Minimise the tentacles on the OctopOSS. Keep it simple
“Cycle time reduction in marketing and sales deals with speeding the time-to-market cycle for new products and services and reducing the order-to-cash cycle time, which produces benefits such as increased cash flows and profits, improved utilisation of human and machine resources, decreased costs and improved customer service” S. Rao Vallabhaneni. OSS can have a big […]
“One challenge we faced was that product managers tend to introduce products with too many variables to manage. For example, we had an ATM/Frame service that could be configured across 12 billion combinations. Well, how do you build an ordering system with so many variables? The answer is to simplify the product options, so at […]
“It is common for us to receive an e-mail from a customer apologizing for not responding sooner because they thought our automated follow-up was being done manually. The key to a successful follow-up program is personalization and making it relevant for the customer.” John Hopkins. Why did Apple’s iPod revolutionise the music industry? Was it […]
“Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky.” Rabindranath Tagore. In yesterday’s blog I discussed the aircraft carrier analogy when bringing rapid change into a legacy OSS. The CSPs of the future will need to be based around partnerships. Not just […]
““Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply.” Stephen R. Covey. Enlist and silent are both anagrams. They also have one other anagram that is important for OSS consultants and integrators in particular. Can you guess what this vital skill is? A hint would be that […]
“Companies can get too big. There is such a thing as diseconomies of scale, which occurs when companies get less efficient after reaching a certain size.” Chris Mayer In the agrarian age, a vendor typically had a small, local, loyal tribe. In the industrial age, “factories” dominated creating vastly more product more efficiently and was […]
“Part of the challenge of being an entrepreneur, if you’re going for a really huge opportunity, is trying to find problems that aren’t quite on the radar yet and try to solve those.” Sean Parker One of my favourite vendor selection and requirements gathering stories relates to a tender that was run by the Air […]
“Customers will want to talk to you if they believe you can solve their problems.” Jeffrey Gitomer. This article from Ericsson, indicates that CX (Customer Experience)* is key to a CSP’s financial performance according to 81% of C-level executives at tier-one carriers in South-East Asia. The article goes on to say, “Nevertheless, 72 % of executives evaluated their […]
“Everything feels like its on the precipice of some major transformation, whether we like it or not.” Sean Lennon. OSS transformation tends to focus on the activities required to take the OSS from current state to a desired future state (naturally). An OSS Transformation is generally planned around the introduction of new tools, processes and/or […]
“A confused mind always says no.” If you are seeking to persuade someone, it is essential for your message to be clear and fully understood. If your audience doesn’t understand or is uncertain, they are likely to say no rather than being seen to make a mistake. The complexities of OSS implementations make it very […]
“Employers need to start rethinking their recruiting process, notably in using sophisticated social network search tools to go spear-fishing for high potential talent, rather than waiting for applications to come across the transom. And, managers need to look for the skills that really matter today in high potential young talent, attributes like cognitive load capacity, […]
“You must be honest about what you want at a core level and decide to go after it.” Martha Beck Every CSP has a vastly different set of requirements from their OSS. Some have non-negotiable requirements that are not relevant to all others. When you’re a vendor that services top-end telcos, there aren’t many customers […]
“Understanding what people really want to know—and how that differs from what you want to tell them—is a fundamental tenet of sales” Jason Fried. In the same post on INC.com, Jason also explains “I made the discovery that people’s reasons for buying things often don’t match up with the company’s reason for selling them… They […]
“Reporting is not Communicating. Reporting and communicating are not the same! Sending out information has very little to do with effective communication” Lynda Bourne on Project Accelerator News Communication is a fundamental part of delivering (or operating) an OSS because so many people are impacted. Status reports can be a useful repository of information during […]
“The shorter way to do many things is to do only one thing at a time.” Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart In his book, Developing the Leader Within You, John C Maxwell tells the story of a young and talented concert pianist as follows: “She was asked the secret to her success. She replied, “Planned neglect.” Then […]
“There are two kinds of learning: experience, which is gained from your own mistakes, and wisdom, which is learned from the mistakes of others” John C. Maxwell When working on any OSS project, there are plenty of experiences to be gained. 😉 But where does your wisdom come from? In what forums do you learn […]
“The best ideas have most of these traits: They are simple, core messages; they are unexpected; they are concrete, credible, and emotional, and they are stories.” Chip and Dan Heath in Made to Stick It’s no coincidence that in the millenia before writing was invented the most important parables were passed down through generations via […]
“Eliminate the things that don’t matter, that you’re never going to get better at or that you’re already good at. What’s left are the places where you have the opportunity to change your position in the market.” Seth Godin In many ways, the quote above holds true for whether you’re a vendor, a CSP or […]
“I want to go to meetings where the inputs are donuts, not the outputs*.” Scott Morrison An OctopOSS can be an all-encompassing beast. It can impact so many peoples’s lives. But this also means that the list of invitees to meetings can explode. I have a theory that a meeting’s outcomes will generally be inversely […]
“A guarantee in this life: Change! Flexibility is better than predictability!” Evinda Lepin There are two distinctly differing views regarding customisation of your OSS: A specifically customised solution will deliver more efficient processing A specifically customised solution allows no room for flexibility Which solution would you seek to deliver and why? My first OctopOSS was […]
