Passionate Partners

Mashable reports that Apple’s WWDC conference sold out in 24 hours. Don’t you wish your company had such passionate partners?

What is your company doing to create this kind of passion in your supply chain?

Ripe for Innovation or Decimation

Our company is in the process of implementing a new business system.  We’re at the point where we’re thinking of implementing some barcoding applications.  Now I haven’t had much to do with barcoding before, but I began to investigate potential devices we’d use.

Here’s a candidate pictured at the left. It’s a wireless device with a small touch screen and a small keypad.  It runs a Windows operating system (either Windows CE or Windows Mobile). And of course, it has a barcode scanner built in.  It’s constructed to withstand the rigors of warehouse use.

And it comes with a HUGE price tag.  Can you believe that in the age of iPhones (which you can pickup for a few hundred bucks), that this device sells for $2200 or MORE?  Until now, several manufactureers (you know who you are) have been flying below the radar, charging outlandish prices for these products.

Well you’ve now been “outed”.  Better invest a little time in learning iOS, before some college kid decides he can make a decent living with a laser scanner adapter for the iphone (or by using the built in camera) and a $9.99 iPhone app.

When I can go to Best Buy and pickup a laptop for less than $500, or an iPhone for a few hundred bucks, you folks are definately living on borrowed time.

Innovate or be decimated.  You’ve been warned.

A Tale of Two Companies

I recently read an article that indicated Microsoft was desperate to migrate their customer off Internet Explorer 6. Their latest version is I.E. 9. So many of their customers are three versions behind. What does that say about the appeal of Microsoft’s new products? About the ease of upgrading? About customers’ skepticism that the latest product will offer more value or better functionality?

Meanwhile at Apple, customers are lining up to sell off their “old” iPads to purchase an iPad 2, to be on the latest and greatest technology.

Is your company a Microsoft or an Apple?

The Disputes Department

I had a vendor contact me the other day for payment of some old invoices. As a matter of fact, they were threatening account suspension among other nasty things. I was able to forward five months of email correspondence showing how they were in the wrong and woefully inept at fixing their errors.

Shortly thereafter I received an email stating that the matter had been referred to their Disputes Department.

Disputes Department? Really? You mean you actually have people in your organization permanently employed to clean up your messes?

If your company has a Disputes Department, you either have incompetent/unempowered employees or very broken processes.

Or disdain for your customers.

Why Sears will go out of business….

Alright, I may be overly dramatic with the title of this post, but honestly, could they make it any more difficult to do business?

Our remote keypad for our garage doors is kaput. We’ve had it in service for over 7 years and it finally gave up the ghost. No biggie – let’s run off to Sears and pick up a replacement.

We arrived at Sears and were greeted by a very pleasant associate, who was setting up cups full of popcorn and offering beverages to all who entered the store. Nice touch, but no thanks, I just need a remote keypad. I quickly tracked down the aisle where the remotes were displayed.

Hmm – they all look exactly alike, except that there are four models depending upon your garage door model. The only way to tell them apart is based upon the color of the reset button, located on the garage door opener (which I had failed to notice, since the last time I setup one was 7 years ago. Yes – my bad for not checking the garage door owners manual before coming – EXCEPT this is 2011 – why doesn’t Craftsman offer a SINGLE universal remote to work with ALL their openers? Why make it difficult?

Undaunted, I had to choose my “reset button” color. Hmmmm.. Blue? Gray? Black? I vaguely remember it being red.. Oh well, let’s grab the remote that works with the blue button.. After all, if I guessed correctly, it would save me another trip back to the store.

Purchase completed, I arrived back home and took a quick look at the reset button color, which turned out to be RED. (Which, for those of you not following closely, was not among my store choices of blue, gray or black.) Okay, let’s find the garage door manual. Thankfully I’m married to someone who is so organized that she should be running the Library of Congress. My wife tracked down the owner’s manual within a couple of minutes. My openers work with remote keypad #139-53684. I write down the number and proceed back to the local Sears store.

After a quick return, I wandered back to the keyless remote section once again. I scanned all the remotes and none of them are the number I need. Finally I dared to check the tag above an empty peg. There it was….. out of stock.
Another friendly associate offered to check stock in other Sears stores. Of course, the only place that had one was on the other side of the city. Not wanting to spend more on gas than the remote cost, I decided instead to order it online.

I didn’t expect the online experience to become a scavenger hunt.

But it did.

After returning home I logged onto sears.com and typed in the model # in the search bar. Nothing. Nada. I was hoping to arrive at the exact remote I needed. Instead I had to type in “remote keypad for garage door opener” and was returned many pages of results of garage door openers and all the accessories. I scrolled my way through several pages where once again I was presented with several choices of keyless remotes which all looked the same. None of the product descriptions contained the model number I was looking for. Still stumped, I found an obscure link to the product owner’s manual and clicked on that. And there it was… confirmation that I had found my prize.

And so I ordered it. Good news was that it was 10% off at the online store (my prize for having found it). Bad news is that Sears shipping charges (slowest service) was $7. And so now I’m feeling frustrated and feeling ripped off.

It is now costing me more than had it been in stock at the store. And I had to take 2 trips and win a scavenger hunt for the privilege.

Sears would do well to spend less time popping popcorn and spending more time making it easier to do business with them.

Before it’s too late.

End of rant.

Servant Leadership

Hat tip to Gene Wright for uncovering this great article on Servant Leadership.

Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs

Came across this on Slideshare and had to share.

Embracing Inevitability

At work, we’re in the midst of a new business system implementation.  It’s going pretty well.  It’s interesting to observe how people function under the pressure of trying to bring the project in on time.

If any of you have gone through this experience, you know that the road to system implementation is usually bumpy.  After all, you have to clean up all your old data (which is usually in pretty poor shape), you need to load new data tables, usually assembling the information from many different (and usually conflicting) data sources.

You need to learn the picadillos of the new system – “I don’t know why but to have to click here three times before the function will work”.

No matter the software, the quality of your consultants or your staff, It’s never completely smooth..  And there’s very little you can do about it.  One approach is to whine and complain about having to run that conversion routine for the fourth time or reload that support table for the third time.  I haven’t found this approach either rewarding or satisfying.

In my experience, embracing inevitability (stuff WILL go wrong) is a much better approach.  It puts you in the mindset that if you only have to configure something once, you’ve won.  If you have to do a task a second or third time, you’ve “broken even”.

Putting a new system in place is an iterative process.  Configure the system, Break the system, Fix the system..until everything is working exactly the way you want.  Expecting things to go right in one pass is not only optimistic, it’s unrealistic.

Embracing inevitability helps you enjoy the journey and not worry so much about the bumps in the road.

Has It Come To This?

I can’t believe I’ve become this cynical, but everytime I listen to politicians on TV, they seem to be exhibiting one or more of the following behaviors…

• Persistent lying or stealing
• Apparent lack of remorse^[3] or empathy for others
• Cruelty to animals^[4]
• Poor behavioral controls — expressions of irritability, annoyance, impatience, threats, aggression, and verbal abuse; inadequate control of anger and temper
• A history of childhood conduct disorder
• Recurring difficulties with the law
• Tendency to violate the boundaries and rights of others
• Substance abuse
• Aggressive, often violent behavior; prone to getting involved in fights
• Inability to tolerate boredom
• Disregard for safety

With all the ethics problems of both parties, and the behavior exhibited in both the House and Senate, many of the above behaviors are displayed on a daily basis….

Which is a shame, because according to Wikipedia, these symptoms define a Sociopath.

Wait For It!

It’s about time to resume writing my blog, but first I have to get a mouse.  I just changed over to a Macbook Pro and can’t use the trackpad like I should.