Thomas Otter

Over the last 24 hours or so I have been busy with SAP’s management changes, lots of press, SAP and client calls and discussion with Gartner colleagues. Expect a formal Gartner position and client guidance to come out shortly.

In the meantime, I’ll give you my personal take.

I listened to Hasso Platter’s conference call, while sitting in the Frankfurt airport. I’m on the way to a presentation on SAP roadmaps for clients in Manchester (my slides now need some adjustment).

Hasso Plattner made it clear that it was his decision to change the CEO and he took some of the blame for the customer and employee dissatisfaction issues that have dogged SAP over the last couple of years. He even managed to go the offensive, positioning the new technologies his labs are working on. In a sense it was vintage Hasso. He spoke with passion, clarity and determination.

Today’s announcement highlights the vital role Hasso Platter still plays at SAP. SAP has been unable to find a successor to fill his boots. We will need to wait and see if the return to the two CEO model will work as it did with SAP’s founders. It is a tougher challenge this time around.

SAP succession plans were shook up several years ago when Shai Aggasi left SAP, and it has yet to really recover them.

SAP’s problems are as much internal as external. SAP’s workforce need a big hairy engineering goals and the room to innovate and take risk.  The field want to sell innovation, not maintenance. SAP needs to cut away the layers of bureaudisney that have stifled innovation moving from lab to customer. Growing margin doesn’t excite software developers or customers. SAP management seemed to forget that. It took Hasso to remind them.

SAP’s challenges are bigger than simply replacing the CEO. It needs to recover its geist. Today was the first step, but Hasso alone can’t restore SAP to its past growth.  The new co-CEO’s,  Jim and Bill, have much to do. This is complicated.

My colleagues, Ray, Allen, Mike, Mark, Andrew, Mark and Van,  are all over the iPad.  Ray’s posts are particularly thought provoking, as he looks at the strengths and weaknesses of the device. There is also lots of commentary on the web, and the consumer electronics bloggers have discussed its every detail.  I’m not going to talk about how cool or not the device is, how naff the name is or what impact it will have on the media industry, or how Steve Jobs dresses. Yet again, Apple created a Great Expectation, and managed it profoundly well.

I was thinking this morning about what impact this device could and should have on UI design. Most enterprise applications are bound by keyboard centric design thinking, basically what I call  navigation donuts. Almost every enterprise application I see is trapped in the amber of the table layouts that haven’t really fundamentally changed since the first screens appeared over 40 years ago.

Andy Bitterer commented in a recent note. (Gartner clients click here)

What would happen if Apple built a BI product? Users would probably love it and actually use it. There is hardly another company in any IT market that is considered a synonym for great design and usability. While Apple has not been known for going after the enterprise software market and rather focuses on consumer products, Apple could still easily use its visualization know-how to create an “iDecide,” “iReport” or “iAnalyze” product that was at least as attractive as those from the best-in-class vendors today. In fact, other BI vendors could learn from Apple how to build end-user-friendly and intuitive applications.

For all the talk from enterprise application vendors about user centric design and building engaging applications, the enterprise software world could really do with an Apple moment.

Many of the applications I see would not be out of place in Miss Havisham’s Mansion. The Enterprise UI design clocks stopped some time ago, and the usability wedding cake continues to rot.

So unchanging was the dull old house, the yellow light in the darkened room, the faded spectre in the chair by the dressing-table glass, that I felt as if the stopping of the clocks had stopped Time in that mysterious place, and while I and everything else outside it grew older, it stood still….It bewildered me, and under its influence I continued at heart to hate my trade and to be ashamed of home.

image from http://chantalpowell.wordpress.com/2008/07/31/miss-havishams-table/  a fascinating blog.

“I began to understand that everything in the room had stopped like the watch and the clock, a long time ago.” “Everything within my view which ought to be white had been white a long time ago, and had lost its lustre, and was faded and yellow.”

Andy Bitterer is something of a polymath. Analyst, photographer, musician, and now video reporter.

Watch his performance here.

The video made me laugh, but it does raise an interesting question for enterprise software companies. Many of the ERP and BI vendors talk about growing their user bases to reach the casual user.  Judging by this video, they have some work to do. In this industry we assume that people are interested in technology, just because we are. Most people aren’t.  

I received a review copy of Andrew McAfee’s Enterprise 2.0 just before Christmas, so I added it to my book pile as an extra Christmas present. Thank you Andrew and the publisher, HBS.

In reviewing books, I have a simple test. Would I spend my own money on a copy? This book passes that test.

There are a goodly number of reviews on the web already, so I’ll keep this review relatively short. I found Jon Ingram’s review to be particularly useful.

The book is clearly written, well structured and it is refreshingly devoid of hype (other than the slightly jarring tagline). McAfee writes well, aiming at a management rather than a geeky audience. It is an easy but nutritious read, there is little technical jargon yet it doesn’t over-simplify or seem condescending when explaining technology. More importantly It isn’t just preaching to the enterprise 2.0 choir, nor it is the Iskra for the Enterprise 2.0 revolutionaries, whomever they may be.

In the same way that technologies and new business practices have changed businesses in the past, so to are new technologies and business practices changing things today. McAfee shows through 4 case studies how collaborative technologies are changing the way we work, and will work.

The term emergence is important to Enterprise 2.0, and McAfee explains this thoroughly. I particularly liked this sentence, Emergence is the appearance of global structure as a result of local interactions.

The section on ROI is also very useful, and not just for Enterprise 2.0 projects. He goes through the limitations of ROI models in some depth, even though he uses baseball examples, it makes sense.

It was also good to see that Argyis and Schön’s Model 1 and Model 2 theory of behaviour, Granovetter’s The Strength of Weak ties, and Burt’s Structural holes were referenced in the book. I’m of the view that we need to be applying more organization design and sociology to business and IT thinking. There are many models in the sociology that we could use to better understand organizations and how they change.

McAfee also references von Hippel and John Allen Paulos. Both are essential reading.

I would have liked to have seen a further reading section. The HBR book site  wasn’t available when I looked today. This book would be well served by a supporting web site, emergent or otherwise.

The final 2-3 pages of the book are key. They link the Enterprise 2.0 proposition back to his broader research (with Brynjolfson, Zhu and Sorell) into IT and competitive difference. He briefly makes the case for how Enterprise 2.0 can improve ERP, and I wish he had made more of this argument in the book.

With regards to the relevance and the extent of emergent technologies and social software in an enterprise context, let me take the liberty of pointing to the blogs and / or research of several Gartner colleagues, for instance Anthony Bradley, Jeff Mann  Andrea DiMaio  Carol Rozwell, Nikos Drakos and Adam Sarner.  For Gartner clients have a look at The Business Impact of Socialization: Real-World Measurable Results. This collection of research highlights 16 examples of social computing that were not open-ended, undefined experiments, but rather were purposeful engagements resulting in actual measurable business benefits. (client access needed)

Somewhat selfishly, I would have liked to see more on the HR implications of enterprise 2.0 in the book. I’m doing a lot of work in this area at the moment. I have recently published a collection of short case studies on social software’s impact in HR as part of 2009 Business Impact series and I field a lot of calls from HR and IT who are looking at the HR implications of social software, both behind and beyond the firewall. In 2008 I published a note, The Business Impact of Social Computing on HR Data. (client access needed) but here is an excerpt.

 Social computing’s impact: With social computing, we’re seeing a new set of HR-relevant data: volunteered data. Employees, managers, executives, applicants and customers share HR-relevant data, but only in ways that suit them, rather than in the structured format that is required by traditional HR processes. People are sharing data to get things done and to socialize. Examples include employees maintaining internal blogs, in which they discuss their skills and interests; workgroups and document sharing via wikis; and social networks. In addition, networks such as Facebook and Xing often offer richer, deeper insights into career history, skills, qualifications and business interests than traditional HR skills and career history databases do. Organizational changes often are reflected in LinkedIn before they appear in the transactional HR management system.

I made this strategic planning assumption then.

By 2012, volunteered, HR-related data will exceed mandatory HR data in volume and value. Leading HR organizations will invest more time and effort in managing and exploiting voluntary data than they spend on mandatory data.

This is similar to the points McAfee makes about imposed, emergent and competitive advantage.

I look forward to reading his next book, and continuing to follow his academic research. As a final aside,  McAfee cites JP Rangaswami in the book. I’d suggest reading his blog. JP is high up on my list of people who I’d like to have write a book.

Thanks again, Andrew, for the copy.

Thinking of strikes, it is easy to imagine coal miners, railway workers and automobile assemblers with shop stewards quoting Trotsky, Gramsci and Marcuse, and brandishing a well worn copy of the Ragged Trousered Philanthropists. This is a naive and foolish stereotype. As this example from Yahoo! shows,  industrial action is alive and well in the high tech industry. (watch the video here)  Valleywag reported on a strike at Yahoo in France.

Carol Bartz’s lacerating eccentricity may captivate Silicon Valley, where she’s cutting costs left and right. Not so in Europe: When Yahoo tried to shut down operations in France, workers made this surreal, defiant video. And went on strike, naturally.Their point: Yahoo made about 1 million euros per worker from Yahoo France alone last year, and used to hype how “it’s important to have [locally] concentrated engineering activities… to innovate” in France, where it would base “one of [its] most important centers in Europe.” Yahoo France’s engineers will now stop working until Yahoo agrees that they shouldn’t have to stop working. At least they’re fact checking the internet company’s hype along the way.

(thanks Valleywag).

There is a  lesson for all “global” high tech companies. HR practices that work in the US don’t necessarily travel well. I have quite a bit of research in the pipeline on a related topic. I have seen global HR projects derailed because of worker and union opposition, forcing system redesigns and huge delays.

I’ll predict that the software industry will face increasing collective and industrial action. Social software makes it easier to organize and motivate around an issue, and create a strong collective even without the presence of a union. It makes it easy to reach the broader public too.  We have seen the power of the disgruntled customer using social media to mobilise support and opinion. Employees have access to the same tools and media. Executives of global software companies will need to get a lot more savvy about global HR issues. Gosh, that degree I did in Industrial Relations might actually be useful one day.

Just 30 minutes north west of Johannesburg there is a Safari Park. You can see giraffe, zebra, wildebeest, many birds, and lots of buck. Lions laze under the trees. You drive your car slowly by, counting off the animals you see.

5 hours north east of Johannesburg there is a Game Reserve. You can see giraffe, zebra, wildebeest, many birds, and lots of buck. Lions laze under the trees. You drive your car slowly by, counting off the animals you see.

Now, speak with a gentle but excited whisper, “Every now and again the lioness gets up and chases a zebra. The zebra must run fast or die; the hunter and hunted. Darwinian. “

I’m no David Attenborough, but you get the point. The game reserve is bigger than Wales and Denmark. The animals are totally wild. It can cruel and wicked.

At the Safari Park, things are a bit different. The Lions are fenced into an enclosure, about size of 5 football fields, and after a while you forget the fence is there. Once you leave, the lions get fed by the safari park staff. The other animals live a comfy existence in their own zone.  Yet it all looks realistic, if you haven’t seen the real thing. If you only have an hour it is great, because it can take a week to find that tree that the lions are lazing under if you are in the Game Reserve.

Checking software references is an important part of evaluating software.  Just remember the difference between the Safari Park and the Game Reserve. Is the vendor feeding them through the fence, or are they chasing their own dinner?  Don’t just ask the lion, ask the other animals too.

image via Sam and Ian on cc flickr.  Thanks!!

photo via cc flickrstream of PMarkham. Thanks cc attribution

I had big plans for my blogroll on my personal blog. It was going to be that place where I had a list of my favourite blogs. I was going to constantly update it. I really got a kick when I first started blogging if someone added me to their blogroll. It felt good. Blogrolls were hip.

I realised the other day that my blogroll hasn’t been updated since about 2006, roughly when England last won a rugby match.  I did a quick on-line scout and saw that most of my blogging mates were in the same boat.  Manual blogrolls don’t work unless you have Chuck Norrisesque discipline.  Let’s face it, updating the blogroll is one of things you planned to do, but then you got offered tickets to a Violent Femmes concert or realised that your tax return was late, or the dishwasher needed unpacking.

This reminds me of the state of many HR / HCM systems.  Lots of brave visions of up to date succession plans, and real time goal management. Lots of cool fields, but all too often, too few people actively maintaining them.

Now, some clever blogs, instead of blogrolls, have a link to recently read posts/feeds. Although a handpicked blogroll that is perfectly up to date would be lovely, I’ll take a slice of an active feed reader above an obsolete blogroll any day.

To those building and maintaining HR systems,perhaps it is time to move beyond thinking of  cool ways to capture stuff and start deriving HR data points from other business processes. It is time for a switch of metaphor: Start thinking twitter streams and feedreaders, and less about blogrolls.

If I want to know who is the top salesperson in mid-size accounts in France, I shouldn’t be asking someone to fill that it in a screen. Some clever software should get the CRM and Finance systems to tell me that.  Top salespeople at risk of leaving, how about a list of those who recently closed a big deal, and now have thin pipelines?  Top producing developers? check the bug reports and code forums.

I want to see a demo of a talent management system that doesn’t have any data entry. Don’t show me cool UIs first, show me what you can do without capturing new stuff.

No, Time, thou shalt not boast that I do change:
Thy pyramids built up with newer might
To me are nothing novel, nothing strange;
They are but dressings of a former sight.
Our dates are brief, and therefore we admire
What thou dost foist upon us that is old;
And rather make them born to our desire
Than think that we before have heard them told.
Thy registers and thee I both defy,
Not wondering at the present nor the past,
For thy records and what we see doth lie,
Made more or less by thy continual haste.
This I do vow and this shall ever be;
I will be true despite thy scythe and thee.

Sonnet 123

thanks again to the sonnet a day.

I’ve been trying to get to grips with in-memory databases. Seems the bard beat me to it.

(image via wikipedia, thanks)

Thy gift, thy tables, are within my brain
Full charactered with lasting memory,
Which shall above that idle rank remain,
Beyond all date, even to eternity:
Or, at the least, so long as brain and heart
Have faculty by nature to subsist;
Till each to razed oblivion yield his part
Of thee, thy record never can be missed.
That poor retention could not so much hold,
Nor need I tallies thy dear love to score;
Therefore to give them from me was I bold,
To trust those tables that receive thee more:
To keep an adjunct to remember thee
Were to import forgetfulness in me.

Sonnet 122.

Thanks to the sonnet a day site.

I’d been meaning to write this for a while, but Jason’s post prompted me to stop surfing the interwebs and jot it down.

Data has three sources.

1. It is interfaced or integrated in from somewhere else.

2. It is derived from other data. For example net pay is derived from gross pay via some sort of tax calculation.

3. Someone types it in

I use a metaphor to describe this in an HR context. It is 1790. You want to build a factory. The first thing you do is seek out a consistent stream of strong flowing water. And that is where you build your factory.

flickr cc attribution license. thanks to LaoWai Kevin.

Too many HR systems, especially talent management systems are deployed without any real thought about how the data will get into these systems. The value has to exceed the effort of maintaining the data otherwise they end up empty. So when you deploy that system to track employee goals, look at yourself in the mirror and ask the question. How will the data get into this system?  Think carefully about transaction data, but think even more carefully about organization data.

if you don’t have a plan, that system will gradually fall into disrepair.

flickr cc attribution license thanks to Andre Mercier. (many excellent pictures, so hard to choose one.)