Archive for the ‘Corporate America’ Category

How to NOT sell me your outsourced development services

Wednesday, July 28th, 2010

you vouch for this guy?On an average day I probably get 5-10 unsolicited emails from someone trying to get me to outsource web, mobile, social application development to their company.

They all happen to have very American sounding names despite being offshore – ex-pats maybe? ;) – are all “the very best” at web, mobile and/or social, are all ISO / CMMi certified, and are all Microsoft or IBM or Oracle gold partners.

Here is the most recent e-mail that I received from one such company:


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Bob Smith to me

Hello ,

IntelliExtremeXienceE-CorpGroup® is the world’s leading Mobile Applications Design, Development and Delivery services company. We are interested in offering our mobile development services to your company and would like to explore possible opportunities regarding the same. The following is our brief overview:

Company : IntelliExtremeXienceE-CorpGroup® - People.Process.Power / Results Delivered since 1989™
Services : Mobile App Design, Development and Porting
Locations : US, UK, Sweden and India
Resources : 10,500,000+ developers

Engagement Models : Pro Mobility Program, Offshore Team, Dual-shore Team, Fixed scope-fixed cost

Accolades : ISO® 9001 certified, Microsoft® Gold Partner, Official Apple® Developer, NASSCOM® award winner (www.nasscom.in)

Supported Platforms : 7 including iPhone OS, Android OS, BlackBerry, Symbian, Windows Mobile, Palm WebOS and Nokia Maemo

App categories : Books, Business, Education, Entertainment, Finance, Health, Lifestyle, Medical, Music, Navigation, Music, Photography, Productivity, Reference, Social Networking, Sports, Travel, Utilities and Weather
App technologies : Accelerometer, SQLite, File System, Networking, GPS, Core Location, Camera, Open AL, Open GL ES

Please let us know if there exists such an opportunity with your company and we would be happy to get back to you accordingly.

Reference Links
1. IntelliExtremeXienceE-CorpGroup®
www.IntelliExtremeXienceE-CorpGroup.com

2. About IntelliExtremeXienceE-CorpGroup®
www.IntelliExtremeXienceE-CorpGroup®.com/About

Regards,
Bob Smith
Head Business Development,
IntelliExtremeXienceE-CorpGroup®,

Portfolio iPhone:-
1. http://itunes.apple.com/in/app/atomic-chalk-scribble-talk/id374247494?mt=8
2. http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/footyroom/id364550897?mt=8
3. http://itunes.apple.com/in/app/iappmatch/id347194540?mt=8
4. http://itunes.apple.com/in/app/fuel-smart-us/id340435838?mt=8
5. http://itunes.apple.com/in/app/asafedrive/id327598691?mt=8
---------------------

Here is why these emails get deleted immediately if they happen to make it past my spam filter:

  1. I hate email. I barely read email from people that I want to talk to much less from the 10 Indian / Chinese / Bulgarians with American names that are the very best iso-9000 cmmi level 5 mobile app developers in the world that want to chit chat.
  2. What is the call to action? I assume it is to have a vague conversation about how you may be able to get my business? That doesn’t sound like a very productive use of my extremely limited time at all. I need a succinct and specific request for you that will help make my life easier and explain why you will make me look like a rock star to my boss if you want a chunk of my very valuable time.
  3. I have no idea who you are. I am suspect of the accolades you have received and I doubt the great work you have done because I have never heard of any of those apps or customers. I think a lot like the Bonnano Crime Family from the film Donnie Brasco – If you want me to trust you, you need to be introduced to me by someone I know and trust that can vouch for you.
  4. Who emails anymore? You have a much better shot at following me on twitter and replying @ me, or friend requesting me on Facebook and commenting on a few of my extremely clever and pithy (if I do say so myself) status updates telling me how super clever and hilarious they were before moving in for the kill.

 

Bottom line – if you want to stand out in the crowded outsourcing market you’re going to have to try harder. Be creative, be memorable, and most importantly, be interesting.

Here are some quick hints on how to effectively sell someone like me:

  • If I don’t know you or if I don’t get introduced to you by someone I know then I probably won’t talk to you.
  • If I don’t know you, and you don’t know someone that knows me, then you better grab my attention with the creative approach you take to meet me AND/OR you better have the most impressive client list known to man.
  • once you do get in the door make sure you fully understand the context of what I am trying to build and why. Build a prototype as part of the sales process to prove to me that you get it, can do the work, and that our business matters to your firm.

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Posted in Corporate America, offshoring, outsourcing, technology | 168 Comments »

A Case for Bringing in New Blood

Monday, May 24th, 2010

Have you ever noticed that, when a new employee starts working for you, they’re highly motivated? They feel the need to make their mark on the company. They want to be impressive. They want to set a trajectory that will ensure their advancement. Sure, sometimes it’s just sycophantic nonsense, but in most cases they genuinely want to demonstrate their skills and their worth to the company.

This is a good thing. This is a really good thing. That drive to demonstrate worth will, in most cases, pay off for the company. But, how do you take advantage of this phenomenon?

Positive Reinforcement Does Wonders

The corporate environment can have a mind-numbing effect on even the most motivated, high-quality performer. Getting past the entrenched politics, the written and unwritten procedures and policies and the general corporate malaise is a challenge. And, while motivated employees like to make a positive difference for the company with their ideas, they don’t usually relish the idea of having to jump through so many hoops to make a positive change.

One way, then, to reward that new blood drive is to remove barriers. When you see a new employee who has a good idea, do what you can to fast-track the idea. Help her overcome the political barriers. Give her a head’s-up on how to grease certain wheels, or who to talk to about cutting red tape.

When the change does happen, reward him in other ways. Simple verbal praise is all right and important, but it isn’t enough. You need to offer other rewards, such as peer recognition. Ideally, an idea or innovation that makes or saves the company money ought to have a monetary reward.

Keep Staffed with Highly Motivated People

So, you understand how to take advantage of this new blood motivation on an individual level. But, how do you keep it fresh? How do you keep bringing in new blood?

It’s simple enough. You constantly evolve your staff by finding ways to always bring in new, motivated, intelligent personnel.

You have to be careful here, of course. You don’t want to lose motivated employees. If your bottom 10% are all still motivated and productive, they don’t deserve to be killed off and the company will be worse off without them.  This is what is sometimes problematic with the old GE / Six Sigma mentality of “killing off” 10% of your work force periodically.

You also need to watch out for the potential negative impact this has on productive employees. In some cases, it will have the unintended consequence of scaring the hell out of them. Employees will start to dread the regularly-scheduled new folks, and may begin to get paranoid and feel as though they have a target on their backs.

If you’re lavish with your rewards, this isn’t as much of a danger, of course.

A better option may be to occasionally find ways to bring in new staff and grow. This is especially true if you already have a dynamite, productive team. Find new roles, and find the budget. Of course, this works well with bigger organizations, and not so well with startups.

Finally, you need to realize that not every new employee has that “new car” shine. If you bring someone in who doesn’t seem interested in making her mark on your organization, cut them loose sooner, rather than later. Then, go out and find an employee who wants to make a difference.

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Posted in Corporate America | 18,699 Comments »

To SOA or not to SOA?

Tuesday, May 18th, 2010

I was recently asked to help build a case for investing millions of dollars into converting a monolithic architecture into a Service Oriented Architecture. The audience were to be very senior level executives that are not technical at all.

I thought it may be useful to post the 4 key points I gave to go along with this PPT Slide as well as some good metaphors/analogies helping non-techies understand SOA.

Here they are:

    – Enabling: SOA/Web Services are what enabled us to build the QoTD iPhone app and are what will enable us to build the future web 2.0, mobile and social apps that we want and need.
    - Efficient: Having a web service layer allows us to write functionality once and then re-use it on future projects.
    - Agility: A Service Oriented Architecture allows us to decouple logic from presentation. This makes it easier and faster to changes look, feel, and functionality on the fly.
    - Integration: Web Services allows us to easily exchange functionality and data with our partners, schools and customers.

Some good analogies/metaphors to describe SOA:

  1. Printing Press: SOA is a lot like the invention of the printing press. Prior to the printing press scribes had to manually copy a book each time it changed or needed to be distributed. When the printing press came out a book could be written once and then easily changed or re-used in a centralized fashion. Things got faster and cheaper.
  2. Food/Chef: SOA is like eating at a buffet: the chef prepares a range of dishes from which you build your own meal. The meal you choose does not require the whole ensemble to be put together ‘in the kitchen’: rather, the chef focuses solely on ensuring that there is an appropriate range of dishes provided in the buffet to keep most people happy for most of the time, based on market demand, season (and other prevailing conditions), consumer feedback/requests/suggestions, etc.  I got this from Beta Thoughts.
  3. Lego’s:  -  This is probably the most widely used and most popular.  It’s kind of long so I’ll link to it rather than re-posting the entire thing.  I got this from ZapThink.

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Posted in Corporate America, New Media, Service Oriented Architecture, technology | 2 Comments »

How to Spur Innovation at Your Organization

Tuesday, April 27th, 2010

Some organizations thrive on innovation. Younger companies, and companies that deal with bleeding-edge technologies or trends tend to make innovation a core value.

Chances are pretty good that’s not your organization. Most organizations struggle with innovation. They want to move forward with new ideas, new technologies and new platforms, but an institutional history or structure holds them back. Other companies tend to squash innovation like it’s an annoying little bug.

I’ve experienced this first hand. I’m the Director of New Media for a big company with an established past. As in, 110 years of an established past. Lucky for me, the company does have a real desire to innovate in the area of technology. They’ve just had a hard time of it up to this point.

So, here’s what I did for my organization. I’m not saying this approach will work for yours. Heck, it might even get you fired. But if your organization is going to stay competitive it’s going to have to innovate, and this process may help.

  1. Identify the problem. This was as much for my benefit as for the organization’s. We were able to get buy-in for innovative ideas at the highest levels of the company. That means when we hit organizational roadblocks down the road, we were able to go back to those executive sponsors and garner support.
  2. Create a mechanism for change. Rather than proposing specific innovations, we developed a group that would solely be responsible for incubating new and innovative technologies, tools and ideas. This group’s purpose is to identify possible technological innovations and bring them back to the specific business units. The group operates outside of the existing corporate bureaucracy, giving it a greater degree of autonomy than any departmental group might have had.
  3. Implement a change process. We didn’t leave the innovative group alone to rule the world, however. We gave them a specific roadmap. We included methodologies, such as interacting with vendors, beta testing of new technologies and involvement with conferences and trade shows, that they would use to identify new technologies.
  4. Determine the vector of change. We also gave our innovation group a specific list of technology types from which they could work. We suggested things like “Web Technologies,” “Cloud Computing” and “Delivery Platforms.” This helps to insure that the group doesn’t go rogue into bleeding-edge technological innovations when we’re struggle to even keep current.
  5. Develop an intake process. Identifying technology innovations isn’t enough, of course. We needed a way for our innovation group to bring new tech to our business units. We developed specific processes for the group to use, including reaching out proactively to various business units, and being proactive rather than reactive.

The end result has been that we’ve seen some especially useful and innovative technology implementations across the company since we started this process. Not every innovation to come out of the group has been implemented or even fully considered, but our business units now have a pool of innovations to choose from going forward.

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Posted in Corporate America, innovation | 10 Comments »

How to Keep your Freedom in Corporate America

Thursday, April 22nd, 2010

If there’s one thing that big corporations tend to have it common it’s that they’re stifling. And I don’t mean just a little bit stifling, I mean a LOT stifling. Between meaningless management-speak and org charts that look like a work of string art, you can go mad if you don’t keep your wits about you.

What makes it worse is that corporations – or at least, the middle managers in corporations that determine the day-to-day life of a company – believe that this kind of processing, this kind of bureaucracy, is the right way to get things done.

So, what happens when you take someone who’s used to working autonomously and try to plug them into the corporate assembly line? Well, you get a mess. I’m living proof of that.

I’ve been an entrepreneur in the tech field for a long time. I took my startup and built it into a successful company in under five years. After I sold off the company, I was up for a challenge. I turned, in my naiveté, to the corporate world.

I was looking for something I could sink my teeth into. I was looking for something exciting that would challenge me. Little did I know I’d be challenged, not just in my creativity, but also in winding my way through the corporate bureaucracy in order to truly innovate.

I went from running my own new/small company, to selling it to a medium-sized company, to working for a monster-sized organization that’s over a century old. That means a century of bureaucracy, a century of entrenched systems, and a century of politics. Talk about culture shock.

The problem isn’t unique to my company, of course. In fact, my company has, at its heart, a desire to innovate and encourage creativity. Any company that’s been around that long presents some serious challenges in the way of bureaucracy.

But, I’m still here. I’m doing the work, day in and day out. How do I handle being the Director of New Media in a company that has so much entrenched bureaucracy, and doesn’t intrinsically foster freedom and initiative? – That’s easy. I change the company. Along the way, I use three guiding principles to help me maintain my freedom (and sanity) working within the bureaucracy:

1. I build on institutional strengths. It’s easy to see the limitations and the useless structures at work in a 110 year-old company. In fact, some days you can get so caught up in the restraints that you miss something: there’s a reason that company has been in business for 110 years. There is something there that’s kept them successful and in the market. Figure out what that is, and put it at the core of everything you do, and you’ll find your efforts will be rewarded even if they’re unconventional.

2.  When you get scolded for thinking outside the box, redefine the box. This isn’t always easy to do, of course. But you need to be able to demonstrate how innovation and creativity have paid off in other endeavors, especially ones internal to the company. Don’t think outside the box, make a bigger one.

3.  Produce demonstrable results. You can’t argue with success. If you want to be encouraged to be creative and free, then demonstrate that you’re able to produce results because of your creativity and freedom. For any given endeavor you want to propose, include some form of metric measure its success.

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Posted in Corporate America | 7 Comments »