The Why, How, What of Implementing IT Systems

By John Gorup (@appiriojohn)

Photo courtesy of startwithwhy.com

Simon Sinek uncovered a simple, yet profound bit of wisdom, "start by asking 'Why?' Sinek uses a simple illustration to make his point, called The Golden Circle, which "...explains why some people and organizations are more innovative, more influential, command greater loyalty and are able to repeat their success over and over." If you have 18 minutes to spare, grab a cup of coffee and listen to Sinek's TED Talk: How Great Leaders Inspire Action. It will be well worth your time.

After I first listened to Sinek, I started to think of how applicable his ideas are to the world I live in - helping organizations implement IT systems. The cloud has revolutionized the speed at which systems can be implemented, but organizations still struggle. From my perspective, the main cause of these struggles are not technical problems, but are organizational change problems. Weighed down by legacy systems supporting complex business processes, organizations need a better framework to achieve more successful results. We can borrow Sinek's ideas to make the puzzles a little less puzzling.

Cloud Metrics for Everyone!

By Nick Hamm (@hammnick), Bipin Nepani (@bnepani) and Naoki Tsukamoto (@nikes63)

If you’re like us, you likely still have one last clock in the basement that needs to be turned back by an hour from daylight savings. This is also the time of year that you’re reminded to change out the batteries in smoke alarms, the baking soda in your fridge, along with other things that should be done a few times each year. The same practice of regular maintenance can be applied to the health of our business applications.
Phil Wainewright recently blogged about how Cloud Metrics is an essential tool to keep track of the technical debt in your Salesforce org.  Launched to the public at Dreamforce 2012, Cloud Metrics from Appirio helps you measure the most critical factors driving complexity and cost of managing your Salesforce environment. (See a sample Cloud Metrics report.)

During the past several years, Cloud Metrics has been run by some of the largest and most innovative companies including those in automotive to financial services to pharmaceutical industries. These companies have found that Cloud Metrics provides concrete data to make informed trade-off decisions, and having a proactive process to measure the state of a Salesforce org ensures educated planning as they take on new initiatives like activating newly released features, onboarding new areas of the business, merging multiple orgs, or expanding the footprint of the application to increase ROI.

We’ve seen several instances where the report has been used to provide the proof of what some may suspect is a problem but have no data to formally prove or disprove their hypothesis.  For example, in one report we saw that the org was heavily customized with an above average number of custom objects and fields, but very few users were actively logged in during the last 30 days. During further discussion with the customer, it became apparent that the administrative team was purely reacting to a large backlog from their business stakeholder for more than a year without assessing the business impact of all these change requests. These metrics made it very apparent to the business stakeholders that a stricter governance and change control process was required, and in turn resources were focused on a prioritized set of customizations that were tied to driving toward the primary business goals.

Cloud Metrics can also help you determine where to fund necessary platform and process investments to ensure the environment is cost effective and agile enough to keep pace with the speed of business change.  For example, on another report we observed a high count of custom lines of code but low count in validation and workflow rules.  We worked with this client to find opportunities to reduce the amount of custom code and take advantage of the configuration (non-code) options that the Salesforce platform provides in order to reduce additional testing and support needed to manage a ton of technical debt for each new release.

In another report, we found a customer using a very large number of profiles but no permission sets. This led us to asking if they had considered permission sets, and it turns out they did not. This small feature could help them significantly reduce time in maintenance efforts every time profile related changes occur (CRUD permissions, page layouts, record types, etc...).

We’re happy to announce that Salesforce Admins can now sign-up for their free Cloud Metrics report directly from our website.  We only look at the org metadata, so there is no risk in running this report. In fact, the only risk is not knowing what you need to know about the complexity of your org.

Customer Spotlight - Q&A with Juan Montes and Diana Pan, MoMA

By Sara Campbell

Please join me in congratulating Juan Montes, Chief Technology Officer, and Diana Pan, Director of Technology, at the Museum of Modern Art for being named 2012 Appirio Cloud Pioneers.

Founded in 1929, The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is dedicated to being the foremost museum of modern art in the world. Its mission is the encouragement of an ever-deeper understanding and enjoyment of modern and contemporary art by the diverse audiences it serves.

Juan and Diana have been the driving force behind an IT department that is impacting business change, all while keeping the museum’s primary mission in mind. I recently sat down with Juan and Diana to understand their role in evangelizing the museum’s mission through technology and what it means to them to be an Appirio Cloud Pioneer.

Q: Can you tell me a little about MoMA’s mission and the challenge you have addressed with the Cloud?

Juan Montes (JM): The museum’s mission is to bring modern art to as broad of an audience as possible and IT’s mission is to help accomplish that by best using the resources we have. Our goal here isn’t to build solutions and host servers, it’s to focus our resources to bring modern art to as broad an audience as possible.

Diana Pan (DP): The museum’s mission is always top of mind. We knew we had to replace the thirty year-old homegrown legacy CRM system that contained all of our mission critical information about our members and donors. It was antiquated and full of patches and workarounds, and it was impossible to run reports and get an accurate picture of who our donors and members were. Our internal staff all had local copies of the data in spreadsheets and no information was shared across fundraising and other functions. We looked for a best-of-breed solution and found that Salesforce.com allowed us to tackle these business problems. It offers us an authoritative source of data related to our members and donors and has integrations to other key systems like our loaned art and retail applications, for a complete 360* view.

JM: Similarly, our previous on-premise mail system required a full time dedicated headcount to keep it up and running, and even when everything was running as it should, we really weren’t providing all that much value to our users. Moving our email system to Gmail was a no brainer. It provides a robust alternative that fulfills all of our requirements, while opening up a lot of collaborative possibilities that we didn't have previously, all at a fraction of the cost.

Q: How has “working in the cloud” changed the way MoMA does business?

JM: We’ve been able to redeploy our team, previously dedicated to maintaining our internal systems, to take care of things that are more relevant to the museum, like our digital asset and collection management systems and to focus on a strategy for keeping video assets in such a way that they can be deployed easily.

From a budgetary perspective, every $100K we get back is money can put into an interactive guide to the museum or a better user experience at Moma.org. We are able to put those dollars to things that are more directly related to what the museum is all about.

DP: The 360* CRM system now allows us to reach donors and members much more efficiently and to acquire new members in much more efficient way because we can analyze what has happened in the past and make decisions based on that data.  Additionally, our member base is at a record high and we’ve only had Salesforce implemented for about a year.  The system has already made a significant impact on membership and business.

Q: What did it take to get from vision to execution?

JM: Initially, it took a lot of education about the cloud in general. We led with Google, knowing that it wasn't trivial, but also was not as complex as the CRM system.  We had to demonstrate why the change would be impactful to the business.  We did a bunch of presentations around on-premise vs. the cloud, just to get people bought into our vision. And once we did that, it was the non-technical things that had to happen--thinking through what a contract with a cloud service provider looked like and making sure it had the kinds of protections the museum needed to consider to be comfortable with the decision.

DP: Beyond the initial education it was about training and educating users.

JM: In the case of Gmail, there was a lot of training involved. A significant percentage of our users had been on Microsoft Exchange for years and knew all the shortcuts and tricks.  We provided a lot of resources to help people work in a new context.

DP: From a Salesforce perspective, everything Juan mentioned applies as well. Even though our prior system was 30 years old and difficult to use, our users had become accustomed to all the workarounds and funky steps they had to take to get it to work for them. It was all they knew.  They had also become protective of their own data stored locally on their machines. There was a great deal of education that went into showing them that everything was available at their fingertips in Salesforce and they didn’t have to extract data into Crystal Reports or Excel.

Q: What is it like working with Appirio?
 
JM: I have a great deal of respect for Appirio as a company.  They have top-notch resources and a lot of what I call “cloud chops”, which was not that prevalent at the time we embarked on these projects.

DP: Like any long project, there were some pretty bumpy times and just like with any other consulting group, the success really has to do with individuals assigned to project. At all levels, we felt that Appirio listened to us, made changes where necessary, monitored our progress and showed that they cared about MoMA.

JM: Another thing I saw, that I liked very much was that whatever was learned in a project,  Appirio incorporated those learnings into the next project to avoid the same pitfalls and make things run smoother, more efficiently.

Q: You were named 2012 Cloud Pioneers. What does being named a Cloud Pioneer mean to you?
JM: In all honesty and with a lot of humility, we are a pretty progressive department.  We don't want control for its own sake and while it is necessary on some levels to provide reliable service, our focus is on enabling the museum to do amazing things. A lot of times that means we get out of the way of users. With a cloud platform we don't have to spend a lot of time spinning up machines--all that is done--so, our end users are able to get value more quickly from the services we provide.

I think we are very progressive and like pioneers in that we’re not afraid to go out and try something new.   At same time, like the pioneers of old, we’re not just dreamers, but practical people.  They that had to make it across the country on their own with very little and there’s a parallel to our situation there.  Anyone that’s met Diana knows she will tell you if something doesn't work.

DP: I don't think we really are pioneers to be honest. Its all about timing and the need came along at a time when the technology was mature enough for us to reliably take advantage of it. We probably wouldn’t have made the same decision 3-5 years ago. But the technology has evolved, so we aren't really pioneers at all.  We were just looking for best solution and that happened to be cloud.

On the Road with Google

By David Salyers

I've been attending my fair share of conferences recently, and have had the opportunity to see a number of different presentations from Google executives - on topics ranging from how they're building out their own ecosystem to general trends they see impacting businesses. One of my favorites was Michael Lock's presentation at Dreamforce, The 7 Cloud Facts you Can't Afford to Ignore.  For those who weren't able to attend, here's quick summary:

1. Consumer technology is beating the pace of business technology
2. Cloud is about having access to infinite compute power
3. Mobile Cloud is the fastest growing technology ever
4. Social technologies are transforming businesses
5. The physical world is being recreated virtually
6. "Faux Clouds" are confusing the marketplace 
7. Cloud is revolutionizing IP procurement + budgeting

As one of Google's top partners over the last five years, it's not surprising to us that Google is a major player in each of these areas. However, too many people that I talk to still consider Google to be primarily an advertising/search provider. The truth is that Google has evolved into a cloud computing powerhouse that should be front-and-center to any organization's transformation or innovation efforts.

For those readers here who aren't familiar with Google's advances in the enterprise, here's a quick homework assignment for you.

1.  Take an inside view of Google's data centers. These photographs and video were recently unveiled to the world for the first time last month.  The size and scale of the infrastructure, computing power, network capacity and storage capabilities that Google has put in place are orders of magnitude larger than anything I personally imagined. Next time you're thinking about standing up your own environment to create an app, or whether Google can support the scale of your global enterprise, remind yourself about they've created.

2.  Educate yourself on the Google Cloud Platform. This platform provides you with infinite compute power and infrastructure to build your own business applications (think back to those data center pictures), create websites,and store and analyze data without needing a single server of your own.  Google's Cloud Platform is much different than Amazon Web Services and Force.com - all three platforms have pros and cons depending on your requirements so consider it if you're evaluating PaaS as an option.

3.  Get to know Google's consumer products. A large percentage of you and your employees use these products in your personal life, and with the consumerization of IT, more often than not, these products and services are being brought back into your business.

4.  Educate yourself on Google Enterprise, and not just Gmail. Google Enterprise is a substantial enterprise software company within the much larger Google. The division's mission is to take Google's consumer products and add the features, controls, and service level agreements that make them applicable across an entire enterprise. Google's Enterprise offerings from email and calendar to their industry leading collaboration and social products are already being used by millions of businesses, including some of the largest in the world.

5.  If you need help, let us know at cloud@appirio.com.  We have experienced cloud advisors and Google experts on three continents that can help you review your business objectives and needs, and work hand in hand with you to determine a path forward to greater innovation and business transformation.

David Salyers is Vice President of Google Sales at Appirio, and plays a key role in helping customers maximize the impact of Google technologies in their business.  He is based in Chicago and has more than 20 years of experience in the IT industry. Follow him on Twitter at @davesalyers.

Workday Rising 2012: Financials, Recruiting and Big Data

By Lori Asburry

Workday Rising is always one of our favorite events each year. It’s a chance to spend time with our customers, to celebrate success and share stories of true business transformation. It’s also a chance to look ahead, and focus on the possibilities of tomorrow’s customer success stories, enabled by the continual innovation and customer-centric approach of a partner like Workday. 

There were a number of Workday announcements at Rising this year that are incredibly exciting for Workday customers. As Dennis Howlett (@dahowlett) and other analysts have observed, Workday is increasingly separating itself from its competitors with a customer-first, mobile-centric and fundamentally different approach to ERP.

Here’s our take on the highlights.

A New Partnership to Change the Way People Work

By Jason Averbook (@jasonaverbook)

Today, I am thrilled that as an organization and an industry we are taking a tremendous step forward.  As a regular reader here, you know Appirio has become a leader in helping organizations transform their business by leveraging cloud-based technologies.  As CEO of Knowledge Infusion, I am proud to join forces with Appirio as we begin a new era in helping businesses harness technology to innovate faster than ever before.

If that seems like a lofty ambition, you are correct.  But today, business agility is the challenge both KI and Appirio have recognized must be addressed, and together we are 100% up for the challenge.