Low Friction Engagements

Getting help on niche software is to darn expensive, mostly due to the friction of corporate ‘necessity’. Providers and customers need to work together to reduce the friction, and therefore the cost of ‘simple’ training / advise services, such that our $$$ niche software can deliver maximum value.

The cost of doing consulting work is driven in large part by the presales, legal, liability, and logistical concerns, or the friction of corporate necessity. When you just wish training or advise to better use that fancy software tool, the friction that is necessary for big consulting projects becomes an impediment to getting ‘simple’ training and advise services, that we could use to maximize the value we could get from our niche software.

This presentation is an appeal to both vendors and company management to rethink this friction of corporate ‘necessity’. An appeal to reduce the friction of these engagements such that vendors can profitably offer training and advise services, and customers being comfortable removing the rigor appropriate for large project, so that service can be obtained more freely and a reasonable cost. All while protecting the interests of both parties.

Come join the conversation that rethinks this corporate friction.

When I was a customer / user of BMC TrueSight Capacity Optimization solution, we had a dedicated team of smart capacity planners, and support from all levels of management. The capacity team delivered value from our capacity solution, even presenting at several global user conferences on our adventures (successes and failures). However, even with this support, we could not get a few half day sessions with an expert to confirm that we were doing things correctly, and to suggest areas where different techniques would allow us to extract even more value from our expensive niche software solution.

The impediment is that our vendor needed to sell us at LEAST a week of full time consulting to make a profit, and our internal management, supportive as they were, including legal, corporate, facilities, property management, etc. could not reduce the friction by forgoing letters of understanding, statements of work, competitive bidding, contract language modifications, indemnity clauses, guarantees for delivery, warranties on deliverables, and other baggage that just does not seem necessary in this use case of training and and advise servcies.

The use case is just like taking an Excel class online or at a training center. In the case of Excel and other well used software, there is a ready available pool of training vendors whos deliverables are basically “we will deliver a block of training that covers a set of functions. We make no warrantee that you will understand it, nor that you will be able to implement it, or that it is appropriate to your situation”, but we buy that service with no problems. Why are companies comfortable with this model but wont budge when it comes to your specialty software?

I propose that vendors offer a service that is similar the the Excel class but for that specialty software. With remote meeting technology this can be done without a site visit (no travel, and liability and security hoops). The curriculum is a tools and techniques, best practices, and confirmation of current practice, kind of deal with adjustment for the particular installation, so while new content is not made for the client, training services can be delivered on the customer system and tailored to them. There is nothing to deliver, other than the time, so much of the friction can be removed, and therefor much of the cost.

Companies should be willing to allow, via a remote meeting type session, an expert on the specialty software to provide the tools and techniques, best practices, and review of current practice without insisting on specific contract language, statements of work, and the other baggage. This is after all, just a training session.

To be clear we are NOT proposing any action that changes a key configuration item, solves a software problem or invents a new process. All of those use cases deserve a full engagement, with the formality, friction, and expense that come with them. We are only suggesting what a ‘power user’ can do (not an admin) and focused on the tools and techniques of the specialty software.

In my particular case, I was hired by my contractor, Movìri, and we have begun a Low Friction Engagement program we are calling Movìri Interactive University. There are several ‘canned’ sessions that cover the tools and techniques of the BMC TrueSight Capacity Optimization solution, but the Moviri Interactive University also covers other specialty software we have expertise in like Splunk, Dynatrace, Cloudera, RSA, Moofsoft, Turbonomic and others. In addition, we will provide a low friction Movìri Interactive University engagement on the services we have expertise in, including Testing and Optimization, Capacity Management, Operations and Cloud Management, Security and Analytics.

The idea is that this specialty software needs to have low friction engagements, essentially advance user training, and this applies not only to specialty software but professional specialties as well, specifically a best practices type conversation on Operations management as a discipline, testing and optimization as a discipline, etc. Both the vendors and customers should be eager to make this happen.