The power of ‘No’.

This week I had an interesting round-table discussion where a few young ICT entrepreneurs, SAP and Exact were attending. The meeting was a preparation for ICT Congres 2009 on October 1^st in Delft, where speakers from both SAP and Exact will attend. Even in this preparation, a heated discussion already took place on open versus closed source software…if you want to witness this yourself then don’t miss the ICT congres. A discussion that intrigued me was about the difference between ICT companies that sell and implement software and who live on customizations, so maximizing the number of hours/services they sell is their main business goal. This is in contrast with companies that just want to sell standard software products and quickly get as many happy customers as possible. An example was given about an SAP partner in Europe who really mastered a few best practices for the industries he wanted to be in and does his utmost not to make any customizations to the solutions he provides his customers. That means often answering ‘no’ to questions for customization and convincing the customer on the power of the best practice, asking questions like “In what sense is your company really unique” or “what would you not be able to do if we would implement this best practice’. This partner went so far as to give his project managers and delivery organization targets where people got a higher payout depending how much their projects were completed ahead of time/budget. The sooner the project was completed, the faster a new project could be initiated and (potentially) a new reference customer added to their client base! Needless to say that this partner is a fast growing one and the customer feedback on their implementations is very positive.

Adding large customizations on top of standard (ERP) software, can easily put a burden on future maintainability, updates to newer operating systems, database platforms or other technology shifts. Not just the customer buying the customization but for the company producing and maintaining the customized software it’s often a tricky situation and not a very scalable model. Exact Software to my opinion could not have grown to its current customer base if all of these customers would have customized versions of our software. So asking the questions mentioned above and saying ‘no’ to requests for customizations, could very well be in the interest of the seller as well as buyer.

In the discussion we had on this topic, opinions on the above were highly different so feel free to comment with your own view on this.

What percentage do you, as product manager, spend on requirements

This morning I had a meeting with a product manager at an organization that controls national (Dutch) payment products like PIN, Chipknip, iDeal etc. They're working on a slight adjustment of the information shown on the 'Acceptgiro'. During my work within product management at Exact, a considerable percentage of the daily activities of me and my team, is to draw up solid requirements. Of course these requirements are based on a source of input (customers, market research, technology) and we validate requirements with internal stakeholders (colleagues within our operations) and external stakeholders (partners, customers, etc). What was remarkable to notice, is that within the organization I visited, the product manager only spends little time (estimated by me at 1% of his time) on the requirements of this new acceptgiro layout and majority of the remaining time in alignment of the external stakeholders. A small change on the layout, think about printing some additional numbers or references, has such a big impact across the entire channel that uses this way of invoicing and collecting payments, that extensive preparations and validations are needed. Ranging from government, banks to debt-collection organizations and organizations represeting the entrepreneurs. That process could easily take up 1-2 years. Quite an eye-opener.

How much time do you spend on validating requirements with external stakeholders?

EnergieDirect: Customerbility in optima forma!

Recently I switched to a different providor for electricity and gas. Reason for switching was that I wasn't happy with my previous providor (Eneco) who pulled a few tricks on their customers. I'll not go into detail about how bad (i.m.h.o.) they treat their customers since that would turn this blogpost into a lot of negativity....and I have something VERY positive to share!

After I decided to search for another energy providor, my neighbour told me about the positive experiences he's had with EnergieDirect. He literally told me 'They're a relatively new kid on the block and much smaller then the big guys, but boy are they giving the big ones a hard time with their excellent service". It's not everyday that I hear people so positive about an energy providor so the same evening I went to their website and filled in their subscription form. They claim to take care of the rest.

Well it's been 2 weeks now and I can only say that so far they have exceeded my high expectations by a mile....and I haven't received one cubic meter of gas nor one Kwh of electricity.

What really offsets them from the competition, at least from the 2 other (big) providors I have experienced, is that they really feel like a close friend taking care of you and guiding you through the process. It's in the way they send their emails ("Hi Ronald, things are progressing quite well. We're on schedule for step #2 on June 29."), it's from the extremely user-friendly way you subscribe to 'your' energy page, the way they help you keep track of your energy consumption (and benchmarking) etc Check out the page they show you upon login. To me, I think they may have nailed 'the' perfect' page for this purpose:

The upper section has the usual shortcuts but right below that menu, is where you'll see what steps you're going through in order to make the full switch to this providor . I'm at step #3:

On the right side there's my personal info. Simple, I see it straight away and can edit it with one-click if needed:

Of course I'm curious about what's next. So here's my calendar showing what they're going to do next for me:

and finally, the info on what the current step #3 encompasses. Helps me to understand what they're doing and how they're going to communicate that to me in due time:

Now I know that i've been critical at online forms as well as expressing frustration at attempts by traditional companies trying to organize an online presence with some level of customer engagement/involvement (I've just received the password for My OHRA online website...via regular mail...3 weeks after subscription...via regular mail as well). Right now, I'll openly give all credit to EnergieDirect and the way they're attacking the consumer energy market in The Netherlands.

Oh yeah, almost forgot, they're way cheaper then traditional providors but even if they offered this level of customerbility for the same price, I would still switch!

SQL 2008 support for Exact Globe

I notice that quite some hits on my blog come from searches with keywords containing SQL2008.


On April 21st, Exact Globe product update 393 has been made general available. As per this product update SQL2008 is supported, running on a Windows 2003 or Windows 2008 server. For small companies, SQL2008 is also suported when installed on a Windows XP or Windows Vista desktop.

If you want to have a look at the unique selling points of SQL Server 2008, please have a look at the overview on the Microsoft website. For an overview of technical documentation for SQL Server 2008, please refer to Books Online.

Exact plans to stop selling SQL Server 2005 as of May 1st. From that moment on, only SQL Server 2008 licenses can be sold to Exact's customers.

SQL Server 2008 licenses grant customers the right to downgrade, which means that customers wanting to use SQL Server 2005 can still do so when purchasing SQL Server 2008 licenses. The upgrade to SQL Server 2008 can then take place at the customer's own convenience.

A complete overview of the system requirements for Exact Globe product update 393 can be found here.


Next to the support of SQL2008, a variety of improvements has been made available to our customers. For Exact's customers, more information can be found in the release notes and in the updated set of database documentation here (access is restricted to Exact customers, so you'll need your username/password for Exact's customer portal).

Building lasting relationships

It's no surprise that in ERP the new site sales is getting tough. on one hand, ERP has already become a commodity so it's getting more a replacement market and on the other hand the economic situation drives customers to lengthen the lifecycle of their existing ERP investment rather then selecting and implementing a new ERP software package. All this by no means implies that there are no opportunities for new site sales...it's just harder to find them. So how to find the opportunities? One way is to work harder or put more resources on it. I like the idea of investing against the market-trends and showing you're confident to create and 'lead' the rebounce rather then follow it.

But there's other ways as well. I've blogged a few times about the importance of social media and how 'social currency' can earn you trust and build lasting relationships. This starts by at least having a presence on the web, showing who you are, what you stand for and what others can expect from you. Today I was approached by a manager from PWC accountants, unknown to me, who came across my details somehow and apparently found it to be trust-worthy. He was sourcing for an ERP package for a EUR 400MLN company. 

Some of the requirements he gave me:

- Should support local legislation in Germany, Netherlands, Belgium

- Support local as well as corporate ledger schemes

- Allow to consolidate financial transactions across the entities

- Able to interface with other ERP systems in order to import transactions

- Solid fixed assets module with parent-child structure

- 20 users but quickly growing

This is right within the sweet-spot of Exact Globe and these are exacrtly the kind of opportunities that I know my colleagues within Exact EMEA can serve very well. A quick call to their sales support department and the ball got rolling today. Will let you know if we win this one and disclose the names.

Is this where the effort from my side ends? No way, for sure I'll be contacting the person at PWC to learn more about his role in that organization, why he is sourcing ERP packages form his clients and how we could establish a lasting relationship...the corp. product management team of Exact Globe happens to be sourcing for an international accounting firm who can assess the level of localization in the 30+ legislations that Exact Globe covers worldwide...

What do ERP and Sacher Torte have in common?

Piece of cake! 

Business process owners at a customer of Exact Software, failed to find a single bug in Exact Globe 392, earning the Exact Globe development team in Kuala Lumpur a sumptuous Viennese “Sacher Torte”

In the past, users at the Exact customer, a pharmaceutical services group headquartered in Vienna, have complained about problems with new batches of Exact Globe, leaving them with a negative attitude toward updates. To create an incentive for the customer to initiate the firm’s standard preliminary testing phase and upgrade to Exact Globe 392, Nicolaas Vos, customer support representative at Exact Austria, came up with the idea to set up a gimmick contest between testers at the customer and developers of Exact.

This was the deal:

If bugs were found in Exact Globe Batch 392, Exact Austria agreed to send the  testers at the customer one bottle of Austrian Schlumberger champagne per bug – excluding internal technical issues, such as data format, Excel and printers. However, if no bugs were found, the customer would send a delicious Viennese “Sacher Torte” to the Exact Globe development team in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

The large-scale test was carried out between February 16 and 20 at customer's subsidiaries in Bulgaria, Croatia, Estonia, Russia, Ukraine, Greece, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Poland and Romania, involving different legislations and custom solutions.

The result?

Exact’s developers won! The testers on the customers 'sites failed to find a single bug. Exact’s development team invested a lot of energy in the stability of Exact Globe 392, and their efforts have paid off. Product update  392, which passed three Exact quality control levels, internal testing and a pilot phase, went into General Availability on January 5, 2009. And now our developers have shown they can meet the expectations of even the most skeptical of testers.

 

 

Surveys? First find out how customers use your ERP system

A lot has been written recently about ERP customers being less willing to invest in new ERP systems (replacing existing systems) but rather are seeking an extension of the lifecycle of their existing investment. An excellent opportunity for ERP vendors with a large customer base to:

• further engage their customers, 
• tighten the intimacy and listen
• Make targeted investments in their product offering and start deep-selling in order to...
• ..increase the ROI for these customers on the investments they did

 

So all we, as software vendors, need to do is ask the customer what they would appreciate most. Start a huge customer survey and off you go....but is it really that simple?

From a product management point of view, what would you want to achieve with a customer survey? How should it help you to get answers to questions you have? Here’s my view on this.

How are customers using the ERP software?

1.    What products are they really using? For my case, are they using just Exact Globe or has Exact Synergy also been implemented and is being used

2.    What functionality are they using (what modules). Maybe they really only use a fraction of the modules they purchased. A module that is active in their license, doesn't mean it's being used (how about ROI on these modules....)

3.    What reports are used a lot, what reports are never used? An ERP system, at a very high level, is about users keying in data in order to produce output (documents) and reports to get better control. We need to understand the usage of reports.

4.    How many users are using a particular functionality. For example: a customer could have 20 users where 18 work on sales order entry only and 2 on financial control applications. Or could have 90% of their users work with requests every day but zero using documents. Tells a lot about the adoption of your software within a company, could even be good input for further training of users in other areas.

5.    How big is the ERP administration and the growth? How many transactions every day? Tells us a lot about the intensity with which the software is used

The answers to all these questions can quite easily be retrieved from the internal logging in the Exact database but also from the SQL database. André van de Graaf, a colleague at Exact Software's Research & Innovation group and Arjen Boers, a colleague at Exact's Customer Support expert center, have developed an application Exact System Information Tool that can retrieve the answers to above questions, analyze it, even come up with recommendations for the user and store it in a central repository at Exact Software where the anonymous statistics can be further interpreted and used as input for product decisions. Soon, a blog post with an explanation of the application will be made public, it's currently in a controlled phase and only deployed at selected customers. 

 

How can the software be improved?

Back to the initial idea: a survey to decide what those 'targeted investments' should be. Once we have insight how customers are using the ERP software, we can determine a subset of our customers and ask targeted questions for possible improvements. If we know which customers are using the MRP overview for their production process every day, we have an excellent opportunity to get in contact and ask for input on future improvements. Or customers who are using the XML replication to export data to Exact Synergy, could be targeted with questions on the consolidated scenario or Synergy financial consolidation. 

Another idea you may think of is to virtually ‘give’ a subset of customers a bag with 100 coins in it and have them assign these coins to 10 possible areas of product improvement. These areas would be given by Exact based on the suggestions/input we already have or the conclusions we draw from the statistics we get.  In order to get targeted feedback we can use a survey like Surveymonkey or a community like the Advisory Groups in LinkedIn as a platform.

When talking about a subset of customers, I am not necessarily referring to a market segment nor a horizontal or vertical 9functional) distinction. It's rather a group of customers who have something in common and that may even be, as an example, that they both are heavy users of cost centers and cost units within their financial administration. 

What is not the goal?

For me, the goal of a customer survey would not be to get an uncontrollable and endless list of all possible product suggestions in all possible areas. I would rather have targeted questions or do more intense follow-up sessions with a few targeted customers. 

 

 

If you’re using Exact Globe or Exact Synergy and want to participate in the final phase of Exact System Information Tool, then please comment or drop me an email at Ronald.Voets(at)exactsoftware.com