What I am thinking about

The 3G wars AT&T vs. Verizon

I have always had a cell phone it seems and I was definitely one of the first to get a “smartphone”.  I feel that over the years, I have had a phone on all of the “major” networks, but never have I had the opportunity I had today.

While driving home for Thanksgiving, my beautiful wife agreed to drive giving me the chance to get a lot of work done.  During that time, it dawned on me that I should take this chance to see what network really was faster over time over a distance.

So, I hit areas from Columbus to Toledo to Ft Wayne, IN consistently testing Verizon’s network vs. AT&T’s network.  I am a long-time Verizon customer, so to say I was surprised by the outcome would be a massive understatement.

Stop One:  North Columbus

Verizon 3G:  288 down 271 Up

AT&T 3G:  2814 Down 371 Up

North of Delaware, OH:

Verizon 3G:  351 down 317 Up

AT&T 3G:  984 Down 281 Up

South of Toledo, OH:

Verizon 3G:  91 down 86 Up

AT&T Edge:  271 Down 34 Up

Just East of Indiana/Ohio border:

Verizon 3G:  72 down 71 Up

AT&T Edge:  149 Down 39 Up

OK guys and gals, these are the facts.  I haven’t changed anything.

Apps/Phones Used:

Blackberry Storm

• Potential excuses for slowness - Connected to corporate email server
• No other apps running

Apple iPhone 3G

• Potential excuses for slowness - Connected to corporate email server
• No other apps running

Conclusion:

I guess if I were Verizon, they can claim that something is 3G when maybe it really isn’t so fast?  I have “felt” that my phones were slow on Verizon’s network (I have had 3 blackberries and a Palm Treo) and all of them felt slow, but there was no good way to benchmark the speed.  The wireless cards appear to be good and I have usually been able to pull 300KB down on them and 300 up with the rare exception I have gotten them to 700 KB/s down.

Truth in advertising:

TRUE:  Verizon’s 3G coverage appears to be larger in space than AT&T’s 3G coverage. (Several times above in VERY rural areas, I dropped to Edge as you can see in my results)

TRUE:  AT&T is the fastest 3G network

Questions:  What is 3G?  Most people claim Edge is “2.75G”, however it appears that Edge has better download speeds than I am getting on Verizon side by side, but slower upload speeds.  I guess the answer is up to interpretation, but if you believe ads, well, then..  ummmmmmm dot dot dot, you are naive :)

Happy Thanksgiving!

RFID in an OPEN world

RFID has been around for several years and my first introduction to it was several years ago when I had the pleasure of working with some visionaries at Simon Property Group.  We were looking at RFID to track kids in the malls for their parents.  RFID has come a long way since then and I am still amazed it hasn’t really caught on.

If you read my last post on OPEN E-Commerce and you take that approach, implementing RFID in your retail locations and showing immediate ROI on it is within easy reach.

I read a really good blog post on the subject here: How to Implement RFID in a Store Quickly.  They go over, in detail, how your employees can even install the system.  They mention the big thing in retail which is reduced shrinkage.  At the touch of a button, you can know where every item in your inventory is.

What would really make the ROI extreme though?

If your store is setup with a wireless internet connection (this can be done very easily even with a Verizon myfi), installing small, netbook type computers into the dressing rooms with the RFID sensor at the door will pay for itself in spades.

Scenario:  Customer walks into the dressing room with some size 4 jeans and 2 medium t-shirts.  The RFID will automatically sense how many items and what items are present.  This can be displayed on the screen with ratings and reviews (which could also be added right there in the dressing room) as well as recommended cross sell and upsell items.

Lots of information can be garnered just from what a customer takes into the dressing room.  For instance, we know she is a woman, looking for casual wear and she is a size 4.  By feeding this information into an engine such as ATG recommendations, the system will use it’s Artificial Intellegence (AI) features to call out what things would go with the items best.  All of this information will also help you on-line as the additional information feeding into the recommendations engine will create better recommendations.

Talk about wow-ing your customers and making sure they know that you care about them and are giving them the most OPEN and transparent information they can get.

If you are in Retail, it’s about moving the dial and nothing will move the dial like this will!

OPEN E-Commerce

People always ask me about tying the new trends of the OPEN Brand or Social Commerce into what is reality in the technology world of E-Commerce.  I found myself sitting at the Partner conference for ATG in January this year while the ATG leadership team was talking about the future of their platform and how it was the last platform you would ever need.  This got me thinking how that would become a reality due to the cost ramifications when I know that my client’s best interests are my number one objective. 

It suddenly dawned on me this week as I was working through a myriad of E-Commerce issues as it relates to a number of my Retail clients that this new world of E-Commerce should be MUCH LESS EXPENSIVE, both to build and to maintain.  Given budgets this year, this is extremely important.

The first question that comes to mind is just how can I do all things social and be where my customers are while maintaining costs?  It seems we can’t touch our core E-Commerce solutions for less than 7 figures…

That, however, IS the answer.  You DON’T touch your core Commerce functionality.

Your CORE E-Commerce functionality should be these things and these things only:
•    Catalog
•    Checkout (Payment and Fraud)
•    Inventory Management
•    Fulfillment
•    Back Office Integration

The things I find myself being asked to change the most are things like this:
•    Facebook Applications/Fan Pages
•    Path to Product/Checkout
•    SEO
•    Personalization/Scenarios
•    Search Implementations (Endeca, Google)
•    Advertising Campaigns

The previous items are the most common pieces that drive conversion and sales for marketing organizations.  Let’s face it, Back Office integration is more of a cost of doing business vs. something you can show true ROI on, at least in the short term.

How do you DO IT?

I have long been a fan of the acronym KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid).  The running norm is to try and build everything into the Core Commerce system, which generally ends with everyone being less than pleased.  Boiling the ocean is not something anyone should undertake.  An E-Commerce solution can be broken up into 3 basic layers:
•    Front-End
•    Commerce Enablement
•    Back Office

Segregating these layers allows for a scalable and organized approach to not just e-commerce, but commerce in general.  Back Office pieces such as Data Warehouse, CRM, Inventory Management, Warehouse Management, etc. are all core competencies of your business.  These areas would be managed and run as they are today, but with the new approach, there would be significantly more clarity about what needs to be done.

Commerce Enablement is all about connecting these Back Office systems to your commerce system in a consistent way so that the inputs and outputs are always a known quantity.  By settling on what these inputs and outputs should be, clear lines of delineation can be drawn, simplifying your organization and minimizing your need for overhead.

Clients should focus on the only exposed items of your E-Commerce system to be your catalog being available and REST APIs being available for the following things:

•    Add to cart
•    Remove from cart
•    Check Inventory
•    Checkout
•    Get Confirmation

These are the core functions necessary to be able to checkout a customer.  Everything else is something extra and it can generally be done for a lot less than trying to build it all into the Core Commerce system. 

The separation will allow front-end applications to be built, upgraded, modified, and extended without affecting the core commerce experience.  What does that end up meaning?  Everything costs a lot less.

This sounds too good to be true…

There are some drawbacks to this approach.  Personalization would not be done via the core commerce platform, however there are lots of SaaS based personalization services from ATG that are available for your promotions that are significantly easier to implement into your code base.

The upsides are endless…

Point of Sale registers can be easily replaced by a web based system that will eliminate long and difficult closing processes and it will allow for cross sell and upsells from the register and even in the dressing room.

I like to always say that a picture is 1,000 words.  In this case, it’s less than 1,000 :)

Next up..  RFID

Offshoring - When should you?

I find this topic coming up a lot still and I am honestly kind of amazed that I still hear it so often.  When should you Off Shore some base of work for your business?  When you should off shore is very similar to asking yourself if something REALLY is a commodity.  Unless something is a commodity, it’s not a good idea to outsource it.  Additionally, if your motivation is to save money, you will lose.

What is a commodity?  About.com defines it like this:

• usually produced and/or sold by many different companies
• Is uniform in quality between companies that produce/sell it. You cannot tell the difference between one firm’s product and another.

If anyone has ever used any piece of software developed by anyone, it’s clear that the second point fails the commodity test badly.  However, maintenance to existing software can pass this test.  For instance, maintenance of a mainframe application or a web application should be largely a commodity.

Since we now know that NEW software development is NOT a commodity, we know that we need to pay special care to make sure that the individual or organization that is delivering us this software knows what they are doing and will meet and exceed our expectations.

In off shore development, meeting expectations is very difficult.  In speaking with people that have been through using it, the frustration levels are extremely high.  Issues are worst in communication (linguistics), time zone changes as well as tasks as simple as common status meetings quickly can become a large effort for both sides of the ocean.

There are countless stories out there detailing disaster after disaster with some organizations attempting onshore to offshore ratios as high as 1 to 11 or 1 to 15.  Even companies claiming CMMi level 5 will fall apart in situations like this (see comments for instance).  We all know the magic number to manage people even in your same office building maxes out at 7.  Even if you try and follow the hourglass model, exceeding 7 is difficult unless you are at the supervisor level which essentially implies a line worker in a factory.  Since we have proven new development insn’t a commodity, that layer is essentially out.  So, a rule of thumb is if you have more than 7 direct reports, it’s too much to handle and that is if you are right there seeing these people all day, every day.  Imagine if the team you were managing were on the other side of the world.  So, when someone claims 11 or 14, watch out.

The best way I have seen off shoring work in a new development process is at a ratio of 1 onshore to a maximum of 4 people off shore.  The on shore resource will need to have personal relationships with each of the 4 off shore resources and the modules that they work on have to be able to be isolated and the requirements have to be so clear that my 7 year old would understand exactly what the ask is.

These are the best practices that I live by when it comes to off shoring, what do you think?

Content Management and eCommerce

I feel like I have been doing Content Management for my whole life.  It actually has been a long time, but the real calculation places me just short of 1/3 of my life.  In that time, I have run the gamut in terms of “What is Content Management”.  I have been through Web Content Management, Enterprise Content Management, Records Management, Catalog Management and more.  Content Management can take many forms, but I wanted to look at it a little closer and see what makes “sense”.  What makes “sense” in this world of ever reducing costs is to be able to do content management better, faster and cheaper both today and in the long-run.

The first thing I look at is we need to agree that following the KISS method is of the utmost importance. (Keep It Simple Stupid).

The second thing to look at is your Information Architecture.  After realizing that Content Management needs to be easy, this is the most important in order to understand so that all of your base level pages, media types and content items can be defined.  Your solution should be able to accept new media types and the addition of pages should be simple and straight forward.  By identifying your content types and what pages they live on, new pages and new content can be easily automated.

Many people feel strongly that the creative defines the content management system, however this is one of the biggest mistakes in the field.  Since we all know the only constant in life is change, we can assume that the creative will change and in some cases change significantly.  When this happens, it is important that the content management solution doesn’t need to be rebuilt.  Content types should be defined by what they are, not how they look.  Defining content in this manner is called loose definition and it allows for the best reuse of content and the most flexibility.  Most pure content sites can be handled with less than 5 content types (navigation item, media item, article item, and promotion).  CSS can and should handle the details.  Since we know the sites will change every 12-18 months, changing the out the content management system (CMS) as well makes even having a CMS questionable based on the cost to implement one.  there is no ROI in saving 500K by having a CMS if it costs you 700K to implement it every 12 months.

The next question is eCommerce.  Products are just content at the end of the day, and should they really be managed as anything other than as another content type?  The obvious answer is no.  I am amazed how often I see content and products managed by different systems.  The cost for something like this is almost unimaginable.  Now, a product may be a more strictly defined content type depending on the requirements for making attributes searchable.

“Keeping it Simple” means keeping your content simple and keeping the number of solutions simple.  If multiple solutions are in place for products and other content, it might be time to re-evaluate your solution to something like ATG (Art Technology Group) as a solution that handles all content within a single application.  Additionally, if your system has more that 10 content types, it might be time to re-evaluate your solution to see where things can be streamlined in order to not have the cost of implementation become a barrier to entry for updating your site and keeping your brand fresh.

Changing the conversation on oil

I really enjoyed this article and I felt that it does a great deal to highlight where the real issues are with gas prices and it paints a realistic picture.  There is one interesting thing that I am honestly SHOCKED I haven’t a lot more of.  Since we know we can affect the market forces in terms of oil costs, why aren’t the politicians changing the market?  Amazingly, I did see a little of this with McCain’s new battery push, but I mean a real investment in alternative fuel solutions like Honda’s FCX car.  If the government gave several billion dollars and tight timelines around making these cars (and an array of vehicles) affordable, accessible and serviceable, dramatic change could occur in the next 5-6 years.

I looked at this report:

I retrieved the following data:

Automobiles:

USMS members report 2.17 cars per household. 49.4% report having 2 cars, with 19.7% having 1 car and 19.6% having three cars. 51.9% of households report buying a new car every 5 or fewer years. The average length of time between car purchases is 6.3 years. Given the average number of cars per household we can extrapolate that USMS households purchase a new car every 3 years, on average. Japanese car makers are the preferred automobile provider. 43.9% of members report preferring Japanese cars, 33.6% of members prefer American cars, and 14.2% prefer German cars. 8.3% prefer “other” countries of origin.

If we do something significant like provide a $5,000-$10,000 tax credit to ALL people (not tiered by income) in order to drop the barrier to entry somewhat on a new car purchase, I think we could affect that 6.3 years.  Since the car already exists by Honda, they could step up production significantly within the next 1-2 years and within the next 2-3 years most manufacturers could follow suit and we could change the market.

I would personally love to see the market changed vs. looking at how to fix something that is inherently broken and finite.

Additional notes:

Consumption Article:  http://www.usms.org/admin/surveys/May2006/consumption_report.pdf

Article Link:  http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/content/jun2008/db20080619_412349.htm

Honda FCX Clarity:  http://automobiles.honda.com/fcx-clarity/

Lots of Work, Lots of Innovation, Loving ATG

It’s been a crazy last few months and we have been extremely busy working on creating a value added approach to ATG implementations that goes way beyond the standard implementation. Many times these go badly because the reality of what is possible within the Iron Triangle doesn’t meet with the expectations that were present at the beginning of the project. I feel that by taking the strong foundation of a market leading product, like ATG, value added add-ons can make the product faster to implement with better scalability and allow the utilization of the entire ATG suite.

The whole idea started for me many years ago when I was at Inforte and it seemed like we consistently had to build the same content management systems over and over that were specifically tailored to a visual design. As we continued to improve our process of managing catalogs and general content, it began to occur to me that these tailored solutions were bad for our clients because in 12-18 months when they refreshed their site, we would have to do this same process again.

As I thought about how we get into this vicious cycle, it became more and more clear to me that there is and should be a slight change to the notion of gathering requirements. When we gather requirements, we always ask the client what they want. The problem is that most people, myself included, when I was a client, don’t always know what they want because all of the information isn’t available. A light bulb went off in my head at this point in my career that gathering requirements should be replaced by driving requirements based on architectural and design best practices. By driving requirements, we can give the client the best solution that fits within what they want to do now and will likely want to do in the future. We can measure success by seeing how much of a content and catalog management solution we need to replace in a redesign.

Many of you might think I am completely crazy at this point, but content management best practices dictate that the best way to manage content is at the asset level vs. at the page level. If we take that approach, many of the architectural and business level decisions become automatic for us and it will eliminate hundreds of hours of meetings, design and development where approaches are decided that many time do not meet the needs of the business. In the case of asset level publishing, the page just becomes another asset that doesn’t lock all the elements on a page when we edit that information. Changes to content on a page can also be published separately from changes to a page’s meta data and thus collisions for shared content items in publishing are eliminated.

Being at Resource Interactive has given me the opportunity to create a product add-on for the #1 eCommerce platform on the planet that will address the content management problem that every client faces. We have been working with ATG on this front for the past several months to create a reusable implementation of ATG that would take advantage of all the things ATG has done right with their product and eliminate the major things that most implementers do wrong when implementing the product. Additionally, we have been spending the past several months creating an offering around tying RI Personas into ATG’s best of breed multi level personalization.

Combining the power of asset level publishing with actionable persona based personalization creates an unmatched level of flexibility and customer service for an eCommerce client.  I have never been so excited for any one project in my whole career.