A Business Process Management (BPM) approach with our customer Business Orange Service

On last Wednesday, we met our customer Business Orange Service in order to see whether we could fit with their current network lifecycle project. We expected to meet them in a well known world that is business integration, end to end processes from the make to order, the network building with workflow tasks until the final customer billing. We expected them to explain us how their business works and which are the main features and processes they really need to achieve their goals. In short, we were expecting from them an ERP approach.

Unfortunately we landed on an unknown land ("Terra Incognita" ) and our host mainly discussed about process concept (BPM) as :

Managing endlessly all the processes along the chain

Synchronizing between processes ,sub processes and linking chain ( a set of processes that are reusable)

Defining the rules between process and sub processes

Assigning the resources needed for processes and managing by Workflow the task assignment

Optimizing the link between processes and task in order to produce the service at the right date wished bey the customer

Maintaining the actual predictability ( What + Who + When ) when the process is instanced and each time it’s possible.

Decomposing existing process modelling into process and sub process to enhance re usability at several levels

Creating the appropriate range of synchronized task in order to produce a service (addition, change, modification, cessation, migration, move)

Supporting lean and six sigma business strategies

All this point above are not inconsistent with the ERP approach (although their own approach was more focused on the flexibility requirements than the ability to organize and structure processes as ERP use to do) but what struck us, I and my colleague is that we didn't discuss really about their business but only about abstract processes and sub processes concept without touching the field reality. May be it is a part of the new reality i mentioned in this blog a few weeks ago and therefore we have to adapt ourselves to this new kind of approach( interesting anyway ! )

But at the end of this meeting they really killed us by powerpoint !!!

The 10 pearls of the discovery process

Did you remember some discovery interviews you had with your prospect that turned into a nightmare ? You will be likely to have bad times with reluctant customer like it happened to Bob Reifstahl in this nightmare on the video Discovery street discovery process.
Fortunately it won't be always the case and the discovery is anyway the most important part of your pre sales job and it is a great opportunity in order to :

1 Understand the main customer's business goals and pain points and how the implementation of your software could help your customer to reach this goals or to reduce the pains

2 Ask your customer "Why your organisation win in business". You will know more about the organisation and the value of your customer and you will be able to use the demo to show how your software will support this success and this unique position.

3 Check it out whether there is a real compelling event for their software implementation: Do they really want to change ? Do they have no other choice to change their IT or can they afford to postpone the project ? What happens if nothing is done ?

4 Know why did they send you the RFP ? Why are they considering your software and your company as relevant for their business ?

5 Ask to your customer "Why your organisation win in business". You will know more about the organisation and the value of your customer and you will be able to use the demo to show how your software will support this success and this unique position.

6 Learn from each individual what he really expects of the software value by asking "If you could transport yourself forward in time to 3 months after the go-live and look back, what would be the most important changes you would want to see?”

7 Collect valuable informations about their business jargon, customers, vendors, data and documents that will be useful for the demo

8 Focus on the 3 or 5 mains business scenarios that are both critical and valuable for their industry and that you could illustrate during the demo without showing all the features.

9 Find out the Unique Business Value of your software : The reason why your software will be unique to the customer's eyes

10 Create allies for your demo ( by selling yourself as a professional guy but not selling yet your product) and spot your assumed "enemy".

and Listen listen listen listen your customer and then contribute by helping them...

Have a look to Bob having bad times discovering his enemy :
"BOB - Go back to the forecasting methods, for exemple do you use exponential smoothing method today ?
THE CUSTOMER - Yes, sometimes we do, sometimes we don't"
Does that sound familiar to you ? I hope not !

Brainstorming with the publisher Centre France

Last week we met our customer Centre France a french newspapers group located in Clermont-Ferrand in order to demonstrate to them how our software could help them to reach their business goals. Before going into the system, we shared with them the brainstorming my colleagues and I had building our value proposition. First we actually told them we brainstormed, we didn't start directly into the system in order to customize the features they wanted to see, and indeed the dices was running as our ideas : Next, we explained them our fist vision we have got from their particular needs and their project and this vision was a complete solution that would handle with their CRM, Subscription, advertising, single copy sales requirements.

Of course, this vision was not wrong but eventually we came up together with a better understanding of their actual need with the next upcoming slide in which we shared with them the same vision but enhanced a lot by the focus on the customer. We told them that we want to deliver a customer centric solution that will provide both the features but also a better knowledge and a better service to their clients.

By positioning the customer at the epicenter of our customer's project, we made it clear to them that we really were willing to add value to their project. Moreover, they appreciated our customized and adapted slides rather than standard ones.

Thriving in the New Reality in 2009

There is no question that the world is facing an extremely challenging set of economic scenarios. Unlike the past years, we are no longer in a rapid expanding global economy scenarios and we all know that the world is in the midst of an economic upheaval of unheard proportions. Given all the bad news we've been seeing on the TV and in the newspapers, it would be really easy to consumed by the crisis ! It is tough but it is no time to lose confidence because in every crisis there is somes dangers but some opportunities as well and there is first the opportunity to transform ourselves in order to thrive in this new reality. Lets go back to the basic adopting the new reality behavior requirements vs old habit we used to do a few months ago.

Thriving versus Winning : In the new reality you don't necessarily need to make a lot of money in your pocket to feel succesfull but rather you can thrive in 2009 by adding more values to your customers, spending more time with them, sharing with them your knowledge industry issues (what you have learnt from others customers) discovering their pain points and finding out how you can help them and having an idea of what they should do in order to solve their problem and eventually having fun doing it

Contribution versus Competition : In the new reality, you have to think in term of contributions rather than competition : that means how can you today make this day a better day and how can you today make as a contribution your company a better place to live and work in.

Work Smarter versus Work harder : Unless you didn't work too much in 2008 I don't think it could be possible for most of us to work harder in 2009 ! I think that trying to work harder could end up into an worthless spiral without additional value or results. In the new reality you have to try to be smarter ( or less stupid i don't know) focusing on the Pareto's law : 20 % of the work drives 80% of the results and therefore we will have to focus on the right thing to do rather than systematically doing all the things right.

Simplicity versus Complexity : The customer business processes are often complex and will continue to be in the new reality no doubt about it, but our job is to make them simpler through our system software and through the value message we deliver to them. Simplicity is difficult to obtain but supremely powerful and beautiful (and visual and simple slides vs boring bulleted point slides are part of it)

Personalization versus Standardization : Being closer to the customer in the new reality will allow us to run more personalized software demonstration in the customers language and with relevant master data that will sound familiar to them ( and not widget data)

Possibilities versus hopeless world : Do not fall into the world of doubt, fear and uncertainty but take this world's new reality as still in essence full of opportunities and possibilities with freedom, abundance and spontaneity. Be fearless, trust yourself and trust your company.

Innovation versus Execution : Flawless sales and pre sales execution does matter in the new reality but innovation and creativity are more. The new area requires thinking differently in order to better serve our customer and to better help our colleagues. Creativity means not being paralyzed by old practices and expert knowledge but being able to think outside the box (but not as a cliché from job resume) to find solutions to unforeseen problems.

Ordering pizza in the future : a funny video that shows why a lot of software options is getting your customer mad !

Just having an idea of the result provided by too much software features in your application ! At the beginning of this order example, everything sounds OK with the call center system that provides a nice CTI integration and allows the woman agent to know automatically the name and the historical interactions of the customer ! But things went probably bad the day when the pizza shop company management decided to add some more business value to their business buying expensive licences for other vertical solutions like an healthcare software databases preventing their customers from cholesterol risks. Additionally they bought all the files and software databases they could, trying to improve their customers knowledge in order to run more efficiently their up-selling operations... But sometimes the customer want to be better serve and not to be better manipulated, too much knowledge seems suspect and a Big Brother oriented thing - We can have some doubts for instance about the advertising campaigns we would receive by mail (spam) that would be so-called based on the telecoms company knowledge of our private downloads on the Internet-

Still thinking about drawings with slides

Here you will find an example of how with drawings and slide animation it is possible to make it simple rather complex concept about semantic web. That video by Manu Sporny of Digital Bazaar is a clear overview and an outstanding demo of the main tenets of the Internet, explaining its main limitations in its current incarnation and the potential of next generation intelligent agent machines to help us find the right information we need .....

Watch and enjoy the video