Month: March 2008

Information overload still crushing us

/ Robert Pease / Leave a comment

Two data points came to my attention on this topic in the past couple days.  One is from Marc Averitt on the chaos awaiting him after being out of the office for a week even after trying to manage voice mail and email via BBerry. 

The other is from a recent LexisNexis survey (via Info Governance) that states that in the 8.89 hour average workday (gotta wonder where that number came from) employees spend 2.3 hours doing on-line research.  In digging into the study a bit, the results are heavily skewed towards legal and education sector employees which leads to the large amount of time spent researching.

Coincidence that LexisNexis provides research products/services?  I think not.

Regardless, we have no shortage of inbound communication demanding our attention and no shortage of on-line content available to occupy our time.  The question remains for us all -what is a priority and how do I get to the information I need quickly?


Crashing a conference call

/ Robert Pease / 1 Comment

This is priceless.  Bob Bauer, Obama’s top lawyer, crashed the Clinton campaign’s press conference call last night and took some shots at the Clinton campaign.  Howard Wolfson was on the other end and did a reasonable job of managing the awkwardness of the situation.  Here’s the link to Politico with the audio.  I have no idea if there is any substance in the complaints and it comes across as bickering between two campaigns in a heated race.  I’m more amused that someone thought it was a good idea to have a lawyer call into a press conference.

Appirio in the spotlight

/ Robert Pease / Leave a comment

I was fortunate enough to get a comment from Narinder Singh of Appirio on one of my recent posts about software as a service being different.  I have not met Narinder personally (yet) but did see him do a fabulous presentation with Salesforce’s Mark Benioff at the Pacific Crest Securities on-demand summit last week.  Here’s his post on it.  Appirio heavily leverages the salesforce.com/force.com platform and the joint presentation highlighted that usage.  It was really great to see an early stage company (and Narinder) share the stage with the Chairman and CEO of Salesforce.com.  Very cool.

Take integration off the table as a sales objection

/ Robert Pease / Leave a comment

I repeatedly heard this in various forms last week citing integration as both a sales obstacle and market limiter to software as a service adoption.  There are no shortages of tools to do integration with out there and a handful were on display at this event, but it still begs the question for all those SaaS application companies or even technology enabled services out there – do you really want to do the integration heavy lifting yourself?

Simon Peel, SVP of Strategy at Cast Iron, had a really great point during the integration panel discussion which I will paraphrase as "the applications have the value and we (integration solutions) are the enabler of that value."

Every SaaS customer has or will have an integration problem as the software application functionality is increasingly consumed by that customer.  Expectations are high for time to production and value given all the benefits that SaaS is suppose to provide.  You want to have deep (and renewing) relationships as an on-demand software company and getting the integration question right is essential.

Aspire to lead

/ Robert Pease / Leave a comment

Great post by Kevin Merritt of Blist on the difference between "foxholes and potholders" in your organization.  I read this a couple days ago and can’t get it out of my mind.

"I like to think of a team’s passion for and support of their leader as being measurable on an imaginary scale from foxhole to potholder. Foxhole leaders are the ones who jumped in the foxhole and fought the battle right alongside the soldiers. Potholders are the ones who seem to appear just as the pie is ready to come out of the oven. A potholder uses his position of authority to demand the potholders, with which he removes the pie from the oven and gleefully presents it as though he baked it."

I think we’ve all experienced more potholders than we care to remember.  Great stuff Kevin.

Examine your words

/ Robert Pease / Leave a comment

Political campaigns are, I believe, pretty heavy marketing exercises with candidates and their messages being constantly tweaked, adjusted, and analyzed.  This election is a lot about words at this point so thought I would pick up Frank Luntz’s Words That Work for travel reading.  His focus groups are pretty interesting to watch after the major debates and he has brought us many of the phrases that dominate the news and pundit-speak these days.  I’m not all the way through it just yet but did want to highlight what he sees as the ten rules of effective language at the beginning of the book.  Here they are:

  1. Simplicity – use small words
  2. Brevity – use short sentences
  3. Credibility is as important as philosphy
  4. Consistency matters
  5. Novelty – offer something new
  6. Sound and texture matter
  7. Speak aspirationally
  8. Visualize
  9. Ask a question
  10. Provide context and explain relevance

Why software as a service is different than just software

/ Robert Pease / 1 Comment

This is a good Q&A post with Brian Jacobs of Emergence Capital.  Here’s a couple really compelling quotes on the difference between being a product company vs. a service company:

"A product business is transactional. You sell something, you get the money, and the relationship is over. A service business is about serving 24×7."

and

"You have to secure the renewal"

I had a great couple days in San Francisco at both the SaaS Summit and the Pacific Crest Securities On-demand Summit.  I’ll share some thought and feedback as a consolidate my notes and digest a bit. 

Best Buy as an economic indicator

/ Robert Pease / 1 Comment

I was at the Best Buy in Bellevue today in search of a cable connector thing and have to tell you that after having difficulty trying to find a place to park, I’m not sure there is much economic slow down in my backyard.  That doesn’t mean there isn’t one or it isn’t coming, but I really couldn’t believe the number of cars and people not to mention the same thing going on at its big box cousin next door – The Home Depot.  Of course, I couldn’t tell if folks were shopping with cash or credit…