From the August 2008 Verghis View newsletter 

With many economies around the world sputtering, most of you are helping prop up balance sheets by slashing discretionary spending, renegotiating contracts and putting off purchases.In this kind of atmosphere, it is tempting just to make the necessary cuts and hope that you will be spared further scrutiny. Making cuts is always painful. I was part of one of the biggest IPOs in US history (at the time) followed by the dot-com crash and our eventual return to profitability with great margins. Just about anybody can manage during good times. It’s during tough times when the great stand out from the merely competent. Here are a few non-traditional ways you can stand out.

1. Love your clients and partners! Yup, with few exceptions, most of your clients and partners are under the same pressures you are. Everywhere they look, they, too, are being hit by reduced services and increased fees – from checking in baggage on planes, to rising food and oil costs, to cost-cutting pressures at work.This is a perfect time to pick up the phone and call or even visit – not just email – your clients and partners and see what you can do for them. Find out how they are being impacted during the downturn. Ask if there is anything you can do to help them succeed in their business. Revisit procedures and policies, offer training. Wouldn’t you like it if someone came to you and offered that kind of help? How many have?
    
2. One of the most overlooked ways to save money is to take a close look at your recurring costs and standing purchase orders. One of my clients just saved over $250,000 a year in maintenance fees. How? They had inherited a contract from another department, but until they made the time to look at it, they didn’t realize they were paying for equipment and software that hadn’t been on the books for two years. Think about it – where else can you get that kind of savings without significant pain?
    
3. Be ready for good times. The larger your organization, the more likely ‘use it or lose it’ money will become available at the end of your fiscal year. These funds must be used quickly and will be awarded to those who are prepared. Have you created a prioritized list of what you want and need? Reach out to your suppliers and partners. Give them a heads-up so they’re ready to help when resources free up. Savvy clients and prospects have already reached out to me this way, and they will get a priority in scheduling.
    
4. One final note: Think big, think bold. If you have been running a support center for many years, you’re probably already running a pretty tight ship. Have you reached a wall in terms of efficiency and productivity gains? Well, this is the perfect time to start planning and implementing dramatic changes in the way you do support. Frankly, most support centers are little more than optimized break-fix centers. What an incredible waste of time for our customers – and a morale-killer for our staffs. Why isn’t most of our time spent working with customers to make them more successful in their business? That’s how to deliver real value.During tough times like these, senior management often looks for dramatic change. Some start with changes to the corporate culture, and take time to get used to. For example, consider getting rid of Level 1/2/3 support models and embracing Savvy Support. This conversion takes time, but pays off in a big way.

There you have it. Quick tips to help you stand out during tough times.

From the August 2008  Verghis View newsletter (sign up from home page)

With many economies around the world sputtering, most of you are helping prop up balance sheets by slashing discretionary spending, renegotiating contracts and putting off purchases.In this kind of atmosphere, it is tempting just to make the necessary cuts and hope that you will be spared further scrutiny. Making cuts is always painful. I was part of one of the biggest IPOs in US history (at the time) followed by the dot-com crash and our eventual return to profitability with great margins. Just about anybody can manage during good times. It’s during tough times when the great stand out from the merely competent. Here are a few non-traditional ways you can stand out.

1. Love your clients and partners! Yup, with few exceptions, most of your clients and partners are under the same pressures you are. Everywhere they look, they, too, are being hit by reduced services and increased fees – from checking in baggage on planes, to rising food and oil costs, to cost-cutting pressures at work.This is a perfect time to pick up the phone and call or even visit – not just email – your clients and partners and see what you can do for them. Find out how they are being impacted during the downturn. Ask if there is anything you can do to help them succeed in their business. Revisit procedures and policies, offer training. Wouldn’t you like it if someone came to you and offered that kind of help? How many have?
    
2. One of the most overlooked ways to save money is to take a close look at your recurring costs and standing purchase orders. One of my clients just saved over $250,000 a year in maintenance fees. How? They had inherited a contract from another department, but until they made the time to look at it, they didn’t realize they were paying for equipment and software that hadn’t been on the books for two years. Think about it – where else can you get that kind of savings without significant pain?
    
3. Be ready for good times. The larger your organization, the more likely ‘use it or lose it’ money will become available at the end of your fiscal year. These funds must be used quickly and will be awarded to those who are prepared. Have you created a prioritized list of what you want and need? Reach out to your suppliers and partners. Give them a heads-up so they’re ready to help when resources free up. Savvy clients and prospects have already reached out to me this way, and they will get a priority in scheduling.
    
4. One final note: Think big, think bold. If you have been running a support center for many years, you’re probably already running a pretty tight ship. Have you reached a wall in terms of efficiency and productivity gains? Well, this is the perfect time to start planning and implementing dramatic changes in the way you do support. Frankly, most support centers are little more than optimized break-fix centers. What an incredible waste of time for our customers – and a morale-killer for our staffs. Why isn’t most of our time spent working with customers to make them more successful in their business? That’s how to deliver real value.During tough times like these, senior management often looks for dramatic change. Some start with changes to the corporate culture, and take time to get used to. For example, consider getting rid of Level 1/2/3 support models and embracing Savvy Support. This conversion takes time, but pays off in a big way.

There you have it. Quick tips to help you stand out during tough times.

The SSPA news picked up and reproduced an article from the April Verghis View newsletter titled ‘No more (support) tiers!’

I was invited to post on the MIT CIO Corner, so I put my last newsletter article titled ‘Perception is reality, but what about the other way around?’ online. You can read the post here.

As part of a white paper I’m writing, I have been doing some research on ‘mashups’. (Web applications that combine data from multiple sources in one user interface.)

The idea behind mashups is simple. As anyone in IT can tell you, there are far more demands for their services than there is time available to get to them. No wonder people find corporate IT not moving fast enough for their needs, particularly if their needs are simple and highly situational. Enter mashups. The idea is that you can create simple ‘widgets’ where you combine content and services from within the corporation and out on the web to create new, simple applications. This can be created by the end user, not IT.

Two interesting mashup makers are available from IBM and Microsoft, called QEDwiki and PopFly respectively. If you don’t know what mashups are, check out the IBM video on YouTube, and the 30 second overview from Microsoft. Will give you a good idea of what is possible…

Are you using mashups to help your customers? Let me know how!

Steve Simpson, a well respected Australia-based authority on corporate culture reproduced my newsletter article titled ‘Are perceptions reality?‘. In addition to being a really nice guy and a terrific speaker, his newsletter is read by people in 31 countries.

His opening paragraph states:

“From time to time, we bring you articles written by people we respect and admire. Phil Verghis, based in the US is a good friend of Steve Simpson. More importantly, he is highly regarded for his expertise in areas including how to structure global support and how to motivate a globally distributed support team. The article below is from Phil’s latest newsletter.”