HighEndBuzz

Tipping at Caribou?

Alright, someone help me out here.  Every day I go to Caribou coffee (I live Minneapolis and do believe it tastes better than Starbucks) and purchase a large (none of that Venti crap, another pet peeve of mine.  Just call it a large for Christ sakes, don't correct me at Starbucks when I say large.  "you want a Venti latte?", no I said LARGE you tool!)  Vanilla latte.  The cost of said latte is $4.10 which is a lot for a cup of coffee and steamed milk with a shot of flavor.  I figure that I'm paying for the service as well.  Right?...Wrong.  They, along with every other coffee shop in America feel the need to add a tip jar at the register while I'm ordering.

There are two things wrong with this picture:

1. I'm paying $4.10 for coffee and milk.  I'm going to assume that service is part of that price, why are you begging for more?
2. Tipping is a very American thing, one that I really appreciate and one that makes this country very unique.  I tip the barber, waitress, cabbie and on holidays the mailman and garbage collector.  What should stand out to the average reader is that unlike coffee shops, tipping in this traditional sense happens only AFTER you receive the service.  For example, you order a beer for $3.00 and pay with a $5 bill.  The bartender gives 2 ones change and you leave him a $1 tip AFTER he gives you the beer.

Why is it that people selling coffee should receive a tip at the point of sale regardless of the quality of their coffee at any particular moment?  Why not leave a tip jar near the exit?  Let me decide if this 4buck cup of Jo is worth the extra $.90.  Could it be that these are typical liberal establishments that see no problem begging for money prior to delivering a product or service?  Someone help me out here? 

BTW, I never tip at a coffee shop...

A New Kind of Wireless Company

I recently read that Cingular and Sprint got some of the lowest marks when it comes to customer service.  I wasn't surprised with Sprint as I'm a home customer (DSL only), but I was a bit disappointed with a company that claims to be on the forefront of technology like Cingular.  Especially since I was about to change my service from Verizon (no love there either) to Cingular prior to reading the article.  I'm having second thoughts now (Word-of-Mouth at work).

A new kind of company needs to take a book from the NEW airline industry (JetBlue and Southwest) and simplify the very lucrative wireless world.  I predict it will happen in the next 18 months (you heard it here first).  With the advent of free WIFI (Google comes to mind) and innovative approaches to handsets (802.11b compliant like the Nokia 9300) paired with great services like Skype I see some creative company taking this fat cow by the udders.

There are, however, barriers to this, call it 4G convergence.

1. Handsets with enough processing power ( not to mention software)to switch from 802.11b, GSM, CDMA networks dynamically (and not burn your ear off).
2. Peering of the various carriers (not to mention technologies) involved
3. Billing systems to divide the pie and charge the customer
4. A big-box retailer to push the brand
5. Early adopters

Finally give consumers easy plans (not US Tax code complexity) and great customer service.  Essentially do the opposite of what the big carriers are doing.  Wouldn't that be a change?

Any takers?

Bad Behavior After the Bubble

As stated earlier, up to the point the Internet bubble burst IT people were in my opinion some of the most talented individuals in business.  They truly cared about their customers both inside their respective companies and outside the fold.   

Then the layoffs began.  First it was the contractors, some would say they were the engine for the growth of the Internet economy.  Everyone wanted to be a consultant in those days.  I turned down a technology strategy consultant gig that supposedly paid $350/hour.  That would have been very short lived.  I remember during the hiring process of a Jr. Network Administrator I joked with the VP of HR to find me someone who "had a heartbeat and could spell IT".  That's how desperate I was to fill all of the open headcounts.  Talk like that these days should lead to your dismissal.

Once the ax started to fall, I noticed some very disturbing behavior from IT managers.  They retreated back to their IT bunkers and settled in for the long war.  Gone were the days of collaboration and innovation; back were the days of policy enforcement and locked-down standardization.  The new thinking (which is very prevalent today in IT) was that added complexity and procedures led to job security.  While we were trying to simplify access to IT resources and dumb down infrastructure complexities during the bubble, the fallout after the crash scared these guys so much they increased the complexity. 

Ask someone in 1998 and the answer was "...piece of cake, I can have that hacked together in 2 days.", in 2005 you'll get "...I'm going to need you to submit your requirements in writing, I'll have an estimate in 2 weeks and will need to consult our feasibility committee and change control counsel.  How does next quarter sound?"

Now I'm not opposed to process and procedure, but if the procedure interferes with the building, marketing and selling of your particular product and service,  you need to fire the tool that got you in that mess.  IT people mean well and are still very talented, the majority of IT managers are lazy protectionists who have retired themselves into their silicon silos.  There are talented managers out there, but they don't last long in those environments.

NWA Woes...Again.

Again, more woes for Northwest Airlines.  Living in the Twin Cities I don't have a choice but to be concerned about NWA's imminent bankruptcy.  They have a nice strangle hold on the Sky's in this area although the latest expansion of the HHH Terminal has provided the upstarts with ample gates.  Unless you live under a rock you should know by now that the NWA mechanics union went on strike after refusing to give in to managements request for additional concessions. 

"Northwest has been trying to wrest $176 million of annual labor savings from its mechanics in an effort to cut overall labor expense by $1.1 billion and end four years of losses. The company, which is the only airline among the five biggest in the U.S. that hasn't won concessions from most of its unions, has secured $300 million in givebacks from pilots and managers and is still in talks with flight attendants and bag handlers."

This statement is not true.  Years ago all of the employees of NWA made concessions to management.  The problem is that the company never kept their end of the bargain made in those days and are now asking for additional cuts from the workforce.

Now I'm no fan of Unions.  They're corrupt organizations that feed on corporate America at the expense of shareholders.  They do next to nothing for the people they represent.  This strike goes to show that they would rather NWA went out of business than to give in to the airline.  I watched the news as one union official stated "we would rather NWA went out of business than give into any more concessions"...you may just have your wish.

There is an easy albeit high level (uninformed about the airline industry) answer to this.  Look at the examples of the low cost (new airline) carriers.  Build some of that model into your legacy business model over time.  Here's my solution:

1. Cut back you number of flights (use less fuel, less maintenance, etc.) Cost side of the equation.  If you're losing money flying certain routes, don't fly them.
2. Go from 7 different aircraft to 3 like you competition.  Fly 737 or 757 domestic, 777 to Europe (like partner Continental) and 747 long-haul.  (substitute these aircraft for Airbus version if you want, I don't care).  Sell of the rest of the fleet.  This will reduce maintenance costs significantly by cutting the number of maintenance workers you need.
3. Outsource major overhaul operations (like Southwest).  Spin off your maintenance facilities in Minneapolis and Detroit.  It alone could be a profitable business with all of the upstarts needing these services.
4. Improve the quality of your flight experience.  Until recently, I always flew NWA.  But my experience over the last few years with flight attendants and ground staff has left me wondering if NWA even cared about it's customers or if they simply look at us as cattle.  Fly AirTran or JetBlue, not to mention Singapore Airlines and you'll understand the difference.
5. Speaking of flight attendants.  Get rid of those old, crusty, mean flight attendants.  I'm not advocating ageism, but they act as though they are doing me a favor by my being on their flight.  Get some younger flight attendants that are excited about a new career in the Sky's, not some crusty old woman who's ass hits you in the head because her hips are so wide she has to go down the aisle sideways.  Didn't there used to be standards?
6. Leg room.  No further comment.

I obviously don't have all, or any of the answers.  However, the trickle down effect of not giving a shit is pretty apparent at NWA.  Management doesn't care about the workers, the workers don't care about the airline and the airline definitely doesn't care about its passengers.  In the end I why should we care with all of the new choices.  Pan-Am, Northeastern, TWA, Branniff, and now NWA...Good bye.

 

Moved...almost

We moved into our new office space today.  It's more of a technology incubator than our own suite.  There are several other startups in the building and you can tell there is a lot of energy in the place when you walk in.  We still have to move printers, books, etc., but all of the paperwork is signed, key card, alarm code, and phone system is configured.

Time to close more business.

Million Dollar Infrastructure for $100 a month...

In my previous life (before starting BluIntelligence) I was/am an IT guy.  I was Director of Enterprise Software Development at my last company prior to their acquisition and Head of Global IT at a software company prior to that.  My life since 1991 revolved around developing and deploying large infrastructure projects.  Siebel, Oracle, JDE, SAP and Microsoft tools are all in my bag of tricks and I have an extensive network of contacts at all of  these companies, not to mention the scores of former employees I could call upon to help with projects.

So in January of this year when I decided to start my own company you'd think I would rely on what I learned from deploying all of these solutions wouldn't you?  The truth is, I did.  I chose none of them.  The secret to my Million bucks worth of infrastructure is not to make the mistakes I helped others make at both start-ups and fortune 500 companies.  For those of you starting your own company, here's my little secret.

Let someone else run your shop...sounds simple doesn't it?

I'll get into more detail in future posts, but this is what our infrastructure consists of today:

1. Email:  Hosted through ActiveHost.  We access our mail either pop3 or web-mail.
2. Web Hosting:  Hosted through ActiveHost
3. Application Hosting:  Hosted through ActiveHost.  Our application we run our business on is hosted at our same provider.
4. Customer Extranet:  We use BaseCamp.  Awesome tool to provide our deliverables and communicate with our customers.
5. Internal Applications:  For everything else we use JotSpot, my personal favorite (a Wiki).  It has our CRM system, our requirement management, our team project deliverables, and our primary collaboration tool.

As a start-up we have the same application any larger company would have without the servers (we do have a file server for local files), application management, data center, or network infrastructure.  We also consider ourselves more agile due to our environment choices.  We're moving into our new office space this week, which means we're moving printers and laptops, not an entire computing environment.

I've personally purchased and deployed all of the enterprise solutions mentioned above and can tell you from experience we have all of the functionality in our hosted products (out of the box) as we would have had if we had purchased Siebel, Oracle or SAP (out of the box).  Just to put the cost into perspective, at my last company I paid $264,000/year in maintenance to run Siebel and had a team of 5 developers who made between $70,000 to $100,000 a year.  On top of that the production environment had 13 servers (test had 6) and was running on Oracle databases and EMC storage.  (And that's just one application)

Joe Kraus (yeah, the Exite guy) who is the CEO of JotSpot makes the point very clear in his blog.  I'll take it one step further though, it's teams like Joe's and Marc Benioff at Salesforce.com who are driving our start-up costs and companies like ours down even more than what they're experiencing.

My most important point in all of this is that outsourcing your infrastructure and application needs to a company whos sole business is to manage them will allow you to get on with your core business. 

The key question is:  "If this is so great why aren't more companies doing this"?  The answer is very simple, FEAR.  I'll answer this in more detail as well as give you some insight into what has become of the IT profession since the bubble burst in future posts, it's shocking. 

10 People I'd like to have lunch with

I had a conversation with an old friend (over lunch) that led to the question: Who would you like to have lunch with more than anyone else?  We ruled out dead people and Jesus...Here is what I came up with.

1. (Sir) Richard Branson:  Who wouldn't, but for me this is the person I want to meet and have a one hour lunch with more than anyone on the planet.  I would ask him how he did it and how he keeps doing it over and over again.  How many CEO's do you know have a fan club???
2. George W. Bush:  Whatever your politics, he's the most honorable man to hold office since Ronald. 
3. Dennis Prager:  Talk show host I respect more than any.  He's got great insight into god, media and current events.
4. Lance Armstrong: Don't even need to explain that one.
5. Tiger Woods:  I don't play much golf anymore, but I do think it would be interesting to speak with him for a bit.
6. Bo Peabody:  Remember Tripod?  Yeah, that guy.  I read the book and since I recently started my own company I do have some questions.
7. Ann Coulter: Fire and brimstone.  I'd love to have a rant with her. 
8. Matt Drudge:  It's a bit unfair to put him this low on the list, but he would be my "new media" numero uno. 
9. Marc Benioff:  Just to apologize to him for minimizing his Salesforce.com product and choosing Siebel all those years ago.  He's on the right track and is one of the "new" visionaries.
10. Bill Gates:  Who wouldn't want to meet Bill.  He's the reason we're all doing what we're doing.

Word of Mouth

I'll be attending the Word of Mouth Marketing Association's (WOMMA) latest event in Chicago, "Measuring Word of Mouth".  This will be my first WOMMA event and I'm pretty excited as I'll be attending with one of my customers.  What got me excited about this event is that measuring what people say (not to mention what impact it has)and think about a particular company, product or service is the foundation of what we do at BluIntelligence. 

This should be good.

Website is launched

To us it's a big deal although in the grand scheme of things, our simplified website launch isn't going to move any mountains.  Our goal was to clearly state our value to our clients and then highlight our core services with the end result hopefully leading to a call or email.  The guys at Olive & Company did a great job in a short timeframe.

This officially takes us out of "stealth" mode (actually warm market only mode) and moves us into the game.  Can you tell we're excited?  We completed a very important POC with a client who recently signed a deal for the entire year. 

What Shade of "Bling" is your Parachute?

Carly got $21M for running 2 companies in the ground on her way out the door.  I don't get it.  I'm all for paying top CEO's millions for successfully leading companies.  I'm really against giving away money to those who fail.  What did she actually do to earn $21M?  Now, I don't think she should give it back, I'm actually happy for her...god bless her if she can get it.  I'm questioning the decision of the board to give her that type of package, or even worse inking that deal when she came on board (which may have happend).  Time to shuffle the deck chairs on the Titanic.