How is it for you?

Do you know, I am so weary of the Cr ...t Cr...h news and cliches that I am now weary of the people complaining of being weary of the same. Yet strangely, life goes on. Sure, if people are having second thoughts about buying that new house/car/huge TV, then there will be a few industries out there that are hurting. But industries that feed our basic needs, or have an economic cycle longer than their countries' economic cycle, are actually doing OK. Very OK, in some cases. We have been very busy with our customers in the food processing sector, and there is an interesting common thread. Those that are supplying the discounters (Aldi, Lidl, Netto) and the value end of the retail market (Asda, Morrisons), are doing very, very well. And I expect Defence contractors, aerospace manufacturers, major projects construction, oil exploration and similar will also be carrying on regardless. So I wonder when the BBC will have a news item featuring those successes?

http://www.aspera.co.uk/

ERP in 2009

So far I have avoided any mention of Economic Downturn or that horrible cliche "Credit Crunch" because I can see no benefit in jumping on that particular marketing bandwagon. I'll leave that to the journalists who just want to sell newspapers. However, now that I have, I had better say why. I received AMR's weekly update email this morning and I was interested to read their comment on ERP sales in 2009. This is based on genuine research and I have known and trusted AMR's knowledge of the business IT community for many years. Their research shows that discretionary IT spend (i.e. "nice to have" rather than "essential") will be slow, but expensive global roll-outs of major ERP systems will actually ramp up to 2010. This is interesting because although these projects could have been an obvious cost-cutting target to a multi-national under pressure, they are clearly being regarded as an essential component of their drive for efficiency - something that will help the business thrive in tough times. This way of thinking is equally applicable to businesses without such a wide geographic spread - a highly efficient ERP system that is aligned to your way of working today is as essential as any other key aspect of your organisation.

www.aspera.co.uk

Is Anything New?

I had just finished reading "The Victorian Internet" by Tom Standage (thank you again Dr. James Bellini) which is a fascinating and very well written history of the telegraph system. You might think this is just a book for nerds and engineers but not so, it is a real insight into the social impact of a revolutionary new technology. There are so many parallels with our recent experiences with the Internet that you really wonder why we never made the connection before. Perhaps you did, I had to read the book first!

Apart from the stories of social networking, worries about privacy, dating, power-users and the rest, the most intriguing part came right at the end - exactly. Where will it end? The telegraph had two ends, firstly when the teleprinter made it possible for typists to use the network without the need for a telegraph office, and secondly the technical evolution of the telegraph network into a voice network with exchange hubs, replacing Morse code with telephones. So what will happen to our Internet? My personal view is that when we rid ourselves of the restriction of 40 foot mobile network masts and have 100% mobile coverage, we will see that evolution happen again - fixed networks and PCs will give way to fully mobile, personal devices and infinite connectivity.




www.aspera.co.uk

More Cool Shopping

On-line this time (where I prefer to shop). My thanks to Lynette for introducing me to Moo, a London-based on-line print company with a difference. You can create and order your own highly personalised business cards, mini-cards, postcards, anything cards - which is pretty standard nowadays. How you do it, and the fun experience, is not. I created a pack of personal cards with some of my favourite photos on the back. You can have up to 100, all different - I chose boats and fish of course - and my details on the front. The whole end-to-end experience from creating the cards, being informed of my order progress to receiving the order was just...great. I can't think of a better word. To give you just a glimpse of what that was like, included in my pack of mini-cards was a New Customer welcome card which said: "Yay, you're our new best friend". Try it.

http://www.aspera.co.uk/

In praise of shopping (really)

Like many chaps I am not a fan of shopping in shops (as opposed to on-line), but last week I had a shopping experience that was nearly transcendental. I went into...wait for it...an Apple Store. No, I have not gone over to the trendy side, but my daughter fancied an iPod in a cool colour for Christmas and I went in to buy one. What a brilliant experience. If all shops were like this we wouldn't have have the High Street problem we have now. Not only were all the products there, working and ready to fiddle with; there were highly knowledgeable guys walking around who actually knew a lot about the products. There were real demos, a tuition stand and a Genius Bar for real-life product support. The result was my daughter not only had her iPod in cool purple, we also bought two iPod alarm clock docks. Now for the best bit (I love technology that improves my life). We paid by credit card, standing in the middle of the store - no queuing for tills - as our helpful friend had one of those restaurant-style RF devices (only cooler, this is Apple remember). We had bought Apple products before, so of course our details popped up on his screen. And this is the bit that made my day - instead of printing out a silly curly receipt that would clog up my wallet like all the others, he simply said, "shall I email it to you?" Yo.

www.aspera.co.uk

Maslow's Hierachy of ERP Needs

If you have forgotten your basic human psychology course or don't know what I am on about, Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs applied to us humans refers to the sequence of need satisfaction, where we have to have satisfied one need before we can become interested in another. We didn't bother with cave painting until we had the food and shelter thing sorted out, then when we organised ourselves into farming communities we had time for all sorts of cultural activities - and so on. I have grossly simplified it but I hope you get the idea.

The same can be applied to ERP. If you bring a system in to a disorganised company, the first thing they will worry about is stock accuracy, and try and get it from 80% to 90%. If you went round the corner to a World Class manufacturer with 99.8% stock accuracy and asked him what he was worried about, I bet it would be something like improving customer service levels. Of course inventory accuracy is important, but he's done that and moved his attention on.

My point, eventually, is that there is always something more you can squeeze out of the business and your systems are just waiting to be moved up a gear. Aberdeen Group have a great way of defining Best in Class and Laggards, and there is a huge gap in efficiency between them. I don't believe there is ever a point when "no more can be done". In my experience there is nearly always a lot more, you might need to upgrade the systems or get some outside help in, but where there's a will there's a way.

www.aspera.co.uk

Wasteful buildings

Consider the average corporate office block and get your calculator out. It is usually only occupied five days out of seven, sometimes only 4. That is 71%. Each working day, it is occupied for at most 12 hours - 35.5%. I am told that the average desk is occupied 40% of the time. That is a staggering 14.2% of the total available hours - which is costing the company 100% in lease costs, rates, heating, security and infrastructure. Add to that the lost time and huge inefficiencies of moving people from their home to the workplace, and the resistance to job changes because of location changes, and the whole concept of going to work in an office looks highly questionable.

If people were able to interact remotely as productively as they do face to face, we empowered and trusted them to work remotely, and most important of all we gave them the tools to do the job in the form of modern IT systems, think what an efficiency gain that would be. Hang on a minute, haven't we been here before? Wasn't I going on recently about the younger generation, who are already used to working this way? Watch this space.

www.aspera.co.uk