Who is your Left Tackle?

Going to the first Cowboys home game has once again proven that football is alive and well here in Texas.

All great quarterbacks play behind great offensive lines. In Dallas, everyone is talking about Doug Free replacing Flozell Adams as left tackle. For those of you who don’t know what that is, in her movie The Blind Side, Sandra Bullock gives a good summary of the importance of the left tackle. It is one of the most important positions on the offensive line because he protects the quarterback’s blind side as quarterback is throwing.

Quarterbacks, like most executives and managers, are only as good as those people blocking and tackling for them. Such folks may not make SportsCenter, but they are the reason for the success of the offense. On each of your teams you have your own left tackle, which has your blind spot.

How many managers, including me, really take the time to thank those who make the tackle so the team can put big points on the board?

Fresh look for The Channel

Please take a minute or two and take a look at the new format of our external newsletter, The Channel. We have a unique culture and tone at AspireHR and it is now reflected in our newsletter, the Our Team & Culture page on our website, and our recruiting materials. If you haven’t already watched it, be sure to follow the link to the baseball video!
http://www.aspirehr.com/emails/aspirehr_newsletter_0710.html

See you at HR2010!

I would like to personally invite you to come by our booth (#330) at this year’s HR2010 in Orlando next week. Partner-level experts in the fields of software, SAP HR implementations, SAP HR training, Talent Management and more will be on hand to answer questions with you one-on-one. I am especially excited this year because we have the opportunity to provide live demonstrations and videos of our products inside the booth.

If you are suffering through an SAP HR implementation that is taking longer, or is more expensive than you expected for less scope than you planned, stop by and relay your story. Each day’s worst horror story will win a Kindle – and, even better, we might have a way to help you.

I was tired of getting bags full of the same disposable pens and cheap giveaways, so I tasked my team to come up with something personalized, unique and actually fun. They didn’t disappoint. We will have a photo booth on hand so that you can take home photographs that your friends and loved ones will want to see!

Even though the HR community isn’t a large one, shows like these can be hectic places full of strangers. RSVP if you can make it to our event at Shula’s Steak House on Wednesday and have a drink with a friend from AspireHR. I look forward to seeing you. Feel free to give me a call, I’d love to talk to you!

Happy Groundhog Day!

I am sure many of your businesses must feel like Groundhog Day, the same problems and meetings over and over. Or maybe you worry that your current IT consulting group will act like Punxsutawney Phil and tell you that there are 6 more weeks of delays before Go-Live.

When the days start to blend together in a mélange of meetings and traffic, I am reminded of the movie Groundhog Day with Bill Murray, a personal favorite of mine. A modern-day allegory of a man learning what it is to truly live each day, the movie reinforces in me the belief that it is how we view the day that changes it. To me this story is all about change. We can’t always change our circumstances, but we can change our feelings toward them. At times it feels like Murray’s character has superhuman powers, because he knows what the day will bring, but in the end he realizes that real power comes from seizing the opportunity to embrace a changed perspective. People are cursed to have the same days over and over again (very Freudian), as it takes a shift in mindset to change.

For example, a meeting, a plane trip, or a change order might appear to be the same as the one before it, but if I approach it as an opportunity to deepen a relationship or learn something, then each experience is new. I will have not have changed the procedure of the day, but the way I have approached it.

Watch the movie again on this Groundhog Day and see how by changing his mind about how to view his day, Murray’s character, his relationship to people and his own personal growth make the exact same day go from boring, mundane and miserable to joyful, exciting and exuberant. I challenge you to go to your board meeting, project meeting or dinner table, with an entirely different perspective. You have the power to change how you experience your day - the power of Groundhog Day. Why not make each day great?

If there is anything I can do to help you on your Groundhog Day journey, let me know. I am here to help, free of charge.

BE THE GROUNDHOG!

Side note: For those of you traveling, it is available in the Netflix Instant Queue, which is how I watched it last night. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107048/

‘Twas the Night Before Go-Live

‘Twas the night before Go-Live, when all through the suite
each expert was typing, refusing defeat.
SAP HR installed by consultants with care
who configured the system with skill and great flare.

The clients were nestled all snug in their beds,
while thoughts of best practices danced in their heads.
Winnie and Joe with their strategic chit chat,
had just settled down for a well deserved nap.

When out on the server there arose such a clatter,
Joe sprang to his desk to see what was the matter.
Away to the Portal he flew like a flash,
tore through his password and saw such panache.

The code in the lines of the new written page,
the luster of Self Service to objects there staged
when, what to his wondering eyes should appear
but a perfect SAP HR system competitors will fear.

That much beloved program had shown him the key
And he knew in that moment, it was SAP.
With deep skillful knowledge, AspireHR experts they came
as he whistled and shouted team leads by name:

Now PA, Now TM
Now Payroll, Now Org
On LSO, on PM
On Benefits and more
To the top of the IMG!
To the end the call!
Now configure away! configure away!
configure away all!

As conversions before the final testing’s they fly
and meet with no obstacle, on up to the sky
so up toward to the Go-Live, these experts they flew
with their screens full of names, and maybe yours too.

And then, first a whisper, he heard from his troop
the shouting and cheering of each specialized group.
As he drew in his people, then turnning around
down the hallway, Joe with crew came with a bound.

He was dressed in burnt orange, from his head to his feet
while updating his Facebook and Yammer and Tweet
a bundle of AspireHR software he had flung in a sack,
and he looked like a soldier just home from Iraq.

His clients – how they cheered! Their laughter, how merry!
Their project on budget, the result a cherry.
The work of the experts all sealed up with a bow
the page of complaints as bare as the snow.

“What a great gang you are!” said Joe with a cheer,
“This project is perfect, you have truly no peer.”
He had a glad face and a heart full of joy,
not one was prouder than that Missouri boy.

Those folks at Aspire have clearly earned praise,
Without their hard work you’d go back to old ways
of manual HR systems causing manual forms again and again,
such duplicate data is surely a sin.

HR is vital to a healthy business
to ignore the problem will make you remiss.
With experts like mine, there is no confusion
good software, good people - the crowning solution.

He sprang from his desk, as his team blew a whistle,
And away Joe H flew, like a ground to air missile
But we heard him exclaim, as he drove out of sight,
“Happy Go-Live to all! And to all a good night!”

I couldn’t resist passing this on. Kind of describes some of the issues in the SAP HR Implementation area

Why you should pay MORE and get MORE

It seems I hear from clients that they are paying MORE and MORE and getting LESS and LESS. I have a novel idea about MORE for LESS. This means different things to different clients, but what I propose is that MORE and isn’t lower bill rates. MORE will be actually going live on time on budget and on scope. It means actually achieving an HR vision to lower service cost, improving compliance, and empowering managers, analytics, and talent management. LESS time spent on post go-live clean up. LESS time wasted during the implementation cycle.

HR matters MORE than sales orders and invoices. Give your managers the tools they need to do their job and your organization can achieve MORE.

Call me, talk to our clients, they will tell you how they got MORE for LESS.

“Ikea Effect”

I was recently reading an article in the Harvard Business Review and thought about how the “Ikea Effect” leads people to overvalue their creations because they have invested labor in the project. I found it particularly interesting as I related the concept to change management efforts in large SAP HR Implementations.

We often get clients that say: “just have your consultants do…”or “we have a small staff so we need AspireHR to do the user acceptance testing…”, and I have often found that one of the fundamental keys to end-user adoption in system implementations is involvement and ownership in the creation of their new system. So where is the balance between involvement that leads to a great success and involvement that just leads to the overvaluation of a poorly implemented system? I think this is one of the things that clients need to address with their systems integrator and consider when evaluating an integrator’s references. Were these projects considered successful because of:

• real satisfaction (i.e. on scope, on budget, on time and on value,
• the Ikea effect, or
• “battered client syndrome” ?

See my next blog for my discussion of this.

Read about The Ikea Effect: When Labor Leads to Love

Follow up blog.

I have had a couple of people email me after this blog saying that that my blogs aren’t uplifting. The first step in solving a problem is admitting there is one. Shining the light on issues is always contentious. Do you blame the flashlight or the problem it is pointing at?

Partner, not a Vendor...

The word “partner” has been bastardized by this industry. Seemingly, every company is your partner. If my blogs seem somewhat passionate and frustrated at times, it is because of a lack of movement and “realization” of this fact, especially in this HCM consulting industry where we are truly a business partner. See the definition below. Note the words “action” (i.e. getting your project live on scope, on budget and on time) and “intimate relationship” (i.e. a shared goal of HCM making a difference as to how your business is run). People are your most important (and most expensive) asset. Can you afford anything less than a true partner?

HR is different. HR projects fail A LOT! Why is it that some companies get a “pass” (references are weighed differently), and CIO’s choose the more politically expedient choice. I am beginning to think that CIO’s are wimps. They want a seat at the “C Table”, but they aren’t willing to actually make the tough decisions and do the necessary due diligence to find a “real partner”. For those CIO’s reading this, you may want to read some words from Collin Powell on leadership:

LESSON
Good leadership involves responsibility to the welfare of the group, which means that some people will get angry at your actions and decisions. It's inevitable if you're honourable. Trying to get everyone to like you is a sign of mediocrity: You'll avoid the tough decisions, you'll av oid confronting the people who need to be confronted, and you'll avoid offering differential rewards based on differential performance because some people might get upset. Ironically, by procrastinating on the difficult choices, by trying not to get anyone mad, and by treating everyone equally "nicely" regardless of their contributions, you'll simply ensure that the only people you'll wind up angering are the most creative and productive people in the organization.
LESSON
"Don't be buffaloed by experts and elites. Experts often possess more data than judgment. Elites can become so inbred that they produce hemophiliacs who bleed to death as soon as they are nicked by the real world." Small companies and start-ups don't have the time for analytically detached experts. They don't have the money to subsidize lofty elite, either. The president answers the phone and drives the truck when necessary; everyone on the payroll visibly produces and contributes to bottom-line results or they're history. But as companies get bigger, they often forget who "brung them to the dance": things like all-hands involvement, egalitarianism, informality, market intimacy, daring, risk, speed, agility. Policies that emanate from ivory towers often have an adverse impact on the people out in the field who are fighting the wars or bringing in the revenues. Real leaders are vigilant—and combative—in the face of these trends.
LESSON
"Don't be afraid to challenge the pros, even in their own backyard." Learn from the pros, observe them, seek them out as mentors and partners. But remember that even the pros may have leveled out in terms of their learning and skills. Sometimes even the pros can become complacent and lazy. Leadership does not emerge from blind obedience to anyone. Xerox's Barry Rand was right on target when he warned his people that if you have a yes-man working for you, one of you is redundant. Good leadership encourages everyone's evolution.

Aspire is big enough to handle all of your needs, but yet small enough in our scope to ensure that we will be your HCM partner and are mutually invested in your success. We’ve implemented projects ranging from an 800 employee company all the way to the 19th largest company in the world. Both were completed on time, on scope, and on budget. Not to mention hundreds of companies in between. Times are changing, and you need to really look at your HCM IT decisions. Call me if you want to talk. Complete disagreement is acceptable. We can co-create something better together.

Help me help you...

Following up on my last blog, I think Jerry Maguire said it best! “Help me help you”!!

After my last blog, I gave a lot of thought to this, so here’s the good news: I can “show you the money”. And, no, you won’t need to pay my firm a dime (nor any of those high-price firms with great athlete’s representing them either). Here’s the prescription: just leverage the same “systems” and “processes” we have used for years to hire employees—your brain and your gut. Talk to the potential service partner (notice I say partner, not vendor and many of you are immune to this wording, in fact I just thought of my next blog right here, stay tuned).

Ask them:
» What they would do and why?
» Ask what challenges they have overcome with similar efforts and how they did it.
» Ask about the impact of those challenges to the budget.
» Call references and ask the tough questions.
» Ask references what it is like to really work with them. Not just the attractive and smooth sales people— the actual people that will deliver the services. (This is important, as MOST clients don’t ask for references and ask tough questions)

At the end of this interview process, ask yourself these questions:
1) Do we feel that we can we truly trust them?
2) Are they big enough to meet our needs, but small enough to care DEEPLY about our success?
3) Will they put our interests in front of their interests?
4) Would I hire them if this was a permanent job?

When hiring an employee, typically experience and ability to produce value for the organization drive the compensation packages. Use this same mechanism to weigh service fees. In professional services, like in nearly everywhere else in life, you get what you pay for. Well, at least for the first statement of work. Select the low-price firm, and after a series change orders and the expected costs, you actually might get a lot less than you pay for. If Select Comfort did this, they may be live instead of nothing at all.

By the way, if all clients did this, we would have 100% market share. Even if you don’t look to us a Partner, these simple things will save you millions of dollars!

Selecting the Uncomfortable

The sad truth is the track records of many significant IT investments and ERP system implementations are horrible. Faced with these business derailments and extreme loss of invested capital, clients all too often ask “who did this to us?” The sad truth is more often than not, that company did it to themselves.

I don’t wish to grant a free pass to the unprofessional “professional service firms” out there with far less than scrupulous business practices. These firms game the RFP system by writing scope statements and assumptions that nearly guarantee the failure (or at least the budget failure) of these initiatives. But, more often than not, organizations crafting the RFP nearly mandate this unscrupulous behavior in order to be selected as the “preferred vendor” and awarded the business.

So here’s the obvious question: why do so many companies continue the cycle and repeat past mistakes again and again?

The recent news about Select Comfort’s complete halt of the SAP implementation it was undertaking after digging themselves into a $10 million dollar hole, behind schedule and well over budget sickens me far worse than usual.

This opportunity is particularly troubling to me, because the fact of the matter is we sat side-by-side with SAP in demonstrating to Select Comfort the value of the solution and, in fact, were a significant factor in convincing them that they could be successful with the technology and implementation. At the conclusion of our efforts, in an attempt to choose the implementation firm to realize the benefits that we assured possible, Select Comfort issued another one of those RFP’s and vendor selection criteria that could only be awarded to an organization nearly incapable of delivery in SAP HR. References and experience were discarded or de-weighted in the process as unimportant to the project’s success.

Think about it. These failures and overruns have spurred a slew of new procurement processes to address the past issues. Formalized RFPs, complex weighted selection criteria, one-throat-to-choke requirements, preferred vendor programs, etc. which have done nothing to reverse the trend—in fact they have enabled these horrible decisions to be made with tremendous efficiency at alarming new speed.

As your trusted advisor, please stay tuned, in my next blog we will discuss how to solve these problems...

Can Talent Management “Best of Breed” (a.k.a. Non Integrated Niche Vendors) Survive?

As the biggest boutique implementer of SAP HCM, we often work directly with SAP in the sales cycles.  We are frequently competing with the “so called” Best of Breed in the E-Recruiting and other areas.  I prefer to use the term Non Integrated Niche Vendors (“NiNV”) instead as this more clearly defines what they actually are.  Do these companies have longevity? Let’s take a look...

Functionality - In my experience with these sales cycles, the deck is just stacked by the NiNVs who are more worried about the color of the screen than the long term business benefits that can be realized by using an integrated system.  What shocks me even more is that IT is taking a backseat when decisions are made on an integrated system implementation.

Cost - Long term, the costs are significantly more than using an integrated system. I say this since we have been hired by clients to interface several of the NiNVs to SAP -- and, it costs almost as much as implementing the SAP Modules.

Usability - I suppose usability is in the eye of the beholder. AspireHR has the skills, passion and experience to ensure that our customers are happy. We have utilized our vast customer experience to build a wide range of software solutions to make your implementation both cost effective and user friendly. That isn’t always the case with the NiNV.

Long term sustainability - Many of these NiNVs are having financial troubles or are backed by private equity and have short term exit plans.  These companies must take market share at any cost and/or move into adjacent areas of HR functionality where they have little or underdeveloped functionality. Does that sound troublesome to you?  All of these companies will eventually morph into some other “aggregation company” which other major competitors will probably buy, since they will buy anything.

Will these companies continue to be competitive or die? They aren’t dead yet, but someday the value these companies bring will be irrelevant. The larger more established methodical long term development mindsets outpace the short term “nice screen color” mindset at the NiNVs.

Remember the tortoise and the hare -- slow and steady wins the race.

This Apple commercial was aired during the 1985 Super Bowl, the year after the famous "1984" commercial was aired.

This commercial was somewhat controversial back in 1984 because it showed PC users following one another over a cliff like lemmings. I ran across this the other day, and of course, I think that's hilarious!!! But more importantly, it has some applicability in the SAP industry today.

Does anyone else feel like the success of the entire industry is at stake when companies are making the decision to use the “big” consulting firms merely because they have a well known brand? Apple couldn’t have done a better job of creating an ad that reflects how I feel about our SAP HCM industry. It seems funny that client after client follows one another over the same “cliff,” never stopping to ask, “I know that they have 100,000 employees, but how many of them do SAP HR consulting here in the United States?” It’s kind of curious to me that the bigger you get, regardless of ability or success in SAP HR, the more deals you seem to win.

I truly feel that we are competing in an “insane” industry. (The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.) If a company wants a successful HR implementation project, they need to first recognize that other companies in the industry are merely following one another over that “cliff” and not looking at the reality of what those big firms have to offer. Hopefully, some of these companies will recognize that there is a difference between those “big” consulting firms and a specialist firm such as AspireHR. I’d like to encourage companies contemplating an SAP HR implementation to call me and talk about a better way of doing things. It took Apple 25 years to make a difference, hopefully it won’t take us that long.

Stay tuned in future blogs. We are singlehandedly changing the entire SAP consulting industry and setting the example that other firms will model.

Do the Patriots need SAP?

Succession planning is key to any organization, and the recent injury to Tom Brady only shows that succession planning is key to every organization including football organizations. For those of you who missed it, Tom Brady the league MVP (it should have been Tony Romo, but I suppose I am biased to the cowboys) went down with a knee injury last week. The patriots didn’t have a succession plan, especially since Matt Cassell didn’t even start at USC.

I suppose there are 15 weeks left to determine if New England (and the rest of the NFL) should implement SAP’s succession planning module...

I would like to help the cowboys implement it at no charge.