Being specific about what you do and what you want

As a member of BNI, we meet weekly to pass referrals and each week, we do an infomercial about our business.
The format isn’t structured, but every once in a while, it’s suggested that we do something very specific in our infomercial. This week, it was suggested that we list two services that we provide. In doing that, I got an aha moment from a number of people in the room. After three years in the chapter, my members had not understood what I did clearly enough to recognize these items.
The specific services that I described were:

• I provide a business operations diagnostic, showing a business owner where his business is encountering problems, and what he can do about it.
• I provide an independent non-technical support to business owners who are receiving technical proposals from IT suppliers and don’t have the technical skills to evaluate them.

These services were much more specific than what I had done before and it created new understanding of what I do.  In BNI we are taught to eliminate generalizations and be very specific.  Also to narrow our target market, so that people can focus on our needs.  This situation is an example of narrowing your target.  I hadn’t thought of describing it this way before.

Learning to market your services more effectively by getting continuous feedback is one of the benefits of meeting weekly.

Passion as the success factor for software change

Over the past 25 years, software projects have had a dismal success rate.  The focus on project management skills has significantly improved those capabilities, yet the failure rate remains basically the same.   Most of the failures have been due to lack of participation of the business.  The following success criteria have been identified in a number of posts.

Success criteria

1. User Involvement
2. Executive Management Support
3. Clear Statement of Requirements
4. Proper Planning
5. Realistic Expectations
6. Smaller Project Milestones
7. Competent Staff
8. Ownership
9. Clear Vision & Objectives
10. Hard-Working, Focused Staff

If we look through this list, especially those at the top, we see business involvement as a key element.  Yet most software projects are defined in terms of technology deliverables and are managed by IT, or even worse, by a supplier.

If you speak to a business unit manager, you will seldom find one who has any interest in the technology deliverables, except to have them there so that they can be used.  If you want him or her to be passionate about what’s being delivered, you have to give them something to be passionate about, and do it now.  You can’t bore him with technology for 3-6 months and expect him to remain interested and supportive.

So what’s the answer?  You can’t dictate passion.  You have to identify deliverables in business terms (there may be a software prerequisite).  You have to deliver results as soon as possible.  The faster you deliver results to the business, the more passionate he will be about supporting the project and ensuring it is a success.

If you can’t do that, you will fail, or at least fail to impress the business.

Six Steps to Successful software change projects

Software is a critical component of any business today, yet the success rate is very poor.  Numerous studies have been done over the last 25 years showing the following breakdown:

• 25% are deemed by business people to have been successful.
• 50% are deemed to have been somewhat successful.
• 25% are deemed to have been failures or not implemented.

The IT industry has focused on improving project management to improve the success rate, yet it hasn’t changed much over the past 25 years.  Percentages vary by a few points, but remain relatively flat.

Why is that?

The reason is simple.  These projects are seen as IT projects and IT is trying to solve it with improved project management.  It is not a project management issue!  While the reason may be simple, the solution seems to be a challenge.

Software change projects are business change projects, but are managed as IT projects driven by IT.  While IT has a major role to play, they will only own the technology results when they are finished.  They will not be responsible for the business results, nor even see them or measure them.

Since most of these projects have a lot of technical components, the focus ends up being on these technical components and the complexities of installing the technical components.  So most business managers ignore the issues and focus on what’s important …. Their business.

They wait for business results to be delivered at the end of the project, and go back to managing their business.

The problem is that no matter how good the software is, it will not produce business results.  The business will, if it is getting better, faster, so that better decisions can be made.

The steps to successful business (software) change projects are:

1. Define your business outcomes.
2. Analyze the current state of your business operations (processes).
3. Define how you need operations to change to achieve your goals.
4. Develop your business case based on the business value obtained from improved business outcomes.
5. Protect business value throughout the project.
6. Deliver business value early.

The following link tells a story of two projects.

Software(?) Project warning bells

Most businesses operations are run on software today.  Even small businesses that try to operate without it suffer because they continue to run operations without all of the tools that they really need.

One of the common problems that I see is companies that only use software when they have to.  For example, they create spreadsheets or use Word to create quotes or proposals, and don’t record transactions until they have to produce an invoice.  Everything required to manage the orders is done manually.

Then they speak to another business person or a software supplier who tells them all of the good things they can get if they install a new software product.  The software becomes the silver bullet.

Often new software is not needed … yet.  If the business tried to really use what they have, they would accomplish two things:

• They would get more use of current software without spending more capital dollars.
• They would change their business operations and learn how to manage a business better, based on better information.
• They would learn what it really takes to get value from software, so that when they do buy new software, they would ensure that it was driven from a business change perspective and not an IT perspective.

This article discusses some of the warning bells that organizations should watch for on their IT(?) projects.

http://bit.ly/cIsLTt

All businesses should recognize that no matter how simple it seems, installing software is a business change project, not an IT project.  Business results should be delivered as early as possible, not at the end of the technology implementations, if you want to deliver success.

7 Steps to successful software changes

From my previous posts, you can see that I don’t believe in buying software as a solution to solving business problems.  Taking my list and turning it around, you can find what you can do to ensure that you will achieve value in your business from changing software.  If you have followed all of the steps, you now know:

1.  Know exactly what you need from the software.  (7. When you are Ready to buy, you know exactly what you need from the software.)

You do this by looking at the outcomes that you are trying to achieve.  What will your business run like, when the software does what you want it to do.  Will your sales be higher, your costs down, delivery faster, etc.?  How will the software help you do that?

Most failures of software projects are caused by a fuzzy goal and what it will take to get there.  The goal may be to increase sales, but the software won’t deliver that.  It will only create the opportunity.

2.  How can you get some of the results early?  (6. You get faster results.)

Too often software projects are rear end heavy.  That ,means that you don’t really get any results until the whole project is over.  That may be months down the road.  By that time, your business has changed and the software may no longer be a priority.  Front end load results as much as you can.  As you get results, you will want to put more effort into it to get even more.

3.  Recognize that you will get resistance from staff  (5. Less resistance to change.)

Any kind of change generates some resistance.  Most of that resistance comes from not knowing why changes are being made.  Much of the rest comes from the impact of having to relearn how to do the job.  Obviously, no software change will have less impact that changing the software.  But there is a lot you can do to reduce that resistance.  First, you can ensure that everyone understands why you are making the change and how the new software will help you achieve it (item 7).   A staged install will also have less impact and produce some of the benefits early.  All of this will help to reduce the resistance and gain support.

4.  Plan upgrades to hardware/software/network (4. Fewer surprises due to new hardware/software.)

Many organizations assume that all you have to do is buy the new software.  Often little research is done on additional needs.  Most software suppliers tell you the minimum requirements for using the software.  This means that the software will not work without these changes.  But this is seldom enough to get the performance that you need.  Software suppliers are reluctant to tell you that you will need additional upgrades for fear that you will look somewhere else.  Knowing what the total costs are likely to be up front and planning for them, is much better than being surprised later on and delaying the implementation.

5.  Recognize that the new software will impact your business (3. Less Impact on your business)

Changes of any type will impact productivity.  Software is a major change.  When people are good at their jobs, they do much of their work without thinking about it (subconsciously).  When you change the software, they have to think about how to do the job all over again.  This slows them down.  You may also have additional work to do, because data may have to be converted, or you may have a parallel operation.  All of this will impact your ability to deliver normal service.

This will happen no matter what.  Not planning for the impact may mean frustrated staff, more errors, upset customers, etc.  You can plan for this by making a change at your slowest time of year, so the impact will be lower.  You can also plan for the extra needs by hiring part-time staff to do some of the work.  While these may add to the cost, they should eliminate many surprises and produce the results you want when you need them.

6.  Consider the training that is needed (2. Less Training is required.)

Often training is the last thing that is thought of.  All of the plans for implementation and migration of data are considered, and if training is thought of, it is the last item in the plan.  Lack of planning for training will impact your productivity.

Most training is done as a crash program, one or two days or more of software training is provided.  Most of this is not remembered, so people struggle through the early months trying to remember and asking for help.  There are a number of problems with what I call fire hose training (have you ever tried to drink from a fire hose?).  There is too much provided, it doesn’t cover everything you need, and the software is not the only thing that is changing.

There are many things that can be done to help prepare people for the change.  You can involve them in the redesign, you can have them get data ready, you can have them perform user acceptance testing.  All of these can help get people ready and make the transition easier to handle.

7.  You have to spend some money (1. No Capital Expenditure.)

This is the one thing you can’t avoid.  They key here is to plan for the full expenditure.  Assume that there will be more cost that what is listed in the software brochure.    In my experience, the cost of installing new software is 4-5 times the purchase price of the software.  This includes hardware/software, productivity loss, training, extra resources, etc.

If you plan for all of these and still can see the benefit, you are likely to have a success project.  Typically the benefits of new software far exceed the benefits that are expected.  Most organizations don’t identify the total benefits, so they restrict their willingness to accept all of the costs.  By trying to keep costs low, they often lose most of the benefits.

7 Reasons not to Buy New Software – Part 7

In the past few days, I have identified five reasons why you should consider not buying new software to improve business performance.

The first five were:

1. No Capital Investment

2. Less Training is Required.

3. Less Impact on your business.

4. Fewer surprises due to new hardware/software.

5. Less resistance to change.

6. You get faster results.

Today’s entry will be:

7. When you are Ready to buy, you know exactly what you need from the software.

Have you ever bought software for your business?  How did you know what to buy?  If you are like many business owners, you heard about the software from a friend, one of your staff had worked with it or you scoured the Internet looking for software that could do the job.

At best the marketplace for software is confusing.  There are many products that seem to do the same thing.  Some specialize in certain industries.  All of them tell you why they are the best choice for you.  I’ve spent many years working with software, time as a developer, in jobs that required me to evaluate software purchases.  It was never easy, always confusing and often in discussions where two parties insisted that their choice was the only one that could do the job.

What I found, is that most of the evaluations were a waste of time.  Most products today are flexible enough to be used in many ways, and if you really want to, you can get the software to do what you need.

Most software products are evaluated on features and benefits and all of the bells and whistles that are available.  While all of these bells and whistles are neat, they don’t matter.

So what is important?  There are two things:

a) Knowing exactly what functions that you need from your software.

b) A supplier that is willing to work with you to develop a win-win solution.

Nothing else matters.

If you have already gotten your software to do what you need it to do, you have a much better understanding of how your business works and how the software helps you.  You also know what more you need it to do, and you know that your existing software can’t do it.  You are now in a good position to evaluate software.  You know what you need and how it has to work.  So you can ignore featsures and benefits, bells and whistles.  You simply evaluate whether and how the software does the job that you need.  You also can evaluate how willing the software supplier is willing to help you.

Your chances of making a mistake have been lowered.

Results:

1. No Capital Expenditure.

2. Less Training is required.

3. Less Impact on your business

4. Fewer surprises due to new hardware/software.

5. Less resistance to change.

6. You get faster results.

7. When you are Ready to buy, you know exactly what you need from the software.

If you have gone through the reasons why you shouldn’t buy new software, you also know what you have to do to make your new software a success.  I’ll talk about that in my next post.

7 Reasons not to buy New Software – Part 6

In the past few days, I have identified five reasons why you should consider not buying new software to improve business performance.

The first five were:

1. No Capital Investment

2. Less Training is Required.

3. Less Impact on your business.

4. Fewer surprises due to new hardware/software.

5. Less resistance to change.

Today’s entry will be:

6. You get faster results.

Planning a change in software is a long term process.  In large organizations in can take years.  In small ones, it should be much faster, but usually it will take months.  With the time spent investigating software that might do the job, evaluating software, signing the contract, tarining, conversion, etc., a lot of time passes.  If the software is going to improve your business performance, this is lost time.  It’s time when your business is not running as effectively as it could.

If, instead of looking into buying new software, you spend that time looking at what you need to improve business performance and whether you can get that with current software, you can eliminate that wasted time and get results within weeks.

Most businesses don’t use software to the extent that is available.  After the initial implementation, it remains stagnant, with few people trying to do more with it.  Then, new problems arise and they get a need to run their business in a different way.  Since the way that they are using their existing software doesn’t cut it, they start to look elsewhere.  What software can help me do what my current software doesn’t do?  (it is very possible that their existing software is capable of doing it, they just don’t know.).  So we go through a new cycle of software purchases, with all of the inherent problems of software upgrades, when it is not needed.

Wouldn’t you rather reduce your costs and improve your productivity.  If you look at existing software, it just may do that?

Results:

1. No Capital Expenditure.

2. Less Training is required.

3. Less Impact on your business

4. Fewer surprises due to new hardware/software.

5. Less resistance to change.

6. You get faster results.

Next

7. When you are Ready to buy, you know exactly what you need from the software.

7 Reasons not to buy new software – Part 5

In the past few days, I have identified four reasons why you should consider not buying new software to improve business performance.

The first four were:

1. No Capital Investment

2. Less Training is Required.

3. Less Impact on your business.

4. Fewer surprises due to new hardware/software.

Today’s entry will be:

5. Less resistance to change.

A lot has been said about resistance to change.  Everybody likes to feel comfortable in their jobs.  When we make major changes, like installing new software, it makes many people uncomfortable, because they can’t do their jobs as easily as they did before.  When we do a job well, it is because we don’t have to think about it, we just do it.  When you change the software, we have to think about what we are trying to do.  When people are under pressure, this is even more difficult.

With most projects to implement software, little emphasis is placed on this issue and most people resist the change, feeling that it will be painful and they won’t get anything out of it (Things won’t be better after the software is implemented.  They will be worse.)  This is why they resist.  They have nothing to gain.

When you look at using the software that they already use, there is less resistance.  This is because people already are comfortable with the software, but they would like to find better ways to do things.  When you show them how they can do the job easier with the current software, they are more open to it.

So by looking at how you can use current software more effectively, you get two benefits:

• You eliminate the negative impact of reducing productivity.
• People have an interest in learning how to use the software more effectively.

This creates a doubling effect on productivity.

Results:

1. No Capital Expenditure.

2. Less Training is required.

3. Less Impact on your business

4. Fewer surprises due to new hardware/software.

5. Less resistance to change.

Next

6. You get faster results.

7 Reasons not to buy new software – Part 4

In the past few days, I have identified three reasons why you should consider not buying new software to improve business performance.

The first three were:

1. No Capital Investment

2. Less Training is Required.

3. Less Impact on your business.

Today’s entry will be

4. Fewer surprises due to new hardware/software.

Have you ever performed any major change to your hardware and software?  Did everything go perfectly?  If it did, you are extremely lucky.  Any major change will encounter some difficulty.  No matter how much planning goes into, something always goes wrong.  Success is dependent on how well your project managers deal with those things that go wrong.   I have heard many business owners and managers complain about last minute surprises:  More costs, delays, etc.  The reasons that these problems were created is not necessarily because of poor execution, but due to poor planning and expectations of imperfections.  It may also be due to lack of experience.  A good project manager will expoect problems and plan for contingencies.

Have you ever made changes to an old house?  When it comes to changing walls, the designer almost always finds that not everything is not perfect hidden behind those walls.  This can sometimes cause major problems.  The good planner warns you about these problems and ensures that most contingencies can be covered within the price.  This way, there are surprises, but not to you.

The same applies to technology projects.  They will happen.  Is your contractor prepared?

This is another benefit of not changing software.  If you don’t, you are unlikely to encounter a need for new hardware or rebuiding of your network or server or adding new features to the software.  You are working with a known quantity.

Results:

1. No Capital Expenditure.

2. Less Training is required.

3. Less Impact on your business

4. Fewer surprises due to new hardware/software.

Next:

5. Less resistance to change.

7 Reasons not to buy new software – Part 3

In the past few days, I have identified two reasons why you should consider not buying new software to improve business performance.

The first two were:

1. No Capital Investment

2. Less Training is Required.

Today’s entry will be

3. Less impact on your business.

Whenever you make any major change to your business, productivity suffers.  Changing the software that you use to run your business is a major change.  Everything that your employees were doing yesterday, they still need to do today, but they are uncomfortable doing it with the new software.

When you look at extremely productive people, most of what they do, they don’t have to think about.  It’s like walking or riding a bike.  Once you know how to do it, your subconscious takes over, and you don’t have to think about it.  Try thinking about walking.  It is very difficult and you may even fall down.  This is why getting a drunk to walk a straight line is a problem.  He is trying to hard and thinking about it.  So he fails.

When you change software in a business, you force people to think about how they need to do it.  This slows them down, and is one of the reasons why there is resistance to the change.  They are under pressure to produce, yet they aren’t productive and they know it.  It is a lot easier to go back to the old ways.

So the benefit of using existing software, is that your employees will be more productive.

This is reason # 3 for not buying new software.  The first two are:

1. No Capital Expenditure.

2. Less Training is required.