I have been thinking a lot about this particular posting.  Although it sounds cliche, it is true that it is hard to believe that it has already been 90 days in some ways and that I also can’t believe it has only been 90 days in other ways.

The ride has been a blast and I am surer of the decision to join the Kinaxis team now than I was when I wrote my Day 0 post to start this blog series.  (BTW, “more sure” sounds better than “surer” to me, but my grammar program wins this round.)

On the other hand, we have accomplished a lot in 90 days.  I had very high expectations for where we would be at 90 days, but I think we have done even more than I had hoped by this point.

So, with this blog, I thought I would do a quick recap of the last 90 days and make a prediction for the next 90 days.

Before beginning the recap, let me set the context by saying that these accomplishments are not the accomplishments of the entire company during the past three months.  These accomplishments are focused on product areas – product marketing, product management, messaging, positioning, user experience, collecting customer requirements and so forth.  The company also made great strides in many other areas, but I am not close enough to them all to discuss them here.  In addition, all the accomplishments listed here are certainly not mine alone.  It takes a lot of individuals, working in teams, across varied functional areas to make these strides.

Here goes.  Some of the highlights of the last 90 days (in no particular order):

- Launch of RapidResponse Control Tower – a solution to enable the demand and supply balancing of anything and everything.

- Successful Kinexions conferences in both North America and Japan, with over 400 combined attendees, presentations from large multi-national organizations, brand name partners and industry analysts.

- The first industry influencers day, drawing 150% of our goal for attendance and exceeding our expectations in terms of post-session blogs and commentary from attendees.

- Development and alignment to a three-to-four year product roadmap that ensures we stay ahead of the market.

- A double-down on our investment in user experience and bringing in some top notch talent into the teams.

- A complete re-launch of the website to align with our Control Tower vision and strategy.

- A long list of strategic partners, customers and prospects who want to co-develop Control Tower applications with us.

Predicting the next 90 days, especially on such a short window, is always tricky.  Here goes anyway … again in no particular order:

- The expansion of our product roadmap thinking in a way that allows us to bring new value to the market even quicker than we do today.

- The launch of a social media “game” which will have people outside the traditional supply chain community talking about Kinaxis, and more importantly, understanding that balancing of demand and supply of anything is everything.

- Two new Control Tower applications in “alpha” deployments with customers.

- Industry analysts talking about a new and emerging enterprise software category – or the expansion of the definition of an existing software category.

- A visual and conversational representation of RapidResponse Control Tower that allows customers, prospects and partners to see the value of Control Tower in a fraction of the time that it typically takes today.

Well, there you have it.  I have really enjoyed blogging in this “informal” manner for the last 90 days.  Going in, I did think that I would blog more often (and as someone pointed out to me last week, in the week before I started, I actually was thinking for 90 continuous days!).  Candidly, I just don’t find myself interesting enough to blog every day.

Although this ends the “first 90 days” blog, I will still continue to blog on what I see happening in the industry, and more often on what we are doing here at Kinaxis.  My blog posts will move to our community in the “21^st Century Supply Chain Blog.”

For those of you who have been following along – thanks!  Again, it has been a blast.

To prove that I really am a technology geek, there really is only one way to sign off …

Kirk, out.

Balancing supply and demand of anything is everything.

We have been using that phrase for some time now and it resonates more with me everything I see it and think about it.

It doesn’t even just apply in business, but in life in general. Monthly finances.  Deciding on vacations.  Decisions on career path.  Many even apply this to personal relationships – “they have had us over for dinner the last two times, we are overdue to have them.”

In business it is even more obvious.  It is true across all business functions and across all industries.

IT has to balance budget and resources (supply) against the top priority business needs (demand). HR has to balance hiring of the right people at the right time (supply) against the goals of the business to support customers (demand).  Finance has to balance the needs of the growth of the business (demand) against the revenue and investment income (supply) the company generates.  Product and R&D organizations have to balance customer and market requirements (demand) against the resources available to them (supply).  Most of the other areas of the business should be even more apparent.

It is also true of industries.  Whether companies are in high tech, consumer products, retail, life sciences, automotive, industrial, oil and gas, or agriculture – it remains the same – balancing supply and demand is everything.  It is also true when you think about balancing people and their skills.  It is true of consulting and construction.  It is true for every industry.

Another strong belief we have at Kinaxis is … Business is complex, your IT systems must not be.

With these in mind, I want to ask all business leaders one straightforward question …

What if you revisited all your software, IT and consulting spending and rethought it in the context of … how would my business look if I had a single demand/supply balancing engine and process that went cross all functions and allowed me plan, monitor and respond to deviations from plan in near-real time?

Think about it.

’til next time … Kirk

Not much time for this blog sitting in the ANA Lounge at Narita airport outside Tokyo, but wanted to get in a quick post before leaving Japan.

What a great week.  Met with two very strategic partners, two media interviews and a large number of customers.  In fact, I would go so far as to say, in my 18 or so years in the software space, the meeting that I had with a partner today was the best I have ever had.  The excitement and energy was unbelievable.  Likely follow-up posts on the anticipated outcomes, but not going to steal my own thunder now.

Kinexions Japan was a huge success with attendance up close to 50% from last year.

The net of the trip is that our Control Tower vision and approach appeals to companies all over the globe.  It just makes sense.  And … it is overdue.

Wow … looking at the day, I can’t believe I only have 9 days until day 90.  Time flies as they say.

til next time … Kirk

This week has been my first trip to see customers, partners, and press outside of North America since joining Kinaxis.

So far, this trip has continued to confirm that our Control Tower vision resonates with individuals from different backgrounds, job levels and in varied job functions.  It also has global appeal and it proves that RapidResponse is THE product to solve the supply chain problems of today and tomorrow.

On a personal note, I didn’t think it would be possible for me to be more encouraged about my decision to join Kinaxis than I already was – but it has gone up a notch this week (jet lag and all).

More later today (or tomorrow depending on where you are) after Kinexions Japan.  Starting in two hours!

til … well, soon … Kirk

I have to admit it, I am still a bit of a gamer.  However, I used to be a huge gamer.  The time I spent playing Doom, Doom 2, (and later Doom 3 on a Xbox, the Doom-aged me would have had a heart attack thinking about playing on a console – but that is for another blog), and many of the newer first-person shooters (FPS) and sports games could have been spent on so many worthwhile causes.  I hope my kids forgive me!

Anyway, at a customer meeting last week, John Sicard was doing a great job of describing how we changed the architecture of RapidResponse so that we develop the server (engine) separately from our analytics, workbooks and other resources.  Before we deploy, we compile all the code together to get the performance of a single product, with the flexibility of developing in a non-serial environment.  This allows us to have incredible time-to-market on new capabilities and applications.  It also aids us with our one-to-many model (one product to service many business process and applications) through developing applications in parallel off a single server engine.

As John was describing this architecture, Mike Groesch, VP of S&OP at NCR, brought up a great analogy.  RapidResponse is like the enterprise software version of id Software and the 3D FPS Doom gaming engine.  The Doom engine first released as the engine underneath Doom itself, but id also released it in many of their own games as well as licensed to other software vendors so that they could more rapidly develop and deploy first-person shooters.  (This basically created a whole new approach to gaming with the EA gaming engine and the Unreal engine as other examples.)

We are unlikely to license to our engine, but the metaphor remains solid.  We can release new application value very quickly because of our approach and our customers can extend RapidResponse into new application areas just like the Doom level editor let gamers create their own levels.

Off to Tokyo for Kinexions in Japan.

’til next time – and from the other side of the planet … Kirk

In my last blog post, I spent some time explaining why both “Good is the Enemy of Great” and “Great is the Enemy of Good” (paraphrasing myself here) can be true depending on how, when and where you are applying them.

Well, I think “Time is the Enemy of Everything” when applied to business pretty much always holds true.  (OK, before getting into the meat of the blog, I am going to assume that releasing high quality products and services are always the goal when I make this statement.  Clearly, rushing a product to market with no concern to quality is not a good idea.)

Back on point … I am hardly the first, or most informed, to take up this topic.  In his blog of December 2009, Trevor Miles referenced a 1987 article from George Stalk Jr, formerly of Boston Consulting Group.  I think Stalk captured the point about time best with the following statement, “Response time is the secret weapon of all businesses. In fact, a company’s overall competitive advantage is directly tied to response time, more so than other performance differences.”

Stalk has a number of “Rules of Response” – very objectives measures of the impact of time lag – which can be found in the link in the article referenced above.  I am going to focus a little less on numbers and more on general time-reduction activities in my approach to this subject.

Let’s look at the three outcomes that we state, and are confident that companies will achieve, with RapidResponse Control Tower.  The outcomes we have stated are: improved customer service, (ii) reduced risk and (iii) improved financial returns (both revenue and cost).  If we took a look at “how” we help our customers achieve these outcomes, the statements might be more precise if they were stated as (i) reducing the time to respond to customer requests (ii) time to detect and correct (or at least mitigate) risk situations and (iii) reducing time to achieving financial results.

In thinking about examples of where reducing cycle times have a significant impact of business operations, I can’t actually think of any examples of where reducing cycle times don’t have a significant impact!

Reducing …  time to market on new products; time to respond to customer inquiries and complaints; time to hire, onboard and train new employees; time to collect cash; time for contractors to get started and co-ordinated for the next phase of a project; time to move inventory; time to get raw materials into finished goods … I could go on, but I worry about the amount of data for readers without 64-bit browsers.

Look, I realize everyone fundamentally gets the concept, but why have improvements in cycle time reductions across all these areas been so modest over the last decade?

Many people get it.  Processes – through process (re)engineering, lean, six sigma and other quality intiatives - have gotten better.  Maybe there just hasn’t been the technology to allow for integrated planning, rapid detection of deviations from plan (due to either internal or external factors) and responding to these deviations to allow for critical course corrections.  That is, technology to drive time out of the system.

To close, am I suggesting that if a company has a solid strategy, that reducing time to … well … anything is THE competitive advantage?  Maybe I am.

One last point to help reinforce the point of this time reduction theory is to ask if it has held up over the course of time.  The most simple expression of the concept may be, “Time is Money.”

A quote from Benjamin Franklin.  The same Benjamin Franklin who died 73 years before Henry Ford was born and 165 years before the birth of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates.

til next time … Kirk

I was in New York City last week, the first time since August of this year, and had a chance to see the 9/11 memorial site from above (36 floors in fact) for the first time – and it is impressive.  It was a great trip overall, especially with a customer meeting, but I think I will save that for another blog.

I do bring up New York though because I saw a framed photograph of the side of a building (taken presumably of a building in New York) that had the phrase “Good Enough is the Enemy of Great” (or something to that effect – I wish I had captured it exactly and found the source).

In any case, it reminded me of two conflicting quotes.  The first opens up Jim Collins’ book, “Good to Great” … “Good is the enemy of great.”  The other is the famous Voltaire quote … “Perfect is the enemy of good.”

So, who is wrong, Collins or Volataire?  Maybe neither.  Or both.

My opinion on the topic is a strong one (and likely more of less lines up with Collins … it has been a long time since I read the book).  My opinion is … both are correct.  In the context of this blog, I am going to apply the quote to business – and business software in particular – but I think both still applies to all aspects of life.

How can I be so seemingly two-faced?  Well, I think it goes like this … determine the one or two areas where you are going to excel.  Ideally, again speaking in business terms here, the one or two areas where you can be better than everyone else (I think Collins would call this your hedgehog).  In this one (or few) areas … beyond the shadow of a doubt … good enough is the enemy of great.  Anything less than great is not acceptable.

Conversely, in every other single area, perfect (great) is the enemy of good.  Huh, you say?  Well, to pull another cliche, you can’t be great at everything.  In ever area outside your key (strategic) focus area(s), is time spent away from getting the right stuff perfect.  After “good enough” it becomes a distraction.  In fact, this is the problem with most business software today.  A lot of software started out being really good (maybe even great) at what it did.  But customers and internal stakeholders always want to add new and pet features (without ever really questioning if it was going to make things better) until the software starts to crumble under its’ own weight and often becomes almost unusable or at least unrecognizable from its’ original purpose.  A symptom of this is a quote like, “I used to really like Product x – it just worked and was so easy to use.”

So, to wrap up … both Collins and Volataire are/were correct.  Pick your strategic and differentiated value proposition and be great at it and good enough at all adjacent areas.

But wait … like all rules there is an exception to this one too.  User Experience.  Good enough is always the enemy to great user experience and all software needs great user experience.

til next time … Kirk

Two things I love … reflecting on these kinds of questions … and taglines.

Taglines rock.  They associate brands way better than just a name.  I can also admit to being a “BMW guy” here.  Although I am way too cheap – errr frugal – to buy new, I am always on the hunt for good deals on used BMWs.

Why do I bring this up?  Best tagline ever … “The Ultimate Driving Machine”  Let’s face it, that is why people buy BMWs.  At least it is certainly the reason that I do.  I get that they are too expensive.  I get that you can get more luxury features.  But … I haven’t come close to having the same driving experience in any other brand of car.  Seriously – I am not brainwashed – it is true.

BMW certainly are not the only company to have a killer tagline.  “Think Different” “Diamonds are Forever” “Don’t Leave Home without It” “… for everything else, there’s Mastercard”.  (OK, I have never felt “Just Do It” makes me want to buy Nike, but I am assuming it would be on most lists).

Oh … and “Where’s the Beef” – Classic!

How about with B2B?  There is some debate here.  I personally still think it works.

I know I pick on SAP a lot (too much?) … but I have to give props where they are do … “The Best Run Businesses Run SAP” is impressive.  I want me some of dat.

IBM is now promoting “Cloud with Compromise”.  Bold and to the point.  I like it.

Back 10 years or so ago, at Cognos, we had “Better Decisions Everyday” – easy to get it.

So … for Kinaxis and RapidResponse … I am thinking … “The Crystal Ball for Volatile Businesses”.  Let’s see if it continues to grow on me.

As always, comments welcome!

til next time … Kirk

To begin on a personal note, I played my last round of golf (at least in Canada) for 2011 this week in an “iron person” tournament.  After an hour frost delay, we played a 5 1/2 hour round of golf where at least 5 greens still had frost on them.  We played from the very tips and the the pins were in ridiculous positions.  In fact, I had my first ever 5-putt.  Yes, a 5-putt.  And since the ball was going no where, hitting a 5-wood into a par 4 or off the tee of a par 3 was not uncommon.  At least I am using these excuses to jusify my 95.

Short blog post this time on pragmatic approaches to product management and software development in general.

This week was another great reminder of the reasons I joined Kinaxis (way back to “Day 0″ blog again) – great people, happy customers, game changing product.  We spent a lot of time working on product roadmap – both near and mid-term – as a joint effort between product management and product development.  It remains so clear that the Kinaxis’ can-do, right-by-customer approach is what leads to a great product and happy customers.

Over the past number of years Pragmatic Marketing has gotten very popular.  By no means am I an expert in all the “ins and outs” of the methodology – I am a much bigger fan of using what works as opposed to taking any methodology on the whole.  I do know that the foundations are solid – and more importantly – the word “pragmatic” was chosen for a reason.

A Google search for the definition of pragmatic will give you … “Dealing with things sensibly and realistically in a way that is based on practical rather than theoretical considerations.”  How refreshing.  Pretty close to my philosophy for life.

I think the teams did a great job of pragmatically tackling next steps for mobile, project management and profitability management in particular.

What does this mean?  Game changing advances in RapidResponse in a relatively short period of time.

til next time … Kirk

After a great week at Kinexions, followed up by flying across the continent, I wanted to address the topic of “Control Tower” and why we used that as the name of our new offering.

The name Control Tower is not intended to depict our user interface, but rather to express the metaphor of the “experience” of what occurs in a control tower at an airport.

To build out this metaphor, think of booking/reservations systems as the ERP.  It is the transactional system that says what is planned to happen – assuming everything goes OK with the weather, security, and so forth – and is installed/deployed on a carrier-by-carrier basis.   These systems are obviously key to the airline industry – as ERP is essential to enterprise operations.

The arrivals/departures screens (and the associated public airport website) are the BI of the airport – they combine information from the various carriers and give a consolidated view of what is occurring across all operations with a view to the past and present. In terms of future departures and arrivals, they report on upcoming flights based on the “future” that is recorded in other systems.  Often, the “future” assumes everything is going to go as planned with flights for that day.

Think of RapidResponse as the control tower.  It takes in data from the reservation/flight plan systems, but then it handles all the unforeseen events that inevitability occur – weather (local and for late incoming planes), ground and gates crews not being ready, flights delayed for mechanical reasons and so forth – and creates multiple scenarios for the future based on several potential outcomes – which planes are running on low fuel, getting out long range flights over short hauls and so forth.  It also handles the collaboration between all parties – air traffic controllers, pilots, ground control – keeping everyone “in the loop” on what is occuring in near-real time.  Basically, the “brains” that makes the airport run when there are deviations from plan (which there almost always are).  It then also handles the orchestration of data back to the reservation (ERP) and flight information (BI) systems.

The reason that I like this metaphor is that many of us don’t think about the control tower – and the associated air traffic control function - when we fly.  We do interact with the flight reservation systems (online or through a gate agent) and pay attention to arrivals and departures information, but we take air traffic control for granted – even though it is such a key function of air travel.  Imagine a weather system moving across the eastern seaboard and pilots trying to land plans without air traffic control!  This is exactly what running a business without a response management/control tower solution is like.  “Weather systems” – disruptions in supply and demand timing – roll into enterprises on a continual basis and predicting them exactly is like predicting a thunderstorm over La Guardia in August.

Hope this helps.

til next time … Kirk