Full employment

via Seth Godin

So true…

You will never be out of work if you can demonstrably offer one of the following:

• Sales
• Additive effort
• Initiation

Sales speaks for itself. If you can sell enough to cover what you cost and then some, there will always be someone waiting to hire you.

Additive effort is distinguished from bureaucracy or feel-good showing up. Additive effort generates productivity far greater than the overhead you add to the organization. If your skills make the assembly line go twice as fast, or the sales force becomes more effective, or the travel office cuts its costs, then you've produced genuine value. That surly receptionist at the doctor's office--she's just filling a chair.

The third skill is the most difficult to value, but is ultimately the most valuable. If you're the person who can initiate useful action, if you're the one who makes something productive or transformative happen, then smart organizations will treasure you.

Vincent Bolloré

I have the chance to be a member of the “Four Seasons Club” (in French: le club des quatre saisons), which is a private business club founded in 2003 and based in Zurich, Switzerland. It is a French-speaking club, gathering personalities from the economical, political, academic, cultural and media worlds.

The number of members is limited to 120. For me, a quite unique opportunity to speak French, my mother-tongue, and not (broken) English or (broken) German!

The Club is also an opportunity to see and to meet extremely interesting people, coming from different horizons, and not “just” the business.

On last Wednesday, we could see, listen to and meet Mr. Vincent Bolloré (wikipedia):

Vincent Bolloré (b. 1 April 1952 in Boulogne-Billancourt, France) is a French industrialist, corporate raider and businessman.

He heads the family investment group Bolloré and is ranked 451st richest person in the world according to Forbes, with an estimated fortune of US$1.7 billion. He is married, with 4 children.

Vincent Bolloré is from a well-off family from Brittany, and he graduated with a Bachelor of Laws (LLB) degree from Université Paris X Nanterre. Bolloré started his investment career as a bank trainee at investment bank Edmond de Rothschild.

His personal investment career began when he took over the reins at his family-controlled conglomerate Bolloré, which deals in maritime freight and African trade, and paper manufacturing (cigarette and bible paper). The company he leads today employs 33,000 people around the world.

He is a well-known corporate raider in France who has succeeded in making money by taking large stakes in French listed companies, in particular the building and construction group Bouygues, where he left with a sizeable capital gain after a power-struggle.

In late 2004, his investment group started building a stake in advertising group Havas, becoming its largest single shareholder. He mounted a coup and replaced Alain de Pouzilhac as Havas Chief Executive Officer on July 12, 2005.

In 2005, through his family company, Bolloré expanded his media interests by launching the Direct 8 television station. Towards the end of 2005, he began building a stake in independent British media planning and buying group, Aegis. As at 19 July, 2006, his stake in Aegis stood at 29%. Direct Soir, a free newspaper, was launched in June 2006. In January 2008, he manifested interest in becoming a shareholder of famed, but troubled, Italian car manufacturer Pininfarina.

He is a close personal friend of French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

I haven't known any detail about the Bolloré Group before this meeting. Actually very interesting! As Vincent Bolloré, a very charismatic and fascinating person, with quite a lot of distance and humility with his business successes. And a definitely not common strategic approach (“we do what the others don’t want to do”), with a very diversified group founded in 1822!

It was also the last day of the very long Indian Summer in Zurich.

Adcubum and Innoveo agree to a strategic partnership!

We are very happy to announce that we, at Innoveo, could agree to a strategic partnership with Adcubum, a Swiss product software company also focused on the insurance market, and developing a very complementary product, adcubum SYRIUS® (back-office), to Innoveo Skye® (front-office).

A step-by-step process, very solid, between the two companies, integrating both Boards of Directors, Executive Management Teams and operational experts, to be able to mature the cooperation model on a strategic and product levels. The first operational activities have started for exactly one year in September 2008, with the first contacts in spring 2008.

And, it is always better to announce this kind of partnership, when both partners have already won together a customer, which is the case for us ;-)

Some words about Adcubum

Adcubum was founded in 1998, is privately held, with more than 100 people, and a capital of 7.5 million CHF. Our colleagues have so far achieved 60% market coverage in Switzerland (health insurance) and 100% in Slovakia (social security) with adcubum SYRIUS®.

They are now expanding their activities to the important markets of Germany and Eastern Europe, and to the Property & Casualty (P&C) lines of business.

 

PRESS RELEASE

 Adcubum and Innoveo contract a strategic partnership to integrate the multi-channel distribution solution Innoveo Skye® with adcubum SYRIUS®.

St. Gallen, 30th September 2009 - Adcubum and Innoveo intensify their co-operation and agree to a product and strategic partnership. Goal of this agreement is the seamless integration of the multi-channel distribution solution Innoveo Skye® in the insurance core solution adcubum SYRIUS® as an optional module. Therewith, their customers are in a position to use the software for all lines of business and to holistically support respectively control their products and services sales. Moreover, with this co-operation Adcubum and Innoveo consolidate their complementary competences and experience in the insurance industry.

Like adcubum SYRIUS®, Innoveo Skye® is based on a state-of-the-art scalable 4-tier-architecture and is easily embedded in any portal solution. Innoveo Skye® comprises all lines of business in the insurance industry (health insurance, property and casualty insurance, life insurance) and supports various back-office systems simultaneously. Furthermore, Innoveo Skye® is capable of multi-channel operations, which enable insurance companies to quickly and consistently offer new products and services via different channels like branches, agencies, insurance brokers or via the Internet.

"The partnership with Adcubum allows to offer our complementary expertise and insurance solutions in one integrated product", says Nick Stefania, Managing Partner of Innoveo. "Customers benefit of a reduced time-to-market for their insurance products and we enable them to offer all insurance products and services for every distribution channel with one single module."

"We are already working together intensively with Innoveo in a customer project", says René Janesch, member of the executive board of Adcubum. "Insurance companies seek more and more for an end-to-end solution supporting the continuous process from the back-office management to the multi-channel distribution. Hence, the current point in time is most convenient for such a collaboration. Above all, we are able to considerably strengthen our know-how in the property and casualty insurance market."

Press release English / German

Innoveo corporate fact sheet English

 

Adcubum AG
Adcubum is a leading Swiss software manufacturer in the international insurance business. The core solution adcubum SYRIUS® is a modularly built back-office system for health, accident and property and casualty insurances based on the Java Platform Enterprise Edition (Java EE) technology. The foundation for the successful company history was laid in St. Gallen in 1998. Since then, the product has been continuously enhanced according to customer and market requirements. At present the company employs more than 100 high qualified and specialised experts. Multiple millions of insured persons with more than 30 million claims are administrated by the core solution adcubum SYRIUS® - tendency rising.

Further information under: www.adcubum.com

 

Innoveo Solutions AG
Innoveo emerged as an independent software manufacturer from a spin-out of the Helvetia Group in 2007. It is characterized by a unique combination of technology expertise and insurance industry knowledge. The SOA/Java EE based agile insurance front-office system Innoveo Skye® is based on more than 12 years of experience in the implementation of flexible distribution systems for all lines of business as well as in the integration of any back-office and CRM systems as well as portals. In an increasingly diversified market a consistent, per distribution channel and insurance product configurable solution offers crucial strategic possibilities, considerable time savings as well as remarkable cost efficiency for the launch of new products.

Further information under: www.innoveo.com

Lifelong learning & “growth mindset”

via Jeff Busgang

I personally like the idea that we are all able to learn during our entire life, thanks to our family and private life, thanks to our social and business activities.

I am also convinced that it is extremely important to be able to change your goals (without being frustrated) and, at the same time, to be very resilient, which is totally antinomic :-) A question of balance perhaps.

Anyway, super food for thoughts from Jeff!

[…] If you aren't facile at adjusting your goals, and they're overly ambitious goals, it can lead to depression.

[…] As investors, we VCs are always attracted to entrepreneurs who set big, hairy audacious goals (BHAGs).  Who wants to invest in an entrepreneur whose pitch is, "I'm going to make a nice living in a small niche," as opposed to, "I aspire to achieve world domination"?  Yet are those entrepreneurs more susceptible to depression and defeatism when they're unable to achieve those outrageous BHAGs?

To reconcile these two views I am reminded of an excellent book I recently read by renowned Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck, called Mindset .  Dweck's research shows that successful people in business, sports and life have "growth mindsets" rather than "fixed mindsets".  The "growth mindset" is one in which a person believes that one's world view is less about ability and more about lifelong learning.  "Growth mindset" individuals feel they can always learn from experiences (failures and successes) and develop resilience because they're focused on personal growth rather than achievement tied to rigid objectives.  When a "growth mindset" individual faces adversity, they focus on the learnings and the self-improvement opportunities that come from adversity.

I have seen in my own work that the best entrepreneurs do set BHAGs, sometimes outrageous and unattainable ones (create a $100 million company in 5 years from scratch?  Is that really possible?), and push themselves to achieve excellence.  But the ones that really distinguish themselves are the ones who embrace the "growth mindset".  They embrace life long learning, no matter how great their achievements, and allow themselves to occasionally hit the reset button and adjust their goals […]

Mark this day :-)

Yesterday (Thursday) was an absolutely important and central milestone in the life of our company - Innoveo.

I am very proud, totally exciting for the coming steps, exhausted, and also in a way - relieved. First confirmations that our vision, strategy, and tactics are not sooo bad ;-)

As usual, a bit of luck, plus a great help and support from very smart people (hello René), and from our Team!

I remember a thought of one of my former boss, saying that:

Good stuff needs time to mature

This is absolutely true ;-) I would just extend it a bit:

Good stuff needs time AND a lot of energy to mature

Nick, mate, a big thought in your direction, you did such a great job!

Coming challenges are big, again, but first … there are coming! And second, they are super interesting!

A last one now, about “vision” :-)

(© Despair, Inc)

 

But gosh, now, I just want to sit down with a good grappa, and to appreciate this moment.

Saying “no”

via Seth Godin

This one is again a good one from Seth:

If you've got talent, people want more of you. They ask you for this or that or the other thing. They ask nicely. They will benefit from the insight you can give them.

The choice: You can dissipate your gift by making the people with the loudest requests temporarily happy, or you can change the world by saying 'no' often.

You can say no with respect, you can say no promptly and you can say no with a lead to someone who might say yes. But just saying yes because you can't bear the short-term pain of saying no is not going to help you do the work.

Saying no to loud people gives you the resources to say yes to important opportunities.

Crazy compensation committees and CEO’s

via Jeff Bussgang

I am just flying into a rage when I hear all these bonus and golden-parachute stories!

All these stories with these crazy CEOs that are doing a very bad job for their companies, which need to be helped by the government and are receiving billions to save their business. And, at the same time, are delivering bonus for themselves and their managers. This is just intolerable! Do not forget, these guys are not alone, there are “great” remuneration committees that are voting these golden-parachutes and crazy bonus. Why not talking also about them?

How can employees accept this kind of behavior? They are not acceptable.

We shouldn’t wonder why CEOs have such bad reputations today, when some are acting in this way, and just impacting all the other CEOs in a very negative way...

Very nice post from Jeff expressing this point of view more in detail:

Perhaps the most successful venture capitalist in history, Sequoia’s Mike Mortiz (backer of Google, Yahoo, Paypal, to name a few reasonable wins), said in a recent interview that one of the ways he decides whether to invest in an entrepreneur is how much they plan on paying themselves. Moritz views high salaries with immense suspicion. If the founder takes a modest salary (in start-up land, that’s typically $100-200k per year – well below even President Obama’s $500k cap), he knows they believe in the future value of their business. […]

Remember, entrepreneurs aren’t saints or selfless do-gooders. They typically work 80-100 hours per week for two reasons. First, they are PASSIONATE about their venture for the sake of the business and its impact on the world more than the money (“Ask me about my business and you can’t shut me up,” confessed my friend Scott Savitz, CEO/founder of Shoebuy.com, the other day). […]

They want to prove to their investors and employees that the risk they took in investing in them and joining their cause will pay off. Why don’t Fortune 500 CEOs feel the same way? Why is it that they don’t view their role in life to prove to the shareholder that buys their stock in the public market that they took a worthy risk and they’ll be darned sure it pays off? Instead, they think it’s culturally acceptable to take outsized pay packages and perks that no educated, rational shareholder would ever approve if given the chance. […]

The behavior is in such stark contrast to what’s going on in the small business, job-creating end of the economy, it’s absurd. The public is understandably outraged. I am too. That’s why I’d fire all the compensation committee heads and turn the reigns over the start-up CEOs. […]

Marten Mickos, former MySQL CEO, is to depart Sun

via 451 CAOS Theory

It seems that SUN will not communicate on that, but Marten Mickos, the former MySql CEO, is leaving SUN, after about 1 year... I remember one of my post in February 2008 with some explanations about the “why” of this merge, directly from Marten. Outch. Something didn’t work as planed there.

Some more information below.

I just got news that Marten Mickos, former MySQL CEO, is to depart Sun amid a reorganisation of its infrastructure and database business units. Don’t expect an announcement from Sun on this, but the news is confirmed.

[…] Marten will be transitioning out of Sun by the end of the company’s (current) third quarter.

Marten’s departure is a big loss for Sun and follows quickly after the departures of Monty Widenius and David Axmark.

[…] Matt Asay is right, Marten’s departure “is likely to lead to an exodus among MySQL’s deep talent pool”. This needn’t be a complete disaster - the same thing happened at JBoss and Red Hat has recovered from that, but this is going to be a serious test for Sun’s ability to maximize on the potential of MySQL and its other open source assets.

Matt also writes that “Mickos was the backbone of MySQL’s rising revenues, as an open-source pragmatist and visionary. He was the face of MySQL, but also of the rising open-source industry.” This is true, and for that reason I hope it’s not too long before we see him taking charge at another vendor.

Good luck to Marten, hope to see him asap in a new role!

What is a great software company

via Judith Hurwitz

Judith is discussing the difference between a good and a great software company.

Interesting insights!

1. Great companies start with a predictable business model and turn the model upside down. They look three years ahead and experiment with innovation. They have to have a combination of intuition, risk, and innovation. These companies are willing to take enough risk to win big but smart enough to know the difference between great opportunities and pipe dreams.

2. Great companies find new areas to position themselves for leadership. This is very tough to pull off. The area has to be important enough for the market to pay attention to but not too big that they look silly.  Great companies never try to take a big existing market with established leaders and try to claim primacy.

3. Great companies build great relationships. Management at these companies builds an ecosystem of influencers including great customers who will talk about the value, press, analysts, and partners who together help the company create a persona of innovation and greatness while the company is still building.

Great software companies are complicated to build.   The software business a complicated and brutal with  lots of failures at every turn.  […] It isn’t easy. Great software companies are even more difficult and scary to build.

Innoveo Skye – Product strategy workshop

Yesterday and today, workshop with the Innoveo Management Team near Zurich for refining and documenting our Innoveo Skye™ (content, scope, roadmap) software solution for insurances (front-end and distribution).

More information there about Skye™.

 

Innoveo at the InsuranceCom conference

Innoveo was again this year partner of the InsuranceCom congress in Zurich.

Lot of very interesting presentations (main topic was innovation this year) and many very good contacts and exchanges!

International IT market is resisting the downturn

via EITO

Despite the weakness in the international economy, demand for information technology (IT) will continue to increase in the coming year. According to the new forecast of the international market research institute EITO, turnover of computers, software and IT services in Western Europe will increase by 2 percent in 2009, to a round 315 billion Euro. "IT expenditure of businesses will continue to grow even in an economic recession", said EITO chairman Bruno Lamborghini. "Information technology is of strategic importance for companies in a crisis situation because it makes operations more efficient and more economic." Increasing demand for IT was also to be expected from contractors working in the public sector, where investment has limited dependence on economic fluctuations. According to the latest forecast, providers of software and IT services in Western Europe will achieve a substantial increase in turnover of 3.2 percent in the coming year, to 228 billion. In comparison, manufacturers of IT hardware are facing a loss of 1.3 percent, to 87 billion Euro.

The EITO market researchers are expecting development of the IT market in Western Europe, which includes the 15 core countries of the EU with the addition of Switzerland and Norway, to be more robust than in the USA. IT turnover in the United States is forecast to grow by 0.8 percent to 347 billion Euro. Before the global financial crisis became more acute, EITO was assuming growth of the IT market at a level of 4.4 percent in the USA.

The global IT market for the year 2009 will grow, according to the EITO forecast, by 2.7 percent to 983 billion Euro. As in Europe, suppliers of software and IT services around the world are growing particularly strongly. Their turnover world-wide is forecast to grow by 3.4 percent to 677 billion Euro in the coming year. The hardware market is increasing by 1.3 percent to 305 billion Euro. The driving forces are emerging markets like China, India and Russia, which still have some ground to make up in developing their IT infrastructure.

So, summarized, concerning turnover forecast for 2009

• Worldwide:
  • Overall: +2.7%
  • Software and IT services: +3.4%
  • IT Hardware: +1.3%
• Western Europe (15 EU countries, Switzerland, Norway)
  • Overall: +2.0%
  • Software and IT services: +3.2%
  • IT Hardware: –1.3%
• USA:
  • Overall: +0.8%
• Western Europe more robust than in the USA
• Driving forces internationally: China, India, Russia (generally speaking: emerging markets)

Innoveo - A real life example of productive SOA solutions

Two years ago a first version of the publication “Service Oriented Architecture for Dummies” has been published. Therein our reference customer, the Helvetia Insurance Group, was mentioned together with the solution we have successfully put in place for them.

In the second, reviewed edition, Innoveo has been dedicated again one full chapter of the book. Still our solution is considered to be a practical, state of the art example of how SOA can work in real life, creating both, an enhanced efficiency and cost optimization on the IT side as well as real business benefits on the customer side.

We are proud of having been selected by Judith Hurwitz for her book and we wish Judith again an amazing success with this new publication.

Find more information about the book on Judith Hurwitz’s Weblog. Judith is one of the authors and we’ve had the pleasure to be directly in contact with her to discuss the content and the progresses we’ve made in the time between the first and the second edition.

You can order the book at Amazon.com.

Get additional information about our consulting services and our insurance frontend solution Innoveo Skye™ by visiting our company website.

cross-posted as Innoveo News.

Defining goals is a pain in the neck, BUT…

via Seth Godin

A good one, to (re)start properly the new year with some inspiring quotes from Seth!

Having goals is a pain in the neck.

If you don't have a goal (a corporate goal, a market share goal, a personal career goal, an athletic goal...) then you can just do your best. You can take what comes. You can reprioritize on a regular basis. If you don't have a goal, you never have to worry about missing it. If you don't have a goal you don't need nearly as many excuses, either.

Not having a goal lets you make a ruckus, or have more fun, or spend time doing what matters right now, which is, after all, the moment in which you are living.

The thing about goals is that living without them is a lot more fun, in the short run.

It seems to me, though, that the people who get things done, who lead, who grow and who make an impact... those people have goals.

All the best for 2009!

Some thoughts concerning 2008+ and wishes for 2009.

Looking back to … 2008+

Actually, 2008 started for me already in 2007 :-)

Difficult to make the cut in January 2008, as we have started Innoveo in October 2007…

So, below, some pictures which are representing my 2008+, a mix of private and professional stuff, as usual.

And, without explanations, for sure ;-)

All in all, 2008 was again extremely “different” and “stable”.

• Different, because I could learn a lot of new stuff, a bit more about myself, meet a huge amount of persons, very smart and people-oriented. A lot of new experiences, in so many different fields, wow :-) And, on top, a strong and deep feeling of being very lucky to be able to lead our own company with Nick . Different also, because it is the first time that I feel so clearly the quite high pressure, even positive, of leading a company and being “responsible” for this company!
• Stable, because I had the chance, first, to work with and for the same great people! I like very much this ecosystem! Stable, secondly, because my family and private life is solid, full of happiness and great private moments. I don’t like stability, excepted in these two fields ;-)

What about 2009?

Looks interesting, isn’t it? As during all the downturn and crisis time, we will all have our ups and downs.

Hopefully with more “ups”, and not too deep “downs”!

Flexibility will be essential, as speed.

I wish you and your beloved ones all the best for the exciting coming year, a lot of fun, good wines and meals (!), success in your new business(es), and a lot of new learnings!

And keep dreaming :-)

Take care, Didier

[click on the calendar-zone to enlarge]

Forget the traditional 4 “P”s!

via Seth Godin

Seth is, as usual, suggesting a new “out-of-the-box” structure to represent the different marketing elements and mechanisms. So, forget the  traditional 4 “P”s (Product, Price, Place, Promotion) coming from the commonly accepted definition of Marketing Mix (Jerome McCarthy). For Seth, we should have a look at 5 elements:

© Seth Godin

So now, let’s have a look at the definition of these 5 elements:

• DATA is observational. […] Data is powerful, overlooked and sometimes mistaken for boring. You don't have to understand the why, you merely need to know the what.
• STORIES define everything you say and do. The product has a myth, the service has a legend. […]
• PRODUCTS (and services) are physical manifestations of the story. […]
• INTERACTIONS are all the tactics the marketer uses to actually touch the prospect or customer. […]
• CONNECTION is the highest level of enlightenment, the end goal. Connection between you and the customer, surely, but mostly connection between customers. Great marketers create bands of brothers, tribes of people who wish each other well and want to belong.

Interesting, isn’t it? Try to have a look at your marketing reality through this new prism.

Three essential questions you can ask yourself:

• Does this interaction lead to connections?
• Do our products support our story?
• Is the story pulling in numbers that demonstrate that it's working?

I like Seth Godin exactly for this kind of disruptive inputs ;-)

Scenarios For 2009: How CIOs Should Prepare (Forrester research)

via Ed Cone

Ed is pointing to a very interesting document from Forrester about the reactions of CIOs, classified by sectors. Including the Finance &  Insurance industries.

For the Insurance Industry, the analysis of Forrester is quite aligned with what we are perceiving at Innoveo.

The analysis is very recent and was presented during a webinar on December 11, 2008.

What is the insurance industry doing to address the downturn?

• Anticipating more cut backs for 2009.
• Insurance has already made significant cuts in IT spending early in 2008.
• Growth in IT purchases for Finance & Insurance:
  • 2007: +8%
  • 2008: -2%
  • 2009: -3%

How will the recession affect the Insurance Industry?

• Shallow recession: GOOD
• Deep recession: NEUTRAL

What are firms in these sectors doing to address the downturn?

• Most firms focus on IT’s traditional cost-cutting tactics.
• New investments (30% of the overall costs):
  • Portfolio segmentation
    • Use commodity / low-cost resources
    • Eliminate large-sized efforts
    • Focus on short-term returns
  • Adopt lean thinking, reduce complexity
  • Shorten planning horizons
• Operational costs (70% of the overall costs):
  • Consolidation/standardization, consistent with the business model
    • Data centers, server/storage virtualization
    • Consolidate and squeeze vendors
    • Centralization of IT contracts
  • Lean thinking — reduce complexity,
  • Staff and asset utilization optimization
    • Delay upgrades and refresh
    • Downgrade for lower volumes
    • Automate where it makes sense

The Finance & Insurance sectors are considering to invest in the following actions in 2009:

• Retiring older applications or technologies to save support costs 50%
• Adjusting project portfolios to increase near-term return on investment 55%
• Assessing the IT organization structure to improve efficiencies 60%
• Investing in technologies such as automation to reduce IT operating costs 70%

Leading firms take multiple alternative approaches:

• Traditional IT tactics to deliver short-term results
• Agility to offer alternatives in the long run — providing a lasting ability to rapidly shift partners, customers, and markets
  • Focus on increasing ability to change: adding/removing services, reselling services from third parties, channel integration
  • Focus on external interfaces to data and systems
    • Apply SOA for strategic flexibility
    • Look to third parties for flexible interfaces
  • Increase flexibility of contracts
  • Employ agile development methodologies
• Innovation to accelerate out of the downturn — new business models and product/service offerings in addition to operational improvements
  • Accelerating out of the downturn requires a strategic focus, but without higher overall costs
  • Use a portion of CapEx for innovative ideas
  • Focus innovation criteria on business strategies
  • Use Web 2.0 technologies to farm ideas from across your Innovation Network — internal and external
  • Employ a different idea pipeline / steering committee
  • Keep investment performance metrics

Summary for the Finance & Insurance sectors:

 

2009 will be a complicated year for software

via Judith Hurwitz

One of the first “predictions list” for 2009 for software companies.

Very interesting insights!

1. Software as a Service (SaaS) goes mainstream. It isn’t just for small companies anymore. […]
2. Tough economic times favor the big and stable technology companies. […] The only way emerging companies will survive is to do what I call “follow the pain”. In other words, come up with compelling technology that solves really tough problems that others can’t do. They need to fill the white space that the big vendors have not filled yet. […]
3. The Service Oriented Architecture market enters the post hype phase. […]
4. Service Management gets hot. […]
5. The desktop takes a beating in a tough economy. When times get tough companies look for ways to cut back and I expect that the desktop will be an area where companies will delay replacement of existing PCs. […]
6. The Cloud grows more serious. […] Just as companies are moving to SaaS because of economic reasons, companies will move to Clouds with the same goal – decreasing capital expenditures.  Companies will start to have to gain an understanding of the impact of trusting a third party provider. […]
7. There will be tech companies that fail in 2009. […]
8. Open Source will soar in this tight market. […] Companies that offer commercial open source will emerge as strong players.
9. Software goes vertical. I am not talking about packaged software. I anticipate that more and more companies will begin to package everything based on a solutions focus. […]
10. Appliances become a software platform of choice for customers. […] More software solutions will be sold with prepackaged solutions to make the acceptance rate for complex enterprise software easier.
11. Companies will spend money on anticipation management. […] Companies will need to understand not just what happened last year but where they should invest for the future. They cannot do this without understanding their data.

Wow, good food for thoughts!

I am excited also to be able to read the new version of the book “SOA for Dummies”, written, among others, by Judith Hurwitz. Innoveo should have there its own chapter, hopefully ;-)

Innoveo Skye, a Swiss made software!

At Innoveo, we are member of the swiss made software community, since our creation.

"swiss made software" is the new label of the Swiss software industry. International software companies like Google, IBM or Microsoft have discovered the Swiss values - quality, reliability and precision - in software development and have established important research and development centers in Switzerland. If you are looking for Swiss values and innovation, openness and flexibility in software, choose your partner from this site.

Our software product – Innoveo Skye – is now also listed in the new product part of the swiss made software website.

Description: Innoveo Skye is a generic, flexible insurance sales solution. It supports an unlimited number of products and services, all lines of business (life and non-life) and all sales channels. Industrialize  
Technology: Insurance-specific, J2EE (TM) based IT solution on commercial (Weblogic (TM), Websphere (TM), ...) and open source (JBoss (TM)) infrastructure stacks, together with a wide range of business-oriented services. 

sugarCRM

via ITRmanager.com (in French)

At Innoveo, we are using intensively sugarCRM since the start of our company, for managing in a structured way our contacts, leads, opportunities and marketing material. At the end, our sales-funnel is managed in sugarCRM.

We are using the professional version of sugarCRM, which is a commercial open source CRM software. This allows us to connect in a very easy way Microsoft Outlook and sugarCRM (archiving of emails of example). Below you can have an idea about the different versions of sugarCRM:

ITRmanager has just posted an interesting interview with the CEO of sugarCRM, John Roberts:

• founded in 2004
• 180 employees
• 4’000 customers of the commercial editions of the product, more than 500 in Europe
• 450’000 users
• 5 million downloads
• one of the biggest PHP project, with more than 600’00 SLOC (Single Lines Of Code)
• 40 software developers that are working full-time on the product
• published under GPL v3
• 4 founding rounds for a total of $46 million
• their goal is not to propose free software, but a very good functional product for a cheaper price than its competitors, because of a different sales and marketing structure
• 80% of license sold, 20% on-demand
• only the software engineers of sugarCRM are developing the core-product, which represents 50 to 60% of the overall code
• about 100 external developers are contributing actively
• about 12’000 developers are representing the sugarCRM community and developing extensions (about 500 extensions so far)
• about 80’000 users are building the overall community, participating to the forums, roadmaps, tests, etc.
• IPO was planned for 2009, will be postponed
• about $20 million cash-reserve
• positive cash-flow planned for Q1/2009

Articles, conferences, reports, books, collaterals and video

Above an updated list (per October 18, 2008) of the different publications, articles, conferences, reports, books, collaterals and video linked with my work in the last years by Helvetia, ecenter solutions, and now, innoveo!

 

	ARTICLES
1	31.10.2002	German, English	Switzerland	Schweizer Versicherung	pdf DE, pdf EN, url
2	26.11.2004	French	France	01 Informatique	pdf, url
3	06.01.2006	English	USA	CIO Insight	pdf, url
4	01.02.2006	English	Rusia	The Insurer	pdf, url
5	11.04.2006	English	USA	FinanceOnWindow	pdf, url
6	11.04.2006	English	USA	Finextra	pdf, url
7	12.04.2006	English	USA	CRMtoday	pdf, url
8	13.04.2006	English	USA	InfoWorld	pdf, url
9	20.04.2006	English	Australia	ComputerWorld Australia	pdf, url
10	24.04.2006	English	USA	ComputerWorld	pdf, url
11	30.04.2006	English	USA	Enterprise Networks&Servers	pdf, url
12	15.05.2006	English	NewZealand	ComputerWorld NewZealand	pdf, url
13	30.06.2006	German	Switzerland	Netzwoche	pdf, url
14	01.07.2006	English	USA	Insurance Networking	pdf, url
15	10.07.2006	English	USA	Computerwire	pdf, url
16	24.07.2006	English	USA	GlobalServices	pdf, url
17	04.09.2006	German	Germany	ComputerZeitung	pdf, url
18	06.11.2006	English	USA	Baseline	pdf, url
19	01.11.2007	German	Switzerland	ICT in Finance	pdf, url
	CONFERENCES
1	16.04.2003	German	Switzerland	Euroforum - VersicherungsIT	pdf, url
2	15.09.2005	German	Switzerland	IT-Strategie-Forum	pdf, url
3	29.11.2005	English	Russia	International Conference	pdf, url
4	15.05.2006	English	Italy	HP Enterprise Executive Summit	pdf, url
5	19.09.2006	English	Belgium	euroOSCON	pdf, url
	REPORTS
1	19.11.2005	English	USA	Thoughtware Worldwide	pdf, url
2	01.11.2006	English	USA	Hurwitz & Associates	pdf, url
3	01.12.2006	English	USA	Butler Group report	pdf, url
4	16.01.2007	English	USA	Celent	pdf, url
5	01.06.2007	English	USA	ovum report	pdf, url
	COLLATERALS
1	01.01.2001	German, English	Switzerland	HP Success Story	pdf DE, pdf EN
2	01.01.2002	German, English	Switzerland	HP Success Story	pdf DE, pdf EN
3	23.10.2006	English	USA	HP Success Story	pdf
4	01.08.2008	English	Switzerland	HP Marketing Collateral	pdf
	VIDEOS
1	01.10.2006	English	USA	HP Video	url

European Black Monday

Wow, if this is not a stock exchange crash in Europe…

Countries	Index	Drop in %
Europe	Eurostoxx 50	-7.34
France	CAC40	-9.04
UK	Footsie-100	-7.85
Germany	DAX 30	-7.07
Switzerland	SMI	-6.12
Belgium	BEL 20	-6.87
Netherlands	AEX	-9.14
Denmark	KAX	-11.06
Norway	OBX	-9.71
Finland	OMX 25	-8.52
Sweden	OMX 30	-7.24
Spain	Ibex-35	-6.06
Italy	SP/Mib	-8.24
Portugal	PSI-20	-9.86

 

That is absolutely brutal… If you have cash, it is time for shopping…

And, still no floor in sight!!

Innoveo Solutions, already one year - Part II

After the “who” of the “First who, then what”, let’s have a look at the “what” ;-) And let’s start with what I would like to call the “prerequisites”

 

Prerequisites

 

The prerequisites are quite “simple”! You have a business and the right people to address it ;-)

In other words: you have a business plan with clear ideas about:

• the status quo (current situation where you are in the founding, acquisition from customers, productizing, financing, etc.)
• you product and services
• the market you would like to address
• the competitors (no competitor, no market)
• marketing and sales
• administration & organization
• productizing
• management
• risk analysis
• finances

At the end, all this should be translated in a clear “values, vision, mission, industry and markets targeted, capabilities”.

As others, I like to speak about differentiation and customers’ pains, as from product positioning.

The best is still to confront your perception of the market with…the market itself! And to correct, iterate, improve, learn, make failures, learn, improve, etc.

We had the chance to start with a big customer contract with a well-known and established company, for quite a long duration. On top, we had also a huge asset, the IP (Intellectual Property) of our software product, coming from a 7 years development and big former investment.

 

Founding

Pfffuu, not so easy. Quite a lot of steps to do, and the first steps are extremely important!

• First you need to fix the name of the company. The name is representing your new venture. It is central for your identity, your marketing and communication future activities. If you have already tried to find a name for a product or a company, you should know that it is very difficult to find a name which is not already used or reserved. As everybody, you then try to combine names, to use Latin or Greek names, etc. We were lucky because after a lot of tries, Nick found the name INNOVEO. At this time, 34 results on Google! And no company registered in Switzerland under this name. Furthermore, Innoveo is a great combination between INNOvation and VEO which means “to see” in Latin. At the end, we decided also to add “Solutions” to our company name because we are delivering software solutions. The domain-name was already reserved. So we had to buy the different main domains (for “innoveo”) and to transfer them. The name is also usable internationally and doesn’t seem to mean something in another language.
• For the office location, it was clear that we wanted to stay in the Zurich/Switzerland area. As we are coming from different places, Zurich remains central and very attractive for hiring A-level international employees. Zurich is designated since years as one of the best place to live. On top, Zurich is a well-know financial place internationally. Concerning the office itself, we wanted to stay near a train-station. The building we were in before was ok. So after having evaluating other opportunities, we decided not to move.
• Our Team was fully integrated in the evaluation and decision process for the choice of the name, as for the office location.
• So, you have the name and the location, you need to choose the form of the company. This is also impacting a lot your venture! Accounting, Corporate Governance, legal obligations, etc. are very depending from this form. We mainly had two possibilities: “GmbH” (limited liability) or AG (Incorporated). As we have started with more than 14 people and we have very big companies as customers, it was quite clear that we need an “AG” form (incorporated). As for liabilities reasons (we deliver a software product).
• Then you need to work on the statutes of the company.
• You have to structure and define your Board of Directors. It was clear that Nick and myself will be members of the Board of Directors. We wanted to enlarge our Board with two external members, very qualified and experienced in different fields: strategic management, sales, software product marketing, product positioning, accompanying start-ups in their development, etc. We had the chance to be able to gain Bruno and Pancho. The organization of the regulations between the Shareholders’ Assembly, the Board of Directors and the Executive Management of the company should be also fixed and documented.
• Ok, then you need to find the shareholders, to define the level of equity requested, the investment of each shareholder, and to define the Shareholders’ Agreement.
• In the statutes, you have also to determine the signature rights of the Board and of the Management, and to authenticate them by a trustee.
• At this point, you have also to open a corporate bank account, to be able to transfer the capital … and pay your first bills due to the founding process ;-)
• The statutes, name and form of the company, office location, member of the Board of Directors, level of Equity, and the signature rights have to be registered (and partly published) at the Commercial Register.
• For all these steps, you need absolutely the support of a attorney at law and a trustee. And, it is not the last time that you will need them ;-) We are working with Peter Neuenschwander (attorney) and Oliver Götz (trustee). since more than 18 months now. These two persons are extremely important for our company.
• A picture below taken from the office of the notary in Walliseller – Switzerland, where Innoveo Solutions was founded on Monday, June 25, 2007 (Nick, Lorenz, Philippe and myself).

That is, more or less (I have surely forgotten some stuff!), the founding process. At the same time, you need to define quite a lot of administrative processes. These, for the next post!

Innoveo Solutions, already one year - Part I

And what for a year :-) We started in October 2007, with 14 people. We are today 16. We started with one customer, we today have 4, which means some great steps on the way to the difficult customer diversification.

So, if you mind (if not, just stop to read this post, very easy ;-), I would like to take some minutes to look back to these extremely intensive 12 months. What have we done? Wow, good question! Let’s try to structure a bit these achievements. And let’s concentrate on the management activities, not on the great delivery and concrete outcome of the whole team. By doing this, it would take much more time. Just too much.

I will divide this “looking-back” process in different parts, too long for one post!

Let’s start with the 3 most important parts.

 

Co-leading Innoveo with Nick

• Nick, my Business Partner, and myself are working for 8 years together. Our collaboration has evolved step-by-step, and we are leading the company together from the day 0.
• Still a lot of fun, respect and learnings in this collaboration. And still complementary in our different ways of managing, based on the same foundation of values.
• I am a lucky guy to be able to work with Nick and I am convinced that our strong collaboration and respect is very positive for Innoveo.
• We have learnt again a lot how to work efficiently together. Responsibilities are clearly splitted but we benefit from each other everywhere it is possible.
• We are developing ourselves in our new roles (Board members, leading tactically the company, sales) together and by our own. Specially helped there by our Board.

 

The management Team

• We are also learning to act all together as an entire and compact Management Team, with Nick, with Philippe (Services and Support), with Lorenz (Technology) and Oli (Product Management).
• Our roles and responsibilities are becoming more and more clearer. Delegation and cross-deputy roles are better in place. We are operatively leading the company together. The most important tactical decisions are taken together. The strategic orientation is discussed and prepared together for the Board meetings.
• On the good way to efficiency.

 

The Innoveo people

• “First who, then what” still in place, with some nice (and complicated) examples.
• Wow, still the main driver to wake up each morning :-)
• I really like the cultural mix and our multinational environment.
• Our team spirit and identity is still extremely strong and both were confirmed from outside quite a lot of time. So it seems that it is not just an “internal” view ;-)
• Lot of fun und humor, very experienced hard-working people. Extremely motivated. Experts in a lot of areas. Our customers like them! I too.
• Great cohesion, very good personal development of almost everybody.
• Nobody left Innoveo (since 8 years now, in the different constellations).
• We could extend our team with Robert and Conny, two great persons, very well integrated in the team. As if they were by us since years!
• People = still and definitely our *main asset*.

Next chapters will contain some stuff about:

Founding, Accounting, Administration, Human Resources, Legal, Productizing, Support process, Corporate Identity, Marketing and branding, Sales, Partner Management, Capital and shareholders, Board of Directors.

Perhaps not in this order!

Is business irrational?

via Seth Godin

YES, for sure, business IS irrational (at least an important part of it) :-)

I really *love* this post from Seth, excellent!

Parents or other adults who are irrationally committed to a kid's well being make a huge (perhaps the biggest) difference in that young person's life.

Entrepreneurs who are irrationally committed to their business are far more likely to get through the Dip.

Salespeople and service providers and marketers who are irrationally committed to customer service can completely transform an ordinary experience and make it remarkable.

Is being irrational irrational? Of course it is. That's why it often works.

If you're looking for the sensible, predictable, long-term strategy, this probably isn't it. Except when it is.

WoW.

Google vs. Cuil

via Seth Godin

Seth is comparing both search engines, not on a functional or on a “index-size” level, but on an “icon” level.

Interesting, and, in my opinion, true!

Markets love icons. We seek them out. […]

Once there's an icon in place, it's there because it's working. It serves a purpose, it carries useful information and performs a valuable function. There will never (or not for a generation, anyway) be the next Marilyn Monroe because this Marilyn Monroe isn't broken.

Google, of course, is the Marilyn Monroe of search.  […]

The challenge for organizations is this: the easiest projects to start and fund are those that go after existing icons. The search for the "next" is easy to explain and exciting to join because we can visualize the benefits. But success keeps going to people who build new icons, not to those that seek to replace the most successful existing ones.

The current claimed differentiations (privacy, size of index) are perhaps not so evident, so that cuil can win enough market-shares against google.

My Digital Identity certified by MyID.is

Charles Nouÿrit (I have met him at the last leweb3 – cgs dinner last year) kindly asked me to join the private pre-alpha-test of MyID.is.

 

What is MyID.is?

MyID.is trying to answer a simple question, how can we provide our users with a digital ID that have been certified with the same level of trust as if we met in real life with a valid ID delivered by a government administration but without the need to actually meet in real life?

By certifying your ID you’ll be able to certify all of your online presence, such as your blogs, your Facebook, LinkedIn… profiles, your comments,… and any kind of online presence that is part of your Identity 2.0.

After months of developing our solution, we are now ready to open our platform to the public.

Status of my certification and first feedback

 

Since Friday, July 25, I am a certified user and I have a certified Digital Identity :-)

The whole certification costs some EUR and is very simple to follow. So, till now, everything is fine.

Congrats to the MyID team for the preparation work.

I have already started to play around with the badges and I could already certified my blog ;-)

You can follow the project on their blog here and on twitter here.

PS: and yes, MyID is clearly supporting interoperable data portability (dataportability.org)

What Marc Fleury is now doing

via CAOS Theory

Marc Fleury, the founder and former CEO of jBoss, has left RedHat after some months of incorporation. He seems now again to be quite busy with his next project called OpenRemote.

The OpenRemote team also includes the creator of Asterisk Mark Spencer, JBoss veterans Juha Lindfors, Christian Bauer, Java X10 project creator Wade Wassenberg, and Linux Home Automation founder Neil Cherry.

Together they, and others, plan to create a complete open source home automation including the OpenRemote Controller hardware, OpenRemote Console Applications to make use of the iPhone and iTouch as a universal remote (although any device with browser will work), the OpenRemote Manager, and the Beehive Database.

“Figuring out the business model, this is one thing I can help with. But for right now, let’s focus on a community. Without a community, there is no OSS model. The community is what you do with it.”

Exciting idea and project!

Modular Navi System launched under 100 EUR!

Our business colleagues from logix-tt (a Swiss company specialized in tracking & tracing solutions, navigation systems and security techniques) has just launched their new modular Navigation System, which is not only incredibly cheap (99 EUR incl. VAT) but also seems to be very easy to use. On top, the system is very modular and is delivered with its own SDK!

From the press release:

GoTo® is not only unique regarding the price-performance ratio, it is the only navigation system with a complete module concept.

By simply adding modules, the navigation system turns into a TV (DBV-T), an internet terminal (GSM, 3G), a DVD-Player, a hands free mobi le phone and lots more.

The software is modular, too. Based on eCos1, Swiss company logix-tt has created its own operating system lbcs2-that enables you to fit additional software to your GoTo®.

Scripting language Pawn 3 (based on Javascript or C) makes it possible to create your own software to be run on the device. GoTo® uses Enlightenment as user interface, so the device is not only available in many colours - but the user interface will fit perfectly.

More about the product at http://goto.ag.

Seesmic founding and launch

Very interesting insides about how Loic has launched and founded seesmic.

I like very much this way of making business, which has more something to do with trust, with support & help, and with commitment of people concerning a vision.

I understand also Loic who is saying that being in a positive environment - which knows the risks und doesn't underestimate them - is great. I hope that this will be also the case at a time in Europe... It is still more or less a pain to found a new venture here, and mostly because of the negative spirit around new founding and the risks taken...

Thanks Loic for sharing this piece of business and, at the end, much more this piece of your life!

And good luck with seesmic!