Categories
Presentation

The Customer Experience

Corporate IT today is not your Father’s IT.

Consumers are no longer confused or afraid of technology. It surrounds them everywhere, and they carry it in their pockets. They feel they are the masters of technology, so raising questions or probing “why” about cost or performance of Corporate IT is easy and natural.

When a manager can take their corporate card and order IT services from companies like Amazon, Skype, Box, and Cloudera at the click of a button, Enteprise IT has to consider the customer experience and define IT Business Services that make it easier for the consumer- not easier for IT.

Corporate IT needs to stop feeling threatened by growing cloud enabled services and change their role so that they are the concierge, or trusted advisor to the business, enabling smart business decisions.

We had great discussion around this topic with the folks at ITFMA’s 2014 conference in Norfolk earlier this month.  the presentation slides are available on Slideshare– if they raise questions or water cooler discussion for you, reach out and let us know.

Categories
Excellence Metrics Presentation

Our lean roots

Lean has  had a strong influence in our thinking here at Thavon. Although companies do not have to follow a special formula, there is great common sense advice in the core of the lean approach.  Without a Go To Gemba mindset, it is impossible for Service Owners to understand the value of their services and the needs of their customers.

We were pleased to have a CEO who sat on the MESA Lean initiative working group and helped to produce their Lean Strategic Initiative Guidebook. You can download it over on the Thavron LinkedIn Page.

Process and People are critical in an transformation, but there also comes a time when Technology can give you that competitive edge.  If you are exploring how to transform your organization into a Service Centric business, or  you want to take your Services to the next level in providing value, let us help you plan the path forward.

 

Categories
Opinion TBM

Demand Budgeting in a Service Enterprise

Demand budgeting.  Once the discussion with customers has begun around services, this is the essential next step. Imagine working with a  restaurant for meal delivery. Service discussions mean that we offer and want customers to  order things like “ lasagna and side salad”. But if  demand planning continues the “GL Account” way, then the conversation would go like this:  “Today for lunch I want lasagna and a side salad. Tomorrow I am expecting company, so I will want 3lbs of ground beef, a pound of noodles, a head of lettuce, two tomatoes and 2 cups of ricotta. *“ You can see that this is not only MORE awkward than 100% component discussions, it  works against the enterprise making the shift.  In order to become a service based organization, services need to be the unit of discussion at all phases of the conversation. This means creating a shift in process and tools so that you can have a relationship and ongoing conversation with customers about how  the value they are getting out of your current services are shifting. Demand should not just be a conversation around adding or decreasing heads in the organization, but should be a discussion about the bottom line business value of services and how shifting business goals may impact the demand for those services.

*yes, I know this is not the real recipe for lasagna

Categories
Opinion

Becoming a better consultant

As CEO, part of my job is to look for ways to help our employees grow professionally. For technical staff, there are many ways to grow and develop skills- it is a process of focusing or narrowing the field of possibilities.  For consulting staff, the challenge is greater.  While there are lots of seminars and webinars that claim to turn someone into a better consultant, my experience has been that it really takes two things – temperament and experience.  This got me thinking about where I first learned some of my consulting skills. Interestingly enough, it was not from past clients- my learning and experience curve started much further back.

iStock_000009759865XSmallOne of the characteristics that makes a consultant successful is the ability to stand up in the middle of chaos and indecision and present a path forward and then lead.  My first experiences with this were as a Cadet Girl Scout in middle school.  There were several occasions where the council threw all the cadet troops together in a meeting to plan out activities for younger scouts for the council wide camp out. Imagine if you can, 20-40  middle school girls ( ages 11-13) in a room turned loose to collaborate and plan.  Although there were girls with marvelous ideas who worked with their little clique to plan activities, I learned fast that the scouts who were able to pitch an idea and then collaborate across groups to create excitement ( we did not call it “buy in” back then) were the ones who were most successful and ended up having the most fun.  I continued with scouts into college and consider my experiences formative ones, thanks to amazing leaders and adult volunteers.

There were a lot of events- some chosen, some not- in my life that put me into situations where listening carefully, designing a solution and being willing to be accountable for setting a direction were critical for success. Over time and through analyzing mistakes I got more and more comfortable with that role. At Thavron, we pair less experienced consultants with field honed employees and use a process of ongoing analysis and discussion to help everyone -even the most experienced consultants learn something from every project. But as I mentor folks informally, I tell them to find volunteer activities that put them into a zone of uncertainty, where leadership and accountability are key to success.  No matter your passion, there will be an organization you love or believe in who is trying something new where the path is not known. Step up and take leadership on those projects. It is on projects where there is disagreement, dissension and a new path forward to be planned that the skills of great consultants are honed.

Categories
Excellence Frameworks Opinion Services

Always exceeding expectations? That doesn’t mean you are excellent.

In consulting, there is a constant push to “exceed customer expectations”. It makes sense in our business- since we are coming in as experts, we should have experiences and perspectives that allow us to see broader trends and opportunities than our clients, who are often buried in the details of running and growing a single business.
iStock_000019901721XSmall
But today, I want to challenge the idea that always exceeding customer expectations is a good measure of excellence. Exceeding expectations can happen when one of two things happens- either expectations were too low, or you behaved better than anyone expected.

Expectations being set too low could be a symptom of a lack of confidence, poor communication, or in some cases, just plain laziness. Exceeding these low expectations is certainly not a sign of excellence.

But, you may protest- what if the expectations are realistic and correctly set? Isn’t exceeding correct expectations a sign of excellence? To which we would answer- it depends.

At what cost were expectations exceeded? If manufacturing specs were exceeded without extra processing time or cost- EXCELLENT. But if exceeding the specs doubled the cost or time of manufacturing- not so great at all. If you successfully close a major project 2 weeks ahead of time with no unintended impacts- EXCELLENT. But if you beat the deadline by focusing more resources on that project, and thus missed the deadline for 4 other projects- that is poor program management, not excellence at all.

Certainly then, if the expectations are realistic and exceeding them produces no negative impact, an organization where expectations are always exceeded is an excellent one, right?

Far from being excellent,  an organization that always exceeds expectations is one headed for obsolescence. If targets are carefully set and always exceeded- then there is no stretch, no growth, no risks and no innovations.

In a healthy, thriving, growing business we would expect to see some goals met, some goals exceeded and some which fail.  The mark of an excellent organization is not how many goals they exceed, but in how they react to the successes and failures.

Categories
Presentation

CIO as an ERP consumer

Traditionally, the CIO and their staff have owned the “care and feeding” of a company’s ERP on behalf of the business. The implementation process for the business is very detailed, but the implementation process for IT has been focused on the Technical Aspects. With the Shift to “Running IT Like a Business”, the CIO and staff are now also consumers of the ERP and need to focus not only on the technical aspects of the implementation, but also self reflect on the IT Business Process impacts as well.​

 

 

http://www.slideshare.net/Thavron/the-cio-as-an-erpconsumer

Categories
Opinion

Picking Smart Partners

It was a 6am conference call type morning, and I found my self at 5am, sitting drinking coffee and reading through LinkedIn headlines while my brain woke up. The one about working for smart companies​ caught my eye.

Although the article focused on moving your personal career forward,  as we choose technologies to recommend to customers, we use the same rule of thumb the article recommended for  evaluating the tech that companies use.

As that 6am conference call progressed, I heard the same questions coming up.. Is it HTML5? How does this do triggers and notifications? How does mobile access look and feel? I was proud that we had chosen tech  (in this case Metric Insights and Aspen Advisors) whose approach to doing business aligns with the future growth of how customers want to use technology.

We are always looking for interesting new technology partners, if you are a tech/tool provider, or have a favorite provider – please share.  We are vendor neutral, but we are glad to share and highlight vendors who we think bring the right stuff to the game.

Categories
Opinion TBM

What about the Enterprise Architects?

Google’s ngram viewer shows that the word “architecture”, which had a stable usage from 1800-1980.  It slowly rose through the 80’s then sharply spiked in the 1990’s and remains stable at a rate double it’s previous usage since about 1998 ( you can see the architecture ngram here).  That rise was interestingly co-incident with the rise of computers( and computer architecture) and the birth and growth in the 1990’s of that beast known as an Enterprise Architect. In the 90’s, enterprise architects went on a search for the computer systems equivalent of physic’s Grand Unified Theory. Creatures such as TOGAF, DODAF and other “universal architectures” were born and then failed in their mission.
The biggest problem was that most of the enterprise architectures ended up layering on more overhead, processes and paperwork than they actually supplied solutions. At the same time that enterprise architects were looking to create massive universal guidelines, developers were moving to Xtreme programming, becoming Agile and sitting side by side wth their customers.
iStock_000005614684XSmall
With the shift to a services mentality, the need for enteprise architects is stronger than ever, but only if they learn some lessons from the Agile approach.
Enterprise architects should not be looking at how they can design and dictate global, universal frameworks, but should use their deep technical knowledge and ability to abstract to patch some of the biggest gaps in the services lifecycle for most companies. Here are the top opportunities for enterprise architects to make a difference in the business bottom line:
1) IT Departments struggle to translate Business Services into technical requirements. This impacts cost, value and risk for the business and creates lots of unhappy phone calls to the CIO. Enterprise Architects wondering what their role is in all of this “service stuff” should be working with the service owners to design and build small frameworks and tools that translate business demand into IT requirements.
2) Someone with an Enterprise Architecture background and training is perfect for the vendor evaluation process. Using their translational skills, they can easily help the business talk with vendors and understand if the product being pitched actually meets business requirements while meeting corporate security restrictions.
3) Working for a large corporation with large purchasing power?  Now is the perfect time to partneer with a service owner, help them abstract out the critical business features missing in the market place and work with vendors to shape the future to your company’s advantage.
The new Enterprise Architecture group is agile and focused on services and service owners. These architects use their powers of abstraction and design to make IT services better for the business.
iStock_000016209384XSmall

 

Categories
Uncategorized

The Thavron Culture

​We have been interviewing new contractors lately, and it has caused me to pause and think about the Thavron culture. To work well on a project team, you not only need the right intellectual skillset, you also need to work well with the rest of the people on the team.

The Thavron culture can best be summed up by the phrase “Work hard, play hard, grow steady’.  Project teams dig in, focus and get the work done. We also understand the importance of  blowing off steam and getting a little silly once in a while.   Most importantly, we are firmly focused on steady growth.  Not an “exponential today, lay you all off next week” sort of growth plan, but a constant stream of growth that continues to raise the level of business over time.

We are a completely virtual team, so we need people who work viturally as easily as they do shoulder to shoulder. I look for someone who can shift from being part of a face to face team onsite with a client to working with from their couch in front of their fireplace without missing a beat.

The world is a constantly changing place, and we are all on a constant learning curve.  People who work with us are continous learners with an ability to dive in and pick up new materials and tools quickly – through experimentation in addition to reading. We are defining this new domain, which means that we are writing the book on it- there is no text book to learn this yet. ​

If this sounds like an environment you would thrive in, reach out and introduce yourself. Send us what we need to know at info@thavronsolutions.com.

Categories
Uncategorized

Launches, growth and resumes please

So many of our partners have activity blossoming this week. One partner we have been doing data analytics and dashboarding for is preparing to release the results of a major industry award based on the analysis we have done ( more to follow on that one).   Another Partner is launching our CityDash City Government Data Transparency Dashboard at the Tableau Conference this week ( links here on Wednesday when it is announced officially).

With all the activity rushing about– it is no wonder that we are starting to collect resumes for contractors who want to join our team.   It is an exciting time, one I do not mind losing a little sleep for.