertise and dedicated skillsets.

Risk: Project team skills are not appropriate and unavailable.

• During the BluePrint Workshop we identify the required resources required from both the client and MIPRO.  For each client resource we identify the very specific role and responsibilities along with the percentage of time they are required for the project.  This information again becomes part of the project charter.  Additionally, as outlined in the charter, these are the resources required to achieve the objectives of the project and be on time and on budget.  We conduct a sanity check of resources against project objectives.  We expect the executive sponsor to support the project and ensure the identified resources are available for the anticipated timeframe.

Risk: Executive Sponsorship is not strong and not visible.

• The role of the executive sponsor begins immediately with the BluePrint Workshop where the executive sponsor outlines why the project is important to the organization and identified corporate level objectives (that we then tie to the project objectives).  The executive sponsor signs off on the project charter along with his/her expected role.  We put the executive sponsor into the change process, issue escalation process and organizational change process.

Risk: The system is not sustainable by the client.

• Knowledge transfer is the cornerstone of our SD3 implementation methodology.  Not only do we staff with the best and brightest, but we align resources directly to the appropriate client counterparts.  Our design allows for the MIPRO team to understand the client business and for the client to understand PeopleSoft.  By the end of the project we expect our clients to know as much as we do about PeopleSoft so they can sustain the system.  Additionally we ensure shortcuts are not taken on testing and training.  This is achieved if we plan appropriately upfront and execute well.

Risk: End users are not trained

• There are multiple factors used to ensure end user training.  The first is a training strategy developed up front, early in the project.  We also recommend a training lead to develop and lead the training efforts. UPK is a very valuable tool to help ensure end users are trained.  We time end user training to coincide as close to go live as possible.  As noted prior, with the proper planning we do not find ourselves in situations where the timeline is crunched and the project is looking for ways to cut corners (which usually results in training being reduced).  Having the right staffing, dedication to training and planning allows us to ensure end users are trained appropriately.

When titling this post, I reminded myself of the ancient Chinese curse, “May you live in interesting times.”  Actually, what we strive for at MIPRO are uninteresting implementations and upgrades.  So, that said, before beginning a project, one should always review the following:

MURPHY’S LAWS OF COMPUTING

1. For every action, there is an equal and opposite malfunction.
2. To err is human… to blame your computer for your mistakes is even more human; in fact it is downright natural.
3. He who laughs last probably made a back-up.
4. If at first you don’t succeed, blame your computer.
5. A complex system that does not work is invariably found to have evolved from a simpler system that worked just fine.
6. The number one cause of computer problems is computer solutions.
7. A computer program will always do what you tell it to do, but rarely what you want it to do.
8. When computing, whatever happens, behave as though you meant it to happen.
9. When you get to the point where you really understand your computer, it’s probably obsolete.
10. The first place to look for information is in the section of the manual where you least expect to find it.
11. When the going gets tough, upgrade.
12. When you need to send an email quick, that’s when the modem wireless router won’t connect!

So, how does one avoid as many of these real – though humorous – problems and maximize success?  One word:  planning.  Throughout the rest of this post, you will see numerous examples of platitudes, conventional wisdom, and corny advice – all of it real and all of it worth emphasizing.

So, plan your work and work your plan.  Sound reasonable?  You’d be surprised how many projects fall into the ready, fire, aim category.  In fact, if you don’t have time to do it right, how are you going to find time to do it over?

Projects should be planned.  In fact, the planning phase of a project should consume 10-15% of the total cost and effort of the entire project.  I’m sure your momma once told you that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.  Or, as the Cheshire Cat told Alice, “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there.”

So plan already.  In fact, if you plan well enough, you can probably find someone else to do the work (just kidding!).  But, laying out the plan well, and then measuring how your project conforms to the plan, is the surest method to ensure success.  In fact, if you are serious about planning and measuring, this is one time that no good deed goes unpunished will probably not come to fruition.

For those of us with some engineering background, remembering the 2^nd law of thermodynamics is always critical:  increasing entropy, or while the quantity of something may remain the same, the quality of it deteriorates gradually over time.

Projects are like this, in spades.

Without a good plan (and good measurements against that plan), and serious scope control, projects tend to drift, slow down, get more expensive, take too long, and generally offend the sensitivities of the very stakeholders who are paying for – and should be receiving the benefits of – the project.  In fact, most projects end up living up to this maxim:  all’s well that ends.

So, if we know that everyone’s enthusiasm will wane (definitely a 2^nd law truism) and management will become impatient (you know that the frequency and severity of system crashes are in direct proportion to the importance of the audience), being able to demonstrate and document where the project is (and where it will be in X days) will mitigate against our bosses saying about our project, ‘After all is said and done, a heck of a lot more was said than done.’

It’s interesting that in my legal world, we are ethically bound when taking a case that we must (a) be knowledgeable about the subject matter, or (b) study up to become knowledgeable fast enough not to prejudice our client, or (c) associate in some other lawyer who is knowledgeable.

How does this apply to our enterprise IT projects?

Well, how often does your organization actually do a project like this?  If it’s an upgrade, when was the last time you successfully performed the upgrade on your own?  If it’s a new system – financials, human resources, payroll, maintenance management, etc. – when was the last time you successfully implemented a complex software system that affected all or a large portion of your organization?  Are you knowledgeable enough about the subject matter?  Can you do the project with OJT fast enough?  Or will you require assistance from someone who is knowledgeable?

It first comes down to planning:  what you want to do, when you want to do it, what resources it will take, how long will it take, and, last but certainly not least, how much will it cost.  For sure, unless you have both the plan and the expertise to work that plan, you should re-read the Murphy’s Laws at the beginning of this post.  Remember, if there is a possibility of several things going wrong, the one that will cause the most damage will be the one to go wrong.  And the corollary adds the word “first” to the end of the sentence.

In conclusion, plan, measure, plan, measure, and make sure you took plenty of time to plan.  I planned for this article to run two pages as I draft it here in Word.  Ahh, I can change the font size to ensure that it’s two pages:  if I declare “success” loud enough, my project is a success!  With proper preparation, YOUR project can also be a success.  Remember, Murphy was an optimist….

Questions, comments or feedback about this? Don’t be afraid to email me.

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More links:

MIPRO Consulting main website.

MIPRO on Twitter and Facebook.

About this blog.

Prior to jumping into the world of PeopleSoft consulting, I spent many years implementing accounting solutions, as well as conducting instructor-led training for those applications.  In my years, I had some great classes, and I had some that just plain left me scratching my head.  Was it me?  Probably not: nobody except the lead developer knew the software better than me.  Was it my delivery?  I didn’t think so: I resonated with people and their survey forms said so.  Was it the material?  Okay, maybe….sometimes accounting software doesn’t compare with the world news, or the latest celebrity gossip.

It took me a while to recognize characteristics of the adult learner and how the dynamics of the people in class impacted the whole class.  I can’t remember who shared this with me, but my world became crystal clear when I recognized the three types of learners – explorers, vacationers, and prisoners.

Explorers are there because there is a world waiting for them and they want to know about it.  They hang on every word looking for opportunity to be better, do better, or just make things better.

Vacationers are there because they just want to get out of their day job.  It is an interesting break from the mundane.  Needless to say, their heart is not always invested in what you are trying to say or do.

The last group is the prisoners.  These are people who are forced to be there.  Imagine their reaction when their boss said “I need you to attend this training”.   It should come as no surprise when you catch these people doing everything except what you want them to do.

I share this with you because I am often perplexed about the amount of time spent in today’s world in meetings, conference calls, planning sessions, etc.  The next time you have to run a meeting, maybe you should do a quick inventory of who is in the room and what category they fit into.  Chances are pretty good that the prisoners won’t volunteer (or accept responsibility) for anything, much less grab an idea and run with it, and the vacationers will agree to anything as long as it does not create more work for them.

As a consulting company, we work with many organizations implementing new software.  That often means adopting new systems, implementing new business processes, and challenging the client to see things in a new and different way.  Of the three types of people I have described above, who do you think tends to perform well in these scenarios?  And more importantly, how many of these people are on your project right now?  If the answer is “not enough,” you may have just found who is killing your project.

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More links:

MIPRO Consulting main website.

MIPRO on Twitter and Facebook.

About this blog.

I heard a radio ad a few days ago that has been bugging me, so I’m going to riff on it here. Sorry, no links or cat stories this week.

In the radio spot, the voiceover guy says in closing, “We do what’s right for the customer, not what’s right for the company.”

The second I heard that I bristled. I thought, what a myopic approach not only to running a business, but also communicating with your customers.

What bugs me is the notion that these two ideas are separate, living in two different ideological silos, one completely unaware of the other. Silo one says, “Let’s do what’s best for the customer, screw the company.” Silo two says the opposite: “Let’s take care of the company, but nevermind the customer.”

Look at Apple, Amazon, Zappos: do we not have enough modern-day examples of how the radio ad’s thinking is totally wrong?

Let’s put our Steve Jobs hats on for a second: if you take care of your customers — build a great product,  provide a great service, create relationships and not just transactions — the company’s going to be just fine. Actually, way more than fine. It will thrive.

This idea is something that you hear a lot of companies espouse, but dig a bit deeper and it’s not always put into practice. Why? Gotta watch out for the company. Someone in some meeting realizes that taking care of the customer means looking at your products or services and maybe totally revamping them, because they’re not the best for the customer. And when that happens, the idea gets resistance and often dies on the vine. It gets relegated to a nice marketing tagline at best.

To us, it’s always been this: you watch out for your customers and clients, and the rest will come. There are the normal constraints of reason, of course — a smart company isn’t going to satisfy irrational, opportunistic customers — but for most cases, there’s little need to think that taking care of the customer and the business are different things.

I can’t tell you how many times we have told clients that they don’t need implement module X, or they really don’t need custom interface Y, or that idea Z would wind up stressing their internal teams despite netting us a nice engagement contract. Each time, the customer has come back to thank us for shooting straight with them, even when the money/deal/project was ours for the taking.

It’s about doing the right thing, all the time, without exception. The money we have lost by walking away from those projects has come back to us threefold when our customers refer us to other opportunities with colleagues or partners. Every time, it’s, “You guys shot me straight, and I was blown away by that. I want to introduce you to a colleague of mine who has a big PeopleSoft project in the hopper but is sick of being burned by other consulting companies.”

You take care of your customers, and you take care of the business. Same time, same thing. No difference.

As for me personally, I’d be wary of any company whose advertising talks of it being an either/or proposition. It’s crazy enough to think it, but it’s another level of crazy altogether to articulate it.

Anyway, there’s my riff. Have a great weekend, everyone.

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More links:

MIPRO Consulting main website.

MIPRO on Twitter and Facebook.

About this blog.

A Clear And Present Danger

How often does it happen that an organization moves from an old legacy ERP type system to a new, up-to-date ERP system and it fails to meet expectations and to improve system and business process efficiency?

Too often!

One of the primary reasons is that the project is way underfunded for the scope and somehow management has decided that there is no need for the costs to be what other successful companies have spent and they set forth to “do it on the cheap.”  Major strategic projects, such as a new ERP implementation or major ERP upgrade, which are underfunded, under staffed, and given an unrealistic time frame to complete, almost never work out.

Cutting corners and saving money on such strategic projects, which are a foundation for the company to support how they manage the business,  may not be the best idea.  The ROI is to be realized after a powerful system is implemented successfully and everyone’s expectations are met.  Doing it right means:

• More cost upfront on the project, but also a maximized ROI for the long term, as in 10 to 15 years, every year.
• Significantly higher system performance and business process efficiency realized, every year.
• Smooth transition from the old to the new system.
• Easier Business User buy-in and happier end users from the get-go.
• Much less maintenance and support costs, every year.
• Minimizing the need for customizations and making future upgrades easier and cheaper.

Given that most organizations do have to deal with finite budget limits on such projects, the best strategy is to plan what scope you can do, within the limits, while “doing it right.”

A Best Practice would be not to take or introduce unnecessary risks, which seldom work out.  Most often one cannot do all of the scope that one would like to do in Phase 1 due to the budget and time available.  What you can do to is develop a long-term, phased-in roadmap, based on business priorities, where the key stakeholders will be able to see when their needs will be taken care of.  OK, they may not get the new system functionality this year, but they will be happier to see that it is at least on the list to be done next year, or the year after.

With new technology, it is often said that “You don’t know what you don’t know.”  If you choose to do it on the cheap, you are most likely going to find out what you don’t know the hard way — and sooner, rather than later. What you may save on the front end, you will likely pay the piper for many years to come.

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More links:

MIPRO Consulting main website.

MIPRO on Twitter and Facebook.

About this blog.

Say what you want about Cuban, but I love his no-BS approach. Here are his 12 rules for startups, and it’s hard to argue with any of them. He comes out of the gate with two I find to be the cornerstone of every successful business:

1. Don’t start a company unless it’s an obsession and something you love.

2. If you have an exit strategy, it’s not an obsession.

Read the whole thing over at Entrepreneur.com.

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More links:

MIPRO Consulting main website.

MIPRO on Twitter and Facebook.

About this blog.

Dan Tynan, writing for CIO.com:

For the past decade, ERP has been the poster child for IT projects that overpromise and underdeliver. It was notorious for painfully complex rollouts that took years to implement, required massive customization, and were often only partially realized. Billions of dollars were spent just trying to get ERP systems to work as advertised.

Now ERP is back — and not just for big enterprises looking to refresh legacy systems. According to surveys by Forrester Research, roughly one out of four SMBs and enterprises plans to either upgrade their existing ERP solutions or implement a new one over the next 12 months.

We see this too. Every day.

What’s different? Isn’t ERP’s sometimes-broken promise giving way to the new promise of SaaS and cloud computing? Not just yet — ERP has been around forever, and in that time companies have learned a great deal. They now fully understand what works, what doesn’t and what mistakes to avoid. They’ve gotten their technology down, integrations minimized and streamlined, and they’ve tied smart business processes to their operations.

In short, they’ve grown up. Learned a thing or two.

Our clients tell us that while they’re looking at cloud apps, they have too much tribal wisdom wrapped up into their existing applications and business processes. Many of our clients have just now put in their first real cut at business intelligence and are using that information to make actual, real-world, daily business decisions.

Their ERP systems may be old, and they may not look as shiny as some of the new cloud platforms offered up by Oracle and other vendors, but they work. And organizations understand them completely. That’s why they aren’t afraid of expanding or upgrading their ERP systems — because finally, they’re delivering the promise that they whispered years ago.

In short, they’re finally humming.

It takes a brave soul to scrap something wholesale that is finally working in favor of something that, in essence, represents a great deal of starting over.

What’s your take? Does Tynan’s article sound like you?

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More links:

MIPRO Consulting main website.

MIPRO on Twitter and Facebook.

About this blog.

Josh Ong, reporting for AppleInsider:

Microsoft’s head of software design for Windows Phone has admitted that the company completely redesigned its mobile operating system platform as a response to Apple’s iPhone and the “sea change” it created in the industry.

Joe Belfiore, one of the first engineers brought to the new Windows Phone team when it was formed, made the comments in an interview with The New York Times.

“Apple created a sea change in the industry in terms of the kinds of things they did that were unique and highly appealing to consumers,” he said. “We wanted to respond with something that would be competitive, but not the same.”

According to the report, “once the iPhone exploded into the marketplace, Microsoft executives knew that their software, as designed, could never compete.” In December 2008, Microsoft’s then head of mobile engineering called a meeting to decide the fate of its aging Windows Mobile software. Seven hours later, Myerson and his team decided to scrap the OS and start again from scratch.

One could argue extremely cogently that everything that has happened in the last five years in the mobile market was in response to the iPhone.

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More links:

MIPRO Consulting main website.

MIPRO on Twitter and Facebook.

About this blog.