deal architect

The “Good Enough” revolution

Wired magazine says “From Digital Music to Video Cameras to Military Aircraft, cheap and simple beats perfect almost every time. It is called the MP3 effect and it will change everything”

Hmmm…3 years ago I blogged about Jetstar whose CIO described it as the 97.5% organization. “That last 2.5 percent is really where the big dollars are, where the big resourcing requirements are -- and it's like a ball and chain.”

Yup, Good enough is becoming more mainstream.

More innovation

On the New Florence blog

Techcrunch’s best iPhone apps

“Fastest growing companies of 2009”

Garmin Connect

Contextualizing Data

Born Global

Weekend Stuff: Caffeine and Ernesto

I am a one coffee cup a day guy. Preferably a cappuccino in the morning. Years of Starbucks have in recent months have given way to a drive-through the local McCafe. A one-cup-a-day drinker’s opinion does not count for a lot of beans, but I do like their beans.  And their hospitality.

Drive through hospitality? Yup, particularly Ernesto Izqueirdo’s. He hoards for me their periodic coupons. And smiles a lot. This morning he had a tie on -  recently promoted. Made my morning to see him appreciated.

Rest of family is still sold on Starbucks. They have not been introduced – yet - to Ernesto’s charms.

“Non-Linear” Services Models

3 years ago, Chandran Sankaran wrote a “Real Deal” guest blog on next-gen BPO when he started Zyme Solutions. It is good to see he has been executing on his vision and that IIM Bangalore, a reputed business school, has written a case study on his business model.

I extracted a few of Chandran’s comments from that document which focuses on non-linear ( not tied to chargeable hours) growth in services - the document can be ordered by emailing : dvrs AT iimb.ernet.in

“As we have seen from the explosion of outsourcing, there is a lot of work to be found in this model, but it comes at a price—the need to constantly hire and train ever-larger workforces, and the need to combat rising costs and increasing commoditization and price pressure at the customer interface. Down this path, once you have hired 10,000 people, you now need to keep that machine fed—which means you must find any work you can to feed the machine.

It is really hard for such a company to transform itself from a linear, people driven business to one that isn’t. Of course it can be done, but it will take
sustained, visionary leadership from the top against all sorts of near-term
growth pressure to pull it off.

We started Zyme at a different stage in the services industry life cycle. We saw the writing on the wall for the traditional services business models, and we had the luxury of making different choices from a clean slate. Early in Zyme’s life, I wrote a piece in a blog that laid out some of these choices. We have stuck with that vision. We have become a specialist with a non-linear, platform based, business model, and we chose a big market and problem area where we have the opportunity to build a large company over time.”

FCC: The Forest and the Trees in the Apple/AT&T/Google saga

In an early sign of its likely activism, the FCC asked for input from all 3 parties on the case of whether AT&T influenced Apple in its decision to reject the Google Voice application.  But the questions it asked and the comments back suggest it will be mired in the trees and lose sight of the forest.

Example: Apple  suggests its issue with Google is around software OS and UI - not a telecom issue. It does not say it, but you could well argue it is telling the FCC to stay out.

"We are continuing to study the Google Voice application and its potential impact on the iPhone user experience. Google is of course free to provide Google Voice on the iPhone as a web application through Apple’s Safari browser, just as they do for desktop PCs, or to provide its “Google-branded” user experience on other phones, including Android-based phones, and let consumers make their choices."

Then there is the he said/she said part

• Apple says it was not influenced by AT&T and that "No contractual conditions or non-contractual understandings with AT&T have been a factor in Apple’s decision-making process in this matter"
• AT&T says it did not influence Apple. It acknowledges however their agreement was "Apple would not take affirmative steps to enable an iPhone to use AT&T’s wireless service to make VoIP calls."
• Google says ...sorry you and I are not entitled to know. Redacted. Update 9/18 Google allows FCC to unmask the redacted portion and its shows Apple had rejected its application.

Is Google Voice even VoIP?

• Apple says "not sure"
• AT&T says "it is our understanding that Google Voice is not a Voice over Internet Protocol service"
• Google does not use the term VoIP anywhere in its letter

You see what I mean - a potential rat hole.

The FCC needs to pull back and look at some broader policy questions about mobile consumer experience and economics.

• why are US mobile consumers (very differently than most around the world) metered on both incoming and outgoing calls?
• why this on-going telco FUD that VoIP is cannibalizing their voice revenue, when customers are actually paying for even more expensive mobile data plans to be able to access the VoIP? (or in case of Google Voice, the time on call counts towards your mobile voice minutes)
• why does AT&T charge its customers rates of $ 1.29 a minute from Belgium all the way up to $ 4.99 a minute from Botswana (plus taxes), when local providers can give you similar functionality for 10% or less of the price (and Skype and others even cheaper)? Ditto for international mobile roaming .
• If the EU has moved to cap international roaming charges for its citizens should the US be doing something similar for its citizens?
• what percent of network coverage is truly 3G? Why not a "truth in advertising" statement which clearly shows only 30% of the US has access to 3G (the telcos do link to their coverage maps - but try squinting through the confusing colors on their coverage, partner coverage etc)
• if there are significant 3G contention issues (as many iPhone users are reporting) why are telcos selling 3G data cards to congest the networks even more?
• given that after 8 years after it started 3G deployment is still a work in progress in this country, why are telcos being allowed to glibly talk about 4G and LTE without specific rollout schedules?
• why are telcos not telling customers how much of so called 3G coverage is via wi-fi and that they will need broadband at home and a hotspot plan when they travel to get any kind of satisfactory coverage? 
• what are customers being told at point-of-sale? Many report they are being sold proprietary navigation, music, voice dialing and other services - without being educated there are plenty of comparable third party applications and services. In some cases the telcos have masked or crippled base functionality delivered by the device manufacturer to be able to sell their own services.
• why are telcos not required to show in plain English how much they are subsidizing on a handset, and how much that costs the customer incrementally over the 2 year plan commitment?

I could go on. Instead we are going to be arguing whether Google Voice is even a VoIP application.

Weekend Stuff: "Young Me"

The last few weeks have taken the family to a few college campuses - my daughter is a senior -  and I have accompanied them on a couple of the visits.

Then I see a tweet around Steely Dan's "Reelin' in the Years" from Naomi Bloom

"Wish to hell I could travel back, meet young me just one more time."

I would like to meet "young me" again - I am pretty sure I would be a campus tour student guide. Yes, the kind who has mastered walking backwards and remembering all kinds of arcane details about the history and topography of the campus.

NY Times says the campus tour and the guide are evolving. Me, I see myself continue to walk backwards. That way I could write a blog which would describe the parents accompanying their teenagers on the campus tours.  Most of them, I can see, also want to be "young me" again and enjoy all  freebies campuses offer these days -free tutoring, free note taker if you are injured, free WSJ,  free wi-fi, free movies, free study abroad. Hide for 4 years while the outside world heals itself of all its economic and environmental and other issues. Rather than be the ones writing the checks for those "freebies"

And while on the topic of Steely Dan, fans may enjoy the making of Peg, circa 1977. My roommate on campus, Walter Herbst introduced me to them. I hope he is well wherever he is.

Blueprint Blue - some good memories for this "young me"

Accenture and the Meidum Pyramid

Growing up at PW, we watched with envy (our at least our partners did) as Andersen Consulting (then Accenture) grew the leverage base – number of staff that reported up to a partner. 1 to 6 grew to 1 to 20 or better. Then they added a layer of Associate Partner and grew the leverage even more. The Pyramid kept growing stronger. Every other firm jumped in with similar structures. And recently offshore firms have taken the model to another level with their huge campuses filled with recent graduates.

So, when I saw this Accenture announcement they were trimming executive ranks, it hit me the winds of global change have been eroding the pyramid for years now. Clients really value the middle layer of staffing, and will reluctantly take the “school bus” at the bottom along with it. But senior executives who cannot show value are tough to park on client accounts and you do not need too many of them to manage staff or real estate or IT in a world of shared services.

So, you end up with the Meidum pyramid. May be odd looking, but far more aligned with the realities of today.

Weekend stuff – Donate your unused plastic for school paper and pencil

Take your unused retail stored value card (apparently $ 40 billion of them lying in wallets and drawers unused, though only a portion will have $ 10 or more unused – a requirement for this offer) and trade them at this site for a donation to donorschoose.org, The funds are used for public school projects for field trips, science learning kits and other needs.

“Speed Trap”

I found myself driving through Waldo, FL yesterday. It’s the town where AAA actually pays for road signs like one in photo warning you are about to enter a “target-rich” zone. The signs, if I remember from previous visits, must be a decade old.

Made me wonder what people in Waldo are thinking.

I mean drivers who go through are obsessed with their speedometer and brakes as the speed limits yo-yo from 65 to 55 to 45 to 55 to 45 to 55 to 65 mph in less than a  couple of miles. Which driver in their right mind would reward any local business by stopping there?

Then I thought about certain tech vendors. This blog and others warn customers they are “speed traps”. Why do such vendors think their reputation does not precede them? That existing customers have not become cautious and new customers go out of their way to avoid them?

Oh and BTW, talking about avoidances - a feature enhancement request for Garmin, TomTom, Google Maps, Bing Mobile: allow users to specify cities like Waldo they want the navigation system to literally drive around.

“People are printing just as much as they did last year”

says Mark Hurd of HP as he tries to explain the slowdown in printer revenues. “Rather than curtailing their printing behavior, businesses and people have simply opted not to buy spare ink cartridges at the same rate as they did during better financial times”

I think he is grossly oversimplifying consumption patterns and competition HP is facing. As I wrote last year in What if gas cost $ 5,000 a gallon and your fuel tank leaked? there is a shift away from inkjets, more competition from compatibles and other gray markets. And there are far more cost-focused campaigns by competitors like  Brother, Xerox and others.

So, Mark may well be right people are printing as much – but they are doing so with much better management of consumables and the source of those consumables. It’s a vastly different market HP is competing in.