Passionate About OSS Blog | Passionate About OSS and BSS

Analytics for customer service

"Feedback is the breakfast of champions." Kenneth Blanchard. Many CSPs are realising the benefits, to themselves and their customers, by diversifying their customer touch points to include new channels. This includes offering self-help and "instant" customer interaction channels (ie web chat, instant messaging, social networking, etc) in addition to the traditional channels such as email, retail outlets, call centres, leaving messages via web forms, etc. It is…

07/08/2013 No Comments

Hack away at the unessential

“It’s not the daily increase but daily decrease. Hack away at the unessential.” Bruce Lee. Whether you're a vendor or a customer, there is a tendency to get lost in the complexity of your OSS. Just as Bruce Lee did with his training, there is complexity waiting to be hacked away from most OSS. There are seven key areas where simplicity can be achieved: Simplified processes…

06/08/2013 No Comments

OSS chefs

"There's a battle between what the cook thinks is high art and what the customer just wants to eat." Mario Batali. If you're an OSS developer, it's easy to see all your work as high art. And in many cases it is. There is an amazing sense of achievement to build something so powerful. Unfortunately for OSS chefs, the customer doesn't care much for the art…

05/08/2013 No Comments

Sharing knowledge is power

"Today knowledge has power. It controls access to opportunity and advancement." Peter F. Drucker. Peter Drucker was born in 1909 and was a leader in corporate management education. His statement above rings true today and is particularly true for OSS practitioners. I've experienced some corporate cultures when knowledge is hoarded, possibly in the hope that power can be hoarded. I don't subscribe to that theory. I…

04/08/2013 No Comments

Impartial product analysis

"Get the habit of analysis - analysis will in time enable synthesis to become your habit of mind." Frank Lloyd Wright. If you were asked to provide an impartial analysis of an OSS, what factors are important? Every OSS has vastly different functionality but there are several factors that affect the overall experience a user has with a product: Usefulness: is the product useful, with a clear…

03/08/2013 No Comments

Attention to detail. An OSS optimisation dilemma

"Don't be so familiar and so much into the details. Keep people dreaming. Close the window, and make them wonder." Celine Dion. The story behind today's post still vexes me to this day. Yes, Celine Dion vexes me too but that's a whole other story. In the early 2000's I was tasked with building a vendor's first ever auto-discovery engine. We were assigned a brilliant young developer to…

02/08/2013 No Comments

Transition Acceleration

"For many people a job is more than an income – it’s an important part of who we are. So a career transition of any sort is one of the most unsettling experiences you can face in your life." Paul Clitheroe. As a consultant, I've had many new roles at many different organisations in different countries and different cultures over the years. So I guess you…

01/08/2013 No Comments

Entertainment age

"We aren't in an information age, we are in an entertainment age." Tony Robbins. The second half of the information age is definitely progressing along the lines of Tony Robbins's quote above. As information commoditises, it becomes the content, the entertainment that differentiates. Does this lead to the line of thinking that B/OSS of the future will be part OSS, part content/media server, part billing engine,…

31/07/2013 No Comments

Points of Interconnect

"It takes two men to make one brother." Israel Zangwill. POI or points of interconnect are interesting places. They are the place where CSPs meet and hand off information between each other. Is it just me or are POIs also the place where size does matter? Is it really true that the bigger CSP will generally assume the position of bigger brother when it comes to billing irregularities,…

30/07/2013 No Comments

What do we use OSS data for?

"Where is all the knowledge we lost with information?" T. S. Eliot. We all know OSS hold lots of data. But why? What is the knowledge gained from the information? I believe there are five main types of data that are essential for true business intelligence: Operational data - the near real-time data that allows the organisation to track how efficiently it is functioning Network performance -…

29/07/2013 No Comments

Busyness

"Beware the barrenness of a busy life." Socrates. Further to yesterday's post, why is it that almost everyone I have met in the world of OSS is busy now and has a backlog of incomplete activities piled up to the roof? Why have I averaged 80 hour weeks for months at a time and still haven't got close to keeping up when on OSS projects? Why…

28/07/2013 No Comments

No wrong doors

"Customers don’t expect you to be perfect. They do expect you to fix things when they go wrong." Donald Porter. I only recently heard a saying that is apparently commonplace - "No wrong doors." It wasn't immediately apparent what it meant. In effect, it means that if a customer asks you a question then you need to go away and resolve it even if it's not…

27/07/2013 No Comments

Why are OSS relevant?

"You can have data without information, but you cannot have information without data." Daniel Keys Moran. OSS technologies will undergo changes from any number of directions in coming years and disruptive approaches will undoubtedly morph OSS from their current form. Irrespective of this evolution, we can simplify. The reason that OSS are relevant now and will continue to remain relevant in their modified form in the…

26/07/2013 No Comments

Extraction

"If we have data, let’s look at data. If all we have are opinions, let’s go with mine." Jim Barksdale. I was discussing performance reporting with a friend yesterday and he made a simple, yet profound statement that I agreed with wholeheartedly. When it comes to performance reporting, it's not the information presentation that is important but how easy it is to extract the data. Every…

25/07/2013 No Comments

Revenue Models

"What revenue model should I use? = the wrong question to ask. Why will people pay me? = the right question" The Board of Innovation. There are so many different revenue models in OSS that there are no simple apples-for-apples comparisons on price. There are perpetual licenses, annual licenses, processor-based licensing, node-based licensing, named user licensing, concurrent user licensing, data volume-based licensing and so many others.…

24/07/2013 No Comments

A vendor’s NASCAR page

"I have a lot to learn about NASCAR. But I've learned if you have the right people in the right places doing the right things, you can be successful at whatever you do." Roger Staubach During a vendor presentation, you will almost always see the "NASCAR page" in their promotional material. It's the page where they show the logos of all their past (or current) customers.…

23/07/2013 No Comments

Vendors / Products

Well, it's been a long time coming, but I've finally updated the Vendors / Products page. Who have I missed? What other details would you like to see in the table?

22/07/2013 No Comments

What is the tennis analogy to OSS?

"You always want to win. That is why you play tennis, because you love the sport and try to be the best you can at it." Roger Federer. In my opinion it is important to strive to be a tripod if you're in the OSS industry. It's vitally important to be competent with Telco networks, IT technologies and understanding business drivers. However, a majority of OSS…

21/07/2013 No Comments

The OSS pyramid

"In most companies, the formal hierarchy is a matter of public record - it's easy to discover who's in charge of what. By contrast, natural leaders don't appear on any organization chart." Gary Hamel. In making the decision to take on a major new OSS project there is normally a significant hierarchy of individuals involved. Invariably the technologists will form the vast base of the pyramid,…

20/07/2013 No Comments

Law of psychological reactance

"Reactance occurs when a person feels that someone or something is taking away his or her choices or limiting the range of alternatives." Wikipedia. There is a tendency for an OSS vendor to arrive on site as THE expert in all things OSS and start telling the customer all about the changes it HAS TO make. In one case, I watched in bemusement as a 10-man…

19/07/2013 No Comments

Outside help

"Accept that not all of the smart people work at your company." Stefan Lindegaard. Have a willingness to seek ideas from outside your organisation. OSS is too diverse to have all aspects covered by in-house experts. OSS are all about making valuable connections. Sometimes you may need outside help to find those valuable connections. Where do you look outside for your inspiration? Do you look?

18/07/2013 No Comments

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