Enterprise Software Uncompetitive

Why the Current Model Does Not Work

Currently the enterprise software market is far less competitive than the consumer software market. This is because decision makers do not have direct experience with the software that they purchase and their options are narrowed by advisers and consulting firms that make money from implementing software. Software is not recommended because it is the best software for the client, but because the consulting company can make money off of the consulting. In the corporate market the quality of the software is secondary to the quality of the relationships that a software company has. First it must hire expensive salesmen who have relationships with executives. Secondly, it must provide very long and expensive implementations to the large consulting companies, or the consulting companies will not promote the software with their clients. Software that is selected by large companies is often the wrong software because of the corrupting influence of consulting companies and software salesmen.

The Web Enabled Model WOuld Work

A perfect example of this is Microsoft SharePoint. It is the worst document management software available, yet it persists.  A hosted model or software as a service, in addition to eliminating software salesmen and reducing the over-reliance upon software companies would result in a far more efficient system, and in far better software.

http://symmetricalcontent.com/wp-content-capabilities/wp-as-cms/

Supply Chain Software And The Google Model

We have moved this post to our new blog on Google for Supply Chain. See the post here..

http://googleforsupplychain.wordpress.com/2009/06/15/supply-chain-software-and-the-google-model/

Google Maps and GoMobileIQ for Vehicle Routing

Things are Changing

At one time vehicle routing software was only available through software that was expensive, and needed to be installed on the purchasing company’s computers. Not anymore. Sophisticated web enabled routing software is now available for a monthly fee, and with less feature rich routing available for free from Google Maps. In our post entitled Lets Web Enable Supply Chain, we made the point supply chain software should increasingly change to a web based model. http://supplychaininnovation.wordpress.com/2009/05/29/web-enable-supply-chain/

There are all sorts of reasons for this, not the least of which being, that web based software can be easily and inexpensively tested, without the necessity for the normal corporate software sales process. We find this process immensely wasteful and actually reduces the quality of software because less transparent software is more difficult to properly compare. When software is not web enabled, it means consultants need to come to the client site and work in an unfamiliar environment where they are less efficient. When software is offered over the web as a service, the entire situation is far more efficient and better results occur.

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What Is Web Enabled?

We wanted to be sure to define what we mean by the term “web enabled.” This is because many marketing representatives will declare their software is web enabled, however, our definition is a bit different. When we say web enabled we mean the following:

• The interface meets high standards of design and is extremely usable, and that it actually takes advantage of HTML, Java or even Flash. Arena Solutions and MCA make the grade, SAP Portals, does not — even though it is written in HTML.
• The company offers their software as a service, and furthermore, they actually support this model with resources.
• The company offers a demo system either directly through their website (the most preferable) or by request through an account rep.

Less Incentive to Improve

Vendors are putting off improving their web interfaces because those making the purchasing decisions are often not aware that there are different degrees of web enablement. Also, too often software vendors present the interface during a demo with specialized pre-sales consultants who spend many hours mastering the interface. This is not evidence of a well designed or usable interfaces. Excellent interfaces allow beginners to quickly pick up software, and expose the underlying logic of the program to users. Executives who do not give sufficient emphasis to the interface will find they have problems with and more expensive implementations.

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Google Maps

To start off this analysis we wanted to discuss a new feature we discovered in Google Maps. First because it is simply interesting that you can get this from a free service, and secondly, because the more sophisticated solution we review after it also is based upon, Google Maps.

Adding a Location to a Route

In the example below, we have created a route between two locations (A and B in green letters below). We thought that Google Maps required addresses, but in fact, you can enter in the name of business and Google Maps will find the closest one to the route you have currently planned. Below, Google Maps has found several 24 Hour Fitness locations that are close to 762 San Antonio Rd in Mountain View California.

However, if we drag the location above the first location, notice it changes where it searches for 24 Hour Fitness locations. It now finds locations close to the starting point of the route.

Here you can see the two 24 Hour Fitness locations presented on the map as well.

Now that we have a gym selected, we can add another business, and it will do the same thing, finding Trader Joe’s locations close to the 24 Hour Fitness.

Using just Google Maps, we have route planned our personal itinerary. Its hard to conceive that just a few years ago, this would have required expensive routing software and was certainly not available on the web. Again, this is all provided for free by Google. Is there another software company that has given as much to society as Google? As popular as they are, their contribution is actually under-appreciated. When compared to software companies like Microsoft of Oracle, that give nothing back and is mostly about locking its customers in….and then charging them as much as possible, Google seems like it is from another planet. We found an article from O’Reilly, that may help explain why, which we have added and excerpt of at the end of this post.

GoMobileIQ

While Google Maps is great for personal use, and could probably plan simple routes just find. There is a lot of functionality it does not have, and it does not consider splitting locations between different trucks. One vendor which impressed us is GoMobileIQ. A few of reasons we like them is:

1. They are truly web enabled
2. They leverage Google Maps.

This is done using the Google Maps API which you can read about here.

http://code.google.com/apis/maps/

It is Google’s attempt to encourage other software companies to use its maps as a platform.

This is good for customers of GoMobileIQ because Google Maps will continue to develop, so by building HeadLight (this is the name of the product made by GoMobileIQ) to interact with Google Maps, HeadLight will continue to gain from Google Map’s development. Furthermore, GoMobileIQ does not have to spend valuable development resources on making or maintaining the mapping software. This is one reason GoMobileIQ can offer its software at such a low price. Furthermore, vendors that do not connect to the Google Maps API are at a competitive disadvantage against a company like GoMobileIQ, because they have the development overhead that GoMobileIQ does not. (applications that work together in this way are also called mashups)

Screen Shots

The screen shot below shows how you can hover over any location, and read information about it. The different color locations represent different drivers. These drivers are assigned locations by HeadLight. Locations can be uploaded with a file, or they can be added manually.

This next view shows a street level picture, provided of course by Google Maps (street level view was introduced a while ago, but as Google adds more pictures, the feature becomes more complete and more usable.

Headlight Conclusion

HeadLight appears to have a very logical interface, and you can actually sign up for a demo online. The price is quite good, meaning even the smallest companies can easily afford a subscription to it. To try it out for yourself, head to http://www.gomobileiq.com It is both interesting as routing software, but also as an example of how to make a commercial application as easy to use and sign up for as a consumer application.

Addendum: Why Google Acts So Differently

Netscape framed “the web as platform” in terms of the old software paradigm: their flagship product was the web browser, a desktop application, and their strategy was to use their dominance in the browser market to establish a market for high-priced server products. Control over standards for displaying content and applications in the browser would, in theory, give Netscape the kind of market power enjoyed by Microsoft in the PC market. Much like the “horseless carriage” framed the automobile as an extension of the familiar, Netscape promoted a “webtop” to replace the desktop, and planned to populate that webtop with information updates and applets pushed to the webtop by information providers who would purchase Netscape servers.

In the end, both web browsers and web servers turned out to be commodities, and value moved “up the stack” to services delivered over the web platform.

Google, by contrast, began its life as a native web application, never sold or packaged, but delivered as a service, with customers paying, directly or indirectly, for the use of that service. None of the trappings of the old software industry are present. No scheduled software releases, just continuous improvement. No licensing or sale, just usage. No porting to different platforms so that customers can run the software on their own equipment, just a massively scalable collection of commodity PCs running open source operating systems plus homegrown applications and utilities that no one outside the company ever gets to see.

Netscape framed “the web as platform” in terms of the old software paradigm: their flagship product was the web browser, a desktop application, and their strategy was to use their dominance in the browser market to establish a market for high-priced server products. Control over standards for displaying content and applications in the browser would, in theory, give Netscape the kind of market power enjoyed by Microsoft in the PC market. Much like the “horseless carriage” framed the automobile as an extension of the familiar, Netscape promoted a “webtop” to replace the desktop, and planned to populate that webtop with information updates and applets pushed to the webtop by information providers who would purchase Netscape servers.
In the end, both web browsers and web servers turned out to be commodities, and value moved “up the stack” to services delivered over the web platform.
Google, by contrast, began its life as a native web application, never sold or packaged, but delivered as a service, with customers paying, directly or indirectly, for the use of that service. None of the trappings of the old software industry are present. No scheduled software releases, just continuous improvement. No licensing or sale, just usage. No porting to different platforms so that customers can run the software on their own equipment, just a massively scalable collection of commodity PCs running open source operating systems plus homegrown applications and utilities that no one outside the company ever gets to see.” -http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html

Clear Thinking at Ciber

So Many Boring White Papers?

White papers and sales literature tend to be a bit wrote and unoriginal. Many of them seem to be written at too high of a level, and as a consequence its difficult to learn anything from them. There seems to be an important element left out: the importance of learning from any document.

Steve Grant’s White Paper

However, every now and then you come across one that is really good where the author(s) has the background and ability to educate. If anyone would like to know how to write a white paper, visit the Ciber website, and download their numerous white papers (registration required).

http://www.ciber.com/services/09template_whitepapers.cfm?data=wp-supplychain&name=Supply%20Chain&dir=../erp/supplychain

We don’t know much about Ciber, but we know that someone over there has their thinking cap on.

We analyze one of their papers which every effectively explains why different solutions work in warehouse management. This article can be found at our SAP Planning blog.

http://sapplanning.wordpress.com/2009/06/05/choosing-an-sap-warehouse-solution/

RFID Video

RFID (Radio Frequency Identification)  is the hottest thing (if there is such a thing as hot in warehousing) in warehousing. RF technology has many applications, and supply chain is just one of them In investigating this technology we came upon a good video on the topic that explains it well.

 

RFID – Technology Video

Lets Web Enable Supply Chain Software

HTML is the most efficient interface language ever designed (especially when enhanced with some Java and Adobe add-ins). However, too many supply chain vendors have not made their interface web enabled.

Bad Interface Design

We work in supply chain systems. What we cannot figure out is why the interfaces for supply chain systems so greatly lag what the web has to offer. The major vendors in supply chain such as SAP, i2, and Oracle have a long way to go before anyone logs into the supply chain areas of their system and actually enjoys it.

One Example of Great Interface Design

One example that we use a lot is Arena Solutions. Arena produces BOM management software, and their user interface is extremely easy to use. We wrote an article on it in this blog and post.

http://spplan.wordpress.com/2008/12/12/arena-solutions-and-where-used-view/

The Arena interface is even better than it looks in the screenshots, because the screenshots cannot explain how well and seamlessly the interface allows the user to transition from view to view and in fact how the software promotes a logical and effective user workflow.

100% Web

We have seen a number of interfaces in our supply chain career, and most of them are no match for well designed websites. A first principle should to be design all interfaces in HTML. There are a huge number of standards created by organizations such as the W3C which have honed the interface code through the years. Furthermore, as supply chain becomes increasingly cross enterprise, thick clients are a liability and will increasingly interfere with adding value. We discuss this trend in this post.

http://fourthpartylogistics.wordpress.com/2009/05/23/fourth-party-logistics-providers/

In SAP, there is a separation between their thick client – and their “portal” which is web based? Why, go ahead and port everything over to HTML and lets move on. There is also no reason for the configuration area to have a non-HTML interface. MCA Solutions, provides an HTML front-end for its configuration and it works great, and MCA has tons of parameters that can be configured, so application complexity is no excuse.

A vendor with probably the most open and web enabled software we have seen is GoMobileIQ. Read about them in this post.

http://supplychaininnovation.wordpress.com/2009/06/07/google-maps-and-gomobileiq-for-vehicle-routing/

Browser Tools

When a company creates an interface in a non HTML language, it must develop its own tools and external navigation. For companies that code their interface in HTML, the user can take advantage of the functionality in their browser to do things like:

• Create Bookmarks
• Open and Manage Multiple Tabs
• Reopen Windows Automatically After Closing or a Crash

All of these capabilities come standard in the top browsers (Opera, Firefox, Safari). Opera actually has a filter for open tabs, which is simply fantastic. We cover this in this blog and post.

http://infoknowledge.wordpress.com/2009/05/26/opera-tab-window-filter/

Plus, people are used to using these browsers so they are comfortable with them. In any case, the supply chain vendors have no chance of ever catching up with this functionality because it is not what they do. (Firefox has so many plug-ins that is essentially becoming its own mini application staging area.) However, they allow their users to access all this functionality, by simply coding interfaces in HTML.

Linking

Another advantage is the hyperlink. A web based interface creates a link for every connection to the server, as when web browsing. This link can be forwarded to other users for collaboration purposes. This is easier to manage, store and retrieve than a transaction code or other methods. Tim Berners Lee began talking about this over 10 years ago. Will supply chain vendors soon catch up with where Tim was in the 1990s?

Conclusion

Supply chain software is behind the curve and continues to turn out ineffective and simply unpleasant interfaces. However, companies like Arena and MCA are better than many of their competitors, in part because their interface is web based. Other companies should get the message and either make the transition, or make the transition faster than they are. We have seen first-hand how poor interface design is reducing the success of supply chain implementations. There is no reason for this to continue to be the case.

Segway for Warehousing

Segway

Segway is a modern and inventive method for transportation. They have become common in law enforcement where they allow police officers to survey a crowd from a raised platform. However, we have not heard of it used sufficiently in warehouses. However, Segway actually promotes its products to be used for warehouses.

They actually have a productivity calculator online.

http://www.segway.com/business/increase-productivity.php

This tells you given a distance walked, how much money the company would save.

For Freight

Segways do not have a large weight capacity, but even the commercial cargo can carry between 50 and 70 lbs (depend upon the weight of the driver of course). Additionally, a trailer can be attached which can carry more cargo of more volume.

However, these are not the only alternatives for stand up transportation within a warehouse.

The Zappy Pro provides similar range and capacity as a Segway, but at a lower price. They have nowhere near the build quality, longevity or ease of use of a Segway, but cost around 1/8th as much.

Future

Eventually, moving platforms may assist in materials movement. Segway is experimenting in this way was well. See the items below. They are currently sold to universities for research. However, Automated Guided Vehicles have certain future in warehousing. FMC has a division that sells heavy duty AGVs.