Culture

Quarter End Reporting – A Time for Reflection

by Geoff Devereux on March 31st, 2010

It’s that time again! The big push for end of quarter. Salespeople are hitting up every lukewarm lead in their Contact List. The Accounting Department is hounding vendors for invoices, customers for payments, and internal folks for every last bit of supporting documentation they can get their hands on for the audit file. And the Marketing guys? I dunno, they are probably all on Twitter!

It’s a busy time. It can be frantic!

But remember that it’s also a time for reflection.

Lately, I’ve been spending a great deal of time delving deeply into the world of Business Intelligence (B.I.). One of the most prevalent themes within the B.I. space right now is the concept of Predictive Analytics: using B.I. software to use historical information to predict future events. This concept has actually been around for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. Who wouldn’t want a Crystal Ball? In the stock trading world, you can look to the guys we call “Technical Traders” as an example of how Predictive Analytics might model.

The point is that everyone wants to look into the future, but remember we first need to understand the past. Looking back on a periodic basis should be a healthy exercise from which insights can be gained. Quarter end is an opportunity to do so.

Move beyond idle navel gazing, the blame game, and compliance for compliance sake. What can you learn from the quarter?

For instance, I’ve been writing in this space for 6 months now. I took the opportunity yesterday to look back at some of my early posts. What I learned is that recently I’ve been so engrossed in the B.I. world, I’ve been forgetting my roots. I’m not a B.I. guy by trade. The whole point of Indicee is to bring B.I. out of the industry bubble and “to the masses”. Instead, the B.I. industry has been pulling me into its world!

Time to take a step back.

With that, I’ve pulled a selection of 5 early posts from the vault. Please share your thoughts!

1. Spreadsheet Nation

The idea was simple enough, write a short post about the role of spreadsheets in organizations. More accurately, write about the role of Excel in organizations. I’m trying to provide a frame of reference from which readers can gain perspective on what Indicee does. My thinking was, I could provide a bit of historical context (background of VisiCalc and Lotus 1,2,3 – the original electronic spreadsheets from the days when you actually had to use the word “electronic” in order to differentiate the thing from a paper spreadsheet), then a colourful anecdote about one or two of my favourite “Excel moments”(to illustrate some of the benefits and drawbacks to spreadsheet use), some stats on spreadsheet proliferation, end off with an introduction to the concept of datamarts, and Bob’s Your Uncle, point made. Readers could use the comfort and familiarity of the spreadsheet concept to relate to the new concept of Indicee. I figured the most difficult part of the whole exercise would have been choosing just one title for the post.

I was contemplating something like:

Confessions of an Excel Jockey
Fathers of Invention; The Mother of All Spreadsheets
or Ghosts of Spreadsheets Past

What is difficult, complex, or nuanced about that?

2. The Meaningful Scorecard

“Finding the one or two key numbers that drives success in your business, and bringing them to everyone is very powerful in a business”
– Joe Knight, co-author of Financial Intelligence

The inspiration for this post was a management improvement video (13 minutes) posted on You Tube by http://www.harvardbusiness.org of an interview with Joe Knight, co-author of the book series “Financial Intelligence”, Business Owner, and Harvard Business.org blogger. The central message of the interview was that everyone in an organization benefits from understanding the numbers by which success is measured within a business. The trick is finding the right numbers. Particularly in today’s climate hearing about transparency is nothing new, but what doesn’t get as much play is this idea of narrowing the focus on measures of performance.

With respect to the numbers: Thanks to technology, we now have ALL the numbers available ALL the time. Reports have become super-robust because they can. Although there’s an argument for providing surplus information and letting the end user choose which parts to digest, there is also a great danger. Knight argues that providing less information to end users can actually produce better business intelligence. The process of asking the questions and finding the underlying systems within an operating group can enable a more focused, effective approach to providing reports. First, understand the work flow and underlying system of work for operations groups; then, develop measures around them. It’s easy to say, but when was the last time these conversations have taken place in your business?

“Business is like a game, and if you don’t understand the finances, you’re basically playing a game where you don’t know score”
- Joe Knight

According to Knight the emphasis should be, and this is where the interview really resonates with me, on providing a small number of operational metrics in a simple way and providing them to everyone. He rightly points out that the people receiving this information probably don’t want to be accountants, and have little or no interest in double-entry accounting “no matter how exciting it may appear to be”. For Accounting and Finance guys like us, it then becomes an exercise of translating Business Intelligence into Practical Intelligence in the reports we create to achieve an optimal value. It would be like one of us attending an advanced physics lesson. We would get way more out of it if someone simply dropped an apple on our heads. Sometimes less is more.

3. Sun Tzu’s Cash Burn

The Art of War, Chapter 2: Waging War

“Sun Tzu said: In general, the strategy for employing the military is this:

If there are 1,000 4-Horse Attack Chariots, 1,000 Leather-armoured Support Chariots,
100,000 Mailed Troops, and Provisions are transported 1,000 li, then the domestic and external campaign expenses, the expenditures for advisors and guests, materials such as glue and lacquer, and providing chariots and armour will be 1,000 pieces of gold per day.

Only then can an army of 100,000 be mobilized.” *

* Sawyer’s translation

As an accountant who has worked in a bunch of technology start-ups; when I read this, the first thing I do is try to extrapolate Sun Tzu’s Quarterly Burn Rate. It’s a bit tougher to try and calculate Cash Zero date seeing as, if the campaign is successful, you will have gained “the masses of All Under Heaven” – AKA “priceless”.

After spending a fair bit of time getting to know Indicee lately, the next thing that naturally came to mind was whether Sun Tzu’s Accounting system ties to his ERP system. If he has Pieces of Gold in one system and Numbers of Men in another, he could be spending a ton of time cutting and pasting reports in Excel to get his Departmental Salary Breakdown by Headcount!

4. Bringing Design Thinking to Accounting and Finance

Design thinking is a process for practical, creative resolution of problems or issues that looks for an improved future result. It is the essential ability to combine empathy, creativity and rationality to meet user needs and drive business success.

(There are number of definitions out there, but I think the above serves the purpose)

There’s a lot of Buzz around the concept of Design Thinking at the moment. A great deal of content has been produced, but I’m not sure how much has been directed toward the accounting and finance community. During the past 2 years for us, listening to someone talk about “radical innovation” usually entailed mostly hand-wringing and, well, … expletives. It’s understandable to have missed some of this.

So, I’m not sure how much about the topic has filtered in. Maybe that’s a good discussion point for the comments:

How much of the Design Thinking paradigm has filtered into the accounting and finance community?
How applicable is this school of thought to accounting and finance?
Do you believe there is a place for Design Thinking in accounting?

5. Ghost of Software Salesguys Past

We are greatly influenced by our experiences. As a child, the hand reaches out to a hot stove only once.

The last couple posts have talked about legacy issues; legacy IT systems, legacy education. Today I’d like to talk about another actor in the Legacy IT Show, the classic software salesman (circa. 2004).

This guy (above) may or may not be selling software, but does the song and dance sound familiar? I’ve sat on both sides of the table. Listening to salesguys pitch software to me as a purchaser, and doing the accounting & finance work in a company selling enterprise software. Software, as an industry, is still an infant relative to most other industries; and with youth, comes growing pains. Here’s the story on both sides.

Listening to pitches, sitting through demos, taking notes only to be asked by a Director, “what would it cost if we just built our own?” was crushing. Or, hearing about how easy a rollout will be (“it’s like lego”) and then, months later, hearing about how it won’t do all that stuff we thought it would do. Did we send out that cheque yet?

On the sell-side, working with salesmen who could barely operate a computer or use excel well enough to complete an expense report. There was one colleague who seemed to continually be calling me from the middle of a war zone, god bless ‘em. The path to hell is paved with good intentions, indeed.

Over the years, I think we were selling more than software. We were selling a dream. And the dream was that somehow this product would magically work and fix all reporting and organizational problems. Presto!

———————————-

Again, let me know your thoughts guys! Do these posts help? Hurt? Are you indifferent? Keyboard froze? Are you “reflecting”?

Let me know!

Enjoy!

Filed under: Asking questions, Business Intelligence, Industry Insights, Spreadsheets, culture

Tags: Asking questions, culture, Excel, Month-end, Quarter End, reporting, Spreadsheets

Measuring What Matters: Interview with Cheni Yerushalmi

by Geoff Devereux on March 3rd, 2010

Using Interviews to distill meaning

Last time, we were talking about how to “Think Like a Reporter“. My goal was to convey the importance of asking good questions in order to figure out how things actually get done and what the critical elements are in your business.

Today, I’d like to take it one step further and showcase an interview I was fortunate enough to secure with Cheni Yerushalmi, the managing partner and co-founder of Sunshine Suites in New York City. In the interview, I’ve tried to apply the principles of good questions in order to create an environment that’s conducive to storytelling. Then, getting out of the way and letting Cheni tell his story.

The other key point I would like to offer up as a takeaway from this experience for all of you is to stay alert for opportunities to expand your networks and your knowledge base. This interview would not have happened had it not been for: 1) Cheni’s willingness and his courage to put himself out there, 2) the enterprising, public invitation from Gary Vaynerchuk, founder of Wine Library TV and author of Crush It, and 3) my recognition of the opportunity and taking action. These are all voluntary actions. How can you ever bottle up this mix of bravery, curiosity, inquisitiveness, openness, and indeed playfulness that’s required to create something out of nothing into a “formula” or a “job description”? This stuff doesn’t show up on your desk with a neat little bow on it, conveniently labeled and packaged for consumption. You have to create it and I think that’s a useful lesson.

Instead of existing in a constant state of “beware”, move into a state of “BE AWARE”.

Back to the point, we are talking with Cheni Yerushalmi from Sunshine Suites in NYC about business, entrepreneurship, recognizing opportunity, and the critical measures that determine success within the business.

I’ll summarize and paraphrase some stuff here to keep the wordcount net-friendly, but feel free to look for some of Cheni’s other recent appearances here, here, here, and here for more great content.

Sunshine Suites NYC with Cheni Yerushalmi

What is Sunshine Suites?

Sunshine Suites is an office community in New York City specifically designed for entrepreneurs to get out of the house and network with other entrepreneurs in a cool environment. Sunshine has 2 locations and houses roughly 600 businesses and 1400 entrepreneurs at any one time. Far from being just another co-working site, Sunshine is serious about creating community! In addition to a place to work they offer mentorship, events, gym memberships, affordable healthcare, and even access to a timeshare in Vermont’s ski country!

The types of businesses incubating within Sunshine runs the gamut, “every company under the sun”, as Cheni and his partner Joe will sometimes say.

What motivated you and your partner, Joseph Raby, to start the Sunshine Suites?

Sunshine Suites was the result of the frustrations experienced, as an entrepreneur, with the lack of both affordable office space and community support available in the city. It was the realization that “there must be a better way”.

Leveraging each other’s strengths, as all good founding partners do, Cheni and Joe took the initiative to create the tool that they wished they had when starting out.

So, what would you say to people unfamiliar with the NYC start-up scene?

Historically, the NYC start-up environment has been difficult but it’s improving. During the heady days of the Dot-Com’s there was interest from investors and lots of money flying around, but not much of an infrastructure to support the companies. Since the bust, it has been a slow process of building that infrastructure and creating an environment better suited for start-ups.

A couple great examples of groups supporting this infrastructure are the New York City Economic Development Corp and the Coalition of Office Space Providers.

The message coming out of New York right now is innovate and build partnerships because right now nothing is being taken for granted.

How do you measure success at Sunshine?

Feedback from the community is most important. Of course, we keep track of revenue and occupancy rates, but these numbers don’t provide any context that we can act on. Obtaining real feedback from members through regular surveys provides a more accurate gauge of whether or not Sunshine is living up to customer expectations and provides direction that’s actionable. Fortunately, entrepreneurs don’t tend to be shy about sharing their opinions so we know exactly where we stand. It’s particularly important for the ongoing success of the business since 70% of new memberships are created through referrals.

How do you balance the qualitative elements relating to feedback with the quantitative numbers side?

The business model itself isn’t very complicated. We know the model works and, being a “for profit” business, we need to keep track of the numbers. But, revenue is not the overriding consideration and the numbers can be misleading. Our success is more accurately measured by the happiness of our community. We like to think of this as a place where we help each other to succeed. For us, it’s better to look at something like, how many companies have we been able to graduate from Sunshine? We also work with entrepreneurs who want to be more active in the management of the programming. We call these guys “Shiners” and it’s this level of engagement that tells us we’re doing something right.

You mentioned companies “graduating” from Sunshine Suites; is that a formal process? Is there a ceremony or what?

It’s funny you mention that. We’re working now to create a more formal process and you should see something in Entrepreneur Magazine about it in the near future. Entrepreneurs who have “graduated”, our “alumni”, tend to stay active at Sunshine, providing mentoring to other entrepreneurs. As well, we provide workshops, panel discussions, and bootcamps.

What do you see for Sunshine Suites in the future?

We are looking at expansion. We would like to expand into other cities, but we want to be careful. Every city is different. They each have their own ecosystem and it’s important to know the environment and the people in order to provide something of value.

Distilling the meaning in relation to Indicee

So, how do we relate what Cheni told me to what we are trying to achieve at Indicee? Simple. The most important performance indicators for the business DO NOT come from the financial reports.

We all know the requirements for financial reporting. A full set of financial statements are crucial for dealing with banks, tax authorities, and investors; but it’s like Cheni said, these numbers lack the context that’s needed to guide meaningful actions on the part of managers.

Using Indicee increases the contextual meaning of your numbers and guides action in that way, beyond the financial statements.

Your customer’s happiness is not an Income Statement line item. The path to knowing your customer comes from looking at operational measures; things like behaviour, feedback, distribution, and consumption. This requires building the additional dimensions into your reporting structure to capture these things.

Final thoughts and random words to live by

Working within a start-up environment and having worked for start-ups in the past, I fully appreciate and applaud what the Sunshine Suites community is doing. I would also point to other great examples out there such as TechStars, YCombinator, and our own local BootupLabs and Network Hub doing great work incubating companies and providing mentoring in order to tilt the playing field a bit in favour of innovators and disruptors who will create the next generation of market leaders. You could even look to mainstream media and programs like Shark Tank in the US and Dragon’s Den in Canada and the UK as a means of educating and illuminating what goes into building companies. You have to look past the TV-silliness, but it’s there.

I encourage anyone who is interested in this stuff to get involved. Check out a networking event, look for people to follow on twitter, talk to your local politicians and get talking to each other.

During our conversation, Cheni told me about when he and Joe were last in Vancouver. The two of them flew into YVR with 2 bicycles in boxes, they assembled the bikes in the airport, then rode from Vancouver all the way to Tijuana, Mexico. He went on to tell me that he never buys a round trip ticket when he’s on vacation. He buys a one-way ticket in order to stay open to the opportunities that present themselves. I think there’s a great lesson in that philosophy and it exemplifies what being an entrepreneur is all about.

Enjoy.

Filed under: Asking questions, Industry Insights, Performance Management, culture, interviewing, stories

Tags: Asking questions, culture, interviewing, Metrics, Start Up, stories

Olympic Spirit in the Workplace

by Geoff Devereux on February 18th, 2010

Being a Vancouver company located right in the heart of downtown, we are living and breathing the Olympic spirit right now! We look out our window and see this:

So, hopefully, you can forgive the indulgence of another post with an Olympic focus.

That said, I would like to tie in the theme to something business related.

I’m big sports fan. I like to participate in ‘em and watch ‘em. When you strip away all the noise, that’s still what the Olympics are still about – sport. So, what is sport? When you get down to the human level, I think it’s the act of pitting our human wills against a standard of excellence.

It’s about DOING.

It’s about being IN THE MOMENT.

And I think we can all identify with the rush that comes from being at our best. We all maintain our “faith in distinction” and I think most of us practice it everyday without consciously being aware of it. Maybe you experience it when you’re playing Halo, or Foosball, or even when you’re busting through a stack of month end reports. As much as we may try and fight it, our work benefits from these euphoric moments, no matter how fleeting they may be.

Have you ever been:

- In the zone?

- In the groove?

- Running downhill?

- Bringing your “A” game?

- With the wind at your back?

- Able to “get out of your own way”?

If you have, I think you can say that you’ve experienced the Olympic Spirit.

What does the Olympic Spirit mean to you?

Go Canada Go!

(Sorry, the clannish xenophobe in me is acting out a bit this week as well. I’ll try to get back on point for next week.)

Filed under: Random, culture

Tags: athletics, canada, culture, event, excellence, olympics, sport, stories, vancouver

Vancouver Welcomes the World to the 2010 Olympics

by Mark Cunningham on February 15th, 2010

A decade long journey has finally brought the arrival of the 2010 Olympics to Vancouver. This past Friday the opening ceremonies officially kicked off the 21st Winter Olympics in our fair city. Canada has previously hosted two Olympics, Montreal in 1976 and Calgary in 1988. I have always watched the Olympics on TV but I have never attended a winter or summer Olympics event. I always imagined that living in the host city provides a very unique perspective. It is not just a 2-week event it is a decade long event that has its ups and downs. There were some significant cost overruns that got their fair share of international press and as you can imagine the construction seemed relentless at times. I admit that I did grumble a bit while commuting to work. But, in the end our city has been transformed: new highways, rapid transit lines, convention centers, sporting facilities, technology infrastructure and much more. I am not going to provide commentary on whether I think the Olympics provides the ROI required to justify such a commitment by a host city. Quite frankly, I don’t really know. But what I do know is that a I am huge supporter of sport in Canada and I think it is a worthy investment by both our government and more importantly corporate Canada. But I digress…back to the Olympics.

I attended the opening ceremonies this past Friday and as I watched the athletes parade into BC Place stadium I couldn’t help but think about the years of dedication and commitment these athletes have poured into their sport. Like Vancouver, the Olympics for them is more than a 2-week journey, it is a life long passion that has and will shape who they are even when they have retired from their sports. The ceremonies left me with immense pride for my country, city and athletes. I have said to almost all of my friends and family that I am surprised how outwardly patriotic we have been over the past month. Dare I say we have a hint of the “American vibe” going on. Flags are flying, chants of “Go Canada Go” and a sea of red and white swag on just about every person walking down the street. If you are not from Canada you may not understand this but our country has had a long internal conflict with ourselves when it comes to defining our identity. It is not that we don’t love our country but we struggle to articulate what makes Canada Canada; and, even if we feel we know we never want to talk about it too loudly. We are humble and at times afraid to say what we believe. For many, the now famous Molson “I Am Canadian” ad campaign gave Canadians something to rally behind without having to say it themselves. Yes, a beer company provided a voice for Canada. Sad but true.

If you attended or watched the opening ceremonies you probably heard Shane Koyczan’s “We are More” slam poetry rant. If you don’t know who Shane is don’t worry. Nobody else in Canada did either! That was his coming out party and Canadians, along with the rest of the world, seemed to love what he had to say. It had the “I Am Canadian” vibe to it but thankfully it wasn’t a beer commercial this time. Here is Shane delivering his poem during his audition for the 2010 games. The version he did in the ceremony was better in my opinion but this will refresh your memory a bit.

There were a few highlights from the ceremony that really stood out for me. The first was the initial short film projected on the big screen showing the most amazing aerial footage of Vancouver, Howe Sound, the Coast Mountain range, the Squamish Chief, and several scenes from around British Columbia. The footage was capped off with a wicked individual snowboard sequence starting from a remote mountain peak, down a steep face of fresh powder, culminating in a live jump through the Olympic rings into the stadium. The footage of Vancouver and its surrounding ocean and mountains resonated with me in a big way. As an avid back country pilot I see our amazing province from this vantage point on a regular basis and it was exciting to see it shown to the world. The second highlight was K.D. Lang’s amazing “barefoot” performance of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah. Both performer and writer define Canada’s diversity in their own unique ways. Lastly, the biggest highlight for me was the one minute of silence for the Georgian Luger, Nodar Kumaritashvili , who lost his life only hours before the opening ceremony. I know this highlight may seem strange but there was something very moving about 65,000 people in complete silence for that long. Believe me….it seemed much longer than one minute. If you want to watch the entire opening ceremony you can check it out here.

The icing on this cake is that on Sunday night Canada won it first gold medal on home soil. Alexandre Bilodeau squashed the jinx that has haunted Canada since Montreal in 1976 to win the men’s mogul competition on Cypress Mountain which overlooks the City of Vancouver.

So what does any of this have to do with Indicee? Absolutely nothing! It isn’t very often that your city gets to host an event like the Olympics and I felt I needed to do something very “un-Canadian” and brag about it. Vancouver is an amazing city and being a business leader in this city makes me proud to be building Indicee here. We have a long history of creating business intelligence software in Vancouver, both Crystal and Indicee started in Vancouver, and I believe it differentiates us and helps shape our culture. I recently commented in an email to the company that we have team members that participate or compete in just about every possible outdoor sport conducive to Vancouver: skiing, snowboarding, cross country skiing, hockey, back country skiing, kiteboarding, surfing, rock climbing and several more. I think we could create our own Olympic team! I wonder if I can convince the International Olympic Committee that Indicee is really a country that deserves a spot in the Olympics. I will let you know how it goes.

In the meantime, tell me what your favourite (that’s Canadian by the way!) Olympic moment has been so far?

Photos credits: Snowboard Ring Jumper – REUTERS/David Gray, Cauldron – Matthew Stockman/Getty Images

Filed under: Random, culture

Tags: athletics, canada, culture, diversity, indicee, olympics, sport, vancouver

Is Cloud Computing in your Company Culture?

by Mark Cunningham on February 9th, 2010

The terms “Cloud Computing” and “Software as a Service (SaaS)” are relatively new buzz phrases that have been flying around both the technology and business communities for the past few years. While these concepts might appear to be new and “radical” the reality is the implementation of these buzz phrases has been around for a number of years and there are a number of companies who have been using these technologies for years to provide both businesses and consumers with useful online products.

So why is the first question I get from IT and business executives, “How Secure is Indicee?” Each time I get this question I struggle with whether I should express my “inside head voice” or my “outside head voice.” Logic usually prevails and I take the high road. I know that most of the questions simply stem from a desire to the maintain the privacy and control of their corporate data. What is funny is that most of these executives don’t see the vulnerabilities they face in their current “inside the firewall” methodologies that are, in many cases, far more vulnerable than any of the current cloud technologies used today. Not to mention the huge security holes they have with employees being able email corporate data in spreadsheets and documents to just about anyone.

At the end of the day this debate really depends on which “lens” you choose to look at the world through. My belief is that the choice between using “cloud” or “inside the firewall” is first and foremost cultural. I see 3 cultural lenses most often and these lenses tend to follow Geoffrey Moore’s Technology Adoption Life Cycle curve

Innovators Lens – these are the people or companies that are the first to hear about new technology and adopt it quicker than the vendors can produce it. When we talk to the IT and business leaders in innovative companies like this they are near polar opposite to laggards(see below). These are the companies that are trying to find as many ways to push everything they can into the cloud. Indicee’s operations are like this. We live in the cloud….Google Docs, Slide Rocket, Salesforce.com, Version 1, Amazon Web Services, Basecamp and a bunch more. If Stephanie, our sales goddess, tells me her computer spontaneously combusted I don’t have to ask her if she had it backed up. If Craig, our king of partnering, drops his laptop in the moat of Treasure Island while attending a conference I only need to ask how many beer he had. Everything we need is in the cloud, secure and waiting for us no matter what computer we are on. As you can see this lens has a very different view and the scenery is spectacular from my balcony. My advice to these companies….the wave is here RIDE IT!
Wait and See Lens - “I don’t know about that cloud computing stuff….I know it seems to be hot and people are talking about it but I am just not sure.” This is a common statement I hear from both business and IT people in all sizes of organizations. The indecisiveness is a major challenge for these organizations especially when they dabble in the new technologies but they never fully commit to trying them in specific areas of the business. Instead they burn up endless cycles dabbling while maintaining the status quo of what they already have. These companies would be better served by making more clear and decisive decisions. SaaS services are amazing for doing small projects to determine their viability, they are low cost, easy to get going and if you don’t like them they are easy to kick to the curb. With SaaS and cloud computing you can actually be an innovator while you hold steady on your current course, something that has been historically more challenging to do with traditional enterpirse on-premise software. While the Wait and See crowd tends to take longer to change, they are much more open and receptive to the learning and change than a Laggard is. Wait and See types need validation from others, they need proof, they need trust and they need buy in from the rest of their peers. My advice to companies with this culture..pick something and DO IT! Live the Nike mantra and go for it.

Laggards Lens - I have met and visited with thousands of companies over the course of my career and what I have learned is that no matter how many facts, figures and benefits you put in front of a person(or company) if they are fundamentally apposed to it, culturally, you are probably not going to change their mind. Here is a simple, real world example of a conversation I have had with a Director of IT for $100M sporting goods manufacturing and distribution company: “The Founder of our business is an old school guy…he doesn’t even use email but he does use a phone. There is no way he is going to let us move our data outside the four walls of this building. As a matter of fact he only wants 4 people on the executive team to see any type of corporate data!” And that, my friends, is an exact quote. That is usually my cue to ask, “what is the quickest route back to the airport from here?” I actually like companies like this because I can see the lens they see the world through and I can quickly determine that our company and their company are probably not destined to do business together. Well, until the succession plan has been implemented and the founder has decided to move on. My only message to companies that adopt this type of culture…..have a listen to Bob Dylan’s “These Times They are A-Changin’”

So what does all of this have to do with the question,, “How Secure is Indicee?” The answer is highly dependent on your cultural lens your company looks through. If you are an innovator, you already believe that the cloud is better, more secure and more reliable. It is built into your DNA. If you are laggard, well this “Cloud dog don’t hunt.” If you are anywhere in between, then you just need to start hanging out with the innovators more often!

So what cultural lens does your company look through?

Filed under: Business Intelligence, Cloud Computing, Industry Insights, SAAS, software as a service

Tags: Cloud Computing, culture, SAAS, security