Tag Archives: business

Defining goals is a pain in the neck, BUT…

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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!

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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]

2007-2008

Forget the traditional 4 “P”s!

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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:

five marketing blocks
© 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 ;-)

The oldest dot-com domains

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via PC World

PC World published the list of the 100 oldest dot-com domains registered.

This first one was reserved on March 15, 1985 – symbolics.com.

Below the Top20:

  1. symbolics.com: March 15, 1985
  2. bbn.com: April 24, 1985
  3. think.com: May 24, 1985
  4. mcc.com: July 11, 1985
  5. dec.com: September 30, 1985
  6. northrop.com: November 7, 1985
  7. xerox.com: January 9, 1986
  8. sri.com: January 17, 1986
  9. hp.com: March 3, 1986
  10. bellcore.com: March 5, 1986
  11. ibm.com: March 19, 1986
  12. sun.com: March 19, 1986
  13. intel.com: March 25, 1986
  14. ti.com: March 25, 1986
  15. att.com: April 25, 1986
  16. gmr.com: May 8, 1986
  17. tek.com: May 8, 1986
  18. fmc.com: July 10, 1986
  19. ub.com: July 10, 1986
  20. bell-atl.com: August 5, 1986

Also interesting to notice that Microsoft first reserved its domain in May 1991, Yahoo in January 1995, and Google in September 1997!

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

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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:

 

summary forrester

2009 will be a complicated year for software

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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 ;-)

Business Restaurant in Zürich / Switzerland

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I was establishing a list of 3 different choices for a friend of mine, in order to organize a good (whatever that could mean ;-) business lunch with one of his customer.

I am not the “Guide Michelin” but I know some of the restaurants in Zurich, and, to my very subjective mind, these 3 below are very good and interesting, as they are all 3 offering “something special”.

1) CANTINETTA ANTINORI /

 

clip_image002

 

2) SEEROSE /

 

clip_image004

 

3) TRIIBBHUUS /

 

clip_image006

Surely not exhaustive, the question was “3 possibilities”, not 10 ;-)

10 characteristics of software companies that will fail

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via Judith Hurwitz

Extremely interesting post from Judith. She is listing the 10 characteristics of software companies that will make them fail in the coming economical downturn phase.

  1. My technology is so revolutionary everyone will want it.
  2. The platform we offer to our customers is a complete architecture and we’re going to build an ecosystem.
  3. We don’t plan to try to partner with the big players; it’s too hard.
  4. We’d love to partner with a large vendor if they are willing to put our product on their price list and sell for us.
  5. We sell a great tool.
  6. Our technology sells itself.
  7. We sell an entire turnkey environment.
  8. We are implementing precisely what our customers tell us they need.
  9. We are thinking about Software as a Service (SaaS)…but…
  10. We are limiting our outreach in the market. It is too expensive to advertise or market. We’re going to wait until things get better.

So, are you “in” or “out”?

Innoveo Skye, a Swiss made software!

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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

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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:

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