The start of a new decade and we have a new Government with some serious change ahead driven primarily on two fronts – Brexit and the need to revisit and re-invest in our much discarded public services after years of austerity, with Health, Justice, Immigration and Defence leading, whilst one should never discount the importance and contribution of all the other departments across Whitehall and of course local government.

While the fog of change slowly lifts, one thing that is clear is that our new Government, which I personally believe is now in situ for the next 10 years, cannot deliver its promised vision without help. That help comes from the myriad of suppliers, small, medium and large, that exist in the various supply chains of the private sector. Exciting? Absolutely! As a Champion of SME’s, who contribute 80% of the British GDP and fuel our economy, the question however is “how do I access that opportunity?”

Navigating Public Sector procurements in such a way that you are successful can seem to be a ‘dark art’ whose secrets are known only by a few. However, the reality is that really isn’t the case but you do need to know the rules of the game (both written and unwritten) and how the game is played. Ultimately Suppliers are businesses and need to be profitable to grow, and that means you need to win; but like any game you are going to have to accept that losing is part of it.

This blog aims to provide some insight, based upon my own experience, into this so-called dark art and hopefully encourage the myriad of great British SME’s to become involved. But be warned; working in the Public Sector is a series of paradoxes simultaneously being the most rewarding and frustrating experience one can imagine.

Rules of the Game

Let’s start with the basics. Public Sector procurement is based upon the concept and the surrounding rules of open and fair competition. This means that Procurement and tendering should be conducted in a fair, open and transparent manner. The most important and broadly accepted principle underlying a modern procurement system is open competition – unrestricted, universal access to the market. Translated it means that there is a level playing field for all and anyone can play.

The other key watch word here is ‘transparency’. In a public procurement this means that information on the public procurement process must be available to everyone: contractors, suppliers, service providers and the public at large, unless there are valid and legal reasons to keep certain information confidential.

Behind these concepts is an entire system of procedures and protocols enshrined in European Law (hopefully in time we will dump some of this unnecessary bureaucracy), that Public Sector Procurement Officers, known as ‘The Authority’ (the “Buyer”) will follow. Unfortunately, at times, they also hide behind them.

Public Sector procurement can be viewed as anything but ‘open and fair’ but you cannot beat the system. What you do need to understand is how to roll with it. This also involves knowing when not to play.

So how do you play the game?

The ‘leg work’ needs to be done BEFORE any procurement ever arrives.  Believe it or not the Public Sector isn’t going to come running to you, you need to go to it. You need to get known and you need to build relationships that allow you to influence and shape people’s thinking. Here’s my checklist…

1.   Be Match Fit –– Is your company ‘match fit’ to play the game in the first place.  What do I mean by this? Is all the company paperwork all up-to-date and filed with Companies House? Insurance all in place? Are you all up-to-date with HMRC? Do all employees and contractors have contracts? Will the company stand-up to basic financial scrutiny? If not, you will fall during basic due diligence 

2.    Understand the Industry (Macro View) – A lot of this can be achieved by just surfing the internet and the industries the Organisation touches. It’s important to know Central or Local Government policy, the Public Sector is the execution vehicle for policy. Educate yourself so when you do meet the department you can have a relevant intelligent conversation. A classic example of this is HM Government’s policy that £1 in every £3 should go to SME’s. Know this and use it to your advantage – nothing like reminding Procurement Officers of government policy     

3.    Understand the Organisation’s Challenges (Micro View) – Understand the organisation you are selling to in terms of what they actually do? Find out what is important to them and learn how to sell to them.  In Central Government every department is different, and no one size fits all, this is due to ‘departmental sovereignty’ where every department effectively has autonomy over its own business operations

4.    Understand the Players and Find your Champions – Meet the players and understand which roles they play – are they an influencer, the end user, the decision maker, the referee (Procurement Officer), the negotiator? It is vitally important you gain insight and understanding as to who’s who in a department and build support from within. You need to get to the ‘C’ suite, create advocates and find champions. You can’t do this during a live procurement, but you can do it before hand

5.    Understand the Politics – This is the Public Sector there is always politics; if what you are proposing is in the wrong direction of travel you are not going to be successful.  Getting access to people is never easy but it is possible. You have to build relationships inside the organisation to understand the political agenda. Remember Public Sector, especially Central Government is a very fast paced moving environment, so you need to stay on top of the political map

6.    Build and Maintain Relationships – Building and maintaining relationships is hard work, and it is also a two-way street.  However, working the Public Sector is always about playing the long game.  People do appreciate you being around and offering opinion and advice, especially when there is no commercial contract in the immediate offering, but later, one day down the line there will be.  Remember People buy from people

7.    Procurement Channels – Understanding the procurement channel and the type of procurement that will be used to buy is absolutely critical.  Get familiar with the different procurement frameworks and avenues.  You have to get on the frameworks, which is time consuming and costly. But this is the investment you have to make in the sector.  One piece of advice –  if you see a procurement titled “OJEU Competitive Dialogue” – stay well clear; this is where the Authority will undertake market testing, make you jump through a number of hoops and have you run around all for no contract to be awarded.  These types of procurements are only for those with very deep pockets and they carry the highest risk profile 

8.    Supply Chain Channels – Public Sector is an ecosystem of Suppliers of all shapes and sizes. Certain engagements are too big for an SME, and Public Sector buyers always look to larger suppliers not only for their skills and capabilities but also to take on the commercial risk.  Such engagements quite often require such Suppliers to use their SME’s in their supply chain.  This is looked upon favourably as they are seen as brining the very best the market can offer to the table, and also solves the headache of HM Government having to run multiple complex procurements. So, get into the larger Suppliers supply chain. Fully accept this is not easy or straight forward, but HM Government usually lends a hand by introducing SME’s to the larger Suppliers as part of the procurement cycle

9.    Educate the Buyer – Influence the Procurement – Every contract that is issued is going to go through a procurement cycle, therefore the trick is to shape the procurement in advance of it formally commencing.  This is achieved by investing your time in educating the buyer in your services and how you can solve their pain points before the procurement commences.  Responding to an RFP or an ITT that is ‘cold’ reduces the chances of success; the reason being that someone else has already shaped the conversation 

10.  Read the Procurement– When the Procurement is issued make sure you READ IT CAREFULLY and respond exactly how you are being asked to.  Failure to do so makes you non-compliant, and you strike out immediately!

11.  Know Your Competition – The competition are important pieces on the chess board. Who is the incumbent supplier? how much does the department spend and with who? (this information is in the public domain) Who are you competing against? Why would you win over them? 

12.  Procurement Scoring and Gamification Theory – Find out who your competitors are and gamify the various scenarios and outcomes.  From this intelligence you can position yourself accordingly.  It is an important exercise to undertake and remember to do it as early as possible as this helps you qualify the opportunity

13.  Understand the Risks Involved and Negotiate – Dealing with the Public Sector is not without risk, and every contract regardless of size, you will find the Authority offsetting their interpretation of the risk onto the Supplier.  This can come in many forms, some of them appear utterly ridiculous from an SME perspective, but understand what you are signing. It’s not in the interests of the Public Sector to bankrupt you, but equally in signing a contract you are taking on the responsibility of delivery.  There is always a negotiation to be had

14.  Get Known, in-fact Get Famous! – You need ‘profile’.  You need to get known (for the right reasons!).  Remember, regardless of how long you have played the game, Public Sector officials “churn” in their roles as much as the Private Sector, so you constantly have to reintroduce yourself and also remember you are only as good as your last project!

Knowing when not to play – Qualify Hard!

Now this is going to be controversial as no one will acknowledge this happens.  However, the reality is it does happen, and you are going to come across the following scenarios when you have played the game long enough. 

From the start of any formal procurement cycle you have to work out quickly as possible if the Authority has already made its decision and is looking for formal legal endorsement through the procurement.  If they are you don’t want to play, as all you are doing is making up the numbers and enforcing that the procurement was legitimate as you competed but lost. As soon as the procurement is issued the game begins as you have to flush out what is really happening.

You do this by qualifying hard through intelligence gathering from any source available.  A word of advice always triangulate intelligence from three sources, so you know on what basis you are making your decision to participate or not. 

Participating and competing is expensive, especially if you are an SME, so you have to know (1) that the playing field is truly level (2) if the procurement has been significantly shaped by someone already and who that someone is (3) do you still have an advantage over the competition that makes your proposition compelling that will get you the chequered flag.

Signs to look out for include, but not limited to:

To a degree this is where experience and gut feel come into play.  The old saying “If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck” meaning if you feel for whatever reason the procurement doesn’t ‘look’ right, then gracefully qualify out explaining your reasons for doing so politely.

Dealing with Losing, Feedback & Challenge

Try not to get upset.  As someone once said “it’s just business”. Personally, I do get upset especially when the outcome is non-comprehendible and seems to defy logic. We only ever get upset over things we care about, and no-one plays to lose, so if you don’t get upset your probably in the wrong game, but learn to let it go. What is important is to understand why you have lost and have the ability to look at how you approached every aspect of the procurement.

Public Sector is about transparency so you should always seek feedback on procurements you lose and also why you have won. However, a constant source of frustration, which I personally frown upon, is when no feedback is ever forthcoming.  Public Sector officials don’t like criticism or challenge however it is very poor form when a Supplier has made significant investment in a procurement not to be given the courtesy of any feedback. If you do see poor procurement practice then do challenge it, but always do this constructively and if necessary, bring it to the attention of the Crown Commercial Service. It’s the only way the whole system ever gets better.

Dark Art demystified

There really is no magic formula, and sometimes it does feel like a complete lottery.  However, you can increase the odds of winning and just like ‘Blackjack’ you only need a small percentage to be in your favour for the house not to win.  You get nothing for coming second, so in summary…

1.    Try and meet the Authority before any procurement begins, introduce yourselves to them and get them to remember you, and if possible, shape their thinking in advance – no one ever got shot for being the solution to someone’s problem

2.    When the procurement arrives qualify the opportunity hard!

3.    Remember, most procurement competitions have been influenced before they are released as they have been shaped by someone.  If that someone isn’t you, then you are on the outside

4.    Do your homework – Policy, department, stakeholders, politics, pain points, killer proposition, competition

5.    You can’t control the competition or what others will do, but you can control yourself – so if you do decide to play focus on you and play your game not someone else’s

6.    If you lose, understand why you have lost.  Ask the question – Should you have played in the first place?

7.    Finally always trust your gut! and apply the “Duck Test”

I hope this blog helps demystify the misnomer that Public Sector procurement is a dark art. SME’s have a fantastic amount to offer the Public Sector, but you still have to win contracts through formal procurements. Hopefully this blog will make you a better player, wishing everyone every success in their endeavours.  Look forward to the comments as always… 

Disclaimer: This is a personal blog. The opinions and views expressed here represent my own and not those of my employer. In addition, my thoughts and opinions change from time to time and I consider this a necessary consequence of having an open mind. This blog is intended to provide a semi-permanent point in time and as such any thoughts or opinions expressed within out of date posts may not be the same or similar to those that I hold today.

I start the new decade as I ended the last. Ask yourself one question are you a tiger? – which way will you go?

“Tiger, one day you will come to a fork in the road,” he said. “And you’re going to have to make a decision about which direction you want to go.” He raised his hand and pointed. “If you go that way you can be somebody. You will have to make compromises and you will have to turn your back on your friends. But you will be a member of the club and you will get promoted and you will get good assignments.” Then Boyd raised his other hand and pointed another direction. “Or you can go that way and you can do something – something for your country and for your Air Force and for yourself. If you decide you want to do something, you may not get promoted and you may not get the good assignments and you certainly will not be a favourite of your superiors. But you won’t have to compromise yourself. You will be true to your friends and to yourself. And your work might make a difference.” He paused and stared into the officer’s eyes and heart. “To be somebody or to do something. In life there is often a roll call. That’s when you will have to make a decision. To be or to do. Which way will you go?” Colonel ’60 second’ Boyd.

Nothing else to be said here…no advice from me or anyone else will help you, but always be true to yourself.

Disclaimer: This is a personal blog. The opinions expressed here represent my own and not those of my employer. In addition, my thoughts and opinions change from time to time and I consider this a necessary consequence of having an open mind. This blog is intended to provide a semi-permanent point in time and as such any thoughts or opinions expressed within out of date posts may not be the same or similar to those that I hold today.

Last thoughts of the year and time to close out the decade and what a decade it has been! This blog is going to be more than a little self-indulgent but hopefully those that read it will draw something from it. So, with a little reminiscing of the early days I want to highlight the positive influence mentors can bring and also say thank you to those that have supported me throughout my career.

I started my career in 1987 at Lloyds Bank at the bottom run of the ladder, in-fact I was in a basement by Blackfriars Bridge on the banks of the River Thames, so you couldn’t get much lower. I never envisaged that one day I would run my own business.

That journey from a lowly “Input / Output Operator” (Yes, that really was my job title) printing bank statements on IBM 3800 laser printers and loading magnetic tapes on an IBM 3420’s tape drive (there the ones you see in the old NASA films) to Chief Executive would never have been possible without those individuals who saw something in me and then took it upon themselves to invest their time into developing me.

My “overnight success” only took 15 years to shape me into an Entrepreneur, and then a further 17 years making a myriad of mistakes and three start-ups until a successful exit.

Serendipity

Throughout my career I have never gone out and looked for a mentor but for some reason circumstance and serendipity have played a part where they have always found me. Yes, some of them were my Managers, but Managers are not necessarily mentors. There is a big difference here. Also, some of them only stay with you for short periods of time, maybe six months to a year, others I can’t get rid of 33 years later! (Big Smile) and have become dear friends.

I have all the academic and professional letters after my name courtesy of seven years of study at night school. Whilst I had my thinking opened through academia it is not this that has got me where I am today, but a combination of personal drive and ambition intrinsically linked to those individuals who were prepared, without asking, to give up their time to listen, to guide, to question and make me think about what I was doing and how I was doing it that has had the real impact on my career. Not only have they made me a better professional but they made me a better person.

Metaphorically, my mentors have come in all shapes and sizes. It would also be fair to say that some of them weren’t even knowingly mentoring me. However, ALL of my mentors have had one thing in common in that they simply wanted to see me succeed.

Raw Material – A Complete Lack of People Skills

In 1987 I was straight out of school and didn’t have a clue about anything except, I didn’t want to go to university and I wanted to work. I did however have a talent for computing and from the start I had a natural grasp on what an IBM mainframe was doing. I can’t tell you why I could do this, I just could. My brain was a constant sponge hungry for knowledge, and I had an ability to learn at pace. This caused its only set of problems, as though I have always been a grafter my people skills were completely undeveloped and my ability to frankly upset people who had been in the job for many years was un-precedented (another natural talent). 

For all my technical talent I struggled to communicate with my peers let alone those senior to me. In-fact I developed a rather unhealthy lack of respect for those who just couldn’t keep up. It is probably this why I still cringe today when I watch “The Apprentice” (love that programme, always wonder how I would get on?) as I see myself from 1987. 

On reflection this fundamental flaw in my DNA was actually my greatest strength – an ability not to follow the crowd, not to accept the status quo, always searching for a better way of doing something through an enquiring mind are the very foundations you need as an entrepreneur. I just didn’t know it then. 

However, this “raw material” needed to be focused, channelled constructively and developed in the right direction to create much needed experience and learning opportunities. I was lucky I had the right people around me that were prepared to knock me into shape.      

Highs and Lows 

I have had many ups and downs over my career. The highs have been incredible, the lows have been so deep at times it would be a lie if I said I didn’t think I wasn’t going to be able to climb out of the various holes I found myself in. 

This brings me nicely to a story that has always resonated with me from the “West Wing”, (for those that don’t know the West Wing, check it out, it was the best political drama every produced). There is a scene from the episode titled “Bartlet for America” where Leo McGary, the White House Chief of Staff tells Josh Lynaham, one of the President’s Senior Advisor’s the following story…

“This guy’s walking down the street when he falls in a hole. The walls are so steep he can’t get out.

A doctor passes by and the guy shouts up, ‘Hey you. Can you help me out?’ The doctor writes a prescription, throws it down in the hole and moves on.

Then a priest comes along and the guy shouts up, ‘Father, I’m down in this hole can you help me out?’ The priest writes out a prayer, throws it down in the hole and moves on

Then a friend walks by, ‘Hey, Joe, it’s me can you help me out?’ And the friend jumps in the hole. Our guy says, ‘Are you stupid? Now we’re both down here.’ The friend says, ‘Yeah, but I’ve been down here before and I know the way out.'”

Now you have to dig yourself out of the hole, but it helps when you have someone who tells you where to dig and shows you how. That’s the value of what mentorship is all about.

What to look for in a Mentor

I don’t believe a mentor takes you to the next level that’s something you have do yourself. However, their advice and guidance can give you the focus and direction that definitely helps you raise your game if you are prepared to listen and learn. 

To My Mentors Throughout the Years 

I am today without these people being in my life. So indulge me here please… 

Mum & Dad – for instilling my work ethic in me, and the values embedded into all their three children of “Always treat people how you expect to be treated”; “Always be true to yourself and don’t just follow the crowd”; and “No one ever owes you anything in life”

Ian Cohen & Chris Hunter – who took an 18-year old boy who had a lot of potential but didn’t know his arse from his elbow and got him to calm down and to focus. They still guide my career even now and I still go to them for advice, 33 years later – can you believe that???

Barry Coleman – my friend and my first Manager who actually understood me and built upon the on-going work in-progress. Never ever afraid to pull me up when he had to and was never phased by giving me a real wake-up call when I got too big for my boots 

John Downey – the man who not only introduced me to project management psychology and how to play the corporate politics “power game” to one’s advantage to get things done, but also taught me there was more to life than just work. Albeit it took me years to master this but his impact on me was enormous, and I am forever grateful for his tutelage

Julie Winterburn – who spent hours listening to me, even when my first girlfriend left me (ah!) and told me on more than one occasion to get a grip! “If you want it, go make it happen!”. One of the very best managers I have ever met

Lance Alexander – for giving me a chance when I didn’t tick all the boxes and someone that always believed in me from the first moment we met. (That was a blast!). One of the pivotal moments in my career joining a small expanding entrepreneurial company – “The HUON Corporation”. Absolutely loved it and my first real steps after 8 years in the corporate environment into what business was really about 

Mike Freeman – “Mentor of Mentors”. The nicest man I have ever met. A man of such great experience and someone who would always give up his time to talk, coach and encourage you even late on a Friday afternoon on a customer site in deepest Scotland missing his plane home. One of the greatest lessons I remembered him teaching me after a really difficult horrible week, when even we had clashed over something to the point of a complete relationship breakdown, “Never go home on a Friday upset, it’s just work, you disagree with people but you’re a professional and you have done your job, so shake hands have a drink and go home to your family”. Come Monday we were best of friends again and ready to take on the world. Synopsis “Learn to let it go, no point holding a grudge, life is just too short, and you are always stronger together”. I and others miss him massively; a truly wonderful human being – RIP Mike. 

Gillian Baker – “Mark, you’re the most unemployable person I know”; enough said, but when it comes from the Lady that broke the glass ceiling in IBM in the early 1990’s and acknowledged as one of the best marketeers in the software industry you can only smile. When Gillian talks to me, I always shut up and listen

Jenny Hedge – Forever grateful for teaching me everything about how Central Government and the Civil Service works – 3 years of daily masterclasses. Best Public Sector education ever. Some-one who became a true friend as we built one of the first (and the very best!) Government Shared Service Centres for HM Prison Service. The “Phoenix Programme” made me famous and was the birth of Certus! (PS: I swear my legs are still bruised from all the kicks under the table at meetings)

Tim Warner – We have worked together for 15 years and the voice of reason behind Certus. Yin to my Yang; I could never have done it on my own. Someone I still constantly go to get his calming perspective. Also, the person I have to thank for improving my English grammar and introduced to me to Latin. (I am fully expecting he will point out every flaw in this blog)

Debra Lilley – For getting my attention and for my constant education in Oracle Product Development strategy and its impact on our company. I have absolutely adored working with her over the years and Certus was so much a better company when she came onboard. One of the very best decisions we ever made.

Richard Haycock – for trusting me to pioneer Oracle SaaS Cloud in UK&I; for giving us focus, direction and encouragement with the Oracle sales teams in the early days. The man who told me directly “Face it, you’re an entrepreneur, stop bitching about it, just accept it and get on with it”. I left his office on more than one occasion with my tail between my legs

Mark Robinson – “The Entrepreneurs Mentor”; the “masterclasses” over dinner and several bottles of red will never to be forgotten during the Certus journey. Absolutely phenomenal insight

And Mr Peter Jenkins (“Uncle Albert”) for making me the sales-person I am today! The difference he made to my personal conversion rates was truly remarkable. Imagine going into every opportunity knowing, regardless of competition, you had a 50:50 chance of winning. Unreal  

Finally, a massive shout out again to Tim Warner, Rob English, Mary Thethi, Ian Carline, Richard Atkins – my brothers and sister in arms. We took on the world and in our own way and changed it in our space forever. Not many people can say they did what we did with Certus. You were the very best travelling companions anyone could have. Thank you.

Last but not least, my wife Natalie. Is she a mentor? absolutely she is as she keeps my feet firmly planted on the ground at all times and as she says I may have been a CEO (now a “Was a”) but not in this house – “it’s bin day and the cat litter needs changing!”

Time to Ride the Elevator

“If your lucky to do well, it’s your responsibility to send the elevator back down” – Kevin Spacey

I find my career is now also changing unexpectedly. Ironically since the sale of Certus, opportunities I wasn’t even looking for or I would have thought I was qualified for are appearing. Also, things I never even thought of doing are materialising not just in business but in my personal life. I am dabbling with the idea of going back to night school to bring my education up to date; I seem to have developed a healthy (or unhealthy depending on your point of view) interest in Politics and Political Science. I guess 15 years of working in Central Government has rubbed off on me and my passion for classic cars and planes has never left me. 

In the business world I now find myself in a small gene pool of those Entrepreneurs that have undertaken a successful exit of a business. I remember many years ago talking to a number of similar people whose ranks I have now joined listening to them say “I would never do it again”. I don’t seem to be in that club for some reason. Only now have I really begun to understand that it is also my responsibility to contribute and give back to the next generation, i.e. send that elevator back down.

No-one can ever make it on their own, so seek out those that have gone before you, meet them and really listen to them opening your mind to new perspectives. Diana Ross said, “You know, you do need mentors, but in the end, you really just need to believe in yourself”. 

My own advice to people is always this “Believe in yourself and Go be Brilliant!’. Serendipity played a large part in meeting people who really helped me. But I am a firm believer in that you create your own luck so go seek out those who can help you. 

As for me turning 51 I suddenly feel I have only just got started. My gut is telling me that the next decade is just going to be fantastic both in business and personal growth.

So, for now I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year and I will see you on the other side. 

Disclaimer: This is a personal blog. The opinions expressed here represent my own and not those of my employer. In addition, my thoughts and opinions change from time to time and I consider this a necessary consequence of having an open mind. This blog is intended to provide a semi-permanent point in time and as such any thoughts or opinions expressed within out of date posts may not be the same or similar to those that I hold today.

In Part I, I raised the spectre of the return of a “Best of Breed” strategy for slicing and dicing up the Back Office corporate Finance and HR systems and outlined the drivers for this behaviour.

The questions I pose too anyone thinking of doing this are: Knowing the benefits of Finance and HR working together why would you separate them? What are you really achieving by having multiple Cloud platforms for the Back Office? Why go to the expense of doing this? Are you really better and have deeper pockets than that of the Silicon Valley fuelled Research & Development (R&D) investment that has taken place over the past 15 years?

Powerhouse of R&D Investment 

Oracle, SAP, Workday, Unit 4, Infor, FinancialForce et al collectively invest billions of dollars a year in R&D. Oracle’s R&D budget in SaaS applications is quoted to be around $6 Billion a year! Where does it all go?

Engineering world class software is a capital expensive business and it is fuelled by R&D. It starts off with an abundance of initiatives that over time are whittled down into the final product. Constant iteration against a moving marketplace can easily mean investments can become sunk costs and write-offs as the sands move under you. Software engineering is a high-risk poker game. The rewards can be massive, but the risks required to be undertaken are equally substantial. It all requires money and lots of it and that’s why Venture Capitalists and Private Equity exist in the first place. It is also a game played by experts with a lifetime of experience.

So why do Organisations and the Users of these systems now consider that their new world Enterprise Structure should consist of multiple Back Office platforms? In effect re-engineering and undoing all the benefits and learnings that has been derived from the billions of R&D investments undertaken. If you pursue a strategy of breaking up the Back Office across multiple platforms hosting multiple SaaS applications just why do you think you can do it better? and what business benefit are you really delivering?

The power of SaaS Cloud applications is in the intrinsic value that is created in terms of operational insight of bringing Finance and HR together in a single fully integrated instance. One data model providing the foundation for technologies like adaptive intelligence and machine learning for many years to come. The R&D at great investment has already been undertaken bringing together the very best talent across the world including, but not limited to: the most current thinking of subject matter intellectuals and thought leaders; behavioural scientists; data scientists; creatives; and the very best software designers.

No organisation, private or public sector has the money, time or experience to pull together what the major software vendors have achieved in regard to Back Office SaaS applications, let alone keep pace with the underlying forward investment required to continuously drive innovation. Their sole focus should be on front of house and their business.

Fool’s Gold – Challenges of a Best of Breed Cloud Strategy for the Back Office

Not one of the Tier 1 Software Vendor powerhouses I know would openly endorse multi-platforms for the core enterprise applications (HR & Finance). The challenges you open yourself up to include, but not limited to:

·       Barrier to Entry for Technology Innovation – Technologies like AI and Machine Learning are embedded in the applications and work off a single aggregated data model as they are data driven not process driven. Split the data model up and potentially you can’t necessarily make full use of this type of innovation that comes with the platform. The Software Vendors are always building for tomorrow and not for today so you won’t be able to keep up 

·       Continued Investment to Stay Current – One of the biggest benefits of SaaS is the ability to constantly stay current on the latest release of software. To replace Back Office functionality with microservices means you are going to have to replicate similar types of on-going investment. Do you really have the finances and the investment capability to continually do this?

·       Reduced Negotiating Power – SaaS vendors love to do commercial deals on bulk of modules and volume. By not selecting one Vendor for the core product suite, you are at risk of losing significant commercial discounts and your negotiating position becomes weaker

·       Higher Implementation Costs – Now you have multiple Cloud platforms to implement and then integrate. The costs include but not limited to are significant everything from contracting, commissioning, mobilising Consultants with different skill sets to implement, and then on-going support. You lose economies of scale in terms of cost

·       Multiple Patching Cadences – Multiple SaaS packages from different vendors will be on different patching schedules; trying to get these to align throughout the year is not realistically possible. The risk is constant that one side of the two systems (possibly more) is going to change and something is going to break. You are going to be in constant state of regression testing 

·       Consistency of UX is lost / Accessibility Impacted – Multiple SaaS packages from multiple vendors means by default multiple UX. Accessibility is also significantly impacted which will result in compromises through off system work-arounds. Consequently, to regain consistency another layer of the enterprise potentially, though not required, would need to be added

·       Integration or Interfaces or both – Open systems aside. Are you integrating the data, or just building point-to-point or a middleware enterprise service bus? Regardless, data models and interface technology changes; these all require ongoing support. It doesn’t take much for either to stop working  

·       Disaggregated Data Model – Instead of a single data model, we have data replicated all over the enterprise. This naturally needs to be constantly synchronised and in all probability in real time 

·       Increased Security Risk Profile – Integration and Interfaces require security. Transferring data between platforms naturally introduces greater risk of data loss. Neither SaaS vendor is going to take responsibility for the data while it is being transferred; that’s for you to take responsibility for 

·       Increased Support Costs – More products, more integrations, more knowledge, different skills required both inside and outside the tent and also the cost of managing multiple vendors and contracts

The bottom line is your total cost of ownership is going to be significantly higher over the long run. Welcome to the 90’s!

Where does Best of Breed Make Sense?

Now there is a place for integration of SaaS application platforms that can leverage huge benefits and that area is in Organisations connecting their Front Office to the Back Office. This is where integration and use of open systems architecture comes into play – at the macro level, not at the functional module micro level in the Back Office.

There are Software Vendors that have laser like focus and have transformed software development for the Front Office from a customer experience perspective. One stands head and shoulders above the rest and that is Salesforce – the blueprint for Cloud in terms of product but also as a service organisation. Being a platform itself it has enabled a myriad of specialist SME’s to bring highly innovative products to the market that should not be ignored! SME’s are the powerhouse of innovation, especially in the United Kingdom. (Definitely a blog for another day)

Personally, I think Oracle still have much to do in the CX area and this is becoming an area of greater focus for them. CX encompasses a whole host of different products usually acquired through acquisition. It is only matter with time with Oracle before they get this right.

However, one to look out for is the company “Service Now”. Once merely the domain of the IT Helpdesk, it already is and looking further to extend a suite of “vertical experiences” over the top of other platforms. Personally, I have high expectations for Service Now. 

Finally, the “Qualtrics” acquisition by SAP could be their saving grace and a potential game changer here as this is key to their future strategy of delivering “experiences”. However initial reaction to their “X” (eXperience) and “O” (Operational) data strategy has not been overly positive.

What Should You do?

(1)   Decide upon a single core platform for all the core back office business functionality and stick with that platform vendor for better or for worse 

(2)   Use your single core platform Open Systems Architecture that is rich in API’s to extend the functionality by creating bespoke microservices that provide services that are specific to the Organisation but are not delivered by the core platforms functional modules. (Look to host these as a Platform as a Service, preferably on the same infrastructure supporting SaaS)

(3)   Collaborate with your chosen platform Software Vendor to continually raise the bar and help them become an even better delivery partner than they are today. Cloud isn’t just about product its about customer service. You will ultimately benefit from this

(4)   Leverage new core SaaS innovation as and when it arrives looking as to how this can positively impact on your business operation and then make sure you implement it and use it (so many don’t and this becomes missed opportunity)

(5)   Consider a Best of Breed strategy for the Front Office; looking to take advantage of those Software Vendors that have innovated in this area (especially SME’s) or the further build of local specific microservices that reflect your offerings with a view if connecting to the Back Office and driving value end-to-end across the enterprise delivering superior customer and employee experiences

Fool’s Gold 

Regardless of platform preference for those that proceed with the approach of splitting up an already fully integrated back office suite of HR & Finance SaaS applications on a single platform need to be challenged. 

It doesn’t take much to look into the crystal ball, roll forward the clock five years and listen to the noise around “total cost of ownership”; the unreliability of the integrations; the cost of managing all the integrations; the size of the internal Information Technology department; and then for the penny to drop and those Organisations starting to strategically retire such applications and finally move to a single core platform. For me this is and always will be simply “Fool’s Gold”.

So, if you have made it through to the end of these two blogs – thank you and congratulations as I have probably just saved you somewhere between £250-500K and 3-6 months in expensive Consultancy fees to point out the same findings. (Nice work if you can get it though). Cheques in the post are still always kindly accepted. 

I very much look forward to people’s opinions and the ongoing discussion, but as I stated in Part I, the answers to many of today’s problems can usually be found in the past.

Disclaimer: This is a personal blog. The opinions expressed here represent my own and not those of my employer. In addition, my thoughts and opinions change from time to time and I consider this a necessary consequence of having an open mind. This blog is intended to provide a semi-permanent point in time and as such any thoughts or opinions expressed within out of date posts may not be the same or similar to those that I hold today.

You can probably guess from the title that I am not a fan of the recent emergence of “Best of Breed” as a strategy for separating out the individual functional components of ERP and HCM SaaS Cloud platforms for the Back Office.

As my thoughts became written-word I took the decision to split this blog into two parts to keep readers focused. Part I looks at the business drivers where Part II the implications and reality of undertaking such a strategy. Yes, this has a heavy Oracle Cloud slant to it and for good reason, however I have commented on the wider market throughout. I want to stress from the outset that I am not talking about the Front Office where equally brilliant innovation can be found amongst both the Tier 1 and Tier 2 SME market providers for niche solutions that can add tremendous value to a business and can be integrated into the Back Office.

Many will disagree with my views but I genuinely hope many will also find them useful and gain some insight from my observations and arguments which is built upon my 30+ years’ experience as a practitioner who lived through the first generation of on-premise “Best of Breed”; has been involved in 40+ Oracle SaaS Cloud implementations as well being a former Chief Executive who was responsible for the vision, strategy and ultimately the successful exit of the UK’s premier Oracle Cloud professional services company.

Urban Myths and Missed Opportunity

Over three years ago I published a series of blogs titled “The Urban Myths of Oracle Cloud Implementations” (https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/urban-myths-oracle-cloud-implementations-part-i-mark-sweeny/). Technology innovation has advanced relentlessly to the extent that I honestly struggle to understand Organisations that are still “dithering” about moving to the Cloud. The costs involved in making and justifying the many known benefits for what is a “no-brainer” decision too many is just perplexing to me. Add this to the opportunity cost of delay itself or just doing nothing and the missed opportunity in terms of return on investment, both tangible and intangible, becomes eye-watering.

Since then, Oracle Cloud has accelerated in its maturity and functionality across the organisation’s Back Office. Whilst the offering still isn’t perfect (what product ever is?), it’s become THE platform play for combining Finance and HR onto a single data model providing operational insight; possessing a rich depth of business functionality; and become an engine for the constant delivery of technology innovation that makes use of new technologies like Adaptive Intelligence (AI) (a subset of Artificial Intelligence) and Machine Learning (ML) that are already embedded into the platform. 

Oracle’s strategy of re-architecting the “Fusion” products for the Cloud a decade ago is now paying off big time. Acknowledged as being late to the Cloud, Oracle Product Development has now created so much momentum it has pushed itself to the front of the pack in the on-going Tier 1 “Cloud Wars” for the Back Office. This is now universally recognised, with even the likes of the mighty Gartner and Forrester (who Oracle have never had the easiest of relationships with) acknowledging this through their magic quadrant analysis.

Missed Opportunity? Not On My Watch

People will argue I am naturally biased because of my own rich Oracle heritage. But anyone who knows me well will also know that my argument is that I always saw “Cloud” purely as a business opportunity and Oracle created the best environment for future commercial success and a healthy long-term return on investment.

I will also tell you quite freely what everyone knows already that SAP is not true Cloud but a suite of products collected through acquisition that are “stuck” together and requires somebody else’s Cloud infrastructure to be installed upon. The core was never re-engineered for the Cloud so SAP is effectively “on-premise” in someone else’s data centre. However, the recent “Qualtrics” acquisition by SAP was an inspired strategic move.

Workday is a great company and truly has a great product for HR but soon as you need to stretch the product across the enterprise it becomes exposed with a lack of breath and depth of functionality. Its financial offerings are not as broad or as deep as Oracle or SAP. Will it catchup? Yes, but it feels like the “Peoplesoft” product development market cycle again and time is against them. Workday continue to develop their HR product in terms of depth and position it from a system of record to a collective set of capabilities. Its Achilles heel is that “experiences” go across an Organisation and finance functions touches every employee in some way so both HR and Finance need to be present. People just don’t work inside functional modules or silos.

The result of all of this is multiple core applications makes the underlying data model disaggregated and you immediately start to compromise on a consistent user experience and accessibility; data mining and insight; and future innovation delivery across the suite becomes much more complex as it is not naturally embedded into the product, not to mention the underlying integration between modules that has to be wired in and maintained. 

The Experience Economy

The fundamental point here is the game has changed and regardless of platform choice we are now in the business of delivering “experiences – a collection of end-to-end capabilities combined togetherover standardised processes ensuring a single record of truth is maintained”. Software Vendors are investing more than ever to innovate at speed and win market share. In doing so tighter integration is required between traditional functional modules as well as a data model that is used by the new technologies like Adaptive Intelligence and Machine Learning.

Employees do not work inside functional modules whatever platform you ultimately select. In-fact with the advances in voice recognition technology the new “UX” is in-fact no “UX” whatsoever. Try doing that effectively on an on-premise system and by the way “putting lipstick on a pig” isn’t the long-term answer either! (See https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/welcome-experience-game-mark-sweeny/) 

Graveyard of Acronyms & Phrases

However most recently there has been murmurings across the market of a phrase that I had personally hoped would remain in the graveyard of acronyms and phrases. 

“Best of Breed” the first time around in the 90’s was probably the most-costly ill-conceived technical strategy ever created and its possible return is now even more concerning. Promoted at the time to be the universal panacea to all of one’s problems it failed on an epic scale. 

What seems theoretically an idea of merit in taking the best solutions that each of the market software vendors possess and integrate them to deliver the ultimate enterprise Cloud Application SaaS platform in reality I will assure you will quickly become a nightmare! An absolute money pit of despair and frankly “Fool’s Gold” for carving up back office functionality by module as well as possibly creating a barrier to entry for use of new future technology.

History Repeating Itself 

I vividly remember such visions of corporate Best of Breed architecture excellence from a previous generation of leaders with business cases stacked full of healthy ROI for justification.

It was then left to the Technical teams to work out how to get all of this to work. No surprise to any of us that we seemed to spend a lifetime wiring it all together (often with sticky tape and string) to then having to constantly plaster over the cracks. IT departments got bigger as we had to justify keeping this rat’s nest of cobwebs all hanging together as systems were upgraded and interfaces broke. Business got frustrated and hence “IT fails to deliver” became the mantra of the day.

2020 – Roll forward to the start of a new decade and now we seem to be talking about it again. The technology may have changed and we have sexy new architectures and tools: Open Source; PaaS; middleware; integration clouds; advanced transport mechanisms and REST API’s etc… to play with but effectively the conversation appears to be returning to the thinking of 25-30 years ago. So, what’s driving this? 

1.     Market Competition– the thinking that by continually playing Software Vendors off against one another through constant beauty parades prevents monopolies, drives excellence and value for money through competition. Wrong on every count – you cannot manipulate the market as the market adapts accordingly. The tier one SaaS market is already an oligopoly with Oracle, SAP and Workday the only three large scale enterprise solutions in play. Their growth plans are based upon known market behaviours, economics as well as the need for future innovative products

2.     Avoiding Vendor Lock-in – Whilst every SaaS contract has exit clauses and great stress is often put on this during procurement cycles ensuring the customer is not locked in forever into one given platform. The reality is the transition and exit costs are on par with undertaking a new platform implementation. Changing the core SaaS platform on a regular basis (say every 3, even 5 years) is not going to stack up commercially. It is this that locks you into the platform and not the Vendor’s

3.    Procurement Competition Structure – the way procurements are often structured (especially in the Public Sector); it’s still feature function against a scorecard. Completely the opposite way SaaS systems are designed and used in practice. But because business users often see functionality in isolation during a procurement sometimes the prettiest system just wins (fickle!)

4.     Pandering to the Business– “We’re Special”– not really prepared to adopt Cloud processes and adapt business processesaccordingly. Best of Breed can be perceived as a way of providing greater flexibility which in reality it won’t

5.     Build v Buy– There is a real need for the core data held centrally in a Cloud SaaS system to be accessible to feed local satellite systems or “Microservices”. It is these microservices that are specific to the Organisation and used on a daily basis that cannot be delivered through the core SaaS functionality is where local investment and development should reside. However, extending the “build” thinking into the Back Office SaaS domain with moving to a “plug and play” scenario where functionality can just be swapped in and out accordingly at module level is just wrong

Recognise any of these? I am a great studier of history often citing that the answers to many of today’s problems can usually be found in the past. But similarly, the thinking in some quarters of a new generation is obviously skipping these valuable chapters of the book and are unwisely setting their organisations on a course at best can be classed as “lost at sea” or at worse “a train wreck”. 

Look out for Part II where I explain the rationale in further detail and also where “Best of Breed” thinking does have a place.

Disclaimer: This is a personal blog. The opinions expressed here represent my own and not those of my employer. In addition, my thoughts and opinions change from time to time and I consider this a necessary consequence of having an open mind. This blog is intended to provide a semi-permanent point in time and as such any thoughts or opinions expressed within out of date posts may not be the same or similar to those that I hold today.

Experience in sales usually comes from one’s ability to read people within the first 30 seconds into the opening salvo of “discovery” questions, whilst working out simultaneously if there is real interest in the conversation rather than just having a meeting exchanging pleasantries. Body language being the key indicator as you cast your lure to see if the prospect is actually going to bite whilst delivering that important open question, followed by a moment of silence, which hopefully prompts an information download in return.

When it comes to the world of digital the word “transformation” usually follows in the same sentence. Both front and back office Cloud Software as a Service (SaaS) based applications have the power to drive permanent change and can positively disrupt the way organisations work as they impact on underlying business models. Throw in some AI, RPA and whatever the current flavour of the month is (acronyms that are now banded around on a daily basis) and with a clever manipulation of an Excel spreadsheet your ROI in such a venture is going to go off the scale. Happy days!

However, there is one major problem and its simply that your prospect’s people don’t want to be transformed – how dare they!

Human Behaviour – It’s in our DNA

Your prospect may say they want to transform the organisation and may even be working on that very business case that is going to return hundreds of ROI percentage points in tangible (cashable) and intangible benefits to support their vision of a brave new world. However, the reality is they really like the status quo and the way of doing things, why? because “Change is Hard!”.

People that like change are, in my experience, very much in the minority. (Exclude entrepreneurs here as we are generally on a mission to disrupt the status quo for the better regardless and the fact that you don’t find many entrepreneurs working inside large organisations as they are often the most unemployable type of people that exists. Anyway, I digress; that’s for another blog on another day).

Basic Human DNA is that when we are comfortable and happy the last thing we want is somebody coming along and up-setting the apple cart. Remember Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs? well its true today as it was in 1943 when he came up with it. Mess with the basis of our emotional state and the unpredictable or in this context the predictable happens – instant subconscious resistance to change.

From a sales perspective again experience usually allows you to identify this within that very first sales call. It is at this point you have to decide your strategy and tactics moving forward to achieve a close. The danger being that you close a sale upon the false emotional context of the buyer. Congratulations on the sale, however this only sets the ensuring engagement up for immediate failure as both buyer and supplier expectations are instantly out of alignment regardless of what it says in the contract. Instead of having the foundations of success, you have the foundations of a fractious relationship.

What do People really want? The thing they value the most – their time!

Most of us just want an easy life and most people don’t want to change the world. Those that do embark on that journey start by understanding that they usually need to change one’s self first. Change is hard; it introduces risk; it can be unpredictable; your job can change & even worse disappear; and change is not always for the better. 

However, people are genuinely receptive to a positive “experience”, especially one that makes their lives easier. Think about it. Why would you not be receptive to something that makes your life easier? It is quite possible to use the new innovative technologies that are now available to deliver new “experiences” without having to transform one’s entire world. Believe it or not you can even deliver new experiences without technology simply by stopping doing unproductive irrelevant tasks that most of us undertake on a routine basis.

It is equally possible to deliver enough of these new experiences that over time you transform an organisation’s world by stealth by changing people’s mindset and behaviour incrementally. A positive experience will resonate and open an individual’s mind to something new. A negative experience will naturally have the opposite effect. More importantly they will remember both.

At this point everyone says “thank you for telling us the obvious”, however brand loyalty is built through customer advocacy – the most powerful type of marketing that exists. It creates the holy grail; eutopia; the universal panacea that we all crave for as it underpins success through repeat business by returning happy customers. Undertaken correctly you create the snowball effect for greater product/service demand and consumption. You would be surprised just how many people don’t understand this fundamental business concept.

From Front Office to Back Office

The last decade has seen digital disruption in the front office take a grip and you only have to look at the likes of Adidas and Nike who create as much as possible an immersive customer experience through their online shop windows as they do in their physical stores. They are no longer just retail companies but technology companies in their own right. 

What is now taken for granted as a way of doing business directly with consumers is now targeting employees inside these businesses. Happy employees make happy customers. A positive mindset and behaviour promote superior customer service, creating positive experiences.  

In the context of a people dynamic at work we can answer the question simply through this equation:

What do People really want? = Positive Experiences that Creates Time

The most valuable thing we all possess is our time. The one thing we all have in common is that everyone’s time is limited and the cliché quote “time is money” is absolutely spot on. We all need to use our time wisely. 

In the workplace we want employees to feel they are valued and too achieve that we want them spending their time doing purposeful work that adds value to the business and that usually means people using their time to interact and collaborate with other people. The social and behavioural elements of work cannot be under-estimated. Part time Mum’s and Dad’s often return to work, not just out of the necessity to earn a wage, but because work provides an environment that provides social interaction with others. Intelligent and stimulating conversation, problem solving, and making a difference, being proud are all characteristics that help us make us feel valued.

The mundane, but absolutely necessary, back office processes need to be executed easily and quickly, in doing so this drives down the costs of operation whilst maintaining control. Result “Better, Cheaper, Faster” executed – the best business strategy ever created fuelled by happy employees who are focusing on using their time to create value, rather than wasting it in the back office. 

So how can Technology play its part in Creating Time?

Stephen R. Covey say’s “The key is in not spending time, but in investing it”. How do we achieve that? by creating positive time saving employee experiences. 

Things are moving fast in tech as I stated in one my recent blog “The Experience Economy” (https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/welcome-experience-game-mark-sweeny/) the technology industry has already jumped aboard this ship turning its attention to the employee experience in the back office with the differentiator of data driving experiences and not process.

Imagine the day when you log on to the company work portal, and the technology based upon your individual behaviour (and even one day your emotional state of mind!) has already worked out the working day – prioritised the mundane back office tasks; informed you of things you must address; even setup meetings automatically and ensured that any “industry breaking news” of interest you are made aware of. In doing so it creates a personalised experience. 

We now square the circle in terms of argument and end back up in the 1990’s around the “efficiency v effectiveness” debate, but this time it’s not about the process but rather about an individual’s time delivered through personalised positive experiences at work. The additional benefit possibly being greater work-life balance, allowing even more leisure time that allows for focus with family and friends. Isn’t that’s what life is really about?

Help the Buyer, Be the Honest Broker and Change the Conversation…

Final words of advice – always help the Buyer, especially if they can’t find their way through their own “transformation” strategy let alone their buying process. If you detect that the Buyer isn’t being honest with themselves about their stated intentions – help them, even to the extent of pushing the issue by painting them a different picture that achieves the outcomes they are striving for without having to turn their world completely upside down. Change the conversation.

Full Digital Transformation (as Consultants know it) in the context of the back office is not always the answer and even if it is it, cannot be done overnight and realistically takes between 18 months to 3 years to do it properly. It is also hard work. Winning hearts and minds is never easy. However, using technology to create new experiences can be done today more quickly it just takes creativity, technology innovation and will power to make it happen. 

We are now living in a world where experiences are personalised over standardised processes. Remember long-term value isn’t necessary in standardised process but in the experience that gives back that most precious of assets – “our time”. 

Views? discuss and comment. As always, I look forward to hearing other’s perspectives…

#entrepreneur #entrepreneurs #cloud #cloudwars #digital #digitaltransformation #saas #transformation #change #changemanagement

Disclaimer: This is a personal blog. The opinions expressed here represent my own and not those of my employer. In addition, my thoughts and opinions change from time to time and I consider this a necessary consequence of having an open mind. This blog is intended to provide a semi-permanent point in time and as such any thoughts or opinions expressed within out of date posts may not be the same or similar to those that I hold today.

Three years on since I last blogged and now its time to restart – why you might ask? Simply it’s been gratifying to hear from Customers, Colleagues, Business Partners and even Prospects who didn’t buy from me (how dare they!) that have told me how much they missed my blogs, which for the uninitiated are still all available on LinkedIn, so by demand it’s time to metaphorically put pen to paper once again.

For those that are new to my style you will simply get my opinion on things that I am generally interested in and I will no doubt cover topics like Entrepreneurship, SME’s (of which I will always be a champion of), the Market, Tech specifically Cloud and Oracle Cloud and anything else that is running through my mind that I think might be of interest to a wider audience.

Blogging for me is a way of bringing structure and order to the chaos that is often going on inside me. What you won’t get is any talk of politics (I think we have all had quite enough of the “B” word), albeit I might comment on what I see the future challenges the UK Civil Service faces when we know what we are doing! My opinions are direct and no doubt will be viewed by some as controversial. So please feel free to agree or disagree with me as its only through experience, conversation and difference of opinion that we all learn and you will actually find that it is this that fuels real innovation.

As we enter into Autumn 2019 and on the last day of Oracle’s Openworld in San Francisco let’s turn back the clock as I am reminded that nearly eight years ago on a very dark and wet night in October 2011 in Fenchurch Street at a then Client’s offices Tim Warner, my long term partner in crime, and I discussed at length a new world called Software as a Service (SaaS) and Oracle’s fledgling offering – Fusion (how many times have they interchanged that name over the years?) and what was then still really amounting to a bunch of powerpoint slides that had been touted around for years but rumour was that it was actually not only a real product but an absolute game changer.

In-fact Larry Ellison, against popular belief, had already made his big bet albeit it is well known that Oracle were a late entrant to the enterprise Cloud game. The more that night we talked the more we felt a paradigm shift was coming that was going not only to change the industry we knew but also the world. It was looking like 1999 all over again.

Looking back when you realise you are staring into pandora’s box and you suddenly know something that possibly very few others on the entire planet know is, on reflection, quite scary and sends shivers down your spine once you understand the ramifications.

A period of our own due diligence subsequently followed, so I will dispel the myth now that entrepreneurs are a bunch of mavericks and cowboys that often make knee jerk decisions. However we do move very fast and just three weeks later we were in the position to make an informed calculated risk decision to follow Larry’s fledging vision and “bet everything on Red”. (this story is covered in the blogs of the past so I won’t repeat it here). Cloud was the new market place and we needed to get their first and create the necessary space in the Oracle ecosystem in the UK to thrive, albeit in reality and we do look back and laugh that we had half a product (most of that had key functionality missing), we didn’t really know how to implement it properly (that took us 2 years) and nobody wanted to buy it – the perfect time to start a business.

Roll on seven years and Certus Solutions the company I originally founded in my bedroom and evolved into the first dedicated Oracle SaaS Cloud professional services company was sold to Accenture in May 2018. My 15 minutes of fame had arrived and after 10 years of hard graft, near two bankruptcies, and a host of other personal challenges that I won’t bore you all with, Tim and myself became overnight successes and for 15 minutes complete legends in the Industry and the Oracle ecosystem.

Now that’s over moving swiftly on…

So was Cloud Evolution or Revolution?

It is just amazing how the software industry has had to change its operating models. Oracle specifically from a product orientated company to a service one (a journey for those involved in the service industry knows never ends!). Something that was started by Salesforce (a company I personally massively admire) is now the norm. Customer success and advocacy are the constant watchwords and rightly so as regardless of Cloud a business does not exist without happy customers.

I once famously told someone very Senior in HM Government in early 2016 after they had spent 18 months pontificating over whether they were going Cloud (as it was a “fad”) that the decision had in-fact already been taken for them by the industry five years earlier and they were going Cloud regardless and it was a decision that was no longer in their gift to make. Shock! Horror! no just a black and white reality check over the seemingly then obvious state of affairs. The only element of control they had was the WHEN they were going and the longer they continually took no action the cost would just increase. Why? simply the gap exponentially grows between legacy technology and the speed of technology innovation, making it more complicated to move both organisationally and technically within a business.

Remember the true cost being not just the financial cost of undertaking the implementation, but more importantly the “opportunity cost” of missing out on the digital innovation that is continuously coming at pace. This is something that is constantly missed from business cases both in the private and public sectors. The bottom line being extremely blunt is “just get on with it because you really are missing out”.

So was it an evolution or really a revolution? Three years ago, I used the word evolution, why? Because even in a blog I had to be somewhat careful not to scare monger and evolution is a much softer word to use in regard to change. However looking back, it really was a revolution but through stealth. Salesforce, Oracle, Workday and SAP are all highly successful companies, and Cloud technology has facilitated the emergence of whole host of exciting mid-market vendors and start-ups. Many of these are British! and something I am proud to have been and continue to be associated with. The smaller ones just love turning the world upside down – go for it!

But still why the change of mind? What I never factored into my crystal ball, as I have said many times before, is the sheer pace of technology innovation and its corresponding impact on business operating models. The biggest lesson I learned was that Cloud is TRANSFORMATIONAL – done right it will transform (no going back) your business operation positively for ever.

It truly is frightening but also at the same time so very exciting. The possibilities of improving our working lives seems endless and the opportunities to challenge the status quo and drive positive change especially in the Public Sector (my undying love for it however frustrating it is at times) still invigorates me today just as much as it did when I first got involved with the HM Prison Services Phoenix Shared Services Programme back in 2004.

We can make Cloud platforms change the way we work better for everyone – employees, suppliers, and customers alike (and anyone else I have forgotten). More importantly in changing the way we work, we also should benefit positively to the way we conduct our personal lives. We just need to look for the win-win opportunities that exist out there. At the very least, it should help make work less stressful and as mundane tasks are removed through automation creates time for value added activities. Our time whether at work or play is the most valuable thing we all have as our time is always limited.

So where has this first blog taken us? Simply I revisit my earlier statements and change my position – Cloud was a quiet revolution as it not only transforms business operations but can also positively (if used in the right way) change our personal lives for the better. The pace of change and technology innovation is not letting up and remember the technologies we are dealing with will continue to transform business operations continuously. The next generation of technologies of the likes of AI (which incidentally has been around for years, but now we are looking at mass adoption) and Robotics (another one in the same categorically) are already available having being built and embedded on Cloud technology platforms.

Still for those who continue to delay their migration to the Cloud it is just delaying the inevitable and at significantly higher cost. History is littered with case studies of what happened to those that did not adapt and remain relevant to what was going on around them. You only have to watch the evening news and look at our high streets for recent examples of this.

There is just as much opportunity today to make a difference as there was when the quiet revolution started. Cloud technology is extremely mature and well proven. The only question one has to ask constantly regardless of your role in society and the economy is are you up for it?

Comment, and let you know what you think, after 3 years I am a bit rusty…

Disclaimer: This is a personal blog. The opinions expressed here represent my own and not those of my employer. In addition, my thoughts and opinions change from time to time and I consider this a necessary consequence of having an open mind.This blog is intended to provide a semi-permanent point in time and as such any thoughts or opinions expressed within out of date posts may not be the same or similar to those that I hold today.