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.

I don’t have a story from my bizarre childhood to tell you, but I will say I am listening to Nickelback on Spotify right now and really digging them. You know, the Nickelback that everyone comes out of the woodwork to say they hate, completely, wholly, entirely, even though they have no idea who Nickelback is and what most of their stuff is like?  Yeah, that Nickelback.

I don’t get it. No band bats .1000, and Nickelback surely isn’t an exception. But they have plenty of good pop-rock tracks in their catalog. Their lyrics aren’t horrific, cobbled-together semi-thoughts all the time. Sometimes they actually approach poignant, even though nobody’s going to group them in with rock poets like Rush or Dream Theater.

So seriously…why the hate? I haven’t seen a band receive so much vitriol since this one time I watched a rap band try to cover Poison’s ‘Fallen Angel’ in a pretty divey bar. The lead singer got hit with a half-eaten cheeseburger and was told to go home. Not kidding.

Anyway, I’m trying to shut down many of my open Chrome tabs right now (33 tabs open at the moment), and the best way is to share some stuff with you so I can close them in good conscience:

The most expensive 14 car pile-up you’ll ever see.

Here’s your White House petition to repeal the stupid regulation that says ‘no electronics in airplane mode’ during takeoff and landing.

Instantly redecorating a living room with Video Mapping. Amazing, and insanely useful if it ever trickles down to the public.

Have a good weekend, everyone!

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More links:

MIPRO Consulting main website.

MIPRO on Twitter and Facebook.

About this blog.

I’d like to add something that stems from my personal experience to the commentary my colleague Dave Cohune wrote a few weeks ago:

K-12 organizations can realize cost savings though wise investments in IT infrastructure.   An example of this is might be to enable the improvement of business processes and decision making, thereby enabling management to provide the district with accountability of financial oversight, compliance, and planning/management of assets.

Desire among US taxpayers to maintain (and improve) quality K-12 education translates to an opportunity for District IT organizations to invest in efficiency-enhancing enterprise software solutions.

While the desire among US  taxpayers to support their K-12 education systems may be there, unfortunately politics sometimes gets in the way of good sense, solid logic and business case justification.  It seems that leaders, such as school board members, are at times more interested in keeping their positions than doing the right thing and frequently do not have the business background to understand that by investing smart dollars today (if they are lucky enough to have any resources to invest) they can actually realize a return on investment (ROI) in a reasonable amount of time.  If they did understand this, they’d they see it would actually save teachers’ jobs and enhance education in just a few years.

Example: In 2009, a K-12 district in Florida had money set aside for capital expenditure that was funded and targeted for a Business Process Improvement (BPI) project. The money was there and the only way it could be spent was for this activity, which had been approved.  The funding could not be transferred and used for anything else.

The project had a significant ROI and also would have made a big difference in automating and enhancing the district’s performance to education compliance requirements.  The administration executives did their due diligence and supported the project to their school board for approval, who immediately turned it down.  Reason – no matter what the business case and future benefit, the board was concerned that any spending at that level would not be politically well received, while laying off teachers at the same time.

The concern is understandable, but should be explainable to their taxpayers and local constituents.  The decision not to take advantage of the opportunity likely costs a significant number of teacher’s jobs in a year or two out in terms of funding.  Also, by manually having to generate the required information, the school district had to employ more administrative resources, when they could have funded even more teachers instead.

Unfortunately the board did not see it that way. This year the district would be realizing the ROI, however instead they will likely be laying off another some 50 teachers.

So while desire is often present for a K-12 IT initiative, be very mindful of the fact that political realities must be overcome before the project sees the light of day — especially in regions where any spending is seen as a negative.

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More links:

MIPRO Consulting main website.

MIPRO on Twitter and Facebook.

About this blog.

Recently, it was reported right here on this blog that I purchased an iPad. For those who know me, yes, this was a significant event. Now that a few months have passed, I’d like to offer an update.  Because here’s the backstory: even though I live and breathe PeopleSoft and ERP and professional services, I’m notoriously suspect of technology when it comes to personal matters.

Let me explain as best I can.

After purchasing the iPad in January, I think I opened it four or five times by the first of March. I didn’t have my MIPRO email available to me, I hadn’t downloaded any applications other than USA Today and I was carrying it around in my briefcase along with the laptop that I was hoping not to travel with anymore! So now my briefcase is twice as heavy which was my primary driver for buying the iPad to begin with – lighten the load! Meanwhile, of course, Apple has now released a new version and mine is ‘old’. (Oh well, as if I would know the difference.)

Last week I attended Oracle’s 5th Annual Maintenance Summit, and we had our demo on an iPad so we could easily take the demo anywhere! During some downtime at the conference, my colleague was able to get my work email, my calendar and some applications on my personal iPad and also gave me some navigation techniques. I was very excited!  The magic tool became usable to my luddite self!

So when I left for business travel this past week, I was determined to only use my iPad while traveling. Guess what happened? All went well, but I did have my laptop as a backup – just in case. Not sure when I will be sufficiently confident to leave the laptop behind on short business trips, but I will certainly keep trying.

If it’s anything like my cell phones, it may be awhile. I’ve had one with AT&T and one with Verizon for about 10 years. I’ve carried them both all the time – just in case.  I also still carry a Franklin Planner along with me, just in case the calendars on my laptop and iPad decide to fail at the same time in conspiratorial fashion.

Wait.  In writing this, it dawns on me that maybe I’m not a great candidate for new technology.  Maybe my inherent distrust for personal technology doesn’t stem from the technology itself, but instead long-standing patterns  and biases that are hard to break, even in the face of evidence that they can be broken safely.

Mea culpa, I guess.

I love my new iPad, but don’t take away my laptop just yet.  And don’t even think about touching my Franklin Planner.

What about you?  Is anyone out there a Just-In-Caser like myself, as I am anticipating?  Or do I need meds?  Let me know in the comments.

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More links:

MIPRO Consulting main website.

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About this blog.

If you’re anything like me, you totally nerd out over what to read, checking editorial and user reviews until your ISP shuts down your connection.  With so many books to choose from and so much review information to obsess over, wouldn’t it be nice to have yet another review source to consider?

Of course it would.  Enter The Staff Recommends, a site where publishers send books to the editors of The Staff Recommends and if the editors like it, it gets featured and the publisher pays a bit.  If the book is a dud and goes nowhere, nobody gets anything.

From their About page:

So what you’re saying is that The Staff Recommends is kind of like the part in the bookstore where the employees put little cards on the books saying what they liked and why, only online?

Yes, that’s what we’re saying.

There’s only one book live right now, which I suppose can be parsed as a testament to their editorial standards.  Or relative newness.  You choose.

Regardless, I love ideas like this.

(Via DF)

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MIPRO Consulting is a nationally-recognized consulting firm specializing in PeopleSoft Enterprise (particularly Enterprise Asset Management) and Business Intelligence. You’re reading MIPRO Unfiltered, its blog. If you’d like to contact MIPRO, email is a great place to start, or you can easily jump over to its main website. If you’d like to see what MIPRO offers via Twitter or Facebook, we’d love to have you.

More culture posts.

We’ve all been in the situation before when we’re not exactly being honest with ourselves and embark in a discussion (debate?) in which we take an opinion for reasons other than to profess what we believe to be the truth.  What are some of the signs that your opinion may be a signal of loyalty and ability rather than your desire to estimate truth accurately?  Robin Hanson has a very good list:

You find it hard to be enthusiastic for something until you know that others oppose it.

You have little interest in getting clear on what exactly is the position being argued.

Realizing that a topic is important and neglected doesn’t make you much interested.

You have little interest in digging to bigger topics behind commonly argued topics.

You are less interested in a topic when you don’t foresee being able to talk about it.

Read the full list on Hanson’s blog, Overcoming Bias.

(Thanks MR)

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MIPRO Consulting is a nationally-recognized consulting firm specializing in PeopleSoft Enterprise (particularly Enterprise Asset Management), Workday and Business Intelligence. You’re reading MIPRO Unfiltered, its blog. If you’d like to contact MIPRO, email is a great place to start, or you can easily jump over to its main website. If you’d like to see what MIPRO offers via Twitter or Facebook, we’d love to have you.

More nerdery posts.

“The future ain’t what it used to be.” (Yogi Berra)

Yogi was half right.

The future looks bright and innovative when you consider the latest wave in technology, which is cloud computing. But the more I learn, the more it seems like the future is what it used to be.  Nothing new under the sun, right?

In a recent seminar I listened, politely, to a couple of young, up-and-coming SaaS project management stars speak about the great methodology to implement their products.  What they showed were reams of Word documents that stepped through their processes.  Again: a series of Word document pages laboriously detailing how and why to conduct a kick off meeting, followed by more, even less titillating documents that drill down on how to conduct a workshop on a singular feature of the product.

They ensured the audience that they can excitedly await more and more detailed text documents that can show everyone knows how to deploy each and every facet of their products.   And here’s what I thought: this tome of Word documents is a giant parallel to yesterday’s great mainframe Word Perfect documents in the library of Software Methodology Documents Left Unread.  It just baffles me that companies with so much innovative spirit in their technology are not innovative in their approach to creating a new way to convey how to implement their solution. I profess I don’t have the answer, but there must be a better way that matches the creative solution of your technology offering.

Right?

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MIPRO Consulting is a nationally-recognized consulting firm specializing in PeopleSoft Enterprise (particularly Enterprise Asset Management), Workday and Business Intelligence. You’re reading MIPRO Unfiltered, its blog.  If you’d like to contact MIPRO, email is a great place to start, or you can easily jump over to its main website.  If you’d like to see what MIPRO offers via Twitter or Facebook, we’d love to have you.

More SaaS posts you should read.

Matt over at SvN points me to the keynote address from this year’s MIT Sports Analytics Conference, which, on the surface, probably isn’t the first thing you’ll be Googling for in the morning.  But despite it being moderated by Michael Lewis and featuring an a pretty good panel, it gets very interesting at about 20 minutes in.  That’s the point when Houston Rockets GM Daryl Morey, in fairly blunt terms, explains how he cannot stand working with people who don’t stand up for their own thoughts and opinions:

You have to have a culture where there’s no bad idea and people aren’t afraid to bring them up. I want the people who work with me to have very, very strong opinions. And I get really mad if I make the first argument against and they’re immediately like, “Oh yeah, maybe you’re right.” That drives me nuts.

This reminds me of the paradox of the wannabe progressive company: its leaders say they want people who will openly disagree and defend their opinions, but when that happens, egos are bruised and positions threatened and reputations tested.  Touchy-feely concept goes out the window when it gets down to bare metal.  The fact is most companies say this is how they operate because it sounds good in press releases and HR magazine interviews, but really can’t abide it in daily practice.  I’ve seen it time and again, and you probably have, too.  And if you say it as a talking point, it’s not part of your culture, and if it’s not part of your culture, you have no business saying it.

This is why I work where I do: when the partners here say to speak my mind, they mean it.  How often do you hear about a new employee being taken behind closed doors and told to speak up more, not less?  That happened to me, right here at MIPRO, about four months into my job.  And it was due: my previous job taught me political maneuvering and the fine art of watching what you say, neither of which are recognized talents here at MIPRO.  This company, for better or worse, embraced the idea that healthy dissent provides a litmus test for idea and opinions, and so far it has worked marvelously, without penalty, every time.  Yes, things can get heated and not all opinions are winners, but everyone has a chance to speak their piece.  When all is said and done, we walk out of the conference room unified, completely behind the chosen approach.

The best part?  This mindset trickles down to clients.  As a consulting company, we pledge to tell our clients what they need to hear, not what they want to hear.  Since we’ve been in business, clients have praised our ability to do this, sometimes in emphatic terms, more than anything else.  And when you’re paying for our expertise and guidance, isn’t that what you expect?

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MIPRO Consulting is a nationally-recognized consulting firm specializing in PeopleSoft Enterprise (particularly Enterprise Asset Management), Workday and Business Intelligence. You’re reading MIPRO Unfiltered, its blog.  If you’d like to contact MIPRO, email is a great place to start, or you can easily jump over to its main website.  If you’d like to see what MIPRO offers via Twitter or Facebook, we’d love to have you.

“I think sometimes that being overly type-sensitive is like an allergy,” said Michael Bierut, a partner in the Pentagram design group in New York. “My font nerdiness makes me have bad reactions to things that spoil otherwise pleasant moments.” One of his (least) favorite examples is the Cooper Black typeface on the Mass sign outside a beautifully restored 1885 Carpenter Gothic church near his weekend home in Cape May Point, New Jersey. “Cooper Black is a perfectly good font, but in my mind it is a fat, happy font associated with the logo for the ‘National Lampoon,’ the sleeve of the Beach Boys’ ‘Pet Sounds’ album and discount retailers up and down the U.S.,” Mr. Bierut explained. “I wouldn’t choose it as a font for St. Agnes Church even as a joke. Every time I go by, my vacation is, for a moment, ruined.”

via Design – Mistakes in Typography Grate the Purists – NYTimes.com.

Good to know I’m not alone in this.