Be Proud To Be An IT Expert – But Please Evolve !


Between Analysts, Bloggers and Software Vendors – I think a lot have been done to demoralize IT professionals already. A lot of fantastic IT people that I know have started to feel insecure and unwanted. This includes many of my friends and mentees. In the last few months – I have had innumerable conversations about this with my friends who work at customer companies, SI companies, HW companies etc. I think it is a huge mistake to downplay IT like it is done now – and just wanted to post a few thoughts here.

First – IT absolutely needs to evolve, just like every other part of the enterprise. And I think that is already happening. I don’t see any IT experts I know who live under a rock. If there are any – then yes, they should feel insecure and unwanted and all that.

But lets look at other parts of the enterprise to see how IT compares. Take HR for example – how many companies can boast of a lean super efficient HR system where talent management, career progression, complaint redressal, succession etc are all efficiently done? Many companies I know struggle with most of these functions, just like they struggled when I started my career. The big improvement has been in payroll processing – like outsourced payroll etc, which happened not only because of business model changes – but also due to great IT innovations. Or lets take sales – several large enterprises still do most of their sales like they did 20 years ago, with good sales people knocking on doors (literally and figuratively). Many of them have complicated and manual approval processeses that I did not understand in the 90s, and I still don’t get them. The parts that improved – like cloud based sales force automation, pricing optimization, etc all happened because of IT innovations. Look at engineering – machine design got a huge uplift in large part because CAD got sophisticated over years, and computers can now handle heavy duty collaborative design seamlessly.

If none of that sounds impressive – imagine the business impact if the IT systems that handle sales orders or payroll goes down ( please don’t say “that is why we should move to cloud” as your response – cloud goes down too ). Yet – the “business” side of the house doesn’t get anywhere near the criticism that IT gets. And IT gets very little credit for jobs well done.

For sure, there is some significant complacency in IT – many IT people feel entitled. Several have not kept pace with the latest and greatest. But on a relative scale – are developers and DBAs worse off in this matter compared to colleagues in HR and sales? My answer is an emphatic NO.

Software vendors and SIs do make a claim that they are all about business solutions. This is of course the right message – IT’s job is to solve business problems . However, this message is now interpreted as “We are all about business, and we don’t care about IT”. That is not how it works in real companies – even in departmental purchases (like it often happens in BI for example) , at some point – integration, security etc will come into play. Not involving IT upfront almost always results in grief and extra cost down the line. I have seen many CXOs repent that they did not involve IT upfront in their procurement decisions.

Some IT folks have morphed into procurement experts – and I am not sure of this is good or bad. Procurement skills are important – since a good part of the job involves dealing with Vendors. However, the way this has translated in many companies is that the sole focus is on price reduction. If IT and the actual procurement department both focus strictly on price – the vendor gets very little opportunity to explain the value of the solution. And this usually is behind the reason why IT vendors like to establish relationships with business side of their customers so that they can also present the value side of the equation, and not just cost. The mature IT organizations act as orchestrators – pulling in business, procurement and all other stake holders – and enabling and advising and coaching all the parties including the vendors. That is where IT adds value in “buy” decisions. I have learned a lot from such IT experts – and I am grateful for that learning.

Then there is the whole cloud argument – that cloud makes IT obsolete. Nothing could be farther from truth. Cloud definitely is the future – but it will be a very long time till everything moves to the cloud. And since the predominant pattern in cloud is for customers to buy best of breed solutions – someone needs to integrate all the disparate solutions between themselves, and also to the on-premises systems. Same holds true for security. And who will advise the business colleagues on HA/DR etc for cloud purchases? Even in the case where most of the landscape is shifted to cloud, IT jobs won’t go away. The cloud companies – hosting companies, data centers, application companies et al need the same skills that customer companies used to need.

So, my friends in IT – don’t feel that you are any less important than your colleagues in other parts of the organization. You are every bit as important – and an equal partner in making sure your company meets its goals. Stop thinking of “business and IT” as two things. “business” is not your customer – they are your partner. You both have only one customer – you know, the people who sign checks etc 🙂

But please don’t sit back and be happy with status quo – complacency is the only thing that can make you obsolete. Learn more about usability, design , organiational behavior and most importantly – learn how the business of your company really works . Adapt and evolve – ALL THE TIME !

Co-innovation – It Takes Two To Tango


People who have known me for a while know that I am a big fan of co-innovating with an ecosystem. I have worked in a number of co-innovation projects in my career with varying degrees of success. And now I am in India for 3 weeks, working with a number of ecosystem partners to explore co-innovation ideas.

Why should anyone co-innovate in the first place?

To begin with – innovation is a misused and overhyped word. I am of the firm opinion that a vendor should not claim innovation on any product or service – only a customer should. I am in two minds these days on whether analysts and bloggers are good judges of innovation. But till I get some clarity of thought, I am going to stick with customers as the sole judge.

But Vendors have to constantly try to innovate – otherwise they will not stay relevant to their customers. Relevance comes in two parts – protecting the investments customers made already, and coming up with new things that solve the ever changing needs of customers in a global economy. It is a hard balance to strike, to say the least.

One reason for this balance being hard to strike is because vendor solutions are not always outcome based. Almost every customer has budget to make more money – be it revenue increases or cost reductions. But not all vendors and customers can articulate IT solutions in the context of a business solution. It is an in-exact science to begin with – since some assumptions have to be made . And in a dynamic business world – you can never guess all the factors that affect an outcome. So vendors are naturally hesitant to tie their sales to an outcome that they don’t have control over. Not just vendors – I have also seen several customers who are hesitant to tie their purchases to a risk/reward model. I guess it will be a while before outcome based contracts become mainstream if at all.

Yet another reason is that no one vendor can provide all the solutions to a customer , although many vendors apparently want to do so. Customers also typically like a “one throat to choke” model – which these days seem to be called a more politically correct “one hand to shake”. A happy medium is where co-innovation comes in. It can have many flavors – with multiple vendors joining in , and some times (sadly not often enough)  with customers directly playing a part.

This is a scalable model – since for a given budget constraint, every vendor can get more bang out of their buck, and the customers get a comprehensive solution. But it takes a lot to make it successful. More than the legal, IP, cost etc type of issues – it is the personality of the people that actually work on these projects that make a difference. Co-innovation projects need people who work for different employers to trust each other a lot. This is easier said than done .

There is another conflict of interest in such solutions. Vendors will need a solution that they can lift and shift to other customers . That will typically mean – some features specific to the given customer they are working with might not fit a “framework” ,model. Customers on the other hand will want an out of the box solution that they don’t need to customize any more. I am sympathetic to both sides – and whether this gets resolved or not depends on the trust the people on all sides have with each other, and very seldom does it depend on the contracts that are in place. In fact if contracts have to be referred to every step of the way – I won’t hold my breath on co-innovation projects succeeding ever.

Then there are co-innovation (allegedly?) projects which have little to no customer participation. This is the beginning of the “solution looking for a problem” type scenes we have all seen. In my opinion, such projects should not be done – just scratch them off. They may succeed on occasion – but they are not scalable.

And then there are the “influencers” – analysts, bloggers, friends and family etc. They provide extremely valuable information on co-innovation projects. The hard part is to negate their bias. Every influencer has a bias – some might want you to maximize short term revenue (hi mom) , others might claim they are “buy side”, except they make vast majority of their income from vendors, yet others might only know one geography or market where you sell and so on. So unless you balance it out – there is a good chance that you might end up with a skewed solution. But all things said – I would rather have influencer input than not have it.

I have a lot of battle scars from co-innovation projects – and some of them have not ended well. But I have learned something valuable from each, and I will still be quick to say “I am in” if there is a co-innovation project I can work on . The only ones I say no to are the ones with low or no customer participation.

The Second Question


As many of you have pointed out in private and in public – I have not blogged much since I have joined SAP . Trust me it was not intentional – just that other things like kitchen remodeling , getting used to my new job etc took all my bandwidth. But now that remodeling project is complete , I can get back to more blogging etc .

Any way – my first assignment at SAP is to work with our customers and partners to make sure they realize the value of BW on Hana . Since the day I joined SAP – I have been talking to customers about this, and something interesting became clear to me. So I thought it might be useful to summarize my customer and partner conversations in my blog so that we can have a more extensive conversation virtually .

When Suite runs on Hana , BW runs on Hana and assorted data marts run on Hana – what would be different for a business user ? In my opinion – after talking to several customers – it is the “ease of answering the second question” that is the most value adding scenario for a business user – especially the “business analyst” types.

Let me explain with an example that should resonate with many of the readers here

Analysts live in an ad-hoc world – their “real” work starts when an executive asks them a non routine question like “how many bottles of soda did we sell to top 5 distributors in Arizona last summer and how did we do against plan” . Question is simple enough – but there might not be an easy way to answer this .

Analysts will probably go to BW or CRM to find who their top 5 distributors are , how much was sold to them etc. and then they will probably log on elsewhere to find plan information . Finally, all of that gets dumped to an excel sheet , massaged with various vlookup functions etc and a prettied up table and graph will be presented to the executive . Most probably , one of the sources of information is yet another spreadsheet stored in a share point site.

Now, I have never met an executive who had asked all she wants to know in one question – and that includes me !

So as soon as the first answer comes in – the exec would ask her next question . “Hmm – that is interesting , how is that split across the various brands we sold them ?” .

The best analysts know this and will come with as much info that they can second guess. But that is a limited approach with most executives – invariably , more data dumps and analysis will be needed . And this takes time – hours at a minimum, days to weeks usually .

Now, what would change with Hana ?

For starters – a lot of data sitting in BW can be crunched and compared to spreadsheet data on the fly by the analyst without IT help using workspaces . This can be done without Hana too – if speed is not an issue and patience is over abundant .

BW sitting on Hana can be combined easily with other datamarts modeled directly on Hana via composite providers. So – adhoc queries spanning multiple sources become all the more easy . And of course the front end like BI 4.x Analysis makes this an excel friendly exercise .

Now when suite also works on Hana – and suite has the Hana Analytics Foundation under it – this becomes all the more easy . SHAF is nothing but Hana views that can also understand BW data . And of course it understands BI front end tools . So in effect – data sitting in suite, BW and other Hana datamarts are all available to users without a lot of manual work to make sense of it all .

Back to our analyst friend who got the second question – now he can quickly change the query to include more parameters and respond to the executive much faster than in the pre-Hana world . What is not to like ? 🙂

Of course , Hana does not replace the need to have a good solid BI discipline in place . The right way to look at this in my opinion is to think of how powerful is the scenario of having Hana and a good BI system together than just one or the other (or god forbid, neither).

It is also important to note that suite on hana does not eliminate the need for BW. Neither is it always a good idea to move everything in a BW system to a custom data warehouse even if it sits on Hana . If you are not convinced , try to implement a reporting scenario that is based on an ERP cost center hierarchy with time dependencies directly in Hana and also in BW on Hana . You can see why having these solutions to compliment each other is better than trying to force fit every requirement into one of them .

Now tell me – what is your “second question” I can help with 🙂