Hawaii Business Consulting, LLC

Part II: Building a To Do List Application for the iPhone

2009-01-30T05:05:00.000-08:00

Okay, in this part of the Tutorial we are going to make the To Do List actually useable. We will add in the functionality to allow you to remove To Do Tasks.

Removing To Do Tasks

This is a lot easier than you might think. Xcode has most of this functionality already built out for you, all you need to do is connect the user interaction in deleting to how you store your data.

We need to enable a button to show the edit Button to enable removing tasks from the view.

1. Open up RootViewController.m

Uncomment the method viewDidLoad. You will notice that Xcode has already coded the line to enable the editButtonItem. We are going to make one small change and have the edit show up on the left side of the toolbar instead of the right side.

Your method should look like this:

- (void)viewDidLoad {
[super viewDidLoad];

// Uncomment the following line to display an Edit button in the navigation bar for this view controller.
self.navigationItem.leftBarButtonItem = self.editButtonItem;
}

2. Build and Go

After compiling and deploying your code you should see the following:

Now click on the Edit Button. Notice how it handles showing the delete functionality:

Now click on the red circle near Task #2, it should show the following:

Now click on the red delete button, and you should see:

You see how the Task #2 still shows up? That is because the task list still has the task in the list property of ToDoListAppDelegate. We need to remove the task from the list.

Here is how we do that:

3. Open up RootViewController.m

After the delete button has been pushed it calls the method - (void)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView commitEditingStyle:(UITableViewCellEditingStyle)editingStyle forRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath.

It passes in the view, the type of editing it is doing, and the row in the table view.

Xcode has the method built for you all we are going to do is uncomment it and add a couple of lines in bold to adjust the array for us.

// Override to support editing the table view.
- (void)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView commitEditingStyle:(UITableViewCellEditingStyle)editingStyle forRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath {

if (editingStyle == UITableViewCellEditingStyleDelete) {
// Delete the row from the data source
ToDoListAppDelegate *appDelegate = (ToDoListAppDelegate *)[[UIApplication sharedApplication] delegate];
[appDelegate removeToDoTaskInListAtIndex:indexPath.row];
[tableView deleteRowsAtIndexPaths:[NSArray arrayWithObject:indexPath] withRowAnimation:YES];
}
else if (editingStyle == UITableViewCellEditingStyleInsert) {
// Create a new instance of the appropriate class, insert it into the array, and add a new row to the table view
}
}

As you can see this method checks the editing style and when it sees a delete we tell it to tell the appDelegate to remove the task at the specific index.

We now need to add that method to the ToDoListAppDelegate.

3. Open up ToDoTaskAppDelegate.h

We are going to define the method in the header add the following code in bold so that your interace looks like this:

@interface ToDoListAppDelegate : NSObject {

UIWindow *window;
UINavigationController *navigationController;

NSMutableArray *list;
}

- (NSUInteger) countOfToDoList;
- (NSString *) toDoTaskInListAtIndex:(NSUInteger)theIndex;
- (void) removeToDoTaskInListAtIndex:(NSUInteger)theIndex;

@property (nonatomic, retain) IBOutlet UIWindow *window;
@property (nonatomic, retain) IBOutlet UINavigationController *navigationController;

@property (nonatomic, retain) NSMutableArray *list;

@end

3. Open up ToDoTaskAppDelegate.m

We are going to code the method by adding the following code in bold so that your implementation looks like this:

@implementation ToDoListAppDelegate

@synthesize window;
@synthesize navigationController;

- (void)applicationDidFinishLaunching:(UIApplication *)application {
self.list = [NSMutableArray arrayWithObjects:@"Task #1", @"Task #2", @"Task #3",nil];// Configure and show the window

[window addSubview:[navigationController view]];
[window makeKeyAndVisible];
}

- (void)applicationWillTerminate:(UIApplication *)application {
// Save data if appropriate
}

- (void)dealloc {
[navigationController release];
[window release];
[super dealloc];
}

#pragma mark ToDoListAppDelegate Actions
- (NSUInteger) countOfToDoList{
return [list count];
}

- (NSString *) toDoTaskInListAtIndex:(NSUInteger)theIndex{
return [list objectAtIndex:theIndex];
}

- (void) removeToDoTaskInListAtIndex:(NSUInteger)theIndex{
[list removeObjectAtIndex:theIndex];
}

@synthesize list;
@end

4. Build and Go

Compile the code and now when you try to delete the task it should look like this:

Summary

Ok you learned how easy it is to provide deleting capabilities to your table view. In the next part I will show you how to add new tasks to your To Do List.

In case you have any challenges building the code attached is my build at
ToDoList_2.tar.gz

Part I: Building a To Do List Application for the iPhone

2009-01-29T06:19:00.000-08:00

This will be a tutorial series based upon creating a To Do List application for the iPhone.

I will break this tutorial up into several parts. The first part will be just on how to create a simple table view app on the iPhone. As we progress I will add more features and explain different interactions.

1. Launch Xcode

2. Click on the File Menu and choose New Project.

You should see a window that asks you to select the template for your new project. Select the "Navigation-Based Application" and click on choose.

3. You will now see a window that is asking you what name to save the project.

Type in the name ToDoList. This will create a project directory called ToDoList and all of the relevant files.

Make sure you have your SDK set to the Simulator. You can change this parameter by selecting from the Xcode menu Project -> Set Active SDK -> Simulator.

Ok, now select Build and Go. You should see the following on your iPhone:

All right so that doesn't look all that amazing, but it isn't bad for not having done any coding and it is at least a good checkpoint that you have compiled and deployed a basic iPhone app.

Now lets dig into all the files that were generated.

What are all these files for?

At first all of these files are a bit intimidating. Lets take a few minutes to discuss what these files are:

Info.plist

This is a property list file that is responsible for some of the initial settings for your application. The most important things to note right now is that it has the Main NIB file set to MainWindow. What is a NIB file? A NIB file is really just an XML file that is used to build the interface. Helper applications like Interface Builder will store information about your user interface in that file.

main.m

This is the program that launches the main application loop held in the UIApplicationMain class.

MainWindow.xib

This is the NIB file which holds the settings for the main interface window.

If you were to double click on the MainWindow.xib file from XCode it would launch Interface Builder and you would see the following:

File's Owner: This class represents the class that deals with the User Interface. By default it delegates the responsibility of the class to the class called ToDoListAppDelegate which was automatically created for you when you chose the project template.

First Responder: This handles the first responder actions. Don't worry about it for now.

To Do List App Delegate: This class is delegated all the actions from the File's Owner class. It is also automatically has its outlets connected to the Navigation Controller and the Window in the user interface.

Window: This is the window where your user interface will be displayed.

Navigation Controller: This class manages navigation through a hierarchy of views. It already has the RootViewController View already associated with it.

RootViewController.h

This is the header file for the RootViewController class. You can see from the header that the RootViewController class is of type UITableViewController. This means that the RootViewController will manage a TableView which is defined in the RootViewController.xib NIB file.

RootViewController.m

Within this file you can see where several methods are generated and commented out for you. This provides you a base line to start programming your table view.

Let's review those functions that are active and see what they do:

- (void)didReceiveMemoryWarning

This method is called by the iPhone OS and is telling it that it needs to have more memory. This is a good place to free up any cached data or non-essential data.

- (NSInteger)numberOfSectionsInTableView:(UITableView *)tableView

This method is called to determine how many different sections are in the TableView. It passes in the parameter of a specific table view. By default this is set to return 1, but we will show how you can have multiple sections in a table view.

- (NSInteger)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView numberOfRowsInSection:(NSInteger)section

This asks the view how many rows of data are there available in this table view to display. By default it returns 0. As we define data in the view we will allow that number to change.

- (UITableViewCell *)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView cellForRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath

This method is called to ask what Table View Cell to display for the table view based on the index path. Simple way to think about this is that for each row indicated by the index path, this method generates a TableViewCell which encapsulates everything in that row.

Right now they create a generic table view cell and modify the text for that cell.

- (void)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView didSelectRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath

This methods asks the controller what to do when a row is selected. Typically in drill down data you would then push on another view controller to show the detailed data.

- (void)dealloc

For all of you who haven't done a lot of C programming and/or memory management this is the routine that gets called to release itself. Here you want to release any variables that you allocated and are managing within the class. I will talk through this more when we actually start adding some variables to the class.

ToDoList_Prefix.pch

This file holds the pre-compiled headers to include. Basically it loads in the Foundation and UIKit Libraries to be linked into your application

ToDoListDelegate.h

This is the header file for the Delegate class that is automatically created for your project. You will note that this class implements the UIApplicationDelegate protocol which defines methods that are expected to be handled on behalf of the application.

It also defines two variables which it uses. One is for the UIWindow class and the second is for the UINavigationController class which we have shown in the MainWindow NIB file

Something to note is that the class uses the @property macro to define the variables. This enables the creation of the header descriptors for the getter and setter methods defined in the class.

For example:

@property (nonatomic, retain) IBOutlet UIWindow *window

The parameters non-atomic and retain specify how the memory management works for those methods. You can learn more about it here.

You may have noticed the IBOutlet term in there and wondered what kind of definition is that? IBOutlet is simply a null-defined macro:

#define IBOutlet

Which is used by Interface Builder to determine which properties of a class are available as an Outlet.

ToDoListDelegate.m

Within this class there are several methods defined for you:

- (void)applicationDidFinishLaunching:(UIApplication *)application

This method is called after the application has launched this is the opportunity to configure your main window to be viewed.

As you can see this method connects the view in UINavigationController which is the RootViewController view, and then it tells the Window to show itself.

- (void)applicationWillTerminate:(UIApplication *)application

This is a placeholder method to add in any code that you want added in before the application terminates.

- (void)dealloc

Inside this method both the navigationController and window memory references are released.

Ok, So let's make a basic to do list

For now we want to do the following:

1. Display the title 'To Do List'
2. Have a list of to do tasks listed on the view

Feature 1: Add the title to the To Do List

1. Double click on the MainWindow.xib file. This will launch interface builder. View it in list mode and expand the Navigation Controller till you expose the Navigation Item for the Root View Controller. It should look like this:

2. Now open the Attributes Inspector by clicking on the menu Tools -> Attribute Inspector.

3. Set the title to 'To Do List'

4. Save the file

5. Return to Xcode

6. Build and run the application again you should see the following:

Feature 2: Have a list of to do tasks listed on the view

We need to track a list of to do tasks.

1. Open up the ToDoListAppDelegate.h file:

We want to create a property that stores the list of to do tasks. We will call the property list and give it a type of NSMutableArray.

We also need to provide means for the views to determine how many To Do tasks they are to be displayed. We create a function called countOfToDoList to return that.

We also need to return the text of the To Do List task based upon the index of the task in the list. We create a function called toDoTaskInListAtIndex passing in the index to the list to retrieve it.

Add the following lines in bold so that your code looks like this:

@interface ToDoListAppDelegate : NSObject {

UIWindow *window;
UINavigationController *navigationController;

NSMutableArray *list;
}

@property (nonatomic, retain) IBOutlet UIWindow *window;
@property (nonatomic, retain) IBOutlet UINavigationController *navigationController;

- (NSUInteger) countOfToDoList;
- (NSString *) toDoTaskInListAtIndex:(NSUInteger)theIndex;

@property (nonatomic, retain) NSMutableArray *list;

@end

2. Open up the ToDoListAppDelegate.m file:

We need to synthesize the getter and setter methods for the list property.

We need to define the methods we declared in the header.

We need to be sure to release the list that we create to keep track of the to do list items.

Update your code with the updates in bold so it looks like this:

@implementation ToDoListAppDelegate

@synthesize window;
@synthesize navigationController;

- (void)applicationDidFinishLaunching:(UIApplication *)application {
self.list = [NSMutableArray arrayWithObjects:@"Task #1", @"Task #2", @"Task #3",nil];
// Configure and show the window
[window addSubview:[navigationController view]];
[window makeKeyAndVisible];
}

- (void)applicationWillTerminate:(UIApplication *)application {
// Save data if appropriate
}

- (void)dealloc {
[list release];
[navigationController release];
[window release];
[super dealloc];
}

#pragma mark ToDoListAppDelegate Actions
- (NSUInteger) countOfToDoList{
return [list count];
}

- (NSString *) toDoTaskInListAtIndex:(NSUInteger)theIndex{
return [list objectAtIndex:theIndex];
}

@synthesize list;
@end

3. Open up the RootViewController.m file:

Right now only the delegate knows about the to do list tasks. We need to let the RootViewController know how to get the count of items.

The RootViewController asks for the count in the - (NSInteger)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView numberOfRowsInSection:(NSInteger)section method.

What we want to do is call the ToDoListAppDelegate and ask it for the count and pass it to the method. We will update that method with the following code:

- (NSInteger)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView numberOfRowsInSection:(NSInteger)section {
ToDoListAppDelegate *appDelegate = (ToDoListAppDelegate *)[[UIApplication sharedApplication] delegate];
return [appDelegate countOfToDoList];
}

Now that we have the count we need to render the correct task name when the row is called in the view. We do so with the following changes in bold:

- (UITableViewCell *)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView cellForRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath {

static NSString *CellIdentifier = @"Cell";

UITableViewCell *cell = [tableView dequeueReusableCellWithIdentifier:CellIdentifier];
if (cell == nil) {
cell = [[[UITableViewCell alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectZero reuseIdentifier:CellIdentifier] autorelease];
}

// Set up the cell...
ToDoListAppDelegate *appDelegate = (ToDoListAppDelegate *)[[UIApplication sharedApplication] delegate];
NSString *taskName = [appDelegate toDoTaskInListAtIndex:indexPath.row];
cell.text = taskName;

return cell;
}

4. Now if we save everything and rebuild and deploy it should look like:

Summary

This was a fast introduction to building a very basic To Do List App for the iPhone. In Part II I will show you how to dynamically add new data, as well as remove existing data.

If you had any problems creating this on your own, I have attached a copy of my build ToDoList.tar.gz

Business Intelligence with Rails... Done in 45 Minutes!

2007-05-20T01:42:00.000-07:00

Attached is my presentation on how to use rails to do business intelligence. It uses a real world example with data from the US Treasury Department to track Specially Designated Individuals.

The Office of Foreign Assets Control ("OFAC") of the US
Department of the Treasury administers and enforces
economic and trade sanctions based on US foreign policy
and national security goals against targeted foreign
countries, terrorists, international narcotics traffickers, and
those engaged in activities related to the proliferation of
weapons of mass destruction. OFAC acts under
Presidential wartime and national emergency powers, as
well as authority granted by specific legislation, to impose
controls on transactions and freeze foreign assets under
US jurisdiction

You can download the models_from_xsd plugin at RubyForge:

svn checkout svn://rubyforge.org/var/svn/models-from-xsd

I have also included a sample project from the presentation in the files section:

Enjoy!

Soren

Building a Brighter Future for Hawaii - What you can do to enable technology in Hawaii

2005-11-02T00:08:00.000-08:00

Recently I gave a presentation regarding how we could build a brighter future in Hawaii by enabling technology.

If you look at it, Hawaii is a very unique place. We live in one of the most beautiful places in the world, we have very low unemployment, and yet most companies today run on 20 year old technology!

Why is that???

If we were to just contrast the mainland with what we see here in Hawaii we see a major trend to just keep the status quo. We have innovated in areas, but in general most companies have either limited their technology investment, and continue to try and go down what has been tried and true. Even though the entire market is shifting.

Why should you care?

It is really simple in Hawaii there is a high cost of living and without technology:

Companies cannot grow.
If they cannot grow... they will not hire
If they cannot hire... they cannot improve revenues
Without revenues, companies disappear and so do the jobs...

Think about it where do you want your kids to work?

The Excuses people make not for not doing anything:

I am too busy...
I am not an expert...
We tried that before...
Internal politics

Click here for the presentation to see what you can do to beat back the excuses and effect change!

Good Luck!

Soren

Part II:Process Improvement - Saving $500K utilizing iGrafx and Design of Experiments

2005-08-29T11:11:00.000-07:00

In Part I of this article we showed how utilizing iGrafx we could quickly map the business process flow, and begin to simualte the differences between the current system and the proposed new system.

In this week's article Part II we will look at the Factors, and create a design of experiments to analyze the process alternatives with regard to cost, cycle time, and Rolled Throughput Yield.

To recap:

There is an opportunity to install a vault dispenser for medications on each floor, and remove the satellite pharmacies. The medications would be stored on each floor of the hospital in the specialized dispenser.

The pharmacy would be contacted for a prescription, but rather than dispensing a medication (med for short), they would provide the nurse an authorization code to access the proper bin in the vault and extract the med.

The pharmacy would keep status of each dispenser real-time and update each dispenser (4) times daily

Should the hospital invest time and money in improving the current process (e.g., by improving the chance the satellite pharmacy has the needed med), or by implementing the proposed Vault System.

Model Design

The model has two distinct processes. This is done to allow for direct comparison in the experiments. The left path is the current satellite prescription (Rx), or "As-Is", process. The right hand path is the proposed process utilizing the vault system.

The new process only utilizes components of the current process when the medication is not available in the vault dispenser. In that case, the main Rx is used to fill the order.

Responses

The responses of interest are:

Time: How can we get the med to the patient most quickly; i.e., what is the shortest cycle time? Which process, current or proposed, has the shortest cycle time?

Cost: Which process, current or proposed, is the lowest cost?

Defects: What is the Rolled Throughput Yield (RTY) of each process? Each defect endangers patients, potentially in a life-threatening way; so it is critical to minimize defects.

Factors

The factors of interest are:

Which process? Does the Satellite Rx, or the Vault, process provide the best responses?

Immediate Med Availability?What's the impact of immediate med availability on the current and proposed process? The Satellite Rx method currently has an 85% chance of having the med. What effect would increasing the availability of the med in the Satellite Rx to 95% have? How does that compare to an 85% or 95% chance that the Vault has the med available?

Utilizing iGrafx we design the process follows as can be seen by clicking here.

Now we need to simulate the process for the Design of Experiments. Initially we used interview estimates of how long do certain processes take. For example it was estimated that activity #8 took beetween 1 and 4 minutes. But how can we more closely approxiamte this?

Doing a quick motion study we record 30 occurences of both the To-From Satellite process times and the Satellite pickup times. We then utilize iGrafx in conjunction with Minitab to determine the best approximate distribution.

As can be seen in the photo below we approixmate the distribution for the To-From Satellite times from the data.

The A-D Measure is the Anderson - Darling measure. The lower the A-D the better fit of the distribution to the data. From the tool we see that the best approximation for the observed data is the normal curve with the following parameters: Mean of 2.578 and Standard Deviation of 0.7940462.

Likeise doing the same for the satellite pickup time gives us the following.

Which shows that the best approximation is the Weibull distribution with the following parameters Shape of 8.988834 and Scale of 2.652587.

We now take those values and replace the previous interview estimates of task durations witht these distribution curves.

Utilizing this data we want to create a design of experiments that provides us answers to the following questions:

Which process do we utilize the current process or the new vault; and

What availability level should we have the medicine 85% or 95%.

We use a 2-Level full factorial design. This means that we take four measurements of the cost, average cycle time, and rolled throughput yield (RTY) of each setup of the factors at different levels: Vault at 85%, Vault at 95%, Satellite at 85%, Satellite at 95%.

Typically this would be very expensive and time consuming to do in real life, but since we are utilizing iGrafx to simulate the process and Minitab to track the outputs it does not have a cost nor time impact.

After running the simulations the results look as follows ordered by least cost:

As you can see from the results the best least cost solution is running the Vault Dispenser at 95% for a cost of $570K with an RTY of 99.975% and an average cycle time of 303 as opposed to running the Sateille at 95% at $1,087,504 with an RTY of 99.498% and an average cycle time of 495.

As you can see by creating a design of experiments we can quickly simulate the annual impact and identify the proper settings for the factors of the business process.

This translated into $500K less costs per operating year and a reduction of processing time by 40%.

Hawaii Business Consulting is the Value Added Reseller of in Hawaii. If you need to be able to quickly analyze your business processes and identify new solutions, iGrafx is the software package you need. It will enable you to quickly model, simulate, and analyze your data similar to what we have shown in the article. The software starts at $500 and that includes an initial training session with Hawaii Business Consulting.

Give us a call at (808) 224-0470 and we will create a free high-level model of your business process and identify ways in which your business could be saving money through process improvement.

Part I:Process Improvement - Saving $500K utilizing iGrafx and Design of Experiments

2005-08-22T01:16:00.000-07:00

Have you ever been faced with having to make a large capital expenditure without knowing the impact to your business? Wouldn't it be helpful for you to be able to analyze the process improvement before making the decision without having to spend a lot of money or drastically changing your operating procedure?

Lets take a look at how process improvement helped this hospital save $500K and improve quality.

Current challenge is that a hospital has a problem with getting urgently needed medication to patients in a timely, reliable, and low-cost fashion.

The current process structure has a main pharmacy with satellite pharmacies each serving several floors in the hospital. The staff would like to reduce the time required to obtain the urgently needed medication, and have a better chance of the medication being available in the satellite pharmacy. In addition, the current process occasionally delivers the wrong medication to the floor. The staff would like to eliminate this opportunity for error.

The current process is modeled on the left side of the process diagram. A potential (new) process using a medication "Vault" system is modeled on the right side of the diagram.

This new process examines the following:

There is an opportunity to install a vault dispenser for medications on each floor, and remove the satellite pharmacies. The medications would be stored on each floor of the hospital in the specialized dispenser.

The pharmacy would be contacted for a prescription, but rather than dispensing a medication (med for short), they would provide the nurse an authorization code to access the proper bin in the vault and extract the med.

The pharmacy would keep status of each dispenser real-time and update each dispenser (4) times daily

Time: How can we get the med to the patient most quickly; i.e., what is the shortest cycle time? Which process, current or proposed, has the shortest cycle time?

Cost: Which process, current or proposed, is the lowest cost?

Defects: What is the Rolled Throughput Yield (RTY) of each process? Each defect endangers patients, potentially in a life-threatening way; so it is critical to minimize defects.

Factors

The factors of interest are:

Which process? Does the Satellite Rx, or the Vault, process provide the best responses?

Immediate Med Availability?What's the impact of immediate med availability on the current and proposed process? The Satellite Rx method currently has an 85% chance of having the med. What effect would increasing the availability of the med in the Satellite Rx to 95% have? How does that compare to an 85% or 95% chance that the Vault has the med available?

Utilizing iGrafx we design the process follows as can be seen by clicking here.

Running the process simulation returns us with the following:

Satellite Rx Process: 659 Defects out of 131,037 opportunities. RTY is 99.4984% at a total cost of $1,116,775.07.

Vault Dispenser Process: 98 Defects out of 131,036 opportunities. RTY is 99.9252% at a total cost of $646,575.81.

Looking at just the simulation data we can quickly see that the Vault dispenser will not only decrease the number of defects, but also cut the operating expenses almost by half!

In Part II we will explore the optimum settings for the Vault Dispenser through a design of experiments that will give us process alternatives with regard to cost, cycle time, and RTY.

Hawaii Business Consulting is the Value Added Reseller of in Hawaii. If you need to be able to quickly analyze your business processes and identify new solutions, iGrafx is the software package you need. It will enable you to quickly model, simulate, and analyze your data similar to what we have shown in the article. The software starts at $500 and that includes an initial training session with Hawaii Business Consulting.

Give us a call at (808) 224-0470 and we will create a free high-level model of your business process and identify ways in which your business could be saving money through process improvement.

LinkedIn - An efficient way to stay connected with your professional network

2005-08-15T00:47:00.000-07:00

You may have heard that everyone on Earth is separated from anyone else by no more than six degrees of separation, or six friends of friends of friends.

But how do you leverage this? How do you locate the types of people that you want, and how do you allow yourself to be available to those that you would want to contact you, without being annoyed with a bunch of spam mail or phone calls every day?

It looks like LinkedIn.com, may have the solution you are looking for.

LinkedIn is a networking tool that helps you discover inside connections to recommended job candidates, industry experts and business partners. Through LinkedIn, you can accelerate your business effectiveness and career success by leveraging the network you already have. LinkedIn makes it easy to receive and seek out opportunities through your extended network while protecting your privacy, your inbox and your existing professional relationships.

Professionals also get access to LinkedIn Jobs, a relationship-powered job network that allows professionals to search job listings and discover inside connections to hiring managers, HR professionals and recruiters. Employers and recruiters can post positions on LinkedIn Jobs and get great candidates recommended by their trusted contacts.

LinkedIn is currently used by over 3.3 million professionals across the globe. This makes LinkedIn’s base of registered users four times larger than those of all other online business networks combined. LinkedIn has over 1,000,000 users in Europe and over 300,000 in Asia.

When I first heard about this system I though to myself "I am way too busy to be entering in contact information in yet another system." But the beauty behind this system is that it is very easy to add people to your network. All you have to do is add in their first name, last name, and their email list and it sends a generic invite to the people you want. Additionally you can upload a list of contacts from your current contact management system and it will generate the invitations automatically.

In addition, it can automatically create your own email signature to help get more people onto your network with your own personalized touch. For an example click here to see my email signature.

Another fear I had was if I joined someone's network would I then have to face a multitude of intros from people I did not know, or perhaps did not care to know?

But as you can see from their website:

"On LinkedIn, everyone’s Rolodex is protected since only people they trust can see who they know.

LinkedIn’s referral-only approach has attracted an elite group of business people not matched by any other network. And LinkedIn works: users accept 84% of all referrals because the only way users can be approached is if one of their trusted contacts forwards a contact request to them because they believe it is an opportunity their contact will appreciate.

This gated access approach has made the LinkedIn network a web of trust where users strengthen existing professional ties and enhance their reputation by helping their business contacts with introductions.

Professionals in over 130 industries are actively searching the extended networks of their trusted business contacts on LinkedIn to discover inside connections to potential business partners, to get in touch with industry experts for advice, or to find recommended professionals to fill open job positions. On average, users search LinkedIn once per second for people and opportunities, and LinkedIn has already facilitated over 1 million business introductions. Over 850 alumni and professional organizations have selected LinkedIn for Groups to set up member-only groups on LinkedIn that facilitate networking among their members.

LinkedIn is certified to meet the strict privacy guidelines of the European Union. All relationships on LinkedIn are mutually confirmed, and nobody is represented to be in the LinkedIn network without their knowledge and explicit consent."

LinkedIn has a wealth of features that you can choose to use or not use. Like most things it is what you make out of it. Try it out and see how well your network expands with LinkedIn.

Blink - The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

2005-08-01T10:19:00.000-07:00

When presented with a new concept, challenge, organization, or even person do you ever come to a conclusion in the "blink" of an eye. Your "gut" has already given you the answer, yet you cannot explain why?

In Malcolm Gladwell's book "blink" he covers what happens within your mind to enable you to process a large amount of information and quickly come to a conclusion of which you cannot immediately substantiate why.

We have been trained not to listen to our gut, but rather follow things through with diligent research, to only find that our gut instinct is correct in the end. Do you ever wonder how you came to that conclusion?

For a personal example, I remember when I was getting my MBA we were covering Organizational Change. The professor that taught the course was previously the Executive Director of the Governor's Economic Advisory Council of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, and afterwards left to become a professor.

One of the students asked the professor, "How do you know whether you are effecting organizational change, how long does it take before you know?" And unfortunately the professor took the ivory tower approach to say "It depends.", and refused to elaborate beyond that. Hardly a conclusive answer nor a solid approach to a critical topic.

For whatever reason I felt in my gut that I knew the answer to the question. I raised my hand and said, "No the correct answer is 90 days." Bear in mind that I had not previously analyzed this issue, but there was an overwhelming instinct inside me that said that was the correct answer.

The professor feeling challenged, said, "How can you be so sure that is the correct answer. There are multitudes of organizations and multitudes of challenges how can you arbitrarily assign 90 days?"

Inside of me, I wondered how did I know? And as I started to think about it, it became to clear me, and I said, "Most public organizations are run on quarterly results. In general when you have a new CEO, new product, etc the first 30 days are the honeymoon period. You can't do any wrong since everyone is willing to see if you have made an impact. After that 30 days people start to ask themselves do they see any change; it does not have to be substantial change, but at least momentum in a positive direction. If they do, then your 90 day clock just got reset, if they don't you have another 30 days of where they observe you. At 60 days in with no change, most people will begin to assume that this is either a bait-and-switch or more of the same and if you don't effect change by the 90th day you will have lost your ability to effect change."

Not liking my answer, the professor stated that it was too general of approach and could not be applied to the real world.

To which my instinct prodded me to ask the question, "Ok Professor, when you were working at the Governor's Economic Advisory Council at what point after a major change in the process did you sit down at dinner with your wife and first tell her 'You know honey, I don't think this is going anywhere?'"

And the look on his face answered my question... it had been 90 days!

"blink" is a fun read, and provides insightful answers to how our brain can process multitudes of information and give us the correct answer in a blink of the eye. If you find it to be interest to analyze your own "blink" judgements just follow the link to Amazon.

Business Process Reengineering - A simple approach

2005-07-25T01:28:00.000-07:00

Everyone always hears about Business Process Reengineering, but what does it mean? In a nutshell, it is the process of reengineering your business so that it can be more effective in processing transactions with the right amount of resources.

Sound simple? Unfortunately too many businesses have been bogged down in these reengineering projects that often all they have to show for it at the end is a lot of effort, much money spent, and little quality improvement. This does not have to be the case.

In the following example, we will cover a simple business process that everyone should familiar with, renewing your driver's license. I have yet to meet anyone who doesn't feel that they spend too much time in line, and that there has to be a better way.

This business process is a generic example, and not based upon any particular DMV. We are simulating how many renewal applications can the DMV handle on a daily basis.

There are 6 steps involved each with varying process times and 6 departments.

We initially start out with 6 workers, one in each department. And we simulate an inter-arrival time of customers looking to renew their drivers license to be 1 every 30 seconds.

When we run the simulation, we will see that only 59.86 or roughly 60 renewals are processed per hour in the entire day. In order to improve customer service the business objective is to at least double the amount of transactions to be processed.

So how do we achieve this? Do we add resources at every department, how do we know when we are hitting diminishing returns?

The best way is to simulate the process and see what the model tells you. After running a simulation we see that the department utilization is as follows:

Time-Weighted Average Resource Utilization
No Workers Added

Department	Sim #1
Application Review	24.94
Cashier	49.88
Eye Exam	66.51
Issuance	49.88
Photography	33.26
Violation Review	99.77

We see that the Violation Review Department is running utilized at 99.77%. We see this as an opportunity to add an additional worker and rerun the simulation.

This time the simulation tells us that we are now doing about 89.64 renewal applications per hour and that the bottleneck has moved out of the violation review department, and into the Eye Exam department.

Time-Weighted Average Resource Utilization
After 1 Worker Added to Violation Review Department

Department	Sim #1	Sim #2
Application Review	24.94	37.35
Cashier	49.88	74.70
Eye Exam	66.51	99.60
Issuance	49.88	74.70
Photography	33.26	49.80
Violation Review	99.77	74.70

Now if we add another resource in the Eye Exam department and run the simulation we see we now are processing 119.32 applications per hour achieving our business objective goal of doubling our applications processed per hour and only adding 2 more workers.

Time-Weighted Average Resource Utilization
After 1 Worker Added to Eye Exam Department

Department	Sim #1	Sim #2	Sim #3
Application Review	24.94	37.35	49.72
Cashier	49.88	74.70	99.43
Eye Exam	66.51	99.60	66.29
Issuance	49.88	74.70	99.43
Photography	33.26	49.80	66.29
Violation Review	99.77	74.70	99.43

So can we do better? If you look at the following Report on Renewal Applications you can see the diminshing returns we get as we add more resources.

Therefore to get more process improvement we need to look at the process times for each function and see if we can optimize those, just adding bodies is not going to improve the process. To see an overview of the entire process, click on the following link: DMV Process Overview

As you can see from this quick example, business process reengineering can be a powerful tool to help you optimize your business process.

If you would like to explore how you could gain efficiencies through modeling your business processes, please contact Hawaii Business Consulting for a free assessment at (808) 224-0470.

Leadership and Self Deception

2005-07-16T01:21:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine recently sent me a copy of "Leadership and Self Deception" by The Arbinger Institute. Even though it is not a very thick book; I being short on time, and always skeptical of yet another touchy feely book, I was slow to engage it.

But once I did, it was very insightful in analyzing and attacking how to break out of the vicious cycle where organizations tend to enter a downward spiral.

In my previous article regarding "How to Beat Back Bureaucracy", I touched upon how organizations once they get engaged in a political process how difficult it is for them to change. And that typically an organization will continue to become more political because it is too difficult and risky for people to change.

In this book it talks about what is necessary for leaders to break that vicious circle. The key message of the book is simply this: Self-betrayal leads to self-deception; which causes you not to focus on results.

The process looks like this:

In the book "Self-betrayal" is defined as An act contrary to what you feel you should do for another is an act of self-betrayal

You justify your betrayal by assigning blame to the other party. The only reason that you are not doing what you know to be right is because of what the other party did.

Unfortunately for everyone the person receiving this blame begins to start their process of self-betrayal;blame assignment; and justification

For example lets take a real-world example.

You manage a large department, you know that your employees deserve more money and you feel that you should do something about it. Unfortunately if you were to do something about it, it could play against you politically within your organization, and perhaps cost you money that would have been paid to you. You commit the act of self-betrayal by passing over getting your employees more money and you assign the blame to the employees. If they were only more efficient, more effective, etc. etc. you would do this, but since in your mind they are not you feel justified in not making any changes.

And what is the result?

The employees who are not making any money, realize that they could do more work for the company, but they choose not to because they justify that if they were getting better paid they would be willing to do more work.

And the vicious cycle begins.

The key steps in resolving this issue, is that business leaders at the top of the organization have to realize that this is occurring and take steps to change its culture.

Specifically:

Don't worry about being perfect, just strive to do better;

Don't look for how others are not doing things correctly strive to make sure your interactions don't fall into this vicious cycle;

Don't give up when you realize that you are prone to assigning blame, start small and be persistent to change your viewpoint;

Don't deny when you get caught in that cycle. Apologize, and move on. Try not to repeat the same mistake.

Summary:

The stories in the book make it much more of a compelling and fun read than I can do justice in this article. If you find it to be interest just follow the link to Amazon.

Conceptual Commercial Bank: A case study on Internet product delivery process improvement

2005-07-08T23:30:00.000-07:00

Executive Summary:

Conceptual Commercial Bank (CCB) is a fictitious large commercial bank based upon information gathered from several large corporate banks. Given the confidentiality and proprietary nature of such information none of the financial information or the process flows discussed in this case study directly correlates to any one specific bank, rather it is an amalgam of public and private information from all the banks.

CCB’s eBusiness Unit is facing challenges on how to quickly deliver new Internet based commercial bank products to its current customer set as well as expanding its customer base. Customers do not feel they are getting as much Internet product as they would like, and the business units feel that the deployment process takes too long and is too expensive.

The purpose of this case study is to analyze the current Internet product delivery process being implemented at CCB and how things could be improved to provide more Internet product for customers quickly while generating more revenues for CCB.

History:

CCB’s eBusiness Unit is responsible for developing and implementing CCB’s Internet financial services products and e-commerce solutions. This group works with the individual lines of business (LOBs) to develop and deliver Internet based solutions to meet the LOBs’ needs.

Due to the immaturity of the Internet space, there are high costs involved with deploying Internet solutions to customers. There are high costs for Internet technologies that are needed to deliver Internet solutions and the high cost of skilled resources has increased operating expenses significantly year over year.

Revenues from Internet products are increasing, although not as quickly as operating expenses. This is due to the slow adoption rate of current customers to new Internet products. It requires them to implement changes within their current business process, which takes time. Overall, customer feedback has been positive regarding their desire for Internet products, but how many products and what kinds are not clear.

Reported losses before restructuring-related items of $179 million in 2004, compared to $141 million in 2003 and $78 million in 2002. Net losses of $143 million in 2003 and $94 million in 2002 included restructuring-related items of $2 million ($3 million pretax) and $16 million ($28 million pretax), respectively. See Table 1.

Strategic Objective

The strategic objective of the eBusiness unit is to Internet enable as many products as possible to form a competitive advantage in selling commercial banking products.

Each line of business (LOB) is responsible for working with their customers to solicit new trends and needs within the market. Given that many of the products currently available to their customers are non-Internet based, the LOBs’ need to think through the consequences of cannibalizing current revenue streams in exchange for new Internet based product solutions.

Internet Product Delivery Processes

The challenge is that the uptake on new Internet product varies greatly based upon customer type. Large corporate customers tend to need specific products for specific needs. They have large treasury departments that have specific individuals to handle specific transactions: Foreign Exchange, Cash Management, etc. In middle-market and smaller organizations these functions tend to roll up under a small group of people. They prefer to have suites of products available to them to manage their complete relationship with the bank.

In order to address both needs, CCB formed the CCB Internet portal to serve their customers. This way both large corporate and middle-market customers can see their applications all in one location. This provides a consistent user interface for their end customers, and a consistent security and deployment mechanism for rolling out applications.

The end customer interacts with the portal in the following way:

1. They access CCB’s Internet portal;
2. Depending on what application they are accessing they are validated using different security measures;
3. The user is asked to authenticate depending on the security mechanism required;
4. The portal builds the customers information from LDAP (an internal database) and displays the look and feel depending on the type of customer;
5. The user interacts with the portal to get access to the applications it needs off of the shared application servers.

New Customer Idea

During this phase, customers may provide feedback on products and services that they would like to utilize from the bank. This input is generally routed to LOB’s customer sales representatives. New idea generation rate averages 5 recommendations per month.

Business Group Review

Capacity: 20 projects; depending on size and complexity

Given that there are multiple business areas, each area looks at new product development within their own budget constraints and determines what products would give them the greatest competitive advantage or what do they need to do in order to retain key customers.

Many projects are not implemented right away due to the fact that it may not be possible to begin work in the current budget cycle. Other projects are already funded and to start new work would mean sacrificing of other projects already underway. These projects are sometimes brought back into the queue in the next budget planning process.

Proof of Concept

Capacity: 5 projects; depending on size and complexity

If the business feels that there is enough potential in moving forward, it engages the system IT areas to start to build out a proof of concept. This proof of concept can be done internally or sometimes in conjunction with external vendors.

This is often done very quickly to test out the idea before the senior management review meeting. It also allows the IT and business teams to better size the amount of time and effort required to deliver this product.

Things get rejected at this point when IT identifies a showstopper from a systems end that will impede the ability for the product to get to market.

Senior Management Review

Capacity: 5 projects

Senior management meets and reviews new proposed business cases for additional projects. This process typically happens during budget planning cycles, but can occur off-cycle if there is enough business justification.

Most projects get rejected at this point due to the following reasons:

1. Not enough data to determine if the projects will generate real return;
2. Competing internal and system needs that cannot afford to free up resources;
3. Other business cases are more compelling and require the same resources.

Gather Detailed Requirements

Capacity: 2 projects

Given the size and complexity of the projects, the number of resources required to implement this phase can greatly vary. Compounding this challenge is that there is an internal strategy group that works as a liaison between the Systems and Business areas. This strategy group tries to marshal the requirements back and forth between the areas which slows the process down. Elimination or reduction of the utilization of this group would greatly enhance the ability for the system’s areas to handle more projects.

Build Internet Product

Capacity: 10 projects; dependent on complexity

This is where the development process begins to build to the business requirements. This takes a lot of coordination amongst resources and across groups. The more complicated the project the more complicated the communication flows. This can lead to miscommunications, turf battles, and stalling of the project. If the cost and time overruns are too extreme, management may choose to stop the project.

QA/Product Release

Capacity: 4 projects; dependent on complexity

CCB is moving to an automated form of QA testing, but currently relies extensively on resources from both the business and IT areas to help do the final QA testing.

During this time a select group of customers are invited to test the product and provide feedback… Too much negative feedback or instability in the application can cause the project to be stopped.

Deliver product to Customers

At this point the product becomes generally available to customers, and it is a factor of the salespeople to sell their customers on it.

If the process has worked successfully the products that are coming out will meet the consumers needs. However with the long lag times, and the rapidly changing Internet landscape those products may not be what the customers want today, which causes the process to be kicked off yet again.

Process Improvement

In order to determine the optimum process improvements, the overall process was entered into the Process Model software, and statistics were collected for the operation.

Table 2 shows the baseline statistics for the process. The inputs to the system are assumed to be 5 new ideas per month fed into the system over a 4 year time period.

Improve Quality

From looking at Figure 2 we see that some projects get stopped in the build or QA phase of the project. The primary reasons are that the projects selected had high variability in customer acceptance, or tended to be trendy in what the market wanted for the short-term, but by the time the product would be delivered it was no longer required by the customers.

By implementing more stringent criteria early in the project selection process, it will help increase the quality of the product ideas and reduce the rejection rate of the project once the project has begun. This is very important do to the fact that any rejection after the bottleneck “Gather detailed requirements” is very expensive.

Table 3, shows the improvements in the quality process. The rejection rate for the “Build internet product” and the “QA pilot release” activities were decreased to 0%. This leads to 4 more products being released - an additional project per year.

Improve Capacity

From Table 2 we observe that the biggest buildup is before the “Gather detailed requirements” activity. The “Gather detailed requirements” activity actually encompasses many sub-activities and three resources. In order to improve the process we need to be able to increase the capacity of the bottleneck. The reason that there is such a small capacity is that in order to solicit requirements, the system group needs to work through the strategy group to communicate with the business. This only leads to indirect and inefficient communications between the business and the systems groups.

By cutting out the strategy group and redeploying those resources into the systems groups, the business can directly work with the system areas, which will increase the communication flows and increase the capacity of handling more projects.

The capacity of the bottleneck was increased from 2 to 6 projects per month. Table 4 shows the improvements. The number of finished Internet products dramatically increased by 200%, releasing 18 projects over a 4-year period. Time to market decreased from 24 months to 15.6 months. Also note that the % utilization of the last two activities increased, because the bottleneck is now releasing more projects each month.

Improve Flow time

Areas in which we could improve flow times are in the “Gather detailed requirements” and “Build Internet product” activities. These two activities take 72% of the 14.5 months of theoretical flow time. But breaking the overall project into smaller phases (one could visualize this as breaking down the batch sizes) we would be able to increase the flow time through both the requirements and the building phase.

Requirements would be less per phase, which would take shorter time to gather and ultimately would speed up the building process.

Table 5 shows the improvements when the flow times are reduced to 3 months for the “Gather detailed requirements” and “Build Internet product” activities. The number of Internet products dramatically increased by over 200%, releasing 22 projects over a 4-year period. In addition the time to market decreased from 24 months to 14 and the theoretical flow time is now 10 months.

Total Improvement (All three improvements implemented)

By improving quality control, decreasing the theoretical flow time and increasing the capacity at bottlenecks, CCB will be able to increase product releases to 30 products over 4 years, or about 7.5 products per year. (Table 6) Just as important, average cycle time is as close to average value-add time as possible. This greatly streamlines the operation and keeps products from being obsolete by the time they reach the market.

Table 7 compares and contrasts the impact of the changes individually as well as implementing all of them together.

Conclusion

The biggest challenge in implementing some of these improvements is that it requires major organizational changes to be effective. While some things such as better quality controls can be implemented without any pushback, removal of the strategy group and closer linkages with the business and system areas will disrupt the political status quo. In order to make changes along these lines support of senior management will be necessary.

But by implementing these improvements CCB will greatly increase its speed in which it delivers new Internet product to market. Infrastructure components (fixed costs) represent 80% of operating expense where project development (variable costs) represents only 20%. By speeding up the process of delivering Internet product CCB will be able to reduce operating expenses and improves the bottom line contribution of the eBusiness unit on a per product basis. This will greatly increase CCB’s competitive advantage in this market by being able to respond to their customer needs quickly, which will allow them to generate revenues to better fund other Internet product ideas.

The Soren Principle - How to attract and retain your top talent

2005-07-02T00:13:00.000-07:00

Why does it seem to be so difficult for many companies to attract and retain top talent? What happens within an organization that causes some people to want to stay and others to leave?

The Soren Principle is defined as "Your top talent will stay in a company as long as they can beat back the bureaucracy and effect change. As soon as that becomes impossible it is time for them to move on."

What I have found to be the motivators for people to stay or change jobs is based on four questions that they ask themselves:

1. Culture - Do they like the people they work for, work with them, and report to them.
2. Impact - Do they feel like they are making a difference doing the job they do.
3. Career Growth - Do they feel that they are learning new things and have more to learn.
4. Money - Last but not least, this is what compensates for when they don't have 1-3 and it helps pay the bills!

If you can provide people with

4 out of 4: These people will go out of their way to do the right thing for the company. They will be eager to refer people to come work at your company.

3 out of 4: While realizing that nothing is perfect they will typically stick it out within a company.

2 out of 4: They are already on the fence and contemplating looking elsewhere.

1 out of 4: They are doing their job search on the job. They are not interested in their work, and it will be difficult to motivate them.

0 out of 4: These people are so disgruntled that they are only there because they can't find something else... yet!

You need to listen to what they really want to do

The first question I ask people during an interview is "What is your dream job?" This often takes the candidate by shock and sometimes confusion because they feel that they have to answer the question in the context of how it relates to the position that they are currently interviewing for.

But I tell them no, I am interested as an employer to know what is your ideal job. That way I can align opportunities that match your interests. I have always found that employees that are staffed on jobs based by their aspiration and not current job title tend to be more effective and innovative than those doing it for the paycheck. You would be surprised by what you learn about people by just asking that simple question.

Make sure you lead people and not just manage them

As an employer you are constantly being silently evaluated by those that work for you. They are making assessments as to whether it is in their best interest to stay on board. Many managers tend to treat people (some not intentionally) like pawns on a chess board. They are tools to achieve the bigger corporate agenda. Often these managers fail to have any ability to inspire their people, or rally them to cause other than "We need to do it, because the guys at the top said so."

Remember:

"People follow bosses because they have to, people follow leaders because they choose to."

What would you rather be viewed as?

Have integrity in everything you do

Nothing amputates an employee's spirit faster than when they see their bosses doing things they know is wrong. The "Do as I say, and not as I do." management approach has been responsible for destroying many a company's workforce.

Once you break trust it is very difficult to reestablish it.

Compensation is not all about money

Every person has a different need that makes them happy. You have to understand what is that motivator in your employees. It requires work, time, and energy to truly listen, solicit, and encourage your employees to share with you what they want, but the rewards are unlimited.

If your employees see that you are willing to go that extra step for them, most return the favor by going an extra mile for you.

But it takes time to establish trust and for people to view you as being different than all those other managers they had in the past.

Communication and Feedback is critical

I once worked for a boss that said he truly encouraged disagreement because he felt that it allowed people to communicate and that he had an open door policy to anyone who wanted to give him feedback.

What it turned out that he meant was that he encouraged disagreement as long as it did not run counter to anything he said. And by asking him questions directly he did not like to be challenged, so his open door policy meant that anyone that did not agree with him could leave.

Don't make that mistake; if you encourage feedback take the good with the bad. You are going to have some that just come in and complain about everything, but it will also enable those to give you critical feedback that will allow you to make adjustments to your organization.

Make your work place fun

Fun does not have to cost a lot of money. I have always had a philosophy of "Work hard, play hard". As a manager you try to find ways to recognize and reward your employees in ways that encourage others to contribute.

I can remember many days where teams that I managed after achieving a major milestone, would take off early on a Friday to do a team outing. It allowed people to detox and unwind. It provided an informal atmosphere where people could feel comfortable venting their concerns without feeling like it was a formal meeting.

We are looking for a few good people!

Hawaii Business Consulting is growing, and we are looking for good people in sales, business, and technology. If you like an entrepreneurial environment, having multiple responsibilities, and having fun while delivering value with integrity you may be interested in working for Hawaii Business Consulting.

Please forward your resume and cover letter to hr@hawaiibcllc.com

Business Intelligence - Real time control of your organization is now a reality

2005-06-24T22:29:00.000-07:00

As a senior executive you have several business priorities that you need to track and keep up to date with. But with the vast amounts of information pouring onto your desk, emails, and voice mail, how can you keep up?

The ability to have your finger on the pulse of your organization is critical not only to your own personal success, but to the growth of the organization.

Imagine a system where you could:

Have an Executive Dashboard where you can get a high-level overview of the key business drivers and performance indicators for your organization

Dynamically analyze your market in real time by tracking your sales versus product categories

Drill down by product categories and analyze Sales growth

Quickly identify your top 10 customers and perform year over year comparisons

Perform What-if analysis and project the impact to your sales forecast

Make changes on the fly and have the system be responsive to your changing needs and not cost a lot of money or take long to implement.

Sound like fantasy to you? Well now there is a solution out there that will enable your organization to do this quickly and at low cost.

Hawaii Business Consulting's Business Intelligence Services ® is the solution you have been waiting for. Leveraging Oracle's new Business Intelligence Beans (BI Beans) Hawaii Business Consulting can take your business information and create a dynamic and secure web interface that allows you to put your finger on the pulse of your organization.

Click on the links below to see screen shots of a generic company implementation.

Executive Dashboard that shows your Key Performance indicators

Product Category Market Analysis

Sales Growth Analysis

Margin Analysis

Customer Region and Market Analysis

Growth and Margin Analysis

What If Analysis

Summary

In less than 30 days you can be up and running

You can host it in your current environment, or we can host it for you

Runs completely independent and parallel to you current systems

Completely customized to your requirements

Call (808) 224-0470 to get your free assessment on how you can get started with business intelligence.

Beating Back Bureaucracy - Killing the weeds that stifle the growth of your organization

2005-06-18T09:45:00.000-07:00

Bureaucracies are inherent in large organizations. The number of layers from lowest level employee to the top is the order of that company's bureaucracy. Too high of an order of bureaucracy results in too much delegation and not enough action or results.

Bureaucracy exists in all large corporations...How do you fight it?

Let's take a look at an example and see what you would do:

You are responsible for a large department. Currently there is a situation that is happening that will cost your company a lot of money, but the problem is that it is highly political. If you take a stand on it and deal with it you risk facing retaliation, but if you play along you get your bonus. Your bonus payoff is based upon your actions and the actions of the rest of the organization... What will you do?

Payoff Table for Political Decision

The way to read this table is as follows:

There is a bonus amount of $200K to be split amongst the organization. If you or the rest of the organization take a stand on the issue your bonus payout is dependent on the strategy of the other party. For example if you take a stand and the rest of the organization plays along the bonus payout ($0K, $200K) means that you will get nothing ($0K) and the rest of the organization will get $200K. Now if both parties take a stand the bonus payout is ($50K, $50K) and this is due to the fact that companies in general tend to hate to deal with political issues and due to dealing with the issue everyone's bonus will be less.

So what should people do? And more importantly what will people in general do? Let's look at Game Theory and see what it tells us:

DEFINITION: Nash Equilibrium If there is a set of strategies with the property that no player can benefit by changing their strategy while the other players keep their strategies unchanged, then that set of strategies and the corresponding payoffs constitute the Nash Equilibrium.

The Nash Equilibrium tells us that in general all people will choose to play along, because you can't get a better outcome regardless of the other parties choice. For example, if you thought about taking a stand you would quickly realize that if the rest of the organization played along you would lose your bonus. Conversely if you played along at worst you will have $100K, and at best you will have $200K.

But what happens if everyone does this?

Playing along is a short term strategy. If everyone plays along then organizations begin to deteriorate from within. Those that take a stand will be less inclined to do so in the future, or will leave for other companies.

Bureaucracy is self healing. It is easier to do nothing than to take a stand on an issue.But in order for the culture of an organization to change, a couple of people need to spark the change and take a stand.While it is self healing, it often costs a company more in the long run and is not self-sustaining for the long run.

All of this is highly dependent on corporate culture. If enough people take a stand there is a chance for change. If not nothing will change until it is too late.

Organizations need leaders within their company to tackle these problems. Find out what kind of Leadership profile you have in fighting bureaucracy:

Click here to take the Leadership Profile Quiz

Summary

Hold people accountable... Really!

Reduce the order of bureaucracy within an organization.

Reward those who do the right thing for the company, and punish those that don't.

If not, you deal with the consequences!

Virtual Sales Force - A unique approach to automating your sales force

2005-06-10T23:43:00.000-07:00

We all know that salespeople cost money, and salespeople don’t and can't work 24 hours a day. Yet customers in general tend to be apprehensive about interacting with salespeople, and customers spend a large amount of time on the Internet before they buy. But customers still want to interact with a human...or at least something that appears human before closing the deal!

Is there some way that we can still achieve both goals? Can we have interactive salespeople that work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and not worry about them asking for an additional commission?

The answer may lie with Virtual Salespeople from SitePal.

These highly customizable and talking avatars can be easily incorporated into your corporate website. With its text-to-speech conversion it allows dynamic information from your corporate database. And most importantly they are willing to work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and never ask for a commission!

Dodge/Chrysler/Jeep Promotion

At www.discoveryourride.com customers are asked personality based questions to derive what type of car the customer should drive. Interactive questions with the Sales avatar make the experience fun and easy to use. Through the process it narrows the car options for the customer and leads them down to closing the deal.

Other applications could be to use it for your customer service desk, billing & payment information, or an informational kiosk.

By integrating it with your corporate database you can automate routine tasks while still giving it a personal touch. By providing interactive content that is engaging you will find that customers tend to respond and interact more than before.

Summary

Routine tasks and new promotions would benefit from this technology

It provides a human touch with the tirelessness of a computer

Virtual Salespeople will never replace all salespeople but it is a good way to handle the Internet channel

Revitalizing your Business with Technology

2005-06-03T18:54:00.000-07:00

A common scenario for most mature companies that have been in business for more than 10 years, is that they either still run a major part of their business with the original technology infrastructure from when they started the company, or they have an amalgam of technology infrastructures, partially implemented software applications, and multiple systems that need to be integrated from previous acquisitions.

Sound familiar?

Don't be too disturbed. There are very few companies out there that have a perfect business and technology integration infrastructure. That is because just when you think you have it all integrated, the business changes and you now have a new system to integrate or a new acquisition to consolidate.

It's an evolutionary cycle in which the technology and business infrastructure has to grow as you are growing your business. Imagine a company when it first starts as a newborn child, and (bear with the analogy) imagine the clothing you provide for your child as your technology and business infrastructure. You provide clothing to that child as he grows. You consistently buy new shoes, shirts, and pants in bigger sizes as the child continues to grow.

But what would happen if one day you decided it was just too expensive to continue purchasing clothes for your child, as they got older, and that you could save a lot of money if you just stopped buying clothes for your child when they were five years old? You could argue that if his feet got too big you could just cut off the tips of the shoes and let his feet expand. Or you could patch together a number of shirts to create an even bigger shirt, etc., etc.

Your child would be busting at the seams of its clothing, as would your business suffer from the lack of infrastructure. This example seems comical because we know that no parent would stop buying their children clothes, except unfortunately I have seen many companies stop investing in their infrastructure and suffer the consequences.

Below is a step-by-step process I use with clients when helping them align their technology infrastructure with their business objectives.

1. Identify process inefficiencies

You need to have a firm grasp of where the bottlenecks are in your cash flow. Don't worry about chasing after the new fad in technology or what your competitors are doing, focus on what is going to generate revenue or cut costs for your business.

Many executives make the mistake of deciding what the root causes are without doing any analysis. There is nothing wrong with having gut instinct, but make sure you get it validated with real data. Engaging a third party has the benefit of a non-biased observer that can pull the details together without the fear of internal politics.

2. Have a technology roadmap

I was once working with a business executive that stated that his company's website needed to be changed immediately. When I asked him specifically what did he feel needed to be changed, his only response was "I don't know...everything!" I like to call this approach the "Fire, fire, fire, ready, aim" strategy or also known as the "Boil the ocean" approach.

If you don't know where you are going any path can get you there. But at what cost, and what detriment to your business? You need to spend the time to clearly identify business objectives of what you want to achieve from where you are today. Without clear business objectives it is impossible to put together a technology roadmap that will be of value to the business.

3. Develop and motivate your staff

Any time you undergo major changes in your infrastructure it has a major effect on your staff. Your staff needs to see how do they fit into the equation, and how do they derive value from the change.

The approach I recommend is to insure you enable people with the appropriate training, support, and give them new tasks to tackle. You insure that it is enough of a stretch so they can grow from the experience. The mechanism is Darwinian, some will make it; others won't.

But throughout this process you need to hold people accountable, and that includes yourself! It's not good enough to delegate all of the responsibility, and expect things to happen. You need to actively monitor the process. Credit needs to roll down to the people actually doing the work, and accountability needs to roll up. Be careful if you are insulated from those getting the work done by several layers of management. If projects fail often it is not those doing the work that are at fault: They may be working with inadequate resources, unrealistic timeframes, and worst of yet most of them might not feel comfortable telling you till it is too late.

4. Be wary of those vendors looking to "help"

Some just want to help themselves to your profits! Many executives when discussing technology transformation feel they are washed out to sea with technology jargon and multiple options, and all they want is a simple solution to solve their business problems.

Many a great promise has been made on PowerPoint presentations, but only to fail miserably in actual results. Steer clear of multi-year projects with no clear deliverables. Demand real ROI, hard dollars not soft and fuzzy projections, that have to be achieved within the year.

You should question any vendor that will not give you a 30-day out clause from your contract. Being locked into a bad contract can impede your company's ability to grow and be more dynamic.

Remember you can't spend yourself out of a problem. Make the vendors earn your business, just like you have to earn your own customer's business.

5. Start small... think big

It is often tempting to take on larger projects because it has more splash and sizzle. I worked with one company that had a 10-year plan on how it was going to change its technology infrastructure. Two years into it, it was cancelled. Realistically businesses cannot afford to run this way, especially if the business plan of today will soon change tomorrow.

Approach projects in increments. Smaller investments allow you to be dynamic and responsive to the business and your customers. It is better to invest $50K into one small project, and if it succeeds invest more. Rather than spending $1 million and hoping that it works.

Bear in mind that you can’t turn a company around overnight, and it is going to take time and persistence to make it happen. Most people cannot be turned 180 degrees at one time, but most can be changed one degree at a time. If you can consistently persuade and show them 180 times, you can get people to change.

Changing a corporate culture and people requires a lot of work. Change is scary for many people. Have a thick skin and don’t let minor setbacks derail you. Often using an external party to be the change agent allows more people to feel that they are on equal footing and they will be more willing to participate.

Summary

If you want to revitalize your company you have to know what your issues are.

Stay focused with a roadmap that can get you from where you are now to where you want to be.

Take care of your people or there will be no one to take care of you.

Make sure you are getting value for what you pay for.

It’s a marathon not a race. Driving corporate change is difficult but the benefit to the company is significant.

Have a thick skin and don’t let minor setbacks derail you.

The process can be complex. Utilize a third party that has experience in this area to help effect the change.

Welcome to Hawaii Business Consulting, LLC

2005-06-02T10:29:00.000-07:00

Hawaii Business Consulting is a technology consulting company that provides business process analysis, data-legacy system migration and integration, custom software development and technology assessment to major corporations in Hawaii.

Hawaii Business Consulting is not a new company. I first began the company almost 7 years ago when I first returned to Hawaii to implement technology solutions on Kauai where I was raised. I wanted to bring back all the skills and expertise that I had gained on the mainland and leverage that to help enable the businesses on Kauai grow with technology. However I soon began to realize that the new Internet Business Solutions that I was trying to sell, was almost akin to selling nuclear reactors to people who just discovered fire. The concept was good but MY timing was WAY off! (smile)

Now I am on the island of Oahu, and over the past two years I have seen a lot of companies here in Hawaii desperately trying to get a handle of how can they utilize technology to enable their business. My expertise is in helping companies align their business strategies so that technology can provide value and enable its execution.

But what I primarily do is work with senior executives to leverage technology to help them meet their business strategy and objectives.

Let's face it; technology for many people, especially senior executives, is a bit of an enigma. In the last twenty years that technology has grown in leaps and bounds, most senior executives have been running companies day-to-day without the help of most of the latest and greatest technology solutions that we currently have. They have made business decisions on gut instinct, experience, and a helpful dose of good luck. So why should things change now?

Because the world has become a much smaller place. Automation via technology and the Internet are making technology an even more competitive weapon in the marketplace. Technology is rapidly eroding the niches of opacity that many companies have happily operated under which allowed them to live within a margin of error and inefficiency because their customers didn't know any better.

Now it has become much harder. With the pervasiveness of technology and the Internet into every aspect of our lives customers are now better informed, have more choices, and expect more for less. This puts extreme downward pressure on prices as companies attempt to fix the problem by just lowering prices.

But lowering prices without identifying their core business problems only exacerbates the problem. Companies who blindly stumble thinking that pricing is the only solution without taking a close hard look at their internal operations will slowly enter a death spiral of inefficiency, increased customer dissatisfaction, and increased unprofitability. Or worse companies become deluged in all the technology choices, options, and configurations that are possible with technology that they either never get started or begin very expensive exercises in futility.

But thankfully with the technology tools that are available today, and with the right partner to provide insight on the proper implementation and utilization of these technologies into the business practices, technology will serve as a compass to lead many companies out of the storm of confusion. However, there will still be unfortunately many that never make it, primarily because they steadfastly hold on to the belief that the way they have done things for twenty years should still be the way they do it for twenty more.

The goal of this website is not to just promote the services of Hawaii Business Consulting, but more importantly to spark discussion and dialogue regarding critical problems facing senior executives as they formulate their business strategy and execute on their plan. I will be presenting articles on a weekly basis regarding issues that effect companies when implementing either new technologies or new business strategies. Feel free to email me any topics that you would like to see covered or issues that you are facing within your own companies and you can rest assured that all topics will be anonymized as to which company it comes from.

Join me as we explore how technology can be sucessfully leveraged by businesses, and the traps and pitfalls that await those that do not know how to execute.

Aloha,

Soren