Archive for the ‘Digital Fuel Customers’ Category

There are these moments in life when you just sit back and smile with joy!

I had one last week.

We re-launched our Customer Advisory Board.

My team worked hard to prepare the online event. The agenda was to include a review of the up and coming amazing…phenomenal…great…. awesome….gorgeous… brilliant! version of our product.

(Credit for the superlatives goes to a guy named Steve Jobs):

And most importantly, we were there to listen, learn and get advice and direction from our customers.

It was amazing to have ACS, BASF, Cummins, Cisco, Deutsche Bank, Estee Lauder, First Horizon, Koch, Nationwide, Neiman Marcus, Starwood, Thermo Fisher Scientific, Volkswagen, and Walgreens stand up and introduce themselves and what they do with our product one after the other, with endless compliments and great feedback and ideas.

This is the essence of being an industrialist: creating products and services that people need, use and value!

Pure Joy! Try it.

It is working! Once again, we have overachieved our monthly new ARR (Annual Recurring Revenues) and our new SaaS customers goals. We’ve added customers such as Cisco, Hospira, First Horizon, Telus, SeaPass and many others to the mix.

There’s nothing that I like more than new customers using new solutions. The growth is in both of our traditional markets – the first is the core enterprises who are looking to manage cost and performance of internal IT as well as cost and performance of outsourcing and cloud providers.

The second market is MSP’s and Cloud Service Providers looking to manage the cost and performance of services they deliver to the enterprise. Am I an arms dealer, selling to both sides? I’m selling to both sides but not arms!

Service providers manage multiple customers while enterprises manage multiple vendors and Bu’s. The solutions we provide for IBM, Cisco Services, Siemens, TELUS, O2, Telefonica, Capgemini, PWC, Unisys, Xerox, Steria, Computacenter, Swiss Post, SciSys and other service providers are very different than the solutions we run for Cisco IT, Deutsche Bank, Capital One, Hospira, Koch Industries, ThermoFisher, P&G, Nationwide, BASF and VW – even if they receive services from one of the service providers who use our solution.

So yes, we provide unique value to each side. That is one of the secrets of our business!

I’m on my way to Frankfurt for some prospect meetings. There’s nothing I love more than that, except for my wife and daughters, obviously.

I got a gift from my travel agent – a guide of museums in cities across the world. Well, I was never big on art, but in the last few years I started getting into it so I will go visit the STADELSCHES KUNSTINSTITUT UND STADTISCHE GALERIE after the meetings in Frankfurt.

I often hear from customers, when talking about IT Cost budgeting and planning or IT demand management, that it is more art than science. Since I don’t think I will find any IT budgets displayed in STADELSCHES KUNSTINSTITUT UND STADTISCHE GALERIE, it is probably a good idea to share with you how IT Budgeting and Planning or IT Demand Management can become a science. It is very simple, if you know:

1. What IT services or “capabilities” you provide.
2. What are the detailed cost models of the services you provide.
3. Key historical metrics: Volume of a specific IT capability per revenue, per HC, per customer, per transactions etc. all by organization, by region, and so on.
4. Historical unit cost per IT capability and how it trends based on value.
5. Business Units, business objectives for the coming year, growth in HC, revenues, transactions etc.

Take all of this, mix it up, throw it on a canvas and you have a great budget…oops ART.
Just joking.

With all of the above you can truly accurately prepare a good, detailed IT budget.

I have seen it happen at many companies, Nationwide, Koch Industries, Volkswagen, Cummins engines, UBS, P&G and many others. Sounds like a lot of work? Well, some create amazing spreadsheets and some use a system – it’s your choice.