deal architect

Book speedwriting?

I asked followers on LinkedIn how they would use 4 months of sabbatical credits like I have accumulated over two decades at Deal Architect. I got plenty of suggestions including this from Andre Blumberg, CIO at Hong Kong based CLP who I have profiled in earlier books

“Four months? You’d write two books, easily.”

Andre is an ultra-marathoner so I am flattered by his standard of speed, but my style of book writing depends on a large number of conversations with executives. I have said often if my voice is more than 10% of a book, I have failed. My blogs, Instagram and other social media is where I share plenty of my voice. In our advisory work, clients get plenty of my voice. But books that I help write are for story telling by innovative executives. And arranging such conversations takes plenty of time.

But surely, having 7 earlier books helps shorten writing time? It does, up to a point.

I recently shared details of two books my team has helped with in the last 18 months – Moment of Service by Darren Roos, CEO of IFS and Business as Unusual by Thomas Saueressig and Peter Maier of SAP.

Moment of Service involved about 50 conversations with IFS, customer and partner executives resulting in 1,000 pages of transcripts, slides and research material and took my team about 4 months. We delivered a draft of 300 pages. The IFS team added their voice and trimmed that total content down to  a very readable 200 pages.

Business as Unusual involved about 150 conversations resulting in 2,500 pages of transcripts and other materials and we delivered a first draft of 400 pages. Took us roughly 6 months. SAP and Rheinwerk Publishing added material, trimmed other and ended up with a 300-page book dripping with innovation stories.

So could we have done either much quicker?

Firstly, it absolutely helps to start with a premise and a pool of potential interviewees. Darren Roos had a pretty crisp definition of the Moment of Service theme. IFS had gone through a branding exercise a few months earlier. Most of his customers and partners were comfortable with the concept. Still the logistics of identifying who to interview, arranging the recordings , transcribing them, getting approvals is a labor-intensive process.

The SAP book subject matter was much more complex. It covers 8 “megatrends”  - Resilient supply networks, Future of capital and risk, Integrated mobility, Everything-as-a-service, Sustainable energy, Lifelong health, New customer pathways and Circular economy. We were looking for very innovative customers who were pushing the boundaries of low-carbon energy, breakthrough medicine, new financial instruments, differentiated store experiences, new business models etc. We were looking to interview a broad range of specialty research firms and partners beyond SIs. We ended up with  strategy firms, Bain and Co and Accenture Strategy,  the mobility services firm, MHP which is part of Volkswagen, the industrial robotics firm, Beckhoff, the Advanced Services Group at Aston U and the energy research firm, Det Norske Veritas among others. Frankly, without SAP’s amazing industry and global reach we would have not got that variety with other vendors even if had taken 3x the time.  

But hasn’t technology and automation helped make the process speedier? Absolutely, in the data collection process. No way could I have traveled to 35 countries to meet with interviewees especially with pandemic travel restrictions. Zoom and Teams were a massive help. So was being able to listen to the digital files of interviews as if they were podcasts on my walks and via Bluetooth in the car. Helped me decide what to excerpt from each.

Tech has also helped make easier the graphics that IFS and SAP developed for their books. Printing and Distribution has similarly become more efficient. SAP Press is offering the Business as Unusual book through many more booksellers around the world and in more eBook formats

Given all the advances in AI, voice recognition and transcription technology has surprisingly not improved much. We have so many accents, acronyms and jargon in tech world that machines just cannot keep up with Tina, who has transcribed most of my book interviews for the last 5 years. And the SAP book in particular has whole bunch of chemistry, geology. medicine, automotive, banking and other lingo in addition.

Same thing with editing. I like to cite the experience from the Godfather movie. Coppola shot 90 hours of film and delivered a 2-hour version to the studio. The studio asked him for more and the released version was about 3 hours long – still less than 5% of what was filmed! Two of the 6 editors won Oscars for their work. 50 years later, I find editing is still an art form. Good editors are worth their weight in gold.

So 2 books in 4 months? Sorry Andre, like I told you if I was to use 4 months of sabbatical time to write another book, it would be fiction. About an analyst who is in the middle of international intrigue and chaos and saves the world. Jack Ryan if he had stayed an analyst.

If the Mrs. would allow me to spend 4 months looking like this nerd 😊

Burning Platform: The year in industry events and travel

In the 81st episode of Burning Platform, we host Jon Reed of Diginomica and Brian Sommer of Techventive to discuss the good and bad in industry events we experienced this year and on the state of business travel.

I carved the recording into two videos.

Part 1 covers the slides all three of us presented. Jon kicks it off at 0.59 “I felt before the pandemic events were largely what I would call legacy and not creative enough. And I felt the same as we went into virtual events that most of those events were really passive viewer experiences that really weren't very engaging and very good. Have however, seen a little bit of progress.” He provides a score card in his slides on how hybrid events have evolved.

Brian, starting at 12.00 is entertaining as he describes the trials and tribulations of post-COVID travel. He has several hilarious slides and also useful advice on what events should aim to deliver for customers, prospects and partners (and also how partners could be effectively using the events) – and yes, us analysts.

I start at 24.08. I had much less travel than either Jon or Brian last couple of years, But I made up with over 700 virtual conversations – about 200 for books by execs at IFS and SAP my team has contributed to and another 500 in various video episodes of Analyst Cam, Burning Platform and New Normal. I also describe the events I was at in-person and some of my travel experiences.

Part 2 is more of discussion between the 3 of us. We cover what we like and don’t like about keynotes and guest speakers, whether we prefer dedicated analyst summits or use conferences, need for expanding ecosystems and their presence at events, showcasing differentiation products and business models and lots of other areas event planners will find helpful

 

 

Burning Platform: IFS Unleashed in Miami

In the 77th episode of Burning Platform, we host Oliver Pilgerstorfer, CMO of IFS, a repeat guest of ours

He provides a sneak preview of their upcoming Customer Event, Unleashed scheduled from October 10 to 14 in Miami.

We discuss their decision to go with Miami when most tech vendors prefer Vegas or Orlando or the Bay Area for their events. We cover some of the agenda – it will center around the theme of “Moment of Service” which CEO Darren Roos does a great job articulating. Every business has multiple, fleeting moments where it either delights or disappoints its customers. Darren is passionate about orchestrating your assets and your people to deliver those Moments of Service. And his customers do so in complex, multinational settings.

We discuss the show floor which will showcase IFS’s growing ecosystem. Finally, we discuss some of the fun items they have planned.

As I tell him, Miami is an inspired choice. While we are partial to the West Coast of Florida having lived here for 3 decades, Miami is a vibrant, cosmopolitan city. With his guests a short walk from the city’s famous beaches, Oliver and his team are putting together a compelling agenda to match that competition.

Feel the excitement in this short session. As he says it will be great to get the band together again. And join me in experiencing it.

See you in S. Florida!

Verticals at Dreamforce

I am looking forward to the Salesforce event next week, and expect to be spending time in the  “Industries” Zone in the Dreamforce Campground. My FitBit is going to be pleased - the Campground is 40,000 square feet in size!

 I hope to get updates with several execs who have presented on their sectors in the Analyst Can series over the last few weeks.

• Eran Agrios, Financial Services
• Amit Khanna, Health and Life Sciences
• David Fan, Communications
• Sunil Rao, Consumer Goods
• Nasi Jazayeri, Public Sector

Under embargo. I was briefed about a new one this week. Will run that after the event.

I also have a post-Dreamforce recording planned with Jujhar Singh, EVP Industry Clouds.

Look forward to meeting several of you there!

Analyst Cam: Buday Thought Leadership Partners

As we have moved to virtual briefings, I have increasingly been excerpting short video segments (with permission) as part of my Analyst Cam series.

This time it is Bob Buday of Buday Thought Leadership Partners. For over 3 decades, he has been helping organizations think big at CSC Index, Bloom Group and now at the firm he leads.

We have a really invigorating conversation around “blockbuster” ideas which have influenced so many of us including Michael Hammer’s reengineering, Clayton Christensen’s disruption, CEB’s Challenger Sale concepts and several others.

He shares techniques which work (and do not work) when it comes to developing what he calls “momentous” ideas. Many of the ideas he has helped up shape end up as management books and influential articles in publications like the Harvard Business Review.

Nicely done in under half an hour. It is a nice primer to his new book Competing on Thought Leadership.

The New Polymath: The SAP version

I don’t like to play favorites across my books, but many readers say they really liked my 2010 book, The New Polymath.

The book bio read

“A Polymath—the Greek word for Renaissance Man—is one who excels in many disciplines. From Leonardo da Vinci to Benjamin Franklin, we have relied on Polymaths to innovate and find creative solutions to the problems of the day. How would these Renaissance men and women manage our current technology bounty? Which disciplines would they choose to focus on? Would they work on the architecture of next-generation green cities, or focus on nanotechnology?

As our challenges have grown exponentially we need to bring together da Vinci, Franklin, and many more. The New Polymath is an enterprise that excels in multiple technologies—infotech, cleantech, healthtech, and other tech—and leverages multiple talent pools to create new medicine, new energy, and new algorithms.”

I had a call with a SAP banking customer this week which took me back to the book:

    “He: Vinnie, a lot of these terms I have discussed will be new to you. So happy to revisit and clarify if we need to.

    Me: Believe me, as part of this project, I've gone from the auto industry and all the changes there (electrification, sharing, autonomy etc.) to healthcare to supply chains…

    He: it's fascinating, is it not? SAP is at the center of it all.”

I could have told him about also learning about a dazzling array of new business models,  carbon capture, cold chains. green hydrogen, molecular recycling, robotics in food service, reverse logistics, pharma track and trace and more. And the underlying tech it takes to support them including augmented reality, blockchain, computational chemistry, digital twins, not to mention hardened, high-reliability computing.

Over the last few weeks, SAP has allowed me to “walk the halls” with its executives, its customers and its partners. It has been demanding - not jet lag, but clock lag from Teams and Zoom sessions at all hours with folks in 20 countries so far - and trying to keep up with so much coverage SAP has across verticals, geographies and business processes. I replay the conversations as podcasts when I drive, I have nearly 2,000 pages of transcripts to mine.

Here we are in 2022 and we are worried about climate change, COVID and Ukraine. If you get away from all the political noise, our businesses are thankfully still focused on new medicine, new energy, and new algorithms.

And the realization that we cannot do it alone. I heard a story about how a high-level auto executive came to visit Christian Klein, CEO of SAP as supply chains were being disrupted and told him “‘We have a couple of challenges in our business which I cannot solve alone and I don't think we can solve it with just one software company.’ That was the genesis of the auto industry network, Catena-X and since then SAP has been thinking about networks for many more industries.

“We cannot do it alone” is showing up in SAP’s rapidly changing ecosystem. Long dominated by SIs, I have talked to strategy firms, Industry 4.0 operational partners, startups in the SAP.iO Foundries accelerators. The ecosystem also has digital agencies, NGOs, outcome-based outsourcers and more.

Not every customer tells me “SAP is at the center of it all”. Many of them talk about S/4 or BRIM or hundreds of other SKUs in the product portfolio. But then you see the forest for the trees - what the broad SAP family is working on. It about so many edge applications – it’s not just about new medicine, new energy, new algorithms, it’s about new everything….

Demanding it has been, but as I felt when I wrote the book in 2010, most of these conversations make me go “wow” – and optimistic about the state of the world.

2022 will be MASSIVELY different!

Welcome back. Hope you had a relaxing break and are ready for a hectic, very different 2022.

Actually, “very different year” has been our annual guiding principle and reflects Deal Architect’s business model. Every year our revenue stream varies and we have learned to be flexible. Let me explain that first, then my belief why 2022 will be truly different.

Deal Architect will turn 18 this year. Back in 2004, I wrote our mission statement:

“We are a boutique advisory firm and content provider which believes in massive leverage. We use our intellectual property in small teams for disproportionate payback for our clients. Our focus is not just IT – we will also focus on energy, health, space and other STEM areas. Our consulting and research are symbiotic - our consulting clients benefit from our research, and our readers benefit from the practical, field feedback from our clients"

The mission has not changed much at all. The blend of our advice and content has, however, changed dramatically.

Our advisory work tends to be ahead of the curve. We started advising clients on India and other talent sourcing. In reverse, we started to tell some of them to rebalance that by the end of the decade given the quality and inflation issues we were seeing. We started helping clients with cloud computing and SaaS evaluations as early as 2005. Now, we are helping clients rethink business processes to reflect massive changes in every vertical industry sector and take advantage of a wide range of digital and automation technologies from robotics to wearables to machine learning. BTW, you don’t hear much about our advisory work. Some of our clients show up in book case studies or in some of our videos but I would never violate their trust - leave it up to them to share what they are comfortable publicly sharing.

Our content has similarly gone through significant change. We started off with two blogs – New Florence and Deal Architect. They have since cataloged nearly 13,000 entries in IT, but also in energy, food, space, travel and many other dimensions. We have published 7 books. Increasingly, we are helping narrate books for C level executives, even considering non-fiction. Hey, if John Grisham could make attorneys exciting, surely someone can do that to tech industry analysts, no? 2 years ago we started videos in the Burning Platform and Analyst Cam series. We have already recorded over 200 episodes.

Both for advisory and content we rely heavily on partnerships with other professionals. For each book, I have leveraged a transcriptionist, an editor and a design wiz. Most of our advisory projects are similarly with other small, highly driven teams.  

We are always being asked to evolve our services and content. We have considered launching a “lite advisory” service – by the day or even by the hour. Content wise - people have asked me how about a podcast? How about a Substack newsletter? 

All worthwhile, but to me it always comes down to form v substance. Each new delivery format takes time away from the substance. And substance wise, this year will be massively different. Here are some of our guiding principles for 2022

• Rebalancing of private and public sector

Going back to days of Keynes, government deficit spending has frequently revved economies out of recessions and other crises. But nothing like the pandemic has seen. In the US alone, our national debt in 2020 and 2021 increased over $6 trillion. That is unhealthy and addictive. Worse, it has given our politicians and bureaucrats almost autocratic power. I see a course correction and a lot more energy back in the private sector. In 2020, I ran a video series where I interviewed C- level execs. It was called “Acrobatics during the Crisis”. We expect to similarly catalog in 2022 private sector heroics and consult with them as they reshape broken supply chains, rebalance their work forces and rethink processes for a changed world.

• Upheaval in most industries

Every industry learned to do something very different during the pandemic. Telemedicine in healthcare, distance learning in higher ed, micro-fulfillment in retail, last mile delivery in food service, virtual open houses in real estate among them. These will get baked into the business fabric for these industries. Climate change is having a similar impact – the circular economy has become a design principle in product design. Digital transformations are allowing for new business models like servitization in many industrial sectors. It is a hugely exciting or frightening time, but no industry will escape untouched. 

• Ascendancy of customer service

One of the biggest casualties of the pandemic has been customer service. I have coined the terms “COVID copout” and “Brexit BS” for some of the excuses we have all experienced. It is universal - in our travels, at auto dealers, at financial institutions, at dining establishments. Here is my reaction – for the next couple of years, businesses which can provide consistent. predictable service while managing price inflation will ABSOLUTELY gain competitive advantage.

• Man-machine rethink

Five years ago I wrote Silicon Collar. The book looked at how automation – machine learning, robotics, unmanned autonomous vehicles, white collar bots, and exoskeletons – was changing the nature of work in over 50 settings – in accounting firms, on the basketball court, in banks, in the oil patch, in R&D labs, on shop floors, in the warehouse and many more. The conclusion “we are no longer white, blue or brown collar workers – we are all Silicon Collar workers since technology is reshaping all our workplaces”. The man- machine balance shifted significantly during the pandemic. People are also talking about the “great resignation”. I am also seeing the “great migration” and the “great retirement” as tens of thousands relocate to my home state, Florida. Many are technically not retiring but starting new careers. And like our quarterback, Tom Brady who at 44 continues to break the laws of aging, are inspiring others to extend their careers, and are attracting surround talent along with their own moves. Companies have long ignored age as a dimension in their diversity goals. I expect that to get rethought.   

• Further content fragmentation

For my blogs, I have always read a portfolio of magazines and watched a wide range of non-political video channels. The pandemic and climate change focus has got us addicted to lots of COVID and weather and energy related news. I am seeing lots of citizens question government propaganda, media bias and social media censorship. The old Watergate “follow the money” guidance is alive and well when it comes to trust about information.  As a result, information fragmentation has massively accelerated - I have been amazed how many fringe platforms and media personalities have gained market share.  The good news is I tend to depend more on primary research and balance out a wide range of information sources. The more the merrier.

Long and short, I believe 2022 is the true start of a brand new decade after a couple of aberrant years. As Brady likes to scream “Let’s Go” and  that is now part of his new Hertz endorsements.

Burning Platform: Acronyms, Buzzwords and Customer Realities

In the 56th episode of Burning Platform, we host Jon Reed, a co-founder of Diginomica.

He is a fellow Enterprise Irregular who blogs and videocasts on enterprise trends. One of his most popular, regular features is Enterprise Hits and Misses. He is incisive, snarky, funny all at once.

We start off dissecting a Gartner slide from their recent Symposium, a list of 12 of what they call "Top Strategic Technology Trends for 2022" like Hyperautomation.  We use that as a launching pad for a discussion on what we think customers are looking for after the turmoil of the last 18 months. Jon makes a great point - he wishes he could see Gartner's hype cycle around each of their 12 trends.

We discuss the need for application/business process vision in addition to architectural evolution, and the need for OT (operational technology, especially industry specific) in addition to an IT focus.

We also discuss virtual events in the industry. Jon has been particularly forceful in pushing for an evolution in that format.

We also bring into the conversation a fellow analyst, Ray Wang and his new book, Digital Giants. Ray had presented about it in the Analyst Cam series here. 

It is a peek into conversations that us market watchers often have when we are away from tech vendors and buyers. Actually both of us are pretty well behaved - we can be far snarkier when there is no camera in sight:)

Thinking outside the Magic Quadrant

First an apology, I could have it titled this post as well with the Forrester Wave or the IDC MarketScape.

Next a mea culpa, I unleashed a few MQs during my tenure at Gartner in the 90s. However, in the years since I have become much more aware of the disconnect between tech buyers and vendors about the value of such tools.

When I was at Gartner, its revenues came largely from buyers. In the run up to Y2K, my colleagues and I did thousands of calls with buyers actively making ERP decisions. Coming up with the MQs - the leaders, challengers - was pretty easy with that market driven data. We did not have a composite win/loss analysis but we could make some pretty educated guesses about market share and momentum.

In today’s much more fragmented IT marketplace, especially since analyst revenues have become more vendor centric it must be so much more difficult. Analysts have to poll vendors for what we used to gather from market signals. You hear vendors whisper in frustration at how much effort it requires on their part.

The bigger issue is how buyers use MQs or Waves. It is just the tip of a spear. It is used to come up with a short list of vendors to evaluate. Detailed RFPs, demos, site visits, reference calls, lengthy negotiations are far more influential in the final decision. Nearly 15 years ago, I wrote about the ‘1,000 points of influence’. With growth of social media, the influence points have only grown. In composite, they help buyers derive their personalized "Interactive MQ".

Also, once they have decided on a vendor, most buyers don’t pay much attention to that MQ category till their next purchase - that could be a couple of decades. Oh, if a vendor drops precipitously from the Leader to the Niche quadrant, they would be concerned, but such moves tend to be glacial.

Vendors, in contrast, get their microscopes out to measure how much they moved from one MQ to the next. It’s fodder for press releases. I especially enjoy the Triple Crown announcements. “We are a leader in Analyst A, B and C’s tools.” I want to ask them - and how many buyer steps above did that eliminate?

MQs and similar tools also tend to reinforce silos in analyst firms. That can drive what I have described as Addressable Market Myopia 

There is a whole community of very committed Analyst Relations folks at vendors. Ignoring MQs would be suicidal, but does so much talent need to be invested every year on the MQ/MarketScape process?

Some of them will ask me what would you do differently. I am happy to help them think outside the box - ok, the square - in how to directly help their sales colleagues in their pursuits. How to help their companies think about and present their products differently and much more creatively. How to look around the corner - the analyst intermediary.  

No press release needed.

ERP - Generation Next

I read Jon Reed's  Diginomica interview with Rondy Ng, Senior Vice President, Applications Development at Oracle. He cites some very large cloud ERP customers - Bank of America/Merrill Lynch, FedEx, Kroger and Albertsons. Encouragingly, he also cites plenty of global coverage. Good to see that traction.

But what functionality have they deployed? I saw General Ledger mentioned a couple of times along with procurement and analytics. But no mention of manufacturing, logistics, banking/brokerage functionality, micro-fulfillment, or reverse logistics. I have heard Larry Ellison similarly use the ERP moniker in earnings calls and event keynotes, but never really discuss any operational functionality. Leads me to ask: Is that the new, shrunk definition of ERP - core financials and possibly human resources?

While I was pondering that, I found myself going down memory lane to 1995 when I joined Gartner. Gartner had coined the ERP term and they had made a conscious effort to bring in several new recruits with business process expertise. Tom Ryan, as part of the ILS service, brought warehouse management and broader logistics experience. Chris Jones, part of CIM, brought process manufacturing. As part of AAS, I brought financial and hr expertise from years at Price Waterhouse. There were several others who focused on PDM, MKT and other functional areas. We definitely contributed to a proliferation in TLAs but I know for a fact we drove vendors to sharpen their process breadth and depth.  Talking of TLAs, I had coined one - AMM - Addressable Market Myopia for vendors who were narrow in their functional reach, but did not dare propose it to Gartner censors :) 

When I left in 2000, I was confident Gartner would expand its ERP focus beyond manufacturing sectors. After all, in most western economies, nearly 3/4 of jobs were in the service sector. And each has unique books of record - insurance needs those around policies and claims, health care had unique clinical and compliance requirements and so on. The manufacturing sector itself was morphing significantly. The products are smarter with embedded software and sensors. The plant was becoming more autonomous. Asset management was no longer just about calculating depreciation for the CFO. It is about predictive maintenance, more sophisticated servicing via digital twins and augmented reality.

But Gartner has only inconsistently focused on this functional evolution. Many of the process experts they had hired in the 90s were gone by the end of the decade.  If anything, it swung back to its IT comfort zone and has emphasized the architectural aspects of cloud computing. And, almost on cue, many ERP vendors made transitioning to the cloud their major focus of the last couple of decades. Functionality and process expertise took a back seat. No wonder, some vendors are shrinking their definitions of ERP to suit their limited functionality. And CRM, EAM and other categories have encroached on spaces ERP vendors have neglected.

I sense a new generation of ERP coming. The pendulum is swinging from a technology focus to a functional focus. The pandemic has sharpened industry specific needs. Telemedicine in healthcare, distance learning in higher education, virtual open houses and digital mortgages in real estate are just some of the examples.

Just last week, I had several reminders of the functional evolution. Zoho gave me a pre-briefing on its updated Zoho One suite. It will officially be announced in a couple of weeks, but the suite has now grown to 45 applications. SAP has lined up 9 briefings for me across its verticals. I met with Mike Ettling, CEO of Unit4 and we discussed how his verticals are evolving. I was part of a virtual event on Servitization and heard how automotive, construction and many other sectors are increasingly moving to "everything as a service".     

Gartner coined the term ERP just prior to when I got there. But for a couple of decades companies had already been deploying MRP and MRP II functionality. We will similarly see a next generation. It may not even be called ERP - to shed the baggage the moniker has acquired with too many delayed and bloated projects.

But the market is definitely marching forward. One thing I am fairly certain of - the next gen of ERP will not suffer from AMM - Addressable Market Myopia.

Adding from a twitter thread with Jon

In fairness many other vendors have not evolved their functionality especially during the pandemic and with recent supply chain issues. Lots of brilliant architects but few process visionaries. Need both.

With brilliant architects but no process visionaries you would never get Amazon’s fulfillment center with chaos theory models, miles of conveyors and hundreds of robots. You would deliver the old process model.