Data, Beatings, iPods, and Highways

My Salesforce CRM system would be perfect except for one thing—the users.  The lazy, unpredictable, careless users, who wantonly pollute and desecrate my pristine database.  They don’t care, want only to get what they need at the moment, and really can’t be bothered to listen very well to what I preach.  And I love them, because without them, I’d have to get a real job.  Maybe even the kind where you get sweaty and come home with dirt under your fingernails!

Over the years, I’ve tried quite a few schemes to help keep bad data out of my systems.  They’ve ranged from things pushed by pricey consultants to oddball homebrew concoctions with more quirks than the crazy guy on who lives in the subway station.  No matter what, they all boiled down to three, basic models.  I call these three, Beatings, iPods, and Highways.  Let’s examine each.

1.  Beatings.  OK, I mean this metaphorically, but let’s be honest, we’ve all thought about it for our most difficult users.  Instead, we proscribe certain behaviors, test for compliance, and then set punishments for violation.  “If you enter duplicate accounts, your manager will be notified.”  “Salespeople failing to completely fill out the H27-b form will have their commission delayed.”

By itself, using this method, you will fail miserably.  Face it, you really don’t have a big enough stick to do much damage.  People know the limits of your authority and if they don’t, they will in a very short time.  Let’s assume for a moment that you really can make your users shake with fear.  How long do you think it will be until the high producers corner the CEO and tell her their sad tale of abuse?  Do you really want to go job hunting again?

2.  iPods.  This is the flip side to being the bad guy.  You reward good behavior.  “The salesperson with the lowest number of errors wins an iPod.”  “Tom is User of the Year and we hope he enjoys his free back waxing coupon!”

Reinforcing good choices has potential, but it also has serious limitations.  First, how are you going to pay for all the bribes (and that’s exactly what they are) that are necessary?  When you heap accolades on your top five or ten users, do you demotivate the other 600?  How do you know precisely what to bribe people to do?

3.  Highways.  A well designed highway is a pleasure to drive.  The roadway is banked to keep you on the main travel portion.  Painted markings and reflective cat-eyes delineate your path and mark hazards.  Signage keeps you apprised of your location and distance to destination.  Guardrails and other safety devices mitigate poor choices and accidents.  A well designed CRM system is similar.

Ideally, your users should seldom be aware of the unseen hand keeping them on the path of clean data.  Make it easier to stay in the lane then to stray.  Use validation rules, auto complete, and contextual help to assist them.  Given a choice, people will generally do the easier, so it is to your benefit to make the right way, the easier way.

Like on the roadway, sometimes the unexpected must be expected.  A well tuned database or CRM system has mechanisms for detecting errors.  Are you using the native reporting functions to their fullest?  If not, why not?  If you aren’t running regular, quality monitoring sweeps, you aren’t in control, you’re just along for the ride to perdition.

In the end, the perfect solution is a mixture.  Truly egregious actions should be curtailed by the threat of swift detection and certain consequences, the beatings.  Excellent example users should be rewarded and encouraged, the iPod.  And in the end, your users should be gently herded along the smooth, well marked, pavement, to their destination, via the highway you built. 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/richevenhouse/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

RSS, Not Just Another Three Letters

What is RSS and why can’t I live without it?  Literally, RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication”.  At a technical level, it’s a group of web feed specifications that allow an end user to download frequently updated information.  Examples of the information downloaded include blogs (like this one!), podcasts, photos, and news sites.

That’s the technical description, but what exactly does it do?  Imagine opening your web browser and finding that while you slept, your butler carefully clipped all the new blog articles that interest you, collected websites with breaking news about your work, and rounded up the results from your favorite sports pages.  Now, come back to reality, stop thinking about butlers, and see the power that is RSS.



There are many different RSS reader’s available, but we’re going to look at Google Reader, a web based one.  First step, go here and either login or sign up for a Google account. 

After you’re ready, go to your favorite sites and look for the RSS symbol and click it to add to the reader:

No symbol?  No problem.  Just go to Google Reader, click on Add a Subscription and put in the site’s URL.  The reader automatically searches for a RSS feed.  Still no luck?  Email the site owner and complain.  Tell him/her to enter the 21st century.

Once you’ve found two or four or twenty feeds, start creating folders to organize them.  Move them around until you feel comfortable.  Now start reading and enjoying.  If you see something that deserves greater depth, click on the article and you’ll be whisked to the original.

Lastly, make RSS a part of your daily life.  Don’t let the feeds just sit there.  Take 30 minutes a day and stay on the cutting edge.  Oh, and don’t forget to add this blog to your list!

Twitter on the Blackberry

Everyone who has a smart phone is on the iPhone or something running Android, right?  Wrong.  As of early 2010, roughly 20.8% of the worldwide smart phone market—that’s about 22 million users—check emails during boring meetings and tedious, family dinners, on none other than the ubiquitous, Blackberry.  Even with that enviable market share, the options for Twitter on the Blackberry are considerably fewer than its more glamorous kin.

Since Twitter is an important part of effectively using social media, finding a good client for my Blackberry was critical and not nearly as easy as I thought it would be.  For several months, I relied on TinyTwitter.  TinyTwitter is an adequate application, but its flaky authentication errors, odd interface, and general lack of development left me wanting more.

The more that I found is a Blackberry application called ÜberTwitter.  Elegant and stable, it’s available in a free, ad supported version or ad free for US$4.99 per year. Yes, per year.  Interestingly, the ads are simply a tiny banner at the top of the timeline screen.  It’s hardly noticeable and seems to be quite innocent.  Still, I plan to pay them US$4.99.  It seems only right for something this good.  How good?  Here’s a partial list of ÜberTwitter’s features.

• Full list functionality
• People search
• New and old retweet methods gracefully done
• Update your Twitter profile right from the phone, including adding a picture
• Easily report spam
• Fully controllable geo-tagging
• Friend picker for easy tweeting
• Zoom in on Avatars
• Use TwitLonger to send longer tweets
• Examine trends and follow the hottest news
• Multiple styles of timelines
• Easy picture posting
• Verified users icon 
• Send video from your phone
  
• Enhance network connection logic (this is huge!) 
  

Enough words; now some pictures. 

In order, the original style timeline, a tweet, showing user detail, and the web interface for the geo-tagging tools.  Please note that these images are copyright by ÜberTwitter.  Please visit their site to see the originals and to view larger versions.

If you’re serious about social media and you have a Blackberry, go to ÜberTwitter now and try out this app and then come back here and let me know what you thought of it.  If you think you have a better choice, leave a comment telling me what and why!

The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right

“The modern world has given us stupendous know-how.  Yet avoidable failures continue to plague us….the reason is simple:  the volume and complexity of knowledge today has exceeded our ability as individuals to properly deliver it to people….”  Atul Gawnde, MD  The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right

Gawnde has a very simple premise.  He believes and preaches the gospel of the checklist.  If you’ve ever flown an aircraft, you know checklists.  Ask any experienced pilot what GUMPS means and you’ll get an earful.  If they’re old enough, they might even tell you about Charlie GUMPS!  Why do pilots and nuclear plant operators and many other safety critical professions rely so heavily on the checklist?  Because they employ humans.

Humans are amazing creations, capable of discovering the fundamental principles of the universe, crafting soaring works of art, and joining together to solve the problems of a planet.  We also forget things, particularly under stress.

Initially skeptical that something so complex as medicine could be aided by the humble checklist, Gawnde examined the data and ran some experiments.  By only implementing and enforcing a checklist for certain procedures, the infection rate and the associated death rate in intensive care units was not “reduced” or “halved”, it was nearly eliminated.  The results were akin to the discovery of penicillin.

Why?  Because even the best trained surgeon or nurse forgets things.  A tiny step left out of a central line insertion can lead to infection and death.  The checklist, properly used, nearly eliminates this.

OK, you’re not a surgeon and you don’t work in a hospital, so why is this important to you (other than you might one day be a patient)?  Because the lessons can be applied to almost any industry.  Did your best salesperson lose the big deal because she forgot to send a software key and they couldn’t try it out over the holidays?  Was that 1,000 gallon batch of micro-brew ruined due to a triple helping of hops?  Use your imagination.

I can hear the objections already.  “Our sales cycle is too complex for this.”  “My end users would never go along with it.”  Let me ask you, is your sales cycle more complex than open heart surgery or landing a jumbo jet in in the river after engine failure?  Are your end users higher maintenance than thoracic surgeons or fighter pilots?  I didn’t think so.

Look, you’re not going to be converted on the basis of one blog posting;  I wasn’t.  Get the book and read it.  It’s not a huge tome and the author’s style is conversational and his stories, riveting.  Read it and let me know what you think.  I’m off to work on my checklists for government sales….

Danger ahead?

Photo courtesy http://www.flickr.com/photos/thetruthabout/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

A reader asked me recently, “What are the downsides of SaaS [software as a service], aka the cloud?”

The more I thought about it, the more the question fascinated me.  I’ve created my career around SaaS and cloud computing.  In particular, CRM products such as SugarCRM, Salesforce.com, and social media such as Twitter and LinkedIN.  As I considered the question, I realized that probably 75% of the software I used each day, didn’t live on any of my PC’s or servers.  Then I started getting a little nervous.

The arguments for SaaS are well known and don’t need much explanation.  No worries about upgrades, maintenance, or in many cases, configuration.  Lower total cost of ownership and greater end user experience.

In my opinion, formed by extensive reading and discussion with everyone from the pioneers of SaaS and cloud computing to the rawest end users, the objections and worries can be boiled down into two streams:  Security and Reliability.  Let’s take a look at security first.

When I was four years old, my mother took me to the bank and had me hand over the piles of coins and a few crumpled dollar bills.  In return, I received a dark red, small book, a savings account passbook.  As soon as we left the bank, my first question to my mother was, “How do I know the bank won’t steal my money?”  I don’t remember my mother’s response, but it must have relieved my fears, because I kept that passbook account until I left for college!

In the same way, when most people first consider SaaS or the cloud, they express in one way or the other, the fear that their data will be sent over the net and then held in the hands of others.  What if its intercepted?  What it the keepers steal it?  What if the remote application is hacked?

Reasonable questions, but how severe is the risk?  If we use standard, secure protocols, transmitting data over the net is virtually risk free.  To be frank, the greatest risk of interception in my experience is from internal threats or from someone with physical access to the users machine.  How well do you really know the cleaning people?

I suppose the SaaS application provider might steal your data, but by the same token, what about Sal or Mike or Jane in your IT department?  Unless you are dealing with some very shady companies, I suggest the risk of outright theft is vanishingly small.

Hacking is more real risk.  Of course, any application that is visible to the world, hosted or local, is vulnerable.   The key here is to deal with vendors that regularly test and harden their systems.  Don’t just ask about it, demand it.  If you can’t tell me what physical and network defenses your SaaS or cloud providers use, at least at a high level, I wouldn’t want you on my team. 

So, you’re convinced your data is safe, but what about accessible?  If the SaaS or cloud provider goes down or the net connection is lost, so is your application and access to your data.  Scary!

Well, yes, it is scary.  So is a fire at your local data center (happened to me last year), terrorists destroying your data center (I was in NJ during 9-11), and Comcast cable inexplicably cutting me off from the web for 48 hours.  My point?  A good vendor is much, much, more likely to have multiple layers of redundancy than any small, local data center.  The rest of the stuff?  Things no one can reasonably defend against.  I recommend good backups + prayer.

Recently, Salesforce.com had an outage that for our instance, lasted about 90 minutes.  A few of my end users complained.  There was some inconvenience.  No lives were lost and no deals were lost.  The company I work for is a software manufacturer.  If we provided medical services or air traffic control, a 90 minute outage would have had a much different level of angst.   

In the real world, most of us can afford the brief outages that afflict even the best of vendors.  If your business can’t, you need serious, deep, redundant, failover systems.  If that describes you, stop reading now and go double check your server room!  If it doesn’t, relax…

Bottom line?  SaaS and the cloud provokes fears about security and reliability, but unless you’re using it to control mission critical, human life in the balance functions, just sit back and enjoy your wise choice in selecting the SaaS and the cloud!

Of Doors and Door Cards

At my place of work, all the exterior and many of the interior doors have electronic locks that are manipulated with keycards.  These keycards are made of plastic and are blank, white, about the size and shape of a business card.  The interior doors are a throwback to when we shared the building with another company, but now serve only to hinder the passage of people.  In fact, certain doors are permanently propped open, negating any usefulness of the rest.

In my eight years working here, I’ve triggered the lock on the door leading to my part of building thousands of times.  Each cycle gives a beep and a satisfying “thunk” as the lock releases.  Today as I entered the area, one of the sales people pulled me aside and in a conspiratorial voice said, “Watch this.”  With that, he pulled the door open without unlocking it.  My world tilted 20 degrees and I started wondering what else that I believed in might be false.  I had a crises of faith, standing in front of a gray, steel door.

Why is any of this the least bit significant to anyone other than me and the maintenance department?  The reason it so threw me was not the fact of a non-locking door.  Anyone wanting in has only to walk 70 feet down the hall and enter through the doors by the vending machines.  It was rather the violation of an implied contract that made me dizzy.  For years I had performed an action and received a result.  To get something—to my desk easily—I needed to do something—swipe my card.

We do the same thing to our system users when we make procedural or GUI changes without preparing them and helping them understand the reasons for the change.  When a user of a CRM system has manually enriched account records for years and suddenly the button is gone and it happens with no input on her part, we see it as an enhancement.  The salesperson entering an account sees it as her world shifting without warning.  Will she get used to it eventually?  Sure, but in the meantime, you’ve thrown her off her game and made her just a tiny bit less inclined to trust you and your system.

The key to preventing the negative reaction is input, communication, and reinforcement.  Get input from your users before the change, whenever possible.  Let them know what the change is and when it will take place.  Remind them again, just before it happens.  As far as possible, clue them in on the reasoning and reinforce why this is a positive change.

A lot of work for what to you, the system administrator, seems like a very minor reworking, but it isn’t so minor to your customers—internal or external.  Unless it's a system critical emergency, take the time to do it right.  The goodwill you create and conserve will pay you back many times over for the little additional effort
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Now if you will excuse me, I’m going to go check the rest of the doors!

Launching: YOU Part III

Today we wrap up our overview of launching your own brand in the world of social media.  We are going to take a look at Twitter.

In brief, Twitter is a micro-blog.  After registering an account, you can post short (140 characters or less) updates.  These updates are seen by your followers--people who have chosen to receive updates from you.  They are also seen by people searching monitoring.  The searching audience is key.


OK, so you can micro-blog, but about what?  Here is what you do not want to be (caution: slightly crude humor).  If you are looking to brand yourself, Twitter is your first line of contact for most people.  Let's suppose you are a Salesforce.com expert.  Perhaps you would post an update along the lines, "Created new #SFDC app to track #CRM #ROI. www.xyz.com".

Notice those # hash marks?  Twitter uses a special type of search to easily categorize topics. While users can search by any word in any post, those words that are prefaced by # are more easily grouped and can be browsed.  Check out this search on www.search.twitter.com.  There are a variety of search engines for Twitter; Google them and try them to learn the differences.

What is the end game of all this posting and searching?  Traffic.  Use hash marks and topical postings to drive traffic to your blog, website, and LinkedIN profile.  Twitter, while great in itself, really shines as a lighthouse to bring people to your shores.

Go on out there and get an account and then drop on by and follow me!  Any questions?  Need help?  Just drop me a line at paul@paulmyoung.net.

Launching: YOU Part II

Let's talk about Twitter and Facebook.  First, notice that I have hyperlinked Twitter, but not Facebook.  Why?  Because I treat Facebook very differently from LinkedIN or Twitter and I recommend you do too.

Facebook--at present--is primarily a social venue.  Granted, many businesses maintain pages and quite a few public or semi-public figures have pages, it remains primarily the haunt of people connecting and reconnecting with buddies and long ago schoolmates.

Does this mean it has no bearing on your quest for a personal brand?  Absolutely not.  It is important, scratch that, vital, that you do not project a negative image on Facebook.  Regardless of its social nature, you do not want those pictures of you drunk and staggering, showing up in the hands of your employer or competitor.  Have fun, but keep it clean and career friendly.

While for Twitter and LinkedIN, I suggest you accept virtually any request to link, for Facebook, I prefer to keep it for actual friends.  Your mileage may vary, but with the current state of social media and my life and goals, it works for me.  If you feel like you could benefit from opening up Facebook to business networking, I urge you to be scrupulously careful in both what you post and how you have your security settings tuned.  Much more than with other tools, the potential for disaster is just below the surface.

Next time, using Twitter to complete the social media circle in brand building.