Control Data Corporation - R.I.P.
I came across an interesting post on Business Insider claiming that the IT industry used to be exciting and predictable!
As you get older you also tend to get a bit nostalgic. “The good old days”. Claiming that the IT industry used to be exciting and predictable is a distortion of reality covered by the term “Nostalgia”.
Time is very democratic resource: 24 hours a day for everyone.
“I am sorry for the delay, but I have been very busy lately”.
I assume we have all had this excuse from someone missing a deadline. A deadline he or she voluntarily committed to. It can be a client who promised to come back on a certain issue, a colleague working on a certain task or a supplier supposed to deliver something.
The excuse is very often delivered when YOU follow up.
In such situations I think we all make a mental note: “This person is not reliable.” And personally I also make an additional mental note: “Is this person arrogant or just out of control?”
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Management consulting indicates both the industry and practice of helping organizations improve their performance primarily through the analysis of existing organizational problems and development of plans for improvement.
Consultancies may also provide organizational change management assistance, development of coaching skills, technology implementation, strategy development, or operational improvement services. Management consultants generally bring their own, standard or proprietary methodologies/frameworks to guide the identification of problems, and to serve as the basis for developing best practice solutions for more effective or efficient ways of performing. Continue reading
I recently came across a post claiming that Axios Systems had made a survey showing that 68% of all global companies are already planning to adopt a cloud strategy.
I assume everybody will agree that it makes sense to get electricity, water, gas and so on from big utilities. Likewise it makes good sense to have certain IT services delivered from big IT utilities, which we currently call the “cloud”.
However, as the customer requirements for customization, integration to other systems, implementation, training, availability, response time and so on increases, the delivery format (cloud or on premise) becomes less important and in many cases “the cloud” is not the answer (yet). Continue reading
I recently came across a statement saying that only around 25% of all companies have a strategy in place. The statement also referred to statistics saying that 80% of all change efforts failed. The question is: are the two phenomena somehow related? Continue reading
Super sales people already have well paid jobs
I am assisting software companies with internationalisation. What that comes down to is helping our clients acquire customers in a new market (bootstrapping), building a local presence (bridgehead) and heading for market dominance (scaling) [1].
Before jumping to the subject of this post let me clarify a few things.
The clients I am assisting all have high price/low volume type of software solutions. They need to get sales people in front of potential customers in order to get the sales/purchase process rolling. Sales cycles are highly unpredictable, but always somewhere between 6 and 24 months.
I often get approached by software companies who would like me to take their products to the market either directly or through a channel of value added resellers, systems integrators or maybe even a 3-tier model. And they offer to pay us a share of the revenue generated through this effort. Basically what they are saying is: “We don’t want to listen to all your consulting theory or read your nice reports; get us some customers and we will pay you with a share of the revenue you generate for us.”
This blog post will explain why this model is doomed to fail, at least in the western world and what you could do instead. Continue reading
At the CeBIT in the year 2000 A.D. I was interviewed by a German journalist about our expectations to the ASP delivery format. How fast would it knock out the traditional (old economy?) license models? What would the pricing policies be? How would we manage the cash flow issues? How could we guarantee availability? How could we guarantee client privacy? How would we manage customizations? Fortunately we were well prepared, because when the hype is running you better provide some answer or you will not get any air time. Continue reading
You want your business to grow, and you want a (sustainable) solid profit? Why then, don’t we just go out there and get some customers, convince them to purchase our solutions at good prices (to us)? Why are you consultants always asking, “What is your strategy”? Continue reading
I got my iPad 4 weeks ago through our office in Germany (not out in Denmark yet). I took it with me on my vacation to Croatia and Italy and am exited about the Ding. Continue reading
I am a passionate skier. But my ski dress needs to be replaced. I bought my ski jacket in New Zealand in 1995. It’s a Columbia and it has served me well. The ski pants was bought in Århus in Denmark in 1996 and they are Helly Hansen. Continue reading
