We are in the enterprise content management business or more explicitly in the information management business and we provide a range of solutions including contract management, records management, document management, asset management, HR management, policy management, etc. We are a software company that designs and develops its own products. We also develop and provide all the services required to make our products work once installed at the customer’s site.

However, we aren’t in the ‘creating innovative software’ business even though that is what we do; we are really in the ‘selling our innovative software’ business because without sales there would be no business and no products and no services (and no employees).

We have been in business for nearly 30 years and have watched and participated as both technology and practices have evolved over that time. Some changes are easy to see. For example, we no longer product paper marketing collateral, we produce all of our marketing collateral in HTML or PDF form for delivery via our website and email. We also now market to the world via our website and the Internet, not just to our ‘local’ area.

Another major area of change has been the interface between the customer and the vendor. Many companies today no longer provide a human-face interface. Most big companies and government agencies no longer maintain a shopfront; they require you to deal with them via a website. Some don’t even allow a phone call or email; your only contact is via a web form.

Sometimes the website interface works but mostly it is a bit hit and miss and a very frustrating experience as the website fails or doesn’t offer the option you need. My pet hate is being forced to fill in a web form and then never hearing back from the vendor. Support is often non-existent or very expensive. From my viewpoint, a major failing of the modern paradigm is that I more often than not cannot get the information I need to evaluate a product from the website. This is when I try to find a way to ask them to please have a sales person contact me as I need to know more about their product or service.

I look forward to a sales person contacting me because I know what I want and I know what questions I need answers to. However, the sad truth is that I am rarely contacted by a sales person (and I refuse to speak to anyone from an Indian call centre because I have no wish to waste my time). However, experience with my customers and prospects tells me that not everyone is as enamoured with sales people as I am. In fact, many of the people I have contact with are very nervous of sales people, some are even afraid of them.

Unfortunately for me, we aren’t in a business where we can sell our products and services via a webpage and cart checkout. We need to understand the customer’s business needs before we can provide a solution so we need to employ high quality sales people who are business savvy and really understand business processes. It is not until I know enough to be able to restate the customer’s requirement in detail that I am in a position to make a sale. Conversely, the customer isn’t going to buy anything from me until he/she is absolutely sure I understand the problem and can articulate the solution.

So, in my industry I rely on a human interface and that usually means a sales person. But, do I really need a sales person and do my customers and prospective customers really want to speak to a sales person? Is there a more modern alternative? Please trust me when I say I have pondered this question many, many times.

Those in my business (selling information management solutions) will know how hard it is to find a good sales person and how hard it is to keep them. The good ones are less than ten-percent of the available pool and even after you hire them they are still besieged by offers from recruiters. Finding and retaining good sales people is in my opinion the biggest problem facing all the companies in our industry. They are also the most expensive of human resources and after paying a recruitment fee and a big salary you are then faced with the 80:20 rule; that is, 20% of the sales force produces 80% of your revenues.

Believe me, if I could find a way to meet my sales targets without expensive and difficult to manage sales people I would. However, as our solutions are all about adapting our technology to the customer’s often very complex business processes this is not a solution that can be sold via a website or automated questionnaire; it requires a great deal of skill and experience.

So for now dear customer, please deal with my sales person; he or she is your best chance of solving that vexing problem that is costing your organization money and productivity. All you really need to do is be very clear about what you want and very focussed on the questions you want answered. There is nothing to be afraid of because if you do your homework you will quickly be able to differentiate the good sales person from the bad sales person and then take the appropriate action. I never deal with a bad sales person and nor should you. I also really enjoy dealing with a professional sales person who knows his/her business and knows how to research and qualify my needs.

A good sales person uses my time wisely and saves me money. A bad sales person doesn’t get the chance to waste my time. This should be your approach too; be happy and willing to deal with a sales person but only if he/she is a professional and can add value to your business.

Sales people call this the value proposition. More explicitly; if the sales person is not able to articulate a value proposition to the customer that resonates with the customer then he/she shouldn’t be there. Look for the value proposition; if it isn’t apparent, close the meeting. Make each and every sales person understand, if they aren’t able to articulate a value proposition for your business then there is no point in continuing the conversation.

Dealing with a sales person isn’t difficult; it is all up to you to know what you want (the value proposition) and what questions to ask. Do your preparation and you will never fear a sales person again.

Over the last 28 years of running this business I have had hundreds of conversations with customers and partners about integration. In most cases when I have tried to obtain more details about exactly what they wanted to integrate to and how I have drawn a blank. It is as if the word ‘integration’ has some magical connotation that everyone is supposed to instantly understand. Being a very logical and technical person, I guess I fail the test because to me it is just a general term that covers a multitude of possibilities.

I have also designed and/or programmed many integrations in my life and I can honestly say that no two have ever been the same. So, assuming that you have a requirement for two or more of the application software products you use to ‘integrate’ how should you go about defining what is required so it is as clear and as unambiguous as possible to your partners, the people you will ask to do the work?

Integration is usually about sharing information and importantly, not duplicating effort (i.e., having to enter data twice) or duplicating information. Having to enter the same information twice into two different systems is just plain dumb and bad design. Maintaining duplicate copies of information is even dumber and dangerous because sooner or later they will get out of step and you will suffer from what we call a loss of data integrity. This is usually why we need integration, to share information and to avoid duplicate effort and duplicate information.

For our purpose let’s assume that we have two application systems, A and B, that we need to be ‘integrated’; both use a SQL database to store data. Applications A and B are produced by different vendors that haven’t worked together before. The first fact to face is that in the normal course of events each vendor is going to want the other vendor to do all the work and each vendor is going to want the other vendor to utilize its proprietary integration methodology (e.g., Application Program Interface (API) or Software Development Kit (SDK)). This is your first big challenge; you need to get the vendors to agree to work together because no matter how this turns out both are going to have to do work and contribute; you can’t complete an integration using just one vendor. That is, the most important thing you have to do is to manage the vendors involved. You can’t just leave it up to them; you need to manage the process from beginning to end.

The second most important thing you have to do is to actually define and document the integration processes as clearly as possible. Here is a checklist to guide you:

1.    Will application A need to access (i.e., read) data held by application B?

2.    Will application B need to access data held by application A?

3.    How often and at what times is access to data required? All the time, once a day, once a week, only when something changes, only when there is new data, every time a new record is added to either application A or B, etc. What are the rules?

4.    How is the data identified? That is, how does application A know what data it needs to access in the application B database? Is it by date or special code or some unique identifier? What are the rules that determine the data to be accessed?

5.    Will application A need to transfer data to application B (i.e. write data to the B database)?

6.    Will application B need to transfer data to application A?

7.    How often and at what times is a transfer of data required? All the time, once a day, one a week, only when something changes, only when there is new data, every time a new record is added to either application A or B, etc. What are the rules?

8.    How is the data identified? That is, how does application A know what data it needs to transfer to the application B database? Is it by date or special code or some unique identifier? What are the rules that determine the data to be transferred?

9.    Does application A have an API or SDK?

10.What is the degree of difficulty (expertise required, time and cost) of programming to this API or SDK? Rate it on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the most difficult and most expensive and most time consuming.

11.Does application B have an API or SDK?

12.What is the degree of difficulty (expertise required, time and cost) of programming to this API or SDK? Rate it on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the most difficult and most expensive and most time consuming.

13.Is the vendor of application A happy to assign a suitable qualified technical person (not a sales person or pre-sales person) to be the interface?

14.Is the vendor of application B happy to assign a suitable qualified technical person (not a sales person or pre-sales person) to be the interface?

15.What is your timescale? When does it have to be completed? What is the ‘driver’ event?

16.What is your budget? Basically vendors work in a commercial environment and if they do work then they expect to get paid. As a rule, the size of the budget will depend directly upon your management skills and the quality of your integration specification.

Please keep it in mind that there are always multiple ways to integrate; there is never just a single solution. The best way is always the simplest way and this is usually also the lowest cost and quickest way as well as being the lowest cost to maintain. Think about the future, the most complex solution is always the most difficult and most expensive ongoing maintenance solution. Think KISS; minimize your pain and expense.

As a guideline, the vendor with the most work to do is usually the best one to be the ‘lead’ in the integration (remember, both have to be involved or it won’t work). So, if for example vendor A needs to read data from Vendor B’s database and then massage it and utilize it within application A then vendor A is the natural lead. All vendor B has to do is expose its API and provide the required technical assistance to vendor A so vendor A can successfully program to the API.

However, in the end it will usually be the vendor that is the most cooperative and most helpful that you will choose. If you choose the vendor you most trust and work best with to be the lead then you will maximize your chances of completing a successful integration on time and on budget.

Almost every organization, commercial or government, needs a help desk. Help desks support either internal or external ‘customers’. Generally speaking the job of a help desk is to support users who have problems or questions about a product or service.

Help desks may run as either a profit centre or as a cost centre. Normally, help desks supporting internal customers run as cost centres (though maybe with an internal accounting function that attempts to allocate costs to all the departments that utilize the service) and help desks that support external customers run as a profit centre, charging for their services via an annual service fee or incident fee.

The only true measure of the worth of a help desk is the level of customer satisfaction and this is very difficult to measure other than in an anecdotal way. This is because of human nature; customers who are happy with the service rarely take the time to write to the help desk manager and tell him. The same is true of customers who are unhappy with the service; most just make a decision not to use that product or service again. A small number of very disgruntled or even litigious or nuisance customers will complain repeatedly in the most vociferous and rudest manner but will largely be ignored as repeat offenders or the usual suspects.

Trying to get a reading across the customer base by using a survey rarely works either as most won’t respond  and the ones that do respond are usually from the two extremes, the really, really happy customers and the really, really dissatisfied customers. Plus, we all know that a survey is like a poll, if you design the questions in a certain way you can always get the result you first thought of.

Because it is so difficult to obtain enough customer input to be able to rate the help desk we usually fall back on internal metrics. Such things as how many calls did we receive last week? What percentage was closed within 1 day, 2 days, 3 days, etc.? How many are still outstanding after 7 days? How many had to be escalated?

The problem with internal metrics, like police reports on crime statistics, is that they can be manipulated to produce the result you first thought of. Remember that old saying about statistics, "Lies, damned lies, and statistics." A smart and politically savvy help desk manager will always find a way to guild the lily and dress up the stats so he looks good.

So, how do you know if your help desk is working and servicing your customers to the highest standard? There is only one sure way I know of and that is to ring the help desk yourself (incognito I hope, calling up and saying this is the CEO won’t really give you a fair reading about how ordinary customers are treated), or organize a team to call the help desk with a list of known issues and test the responses.

This sounds like it should be a business opportunity; a kind of reverse outsourced help desk, an organization that specializes in testing help desk services. All you have to do is provide them with scripts and a way to measure the effectiveness of the responses. However, I don’t know of any organization that provides this service just as I have never met a CEO lately who seems to know or care what is happening with his help desk service and this is the real problem.

You can always tell the company with the disinterested CEO because there is no way to contact him or her on the website. Companies that aren’t interested in supporting customers always make it almost impossible for a customer to provide feedback. Unfortunately, this ‘we are hiding from you approach’ is becoming the norm as companies remove all contact information from their websites and force customers to endure long waits and rubbish ‘service’ from outsourced support centres.

The executives don’t receive negative feedback because they make it so difficult for customers to reach them. Personally, I think this is a short term and eventually damaging practice as customers tend to have long memories and frustrated, dissatisfied customers will make it their business to tell everyone but the company’s management team (because they aren’t able to contact them) about the rubbish product and the shoddy way they were treated.

Before you ask, let me explain that we do have a support centre but it is not outsourced and we make it as easy as possible for customers to contact us by web form, email, mobile device or toll free number. Please see the links below:

http://www.knowledgeonecorp.com/support/contactinghelpdesk.htm

http://www.knowledgeonecorp.com/contactus/emailus.htm

http://www.knowledgeonecorp.com/contactus/Contact_By_Mobile_App.htm

http://www.knowledgeonecorp.com/support/freeemailsupport.htm

support@knowledgeonecorp.com

Just so you know that we practice what we preach.

Paradoxically, I believe the reason that I get so few complaints (apart from the high standard of our support services) is that I make it so easy for customers to contact me or any other executive in my company.

We also use our own product RecFind 6 as our help desk software so we are able to build in all the alerts, escalations and reporting we need to manage each and every support call to the best of our ability. And finally, my office is just 20 metres or so from the support centre so I make it my business to be in there talking to the support staff at least 4 or 5 times a day.

I am a CEO who is vitally interested in his customers and the quality of support they are receiving and not just for altruistic reasons but for sound business reasons.  Happy customers stay with us and invest in our products and services year after year. It is quite simple really; I invest in my customers so they will invest in my company. It works for us and I wonder why other CEO’s don’t understand this very simple message.

The relationship between a vendor and a customer should be a mutually beneficial partnership; it should not be an destructive, adversarial relationship. In my opinion CEO’s who do not allow their customers to contact them and deliver either a complaint or a compliment are fools and bad business people with a strictly short term view. It is a formula for more short term profit but less long term customers. We opt to spend more money and time on support so we can foster better long term relationships. I think in the ‘old days’ this used to be called service.

Your customer’s old system is now way past its use by date and they have purchased a new application system to replace it. Now all you have to do is convert all the data from the old system to the new system, how hard can that be?

The answer is it that can be very, very hard to get right and it can take months or years if the IT staff or the contractors don’t know what they are doing. In fact, the worst case is that no one can actually figure out how to do the data conversion so you end up two years later still running the old, unsupported and now about to fail system. The really bad news is that this isn’t just the worst case scenario, it is the most common scenario and I have seen it happen time and time again.

People who are good at conversions are good because they have done it successfully many times before. So, don’t hire a contractor based on potential and a good sales spiel, hire a contractor based on record, on experience and on a good many previous references. The time to learn how to do a conversion isn’t on your project.

I will give you guidelines on how to handle a data conversion but as every conversion is different, you are going to have to adapt my guidelines to your project and you should always expect the unexpected. The good news is that if you have a calm, logical and experienced head then any problem is solvable. We have handled hundreds of conversions from every type of system imaginable to our RecFind product and we have never failed even though we have run into every kind of speed bump imaginable. As they say, “expect the best, plan for the worst, and prepare to be surprised.”

1.    Begin by reviewing the application to be converted by looking at the ‘screens’ with someone who uses the system and understands it. Ask the user what fields/data they want to convert. Take screenshots for your documentation. Remember that a field on the screen may or may not be a field in the database; the value may be calculated or generated automatically. Also remember that even though a screen may be called say “File Folder” that all the fields you can see may not in fact be part of the file folder table, they may be ‘linked’ fields in other tables in the database.

2.    You need to document and understand the data model, that is, all the tables and fields and relationships you will need to convert. See if someone has a representation of the data model but, never assume it is up to date. In fact, always assume it is not up to date. You need to work with an IT specialist (e.g., the database administrator) and utilize standard database tools like SQL Server Management Studio to validate the data model of the old system.

3.    Once you think you understand the data model and data to be converted you need to document your thoughts in a conversion report and ask the customer to review and approve it. You won’t get it right first time and expect this to be an iterative process. Remember that the customer will be in ‘discovery’ mode also.

4.    Once you have acceptance of the data to be converted you need to document the data mapping. That is, show where the data will go in the new application. It would be extremely rare that you would be able to duplicate the data model from the old application; it will usually be a case of adapting the data from the old system to the different data model of the new application. Produce a data mapping report and submit it to the customer for sign-off. Again, don’t expect to get this right the first time; it is also an iterative process because both you and the customer are in discovery mode.

5.    Expect that about 20% or more of the data in the old system will be ‘dirty’; that is, bad or duplicate and redundant data. You need to make a decision about the best time to clean up and de-dupe the data. Sometimes it is in the old application before you convert but often it is in the new application after you have converted because the new application has more and better functionality for this purpose.   Whichever method you choose, you must clean up the data before going live in production.

6.    Expect to run multiple trial conversions. The customer may have approved a specification but reading it and seeing the data exposed in the new application are two very different experiences. A picture is worth a thousand words and no one is smart enough to know exactly how they want their data converted until they actually see what it looks like and works like in the new application. Be smart and bring in more users to view and comment on the new application; more heads are better than one and new users will always find ways to improve the conversion. Don’t be afraid of user opinion, actively encourage and solicit it.

7.    Once the data mapping is approved you need to schedule end-user training (as close as possible to the cutover to the new system) and the final conversion prior to cutover.

Of course for the above process to work you also need the tools required to extract data from the old system and import it into the new system. If you don’t have standard tools you will have to write a one-off conversion program. The time to write this is after the data mapping is approved and before the first trial conversion. To make our life easy we designed and build a standard tool we call Xchange and it can connect to any data source and then map and write data to our RecFind 6 system. However, this is not an easy program to design and write and you are unlikely to be able to afford to do this unless you are in the conversion business like we are. You are therefore most likely going to have to design and write a one-off conversion program.

One alternative tool you should not ignore is Microsoft’s Excel. If the old system can export data in CSV format and the new system can import data in CSV format then Excel is the ideal tool for cleaning up, re-sequencing and preparing the data for import.

And finally, please do not forget to sanity check your conversion. You need to document exactly how many records of each type you exported so you can ensure that exactly the same number of records exist in the new system. I have seen far too many examples of a badly managed conversion resulting in thousands or even millions of records going ‘missing’ during the conversion process. You must have a detailed record count going out and a detailed record count going in. The last thing you want is a phone call from the customer a month or two later saying, “it looks like we are missing some records.”

Don’t expect the conversion to be easy and do expect it to be an iterative process. Always involve end-users and always sanity check the results.  Take extra care and you will be successful.

We have all heard and read a lot about the Cloud and why we should all be moving that way. I wrote a little about this in a previous post. However, when we look at specific applications like records management we need to think about the human interaction and how that may be affected if we change from an in-house system to a hosted system. That is, how will the move affect your end-users and records management administrator? Ideally, it will make their job easier and take away some pain. If it makes their job harder and adds pain then you should not be doing it even if it saves you money.

We also need to think about the services we may need when we move to the Cloud. That is, will we need new services we don’t have now and will the Cloud vendor offer to perform services, like application maintenance, we currently do in-house?

In general, normal end-user functions should work the same whether we are running off an internal system or a Cloud-based one. This of course will depend upon the functionality of your records management software. Hopefully, there will be no difference to either the functionality or the user interface when you move to the Cloud. For the sake of this post let’s assume that there is a version of your records management system that can run either internally or in the Cloud and that the normal end-user interface is identical or as near-as-such that it doesn’t matter. If the end-user interface is massively different then you face extra cost and disruption because of the need to convert and retrain your users and this would be a reason not to move to the Cloud unless you were planning to change vendors and convert anyway.

Now we need to look at administrator functions, those tasks usually performed by the records management administrator or IT specialist to configure and manage the application.  Either the records management administrator can perform the same tasks using the Cloud version or you need to ask the Cloud vendor to perform some services for you. This will be at a cost so make sure you know what it is beforehand.  There are some administrator functions you will probably be glad to outsource to the Cloud vendor such as maintaining the server and SQL Server and taking and verifying backups.

I would assume that the decision to move a records management application to the Cloud would and should involve the application owner and IT management. The application owner has to be satisfied that the end-user experience will be better or at least equal to that of the in-house installation and IT management needs to be sure that the integrity and security of the Cloud application will at the very least be equal to that of the in-house installation. And finally, the application owner, the records manager, needs to be satisfied that the IT support from the vendor of the Cloud system will be equal to or better than the IT support being received from the in-house or currently out-sourced IT provider.

There is no point in moving to the Cloud if the end-user or administrator experience will deteriorate just as there is no point in moving to the Cloud if the level of IT support falls.

Once you have made the decision to move your records management application to the Cloud you need to plan the cutover in a way that causes minimal disruption to your operation. Ideally, your staff will finish work on the in-house application on Friday evening and begin working on the Cloud version the next Monday morning. You can’t afford to have everyone down for days or weeks while IT specialists struggle to make everything work to your satisfaction. This means you need to test the Cloud system extensively before going live in production. In this business, little or no testing equals little or no success and a great deal of pain and frustration.

If it was me, I would make sure that the move to the Cloud meant improvements in all facets of the operation. I would want to make sure that the Cloud vendor took on the less pleasant, time-consuming and technical tasks like managing and configuring the required IT infrastructure. I would also want them to take on the more bothersome, awkward and technically difficult application administration tasks. Basically, I would want to get rid of all the pain and just enjoy the benefits.

You should plan to ‘outsource’ all the pain to make your life and the life of your staff easier and more pleasant and in doing so, make everyone more productive. It is like paying an expert to do your tax return and getting a bigger refund. The Cloud solution must be presented as a value proposition. It should take away all the non-core activities that suck up your valuable time and allow you and your staff more time to do the core activities in a better and more efficient way; it should allow you to become more productive.

I am a great believer in the Cloud as a means of improving productivity, lowering costs and improving data integrity and security. It is all doable given available facilities and technology but in the end, it is up to you and your negotiations with the Cloud provider.  Stand firm and insist that the end result has to be a better solution in every way; compromise should not be part of the agreement.

Most of us have probably become more than a little numbed to the onslaught of Cloud advertising and the promotion of the ‘Cloud’ as the salvation for everyone and the panacea for everything. The Cloud is promoted by its aggrandizers as being both omnipotent and omniscient; both qualities I only previously associated with God.

This is not to say that moving business processing to the Cloud is not a good thing; it certainly is. I just wish that the promoters would tone down the ‘sell’ and clearly explain the benefits and advantages without the super-hype.

Those of us with long memories clearly recall the early hype about what was then called ASP or Application Service Processing or even Application Service Provider. This was the early progenitor of the Cloud and despite massive hype it did not fly. The reasons were simple, neither the technology nor the software (application and system) were up to the job. Great idea, pity it was about five years before its time.

Unfortunately, super-hype in our industry is usually associated with immature and unproven technology. Wiser, older people nod sagely and then wait a few years for the technology to catch up with the promises.

As an older (definitely) and wiser (hopefully) person I am now ready to accept that all the technology required for successful and secure Cloud processing is now available and proven; albeit being ‘improved’ all the time so still take care not to rush in with experimental technology.

As with many new technologies the secret is KISS; Keep It Simple Stupid. If it seems too complex then it is too complex. If the sales person can’t answer all of your questions clearly and unambiguously then walk away.

Most importantly, make sure you know all about all of the parties involved in the transaction. For example:

1.    What is the name of the data centre?

2.    Where is it located?

3.    Who ‘owns’ the rack and equipment and software at the data centre?

4.    What are the redundant features?

5.    What are the backup and recovery options?

6.    Is your vendor the owner of the co-hosted facility or do they subcontract to someone else? If they sub-contract is the company they subcontract to the owner or are they too just part of a chain of ‘hidden’ middle-men? It is critical for you to understand this chain of responsibility because if something goes wrong you need to know who to chase.

There are a lot more questions you need to ask but this Blog isn’t the place to list them all. I am sure your IT team and application owners will come up with plenty more. If they don’t, wake them up and demand questions.

Most small to medium organizations today simply do not have the time or expertise to run a computer room and manage and maintain a rack of servers. There is also a dearth of ‘real’ expertise and a plethora of phonies out there so hiring someone who is actually smart enough to manage your critical infrastructure is a very difficult exercise made more so by most business owners and managers simply not understanding the requirements or technology. It often becomes a case of the blind hiring the almost blind.

Most small to medium enterprises also cannot afford the redundancy required to ensure a stable and reliable infrastructure. A fifteen minute UPS is no substitute for a redundant bank of diesel generators and a guaranteed clean power supply.

Why should small to medium enterprises have to buy servers and networks and IT support? It isn’t part of their core business and this stuff should not be weighing down the balance sheet. Why should they be devoting scarce and expensive management time to activities that are not part of their core business?

In-house computer rooms will soon be become as rare as dinosaurs and this is how it should be, they are an anachronism in this time and age; out of time and out of place.

All smart and business savvy small to medium organizations should be planning to progressively move all their processing to the Cloud so as to lower costs, improve service levels and reduce management stress. I say progressively because it is still wise to get wet slowly and to take little steps. Just like with your first two-wheel bicycle, it pays to practice with the training wheels on first. That way, you usually avoid those painful falls.

I like to think I am a little wiser because I still have scars from gravel rash when I was a kid. I am moving my RecFind 6 customers to the Cloud and I am moving my in-house processing to the Cloud but just like you, I am doing it slowly and carefully and triple-checking every aspect. I don’t take risks with my customers or my business and neither should you.

One last thing, I have the advantage of being very IT literate and of having a top IT team working for me so we have the in-house expertise required to correctly evaluate and select the most appropriate technology and options. If you do not have this level of in-house IT expertise then please take extra care and try to find someone to assist who does have the level of IT knowledge required. Once you sign up, it is too late. Buyer’s remorse is not a solution to any problem.

Many years ago we released a 16 bit product called RecFind version 3.2 and we made a really big mistake. We gave it so much functionality (much of it way ahead of its time) and we made it so stable that we still have thousands of users.

It is running under operating systems like XP it was never developed for or certified for and is still ‘doing the job’ for hundreds of our customers. Most frustratingly, when we try to get them to upgrade they usually say, “We can’t justify the expense because it is working fine and doing everything we need it to do.”

However, RecFind 3.2 is decommissioned, unsupported and, the databases it uses (Btrieve, Disam and an early version of SQL Server) and also no longer supported by their vendors.

So our customers are capturing and managing critical business records with totally unsupported software. Most importantly, most of them also do not have any kind of support agreement with us (and this really hurts because they say they don’t need a support agreement because the system doesn’t fail) so when the old system catastrophically fails, which it will, they are on their own.

Being a slow learner, ten years ago I replaced RecFind 3.2 and RecFind 4.0 with RecFind 5.0, a brand new 32 bit product. Once again I gave it too much functionality and made it way too stable. We now have hundreds of customers still using old and unsupported versions of RecFind 5.0 and when we try to convince them to upgrade we get that same response, “It is still working fine and doing everything we need it to do.”

If I was smarter I would have built-in a date-related software time bomb to stop old systems from working when they were well past their use-by date. However, that would have been a breach of faith so it is not something we have or will ever do. It is still a good idea, though probably illegal, because it would have protected our customers’ records far better than our old and unsupported systems do now.

In my experience, most senior executives talk about risk management but very few actually practice it. All over the world I have customers with millions of vital business records stored and managed in systems that are likely to fail the next time IT updates desktop or server operating systems or databases. We have warned them multiple times but to no avail. Senior application owners and senior IT people are ignoring the risk and, I suspect, not making senior management aware of the inevitable disaster. They are not managing risk; they are ignoring risk and just hoping it won’t happen in their reign.

Of course, it isn’t just our products that are still running under IT environments they were never designed or certified for; this is a very common problem. The only worse problem I can think of is the ginormous amount of critical business data being ‘managed’ in poorly designed, totally insecure and teetering-on-failure, unsupportable Access and Excel systems; many of them in the back offices of major banks and financial institutions. One of my customers called the 80 or so Access systems that had been developed across his organization as the world’s greatest virus. None had been properly designed, none had any security and most were impossible to maintain once a key employee or contractor had left.

Before you ask, yes we do produce regular updates for current products and yes we do completely redesign and redevelop our core systems like RecFind about every five years to utilize the very latest technology. We also offer all the tools and services necessary for any customer to upgrade to our new releases; we make it as easy and as low cost as possible for our customers to upgrade to the latest release but we still have hundreds of customers and many thousands of users utilizing old, unsupported and about-to-fail software.

There is an old expression that says you can take a horse to water but you can’t make it drink. I am starting to feel like an old, tired and very frustrated farmer with hundreds of thirsty horses on the edge of expiration. What can I do next to solve the problem?

Luckily for my customers, Microsoft Windows Vista was a failure and very few of them actually rolled it out. Also, luckily for my customers, SQL Server 2005 was a good and stable product and very few found it necessary to upgrade to SQL Server 2008 (soon to be SQL Server 2012). This means that most of my customers using old and unsupported versions of RecFind are utilizing XP and SQL Server 2005, but this will soon change and when it does my old products will become unstable and even just stop working. It is just good luck and good design (programmed tightly to the Microsoft API) that some (e.g., 3.2) still work under XP. RecFind 3.2 and 4.0 were never certified under XP.

So we have a mini-Y2K coming but try as I may I can’t seem to convince my customers of the need to protect their critical and irreplaceable (are they going to rescan all those documents from 10 years ago?) data. And, as I alluded to above, I am absolutely positive that we are only one of thousands of computer software companies in this same position.

In fairness to my customers, the Global Financial Crisis of 2008 was a major factor in the disappearance of upgrade budgets. If the call is to either upgrade software or retain staff then I would also vote to retain staff. Money is as tight as it has ever been and I can understand why upgrade projects have been delayed and shelved. However, none of this changes the facts or averts the coming data-loss disaster.

All over the world government agencies and companies are managing critical business data in old and unsupported systems that will inevitably fail with catastrophic consequences. It is time someone started managing this risk; are you?

In a previous career with mainframes I spent eight years as a large scale project manager and then a further two years as the international operations manager managing a number of project managers at troubled projects around the world. Those ten years taught me a great deal about what it takes to be a successful project manager and conversely, why some project managers fail.

Notice that I said why some project managers fail, not why some projects fail. It is cause and effect; projects only fail when the project manager fails to do the job required. This particular concept separates good project managers from bad project managers. Good project managers take full responsibility for the success or failure of their projects, bad project managers don’t.

Good project managers are ‘glass-half-full’ people, bad project managers are ‘glass-half-empty’ people. Good project managers are leaders, bad project managers are victims.

So the first piece of advice is to choose your project manager carefully. You want a strong willed, bright and energetic doer, not a facilitator or politician. You want a strong leader, not a careful and political follower; you want Jesus, not the disciples.

The next piece of advice is that you should set quantitative criteria for project success. No ambiguity or motherhood or weaselly words, as the Dragnet cop used to say, “Just the facts Mam.” In my day it was easy, we had to install the new hardware and software, convert from the old system, design and program the new applications and then take the whole system through a 30 day acceptance test with 99% uptime. There was always a contract and the conditions of acceptance were always clearly laid out and assiduously referred to by the customer. We knew what we had to achieve and there was no ambiguity.

Unfortunately, one of the problems with a lot of projects is that the conditions for acceptance and success are not clearly articulated or documented. But, a good project manager will always make sure that the scope and objectives and expected outcomes are clearly defined regardless before accepting the challenge. The bad project manager on the other hand is always happy that there isn’t a clear definition of success because the bad project manager wants to make judging his or her performance as difficult as possible.

I once fired a project manager who told me in three meetings in a row that he had not completed the requested project plan because the project was too complex. Obviously the more complex the project the more its needs a comprehensive project plan otherwise it will be impossible to manage. My failed project manager didn’t want to document the project plan because he didn’t want deadlines and he didn’t want to be judged on how well he was meeting deadlines.

It sounds like an over-simplification but if you want a successful project then choose a successful project manager, one who accepts full responsibility for all outcomes and one who is committed to success.

As part of the interview process, ask them what their philosophy of responsibility is. As an example, here is one I always used.

“Everything that happens is due to me because everything that happens is either due to something I did or something I didn’t do.”

I have never found a good project manager who had a problem with this credo. Bad project managers on the other hand, see it as anathema to their survival strategies. Good project managers accept full responsibility for success or failure, bad project managers do not.

Good project managers also don’t spend all day in an office playing with Excel and Microsoft Project. Nor do they spend all day in meetings or on conference calls. Good project managers integrate themselves into the very bowels of the project and ‘walk-and-talk’ on a daily basis.

Walk and talk refers to the practice of meeting with real workers at all levels of the project, especially end users. Good project managers make the time to talk to end users every day and because of this they know more about what is happening than any senior manager. They are ‘in-touch’ with the project and are constantly aware of changes, problems and successes. Good project managers who practice the walk and talk technique are never surprised in project or management meetings because they always know more than anyone else at the meeting and they always have the very latest information. This is probably why they are such good project managers. If you aren’t prepared to invest at least one hour of your time every day walking and talking to real users then you shouldn’t be a project manager.

Good project managers also always know how to select and manage their team. Because they are natural leaders, management is a natural and comfortable process for them. There is never any doubt in a good project manager’s team about who the leader is and who will make the final decisions and then take responsibility for them. There is no disseminated responsibility. The opposite is always true in a bad project manager’s team with disseminated responsibility and no clear record of who made what decision.

The calibre of the bad project manager’s team is always significantly lower than that of the good project manager’s team. This is because mediocre people always hire mediocre people and a bad project manager is afraid of strong capable staff because he or she finds them threatening. A good project manager on the other hands loves working with strong capable people and revels in the ongoing challenge of managing them. A good project manager is never threatened by strong capable staff, au contraire; he seeks them out because they make it easier for him (or her) to be successful.

There is no magical formula that will ensure a successful project, completed on time and on budget and with all contracted deliverables accepted and signed off. It also doesn’t matter what project management tool you use as long as you do use a project management tool. I don’t particularly like the latest version of Microsoft Project (and that is an understatement) but if required I could use it to manage any project no matter how big and how complex. It isn’t the tool; it is the person that counts.

This is simple advice like my favourite about how to do well on the stock market, “buy low and sell high.” If you want a successful project, always start with a successful project manager. He or she will take care of everything else.

A company’s website is said to be its window to the world. It is supposed to be the portal through which business flows in from all corners of the globe. (Now that is a silly expression, since when did a globe have corners?) Notwithstanding the silly expression, the Internet and a company’s website are supposed to be the foundation of the modern marketing paradigm. In this new model, everything will be sold online and Cloud and SaaS will be the most used and abused marketing terms.

However, there are a couple of minor flaws in this model.

Have you ever tried to do an online demonstration or presentation to 27 people, all with different agendas? I have and it is almost impossible to be effective in this environment.

Have you ever tried to understand the nuances of a complex commercial application requirement using only the telephone, email and online sessions? I have and it is impossible to really understand one hundred-percent of the requirement.

Sure you can sell books and computers online but it is a far from perfect model when selling complex application systems that will eventually be integral to the successful operation of your customer’s business.

In our business we make good use of technology to better communicate with our customers and prospects all around the world. We in fact couldn’t operate without the Citrix tools GoToAssist, GoToMeeting and GoToTraining. They, or tools like them, are essential for running a software and services company like ours with customers all around the world.

In this day and age, and especially after the GFC, no company can afford to have ‘local’ staff in every town, state or country where it does business. Nor can any company, no matter how big, afford to fly pre-sales staff in for every one-hour demo requested by a prospect or every one or two hour support session for a customer.

However, in our sales cycle (application software) there are still many things that are best done face to face and there are some things, like application consulting, that can only be done face to face.

At this time we handle the face to face requirement by telling people we hire for consulting and support jobs that they must be available to travel and frequently, both inter-state and internationally. We make this requirement a prominent part of the job add and the interviews. Having a ‘flying squad’ of support people and application consultants is now an integral and essential part of our sales paradigm and from the customer’s viewpoint it works very well. But, it is a far from perfect solution from our viewpoint because of the high cost and lost time or ‘opportunity-cost’ of dead time spent in transit.

The flying squad will always be an important tool for us when delivering solutions but as we grow it needs to be supplemented and complemented by partnerships with local firms with the skillsets our customers require.

A few years ago, conscious of this need to partner, I registered a new website called bizzpartnerships.com with the intention of starting a new business primary designed to locate and connect business partners all around the globe. Sadly, the pressure of running and growing this business didn’t leave me much time and like a lot of good ideas, it is gathering dust.

It is still a great idea because there are literally millions of businesses like mine that need partners to both win and support customers; partners that can provide that essential face to face contact that is sorely missing from most modern business models. It fact, the situation worsens year by year as vendors cut costs and outsource almost every function to countries like India, China and the Philippines. I stopped dealing with a well-known hardware vendor because they told me my account manager would no longer be local but would be based in a call centre in India. I have gone from spending millions with this company to spending absolutely nothing.

Notice I am not talking about outsourcing, which I hate, but partnering, which I love. Anyone who wants to know how I feel about outsourcing should read one of my previous Blogs:

http://www.knowledgeonecorp.com/blog/post/2012/02/05/Outsourcing-will-destroy-the-west.aspx

Partnering provides that much needed and much appreciated local, face to face contact; outsourcing takes it away.

My prime objective from this point on will be to forge partnerships with companies that can add value to my customers. I believe that this is an essential component of the still maturing online model.

So, if you are reading this blog and you are part of or know of a quality customer-centric services company that can add value to an enterprise content management software installation then please let me know about it. In a good partnership, everyone benefits, especially the customer.

As we all know, the world of IT and applications is changing rapidly and most of us application software vendors are trying to second-guess where the market is heading. The two key questions are:

1. How should we deliver applications? and
2. What should we be developing?

If we read and believe the IT press, especially the IT industry blogs, we should all be convinced by now that every application needs to be delivered on a mobile device. However, I am not fully convinced because I am a long-term and avid user of mobile devices, smartphone and iPad, and my experience tells me that mobile devices still don’t have the capabilities I need to be able to run all the applications I use. I also struggle to understand how to make my applications totally usable on mobile devices, especially smartphones.

For example, my smartphone is invaluable for checking and responding to emails when on the move. It is small, light, convenient (it sits in my shirt pocket) and has a long battery life. It also ‘connects’ to the Internet from most locations and 3G/4G and Wi-Fi services provide acceptable performance for email monitoring. But, it isn’t suitable for reading big documents and it isn’t suitable for lengthy responses. It is also painful when accessing web pages; the processor is too slow, the screen is just way too small and the QWERTY keyboard too small and too awkward for anything other than simple responses.

The iPad 2 is a lot better mainly because it has a bigger screen and more usable keyboard but it is still far from perfect.  Whenever I have to do real work (like writing this blog or writing program specifications), I end up working on my powerful laptop or desktop.

Strangely though, when I look at my laptop and desktop and all those messy cables and connections they look like museum pieces next to my iPad 2. In my opinion, the industry is somewhere between the old paradigm and the new paradigm but we haven’t got there just yet. Today’s mobile devices are a good first attempt but they don’t yet have what it takes to replace the desktop and laptop for serious business users.

The choice for us really comes down to developing and delivering software applications in either native mobile app mode (e.g., iPad apps developed in Xcode) or web-client mode (i.e., ‘thin-client’ applications that run in a browser and are developed using tools like HTML5, JavaScript and Ajax).

The web-client model is the best for us because it provides platform independence and the lowest cost delivery model. That is, it enables your application for all types of mobile devices as well as traditional notebooks and desktops and it is delivered just by the end user typing in a URL. It also only requires a single set of source code rather than the multiple sets of source code required to support native mobile apps for devices like the Android phone, iPad and Blackberry. It is therefore the lowest cost to develop and maintain and the lowest cost to roll out and support.

Ironically, the web-client model is also very old technology and I am surprised that after all these years we don’t have anything better to replace it.

As to what we should be developing, well that is literally the (multi) million dollar question. Our traditional fare is Enterprise Content Management software (ECM) or more simply, Information Management software. The ECM bag includes a host of horizontal market applications like document management software, records management software, contract management software, knowledge management software, etc. Our product RecFind 6 provides all of the above capabilities.

So, given that we already have a pretty clever and flexible ‘multi-application’ solution what should we replace it with or, what should we add to it? More importantly, what do customers need and want and even more importantly, what are they prepared to pay for?

Our customers happily tell us all the time about the new and extended functionality they would like to see in our products but usually their assumption is that we will fund the changes and provide the extended functionality free as part of a future upgrade. Usually they are right because we continually add new and improved features to successive upgrades provided under the customer’s maintenance agreement. However, for software vendors wanting to provide additional value and grow revenues, the real question is “is there a totally new product the majority of customers would need and want and be happy to pay for? “

I spend a lot of time thinking about this question. “What can I design and build that will provide significant value to a customer?” So much value in fact that the customer will be more than happy to outlay the funds to buy it. You might say it is the Holy Grail of software development, often called the ‘Killer App’. It may come as a surprise to those outside of our industry but many software developers spend enormous amounts of time and money building products no one buys.

A great idea doesn’t necessarily translate to success in the market. Similarly, because a customer says it wants something it does not necessarily follow that it will be willing to pay for it. As a software developer you have to ask the question, “If I build it, will you buy it?” This sounds a bit like Kevin Costner and his field of dreams movie, “Build it and they will come”, but in our case that isn’t necessarily true.

I have lots of ideas and have written lots of specifications and have built lots of applications but that killer app still eludes me. It must be time again to go out and ask our customers, “What would you like us to build? What application or feature or functionality would make a real difference to the running of your business? What application functionality do you need most of all? What do you believe will add the most value to your business? What would you like us to build next?”

Customers always have great ideas and they are often able to think outside the square. Software developers like us are more often than not too close to the problem. Now let’s see what they tell me, maybe that killer app is just around the corner, just like that next big lottery win.