In the 90’s I worked on a number of fairly large scale SAP Projects in a variety of roles, including Project Manager, and supervisor of several other projects.  The standard tool was Microsoft Project.  It was used for:

• Planning a Project (initial Scoping)
• Selling it
• Periodic reporting to Steering Committee during the actual projects

What’s missing from the above?   Well, how about using it to help the actual daily work of project team members?

Project  team members did not even have access to MS Project, it only existed in a few copies on the PM and Team Lead’s computers.  Information-flow was one-way: feed the beast to be able to occasionally print charts that look impressive (scary) enough that Steering Committee members won’t question it.

Ok, I am admittedly sarcastic, but the point is:  PM 1.0 was all about planning, reporting and it served Management but did not help actual Project Execution.

My expectation of PM 2.0 would be that it helps all team members involved who can share information, collaborate on it and actually get clues from the system on where they are, where they should be, what their next step is, instead of just feeding the beast.

Is this the real promise of Project Management 2.0?   I hope to find out from an excellent set of panelists that I have the honor of moderating at the Office 2.0 Conference next week:

• Andrew Filev (Wrike)
• Bruce Henry (LiquidPlanner)
• Mark Mader (Smartsheet.com)
• Guy Shani (Clarizen)
• Dean Carlson (Viewpath)

Of course this is just one of many exciting sessions - if you haven’t registered yet, you can grab a $100 discount by registering here.   Oh, and don’t forget to visit us at the Zoho Party - the address is #1 Cloud Avenue.

(This article is cross-posted at the Office 2.0 Conference Blog)

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Tags: cloud computing, Collaboration, o208, o2con, office 2.0, office 2.0 conference, office2.0, On-Demand, online, PM, PM 2.0, productivity, project management, project management 2.0, SaaS, web office

After all, those greedy Partners who stole this deal from their Limited Partners made a coupla millions each.

What do you mean they didn’t steal it?  Oh, their firm, Insight Venture Partners only does late-stage deals and Photobucket did not qualify?  Hm.. small detail, who cares?  It’s still guaranteed profit, I want in on such deals.

What?  Not guaranteed?  Are you crazy?  Oh, you mean this is what Venture Capital is all about.. you take a risk and invest in a company that could actually be a dud?  Oh, boy, now where do I make my safe millions?

And what’s all this fuss about?

Wall Street Journal, CNET News.com, Silicon Alley Insider, A VC, Valleywag, PE Hub Blog, Technology Live , Startup Chatter, paidcontent.org.

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Tags: Humor, photobucket, Startups, vc Funding, venture Capital

As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words.  Well, this one certainly belongs to the  contextual ad blunder series.

(Source: IT Project Failures)

Additional ad blunders:

• The Irony of Contextual Advertising
• Contextual Advertising Blunders
• The Scary Thing about Contextual (?) Advertising

Tags: adbrite, adsense, advertising, Adwords, contextual advertising

Nothing about the Office 2.0 Conference is even remotely ordinary.

Start with the organizer, Ismael Ghalimi, CEO of a VC-funded startup, Intalio.  That’s normally a full-time job - not when it comes to Ismael: he is also a scuba-diving instructor, a pilot, launched Monolab|Workspace, (is that Incubator 2.0?), launched the Extreme Productivity Seminar series, oh, and have I mentioned the annual Office 2.0 Conference?  ( I actually know his secret, he has two body doubles, I just haven’t been able to prove it yet)

Pressed for time he is turning a necessity into a virtue: year by year the Conference is a showcase of creating a successful event out of nothing in only two months. I remember the first event in 2006, when a couple of us Enterprise Irregulars were helping him plan the sessions only weeks away from the start.  A few days and a few blog posts later Ismael got flooded with request for sponsor and speaking slots.  This year history repeats itself: just a month ago the conference site was a placeholder and one could only wonder if … then a new site was born overnight, based on Jive Software’s excellent ClearSpace platform, and now it’s alive with user participation, sponsors, registration..etc.

What’s a Web-focused Conference without wi-fi?   It’s a joke that in 2008 conferences, including brands like Web 2.0, Gnomedex …etc.  still fail to provide sufficient connection.  Ismael’s solution includes laser beams to the top of the building, another one down to a terrace, then inside - making it happen with Swisscom was quite a project in itself.  Office 2.0 set the standard once and for all, anything less at major conferences is a failure.

Then there’s the issue of The Gadget.  I believe the iPod at the first conference was just more-then-generous swag.  The iPhones handed out at the second conference had an integral part at the event: several applications released specifically for Office 2.0 allowed participants to interact with each other, navigate the schedule and find sessions.  This time all paid participants will receive a the HP 2133 Mini-Note PC.

Yes, the conference swag is not pens, stickers or t-shirts: it’s a mini-computer, which cost about half the registration fee.  It will clearly raise eyebrows, and many would prefer to skip the gadget and pay reduced fees.  I think handing out such an expensive gadget will have an interesting effect on the conference demographic: we’ll likely see an increase of corporate employees, who can expense the entire conference and are less price-sensitive than startups and freelancers - the original Office 2.0 crowd.

But that may very well be what the conference needs.   There’s a reason why this year’s theme is Enterprise Adoption.  The Office 2.0 movement wouldn’t go very far with only the early pioneers, evangelists talking to themselves, dissmissing enterprise requirements.  For the principles to become practice in business, we need a more balanced mix, and in a twisted way the gadget may just help achieve that.

Those who can’t afford the full registration are not entirely locked out: Socialtext CEO and top evangelist Ross Mayfield will facilitate Un-Conference 2.0 the day before the official conference, at a cost of $50.

Finally, startups have a chance to present the attending VCs, media, bloggers at  LaunchPad - Ismael announced this event over the weekend, and already has 10 particpants - get in there while you can.  Note to my (numerous) VC readers: I hope you will be there, too.

If you’re still hesitating, check out the Agenda, the list of Speakers,  Media representatives,  and if you haven’t done so, register now.

I’ve saved the best for last: don’t use the standard registration, save $100 by registering here.

Update: while I was typing here, fellow Enterprise Irregular Dennis Howlett explained why this is an Irregular (pun intended) Conference in more than one way.  Update to the update: see Susan’s excellent summary.

(cross-posted on the Conference Blog)

Tags: cloud computing, Collaboration, o208, o2con, office 2.0, office 2.0 conference, office2.0, On-Demand, online, productivity, SaaS, web office

I’ve repeatedly praised Web-based Invoicing service FreshBooks for being innovators, unveiling the hidden business model enabled by SaaS: benchmarking.   But who’s benchmarking the benchmarkers?

Competitor Xero has just issued a call looking for benchmarking partners comparing metrics like:

• Customer acquisition rates
• Teaming model and allocation of spend
• Sales and marketing spend
• Sales quotas
• Google spend
• Pipeline conversion

CEO Rod Drury is looking for 5-10 partners, communicating either directly, or through a trusted third party.  Either way, its quite a challenge, as unlike the aggregate anonymous data Freshbooks provides to their customers, this level of sharing requires quite a level of trust.

Interestingly I contemplated similar ideas just a few days ago when Zoho CEO Sridhar Vembu published his margin analysis of Google, SAP, Oracle, Microsoft and a few others.  He drew a conclusion that since Google’s current revenue and profit per employee metrics were much higher than even the best players in the application space, Google has little incentive to move into this space forcefully. (He then followed up with a What’s in it for Zoho? post)

Specific conclusions aside, I thought it would really be interesting to expand this spreadsheet buy including Zoho and comparable companies as well as additional metrics.  Needless to say I ran into a similar dilemma that Xero is facing now: these are private companies that don’t typically publish their financial results, to get them participate we would need a relatively larger sample and it would still require a leap of faith.

Rest assured I’ll be watching Xero’s experiment with great interest.

Related posts:

• Benchmarking: No Longer the Hidden Business Model in SaaS
• SaaS Will Never Be the Same - Again 
• Freshbooks Launches Benchmarking Service: SaaS Will Never Be the Same
• The “Hidden” Business Model in SaaS: Benchmarking 
• SaaS: The Cat is Out of the Bag

Tags: accounting, benchmarking, billing, freshbooks, Google, invoicing, SaaS, xero, zoho

This is one of those rare occasions when I can pull up an old post, dust it off,  and voila! - I’m done.  Yes, I am lazy - but hey, I can’t help, this is one of those “I’ve told you” moments.   Here’s what I wrote last year:

Time for a reality check. Product quality, customer satisfaction and market success have very little to do with each other when you have a monopoly.

The Vista problems are real, they are not fantasies created by bloggers. But how exactly are consumers supposed to revolt? They still need computers, and despite Apple’s respectable growth, they still represent a fraction of the consumer PC market. Try to buy a PC today, it’s hard to NOT end up with Vista (even I got one)

Customer demand for Vista? No, it’s customer demand for computers, in a market with no choice. I’m not “making this up”, Donna. It’s all in Microsoft’s 10-Q:

…Client revenue growth correlates with the growth of purchases of PCs from OEMs that pre-install versions of Windows operating systems because the OEM channel accounts for approximately 80% of total Client revenue. The differences between unit growth rates and revenue growth rates from year to year are affected by changes in the mix of OEM Windows operating systems licensed with premium edition operating systems as a percentage of total …

The increased “demand” for premium versions comes from another well-documented fact, i.e. Microsoft’s new segmentation, castrating Vista Home Basic and essentially making Home Premium the equivalent of XP Home - a hidden price increase, by any measure.

A true measure of “demand” for Vista would be corporate licenses and retail sales, and both are behind. But not for long: eventually, after the release of SP1 corporate IT will give in, too - who wants to be “left behind”, after all.

Today InfoWorld burst the Vista Sales Bubble (if you ask me, there never has been a bubble, but that’s another matter):  35 percent of mainly enterprise-class users “downgrade” their Vista systems to XP.

The numbers speak for themselves, let me just add this: next time you look at Vista Sales figures, remember: these customers did not have the choice to buy XP directly, they had to get Vista on their systems, then “downgrade” (upgrade, if you ask me) to XP.    But by then their transaction is booked as a Vista purchase!

Vista sales figures are inflated, these transactions were not real purchases, just ransom paid to the monopolist for the privilege to use the OS that actually works- XP.

Tags: microsoft, microsoft monopoly, oem, vista, vistasucks, windows market share, windows vista, windows xp, xp

The first time I wrote about Zoho - the “Safer Office” they had less than 50 thousand users - not a lot for a web service. Today they announced having a million users - and that’s just direct Zoho users, not including those served by Baihui in China, or any other white label providers.  Back then they had 3 products: Writer, Sheet and CRM - today the list includes 17 Applications, 5 Add-ons and 4 Utilities.

The chart below shows steady growth in monthly new registrations - the sudden spike in May is the effect of opening Zoho Apps to users with Google and Yahoo accounts.

Now, you may ask, what are a million users worth in the world of freebies?   Web startups do go out of business not being able to monetize their popularity.  Zoho’s story has been that Adventnet, the parent company with “boring” but reliable, cash-cow network management products is financing the “Zoho experience”.  Well, here’s an update to that story: the Zoho brand itself has been self-sustaining for a while now.

While Zoho does not disclose numbers - it’s their prerogative, being a closely held private company - they apparently have paying users.  The number one revenue generator is Zoho CRM, that they were asked to abandon in order to be allowed to join Salesforce.com’s  Appexchange.  Apparently they made the right decision, and instead of being relegated to providing an Office Suite only, they keep on adding business applications like Projects, Invoice, People, Meeting..etc.  Incidentally, these apps are where Zoho makes their money.

The free Office and other apps with the million-or-so users are Zoho’s main marketing vehicle.  As we often discussed here, they don’t have a Sales force, in fact they don’t “sell” as such: the products sell themselves.  This trend will likely increase as Zoho now increasingly focuses on integrating existing services rather then just pumping out new ones.

That is not to say that the Office Suite can’t became a source of significant revenue, but perhaps from a less expected source: while Zoho strives to become the outsourced IT department for small businesses (SMB) they have seen a flurry of large enterprise inquiries recently.  I am aware of ongoing projects with customers that even enterprise software giants SAP or Oracle would consider strategic, key accounts - let alone Microsoft.

As for the one millionth user: Zoho CRM user Dean Detton of Prestige Automation Inc has been invited to celebrate at the Zoho Party during the Office 2.0 Conference on September 4th.

The address for the party is: 1 Cloud Avenue.  See you there!

(Disclaimer: I am an Advisor to Zoho)

Related articles by Zemanta

• NetSuite, Zoho post app suite gains
• Zoho’s millions
• Zoho hits a million accounts with a superior product range

Tags: adventnet, cloud computing, cloudave, crm, office 2.0, SaaS, web office, zoho

(Updated… a lot)
Recently I’ve seen signs that may suggest the occasional UPS glitches are not-so-occasional, and there may be deeper systematic problems with our favorite delivery service.   The brown truck driver is as friendly as he ever was - it’s the systems that appear to s***w customers left and right.

First there was the unreasonable delay within California, then the case of the “lost” packages, a systems failure compounded by rude customer service:

• Four out of five packages I dropped off at the same UPS store disappeared - i.e. they were never entered in UPS’s tracking system.
• Since the system is always right, customer service accused me of never having shipped them in the first place, then of not applying the labels properly.
• When the recipient, Shoebuy.com, a major UPS customer initiated a trace, the previously non-existent packages miraculously all showed up at the destination UPS center, without any indication how they got there.

The above example may not be rare, as demonstrated by this commenter:

Texas-to-Texas package disappeared (was never scanned in) and 30 hours later showed up in Alabama.  UPS has no clue how it got there.

Finally, my third shipping experience within a month:  I’m expecting a Sony Reader sent from NY to CA.  It was originally due to arrive on 7/28 but now I see it’d rescheduled for 7/29.  A one-day delay is not the end of the world, until you look at the details:

-The package arrived at Vernon, CA Thursday, 7/24.

-Next arrival scan is in Los Angeles, Friday 7/25 evening. (Great progress!)

Now, I don’t know why it sat a full day virtually in the same place, but even with this delay, if it’s in Los Angeles on Friday, why on Earth can I not receive it on Monday in the San Francisco Bay Area?   Why the Tuesday delivery?  That’s 5 days within California!

Admittedly my statistical sample is rather small, but 3 failures out of 3 deliveries within a months suggests these may not have been accidents, UPS may just have more serious logistic / system problems than they care to admit.

Update: Rob’s story below is so shocking, anything I’ve experienced pails in comparison.  You just HAVE to read it in full.

Update #2: On second thought, it’s a story worth bringing it up to here in full:

I’ve got one for you….

My sister-in-law has MS and receives very expensive injections delivered once a month, packed in dry ice because it has to stay refrigerated.

My sister-in-law lives with her mother. Well, her mother had decided to cancel her Dish Network subscription. Dish told her to put all of the hardware in a box and they would pay to ship it back to them via UPS. Only problem was, there was no hardware to return since she had already done that through the retail store. Dish claims that they notified UPS to cancel the pick-up…given the rest of this debacle, I’m inclined to agree with them.

Meanwhile, my sister-in-law gets her medication delivered via FedEx (because there’s no way UPS could get it there in time before the ice pack failed). FedEx leaves the package containing the medication on the front porch.

Now, UPS shows up a little bit later and TAKES THE WRONG PACKAGE. Apparently, the instruction to cancel the pickup never made it to the driver. The package they took was clearly in a FedEx box, with FedEx shipping labels, etc. There were no UPS shipping labels anywhere. UPS essentially stole her medications right off of their porch.

You would think, given their commercials about “delivery intercept”…you know, “there’s a problem with the gizmos” that it would be a simple matter to stop the package and turn it around….NOPE. Their advice was to call FedEx (what the *&!@^ does FedEx have to do with it and to call the pharmacy to get a replacement). They said that it was en route to Dish Network and they couldn’t stop it, but that Dish could send it back (which Dish would have to pay for…how is it Dish’s problem?). The problem, which was explained to them, is that by the time all that happens, the medications will have reached ambient temperatures and will be useless and that my sister’s insurance wont pay for the $1500 meds twice in one month.

They eventually rectified the situation by reimbursing my sister the money, but only after she paid out of pocket to get the replacements and after spending countless hours on the phone with UPS customer service.

What can Brown do for you? I don’t know, but I know what I’d like to do to brown….

Update (7/29): Today is the rescheduled delivery date.  The latest scan info shows yesterday my package was in Sacramento, 90 miles NE of me (remember, it was coming from LA, South!).  I smell another re-schedule

Update (7/29 evening): UPS just confirmed they really have no clue where the package is and recommended I contact the sender, as only they can initiate a trace.  Deja vu

Update (7/30): The sender initiated a trace and the expected delivery date field completely disappeared.  A few hours later new scan information showed up:  Out for delivery.   This means I should get it today. Hooray!  Except… the package is in Vancouver, WA, and I am in California.   If UPS keeps on randomly driving around the West Coast, they might just accidentally find me one day

Update (7/30):  I called UPS with my concern that it cannot possibly be “out for delivery” from Vancouver, WA.  They confirmed I should ignore the status, the package indeed will find my way to CA today.  Yeah, right.   A few hours later someone woke up.  Now delivery is rescheduled for the third time, adding two more days, with this status message:

This is beyond pathetic…

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• UPS: Tracking and Customer Service Failure
• UPS: Delays and Customer Service
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Tags: customer disservice, Customer Service, delivery, DHL, failure, FedEX, logistic, shipping, system failure, UPS, upssucks, usps

I often find out what’s happening in the world just be looking at the keyword activity in my blog referral log.  Like today, when I received readers looking for news on the earthquake in Japan.  This is actually sad, I feel bad for people looking for real info and getting “hijacked” - I am clearly not an earthquake expert, not even an authority on the subject.  All I did was point out how Twitter had been the first to report on several quakes in China and Japan, long before the major news-wires, and miraculously (and unfortunately) my post became the #1 hit for the Japan earthquake search on Google for a while, even preceding Japan’s Meteorogical Agency, which should be the ultimate source for such information.

This isn’t anything new, I’ve seen some of my posts get into top Google positions before - but it’s more understandable when I write about a more obscure subject, or a startup nobody else covers… like Brainkeeper,  where my post was #1 for months, preceding the company’s own site.   Being #2 for the fairly generic search on saas very small business is a bit more surprising, and #1 for Microsoft Outlook Sluggish is certainly rather unexpected.   Yahoo, for a change, lists my fairly old post as #1 for the very generic search term Startup Executives, and how on Earth did I get to dominate the igoogle for google apps search?

Recently I’ve noticed it almost doesn’t matter what I write about, I can get a premium position for certain relevant keywords. As much as I am enjoying it (hey, who doesn’t like Google Juice), there’s something fundamentally wrong with this system.  I think blogs are somewhat overrated, and perhaps individual posts should be weighted on their own merits, not the Google Juice of the main blog itself.

But there’s another conclusion we should draw here. Content is really king, to the extent that it can compete with advertising. Businesses should take notice: you can pay for AdWords, or get to the top by developing your own content - and organic hits are worth more than paid ads.

There’s another side of the coin here: if you don’t develop your own content, someone else will - and you may not be happy with the results.   I’m not sure UPS enjoys seeing my post immediately under their site for the google search  UPS Tracking…

So once again: the old adage “Content is King” has got a new meaning.  I’ve been contemplating this for a while, and am getting ready to announce a new initiative in the next few weeks.

Tags: advertising, adword, Blogging, content, Google, google juice, marketing, pagerank, search, SEM

$49.99

$5.36

I moved my printer and need a longer USB cable.  Options:

- Drive to Best Buy, hoping they have the 15ft cable in store.  Cost: $49.99 + gas + an hour of my time.

- Order on eBay. Cost: $5.36, shipping included + 5 minutes research and order.

Oh, yes, I am not getting the gold-plated version.  Who needs it anyway?

Brick-and-mortar stores really need uniformed customers to survive.

Update: To Save Gas, Shoppers Stay Home and Click - reports The New York Times.

Tags: bestbuy, brick-and-mortar, eBay, ecommerce, retail, uninformed customer