After 5 years of being a loyal Windows Mobile user I have finally surrendered to the pressure and gone and bought an iPhone.  It’s a good phone and many would argue that WM is just as good with the HTC Touch HD having a bigger screen yadda yadda yadda.    What I discovered was it wasn’t about the phone.  In the end the reason I moved was the applications.  You can get just about anything on the iPhone from the AppStore and not just games (I’m not a game player) but useful stuff!  Most free, and some for just a couple of dollars.  It’s easy to use, it works and its useful. 

 

So I got to thinking about Sharepoint.  Out of the box it quite useful but left to your IT department to implement will leave you with about 10% (not a real stat) of its usefulness.

The business apps that you can easily implement on top of the platform are where Sharepoint really comes into its own.  Not that hard to write either. 

 

So what about a Sharepoint AppStore?  For $499 just download a generic HR leave request app.  Or for $2999 download a Virtual Earth enabled truck tracking App.   The developer community or ISV community write the applications and businesses buy them.  

 

I reckon someone must have thought of this already?

Utilisation Rates

Utilisation is the Percentage of Billable Time that is billed to a client. There are generally two ways to calculate this number, gross utilisation and net utilisation:

·         Gross utilisation is billed hours over total possible billable hours over a given period. For example, in the course of a month there may be twenty (20) workdays leading to 160 potential hours. If the consultant bills 120 hours over that period, then the gross utilization is 75%.

·         Net utilisation subtracts public holidays, vacation and sick time from the possible billable hours, for example if a consultant took a week of vacation, totalling 40 hours, then the net utilization would be 100%; 120 billed hours divided by 120 possible billable hours.

Calculated under either method, this number is important to overall revenue and profitability of the organisation. With higher utilisation there are higher revenues and gross profits, since costs such as salary are fixed over a short period of time.

On the surface it would appear that the ideal organisation should strive for a utilisation rate of 100%. This, however, is short-sighted. An organisation needs to provide time for training, sales support, and have resource flexibility to address new sales opportunities.

Very often a PSO will need to present a potential team or partial team to close a sales opportunity. If there is no talent available "on the bench" the organisation will not have the resources required to respond to sales challenges such as this.

The prudent manager works with the sales organisation to forecast upcoming projects and plan staffing and training accordingly.

Formula

Where Available Hours = Total Hours – (Public Holidays + Annual Leave + Personal Leave)

I recently attended an all weekend event called CodeCampOz.  Essentially this is a weekend in Wagga Wagga where IT geeks get together to share knowledge around software development.  Readify was one of the major sponsors for the event this year putting some of our limited discretionary spend into a community event – why?  Well to be completely honest because one of our guys Mitch Denny (the main organiser and facilitator) was prepared to put his own money in to ensure it ran.  Clearly that sort of passion should not go unrewarded so we jumped in.  This typifies the type of commitment to our industry that is unfortunately very rare and I have huge respect for this type of behaviour and also for the guys presenting at the event.  Capital ‘P’ Professionalism.

Anyway I was invited to take part in a panel discussion specifically targeting recession survival for Application Developers and Software Development organisations.  In the hour we had we didn’t get to the end of the initial questions so I thought I’d post a blog entry to short form my thinking for those that are interested.   Here we go:

How does the economic downturn affect your business?
Yes – we are not immune.  The recession has lowered our growth from the stellar growth of previous years.  It has put increased pressure on cost containment and of course cashflow.  Really obvious I suppose but the interesting thing to be is that whilst that is the overall effect in fact each State has performed differently and for differing reasons.  For example NSW and WA have gone very well, NSW against the trend.  We are not a great litmus test for the economy in general.  The good news is that our investment is cash information and control systems is paying dividends despite our customers stringing us out - and we are still experiencing top line growth, and I can’t complain too much about that.

What are the things that you think the business can do to survive the downturn?
In fact many of the things I would say here are things you should always do anyway.  Being in a downturn should not be the reason to do them.  Perhaps a downturn just brings them into sharper focus. 

·         Invest in systems that help you manage cashflow and ensure you focus on good invoicing practises and collections. 

·         Focus on the performance of your people.   There is no room for skiers.

·         Keep running your eye over operational costs to make sure you’ve covered every area that will save you money.  In our case the big expense items are people (see performance), travel and communications. 

 

In business you are either in a growth phase of a retraction phase.  In retraction, think of it as pruning a tree.  If you do it well your tree is ready to growth and blossom well when the spring comes.  If you chop it off at the trunk there is no way it will grow back to its previous beauty.    

What are the things that employees can do?
Once again – the same as you should be doing in normal times. 

·         Focus on your own professional development (like going to codecampoz) and don’t be afraid to invest in yourself.

·         Find out what challenges your business is facing and ensure you help out.

·         Be the most valuable person you can be to the organisation.  No sensible business owner wants to remove great people from their business.

·         Focus on customer service

 

In a downturn what is more appropriate, contracting or fulltime?
We are all contractors really, it’s just that some of us are on longer contracts than others. 

In our industry though the argument for our customers becomes do I want to use professional services or do I want a cheaper contractor to help solve my problems.  Our smarter customers are looking for organisations to solve their problems in the most cost effective way.  (no surprise there is a big focus on reducing cost right now).  Although it appears counter intuitive the real value proposition lies in professional services.  I’m seeing a general trend for organisations to release there contractors and look to professional services to solve their immediate and most compelling issues. 

What do you think are going to be the technology trends for the next 18 months?
From a completely capitalistic point of view ‘I don’t care’!  Yes I know that is a funny thing for a CEO of a software development company to say. Surely I have an opinion.  All change is good – that’s how we all progress and that’s how IT companies make money.  Straight forward simplistic view I know.

 On a more altruistic level, whatever the technology is I’m hoping it in some way addresses some of the many global issues we face.  Whether that is a global financial crisis, terrorism or poverty I don’t have a favourite.  The world needs innovative solutions to its many problems. 

What are your thoughts around offshoring development resources vs. keeping them local?
The average developer is definitely in constant jeopardy of being ‘offshored’.  To believe that the average  Australian developer is in some way better than the average offshore developer is indeed naive just as it was probably naive of the Pac Brands workers to believe that the company could resist every trend to offshore much of its capability.  If you don’t want to be ‘offshored’ .. DON’T BE AVERAGE!  There is plenty of compelling evidence that high performance local development teams doing a great job will outperform its offshore alternative.    

Leadership is a subject that always interests me.   You can’t buy it and I don’t think it’s easy to build in someone either however the basic traits of leadership live inside many people and sometimes it’s just a matter of learning how to unlock it.     At Readify we have become pretty good at recognising people that have leadership traits and we hire almost exclusively people that have those traits.  Many of them don’t even know it themselves when they join us.   I don’t undervalue how hard it is to recognise these traits however I reckon the real trick is to figure out how to unlock leadership in your people.  

Of course there is no silver bullet but as an organisation you can do it – it does however take time and it does mean you have to invest.  It costs us PLENTY in time and dollars, and we wouldn’t do it if the returns were not plenty as well - but don’t expect the returns to just arrive in wads of cash.    The type of leadership I like to see encourages others to lead and as more of our staff learn the traits of great leaders, I’m seeing those around them learn as well.   I don’t think in a consulting company like ours you can have too many leaders because they all lead in different ways for different reasons.  I reckon I’d like to bottle what we have now.  As high maintenance as it can be sometimes -  it really works for us seeing our staff lead in technologies, business, community and citizenship!

I was at Re-mix today and there was a buzz around about David Burela and his incredible team’s entry into the Imagine Cup for Australia.  Insiders were telling me he was a shoe-in, others were telling me it was in the bag for David.   After all, the project has the endorsement and approval of the leader of the National Party (for Australia) and the head of the Farmer’s Federation of Victoria.

 

David actually got to demo the product at the lunch session for Remix and captivated the attention of the complete room for the time he was talking about it.

 

We all know that the ‘fat lady has to sing’ and at the time I left she wasn’t singing, but she was warming up.   The upshot was – by unanimous decision – Readify’s David Burela and his team are the AUSTRALIA WINNERS OF THE IMAGINE CUP AND ARE ON THERE WAY TO PARIS!

 

Multiple people at Microsoft believe that David’s team didn’t just do a “university project” but came up with an incredibly viable business proposal that investors will be interested in.

 

The project incorporates Silverlight and Virtual Earth as part of its system – two big buzz technologies for Microsoft at the moment.

 

David’s team won out over three other finalists who were being coached by the mentor who led last year’s team to victory.

 

His whole team was immediately interviewed by Tony Sarno, Editor of APC Magazine. Tony was also one of the judges and was incredibly excited about it. 

 

A huge congratulations from Readify David. 

Maybe its on the back of a mining boom (thats not news to anyone) or maybe its just the right time for Readify but what a great time for Readify to launch a Perth office.  Andy Lamb has hit the ground running and already it seems Readify is making a name for itself locally.  We have scheduled a mini series of our 'ever popular on the East coast' RDN series - starting with:

 

 

Seriously, if you have not seen these guys present you've really missed out.  I'm even going to fly over for it - so see you there  :) 

 

I know that some people believe that travelling on business is really 'just a junket', however lets just look at it a little more closely.

 

1. If you are from Australia, the US is not just around the corner.  So really who does enjoy the process of catching a plane and the absolute boredom of sitting in a plane for 16+ hours in a very small chair with no leg room?
2. You are away from your normal connectivity.  Getting your laptop online is not so much of a technical issue these days and global roaming for your phone works, albeit expensive,  however your normal work mode is completely disrupted so you cannot expect to be as responsive to your business demands. 
3. Nobody has actually come up with a resolution for the time-zone problem.     One day ahead and 6 hours back does not leave you much room to be engaged with staff and customers. 
4. Travelling back from the US you find the two days just disappears behind that cramped little seat and that dam time-zone thing again. 
5. I miss being around my family.  Actually, in order of priority - that is No.1. 

 

I try to make sure I'm getting value from my investment in time and money.  If for some reason I don't feel like I'm getting value  - I'm going to stay home.

 

Scorecard for this trip to the US - 8.3/10  - guess that means I'll be going again! 

A bit like a high performing sporting team, sometimes we get caught up in highly complex activities or even an extraordinary workload.  Sometimes you just have to make sure you are doing the basics right to be successful.  For example:  

 

We work in an environment whereby we are all pretty remote from each other most of the time.   It creates a massive reliance on getting the communication right.  Whether that be email, TXT, IM , phone or anything else – we must treat each other as a very high priority and ensure that we are using the right medium for the right purpose.  In our environment we all have the right tools in order to stay connected – in fact we have an equally important issue about when we can turn it off.  In general during business hours:

 

·         We do not encourage people to be online without starting Office Communicator.

·         We expect phone calls to be return on the same day the message is left. 

·         We expect that an email will be returned ASAP – and if it’s likely that it will be a couple of days before a clear reply can be sent then it is expected that a quick return email stating the date they will have a reply is a polite thing to do.

·         It’s not silly to follow up an email with a phone call.

·         If you are ‘off the air’ for an extended amount of time – announce it, leave an out of office reply, change your presence awareness etc.

 

The other area I think that we need to ensure that we have right centres around relationships.  As a management team we are constantly busy – what we find is that we can run out of time to ensure that we are finding time to:

 

·         Reach out proactively to our customers

·         Meet with our staff face to face

·         Attend and support community/industry related events

 

Seems so obvious that I’m sitting here wondering why I’d bother to blog about it.  I reckon, like a highly tuned sports person – sometime we forget to ‘watch the ball’.

Today I learnt about World Wide Telescope http://www.worldwidetelescope.org/ I learnt that it ws supposed to launch on the 27th of Feb. I learnt that its  technology that Microsoft has been working on for some time, I learnt that its an extention of Jim Greys work.  I learnt that it makes kids REALLY excited and probbaly bring out the kid in some adults - those that it doesn't make cry. I learnt that its the biggest thing since Excel and the Browser launched. THE ONLY PROBLEM IS - I CAN'T FIND IT!

A while ago now I spent 5 years of my life building another business.  At the time I left it was by most measures very successful and had demonstrated fantastic growth in what was a tough market.   My problem was that it could have been and should have been twice the size and had it not been for a partner with mad cows disease (not literally) – it certainly would have been.  Most of us that have started businesses at some stage go through the bad partner issues and once you have done that once you are extra careful about the next venture you take on.   Thankfully I was much smarter and much more careful in my choice of partners this time.   

As much as a complete disaster the end of that business became, I ended up being thankful for learning many lessons (perhaps the hard way) in how NOT to run a business.  Seriously - you can always find a positive even in something that appears on the surface to you as an unmitigated disaster.    When I sat down afterwards to evaluate where I was at - I could barely count the lessons I had learnt over the 5 years on what NOT to do.  Even though we like to think that intuitively we would never make a certain mistake – nothing drives that lesson home better than to see it played out in front of you, before your very eyes.  A bit like having an ulcer in your mouth that you can’t help but keep poking with your tongue.

I learnt the type of person you should never have as a partner.  I learnt a bunch of lessons in how not to manage staff, I learnt how not to deal with suppliers and I also learnt exactly how not to treat customers.  

I reckon the best lesson I learnt was that 'any opportunity you have to increase your self- awareness should be embraced'.    As a CEO you cannot be all things to all people, you cannot know everything.  Any attempt to pretend that you do will be exposed and your credibility should be questioned.  If you attempt to try and fool people that you are all knowing and all seeing you will undoubtedly strangle the growth of your company - and you end up looking very stupid. 

A small example of this was watching my former ‘mad cow’ partner wreck weeks of work on a tender by up- setting the customer at the 11th hour (as much as we tried to keep him out) and then refusing a ‘lost bid review’ after we got the news that we had been unsuccessful. 

I reckon it’s very important to understand your weaknesses, hire people much better than you and then MOST importantly listen to them.  Never refuse an opportunity to raise you  level of self awareness.   

 

There is much we’ve come to learn about a highly mobile (and somewhat virtualised) business.  So many things that translate to fantastic business accelerators.  So many things that support a very new and exciting working life model.   

Here’s the problem - most people don’t really get it because they are looking for something very tangible to explain to them how it works – they want a book, they want documented examples or they want to install something (it’s an IT thing). 

Here at Readify we’ve managed to cook up something quite amazing that I believe anyone could do if they have the same hunger as we do.  Something very edible, almost ripe and ready to be consumed by the entire business.

Would you like the recipe?   Of course you would, and it’s actually not all that hard to make.   

1.       Take a whole bunch of new Microsoft Technologies. 

a.       ½ cup of Ajax

b.      1 cup of MOSS

c.       Tblsp of .NET 3.5 (WPF, WCF flavours work well)

d.      Sprinkle with some Expression and Silverlight

2.       Mix with some imagination and a strong desire to capture, share and push knowledge to the corners of your business.   

3.       Pre heat your development environment and bake with one or two of your best developers.

Here’s one we prepared earlier J 

 

SITTING IN SEATTLE AIRPORT
First rule of travel - make sure you have all you flights sorted out so that you know were you are going and stopping and when each flight leaves and arrives. 

Second rule of travelling - see first rule. 

Seems i didn't quite get that right this time - arrived in Hawaii a half a day ahead of when I thought I was.  Not that this  presented a major problem, in fact I was accused of doing to on purpose.  I can confirm that I was a bit surprised to see the sun shining on the decent into Honolulu when I thought it was 10pm. 

Taxi's in every country (except London cabs) seem to be the most dangerous part of any trip.  My cab driver coming into Seattle hit 75mph on the freeway in the pouring rain three times before I pulled my taxi basher out of its case and smacked him with it.  Actually a 75mph you really don't want him to turn around and start a conversation with you - chances are he's on something.  On the way back to the airport I did warn the taxi driver before he started no to exceed the speed limit.

Finally, despite my insistence that my flights out of the US were DIRECT to Melbourne and that was confirmed on the itinerary -   the nice fellow at the check-in gave me two boarding passes.  One for SYDNEY - MELBOURNE %^&*(!!  NOT what you need at the end of a tiring conference. 

No amount of checking my itinerary would have picked that one up - IT WASN'T ON IT!

Did you hear that KPN just bought Getronics?  Should have seen that coming eh.  My source tells me that the Australian business is going well so they shouldn't expect any um' right sizing activities.     

 

 

Friday

What better place to start the day but  Austrade.  Not that I was pining for an Australian accent.  Jane Wang runs the office in Xi'An and after an interesting meeting and some sweet coffee and a CD that I need to look at later we were whisked away to the first of our 'meet the businesses' meetings.  Escorted by the Vice Director of the Software Park our first visit was with the jovial General Manager of Cenozolc, Mr Guo Ping Bo.  He provided some insight into an ISV providing software to the petrochemical industry.  We were given a tour of the business and with some light hearted conversation whisked off to meet with the General Manager of Grapecity, Mr Zhu Yuzhang.    This was a great meeting and Yuzhang provided us with some real insight into a BPO business that has been providing services to its Japanese head Office for 19 years!  Obviously the Japanese were onto this  long before we were.   Back to another huge lunch with Dr Chen and more conversations about the intricacies of doing business in China.  I was starting to understand.  More meetings back at his office and then being a Friday and the end of the week Chen suggested his favourite thing - a 'very professional' foot massage prior to dinner.  For those wondering 'Very professional' does not mean any hanky panky - the people providing the service are known as technicians so there can be no confusion between the trades.  You may be surprised just how involved a foot massage can get - if you are interested ask me sometime how my ears feel now.    Dinner went until near on midnight and I crashed pretty exhausted.

 

I reckon we should have foot massage places in Australia. 

 

Saturday

The day started off with a little shopping then a massive  lunch then meetings then the museum then a massive dinner - After dinner we went to the Royal Water Gardens.  

At the museum  I was treated to seeing relics from the Qin, Han and Ming dynasty's and a couple of dynasty's that I can't remember.  It was fascinating to see the progress in pottery and armoury BUT my favourite was a scull of Homo Erectus somewhere between 700,000 and 1,000,000 years old.  Lantian man - found of course in the Lantian area of China.  At the Royal Gardens I sat on the steps of the main building to watch a very high tech film cast on the canvas frame of a mass of water fountain on the edge of a big lake.  Confused ?  The water was sprayed up in the air and hi tech video and audio combined with the odd 6-7 lasers provided a great movie.  Not that I could understand the language but the story was pretty simple to follow even without knowing the words.  (no subtitles I'm afraid).  The images in the movie were very 3D  and the sound system very impressive.    Another late night. 

 

Sunday

Today was split into two.  The morning out at the 8th wonder of the world. The Terracotta Warriors. The afternoon at a Tea House with Dr Chen finalising discussions and trying to nail down all the take-aways from the trip.   The warriors are at Emperor Qin's tomb about an hour outside Xi'An.  On the way out I saw three accidents.  Two trucks rolled over and one nose to tail.  To give you an idea on how mad the road rules are - we approached an onramp to a freeway and about half way up it looked like the freeway was clagged.  The car in front just turned around and drove straight back though the traffic weaving its way until it got back to a place it could join traffic going the right way.  We were much safer - we BACKED up through the oncoming traffic - that was heaps of fun!  Felt like I was in a James bond movie :)

I reckon backing into the oncoming traffic could be a new ride a Sea World

  

Monday

Heading home day today.  With items finalised yesterday at the Tea house, and a visit to the IBM Software Park Innovation Centre (met the Managing Director - Rong Zhen) the only agenda items we decided to make a quick visit to the Art Gallery before one last huge lunch and a drive out to the airport.  We had said our goodbyes already to Dr Chen - What a great host he has been - particularly when you consider the number of things he has on his plate.  In addition to running Netec his portal business, Owning the Innovation Centre he is also has government responsibilities:

 

• Member of the Xi'An municipal people congress executive committee (provincial status)
• Member of the special committee on ethnic groups, religions, returned chinese and foreign affairs of the peoples congress
• Vice Chairman of the peoples political consultative conference of Yantadistrict (the biggest conference including the Hi Tech development zone)    

 

We said our good byes to our driver  Mr Liu - thanks for keeping us safe and getting us from one meeting to another (love to see him try and drive in Australia) and thanks to 'Cindy' our interpreter - what would have done without her. 

 

 I reckon writing the report and recommendations for the Readify Board can wait until I return. 

 

Sounds like a Thirsty Merc song but after one of my meetings with the Vice Director of the new Software Park in Xi'An, Mr Zhu Liming and his lovely college Ms Cindy Wang -  I now have '20 good reasons' why a business might like to setup camp in Xi'An.  

 

The software park was established 1998 and is nationally recognised.  Which is important in China.  It sprawls across over 100 hectares and boasts  400,000m2 of buildings.    Over 580 companies now use the Park facilities.  Amongst  these companies you'll find 40,000 engineers.

 

It turns over RNB 11.2 Billion and in export business alone US$55m.  Not small companies but companies such as Oracle, Sybase, Intel, Nortel and Fujitsu.  There are over 80 companies providing ITO services  totalling US$28m revenue.   The software park host the a global BPO conference here every year, attracting over 500 delegates. 

 

Many large multinationals come here to do R&D.  Why?  Well Xi'An is rich in hi tech talent.  94 colleges and universities have produced around 410,000 skilled engineers with 869,000 undergrads, 40,000 graduating in IT every year.    THE COST OF LABOUR IS VERY VERY LOW.  Companies pay about 2,300-5,500 RNB (Yuan) depending on the skill level per month for skilled engineers and developers.   Yes folks that's a staggering  A$383 - A$916 per month  (before you start to feel too sorry for them - I will note that the cost of living here is about 6 x less than Australia also).   How much do you pay for renting an office in the Park? That's only 40 RNB per m2 per month (about A$7).

 

What's the catch -  Maybe they can't get the internet? Maybe the staff turnover is huge? Maybe nobody knows who Thirsy Merc is? Maybe they speak Chinese?  Well folks - from the Park gets you access to 155 Mbps, Xi'An boasts 8.6% staff turn-over -  lowest in China (and why not its a nice place) and two expressways to airport (30 minutes). 

 

I have  found that the people that speak English are pretty good at it and I suspect that many others understand you but are not confident enough to speak it - I'm guess its not a high percentage though.  I'll do the Thirsty Merc survey later today.   

 

I was lead to believe that the Intellectual Property law's are - well kind of loose here in China.  I was assured that the Government has been working on that and it has improved in recent years.  

 

I reckon I heard 20 good reasons - 3 of them are very compelling.    

 

Travel tip of the day - No jetlag (its only 2 hours difference to Australia) - was that 21 good reasons?

 

Next - Next I travelled across town to Austrade to find out more about trade in China,  I meet some of the companies that use the park and after not actually walking all that far ... I have a foot massage!

Right now I'm sitting at a desk in Xi'An China.  The visit was for research on what has become a giant economy and an opportunity that should not be ignored.  After being just two days now my head is spinning and I'm really not sure where to start. 

Both Prof Christine Mingins and I we're invited to come and visit through a Chinese Government VIP program where they encourage outsiders to come and see what China has to offer the West.  Dr Chen and senior Government official and successful businessman in his own right has been the perfect host, facilitating many introductions to businesses as well as being an absolute font of knowledge on the complex nature of doing business in China.

Of the many businessmen I've met so far I've always been asked to talk about Readify and its innovative business model.  There seems to be genuine interest in the sort of things that we might be able to do in China and I've found the Chinese to be very open about there own businesses. 

Dr Chen is a bit of a history buff - so I've been treated to many long discussions about Xi'An's 3,500 year history, its Dynasty's and its people.  I'm really looking forward to tomorrow when I get to go and visit the Terracotta Warriors. 

To my surprise, the food has been a real treat. Some of the dishes don't actually look the best but as long as you can brave the look, the tastes are quite special.   

I reckon - and this is not an original though - that travelling opens your eyes.  Christine and I were the only Caucasians on the plane from Hong Kong to Xi'An - very few of the people we meet speak English although everyone speaks far more English than I do Mandarin :)

In my next post I'm going to drill in on what is on offer here from a technology outsourcing point of view and I might even squeeze in some photo's.

So what’s bad about it I hear you ask?  SMOG - and no that’s not an acronym.  Smoking laws are about the same as Australia 25 years ago and I don't think I could ever drive here.  The road rules are - "give way to everyone and don't give way to anyone" - mad, but it actually seems to work.  Lucky I have a driver! 

Virtual business doesn’t actually mean that you don’t get face to face – instead it is the realization that not everything needs face to face.  Pick the meetings that require face to face, the ones that a phone will work for and the times that email is fine or Instant Messaging works. Get the best results by picking the best medium.  The new water cooler is Instant Messaging!