deal architect

This Bluebird shall be hung and quartered

In sales lingo, bluebirds are those opportunities that fly in the window with the salesperson not having to lift a finger. And in some cases, salespeople fumble them and kill their opportunity. The episode below, though, has my mouth agape. I have masked a few client and regional details.

So our market analysis shows a particular vendor could deliver a particular product at a client opportunity. So I convince the client to include them in the sourcing process. I call the sales person I have dealt with in past and have him introduce me to his colleagues in the client geography. It is a big, household name client, and the opportunity sounds like a good fit for them. They sign NDA, we provide them details.

Try to arrange next steps. The salesperson goes AWOL. Multiple emails, voice mails go unanswered. Could be on vacation, may have decided to pass on opportunity. But no response means my client will drop them soon.

So I reach out to the salesperson who I know and who made the first introduction to salvage the situation.

His response:

"I’m neither your messenger boy nor your coordinating body for requests processed by that region.. I’ve already informed you that the client request does not fall into my sphere of responsibility and I expect you to respect this fact.

A response is neither required nor desired."

Then he proceeds to send the client (not his as he has made clear - that of another region) a similar "leave me alone" note.

Now that is what I call "cruel and unusual" punishment to a bluebird.

Readers: If you were this salesperson's boss, how would you counsel him? If you were me, would you bother to invite this vendor to other deals?

Immigration Humor

ok, here's something to cool our passions on the topic...

Two panhandlers are comparing notes

First: Business is ok...I dream of days where at least 3 people will give me more than a dollar
Second: Wow. All I get is $ 10 bills and lots every day
First: Wow! You kidding, right?
Second: Nope...all the time
First: What street?
Second: Nice try ...actually nothing to do with location
First: Your dress code?
Second: Nope...my sign, I think
First: What? What?
Second: "Please help with the last $ 10 I need to get a return ticket to Mexico"

Fire Lake

It started off as an “uh-oh” week.

My therapist, who I saw Monday after a long time, gave me hell. For not taking advantage of his bio-mats and acupuncture needles. I wish they served those negative ions on every long flight. I suspect the needles would not make it through TSA. Unbelievably relaxing experience. Then he gave me more crap for the shape I am in - I blamed it on Delta -)

Next, reluctantly, I boarded another flight to take my son to his closest friend, my cousin’s son in Boca. The routine Southwest flight to Fort Lauderdale – usually 28 minutes in air turned in to an ordeal 4 times as long. Severe weather and congestion. The pilot told me he circled 16 times - Flightaware confirms all the fuel we wasted circling over the Atlantic. Almost had to land at W. Palm Beach because we were out of gas. In fact, the Flightware log wrongly shows we landed at W. Palm Beach. We came close but the pilot was finally cleared to go to Fort Lauderdale. Having told us he was out of fuel, you could see the nervous looks on passengers as he decided to head there.

And the biggest bummer of the week - as I was downloading a bunch of songs on Sunday could not find my favorite Bob Seger single from 1979.

But I found my personal Fire Lake here in Boca. My cousin lives in a community with a decent sized lake, and a jogging trail of 2 miles that circles it. Last night, fireworks from Florida Atlantic U and neighboring towns like Deerfield Beach and the kids from community gave the lake a 360 degree pyrotechnic panorama. Earlier in the afternoon, we had the repeat of the severe weather that had delayed us. Probably 2 inches of rain in 2 hours – and that brought its own fireworks. The poor ducks, swans, egrets, herons and the bass and catfish which make the lake home hated the human version.  But they seemed happy enough this morning. Because the lake is the fullest I have ever seen, almost at flood level.  And my therapist will be pleased – I am more than half way through my goal of walking 20 miles along the lake through tomorrow.

July is all domestic travel for me. 10 flights – 12K. All signs are it will be a miserable travel summer in the US. So I hope I can find Fire Lakes across the country – hopefully not showing signs of global warming.

Oh, and BTW found the Seger Hit here. Who would have thought Uncle Joe was a Wild Hog? Now just need to find a Long Tail site to download just that single (and may be a couple more Silver Bullets).

Readers, any suggestions for such a site? Minus the gypsy leather -)

Still No. 1

The Economist gives us a nice July 4 present.  The cover calls us Numero Uno and the editorial says "If America were a stock, it would be a “buy”: an undervalued market leader, in need of new management."

I would, however, change "management" to "mood" - and I am talking about our recent angst around immigration. We are the world's richest and most powerful nation - s0 what happened to our generosity? Why do we feel so threatened?

As the Immigration bill failed last week, Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez summarized the mood in the country - attitudes appear to have changed since he "felt so welcome" arriving in the USA as a Cuban refugee. "I hope that the day will return," he said, "when we will once again think about immigration not as something to tolerate but as something to be proud of."

The national politicians have punted the issue through the Presidential  elections, but it is too important for us citizens to ignore. I put comments on Jeff Nolan's post on the topic. I respect his anger about the process - the Senate had taken an offensive position in pushing the Immigration bill when the founding fathers had defined a defensive role for it. But now we will have hundreds of state and local authorities and in some case groups of citizens tackling an issue which clearly belongs with the feds.

So here's my July 4 wish. Fellow Americans, the issue is too important for us to just leave to the politicians. Join the debate. Immigration is our core competence - as global competition intensifies, it is critical we tweak the process, not damage it in our angst and anger.

And let me kick it off  invoking Oscar Handlin, The Uprooted - winner, Pulitzer Prize in history, 1952

"Once I thought to write a history of the immigrants in America. Then I discovered that the immigrants were American history."

Here's to those immigrants who came on the Mayflower, 4th generation immigrants and more recent ones - all who made us Number 1.

Happy 4th!

More New Florence

Posts on my other Innovation blog

Big Ball of Connectivity
Lynyrd Skynyrd - front row seats
Surface Computing
Smart Coffee Lids
Technology Innovation and Firefighting
Technology Innovation and Sports Tickets
Giant Geoglyph Ad
Wired Top 10 NA Geek fests

What do iPhones have to do with Enterprises?

Good friend David Scott Lewis takes a jab in one of his comments below about all my recent iPhone posts.  So do most of my readers - the Infosys-Cap Gemini  post readership since Friday outnumber all those for my iPhone posts by more than 5 to 1.

So what do I continue to write about iPhones? What do they have to do with enterprises? Everything.

Mobile deployment is one of the hottest innovation areas in most of my corporate clients.  MS Windows Mobile is far more interesting to them than MS Vista today. To them, the iPhone may be a mildly interesting device in itself as an enterprise platform, but they are excited about the  applications it will likely spawn and the impact of its browser and other features on competing devices.

Secondly, the scrutiny on AT&T is just as important. As I wrote in Real Finance magazine last year (see attached) , for many families that connectivity utility is greater than all others - gas, electricity etc - put together. For many CIOs, telecoms cost more than all software, hardware and services put together. As SaaS related hosting, sensor telemetry, mobile apps, global travel grow, our telecom costs will likely explode. We are going to need much more scrutiny of our telecom vendors and their bills. And telecom taxes - some of the highest on any utility.

Download telecoms_real_finance_jun_06.pdf

Take Two and Call me in the Morning

SAP filed its response to Oracle's complaint in the TomorrowNow matter. Pretty arcane legal stuff with 3 major points:

- There has been - and going forward will be a stronger "Chinese Wall" between SAP and the TN Unit
- TN, on behalf of customers, can appropriately download documents from Oracle sites
- Some of the TN downloads were inappropriate

It is "a wart on the left eye brow of an ant" defense - that Oracle is taking a small infraction and amplifying it into "rhetoric and hyperbole" as the document describes it.

SAP does take occasional shots at Oracle: " TN does not force its customers to pay artificially inflated prices to fund Oracle's future acquisition and integration of products that customers do not want or need"

SAP's case would be so much stronger if, as I have written here, TN also offered SAP customers an option. Because there are plenty of customers who "pay artifically inflated prices to fund SAP's Oracle's future development, acquisition and integration of products that customers do not want or need"

So while the two of them spat, it is good to see Rimini Street, an independent third party maintenance firm, report it doubled its client base in first half of 2007.  It is good to see NetCustomer, another firm which provide third party maintenance, present at PeopleSoft gatherings. And it is great to see NetSuite file to go IPO.

Third party maintenance and SaaS - the Rolaids and Alka-Seltzer for a decade of big ERP parties.

Update: NetCustomer announces an "Independence Day" offering - independent from the feuding two

Game Changer?

Feedback from the iPhone weekend that was...

For the functionality it can control, the iPhone gets rave (stunning is probably a better term) reviews from Scoble and Tim Bajarian. Even though it was only announced 6 months ago, in an interview Steve Jobs said they had been thinking about a mobile device for 3 years. Clearly, thought a lot. The numbers sold exceeded even the high launch expectations. The NY Times says even Asian markets which have a multi-year lead over the US in mobile functionality and deployment are taking notice.

But for the pricing it could also control, Apple has taken a significant gamble. As the NY Times article says the average US consumer has paid an average of $ 50 for their mobile device. Pricing it at 10 to 12X, will only allow it to grab 1-2% of the high-end of the global market by end of next year. In markets outside the US, as Sharad Sharma points out consumers are even more price sensitive. And vendors like Nokia and Samsung have huge installed bases. An initial teardown suggests Apple used plenty of shared iPod components. Not sure if AT&T is subsidizing the device much - as has been common in the US market to get a commitment for a 2 year contract.

For the AT&T network it cannot control, Guy Kawasaki and Paul Kedrosky summarize the negative sentiment. I just do not get AT&T. Just today it announced free WI-FI hotspot access to its broadband customers. But nothing similar for the iPhone plan in spite of its clear dependence on WI-FI till the 3G network matures. And in a USA Today interview, AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson hopes the iPhone "doesn't change (AT&T) too much"

Yes, Apple has raised the bar for devices - at the premium end of the market. The question is can it  become more mainstream? And it will raise the bar for quality and cost of our mobile networks. So, AT&T while winning the market share battle on the back of the iPhone, may lose the long term war if it "doesn't change too much". As competitors showcase their own speedier networks, and customers understand all the extra costs - texting, hotspot, roaming, others - that do not come with the 2 year deal they signed up for.

Game changer, for sure. But in some ways Apple or AT&T have not necessarily thought about.

Update: GigaOm points to some iPhone users who are already turning off AT&T

First DRM - next SIM card?

So I hear Sheryl Crow on the radio:

"...It's not having what you want
It's wanting what you've got..."

And I go, damn straight - I am going to show my 8125 some love, the one feeling sorry for not being a iPhone.

So I go download that number and another dozen from iTunes.  To spoil my 8125, I pay a 11c premium each over Walmart.com where I usually download my music. (My daughter, not yet a sourcing cheapskate, religiously buys those many each month from iTunes for her iPod).

And it hits me. Some day I would love to buy calls and data minutes by the drink from an "iCalls". That serviced by Apple. Or WalMart. Or AT&T. Or Verizon.  Or Virgin. Or Skype. Or Whoever.

Using an iPhone or a  8125. Or a Nokia. Or a Motorola.

It's taken a few years, and resistance from the music industry, but iTunes is finally moving away from DRM. It may take a few years but I would like to see Apple similarly move away from the equivalent in the telecom market - the locked SIM card.

Because when we deregulated the telecom industry that is what we wanted - not a scenario where I pay $ 25 for a measly 1135 kb download to my 8125 while roaming on the AT&T network in Austria.

Now that would make me sing with Sheryl. she in Austin, me in Austria and not have a stress attack when we open our monthly mobile bills:

".... I'm gonna soak up the sun
Got my 45 8125 on
So I can rock on..." 

 

Tale of Two Processes

So I have a small fender-bender while backing out in a parking lot last week. My left rear bumper. Her right rear bumper. May be at 3 mph.The kind the cops do not show up for. The kind that are settled 50/50 by most insurance companies. So I tell the other passenger we should both get  estimates and ideally keep it away from the adminstrivia of the insurance companies.

I should have known better. She was agitated because her car had just come out of the shop from a previous accident. I feel badly for her. But no cops are going to show up. I guess I should have asked for witnesses. But we just exchanged insurance details and drove off.

So what does she do? Files a claim next morning with my insurance company, Progressive.

Progressive calls me, records a statement, takes photos of my car. Does the same with the other driver. Concludes, as I thought, it is a 50/50 responsibility.

In the meantime, defensively, I file a similar claim with her insurance company, State Farm. Their rep calls me and talks casually ("oh, I will call you back for a longer conversation once I have spoken to my insured"). No recorded statement. No photo of my car. 3 days pass. I call to check. The rep goes - "we declined your claim". And mails me an unsigned 2 para form letter which says the same.

I have a call in to the State Farm supervisor. I am burning to see what predictive technology State Farm has that Progressive does not have which allows them to bypass recorded statements and photos. Or may be they have this lie detection technology? I am pretty sure it does not work over a phone line and probably takes more than a one minute casual conversation....