Lead us not into dissatisfaction

Pro

1 April 2005

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs leads us in unexpected directions, both personally and in pursuit of IT sufficiency. In the 1950s and 60s, Maslow developed a psychological theory that was at odds with the installed user base of head shrinkers of the day. While they adhered to the teachings of BF Skinner (mechanistic learning) or Freud (naughty thoughts about mummy drive us), Maslow said that unmet, salient needs are the powerful guide for our behaviour.

Maslow opined that certain lower needs need to be satisfied before higher needs can be motivational. Physiological needs (food, air, water, etc) take precedence over all else. Shelter, then safety, come next up. The hierarchy ascends through love/belonging and progressing to esteem toward what Maslow considered the top: self-actualisation.

In a predictable Maslowian manner, some recent consultancy work led me to offer to supply a notebook computer to the MD of one of my clients. I enlisted the help of an IT distribution company (who will remain nameless) where I had an account. The ensuing pearness of the shape of the deal and the reasons for same put in sharp focus the need not just for responsive IT systems but for a business process that uses and modifies them to better serve that rag-tag lot that is thrusting money in your directions (your customers!). All hail the coming BPM revolution!

And so, my craven behaviour designed to pay the mortgage and put potatoes in the pot, gave rise to other behaviours that ascended the pyramid of needs and culminated in this expression of criticism that I trust will enlighten the fulfilment of your various IT conundrums. The implementation of that alternative perspective will, in turn, lead to the esteem of your colleagues and business associates and that frisson of self-actualisation for all users that your IT system touches. I’ll be content stuffing this up the backside of an under-performing IT distributor!

The Web is a wonderful conduit for information — and misinformation. When placing an order for expensive gear, your not-at-all-Luddite part-time scribe often resorts to the old fashioned expedient of the telephone to discuss details and place an order. E-commerce is fine for books and CDs (and the occasional 1957 Gibson Melody Maker on eBay) but past experience regarding the need to switch to synchronous comms for supply of IT goods has again proved unavoidable.

Sad but true, Nick, my man on the distributor’s end, called up the same Web page I was looking at from the online catalogue, and we debated the merits of WinXP Home Vs WinXP Pro. It was mostly a one-sided debate pointing to unmet training needs of the distributor’s sales staff. A deal was struck for a price with a margin that just about paid for my time and expertise.

The technical details on the site of the PC maker (Samsung) were largely cut and pasted with little obvious editing for style or accuracy (another unmet need?) into the distributor’s site. Clearly XML was a technology too far for either the vendor or the distributor. A quick calendar check: this is 2003? Not 1999? The ghost of the IT Network haunts me still!

The salient technical details were, however, abstracted and used as a demonstration of HTML skills needed for coding un-numbered lists. Along the way a couple of details were bungled. A 20Gbyte disk became a 30Gbyte disk and an integrated 802.11b wireless interface was added to the Web spec sheet but not actually slipped into the inventoried item.

The otherwise excellent Samsung VX20 notebook delivered the next day bore a striking similarity, but was not identical, to the one displayed on the Web page and discussed at some length with Nick, before placing the order.

Grief was caused as the customer, having viewed the same spec sheet, was put under the (unfortunately mistaken) belief that a 30 Gbyte disk and a WiFi widget were included in the modest price I demanded. Many management hours and phone calls later, a suitable credit against the price for the under-spec disk was arranged and a PC Card adapter (fortunately much better than an integrated option, IMHO) was dispatched.

My guess is that the distributor, who is already working on very scant margins, made nothing on this deal mostly due to having to supply a WiFi network card FOC and fend off a dozen or so calls to the sales team that resulted in no additional sales.

What promised to be a slam-bam thank you ma’am deal for me also did not meet my expectations. Multiply this times the thousands of customers and transactions done on a daily basis by this distributor and you have a very blunt edge where a finely honed competitive cutting tool should be. A tendency for customers to take their unmet needs elsewhere would be understandable.

Despite my efforts, the matter is still open over missing warranty documentation. Calls to sales produced a suggestion to call customer service that resulted in a number at Samsung where the person said that this was the problem of the distributor. I mentioned this to sales and got the equivalent of a telephonic shrug. Growing tired of unproductive telephone tag, I sent an e-mail to the distributors customer service e-mail address two days ago. My request has not yet been acknowledged let alone satisfied.

Most illuminating were Nick’s comments on the state of their Web site and the nature of their business. ‘This is a pretty fast moving business and we cant always keep the Web site as up to date as we’d like. Sometimes the buying side of the business gets a special deal and that allows us to set hot prices for some products (like the one I ordered but didn’t receive?). We put our phone number on every Web page so people can call us if they have any questions (which I did. And my contact resorted to the same Web page I was looking at when providing what information he could).’

Maslow would say that salient needs of customers and suppliers in a well-done deal are identical. What has gotten in the way in the instant case is the distributor’s failure to adapt and change in order to make Teflon-like deals a reality. This little round of aggro is not the first time this has happened and probably wont be the last until somebody gets their finger out and uses IT to sort this AND provide a nice mapping for both the customer’s and their employee’s hierarchy of needs.

What we have here is a screaming demonstration of the lack of the latest IT fashion, Business Process Management (BPM) software tools. Like a lot of IT fashions, it has actually been around for a while. Those crazed (or enlightened) CIOs that know a good opportunity when they see one from afar have already hacked their way through the Version 1.0 jungle and are starting to see results.

BPM got its start in the 1930s when Walter Shewhart outlined a methodology for ‘continuous improvement’ known as the Shewhart Cycle. The four steps for improving processes ran invariably through Plan > Do > Check > Act. W. Edwards Deming, one of Shewhart’s disciples, took this schema to Japan and as a result we are all driving Hondas, Nissans and Toyotas that the wheels don’t fall off near as often as they do with French cars.

Deming’s revolutionary advance has filtered through almost all manufacturing processes even unto meanest bean sprout supplier in Taiwan and is reflected in software dedicated to business process design and modification. The Delphi Group believes that BPM may be the next ‘killer app’ for enterprise software users in the private and governmental service sectors.

New paradigms R us

BPM software and tools are based on the ubiquitous availability of browser-based applications, cheap and universal connectivity, efficient comms, and a population of Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) users that, for good or ill, have made EAI a cornerstone of their business process.

Workflow solutions, EAI, CRM and application development tools are all dumped in the BPM pot and given a brisk stir. If it comes together, customers and employees get their needs satisfied and money pours in from more frequent and less costly transactions.

BPM can become 2003’s killer app because it extracts more value from previous large IT investments and that is the belle mot of our trying times. Because BPM is based on previous IT investment, it can endure the stern looks when CIOs bring a new project to the boardroom table.

Companies can use BPM to sort their current processes, automate their execution, monitor performance, and importantly make ad hoc changes to improve the current business processes a la Shewart/Deming’s method for industrial processes. These are big promises all and ones that may have been uttered before by the ERP unholy trinity.

This time, however, it is all hanging together a bit more tightly — mostly because implementation is not all or nothing and incremental improvements can be realised well within the goldfish-like memory of CFOs for IT projects that actually paid off.

There’s a lot at my confounded IT supplier that BPM can fix. Why do customers call instead of using online ordering, especially for low numbers of units where the cost of the transaction is clearly disproportionate? Why were the exact specs of the machine ordered not available online and matched to the red hot price? How did the invoice get generated based on different specs? Does the sales team know of the problem of Web site Vs invoicing system? And could they fix it if they did? Why is not customer service responsive? Do the sales side know that customer service has dropped the ball on the warranty? Could they leap in and save a customer? Come the day that I should again ring them (in desperation?), will they know about this problem and know that it is (presumably, eventually) fixed?

A good dose of BPM to my errant distributor’s buyers, sales pipeline and customer service would have me a happy un-needy bunny. Important (to them!) would be decreased cost of transactions and higher rate of customer return. And the hapless sales team that is bearing the brunt of my increasingly pointed inquiries would, with BPM in their quiver, have the tools to zoom through the lower layers of the pyramid and scale the peaks of self-actualisation by changing the way the company does business with their own head/hands/browser with pride. We all have needs.

BPM names to conjure with are Savvion, Metastorm, Fuego, Lombardi, FileNet, StaffWare, SeeBeyond, Vitria, and of course BEA, Tibco, the rest of the ERP flock as well. And lets not forget IBM and, shudder, Microsoft who is warping BizTalk to suit. William Gurley, seer and venture capitalist, thinks that BEA has got the full import of BPM possibilities and is one to watch despite some overlap conflicts with a gaggle of their BPM pure play partners.

This is not just about IT, this is about business. It is possible to have great IT infrastructure and slick BPM but still fail at business. However, well formed IT is increasingly important to keep a good business competitive and that requires implementing the principles of continuous improvement diligently and continuously. BPM makes it natural and semi-automatic.

BPM methods and software are the way to codify the real intellectual capital of a well-run business. You can use those winning BPM ways to extend revenue and contain costs, leaving happy, well adjusted and handsomely rewarded customers and employees in its wake. BPM is what will take your business into 04 and see that all your various needs and the needs of your customers and employees are met thereafter, too.

08/05/2003

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