Re: What problems are people in the MV world trying to solve
- From: "GlenB" <batchelg.removeit@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 17 Dec 2008 01:11:18 -0500
"Tony Gravagno" <address.is.in.posts@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in
message news:i1ogk45ftjjobte7tlggopi8vpsj970cit@xxxxxxxxxx
Please forgive a bit of rambling as I try to get out a number of
related thoughts without much time for editing.
[chop]
This is a combination of business and technical. Technical meaning methods
and philosophies dealing with data management and application
enhancement/modifications. I have tons of connectivity and integration
topics to play with but none of them are critical.
The types of problems I try to solve on regular basis require more
business problem solving than technology problem solving. The largest
problem I'm facing right now is how to handle web commerce accounts in our
existing distributor-oriented sales/customer/contact system. The entire
system is centered around a customer account and the ID assigned to it so
purging the "master files" for one-time buyers every 12 months is not really
an option currently. Additionally, there is no way that I can transform the
customer/contact-file-linked orders and invoices into complete snapshops of
the sales transaction and have the rest of the system function properly from
the snapshot. The rest of the system is linked back to the customer and
contact files by account ID. The only solution I've come up with is to dump
the existing customer ID numbering scheme, link the old IDs to either
fixed-length hex or fixed-length decimal values, and generate an account ID
reference system that can point to live files as well as a limited+scoped
cache depending on the source of the request. The sales analysis system only
needs the company name for example, so that's one field in a combined
"account cache" versus an live item in a "master" file. The master files can
be purged without hurting the rest of the system then. The account cache can
be pruned independently.
Having written all of that out, have you ever seen a software tool that can
handle account caching and scoped I/O similar to this? I'll probably end up
writing it myself since I've yet to see anything. I'm sure that this
situation is not unique to us considering the number of MV systems running
e-commerce portals which weren't originally designed for it. The typical
response I have gotten from consultants and VARs is "we use a specific
customer account from your existing master file and manage everything from
the e-store software." That won't cut it for us since we do detailed data
mining on our customer/contact/product/product line sales history. Also, we
don't need or want two sales and customer systems to deal with. The one we
have changes so quickly we can barely keep up with it.
If you look at my most recent blog entry you'll see I've been doing
more work with Microsoft Outlook recently.
remove.pleaseNebula-RnD.com/blog
Do end-users ever ask you folks about integrating Outlook with their
MV apps - sharing contact and event data between the systems? What
about other productivity/organization apps?
The few times I've gotten requests for Outlook have been relating to
assigning reminders. I implemented a VB.NET reminder tool a while back using
code from the MSDN library and from web articles. I think it may get used
once a year if it all.
BTW, isn't it nice of Microsoft to switch to the Word (horrifically
incapable) HTML rendering engine in 2007? Talk about a few/ten steps
backwards in technology progress.
Many companies have automated phone attendants that route calls and
provide information: "press 1 for balance inquiry", "enter a flight
number to hear departure and arrival time", "enter a part number to
get pricing and availability"... Do end-users ever ask you guys about
this sort of thing?
Heh. I've actually tried promoting DTMF querying but the people I've
promoted it to think it is archaic. Afterall, everyone has 'net access even
if it's dial-up. Then there's the vocal usage of the same PBX system, which
most people prefer over automated systems these days. The menu trees and
loops implemented today give DTMF interfacing a bad appearance. I obtained
the Dialogic developer libs back when our voicemail was running on a i586
and attempted to write a DTMF interface API. Like all the fun projects I had
to can it for real projects.
Would you be able to offer your applications to a wider or different
audience if it were mobile-enabled? How many of your clients rely on
the Blackberry or other PDA for messaging and other applications?
If we had a roving sales force, sure. That's not really our industry
though. I implemented an Avantgo version of our original web site but at the
time you had to pay for a channel subscription to get listed in the
directory of stores/services. Times sure have changed. We are moving to
XHTML and onward towards Web 2.0 with our new/upcoming web site. One of the
future projects could be a mobile version of the site. All-Spec.com on the
iPhone. Heh.
Check this out: www.ruggedtabletpc.com
The T8700 is awesome and you can get one for under 4K. Search youtube for
xTablet vids. There's one where they're pitching (not tossing.. pitching)
baseballs into the screen. We were => <= close to getting a demo for our
receiving area but shortly thereafter deemed it a waste of money. It was one
of those cases where throwing a new toy in the process didn't fix a broken
process.
What sort of data gets read manually from external sources then keyed
into your apps? How much time could be saved by automating the
process?
If only OCR was 25 years in the future right now. It's gotten better, but
it still sucks in general. Bar code recognition works pretty well in many of
the document scanner tools. Got some ideas? We get all sorts of packing
lists from vendors and some of them are so thin and faint that you can't
even read then visually. We scan just about everything into our D3 system
and attach the paper to related screens as PDFs.
I think many end-users would like tools to increase their
productivity, but they don't know exactly what to ask for. Or maybe
they know exactly what they want, they just don't ask their MV people.
Or maybe they do ask their MV people and because a solution is
required outside of the box, perhaps it just doesn't get done.
Or maybe they don't want to ask. If they do then they will make their lives
even more complicated considering the spaghetti nightmare they inherited and
have been hacking up for eons. Nathan wrote a nice article in the latest
Spectrum regarding that. I'm awaiting #2.
In an increasingly challenging economy we're seeing companies laying
off employees, and that means the people who remain need to do more.
Automation and alternative access to data may help. I think MV
developers need to do whatever they can to be able to offer these
sorts of solutions.
We've been doing that since I've been @ All-Spec. We run on low margins and
with as few employees as possible. That's the only way you can really be
competitive with global/Internet buying. Companies don't like to change
vendors that they have established relationships with. If you serve the
customer correctly then there's no reason for them to leave. In order to
grow, though, the new customer enticement has to be something other than
inventory level or a pretty web site. Price drives new business in most
cases, but if you can't maintain your level of customer service within the
same profit margin than you'll end up running under. We've seen 20-25% sales
growth per year the last 5 years or so and we've only added a few bodies.
System process and business process streamlining is always the first step to
help handle more business. Adding employees is the last.
A down economy often means increased use of contract service
providers, but if you're not capable of providing the sort of services
that a company needs, they'll look elsewhere. Consultant/developers
need to diversify to increase their chances of qualifying for more
engagements. If you aren't going to diversify by learning new skills,
then the next best thing is collaboration. From this thread and
others related, I'm hoping everyone makes it a point to ask their
clients what can be done to help get through this economic storm, and
then bring challenges back here so that we can document specific
options.
Diversification is critical for any business that wants long term success.
If I think of some topics I'll post 'em. Are you wanting questions from any
specific area?
Thanks for your time,
Tony Gravagno
Nebula Research and Development
TG@ remove.pleaseNebula-RnD.com
GlenB
.
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