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Media Convergence - Web and Print

Sethu Iyer — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 01:41:00 GMT

The proliferation of camera phones such as iPhones, Blackberry, Androids, and similar smart-phones, is driving a radical change whereby these hand-held devices are becoming powerful scanners and readers in themselves and are thus able to leverage QR codes pretty easily.

QR Codes also known as quick response codes have been around for quite some time and are essentially two dimensional barcodes, similar to the ones often used in automatic classification of content in document imaging systems. There are many other types of barcodes; some are standards based and others proprietary. Most barcodes with the exception of the newly introduced Microsoft tags hold the data in the codes, unlike Microsoft Tags that holds the data in a separate server.The information on a barcode is read and decoded by a scanner/reader similar to the scanners in grocery shops. The more sophisticated and intelligent ones are used to track movement of goods in Supply Chain, such as in inventory control and lot and location management in warehouses, though the latter now relies greatly on RFID than simple bar codes.

Camera phones such iPhones, Blackberry and Androids, are emerging as powerful scanners and readers. Thus the use of barcodes which until now was mostly confined for businesses, have become easily available for individuals. Think of these tags as tiny-urls that can be printed or reproduced on any medium. Microsoft enables creation of barcode tags instead of VCards that can be printed on business cards or for even could be used for tagging personal assets at home without the need for explicit labeling.

Similar to the benefits of bar-codes, the uses of these tags are endless. For example pet-owners could print out a tag and insert it in the collar belt of their pets, with details of the owner in case the pet gets lost. Companies in LifeSciences/Healthcare could use these tags to provide detailed dosage instructions instead of cramped up product labels. Some of the other areas include the ability for advertisers to engage participants through a participative, permission based process by attaching these tags to any form of print, television, digital or billboards ads. If interested, the consumer can scan (photograph) the tag and the reader-software in their smartphone will automatically redirect them to the advertisers’ website or can engage the prospect in some call to action, such as download a discount coupon to be redeemed in a nearby store. When used with backlit LCD hoardings these tags provides the opportunity for localized campaigns with potential for greater conversions.

Geo-social networking – how much are we willing to reveal about ourselves?

Sethu Iyer — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 15:14:00 GMT

Geosocial networking seems to be the hottest social trend for 2010. Checkins seems to be the new tweeting. Well it is another story that it took a long time for me to key in my first tweet, up until now I have just a few tweets to my credit. Perhaps, it might just be me!

Though Google was the one of the early providers to introduce geo-location services through Google maps, and later through Latitude and Buzz, it is the plethora of apps for handheld devices and smartphones that fascinate me. Geolocation services from Foursquare, Gowalla, Brightkite, Hotlist, Buzzd amongst others enable their members to check-in at their favorite spots, restaurants, hotels, bars or any place that can be identified by a geo-cordinate. Many of these services also reward their members for check-ins through member points, badges, pins etc. Foursquare offers the title of a "Mayor" for the most loyal of regulars with the most check-ins. The Mayors are offered freebies from the businesses or establishments that have signed up the service such as free coffee, hotel stays and other things in kind.

Well I may sometimes be tempted to see which of my friends have checked-in to a bar or restaurant, or events or even more which one they frequent often, I am still not sure if I would like my presence to be tracked on a continuous basis. However I do see the benefits of such applications for events, tradeshows, seminars and functions that attract large crowds. Some of the geosocial services that are vying for a piece of the market and action are...

Gowalla - http://gowalla.com

Brightkite - http://brightkite.com

Foursquare - http://foursquare.com

Grafittigeo - http://www.graffitigeo.com

Hotlist - http://www.thehotlist.com

Loopt - http://www.loopt.com

Whrrl - http://whrrl.com/

Yelp - http://www.yelp.com

Convergence of ERP and ECM

Sethu Iyer — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 02:53:00 GMT

A few days ago I was at the Open Text Enablement Training. Having had spent several years with Content Management Systems, I went in without expecting much, assuming the training and discussions would be about WCM, Collaboration, Document Management, Records Management, Digital Asset Management and of course extensions of the same solutions for Web 2.0 and Social Media.

Once the session started rolling I realized how mistaken I was. I found a completely new paradigm of ECM enabling ERP systems to provide great opportunities for efficiency and effectiveness improvements.

Having had grounds up experience with ERP & Supply Chain systems prior to my initiation into ECM, the training was spot on and I could realize the value and potential of such an offering. Traditionally ERP systems evolved over time from MRP through MRP II to ERP and Supply Chain management to provide an integrated view into an Enterprise covering all functional areas such as Finance including Accounts Payable, Receivable, General Ledger, in-bound and out-bound logistics including Sales & Distribution, Procurement, Production Planning, Manufacturing, Warehouse lot and location controls etc. Usually it covered the typical end-to-end cycle from procure-to-pay or order-to-cash. While this perfectly fulfilled the need for enterprises to get a 360 degree view into their operations, most of data managed by these systems are structured and discrete pieces of information. Thus a MRP run would result in automatic triggering of production orders, purchase orders, or vendor orders which would comprise of the item details, schedule, product specifications etc. These systems per-se were not designed for managing unstructured information generated through collaborative interactions such as vendor negotiations, evaluations and selections that happens through emails, or QC processes that might contain unstructured information such as operating manuals, test procedures, equipment calibration processes, test certificates, lab photographs, lab videos etc. Companies usually store such information outside of the ERP system and access to these assets is disjointed. Typically users would need to scan through multiple systems including physical documents to get the required information.

However imagine a situation where ERP systems and ECM systems can co-exist and information could be provided in-context to the users. There are several scenarios where this would be helpful such as in Logistics where users would need to see customers’ sales order and deliveries which are usually managed as structured information alongside unstructured information such as Bills of Exchange and Letters of Credit, Shipping Notice, Suppliers (and third party) Inspection Report and Test Certificates, Shipping Invoice, Transit Insurance documents, multi-modal transportation documents, bills of lading, mate’s receipt, and warehouse receipt notice and customers inspection report etc. Each of these documents are required at some stage during the distribution process for completing a B2B transaction. Some of immediate areas where this could provide huge value are in Accounts Payable, Quality Control, and Distribution etc. I think ECM enabled ERP systems would contribute to increased operational efficiencies enhancing the benefits of integration that ERP systems usually provide.

Companies and DNA mutations

Sethu Iyer — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 12:44:00 GMT

Amazon started off as a retailer of books. It later expanded its business to include consumer durables such as electronic items, computers, jewelry, DVDs, etc. Further as it started growing, it started providing its store-fronts and fulfillment systems as a service for third party vendors and retailers. In fact at one time Toys-R-Us was using Amazon as its online white label storefront. Later it started providing digital music downloads and eBooks readable through Kindle dramatically changing the distribution model for books. In the process it has greatly reduced if not eliminated the overheads associated with printing, storage and physical distribution of books. As an extension to this line of business Amazon now also supports private publishing, eliminating middlemen and competing directly with mainstream publishers. In a completely unrelated diversification, they have ventured into infrastructure, hosting and storage services through Amazon web services and cloud.

Amazon was able to establish itself as a leader with the first mover advantage in the online retailing business. However the same doesn't seem to be true in the infrastructure hosting and cloud computing environment. With storage costs diminishing and with increasing adoption of cloud computing and a myriad of competitors offering cloud computing services, will Amazon's strategy of unrelated diversification play off? Or in other words has Amazon's DNA undergone a radical shift from retailing? In the process has it diluted its core competency in online distribution by getting into unrelated businesses from publishing to storage?

GE has several unrelated businesses in various verticals from design, engineering, construction, manufacturing, distribution, healthcare, media, broadcasting and financial services etc. At some time each of these were leaders in their segment, but now they face intense competition in several segments. A case in point is GE Money. Apart from organic growth, GE has grown through acquisitions and diversifications as well. Siemens, UTC, SPX, Altria, Tatas, Siemens, ABB etc., are global companies somewhat similar to GE in their operational model. For example Tatas took advantage of the easy credit acquire companies abroad. They also made forays into unrelated businesses like low cost housing. Interestingly in the mid-eighties Tatas actually had hived off and divested non-core businesses and set off on a consolidation strategy, concentrating on steel, infrastructure, cement and commercial vehicles. However since then they have expanded may LOBs, and have successfully introduced newer ones such as Tata Housing, and acquired Ritz Hotel in Boston, Corus Steel, Tetley Tea, Land Rover and Jaguar, and acquired and resold Glaceau Vitamin fortified water brand to Coke. However many of these acquisitions were financed through costly debt and the same is now hanging over their head like a Damocles sword, given the credit meltdown. Though forward and backward integrations and related and unrelated diversification are great strategies in a growing economy (market), would the same be true in a marketplace that is saturated for a product or service? At what point in its lifecycle should a company resist the urge to diversify and stick to its knitting? Drug companies, with shrinking pipelines and competition from low cost generics are actually facing this dilemma, and some are in the process of reinventing themselves as Biotech companies through mergers and acquisitions.

Likewise there are other successful companies such as IBM, Oracle and Cisco which have reinvented themselves by changing strategies through acquisitions and new product developments; there are some not-too-successful examples as well such as SUN and General Motors. Though bankrupt now, GM apart from manufacturing and selling cars and trucks and financing through GMAC, also provides geo-location and satellite navigation services through GM Onstar services. Though Onstar may help sell more cars, the business and technology is completely unrelated to GMs core operations in the car business. Likewise SUN though a leader in IT infrastructure services at one time with several innovations to its credit including the radical Java platform was struggling to hold itself against competition due to several unrelated products in its portfolio. It would have disintegrated slowly if it was not acquired by Oracle.

On the other hand, companies such as Exxon-Mobil, Rio-Tinto and Arcelor-Mittal and Coca-Cola have stuck to their core, and build capacities around their competence with global acquisitions and through backward integrations and upstream diversification.

Business strategists such as C.K Prahalad and Gary Hamel etc., have been advocating businesses to focus on their core competencies and hive off non core business operations. In fact the same argument has been extended for businesses to focus on their core operational processes and outsource non-core or supporting processes such as Payroll, Accounts, IT Support Services etc., to third party service providers. The current trends in management thought are to grow and evolve companies into learning organizations with creativity and innovation as core competencies to sustain competitive advantage in the fiercely competitive global marketplace.

As I had mentioned in one of my earlier posts, what makes some companies thrive and grow by reinventing themselves regardless of organic growth or through acquisitions, and others to wilt away into oblivion like a withered leaf? What are the various factors that determine the life-span and lifecycle for companies? Are the lifelines of companies an outcome of the leaders' vision that set a path and direction or are they an outcome of DNA mutations such as changes forced upon them by the marketplace? What will be the nature of enterprises of tomorrow? Would the leading business of tomorrow be larger diversified conglomerates or would these be smaller businesses operating in a niche?

Locked in the cloud

Sethu Iyer — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 04:42:00 GMT

The demonstrated success of software as a service (SaaS) such as Salesforce.com, Zoho, etc., has inspired hosting providers and infrastructure vendors to provide similar capabilities such as Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) through cloud based computing.

Many organizations have begun exploring cloud computing for hosting their applications. If not for production stage deployments, there are benefits in using the cloud for development and testing purposes. Obviously, the key benefits of embracing the cloud are lower capital costs of infrastructure, lower operational and maintenance expenses, lower storage costs, ability for universal access through the net, and ability to leverage virtualization effectively amongst others.

From a purely financial perspective since the cloud infrastructure is a leased asset, it can be construed to be off- balance sheet financing, and can be attractive to many companies in need of cash and could treated akin to vehicle and other infrastructure leasing etc., but that is a different topic in itself lending itself to comparison possibly with Outsourced Managed Services.

Though the traditional resistance to go to a cloud based environment because of issues such as information security and data leakage, reliability, availability etc., are still pertinent and valid, one of the major risk is vendor lock-in and getting pigeon holed into a single service provider. What would happen if a customer wants to change the cloud infrastructure vendor? How seamless would be the transition to move from one vendor to another? This is where standards are required for interoperability between cloud vendors. Apparently there are already disagreements between IBM, Amazon and Microsoft on the Open Cloud Manifesto. Another organization called Open Cloud Consortium comprising of a few universities and companies such as Cisco and Yahoo are attempting to evolve standards around cloud interoperability.

Until such time interoperability standards evolve, companies may choose private clouds as an alternative. This is a safer bet, since it provides the benefits of cloud but is managed internally by companies.

A case for social network enabled intranets

Sethu Iyer — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 05:09:00 GMT

Today most people participate in one or many social networking sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Ning, Twitter etc. Additionally Blogging, Podcasting, Wikis, Discussion Forums, Communities, Tagging, Ratings, Reviews and Search has enabled unfettered communications transcending geographic boundaries.

However when it comes to the intranet, though companies do talk of internal facebooks and Linkedin's, the actual benefit and ROI calculations from social networking sites are little difficult to quantify. However the benefits of social capabilities within intranets are clearly evident and could come from cost savings from information reuse, knowledge sharing, reducing cycle time to onboard new employees, effectiveness improvements by building and retaining of intellectual capital etc., and revenue generation opportunities through collaborative participation in a sales process etc. Some of these are elaborated below.

1. People associate and connect with people: In the earlier days Intranets (and Portals) were targeted to specific segments or constituents such as Marketing Portal, HR Portal, and Employee Portals etc. At best portals within an enterprise could be similar to iGoogle or Netvibes, where users get access to specific applications or content by virtue of their roles in the organizations. These are usually controlled by their administrators and LOB managers. Unlike such portals, social networking sites within organizations are more transparent and seamless. Rather than siloed boundaries defined by functional segments, social networking sites enables users with common interests to form communities and groups. Thus it is not uncommon to see a network community comprising of individuals from customer care, sales, accounts receivables and engineering sharing a common interest. Though functionally they may be segregated, by virtue of such an association they would be able to collectively work towards common goals such as enhancing customer satisfaction.

2. Employees will remain more connected to their jobs: Social networking sites within an intranet could reduce voluntary attrition and turnover because employees will be actively engaged with the social fabric of the company which in fact reflects the underlying culture of the organization. People like to work with people they are able to relate with and share something in common, and social networking sites enables nurturing and building such relationships.

3. Tap collective wisdom of employees: Knowledge accumulated within an organization is hidden in the brains of people. Such internal social networking sites enable free knowledge sharing that can be automatically captured and repurposed. It provides capabilities to identify individuals as experts in a specific domain and allows others to reach out to such experts for their opinions. Such experts could aid in mentoring and guiding people. It unlocks the hidden intellect which would otherwise be lost when an employee retires or leaves the company. Better informed employees are more productive employees.

4. Improves productivity: Well informed and empowered employees are generally more productive. Transparent communications facilitated through internal social networking sites obviates the need for strict controls and processes and enables unfettered information sharing among employees.

5. Faster problem resolution: Employees can broadcast requests for help through discussion forums and discussion rooms. Some social networking products give users the ability to rate responses and allows experts to mark a thread as a confirmed /suggested solution. Such answers could be accumulated and posted to a wiki which could become a self evolving knowledge base.

6. Flattens company structure. The beauty of social networking sites lies in its ability to demolish formal organizational hierarchies. A comment or a post can be read by any participant within the community including the CEO. Senior management can understand and read the pulse of employees by monitoring the chatter within the networking sites. Based on this information they can proactively work with employees in resolving issues and contributing meaningfully to their needs. Such sites also enable integration between siloed functional boundaries such as finance, marketing, sales, production etc. Traditionally such departments are at loggerheads because of conflicting and disconnected departmental goals.

7. Facilitates internal communications: This is especially important for field facing staff and on-the-move employees, who otherwise would seldom get a chance to interact with their peers and other people within the company. Informal communications through social networking sites in a telecommuting or mobile world brings spirit of camaraderie. Such people can either form formal groups facilitated by the management or can participate in informal self regulated groups as well. If properly used such an environment can complement or even could be an alternative to emails as a means of communication.

8. Bring new employees up to speed: The knowledge and information in such sites if properly captured and repurposed can be hugely helpful in getting new employees up to speed. This could be effectively used for workplace training and enablement. New employees can be linked up with online buddies to make them comfortable and help them blend effortlessly with their peers and supervisors. Such hires can be encouraged to participate in informal groups, and other participants in the group can respond to any questions etc. Such sites could also be used for communicating corporate policies, business processes or areas related to compliance through an informal setting.

9. Help create a virtual water cooler: Allows people to engage in informal and casual conversations leading to bonding among co-workers. People can informally comment on things like cafeteria menu, or have classifieds columns or an internal craigs-list kind of environment for buying selling goods etc.

10. Idea Management and Innovation: Such sites can foster creativity by enabling employees to post ideas to a common forum and others can comment, rank, rate, and participate. Once an idea gets accepted by a large number of users the same can be moved into a more formal process. Senior management can get involved at at appropriate time with investment of time, money and resources. Ideally senior management could act as an Internal VC to evaluate and support best voted ideas. Such a process would help create innovative Intrapreneurs within an organization and such innovations could be an effective competitive edge for the company in the marketplace.

How to reduce healthcare costs

Sethu Iyer — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 00:34:00 GMT

From an article in Time…

If there is an ideal out there, Baucus says, it can be seen in the kind of medicine already being practiced by Kaiser Permanente, the Mayo Clinic, Intermountain Healthcare and Geisinger Health System, which manage to hold down costs and get better results. Their operations have fostered closer teamwork among care providers. Also important will be electronic record-keeping that saves time and avoids errors, and comparative-effectiveness research that gives doctors and patients a better sense of which treatments work best. And a reformed health-care system would put more emphasis on preventive care and managing such chronic conditions as asthma, heart disease and diabetes that now account for 75 cents out of every medical dollar spent.

The Five Big Health-Care Dilemmas – TIME

Today healthcare providers are reimbursed based on the quantity and volume of services they provide with little emphasis on the quality of the outcome. Hence a patient may undergo the same procedure multiple times with little or no change in outcome. Instead of finding opportunities for early intervention and prevention the onus somehow seems to be towards letting conditions become chronic resulting in costly and avoidable treatments. Ironically, it is financially advantageous to a hospital to have a patient come in several times for a procedure or surgery rather than get a single effective procedure and get discharged. Add to the fact that due to inefficient systems, patients are often times recommended duplicate procedures and tests that simply adds to the final costs but does not contribute to favorable outcomes.

Customers shopping for products are often allowed to test them before they buy and return the same if they aren’t fully satisfied with it. Most products are covered by warranties and guarantees for quality and performance. Why not apply the same rules to health services rendered by hospitals? Why as a consumer of services, a patient is not allowed to pre-negotiate a price for a procedure or a service? Also why don’t hospitals provide a guarantee/warranty for the procedure or service they perform? Wouldn’t market dynamics settle the price at a level people are willing to pay?

In a Supply chain scenario the objective is always to minimize the number of links (bottlenecks/middlemen) in the distribution chain to minimize costs and increase effectiveness. Likewise, why aren’t we able to apply the same rules to healthcare services, where a bulk of the costs are due to the operational inefficiencies of payers who also act as middlemen in determining the procedure or treatment a patient has to undergo?

That being said, some hospitals are making inroads into guaranteed services, which means that within a given guarantee period if a patient returns for the same treatment, then the same would be provided free of cost. At a minimum, I think such guarantees should be mandatorily provided for implants and prosthetic devices.

Content Management Solutions - ever stretching finish line

Sethu Iyer — Wed, 27 May 2009 02:39:00 GMT

The world of enterprise content interestingly has evolved into complex hodgepodge comprising of web content management, document management, rich media management including videos, enterprise collaboration, social collaboration and communities, management of the entire spectrum from static to transactional content, and ability to provide real time updates alongside static content, ability to analyze, personalize and finally recommend the right content based on the context and intent of the user's persona.

The challenge today is not just managing content, nor the ability to get the right results from a keyword search, but the capability to provide the right content to each constituent based on context and intent regardless of where the user came from or the device used for accessing content - for example someone visiting a site from a Smartphone or a web browser should get the same experience. This transcends beyond the traditional concepts of implicit, explicit, roles based, rules based personalization or capabilities of generating and pushing content and personalized landing pages based on internal taxonomies mapped to user profiles.

With the newer social media capabilities such as world of twitters and facebook, the finish line in terms of features and functions seem to be an ever stretching line, especially when content needs to be syndicated and distributed through such social media sites as well. Some of the radical innovations in the content management space seem to be around personalized content delivery that includes the ability to push content through user defined interoperable web-gadgets that can be deployed on any websites, smartphones, desktop etc., regardless of technology used in such systems. This includes the ability to provide dynamic mash-ups aggregating content from several sources into a unified view. Personalization based on social recommendations is another such area alongside with web analytics. With the economic downturn, and slashing of marketing budgets, more and more companies would be embracing the web as opposed to traditional media to reach out to constituents and prospects. With a plethora open-source CMS products and consolidation of the pure-play commercial CMS solutions it is imperative that a company embarking on a content strategy should have its vendor selection process closely aligned with its business goals, unlike in the past where such initiatives were largely IT driven.

Clarity - the missing link?

Sethu Iyer — Wed, 20 May 2009 13:49:00 GMT

The world's complex "just in time" manufacturing supply chains are making it increasingly tough for Zoran, and any other single link in the chain, to know what's going on just a few links away. Sometimes, Zoran itself doesn't even know how its own chips are used: One batch it thought was destined for DVD players instead turned up in digital picture frames.

The recession has exposed a harsh side effect of the supply-chain system.

Forced to guess at demand for their products in a plummeting market, everyone hit the brakes, hard.

Clarity Is Missing Link in Supply Chain - WSJ.com

The above article in the Wall Street Journal of May 18th, 2009 provides insights into the plight of suppliers in a value-chain operating in isolation without sufficient knowledge of the demand side of the supply chain equation. Though forecasting takes into consideration variables influencing demand, it is still prone to errors that get compounded during unpredictable economic conditions, especially when visibility into the variables influencing demand cannot be identified accurately.

The case with Bestbuy highlighted in this article is a classic indicator of this problem. They were unable to accurately forecast demand for DVD players given the economic uncertainties, and hence arbitrarily chose a conservative approach and slashed forecast numbers – hence the “independent demand forecast” itself was to some extent biased. The other suppliers in this chain, would have altered their production schedules based on this forecast, factoring their manufacturing cycle times and procurement lead times which would have introduced distortions (minimum batch quantity etc.) thereby affecting the “dependent demand” across other links in the chain which affects the fulfillment process. Though generalizations cannot be made, the extent of distortions introduced in the fulfillment process itself depends on a product’s order-to-cash cycle such as Engineer to Order, Made to Order, Assemble to Order or Made to Stock.

Shifting gears, the unpreparedness of Hospital Emergency Rooms to handle the influx of patients fearing swine-flu affliction is exactly the same as the issue faced by Bestbuy in predicting consumer demand.

Thus the basic issue here is with forecasting and has nothing much to do with JIT systems. Any inventory build-up just hides problems in the supply chain, and is not at all desirable. A JIT system only ensures that no fat builds up in the chain, and adds to the costs. Of course, poorly executed JIT systems that just pushes the risks to the supplier who assumes the responsibilities for the inaccurate forecasts provided by the retailer or distributor in the supply chain, but that is a subject in itself.

Portal Upgrade Cheatsheet

Sethu Iyer — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 02:42:00 GMT

Portals have evolved over years and many companies are now faced with the need to upgrade or migrate to a newer Portal environment to take advantage of the Web 2.0 or other social media capabilities that were unavailable in the earlier versions. Some of these include simple things like the need for parallel portlet rendering with AJAX or ability to use third party JavaScript libraries for optimized User Interfaces, the need to create social groups and microsites etc. Such upgrades sometimes becomes challenging with the huge proliferation of multiple Portal sites and portlets. However with some advance planning, such upgrades or migrations can be done with relative ease, more so if the process incorporates best practices and upgrade steps documented in advance. The following steps are common for any such upgrade and can be applied for most portal products.

1. Identify the Current State:

Infrastructure Components: Identify and document the existing deployment with respectto the Operating System, Application Server, JDK/JVM used, Web Server, Database, Authentication Systems, Authorization Systems (any SSO Solutions), LDAP etc.
Identify the deployment topology; especially in a globally distributed environment understand the number of clusters, standby and failover mechanisms, performance SLAs, harware load balancers etc. Also document how the physical deployment is done especially the components within the DMZ and behind the firewall.
Earlier, many vendors had their own names for Portlets. They were known as modules, gadgets, pagelets etc. These Portlets were built on proprietary standards. These days portals can support a wide array of standards based Portlets such as JSR 168 and its sequel JSR 286, WSRP 1.0 and WSRP 2.0 etc. Identify and document the Portlets of each type namely, JSR 168 Portlets, WSRP Portlets, proprietary Portlets such as pagelets or gadgets etc. Also, retain the older Test scripts if available or create new ones for the Portlets and Portal to ensure successful functional testing post upgrade.
If any of the Portlets provides transactional capabilities identify how are these transactions handled? Does it involve a middle-ware? Is it done asynchronously or synchronously? What are the frequencies of such updates? Are there any security requirements that need to be taken care of?

2. Determine the future state:

This would include the newer operating system, if a virtualized environment is going to be used then the type of virtualization software. How the development, staging & UAT and Production En vironments are set up.
Identify and document the down time (if any) permitted for the upgrade.
Identify of any of the Portal components or Portlets need to be re-configured before deployment. Sometimes JSR 168 and 286 Portlets may need to be repackaged before they are redeployed, especially if a different Application Server is going to be used.

3. Governance and Management.

The portal is essentially an aggregation framework that allows delivery of different applications through a common front end. In a distributed and decentralized environment, the Portlets are usually managed by different business groups or departments. Identify the key owners of the Portlets in such environments, and such upgrades could impact their business. The owners could be department heads or LOB managers.

4. Resource Planning:

Identify the resources and timeline required for the upgrade/migration. This is usually the most challenging part, since it involves people within and outside the organization. Also this is a fine blend of art and science, and success greatly depends on the skills of the project manager in holding a dynamic team together. Especially identify, how many of these would be in-house resources, how many would be provided by a systems integrator or software vendor, the physical location of these resources - onsite, offsite, near-shore or, offshore. Identify their roles, responsibilities and issue escalation procedures - such the database administrator, deployment engineer, person responsible for installation and configuration, team responsible for migration and deployment of legacy code, teams for code reviews, module testing, integration testing and stress & performance testing.

5. Continuously Communicate:

Document and enforce proper communication protocols - such as periodic review meetings, stand-up meetings before go live etc., define the frequency of such meetings, identify the meeting lead and organizer. Identify persons responsible for documenting the meeting notes and follow-ups for timely completion of tasks. Also, once the go live date is decided, communicate the same to the user community and get their buy-in.

6. Risk Mitigation Plans:

Despite best intentions and however well planned and documented, things can go wrong with any implementation. This could be events within and outside the control of the implementation team such as delay in procurement of hardware to getting the infrastructure in place. Ensure all possible risks are documented with suitable mitigation plans.

Would Digital Medical Records Increase Health-Care Costs?

Sethu Iyer — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 13:47:00 GMT

In an article titled “Wrong Prescription” of April 6th issue of TIME magazine, the author Scott Haig argues that digitizing medical records is not a panacea for the ever increasing healthcare costs. He in fact states that systems to support EMRs are being driven by the profit motives of payers and care providers and hence they stand to benefit more than patients or physicians. Though, such systems would be able to reduce the “care to billing” cycle-time by passing information instantly to billing, the reverse could also happen, and the care options provided to patients may be dictated by the options provided by the billing system. Given the fact that the treatment options would be based on acomputer’s assessment of a situation, physicians would no more be able to write anything but would be forced to comply with the limited choices provided by the EMR system leaving very little to the judgment of the physicians themselves.

Though I partially agree, one also need to look at this from a broader perspective. Today the manual systems and siloed processes are more prone to abuse and fraud. The reports about the nexus between pharmaceutical companies and physicians are not new, which has forced the need for greater transparency in donations and contributions made by these companies to physicians’ pet projects. A well integrated system will only reduce such incidences.

In the absence of an electronic system, It would be physically impossible to maintain a paper trail of all the documents leave aside identifying the early warning indicators, understanding the trends and potential risk category a patient may fall into. There would be no interchange of data between hospitals and chances are the same procedure or treatments may be repeated resulting in increased costs. Over a period of time the data collected from such systems (without compromising patient information) can be used to evolve benchmark references for measuring the efficacy of the care administered by physicians and hospitals. The “core measures” specifications of the joint commission are a path in the same direction. If product companies and service organizations can provide service level agreements why not hospitals as well for the treatments they administer? I think over time such a system would benefit payers, hospitals and patients alike, but effective implementation of such systems are key to its success.

Web Usability - Don't make me think

Sethu Iyer — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 22:53:00 GMT

I recently read a book on Web Usability by Steve Krug titled "Don’t make me think - a common sense approach to Web Usability"

Though I have been in the WCM space for several years, and thought I professed all the do’s and don’ts of the web, especially on web interface patterns (http://www.welie.com/patterns/) and designing outcomes based on statistical analysis such as A/B testing, Multivariate testing and all its statistical variants like Taguchi method for better user conversions, with this one was really a refreshing read.

The book just goes into the basics and encourages sticking to conventions when it comes to web-design, because people are familiar with well applied conventions. They need less time to react or make the next click - similar to good street signs.

I have seen many home pages cluttered with so much content... company's brands, teasers, promos, deals, twitter feeds, comments, videos, dynamic content, acknowledgments etc.,that it becomes truly confusing for a visitor trying to navigate through the site. Try searching for the supported JDK versions for IBM WebSphere Application Server V7 and you will know what I mean.

Steve advocates web testing early on in the design process and suggests an optimal team of 3 to 4 users for round of testing. If a page is well designed, then a user must be able to answer the following questions without any hesitation, and must be able to do this after being led to a page blindfolded without being given the context or intent of the test.

What site is this? (Site Id)
What page am I on? (Page Name)
What are the major sections on this site? (Sections)
What are my options at this level? (Local Navigation)
Where am I in the scheme of things? (You are here indicators - breadcrumbs)
How can I search?

Short and lucidly written for non-technical business folks, yet very informative book - can be read in a few hours.

What channel of Information influences you the most?

Sethu Iyer — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 19:54:00 GMT

For one of my meetings in NYC I took a taxicab from Penn Station to the Hilton at 54th Street, instead of the subway trains that I am used to. I took the taxi because I hadn’t had time for a coffee that morning and hence planned to down a grande Starbucks on taxi ride to the meeting. I got into some small talk with the cab driver and soon realized what a mistake it was to engage in such conversations. As soon as we started talking, the cabbie fully took charge of the conversation and started to demonstrate his inane ability to have a solution for every problem in the world. He seemed to have a solution for the traffic congestions in the city, to ongoing crisis in the middle-east, to mortgage meltdown, bailouts and stimulus plans. He had his reasons and conspiracy theories to back up his arguments. At one point I was about to tear my hair and jump out of the cab.

But later that got me thinking – isn’t the information explosion we see on the web something similar to what the taxi driver demonstrated verbally? Many proponents of the new media may disagree with me and state that there is a shift in authority and anyone with access to a blog can now deliver news, views and opinions and this provides a level playing field to anyone who has the talent and drive. The privilege no more rests with a limited few from the large publishing houses.

However that being said, aren’t unsolicited opinions the cheapest commodities in the world, and aren’t there millions like the taxi driver just waiting for an opportunity to dump them on anyone willing to lend an ear and listen. Just because the bandwidth and storage is free doesn’t mean the content the bandwidth carries can be garbage and trash.

This then raises another question – which channel of information influences you the most? Are there a few select sources that we can rely on for its authenticity or is everything flattened out without users getting a chance to separate the wheat from the chaff? I know I can bookmark content sources at delicious and dig it and, subscribe to select feeds, manipulate and mash it up etc., but then the fear of losing something that I did not know in the first place, makes me google the keyword once too often, and that lands me into an inextricable web. When I put this question to a friend – he retorted back and asked me my SocialMediaIQ – I said I don’t know, more so because he is a person who discreetly holds the view that the meaning of Copyright in blogosphere is same as the “Right to Copy”, which leaves the question of the most influencing channels unanswered.

Google Health, RHIO and HIE

Sethu Iyer — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 14:46:00 GMT

Google Health brings in a new dimension to the ever growing search for finding a solution for storage, management and distribution of Electronic Medical Records (EMR).

Until so far the onus of managing a health record was the responsibility of the care provider or hospital. But now with Google Health patients would be able to access, organize and manage their health records. It allows the patient to gather this information from participating hospitals, physicians, and pharmacies and store them at a single place and also provides them with the capability to share this information with different physicians and hospitals. The success of such as system depends on the interoperability between the disparate applications used by Care Providers, Hospitals, Pharmacies and Payers.

Health Information Exchanges (HIE) and Regional Health Information Organizations (RHIO) attempts to do the same thing. Many hospitals have successfully implemented or are in the process of implementing such a system.

In one of the hospitals networks I was involved with, there were many challenges in implementing such a system.

a) To begin with, the basic patient information was distributed among these hospitals, and quite often the same patient would have visited multiple hospitals, hence there could be duplicate patient information. Creating a unified Master Patient Index (MPI) using such data was a project in itself. After this a Record Locator Service had to be created to query and identify a patient using a deterministic or a probabilistic match using one or several patient variables such as SSN, driver’s license number, DofB, address, or any other demographic profile that uniquely identifies a patient.

b) Once this was done, there was a challenge of physician authentication to access this data. Since the data was stored in different hospitals, and each hospital had their own user authentication system, a SSO solution was necessary to eliminate multiple logins.

c) After this there was a challenge of identifying which physician gets to see what patient data. How could Lab ordering and Lab data or electronic prescription and fulfillment data be automatically associated with patient? And how can physicians communicate between themselves securely and use this data meaningfully in their diagnosis?

d) Finally how to make this model scalable, beyond a few hospitals who participate in a regional alliance - RHIO ultimately was purely based on asynchronous messaging using a common protocol. The HL7 standards provide a good framework and XML formats for common data exchange.

If Google Health is able to fulfill all of the above functional capabilities, including building a larger network and is able to rope in more Care Providers, Hospitals, Payers and Patients, then it has the potential to revolutionize the Health Industry by providing a common framework for storage and exchange of health data, and possibly an alternative to RHIO and HIE.

Embracing Social Media for Healthcare

Sethu Iyer — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 05:46:00 GMT

The reform of the healthcare system has been one of the major agendas of the Obama Administration. An aging population with rising trends in chronic illnesses has seen a surge in demand for care providers, but the ever increasing healthcare costs are making even some basic healthcare unaffordable, leaving many uninsured or underinsured. It is ironic that, despite a market driven economy, a patient (consumer) is unable to negotiate a price for the service provided by the hospital – such as a performance based payment for service rendered. The prices are negotiated by health insurance providers and hospitals, which have exactly divergent interests at stake. About 20bn dollars have been earmarked for reforms especially to make basic healthcare affordable for everyone by streamlining efficiencies and better collaboration between health insurance companies, care providers and patients.

There have been many fragmented attempts by hospitals to increase efficiencies through better management of Electronic Health Records (EHR), investments in Hospital Information Technology (HIT) and collaboration and interoperability between regional health providers in the form of Regional Health Information Organizations (RHIO) etc. But much needs to be done.

Human beings are social animals and they behave and listen to the common wisdom of the crowd….see facebook, myspace, twitter, and host of blogs and forums. Hospitals could perhaps leverage this human behavior and embrace some of the social media tools to distribute information and engage patients in a participative manner. Such a social engagement would foster a sense of community among like minded patients suffering from similar chronic ailments such as diabetes, heart problems; obesity etc. The patients can learn from others experiences and such an informally informed patient would be more willing to make lifestyle changes in prevention and cure of similar diseases. For example in www.patientslikeme.com people not only learn and share their experiences, but this provides a valuable source of information for physician, hospitals and drug manufacturers in providing a treatment.

Common among such social media tools that could be used effectively are patient blogs and physician blogs, community forums and message boards, audio/video Podcasts by physicians, success stories by patients etc. Ultimately, at the end of the day when the patient knows what to expect – he/she would be ready for the choices. An informed patient usually would make the right choices, which is fundamental to the treatments of come of common chronic ailments especially lifestyle based such as diabetes, hypertension etc.

The California Healthcare Foundation has a great report on the same.

Evolution, Adaptability and Survival - lessons to learn from Fortune 100 companies

Sethu Iyer — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 22:16:00 GMT

What is that makes some companies adapt and grow, and other to wither away to failure? What is that makes some of them so resilient to external forces, and bring about disruptive yet positive changes? Basic accounting practices or concepts of finance haven’t changed from 1955 to 2008, save some regulatory practices for sake of transparency.

Of course, in the past several years globalization has become a reality, opening up newer markets and also newer competition. Market forces have pushed higher efficiency levels across value chains, productivity levels are at an all time high and wastages across the supply chains are at an all time low.

Many of the companies that did not make it to the 2008 Fortune 100 list also had made forays into global markets at some time during their lifecycle. They certainly had high quality of committed, skilled and high-performing employees, and many of these companies at some point in time had set standards for others to follow. Yet almost 80% of those from 1955 are not in the Fortune 100 list today. However the 20 companies that made it in 1955 and in 2008 have had a combined growth from 33bn USD to 1879bn USD in a period of 53 years.

What is the secret of their success? Some common characteristics and traits that are evident in these companies are their adaptability and readiness to change, ability to innovate, enforce realistic goals and operational metrics and ruthlessly enforce a culture of accountability at all levels for results.

Social Media - Is it relevant for your industry?

Sethu Iyer — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 05:41:00 GMT

Every company I talk to these days wants to embrace social media applications such as Collaboration, Blogs, Wikis, Forums, Ratings, Reviews, Facebook and LinkedIn type applications, third party widgets etc. in some form or shape across their web properties on the intranet, extranet and internet.

Social capabilities such as Blogs by employees and customers, product technical reviews, ability for customers to review and rate products etc., certainly help in increasing mindshare and provides valuable feedback that could be used for product development and managing perceptions of a product or a service etc.

It is however imperative that companies must evaluate the benefit of using such social media tools and understand the strategic alignment of such applications with their business process before jumping headlong and implementing a social media platform.

The benefits of using such social tools depends on several factors such as the industry vertical the company is in, and the type of goods and services sold by the company, its distribution channel and selling process – whether the product is a “Made to Stock” item or is it a “Made to Order” or “Engineer to Order” item, including the cycle time from order to delivery.

For example, new age products such as gaming gizmos or companies in the services industry such as travel, hospitality, media and entertainment industry can reap great benefits from social participation through customer reviews and ratings.

However a company selling industrial consumables or undifferentiated commodities may not be able to get as much benefit. This is because the buyer would know the exact technical specification of the product and would engage in a transaction only if the product conforms to or surpasses the stated standards. Think about this – would an 87 octane gasoline differ from one manufacturer to another? Adding a blog or a rating and review system may not in any way impact the sales of the product.

Likewise, industrial buyers also usually go into a long term arrangements with their suppliers and deliveries are made to predefined schedules. With Just-In-Time supply strategies, ability to configure the velocity of the manufacturing to the velocity of demand etc., social tools may provide only limited benefit.

Collaboration Capabilities for Internet based Auction Mechanisms in Supply Chains

Sethu Iyer — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 01:42:00 GMT

Prof. Anand Nair, a good friend of mine had published a paper on this topic and has provided excerpts in his blog. My thoughts on the same are below.

Internet-enabled Auction Mechanisms in Supply Chains

In a paper that I published in 2005, I assert that in its present state of affair an electronic marketplace would become nothing but a virtual place where the competing firms would be indulged in price wars to maintain their presence. A prolonged spur of activities in this direction would lead to a stalemate where the winners are losers. In the long-run it is important that the decisions associated with electronic auctions must be based on more than bargain-basement price tags. The business intangibles focused on developing a strong buyer-supplier relationship, will determine the quality of the purchase contract.

To survive, many exchanges are already starting to change business strategies, shifting from public auction-type exchanges to private exchanges run exclusively for a specific shipper and its core carriers. Others are transforming themselves into application service providers (ASPs) that rent software solutions online. Many are looking to transform themselves from public exchanges that are open to all comers into private exchanges that provide a platform for a specific company and its trading partners to collaborate on the Internet. A lot of them are migrating to collaborative logistics networks. The focus is moving away from a spot exchange to providing the infrastructure for companies to collaborate with their existing partners.

Business NOT as Usual: Ideas, Insights & Intuition: Internet-enabled Auction Mechanisms in Supply Chains

Some years ago few of my friends had started up on a venture to do a similar auction enabled exchange for basic steel products - long and flat products including Alloy steels, but it was too early at that time and there wasn't much buy-in. Eventually many exchanges have come up since then, but most of them typically revolve around auctions based only on price or price&delivery of readily available stock.

An exchange platform for Industrial goods functions much differently from eBay type auction sites. This is because, transaction of industrial goods usually involves multiple parties such as the seller, buyer, inspection agencies, multi-modal shipping companies and banking service providers. A successful transaction involves frequent collaboration between all these parties and relationships are built at many levels that transcend typical buyer-supplier relations.

Unlike a traditional auction site where goods are available in stock to be transacted, an industrial product is often times made to order for a customer, and the process of negotiating the terms in an inquiry including delivery schedules is a collaborative process in itself.

Most industrial goods and consumables are usually certified by third party inspection agencies such as BVQI, SGS, DNV, UL etc., prior to shipments. Most auction enabled sites do not provide the capability for these inspection agencies or suppliers to upload inspection reports and test certificates or other related documents. Some of the additional documentation includes packing lists and Bill of materials (in formats that are different from ERP/SCM defined ones), container loading certificate, mate’s receipt, multi-modal bill of lading, documentation about container placement in the vessel, bank documents such as letters of credit and bills of exchange for negotiation, documentation for payment of statutory tariff, documentation for customs etc. Unfortunately, I am not aware of sites that actually provide all these capabilities, hence it ultimately narrows down to auctions where suppliers compete only on price, leaving other aspects of the transaction to be done outside of the electronic marketplace.

Ideally such sites (or marketplace) should facilitate collaborative interactions between all the parties involved in the transaction. Also such systems should be capable of integration with shipper’s product tracking applications for a view into route planning and logistics. Furthermore such sites should also have records management capability for product traceability in case of defects and recalls. This would be similar to the case-management applications available with insurance companies. Only when such features are provided, can internet based electronic market place can go beyond the typical price based auctions and facilitate meaningful relationships between all parties involved in an industrial transaction.

Considerations for Open Source

Sethu Iyer — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 07:09:00 GMT

The choice of an application whether open-source or commercial-source depends on needs of the organization. The key advantages of open-source are license and code is free, often times the source code allows for customizations and extensions, and some form of basic support may be available from a wide community of users. All of these may be compelling reasons to save money upfront and go open-source. But open-source is not free. The costs for implementing and supporting an open-source product may be almost same as for a commercial product.

Maturity and Adoption

The adoption of open-source has been growing. Many large enterprises have standardized their infrastructure on open-source, especially Linux, Apache etc. This is because open-source “infrastructure” components have evolved and matured. However the same is not true with but the “packaged application” products. Many of these are still on their road to maturity. Though there are many open-source ERP, SCM, Rules Configurators, Collaboration Applications, and Content Management Apps etc., few of them are able to compete with Oracle, SAP and SharePoints of the world especially for enterprise wide deployments. Though the adoption of such open-source applications are on the rise, commercial applications still continue to dominate a large portion of the Enterprise Application market space at least in the near future with open-source apps dominating the SMB marketplace.

Technology, Skills, Support and Maintenance

Also choice of an open-source product depends on the technology the product is built on (PHP, J2EE, Ruby etc.), the skills available in-house for any extensions or customizations or integrations, the size of the community supporting the product, and the capability of the product to support the near term and long term needs of the organization, the risks associated with migrations and upgrades. Such a needs-analysis may suggest the need to go with more than one open-source product for fulfilling an organization’s requirement, whereas a single vendor supplied commercial application suite might fit the bill. Most open-source software is developer centric and thrives only when there is a large user community. Hence we do not see open-source for typical narrow industry specific solutions such as for pharmaceutical clinical trials, Drug Discovery, R&D applications etc.

Cost considerations

Though open source software itself may be available for no-cost, the costs for implementing an open-source product could almost be similar to implementing a commercial product, unless the organizations have sufficient skilled resources available in-house or are able to tap into a large community of users. Open source is free - in the sense of freedom of speech, it does not imply free of cost.

Some lessons learnt

For example in the CMS space, I have tried Joomla and Drupal. While Joomla and Drupal in are good for individual websites, organizations needing a multiple sites with content and asset sharing across them may better opt for other technologies. Neither Joomla nor Drupal has the capability to publish content to multiple end-points running on different technologies such as Microsoft .NET ASP, Java JSP or sites running on other technologies such as Ruby. Bear in mind this is different than hosting multiple siloed sites on a single install.

Also, today content management encompasses areas such web content management, document management, support for digital asset management (for images, audio, video files), and ability to stream these as required, collaboration, records management and often times some sort of digital rights management etc. Also, typically a large organization or an enterprise interacts/communicates with its constituents across several touch-points such as through the web, emails, direct mails, audio/video Podcasts apart from other traditional media. One has to weigh in and see if chosen product would address such diverse needs such as publishing to multiple end-points.