FACEBOOK 2010..... Part 2

After I listen to the country manager of Facebook (Laura González-Estéfani Ramiro) thanks to Enrique Dans (my Information Systems professor who convinced her to come to one of our classes) I had a lot of questions regarding Facebook's actual performance and future in the corporate industry....

I know that right now they are focusing on the consumer - people market and they want to grow the number of accounts exponencially, and I understand that a large portion of their income comes from Ads, but I can't stop thinking about other potential growth areas they have and they are not saying:

1. They have a tremendous social p2p platform and they are always enhancing it, not only by what they add in terms of functionality from their R&D department, but also by what people ask Facebook to improve on it's platform. So you have a platform that has not only the experience of one company, but also has the requirements of thousands of people that have helped to have a better platform.

2. Imagine a company, like for example the Bank I work for, that has more than 10,000 branch executives that interact with customers. This executives sell and service thousands of customers everyday, and whenever they encounter a problem, they go through the regular channels and report the problem expecting to have either an explanation of what they are doing wrong or a solution. As you know most companies have high rates of beurocracy and to detect a problem, find a solution or explanation and tell the other 9,999 executives what happens, might take forever and as a branch executive you don't have time to waste and most likely the next xxx customers you will service will have the same problem.

3. Imagine that you have a platform that enables them to either communicate with themselves or get communications from corporate in an online way. This way if someone posts a threat or problem or question, everybody will know, and if it is a real problem or a good question, probably most of them will also have it, even if they don't know yet. This will enhance productivity by allow them to give short term solutions, best practices and interact with each other by aggregating the knowledge and help of thousands of people that do the exact same job and most likely face the same questions.

4. You might think... Well there are companies that already sell that service, why don't just buy it from them... Well... The answer is simple, I've seen some software sold from this mayor software houses and they make sense, but they lack the aggregated features and enhancements that Facebook have developed in the past few years...

So if I was Facebook's



I would assign a Top Executive to start evaluating corporate needs and start making a Busines Plan to Rent/Sell/Lend/Host Facebook's platform to this guys who are willing to pay a lot of money for this service.... I mean, after the cow runs out of milk... you need to find another cow right????

I know you will tell me that there area lot of things to consider in my theory for example information security on corporations or change management for this type of social networks, but that is why I said that I would hire a Top Executive to address this issues.

For example, If I where appointed to this assignment I would develop this same infrastructure that could run within Company's VPN and only some things could be shared with other Company's VPNs...

What impressed me the most after Laura's speech is the low number of employees Facebook currently has. After Enrique's class finished, I approached Laura and asked who was the country manager of Facebook in Mexico because after my MBA, I am going back to work for my Bank and I would like to contact them and see what how can collaborate between the two companies, and although she was very nice and gave me her info and asked me what type of collaboration I wanted (and I am sure she will help me solve this issue) I was impressed to know that Facebook does not have a country manager in Mexico and they ran the country from US, which is fine for me only if they are sticking to their actual Business Plan, but if they want to expand to other stuff like the one I am mentioning above, they will definitely need to strengthen their Head Count.

Anyway, it's just a thought

Arnoldo

Tesco... Work Smarter, Not Harder...

How can you make a grocery store to go from selling tomatoes and lettuce to banking, loyalty, gasoline, etc.... Through Technology of course!!!!! Just imagine the ERP this guys have to have just to coordinated Inventories, Procurement, Suppliers, Supply Chain and this is only if we speak as Tesco selling groceries, now how could they grow? Well by knowing their customers would be your most likely response, but HOW????... Just imagine having millions of customers going in and out of your stores, you won´t be able to go one by one to find out what you need, so you need to develop a clever way to find out their preferences and to make a proper segmentation and targeting, hence through their loyalty program they could get all the information they needed, considering they had more than one million users... that´s pretty much what you could need in terms of information and again... how do you do this??? With a CRM and Loyalty program software combined with strong SQL and Database power (just ask the bill that Teradata got ;).

Now let´s speak about financial services... you have all this people coming in and out of your stores, it would be a pitty to waste the opportunity to try and sell them something more... like a credit card for example he he he... All this thanks to Technology....

So my advise is WORK SMARTER... NOT HARDER.... Technology is your friend and will help you execute your ideas...

Casa del Libro... Fresh new start... Or Long and painfull recovery

Editorial Planeta, one of the largest groups in Spanish speaking markets, made it´s first online efforts through their first online library in 1995 and in 1996 launches www.casadellibro.com with more than 1,000,000 books at you disposition and shipments to five continents. Following the trend of Internet boom, they went and bought the most expensive and complex combination of software and hardware, to be able to compel with partners and expected demand. To make an long story short, Internet bubble bursted and the sh… hit the fan… Hence disaster reigned in fantasyland, hence they went from everything they wanted to wanting to have something. In this given case, I would make an analysis to make the decision to whether to keep investing in current strong and very costly tool or buy a new and more advance one. Analysis would include current cost, time to market, trade off of both solutions. Given my experience, and taking into consideration how hard it is to re launch a project, I would go and get the new technology even if it is not as robust to start slow and then scale it according to market flow needs.

ERP´s... Just like doctors prescriptions...

Companies need to be structured, they need order, they need information and most of all they need to improve performance while dealing with resources. As you can see from the definition of Wikipedia, the ERP helps a company to manage its internal and external resources.

I am going to give an example of an ERP implementation I was involved with, while working in the procurement department of a mayor bank in Mexico. I worked at the procurement department for little over a year, and I was fairly new to the function, compared to all employees in that department, and mostly the people that worked for me with an average of 15 years in their positions (I don´t know, maybe that is why I was assigned temporarily to that department to bring fresh blood to the function).

My through the implementation was pretty much in the ninth circle of Dante´s Inferno… Really… At first I could not understand why People where so reluctant to adapting the new system, I like to make the analogy of a doctor’s prescription, where you know that it is for your best interest to follow the exact instructions, and if you follow the prescription and take your medicines you will get cured, but many times people just don’t follow them, they immediately start questioning the doctor´s recommendations (because deep down, many people have a frustrated doctor within… like my wife who loves to give prescriptions from her empirical knowledge rather than studying for more than 8 years of medical school, but who´s counting right... ) for example, the doctor says “take the medicine for two weeks” and immediately people think “ It´s too much, I´ve taken the pills for a week and I already feel fine, so I don´t think I need to take the extra 5 days, you know how doctors love to exaggerate”.

Well, change management for an implementation of an ERP is much the same… I´ve heard comments of people saying “This system is not going to teach me how to do my job”, or “This F*&%$&%+* system knows about procurement as much as my two years old”.

They had the system, they had consultant and product people coming to explain them the advantages and the functionality, and they would just not care.....

Not until we understood and gave them a deadline, where we told them that either they filed all their stuff through the ERP system by XX date or they would have to find a job elsewhere... I know this is not the best way to go, and please don´t tell my OB teacher, but after six months of waiting for them to understand with absolutely no result and even some attempts of sabotage (yeah you heard right, sabotage!!!!), we gave the ultimatum and in less than two months they were working with the tool.

At first they were very reluctant and they would commit their heart and souls to find even the tiniest of mistakes just to prove that the system didn´t work, but with firm hand and by resolving most of the “suggestions” they made, now they use it as a given, in fact after a few years I was commenting about this with some of them and they can´t imagine their lives without the tool, and the new guys just have it from start so they don´t have an option. I believe that there is a natural reluctance to change, specially when they see an automated system that is going to be implemented. I don´t know,but of them immediately feel that they will lose their jobs… And for the most cases of those who where suffering, they where right… But I can say that those who survived where the ones who got smart, embraced the tool, became savvy users, and then they where not required because of their functions, but they where appreciated because of the expertise of the tool, and that is what saved them….

No tool is perfect, and most implementations in big companies are hell, specially because things used to be a mess and you need to fix a lot of stuff (if you implement a tool on a mess you will only have an automated mess je je je), but at the end look at it as using MS Excell... Can you imagine your life without excell???

You can´t stop evolution…. Evolve or die…. ;)

A

DELL HELL... To answer or not to answer....

The power of being right....
It is not only that Jeff was a big followed blogger, and it is not because all of the comments that he got, because if you think about it they where not one or two million comments, he had not more than 600 comments per posted blog, and if you take into consideration all the computers sold by Dell in any given year, it does not sound like much... But Jeff was right ...

Dell already knew......
My believe is that Jeff was not the only one, surely there where other blogs also complaining about dell service, and surely they had a lot of complaints in their customer service line. So my guess is that they already knew they had a problem and did not know how to respond.

NEVER UNDERESTIMATE THE POWER OF AN INDIVIDUAL....
As I already mention above there were many people complaining, and they never imagined that a blogger could cause so much damage. This was 2005 and people where not paying much atention to internet, Nobody thougth a bunch of "geeks" could be a threat...

To answer of not to answer....
I would answer, but I would not answer in Jeffs blog, I think it would just be unfair... It is so easy to judge from the past, but let´s be honest how could you know what specific blog will really hurt you.

If I know I have a problem, and I realize that I´m getting a lot of heat in different places ("Such as the geek bloggers") then would just come clean and answer honestly I would say something like "We know we are wrong, and we will fix it this this and that way and bla bla bla". Depending on the size of the problem and the level of heat I´m getting, I would go to mass media or responding according to this. If I´m getting a lot of heat from Internet I would publish a couple of articles or go to some of the most visited pages and deliver my message....

FACEBOOK 2012.....

Living in a country with security problems like Mexico, people tend to get paranoid and some times will even loose all objectivity. There was a huge tragedy that I absolutely condemn and made me personally very sad, and impotent, and frustrated maybe because I have kids of my own, ant it was the case of a very well known person in Mexico called Fernando Martí, son of Alejandro Marti, owner of a huge Mexican Sporting Goods Chain Stores called "Deportes Marti" (if you like to see what really happened you can read the script of an interview they made him in Mexico)

http://observatoriomediosuia3.wordpress.com/2008/08/14/no-puedo-retirarme-a-lamerme-las-heridas-entrevista-alejandro-marti-%E2%80%93-empresario/

Well, as soon as this case went public, a lot of blogs, e-mails, manifestations, etc... started to happen. And one of them got my attention and actually made me realize that even though it was a tragedy, and I can understand that people are upset and frustrated, it is no excuse to get a target to direct all of your anger. Let me explain myself... I usually erase all spam and chain mails which in Latin America are huge, but one of them caught my eye that had the following subject:

"Stop using facebook if you want to protect your family"

When I went and read the rest of the mail, people where arguing that you have your personal information, you have photographs of yourself and of your families and you even disclosure personal information that Hackers might use to kidnap a member of your family". Not only was I surprised with what the e-mail said, because it had a lot of truth in it, but it was, in my opinion, manipulated in order to create panic into people using two key elements. A well known brand of a social network, "Facebook" and a recent tragedy as an example.

I made some self introspection and came to the conclusion that if anyone wanted to get information of Marti´s family or any other well known family in Mexico, you don´t need to go all the way to hack facebook and obtain personal information... everybody knew who they where and judging only for the number and size of the stores they own, you don´t have to be a mind reader to realize that they are targets of kidnapping and they would know that they could ask for a lot of money.

I even got into a discussion with my wife´s sister who got completely paranoid and was canceling her account and that of her husband and children because of security purposes. I just told Paloma (who I really like) listen, there are a couple of reasons there is no point in canceling your Facebook account:

1. You really are not a target for kidnappers.... they would probably would want more than 500usd and a big mac, and that´s all you´re worth.
2. They would just need to see what car are you driving, or stand outside of your kid´s school entrance and select a target based on a zillion other aspects.
3. You really are not a target for kidnappers.... they would probably would want more than 500usd and a big mac, and that´s all you´re worth.
4. It will be a lot easier to drive around a fancy neighborhood and start following the person of the biggest house, that comes out with the biggest and most expensive car, than go for all the trouble of hacking Facebook to find a worth target.
and finally
5. You really are not a target for kidnappers.... they would probably would want more than 500usd and a big mac, and that´s all you´re worth.

They where speaking that after this and other security related issues, people would simply stop using facebook, and guess what.... they are still connected, because the synergy and the need of social networking are so big, that eventually they will reconnect.

I believe Facebook will be a different, more secure, evolved tool in 2012... But it will definitely will still be there.... I don´t even think that they plan much of the stuff in terms of functionality and applications they will incorporate, but I imagine they just go with the flow and attend to the needs of their subscribers who are the really owners, censors, judges and end users of Facebook.

A

Google

Working in one of those companies where the CTO (Chief Technology Officer) Believes that Internet can cause productivity of employees to decrease (yeah I know…. it sounds stupid doesn´t it ????) . I did not have much access to a lot of sites such as hotmail, facebook, etc… Thank God they did not included Google and Wikipedia. I can tell you that most of my quick desired information needs, that do not require a lot of detail, I can get them from this two sites

SEARCH ENGING
The WWW is absolutely H U G E ! ! ! and trying to get some information that you need can be absolutely frustrating and time consuming, considering my curious profile, the five year old span of attention that I have, and the fact that most of the times I will always lose track of original objective. That is why I always use Google whenever I need to find something, every time I have a question, I will just “Google it” and get the first few links, read the extract of the site and see if it has what I´m looking for, and it is a lot faster than asking humans that most likely will try to explain something they are not even sure they know. I even use it if I have some orthographic question and will punch the word and see the famous message " Quizás quiso decir: SYMPATHY “ then I go feel very stupid, but will get it right and not lose that much time ;)


GOOGLE MAPS

It is not only super cool that you can actually see the street where you live at (this is a real photograph of my street taken from Google Maps…)



But it is really usefull when you come from Mexico to Madrid and everybody will just give you the address and then expect you to make your way by yourself, so they will tell you…. “Meet me at LATERAL in Velazquez”… Yeah, like that is going to solve my life…. And if you ask a cab and he happens to listen to your Mexican accent and you will go first to “El Escorial” and end up paying 54 Euros for a supposedly 5 minutes ride. So you go to Google Maps, punch in the address, and there you go… You get this…





GOOGLE SITES
I think this is a really productive functionality that I did not know previously. This is a workgroup site that has a calendar, hosting documents, task manager (To Dos), Information about the team amongst others. Usually if you are in a big Corporation you will have a lot of tools such as MSOutlook or similar tools that can help you with this, but if you are for example a student at IE you have no idea how powerfull this is. For example, we have already done two projects with this functionality and this tool probably increased our productivity by more than 30% compared to what I have heard of other teams. We made a specific TO Do List and everybody knows what they need to do, when do they need to have it done and they can post their answers or working documents in the same site so everybody knows what each person is doing. Also we use it to host working papers and final documents and different versions, and on top of it we can track changes online… yeah!!! It´s that cool.

Microsoft..... love it or hate it...

I think Microsoft is the best example of a person, entity, company or whatever you want to make an example out of it, that generates pure and simple envy.... Yes, you heard it.... E N V Y... You do not have to like someone to recognize he´s a genius. This guys started as programmers of a set of rules or instruction codes that helped us, stupid humans, to control a very simple and primitive computer. The amazing thing is that leyend speaks that when they sold the program to the guys that made the computers, they didn´t even have it finished, hahahaha.... I don´t pretend to give you an explanation of the mission, vision, business model, etc... (you can get those directly in Microsoft´s page or look for the blogs on my classmates, some of them just love to explain business models)

But what I would love to say about their business model is the passion when they created their first modo, believe, mission statement or whatever... "a computer on every desk and in every home, running Microsoft Software¨... well this guys believe it and guess what, preatty damn close, don´t you think?

They started out with an Operating System, evolved and evolved and evolved, and after analyzing the needs of people they came up with a suite of products that really made sense, and if you stop and think about it, you can see that it was based on the most simple ideas and personal needs... A SW to create documents, alias text editor, a very big and usefull program that combined the potential of a calculator and the usage of texting, a data base manager, amongst others... if you see, this where very everyday common needs.

To make a long story short, this guys have been criticized, have been the target of numerous lawsuits, accused of practically being the devil on earth... but guess what, they are still here. Microsoft is in my opinion the best example for my too eager peers at IE, that disregard any enterpreneural idea just because ¨That already exists¨or ¨there is too much competition...¨ This guys, in my opinion demonstrate that you do not have to have the ¨BEST¨product, that you can compete in a tank full of sharks, that you can work against all odds, and still be succesfull.

Foursquare: How I love simple ideas

It´s has always amazed me that if you stop and think about it for a minute, you will find that here are always opportunities to generate business, and a lot of people can come up with terrific ideas, but there are so few of them that can really make them reality. Just think how many times you have heard “Well… that´s not new” or “I know X and Y companies that do the same thing”, or “I already thought of that”…

Well my response to that people is: “Then why don´t you…..”

Most good business ideas are simple, like this guys at foursquare which is a site where you connect with your friends and basically tell them where you are. For example you want to say that you are in “CORTE INGLES”…. We all know that there are a lot of them throughout Spain and sometimes there are two or three at the same neighborhood, such as Salamanca in Madrid, so you login to foursquare and can specify in which “CORTE INGLES” are you can tell whomever you want to go there, and they can even get a map of specific location.

So, the business idea is simple and appealing to many people

1 People like to be located: A lot of people could argue that they do not wish to be so easily located, and that it is even dangerous, or that it disturbs their privacy rights, etc.. but as my grandpa used to say “don´t like it, don´t use it…“ but you need to understand that there is always market for everything, and not because you do not like something, it means that everybody is going to hate it. (ask Marilyn Manson ;) )

2 People like to be connected: Social Networks are here to stay, whether you like it or not… The number of people connecting through social networks is increasing in an exponential ratio… So if you like to be connected, and you like to be located…. You see why this idea is getting more appealing by the minute…

3 You can always make business out of people’s needs… For example you have to give your profile, and every time you give a recommendation it is being recorded, and your friends accepting or commenting on your recommendations are also being recorded… just imagine the potential of this information in an aggregated manner NOT IN AN INDIVIDUAL MANNER (since I am studying at IE and here quoting and the usage of information is a HUGE DEAL… this last statement in point number three is my complete assumption and I have absolutely no idea if they use this information for business purpouses)

4 It is a great way for companies to reward their customers… Companies want to grow on mobile customers and the whole p2p world (person to person), hence foursquare gives the opportunity to businesses to deliver “special offers” to customers and it is a really really cheap way to get to this segment.

5 It is fun… how can I differentiate my business and at the same time ease my introduction into this really complicated market… just make it fun, really try it… it´s fun… If you are interested go and try it… u have nothing to loose…
I can go on and on and on, and it is not my purpouse to make a thorough analisys of this company but to make a point that simple ideas are always a good idea and technology enables you to make some of them a reality.

Evolve or risk being left behind…

Un Chilango en Madrid...

Es curioso como estás acostumbrado a ciertas cosas que no te das cuenta de lo absurdas o completamente ridículas que pueden sonar, hasta que te vas a vivir a otro país. Es como la pinche constumbre que tenemos los Mexicanos de decir todo en diminutivo.

“Al ratito te caigo”

“Me das un vasito de agua”

“Me haces un Favorcito” (aunque suene medio a albur jajaja)

No tengo la menor idea de por qué, pero ahora que lo pienso suena ridículo y hasta medio teto. Y ese tipo de cosas todavía las puedo pasar, digo el ser sobre educado no te hace pasar osos o meterte en problemas, pero otras frases verdaderamente te pueden hacer pasar un oso como el siguiente ejemplo:

Arnoldo: “ Disculpe, me podría regalar una coca de dieta”

Mesero en tono de Benancio: “Que queeeé… pero jodér tío, pues aquí no regalamos nada, si lo que usted quiere es una coca pues tendrá que pagarla”

Jajajajaja no manches me di cuenta de lo estúpido que puede sonar una frase así, digo en México estamos acostumbrados a que sabes que no lo está pidiendo de regalo y que la va a pagar, pero si haces la traducción a ingles te das cuenta de lo sumamente absurdo que es…

“Hi, excuse me would you be so kind to give me a diet coke for free”… Ahora ves lo estupido que puedes sonar sit e vas a otro país y no te das cuenta de las costumbres tan arraigadas que tenemos…

Y lo que también está muy cagado es que son literales como no te puedes imaginar …

Arnoldo: “bueno bueno, entonces me vende una coca de dieta”

Mesero en tono de Benancio: “Pues yo no se si usted está de dieta, pero aquí no hay cocas de dieta, lo único que hay es coca light”

Ya se, es absurdo pero es real…. Poco a poco les iré describiendo las peripecias que vive un Chilango en este país.

Saludos

Yo