FiberGeneration

Starting Up In Belarus : OptixSoft

Whilst my friend Andrew decided to go to FOD Fiber Optics Devices Ltd, some of his colleagues at the IIT Institute of information Technologies of Minsk, Belarus, decided to create their own firm : OptixSoft.

A unique start-up of its kind, OptixSoft provides outsourced R&D services to the Fiber Optics Test & Measurement industry :

OptixSoft offers a full range of specialized software development services, from GUI and custom utilities for equipment to embedded software development for Windows CE and Linux, to firmware and device driver development. Our main specialty is software development for telecommunication industry, including embedded and low-level software development for fiber optic transmission lines and fiber optic test and measurement equipment.

In addition to specialized system/low-level software development (firmware, embedded software, drivers), Optixsoft also offers custom application software development for desktop and pocket computers. Even the most robust and feature-rich test and measurement instrumentation often requires enhancements and customization, and additional application software needs to be developed to support that. Often such software allows users to work with files, display and organize data received from your test and measurement equipment, and integrate with 3rd party solutions.

Custom application software development that we build for our clients includes:

intuitive user interfaces to manage existing processes and files,

data processing and data storing for 3rd party databases,

data analyzers and report generators,

distributed systems and packages.

To give you an idea of OptixSoft' s capabilities, CEO Mike Ziuzin developed a few years ago a project of his own : a *pocket-OTDR*, based on a micro test probe (the "OTDR" per se) and a Pocket-PC. WiFi, BlueTooth, and miniaturization : the right package for an FTTH Fiber-To-The-Home tester...

You can contact OptixSoft by email at : [email protected].

Alex Che, software expert, waits for your twitts here on Twitter

I visited IIT a few years ago. It was like if I were playing "Back To The Future" : those folks were using pretty aged equipments, things that we Frenchies got at the university back in the early 80's. And those guys were doing absolute jewels. Out of almost nothing, at least for someone like myself who has been working with the big T&M vendors such as HP/Agilent and NetTest for years.

Since this visit, I'm convinced that this team is capable of miracles. May The Force of the T&M be with them ;-)

Three posts by Seth Godin I should have written myself

It's about marketing, business development, selling, customers, and us.
First, read "Self promotion", then continue with "The first rule of b2b selling", and finish with "What do you know?".
Now you've got the top-3 rules for a successful business.

Fiber-To-The-Home : The Exploding Market

See by yourself...

[UPDATED 03-19-08 2:25PM CET] The video is no longer available on YouTube. That's the beauty of Web 2.0 and Rights Management ;-)

Get EnterTrained With eXperide

What if you could get trained on fiber cable installation right at your place, right on the field ? No more wasted time in transports, no more painful lecture training in a classroom far from your home, no more hands-on practice on a table. Just a time-saving, practical, productive training.
That is what eXperide is to provide : quick-start on-site hands-on training for installation & maintenance contractors, enabling technicians to get up-to-speed faster and better.

I won't disclose everything of course - although I'm quite proud of the marketing & sales strategy the team has put together - but here's a brief overview of the tools eXperide will bring to its fellow customers sometime this year :
- pre-equipped mobil-home trucks, sporting ready-to-use workstations for hands-on training (cable preparation, splicing, and testing);
- pre-loaded iPhone and/or iPod Touch, with e-learning materials (e.g. podcasts and videos) and direct access to eXperide' s technical support;
- discussion forums and weblogs, for people to share their best practices and experiences.

Quite an exciting one, right ? Then, stay tuned for more ;-)

Your Best Marketing Friend : Google

To those of you who still think you need to pay hundreds of bucks to a PR agency for ensuring your visibility on the Web, you may think again. See this : somebody somewhere was searching Google for "optical networks contracting"; outcome : Fibergeneration came number one in the list, with this post.

Lesson : Seth Godin is right. First thing to do this year : Google yourself.

It's About Accountability

Christopher Harris, President of Inventure Global, an IT consulting firm based in San Diego, CA, tells the World about his own worst day in business. In brief : Inventure Global was supposed to provide a new startup with the alpha version  of their website, but missed the deadline, hence endangering the startup' successful launch. Here's the lesson :

“Some of our most avid customers here were customers that we totally screwed at some point.  We went to them and told them we knew that we screwed up, told them we were going to fix it, and told them that whatever it cost them we’d make it right as best we could.  We did that, and now they respect us more for it.  That’s the way you earn trust is by how you handle yourself when the situation goes against you.”

I've personnaly encountered such a disastrous situation more than once along my 15+ years-long career as an entrepreneur and business developer. Most often, it occured when someone in the team screwed up the whole thing because she simply didn't feel accountable. It was always a "not my fault", "not my business", or "not my whatever"... Hence the mandatory Musketeers' Spirit : "One for All, All for One", which should be the only motto of any team of any sort. Because it makes the people accountable and responsible for every single decision that they take under the team's umbrella (and by extension, the company itself)...

I screwed up a project myself. Back in '83, when I left a fiber optics cable installation work to go home - because my girlfriend was expecting me to be back before night. I did it once. That has been one of the best lessons I've ever got from real life : don't act for yourself, act for the team, no matter the consequences at home. Because at the end of the day, that's your customer who's paying you. Not your girlfriend (otherwise, you're a lucky guy ;-).

See Christopher's article on GoBig Network here . Inventure Global blog here.

Netflix: How to build a killer community

It's Crossing The Chasm at the Web 2.0 Age. Read Webware' Harrison Hoffman report here.

It's about customer relationships management, er. : it's about your business

Andy Hanselman has posted a must-have presentation on Slideshare. With this "practical guide to creating competitive advantage and improving business performance", Andy goes right to the point : the only way for any business to be successful on the long run is to get what he call " devoted customers " (ed. note : i prefer using the terminology " loyal customers ", as I am myself devoted to their own success ;-)

post-scriptum : Slideshare seems to become more business-oriented those days. A very good news.

Quick Snap

Just a few hours after I posted the short notice about the issue * with the new SnapShot feature,  I received a comment from Erik Wingren of Snap.com. Erik gave me a few hints, which appeared to be the right ones to solve the problem.
Erik' s quick reaction is a perfect example of a customer-focused attitude. Being currently involved with two Web 2.0 startups, I wish we can provide such of attention to our own customers and users right from the very beginning of our operations.
Actually, I am either  a regular user or a beta tester at lots of new firms here and there on the Net. Honnestly, I'm quite disappointed by the lack of attention from the majority of the France-based Web 2.0 startups. No wonder why we are always considered as arrogant people...
On the other side of the spectrum, I'm always delighted by the responsivness of the young US firms. Seems that a large bunch of American Web 2.0 entrepreneurs have learned Peter Drucker at high-school. Or maybe they read Guy Kawasaki' s " The Art of Bootstrapping " !

* : most probably, the issue came from wrong settings sent by my browser - Opera 9.20 for Mac, still the best user-experience. As I did the update just before heading for a meeting in Paris, the conclusion is the same as usual : never upgrade your system when you're in a hurry !

Top-Ten Creating Passionate Users Articles

The Blogosphere has  been whirling quite fast last month : Kathy Sierra, a programming instructor, game developer, co-author of the Head First series of books on computer programming, and respected blogger had to face anonymous death threats, forcing her to cancel her speech at the O'Reilly Media's ETech conference back in late March. Kathy Sierra explained her decision, detailing the  threats, on her blog Creating Passionate Users .

I let other bloggers comment about this story. Fact is that CPU is one of my very favorite webblogs, that I read almost every day, for it's full of really great insights for marketing & business development.
Also, note the always crisp & clear illustrations, should it be photos, diagrams or drawings. Kathy Sierra knows what communication means (well, it's the minimum for an instructor and author). See " My Favorite Graphs... and the future " : Sierra' s own favorite pictures from her CPU blog.

Here are my Top-Ten CPU *  articles  - based on the ' Past favorites ' list displayed on the front page, because there are so many excellent posts that the choice was difficult to me : better build the top-ten list from a already shortened list.

• User Community and ROI : another perspective on Evangelism and Early Adopters.
• Ultra-fast release cycles and the new plane : why the word " instantly " becomes the rule in the Web 2.0 era.
• How to be an expert : combined with Colbert 's own vision of being an expert, an excellent introduction template for us consultants ;-)
• The hi-res user experience : quote Sierra : " If we want passionate users, we might not have to change our products--we have to change how our users experience them. " If you do fiber testing and use a lead-in fiber with your  state-of-the-art OTDR, you get the picture. (note to novices : no hypertext links here, on purpose : please use Google to find out what an OTDR is ! )
• Subvert from Within: a user-focused employee guide : how to engage your customers to make them passionate users of your products when you work with a big company (will ring a bell to my fellow Musketeers @ Agilent...)
• Listening to users considered harmful ? :   this one is about providing customers with what they really do want but  don't realize it because they had no way to imagine it. Think of your friend next door who's willing a PC because he needs to do wordprocessing, web browsing, and emailing : in fact, he wants a Mac.
  You ARE a marketer. Deal with it. : even if only for the Old-School vs. Neo Marketing, read it, now !
  Stop your presentation before it kills again ! : another perspective on the use/abuse of PowerPoint those days. Shows that a simple paperboard together with black, blue,red, and  green markers are often better than slides...
  Motivated to learn ? : just-in-case learning vs. like just-in-time learning. Sounds familiar ? Welcome to the Age of Google and Wikipedia !...
  Your brain on multitasking : a must-read for people who think that multitasking is a great advantage for human workers. Personal anecdote : before moving to Germany for Agilent Technologies back in 1999, I was proud to be a real multi-tasking guy; I always got ten things runing in parallel, from answering emails and calling someone on the phone to brainstorming on a mission-critical project. Since I left 4 years ago, I do only one thing at a time. I tell you what : I'm way more productive than in '99, thanks to my German colleagues !
  
  * each time I write this acronym I think not about computers but CTU' hero Jack Bauer' s journey  ;-)

It's about Learning

Reading CNET the other night, a headline grabbed my attention : " Record exec: Mobile industry could learn from Apple "
A report by Marguerite Reardon of CNET News.com. Quote Marguerite :

In a keynote address at the CTIA Wireless trade show, EMI's Eric Nicoli warned the industry that it would not reach its potential if mobile operators, handset makers and content providers don't work together and put the customer first. He said they need to make sure that every product they develop for consumers is one that people want, is easy to use, and provides value at an affordable price.
"We will not reach our goals if we carry on as we have been doing," he said. "Not to diminish what we have achieved so far, but there are important challenges to address if we want to take this business to the next level. And that means we must put the customer at the forefront."
"Apple makes stuff that people love to own," Nicoli said. "They love the simplicity and user-friendliness of the iPod and iTunes. Apple doesn't employ any sorcery or dark magic to achieve this. They listen to what consumers want. And that shouldn't be Apple's unique privilege."

Very interesting indeed. Those folks at the Mobile industry are definitely not Average Joe, they have MBAs - at least, they play golf with their peers of Wall Street, their business is driving the whole Telecoms industry at large - at the end of the day, we need fibers to carry mobiles 's signals. So, how come they forgot a simple fact, which even self-made-men like myself do know and apply every single day since the very begining ?  : " It is the customer who determines what a business is...What the customer thinks he is buying, what he considers value, is decisive--it determines what a business is, what it produces, and whether it will prosper." Peter Drucker, Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices, 1974, p 61.

Maybe they were driven by bozozity until the very moment Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone ? By claiming that " [the Mobile industry] need to make sure that every product they develop for consumers is one that people want ", Mr. Nicoli admits that they all tells his pals at the Mobile Industry that they failed listening to their customers. Now, he also made a giant step towards recovery : he is learning. He's learning that the Mobile industry has he tells them they have to learn about its their own mistakes, its their competition (Apple is coming after them with the iPhone), and its their environment.

So, what is learning, in business ? I found no better way to explain the whole idea than what Hal Stitt, my coach during my Musketeers years at Agilent Technologies, says :

"  learning as a winning business strategy means learning more and learning faster than your rivals do about your customers, your competitors, your business environment and the opportunities available for your business to win customers. "

Hal likes to describe the whole concept with this diagram, based on Peter Drucker' assessment which claims that it's the customer who decides the winner.

I like it too, for it is crisp and clear. Plus, according to my own experience as a  customer in B2B since 20+ years, it is exactly the way it works : a short loop, involving both the customer and the vendor in a constant dialog, always makes this vendor successful.
Perhaps the guys in the Mobile Industry were more used to a more rigid process, such as this one :



Definitely not a KISS  ' Keep It Simple, Stupid ' approach, such as the one developped by David Kolb in the early 80's : -------
In this diagram, replace " Concrete, Experience" by " Customer ", " model " by " Application ", " Test " by " Feedback ", and " Reflect " by " Product ", and you get another representation of Drucker's model. Please note that I didn't put the accordingly modified diagram on purpose : do it yourself, you will better... learn ;-)


Back in 2001, Hal Stitt has published a white paper " About Learning " . I am pleased to post the first three pages, for it explain the whole idea :

LEARNING VERSUS KNOWING ORGANIZATIONS
Contrasts and Comparisons

Knowing Organizations
Most organizations we have seen and read about over the past 40 years have focused more on knowing than on learning. Knowing is a state, learning is an action. Learning changes the state of knowing.

Knowing organizations promote and hire people mainly based on what they have done, on what they know. Less value is placed on the person's ability to learn. Training focuses on skills and processes with a direct impact on job performance. Little or no effort is put into training people to learn, encouraging learning, or rewarding learning.

Management effort in knowing organizations focuses on getting better and better at what the organization does, instead of what it could become. Effort is more likely to be put on careful measurement of results and comparing them with expectations than on encouraging learning. Knowing organizations put people in jobs to get results, to fix problems, to turn around failing organizations. If sales are not up to expectations, they will bring in a sales manager who knows how to fix that. If manufacturing is not meeting expectations, they will bring in a new manager who knows how to fix it. If the company is not meeting investors' expectations, they will bring in a new CEO who knows how to fix that.

In knowing organizations, learning is seen as down time. It interferes with performing.

Learning Organizations

Learning organizations hire and promote people based more on their ability to learn than on what they already know, more on what they can do than what they have already done. Learning organizations realize that results are related to actions by probability. They realize that just because something worked in the past doesn't mean it will work in the future. They realize that just because something worked in another company or another organization doesn’t mean it will work in your company or in your organization.

Knowing is not transferable across organizations or over time. The situation changes, but knowing is static. Learning is transferable. Learning is dynamic. Learning includes learning about changes in the situation.

Sun Tzu's quote is often misunderstood. The time at which your must know the enemy better than yourself
is at the time of the battle. In war, what you knew yesterday, last week, last month, last year can get you killed. In business, it just means your customers buy from your competitors.

Learning organizations see learning as a competitive sport. If they can learn more and learn faster than their competitors, they can outperform those competitors.

Innovation is a core business function. Innovation is the engine powering successful competition. Learning drives innovation. Without a stream of new learnings, innovation only happens by accident.

What your organization will learn outweighs what it already knows.

We see three fundamental reasons why what your organization will learn is more important than what it already knows:

• Knowledge and experience were gained in the past. There is no logical reason to believe the future will be like the past.

• A very high proportion of knowledge and experience is similar among competitors. It is too often a very weak differentiator.

• The belief that the organization already has the answers leads to arrogance and complacency, which leads to defeat.

Learning is the root of competition
Your organization is either learning and innovating better than your competitors, in the eyes of your customers, or you are a target for those who are. Learning leads to innovation, which leads to winning—if you innovate better than your competitors, in the opinion of the customers.

The most valuable learnings lie outside your organization *
Getting good information first hand from good sources outside the organization, but within the system the organization serves, is a core behavior of learning organizations.

Learning only counts when it affects behavior
We do not advocate learning for learning's sake. Learning has no value to the organization unless it affects behavior. Not learning or learning the wrong things is bad enough, but we believe learning the right things and not acting on the learning is the worst possible outcome. It kills morale and motivation in the people who have learned something vital to the organization's success if they are prevented from acting by decision makers who have not. It's ludicrous! The people who have learned something vital are the people the decision makers should be motivating.

The purpose of learning is to win
We believe the most important purpose of learning is to create changes that will create wins. That is diametrically opposite to the purpose of hierarchical organizations: to develop and maintain order and control.

Learn What?
All businesses learn about their businesses. But the winners learn more about their customers and competitors than their competitors do. To win, most customers must prefer your products and services over your competitors. You cannot get customers to prefer your products and services by focusing your learning on your own organization— by looking in your mirrors. It requires learning about your customers. It requires understanding your customers well enough to know what your organization can do for them in the future that they will prefer over the offerings of your competitors.

Hal's White Paper " About Learning " available here (.pdf), with update online here.

*note : helping clients do that is one of DeltaNet's core strengths. To contact Hal @ DeltaNet, click here.

Peter Drucker' official biography here.

--- updated Apr. 2d, 2007, after EMI announcement on DRM-free ---

ChangeThis

Over the last couple of weeks, I've spent a lot of time browsing the Net, seeking for new ideas for some new business I have in mind. Surfing from one site to another, from a blog to another, I finally landed on... ChangeThis. The funny thing here : before using blogs as my primary source of inspiration, ChangeThis was one of my favorite.
As John Jantsch wrote in his Duct Tape Marketing... blog :

"ChangeThis is a clever project, originated by Seth Godin and currently owned and operated by 800-CEO-READ. Anyone can post a proposal for a manifesto on the Change This site and then readers vote on whether or not they would like to see that proposal turned into a Change This Manifesto. A Change This Manifesto is basically a well developed thought on one particular subject and comes in the form of a smartly designed PDF file."

Reading a ChangeThis manifesto is always a relaxing yet fruitful moment : it's all well designed, written, and, of course, thought. You may want to see it by yourself by clicking here.
Oh, there is one more thing : you can even participate yourself to the ChangeThis revolution, to "challenge the way ideas are created and spread". Submit your proposal for a manifesto to the ChangeThis folks, get it approved, then readers will vote on it. See the open proposals here.

You are now " on a mission to spread important ideas and change minds. " Welcome on board, Buddy ;-)

About Beta Testing

 

Last week, I met with the founder of a WebTV startup here in France.  During our discussion,  the beta test issue came out : she was planning a 2-weeks beta phase, during which a dozen of selected target customers would have access to the WebTV website. And that was pretty it.
Of course, I did my best to convince her to change her mind, and go for a longer test period, to be offered to a larger audience. Here are my arguments :

• beta testing is aimed at... testing a beta version of a product. In other words : the objective is to get as much as possible end-users feedback in order to fix bugs which can be detected only in the real life (vs. the R&D lab or the garage) by real users (vs. software engineers and developers), spot user interface' s incoherences, and... get the people used to the product.
• The Web is... global. Remember "www" ? Stands for : " World Wide Web ". The Web allow anyone to reach anyone in the World (well, there are some limits, but still, you know what I mean). Why would you want to limit your scope to a dozen of people, when thousands can help you build a better product, almost in the blink of an eye ?
• in today's Web 2.0 environment, every single new website or online tool come up as a "beta". Everybody is used to it now. Especially the people who this startup is targeting. So, one more Web 2.0 firm launching its first product in beta mode won't hurt anyone.
• speaking of the target audience : the goal of the startup is to create a community of end-users/visitors. What a better tool than a beta phase to create this community spirit ? People will be proud to be part of the development team, they will feel like pioneers, helping at building something new, something great.

For all those reasons, I suggested to launch as soon as possible, in beta mode, for 6 months, and worldwide. Keep your eyes open : there might be  an eye-catching WebTV near you soon ;-)

Customer Relationships Management (the model)

As a PBwiki' user (well, I haven't launched the FiberGeneration yet) I  received an email from the startup' team, regarding a major update of the user interface and features set. I can't resist publishing it : it is a model of customer-focused approach. That is exactly what I do expect from any vendor : keep me informed of the latest developments on the product (or beta product), use common language (I mean, no marketing blahblah nor hype slang), and show the benefits in the real life (i.e. real case studies).
Also, note how subtle is the invite to watch the video : it's all about " you ", the end-user. That is the most convincing way to get people's attention : speak about themselves.   

From:   [email protected]
Subject: PBwiki -- Introducing the best feature in the world (fibergeneration)
Date: February 21, 2007 12:33:41 AM CEST
To:   marc duchesne

comment : note the recipient is not a list but me alone. The intention is to make me (i.e. the customer) proud : " hey, I've got a message from those guys; they're paying attention to me"...

First, a disclosure: We tried to sound modest in this email, but it just
didn't work. We're too excited about announcing how cool your wiki
(fibergeneration.pbwiki.com) just became!!

comment : note that they are not saying "how cool PBwiki just became" but "YOUR wiki". They are not talking about their product, they are talking about MY product (the fibergeneration wiki). Pretty different, huh ?

Today we're thrilled to announce the official launch of our new PBwiki
Point-and-Click editor, which lets you edit in rich text and import
photos, videos, and more. And you can switch to it right now, for free.
Here's what you get:

comment : the new features are maybe important to many users, but the most important  here is for everyone : it's free. Note how the message " you can use the new features right now and for free " has been introduced : at the end of the paragraph, and crisp and clear. So, that's the only thing the reader will keep in mind.

RICH-TEXT EDITING
Editing is much, much easier. Just type like you would in your favorite
word processor and click Bold, Italics, and font color/size. Drag text and
images around anywhere you want. It just works.

PBWIKI PLUGINS
Add a shared calendar to your wiki. Or a YouTube video, Flickr photoshow,
chat room, stock chart, or more. Just click "Insert Plugin."

SWITCH BACK TO CLASSIC MODE ANY TIME
You can always switch back-and-forth between Point-and-Click and Classic
editing modes.

comment : note the short sentences, and the crispy messages : " it just works ", " Just click ". All made to make you feel comfortable, because  the new features are easy to use.

"So PBwiki," you might say, "how do I try the new Point-and-Click editor?"

We're glad you asked!!

Watch a 2-minute video tour of the new features and try the new
Point-and-Click editor on your wiki:
http://fibergeneration.pbwiki.com/pac.php?ea=ALfP1aPSpz&ref=em_pac_6

comment : note the casual tone, as during a live discussion. Who can resist ? Not me !
By the way, I let the URL on purpose, so you can watch the video tour and get the picture by yourself. Maybe you'll open your own wiki thereafter ;-)

Thanks,

David, Ramit, Nathan, Emily, Brian, and Darren
Your PBwiki Team

comment : there is no job title, just first names, and this wonderful signature : " YOUR PBwiki Team".

I have had the chance to be responsible for new products introductions at HP/Agilent Technologies. Back in 2002, we achieved the most successful new product launch in the history of the company. The key : we designed this product with a customer (read : end-user) -centric approach. During the whole development process, we kept this approach : regular updates to our sales channels and key end-users, customers seminars, etc. In summary, we always kept our customers in the loop.
I think the PBwiki folks got it all. 

Check Point FiberGeneration v1.5

I have registered FiberGeneration on SiteMeter on January 27th this year, means roughly a month ago.
Here is the traffic report as of today :

Visits :
Total  312
Average per Day  16
Average Visit Length  2:21
This Week  110

Page Views :
Total  436
Average per Day  23
Average per Visit  15
This Week  160

I don't know yet where this goes, however I can tell that the traffic jumps when I publish a post with a trackback to a prominent blog or when I post something with the magic keywords : " Steve Jobs " ;-)

As I a pretend to be a smart/creative/efficient (please add your own adjective ;-) Product Marketing guy, I am gathering data for the SWOT analysis of FiberGeneration and its next major revision - the version 2.0 (hey, everything is " 2.0 " those days ;-) is on the roadmap, scheduled Q2 '07 !

I am a Business Designer !

A quick post from Brian Sooy of  "  Design Matters " here : ' 5 thoughts for designers '

Every day seems to bring new challenges, but some challenges remain constant:

1. You are being hired to solve problems, now solve them!
2. Don't use the level of "busyness" as a gauge for profitability.
3. It's your role to challenge assumptions.
4. You are never too busy for your best clients.
5. Resist the tyranny of the urgent and focus on your priorities.

Five quick things, but well worth remembering.

Now I understand who I am ;-)

Let the blog rolling

According to the ' fibergeneration.com ' product plan, I have started publicizing this blog a couple of months ago. No innovation here, I am using proven tips & tricks of long time bloggers : do comments on others' s blogs, trackback to relevant posts on others' s blogs, insert the URL email' s signature, tell people about my blog during informal discussions, etc. I tell you : it works. That is the beauty of the Web 2.0 : it let the World know about you in the blink of an eye.

Here is the latest mapping of the visitors, as per ClustrMaps this morning. As you may notice, there are people (and computers ;-) from everywhere but Latin America, Africa, and Far East.
Several folks told me that fibergeneration.com is not accessible from China (maybe TypePad is blocked - I haven't checked the status of blogging in China so far).
So, publicizing my blog in the Far East is a dead end. Therefore, I will focus on Latin America and Africa from now on. Of course, I'll continue to concentrate my efforts on United States - well, you know, I'd love to get a Green Card someday ;-)

ps : I couldn't find any blog' post where I could send a trackback with this entry !

   

 

Fiber Generation (So long, PowerPoint ;-)

Here is the presentation I have created for an ISP going to launch its FTTH services next year. The goal is to introduce Powerline Technology as the technology of choice for home networking, considering that Fiber To The Home brings more than 50 mbit/s to the Subscriber. Of course, this post contains only public information (no names here - watch the newswire in Q1 2007 for more details ;-)
I will come back soon on the content of this presentation : FTTH, Powerline, etc. For the time being, I just wanted to highlight the format : no PowerPoint here (hey, I'm a Mac guy, see what I mean ?), no Keynote either - which is an amazing tool for designers/presenters. No slides per se, thanks to Comics Life (for Mac only ;-). What better tool for story telling (a presentation IS a story) than a comics ?
I chose not to use Keynote because the audience is a prospect known for its strategy : innovation, always a step ahead of its competitors. An innovative way to present innovative technology to innovative people !

By the way, I put the file (w/o names and business-related stuff, of course) on SlideShare.net here. 27 views over 23 hours, that is quite a good ratio ;-)

Ah, there is one more thing : you are seeing small size jpg files. It is on purpose : most of you don't have an FTTH connection as of today...

Sun Tzu & The Right Fights

Note : This post is the first of a series about winning in Business when you are a challenger willing to become The Leader. It is based on my experience as Business Development Manager and Product Whatever Manager at Agilent Technologies, from 1999 to 2003. Any startup or any small player serious about its business should be able to apply the following strategy to become market leader. Simply because it worked quite well during the hard times of the Telecoms Industry downturn. Why the heck would it fail during the Web 2.0 gold era ?!!!

In late 1999, Ned Barnhold, CEO of the HP' spin-off Agilent Technologies, announced his decision to penetrate the telecoms networks' installation & maintenance testing marketplace, for the company to become market leader within the next two years. Born as a pure " R&D and Manufacturing " oriented vendor, Agilent was the undisputed Test & Measurement worldwide leader on those segments, by far. The company was serving all the big players of the Bubble : the Lucents, the Alcatels, the Nortels, etc. Every single network equipment manufacturer was buying Agilent' s lab. and/or production tests solutions.
On the outside plant side, no one relevant actor was using Agilent branded testers : Agilent was a challenger on the Installation & Maintenance (I&M) markets.

So, Barnhold' s decision to focus on I&M was... a challenge ! An exciting one, for those of us who were directly involved with it. Enter the Musketeers and all that stuff which did our life for the next three years or so (and still does, for some of us ;-).

To achieve this goal : become #1 on the I&M market place by 2002, starting from (almost) scratch, we called on Sun Tzu and his proven methods for winning a war - ooops, sorry : for winning in Business.
We picked the one quote which replace MBAs diplomas in the Real World : “Know the enemy better than you know yourself, and the outcome has already been decided.”, and we built the whole strategy from it. We looked at ourselves (Agilent per se, the structure, the people, the use and habits, the way of doing business, etc.) and our competitors, selecting one of them as our * enemy #1 * (that was before 9/11; today, I rather use another terminology, e.g. " rival number one "...). We came up with the conclusion that to become the market leader in less than three years time frame, we had to concentrate our energy on our sales channels. Hence the name of this strategy as a whole : Winning Sales Channels Attributes - I will come back to that one in the final post of this series (well, teasing is an operational marketing tool, right ?).
In order to reach this ultimate objective, we decided to put together three sub-strategies (note : only three) :
• The Right Fights : to win a customer
• Bid2Win : to win tenders and deals
• Be Friend of Technicians : to win speed in new product generation

I have mentioned the Bid2Win in a previous post (see here), however I will come back to it in a couple of weeks. Next week, we will discuss the last one " Be Friend of Technicians ", which is about talking directly to the end-users of your products in order to get their feedback...

Today, I am going to describe you the Right Fights strategy : how to grab market share by winning customers. Here is it :
• A Right Fight is NOT about winning a deal.
• Find weakness in leader’s strength.
• Attack where the leader is unprepared, appear where you are not expected.
• Choose when and where to fight.
• Limit the time and the place of the attack.
• Need at least 75% more strength at the time and place of the attack.
• Fight to win the leader’s position, not only the order – acquire the benefits of leadership.

Then, we looked at the respective behaviors of an industry leader and its challengers :

What is the Leader doing ?
a. Appropriate Strategy : Defend against all threats. The challengers will determine where and when to pose a threat.
b. Appropriate Tactics : Focus attention on existing customers. Listen for potential, developing threats. Counter all threats early.
c. Resource Deployment : Bias resources toward the biggest accounts and the biggest product lines. Deploy more than enough resources against each threat to insure the win.
d. Competitor Knowledge : Broad and accurate intelligence to identify potential threats early.
e. Expected Outcomes : Maintain very high market share, and the economies of scale that creates.
f. Failed Outcomes : Loss of market share. Loss of leadership position.

What is the Challenger doing ?
a. Appropriate Strategy : Choose when and where to compete. Win virtually all of the contests you enter. Do not compete if a win is not certain.
b. Appropriate Tactics : Focus attention on new target customers. Operate just beyond the edge of control. Enter chosen contests with fanatic will to win.
c. Resource Deployment : Bias resources toward the most important contests that can be won with certainty. Put more than enough resources on the few most important contests to insure the win.
d. Competitor Knowledge : “Know the enemy better than you know yourself, and the outcome has already been decided.” Sun Tzu
e. Expected Outcomes : Take market share from larger competitors. Attain high market share and the economies of scale that creates.
f. Failed Outcomes : Loss of market share. Very disappointing financial performance. Disaster, loss of the business.

Last, provided that we had only a couple of years ahead of us to achieve our CEO' s objective, the sense of urgency was a key element in our decisions process. Here are the four points which lead us to the final decision :
•We had to accelerate our learning.
•We didn’t get the chance and the time to learn by doing every mistakes by our own again.
•We had to learn form the successful and the unsuccessful fights the organization was going to fight.
•We had to learn from the mistakes of our competition.

So we have setup the “ Right Fight Process ”, consisting of the three steps in use by all armies in the World since General Sun Tzu (circa 500 B.C., by the way): Brief - Execute - Debrief.
Here we go :
#1. The Think-Tank Team identify fight (i.e. competitor' s installed base, or green field)
#2. Define the opportunity for the company (i.e. the potential)
#3. Set operating model to “not business as usual” (i.e. set business as unusual as the rule)
#4. Understand customer’s business and competitive situation (i.e. do your homework ;-)
#5. Define Team, owner and roles (team, team, team)
#6. Find THE potential customer champion (i.e. find the guy who will make you win)
#7. Make sure the customer problem is understood (i.e. ask questions, again and again)
#8. Build business case for the customer (with the customer)
#9. Build the battle plan (without the customer ;-)
#10. Visit the customer w/ proper Team (do not forget to apologize for not being here earlier)
#11. Anticipate and plan contingencies (i.e. Plan B, Exit Plan, No Way Plan)
#12. Deliver the plan to the customer (i.e. execute)
#13. Offer demo (i.e. demonstrate how your product can solve the customer problem)
#14. Deliver the perfect budgetary quote (i.e.
#15. Follow-up w/ customer.
#16. Do not forget to take the order!

As we were based in Germany, the Right Fights Process was summarized on two short/easy-to-use/user-friendly tools : a Q&A form - the " Right Fight Spec Sheet " - to be filled by the " Fight " owner, and an MS Excel spreadsheet - the " Right Fight Score Card ". Those tools were created to allow the management to quickly get the whole picture of the " fight " (by the way : we didn't say " deal ", see the difference ?).
The Right Fight Spec Sheet consisted of a crisp & clear list of items grouped by topic (simple, huh ?), with " Yes / No " tickle boxes. Filling in the form was way faster than a survey on the web (well, as long as Windows didn't crash - ooops, sorry, bad joke ;-). Here is an example of the questions / topics / items - comments in italic :

About the Competition :
Target rival #1 in the considered region. Yes / No. " Beat the best and you will beat the rest " was our motto.
Hurt competition. Yes / No. Our aim was to become #1 within the next two years. It couldn't happen without hurting our competitors.
Disrupt/confuse competition. Yes / No. Thanks to General Sun Tzu, this is a strategy the challenger can use with great effects.
Fight that will drive you to the position of leader. Yes / No. The question was : is the fight bringing us one step further to reach our goal to become #1 in less than two years.

About the Customer Relation :
Increase the sense of loyalty. Yes / No. Was there a need to increase loyalty at the specific fight location.
Fight that enhance the image. Yes / No. Was it a fight that would enhance the image where it was desperately needed e.g. become friend of technician.
Fight that lets us become friend of the technicians. Yes / No. Would the fight help us * Musketeers * to achieve our goal to become friends of the technicians.
Long lasting effect. Yes / No. Could we estimate how much revenues the fight would bring us in the long run.

The score card was even simpler to use (please don't think that we were all damned bozzos : we were in a hurry, so we had to create and use fast tools ;-). Put in some rough numbers and names, press the "enter" key, and boom, you got this nice palette of colors : green, yellow, red. Sounds familiar, huh ? Green for " Let's go fighting ", Yellow for " Let's wait for more information ", and Red for " Let's stay at home for the time being " (or something like that meaning that this fight is definitely not a fight to fight, right ?). Here is a real example, dated 2001- there is no more confidential data in there : all the service providers listed have either disappeared or merged with another one, the internal organization has been completely modified, and the people are either gone or working elsewhere in the company.

Oh, there is one more thing (okay, this post is not about Steve Jobs; however I strongly believe that he is using such of strategies quite well ;-)
Before going outside to knock at your target customer' s door, you still have to plan your mission. Putting together the strategy is one thing, implementing it is a different story - although a good plan means easy implementation. Hence the mandatory mission planning, that we the famous Agilent Musketeers called : " Combat Mission Planning ", according to the Top Gun terminology. You can use the following plan as a template for your next mission - ooops, sorry : your next customer call ! :

a. Define the mission objective : A mission objective is a clear, measurable, tactical statement of a goal that can be achieved by those people responsible for its execution.
b. Identify the Threat : Once you have a clear mission objective, you have to analyze thoroughly the competitive threats to your outcome
c. Identify your support assets : Once you have your mission statement and knows the competitive threats, scour your internal assets for the one thing that might make or break the sale.
d. Emphasize your strength and their weaknesses. Never engage in a costly frontal attack when you can outflank the competition and still win.
e. Set your timing : Once the plan is in place, the only thing left is to find the optimal moment to strike: Identify your optimal mission timing.
f. Plan for contingencies : It’s far easier to work out your options in the quietness of your office than in the hectic battlefield.

As a conclusion, just this : the Right Fights strategy, together with the other two "Bid2Win" and "Be Friend of The Technicians", helped Agilent Technologies to be ranked #1 Test & Measurement vendor by Frost & Sullivan in 2002. Right in the middle of the Telecoms downturn and the turmoils it caused in the entire industry. It demonstrates the effectiveness of our decisions, the first one being to rely on proven methods based on Sun Tzu' s principles. In my humble opinion, applying this strategy during * good days * is even more productive.
Of course, I will give you a real case example of a successful fight soon : back in 2001, Agilent took over one of the World' largest optical network carrier out of the hands of its rival number one. A quick, smart, successful strike. Unfortunately, it didn't last long : the downturn hit this carrier hard ! Anyway, that was fun. Stay tuned, and Carpe Diem.