Verghis View Feb. ‘08 - Financial Uncertainty: Time to Strike?
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In this issue:
- Financial Uncertainty: Time to Strike?
- Update on Travel and Complex Support
- MIT CIO Conference
- My New Website and Blog (Will the Newsletter Survive?)
- Upcoming events of interest to support professionals
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Financial Uncertainty: Time to Strike?
by Phil Verghis
President, The Verghis Group, Inc.
With the current uncertainties in the global financial markets, a common response among managers is to hunker down and weather the storm. Of all the career-limiting moves to make, asking for significant investments and resources for support during lean times has to rank as one of the worst, right?
On the contrary, this may be a perfect time for the well-prepared to ask for — and get — your important investments funded. You see, while most companies retrench during tight times, the smart ones invest. You can lead the way out of tough times with better service, not cuts.
The rest of your colleagues may be quivering, hoping the budget cut gods and goddesses don’t look their way. But if you are well prepared, you can propose a plan that shows why smart investments now will help you stand out from your competition by the time the economy does turn around.
This is exactly what one of my Wall Street clients is doing. They look after infrastructure that during a typical day handles over a billion US dollars of transactions per minute. Of course, these are not typical times on Wall Street. Yet in the middle of a staggering stock market meltdown (and massive jump in transactions), they have just proposed a major investment in their support enablement tools.
The rationale?
For over a year, this firm has been implementing Knowledge Centered Support (KCS) across multiple groups in multiple continents. During that time, they resisted the temptation to buy technology right out of the gate. Instead, the team focused on transforming their methods and culture. While making steady progress on the often-significant changes required by Knowledge Centered Support, they have been discovering exactly what they needed the technology to do in order to enhance their KCS rollout. The result? After a year in the new (to them) world of KCS, they now have an excellent idea of exactly what the tools should accomplish.
Interestingly, they have also been able to achieve significant savings from the vendor’s initial proposal a year ago. Because their requirements are now crisp and better defined, they probably won’t have to replace the tool later — unlike too many organizations that spring for technology first, before they deal with the people and process optimizations. Those ”technology first, people and process later” implementations inevitably fail, and when they do, the tool is usually the one that is blamed and replaced. And the cycle resumes.
The savings from KCS are tangible and substantial. The amount the KCS team is requesting, while not trivial, is tiny in the context of their multi-million dollar budget. They are well prepared to “ask” for the investment, and are going to do so.
Are your plans for investments ready to go?
http://serviceinnovation.org/kcs/index.php
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Update on travel and complex support
It’s been a busy few months since the last newsletter. In early December, I returned from a marathon six-city, three-continent trip (Las Vegas, San Francisco, Brisbane/Gold Coast (Australia), Singapore and India. Along the way I met with clients, gave a keynote address, a talk, and conducted several workshops. Meeting with several of you was a great way to break up a long trip. As you read this, I’m about 38,000 feet above sea level, on my way to India via a 14-hour flight to Dubai.
For much of the past year, I’ve been working as the advisor to a new India-based group consisting of service leaders from Avaya, BMC, CA, EMC, IBM, Microsoft, SafeNet, Symantec and Yahoo. Within India, people are familiar with call centers and R&D as places to work, but they know much less about technical support. This group of companies, along with the Confederation of Indian Industry (a non-profit, non-governmental organization) has launched an effort to change this. We will also create scholarships and internships to help people learn more about the field. I’ll be delivering a keynote address in Bangalore during the public launch of the event on Jan. 31, and the next day will facilitate an in-depth planning and review session for the group.
If you have a significant group that provides complex technical support out of India, let me know. I’ll connect you with the right folks to become part of this high-powered team.
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M.I.T. C.I.O. Conference
I’m looking forward to the 2008 MIT Sloan CIO Symposium this spring.
As you can imagine, it has been a quite a bit of work, involving smart people with a lot of opinions. But it has also been (and continues to be) a pleasure working on this effort.
The conference will be held at the MIT campus in Cambridge, MA, on May 21st. The collective rolodex of this team is staggering.
http://www.mitcio.com/
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My new website and blog. (Will the newsletter survive?)
My web site has been online since 2004, when I began the Verghis Group. In the next few weeks, I’ll relaunch the next generation Verghis Group web site. It will include some new features a number of you have asked for, including a blog.
I’m eager to try blogging and see how well I (and more importantly you) like it. If it‘s successful, I might retire my newsletter.
Which do YOU prefer? Newsletter or blog?
Speaking of THE VERGHIS VIEW, I recently upgraded to a different newsletter delivery provider. If you didn’t receive this issue, or it was forwarded to you by a friend or colleague, please sign up for your own subscription at http://www.verghisgroup.com.
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Upcoming events:
* Jan 31 – CII/GEPS Forum Bangalore
Keynote address
http://www.ciigepsforum.com/
* Feb 13 – First Wednesday Group Boston
Producer
http://www.first-wednesday.com/
* Mar 10 – HDI Dallas
Be the Voice of the Customer
http://www.thinkhdi.com/hdi2008/session.aspx?SessionID=1021
* April 30 – May 1 - Consortium for Service Innovation
Executive Summit
http://www.serviceinnovation.org/
* May 20 – IBM Pulse Orlando
Speaker
http://www-306.ibm.com/software/tivoli/pulse08/
* May 21 - 2008 MIT Sloan CIO Symposium MIT campus, Cambridge, MA
Coordinator and Content Panel Team organizing committee
Organizing the morning CIO Keynote Panel
http://www.mitcio.com/
* June 12-13 Global Support Summit
Speaker and on planning committee
I hope to see you at one or more of these events. If you’re there, please come up and say hello.
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Talk to me!
I want to hear from you! Your ideas, insights and feedback are important to me. What topics or books would you like to see discussed? Who would you like to see interviewed? Your comments, questions, ideas, suggestions, feedback and contributions are welcome.
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