aqualung

via adage.com

There's a lot of noise around this situation that focuses on the language used rather than the message. In the end, I think that the situation (handled properly) would have been no harm if the use of the f-bomb was the only problem. But the larger point from Chrysler's perspective is the negative sentiment to their home city, one they have trying to overcome with the Eminem ads and the "Imported from Detroit" tagline - the offending tweet was NOT the message Chrysler is trying to put across.

From my perspective, the even bigger problem is that Chrysler doesn't use its own voice, but an agency with its Twitter presence - sorry, but I don't see that as engaging in a conversation, nor do I see it as an authentic presence in social media. Social media/PR/marcomms agencies may be great at helping you set up a socmed strategy and presence, but they are a lousy proxy in a relationship - intermediaries just get in the way of hearing and being heard. Is that a lesson that companies STILL haven't learnt about social networks?

via www.fragiletoagile.com.au

While TOGAF (with version 9) has made some steps towards a greater business orientation, it DOES have an IT background, and will take some time to shake off that tag, if it ever does. TOGAF and other "high-ceremony" methodologies, taxonomies and frameworks also threaten a large and expensive project to implement - F2A is applicable out of the box, and can create value in a matter of weeks.

via www.euansemple.com

I was watching Euan Semple's video of his DO lecture, and at one stage he spoke about middle managers as intermediaries, and their potential for extinction as social media began to disintermediate them as it begins to permeate enterprise consciousness. Very briefly, he made what I think is an important distinction, one which is often overlooked in this type of conversation: there are two types of intermediary - "synthesisers" and "gatekeepers".

Synthesisers offer value as integrators, bridgebuilders, hubs and filters - they link people to other people, link people to information, and help make sense of information flow. This value will become more important, not less. These middle management incumbents will have the best chance of survival (they will still be subject to "shotgun" redundancies actioned by senior management with eyes on numbers rather than value, so they're not immune to the threat) as information flows increasingly become more important than information stores.

Gatekeepers, on the other hand, only offer interruptions to information flow, and attempt to hoard, rather than share, information. These will be most threatened by social media behind the firewall, and most likely to be disrupted by information flow.

For some time now I have continued to blog (albeit spasmodically) on this blog for topics which would probably have been on a "company" blog if I'd had one (I did set up an "achurch" blog here on Typepad, but wasn't particularly happy with putting more content here - I am really looking to take back some control of my own web presence!). I readily confess to having dragged the chain unforgivably on that front, but am pleased to say that (finally) I have my own hosting in place and have a new WordPress site at achurch & associates.

You'll notice it's a fairly unassuming design - a man needs to know his limitations :), to paraphrase Harry Callahan. You may also notice some of the content gets re-posted from here to there - it's not going to be a lot, but it makes sense to repeat some posts on the new site, and they will probably get a bit of an update in the process.

So what happens to this site? It will still get social media, politics, music and personal stuff posted to it - things which aren't specific to my business. Likewise the "small pieces" site will get snippets of interest from around the place re-blogged still.

So those of you interested in enterprise architecture, IT strategy and industry analysis - that will be at the new home. Everyone else - as you were :)

via www.newsome.org

Kent says what I wish I had the time and chops to - the big problem with social media marketing is that the consumer doesn't want it ... I think that businesses should be findable on social media, but it isn't a marketing channel, it's an information-sharing and support system

If you want the backstory on this, Mark Pesce's purpose-built blog is a good place to start (most of the reviewers seem to be posting their reviews on blogs, but Mark has opened up a post specifically to garner reactions, so it's worth looking at the comments), or search Twitter for the hashtag #telstradesire - I'm more interested in the apparent controversy about the reviewers collective reputations/integrity, and the whole "social media" experiment that Telstra is conducting.

In no particular order, my thoughts:

 

Had an interesting email last week from the Senior Marketing Manager at Software Advice who asked me to read, comment on and link to his boss’s blog post about SAP’s SME offerings. My first thought was “if somebody wants to engage with me, why aren’t they talking to me themselves?†… my second thought was “so they want me to help them get some Googlejuice?â€
This was last week - so I’ve thought about it a bit. And I’ve decided (against @dahowlett’s advice ☺) to write it up … for a couple of reasons:

The company: Software Advice offers what is potentially a useful service to small to medium sized businesses - enquirers about business software can self-serve via a simplistic sequence of questions which lead to a suggested software package for their needs, and if that’s not enough they can ring up a consultant for more detailed advice. Or you can select a category of software (CRM, ERP, HRM etc.) you’re interested in, and check out all the vendors that have signed up for the “other end†of the service. The service is free to the enquirer - Software Advice gets paid by software vendors for qualified referrals. They’re up-front about that - it’s on their site, and the Marketing Manager was quite happy to explain the deal to me … it looks like a workable model.

The post: There’s no new information in it, and any analyst/interested party who follows the big ERP vendors will find nothing exciting there (in fact, SAP has a similar summary on its own site). But the cognoscenti aren’t the audience, and while it was easy for me to be a little dismissive, for a non-technical small/medium business person it was a concise and informative summary of SAP’s offerings - not a bad thing. It would possibly generate more questions, but that works right into the business model - any prospective customer who follows up with more questions will be a better-qualified lead.

What’s missing: While the post made good reference to the SaaS nature of Business By Design, it didn’t say anything about SOA or the “on-demand†aspect of Business By Design - not entirely Software Advice’s problem, in my opinion. I’m a services kind of guy, and sometimes viewed as “anti-ERP†(not an impression I argue against, either ☺). Business By Design is SAP’s opportunity to disrupt itself, rather than be disrupted by someone else. Their on-premise/hosted apps will still have a life - there are plenty of customers who won’t fit the BBD model (as it stands - there’s no particular reason why it couldn’t be scaled up to larger enterprises eventually), plus there’s plenty of customers who still have a long payback period for their current implementation and won’t be in any hurry for a replacement exercise. But the future is less likely to consist of on-premise installs, plus SAP needs to move to a more SME-friendly position if it wants to continue any reasonable rate of growth (or relevance, even).

And it’s NOT because they don’t have the ideas … as Ray Wang suggests (in his wrap of last year’s SAP Influencers Summit) SAP just aren’t making enough of their innovations … they’re caught flush in Christensen’s Innovator’s Dilemma.  Despite my “anti-ERP†stance, I believe that SAP is in a good position to change the way they approach the provision of business functionality, and BBD is the key to that (I certainly think it has a better chance than Netweaver, SAP’s previous attempt at SOA-type architecture). The question is … do they have the balls to disrupt their historical business model and commit to a service-based offering?

Somebody’s going to do it …

via blog.thingamy.com

Sig has another crack at enterprise software and its emphasis on efficiency, and the gap it leaves in effectiveness - doing the right thing, not just doing the thing right.

Dennis Howlett also weighs in, contrasting Sig's view with the current Enterprise 2.0 push, which he sees as perpetuating the "efficiency" approach:

I had something to say about this a while ago:

Note: there's nothing wrong with enterprise software and efficiency per se - social media/E2.0 shouldn't be trying to replace those things, but to augment existing business process with a cross-silo conversation to help improve WHAT we do, as well as HOW we do it.

via blogs.zdnet.com

WTF, "Fusion will be heavily diluted in an effort to get something out the door in 2010"? Just how long is it going to take for Oracle to get this story together, let alone right?

... and there's a few people in my town who won't be happy to hear about stalled development on JDE.

The rest of the post has a couple of interesting points about how Oracle monitors its licenses, and again points out that its maintenance revenue (at 92% margin) is the only thing keeping Oracle profitable ... Ellison wants Oracle to be the IBM of the 60's - if he's not careful they'll end up the IBM of the 80's instead.