Social Networking – Fab Four Case Study

When the internet first appeared as a serious business tool about 10 years ago, talk was about industries being transformed.

Here's how the music industry is now being transformed, and the internet-based tools being used. What lessons can be learned by businesses of all types?

The first internet purchase I made, back in the 90s, was flowers for my mother for Mother’s Day (Smothering Sunday). I was working outside a town and buying online was so much easier at lunchtime. But it did mean that the local Interflora shop lost out their commission for taking the order. Indeed “dis-intermediation” has been a major issue in many industries. Middlemen need to be adding value to survive.

Impact of the Internet on the Music Industry

One industry that has perhaps taken longer than I expected to fully transform is the music industry. Now the iPod, mobile phones and other mobile devices can handle masses of files with a sound quality indistinguishable from CDs. The AppleStore, other digital stores and the likes of ReverbNation are the new middlemen, replacing record shops and record labels by letting bands publish their music online directly.

The Impact on Music Retailing

HMV Group are doing a sterling job of keeping HMV stores and Waterstones bookstores open, when virtually every other record, video, game and book store is closing due to digitisation. By coincidence HMV published their full-year results a couple of days ago. They are desperately trying to move into the digital space on the one hand, and into live music through the recent acquisition of Mama Group on the other (HMV Hammersmith Apollo etc). With like-for-like sales down but profits up, the share price rose slightly but has since dropped back, to around a half of the price a year ago. (Please note that link to Stock Exchange website may be playing up - if so try finding HMV once you get there). Capitalisation, the group's value, has dropped in the last year from £488m to around £236m - a drop of some £250million (or quarter of a billion pounds!)

Rich Musicians, Poor Musicians

For professional musicians of all genres, they have always been relatively poor unless they’ve been right at the top. The last few decades have been relatively good for them, but the internet is making it ever more difficult to make money from selling music, due to file sharing and free downloads. Tracks and albums sold via the digital stores are in pence or a few pounds, so huge quantities need to be sold to make any serious money. More and more musicians are complaining of problems making a living.

Musicians are having to focus again on live gigs, and selling merchandise there and online. Fans of Lily Allen will be disappointed to hear that even she is winding down her involvement in the music industry to concentrate on fashion clothing, with just two gigs in July remaining on her schedule, at the Wireless Festival, London on Sunday 4th and Benicassim Festival, Spain on Sunday 18th.

Marketing - Using Social Networking

Marketing for musicians is more important then ever. Using social networking is key, especially amongst the younger generation. How is this being done? What lessons can be learned for other types of business?

The new Fab Four

In honour of my teenage nephew being the youngest member of the youngest band ever to appear at Glastonbury, at founder Michael Eavis’s personal request, I’m going to take a look at how they are trying to break into the music industry using social networking.

“The Theory of Six Degrees” has adopted a multi-pronged approach, in roughly descending order of importance :

1. A web site for the band with a nice short URL www.t6d.co.uk for publicity. The site provides links to all the social networking sites listed below. Merchandise such as event tickets, mp3s, CDs, badges and other super items can be purchased.
2. MySpace This is often the site linked from other websites, such as festival sites, and effectively acts as their principle site because of MySpace’s capabilities. This contains a gig list (including Guilfest where they kick off the Rocksound Rock Cave 1240-1310 on Saturday 17th July), videos, Twitter feeds from band members and the band itself, shortened demo tracks to download free of charge and buy in full, and links to their main merchandise store. They are also carrying banner ads to earn a few bucks (but this is a distraction from their own messages).
3. Facebook This is the principle way to keep in touch with their 2800 fans, many of whom are the traditional teenage girls. Isn’t it magic that they can get feedback about their gigs directly?! For example “saw you at Glastonbury and you were quality and honestly one of the best acts i saw all festival” and “Glastonbury …. one word for the gig... AWESOME!” There are dozens of pictures, and videos, including from their set at Glastonbury last weekend. Announcements can be made on Facebook about gigs, radio and TV interviews and track releases, and there’s links again to their merchandise webshop
4. YouTube Dozens of videos of live gigs and staged demos, plus the BBC News broadcast just before Glastonbury. Yet another way of getting feedback from fans (“Anyway you guys are absolutely amazing. Even my mum thinks you're cute!!!” and the inevitable “Does Scott have a girlfriend?” from a female admirer)
5. ReverbNation a specialist music site where T6D are rated 32nd of the hundreds of London-based bands. Over 6000 fans, and you can hear a selection of their music for free (yes, that’s the problem!, though some are shortened demos) by clicking “Play All”. Enjoy!
6. Twitter A late addition to their set, as it’s perceived as being for older peeps. But why not, to broaden appeal to the parents’ generation? The tweets feeds into their MySpace site.
7. Bebo This is barely used, which reflects Bebo’s problems under AOL’s ownership

This all took time to set up, and now to keep updated. But as most of the facilities are absolutely free, they provide a powerful, low-cost marketing platform for the band’s development.

Lessons for Other Types of Businesses

So what can we learn and adopt in other types of businesses?:

1. A simple but well-designed website can be used to act as the hub of the social networking activities, and include a webshop to sell a variety of electronic and physical products
2. MySpace is aimed principally at musicians, comedians and filmmakers who need gig lists etc. No relevance to other types of business
3. Facebook is really useful to involve fans/customers two-way, at least in the B2C space
4. YouTube is a great way to publish videos, whatever your business
5. Twitter can be used to send out messages, optionally with links to pictures and videos. It’s an easy way of embedding real-time news into your website, by anyone given access rights to the Twitter account(s)
6. ReverbNation: Again mainly relevant to musicians, plus venues
7. Bebo: Can anyone tell me why bother to use it?

Interestingly all these branded web services are based in the US, so there’s all the usual cloud SaaS issues around Data Protection and the like. But let’s not worry about that here.

In any case hope to see you for celebrations on 17th! Discounted Guilfest tickets here. Rock on!!

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Escaping Excel Hell – Processes Desperately Seeking Automation

A chat over a pint last night reminded me that many businesses still have lots of Excel-based processes, including reporting, that are inefficient and prone to error.

In many cases highly qualified and expensive “Excel jockeys” are spending most of their time manipulating data. Automation would let them be their job title – “business analysts” - who add proper value to the business.

Sometimes it’s just a matter of replacing Excel with a database or OLAP system, depending on the volumes of data, or writing some macros or VBA. Automation also provides the key benefit of slashing the risks of error that so often plague manual Excel manipulation.

What Excel-based processes are desperately seeking automation in your business?

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Performance Management - Just fight crime, Theresa May tells police

With huge pressure expected on police budgets, Theresa May the Home Secretary has announced that the last of the previous targets will be dropped to let the police get on with the job.

That’s great, but how can this be reconciled with “If you don’t measure it you can’t manage it”? That’s an important question. Should every business and organization in the land follow suit and drop their KPIs (Key Performance Indicators)?

It would make a mockery of the concept of KPIs. So are KPIs good or evil?

Well it depends how they are implemented:

1. There are two types of KPIs – KRMs and KPDs (results and drivers respectively). It’s important to understand which, and have a balanced set
2. Key means key. Just a few KPIs that make a difference to the business at each level of management, and in each area.
3. Use them appropriately. For example “public” league tables tend to polarize participants into getting better and getting worse, which is rarely what’s required. Just publicly announcing this week’s “winner” would be a better motivator, and discuss other performances privately.
4. Watch out for fractions where reducing the denominator at the bottom has a bigger influence than actually doing a better job (e.g. artificially reduce reported crimes to improve % of reported crimes solved)
5. Make sure data collection is practical. The key problem with the police is too much time has been spent doing paperwork. In any organisation there has to be a better way to be able to collect data needed for KPIs.

When KPIs are well implemented they can transform a business or organization to concentrate on what’s important, and produce the results that matter. Cultural issues and change management are as important as designing the KPIs.

There’s also the matter of how KPIs are communicated. Gauges in dashboards are becoming increasingly popular, and here’s an example of putting speedometer dials into Excel to compare actual against target performance.

What’s your view?

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Cloud Computing - Hot Air or Business Reality?

Cloud computing is BIG BENEFITS, BIG RISKS.

See recent article Hot Air or Business Reality?

Weekly Review - XP Support / Cloud Computing & 20% VAT Rate Change

(1) WINDOWS XP SUPPORT & CLOUD COMPUTING

Having lost at least 3 days' work last week continually re-booting my XP laptop (for reasons below), it was interesting to see today that Microsoft have made an announcement about "extended support" for XP. From 13 July support will continue, but only for XP on the latest Service Pack3. This means Microsoft will continue to issue security updates, fixes, patches and driver updates for XP SP3.

Any XP PCs that cannot for some reason be upgraded to SP3 will need to be replaced (an upgrade to Vista or Windows 7 would also not be practical - in any case upgrading a PC is generally inadvisable, as older ones are not designed for the newer operating system)

I've kept XP principally to run Word 2003 (which I prefer over 2007, and it provides better compatibility with both 2003 and 2007 used by others). Those around me are using Windows 7. Other than perhaps a bit of speed advantage, there is no magnet affect to suggest it is worth the effort of changing.

In fact the loss of use of the laptop highlighted that I would have been far better off if all my applications were cloud based. I could have then used any other internet-enabled device to continue working. Having been "positive but cautious" about the cloud for some years, my aim now is to migrate to the cloud and leave Windows behind altogether. But there are lots of compatibility hurdles and cloud risks (see separate articles) before I can make the switch.

Why leave Windows behind? The fault has proved elusive, but appears to relate to wireless networking. I've switched to my 3G dongle and all is well (for now), though I can no longer use network services such as network printers. I suspect there has been a "Windows Update" that has screwed a setting. It certainly highlights:

1. The risk of taking upgrades like these "blind" (as is often the case with both PC and cloud computing)
2. The need to have secondary methods for all critical aspects, such as internet access

Hopefully the cloud and telecoms industries will progress quickly to bring the risks down to acceptable levels. Roll on the revolution!


(2) 20% VAT RATE CHANGE

Another "exciting" but important announcement this last week was the new standard VAT rate for the UK of 20%, to apply from 4th January 2011 (the Tuesday after the Bank Holiday). For many B2B (Business-to-Business) companies this will mean the first day of a new accounting period, but for retailers, etailers and some B2B it will be part way through a period.

It is tempting to think that this is otherwise just a repeat of the rate change this last January. It isn't:

• On the commercial side, the last increase was a reversal of a previous decrease. This time it is a real increase, and new approaches will be needed for pricing etc
• On the systems side, software vendors will have chance to put better solutions in place than when a few days' notice was given in 2008. This may mean software upgrades and/or changes to their advice. Many vendors didn't have specific functionality for aspects such as credit notes and un-despatched orders last time. Furthermore any business that has changed their systems in any way during 2010 will need to look afresh at the rate change issues.

I published an article last week that looks at these issues in more depth.

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Social Networking - B2B Examples

Social networking clearly works for B2C (Business to Consumer). Rumours are now rife that Google will be developing "GoogleMe" as a competitor to FaceBook. But what about B2B (Business to Business)?

All marketing (whether B2C or B2B) targets real people. Real people are social. They enjoy conversations and value authentic relationships. There is therefore no inherent reason why social networking shouldn't work for B2B, provided there is careful attention to the specific considerations.

Graham Jones, the Internet Psychologist, warns about how to use social networking effectively in "Do not use Twitter for business" - well that depends how you define business. The article is especially relevant to B2B 1-2-few rather than B2C 1-2-many.

So who is making social networking work for B2B?

Professionals marketing themselves or their companies certainly find LinkedIn, Plaxo and similar systems useful. Executives from CEOs downwards can leverage their existing contacts using a variety of techniques that I'll put aside for another occasion.

Today let's look at account management and finding new people for new business? Certainly documented case studies for B2B to “prove” it works are extremely thin on the ground. Yet apparently roughly one-third of all commercial searches on Google are B2B in nature, more than 50 percent of Google’s target advertisers are B2B, and almost 38 percent of Yahoo’s target advertisers are B2B.

So what are the major major B2B brands doing in the UK? There are virtually no documented case studies, so what are key brand names doing?:

1. Staples the stationers, a US Nasdaq-quoted group, have an email newsletter in the UK and that's about it. They do have a Facebook page in the US, but not in the UK.
2. Ryman does likewise with an email newsletter
   
3. British Airways, which sells to both businesses and consumers, often through intermediary agency businesses, have used Facebook. But the website only promotes their use of Twitter. They are also using YouTube for PR videos

So how about elsewhere in the world?

1. Avaya, the telecoms and data networking company , which uses a mixture of techniques. Their Facebook "wall" is the core to provide "Powerful, Authentic, Personal Interaction", linked to videos on YouTube plus other resources. Oddly the website only refers to their blog and Twitter
2. Siemens, another technology company, has no indication of social media on its website, but have dipped their toe into the water with 3-1-2-1 to market to US government
   
3. Kodak makes sure they are monitoring what people are saying about them on social media, apparently plus proactive techniques - though these are not obvious from the website
4. DuPont the chemical and materials company is using "viral video" - taking the more stunning video clips from product tests to produce videos that people want to watch and share woith friends. But where are they on the company's website?

Do you have any other good B2B examples to share?

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Commercial and Systems Implications of the 20% VAT Rate - Making the Most of the Change

As George Osborne and the UK coalition has decided to raise standard VAT to 20% from next January, "usefully" on 4th January rather than on 1st , at least we have the chance to prepare properly for the rate change.

With only a few days' notice of the reduction to 15% in 2008, and the subsequent reinstatement of the 17.5% rate, I produced a series of articles on the key system issues.

Although the increase to 20% is similar, it will be different in both the principles and practical application. I have written an article in that VAT blog that sets out some pointers in these key aspects:

1. Commercial impact
2. Sales pricing
3. Issues for software and SaaS services
4. Additional issues for users

As mistakes can be expensive, in terms of VAT penalties and unnecessary administration during the transition, it's worth planning and implementing carefully.

I'm encouraging both vendors and users to comment on how their specific software is going to cope with the rate change, which I trust will add to the value.

Click here for the full article "Commercial and Systems Implications of the 20% VAT rate".

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Performance Management - Forecasting and Budgeting

Forecasting may be like everyone putting their fingers in the air. But for most businesses it is essential - especially for cash flow, and to achieve corporate plans.

There is a big gap between expensive corporate forecasting systems (such as Hyperion and Cognos Planning , formerly Adaytum), and Excel which is often the forecasting workhorse of SMEs and smaller corporates.

There have many attempts to fill the gap, but commercially it's a difficult proposition. For example, Inca Planning (formerly Dillon) nearly disappeared in 2009, only to be bought by COA Solutions and re-branded "ClearView Planner".

Confusing as a London company similarly called Clear Plan (SAAS) Limited is marketing the US-based cloud solution Adaptive Planning into Europe. Adaptive Planning comes in various flavours, including a free starter edition, and for its sins is the planning component of Netsuite.

Otherwise TM1 is probably the best known mid-market solution. But as part of the IBM Cognos stable, it's difficult to know how it will progress. I was sorely embarrassed for the TM1 specialist who was giving a demo at Cognos's offices, when the Cognos Planning representative came in and effectively rubbished TM1. I'd like to have heard what was said afterwards! Interestingly Inca, the company that sold off Inca Planning, is now selling TM1 alongside their traditional role with Cognos Planning (Inca started as a spin off from the sales team of Adaytum, with Adaytum's consulting team becoming Budgeting Solutions).

Another cloud solution worth considering for larger businesses is Rocket's CorVu CorPlanning. This allows multi-user development of integrated P&L, balance sheet and cash flow statements, with the most sophisticated logic when you need it. Sadly the entry price is not for the faint-hearted.

When Microsoft canned the forecasting component of PerformancePoint in early 2009, as part of the migration of its reporting functionality into SharePoint, one of the executives founded XLPlanning. The product is browser-based, and available hosted in the cloud or on-premise. Simpler than CorPlanning, it is priced for businesses with revenues of £10-100m.

There are various other cloud and on-premise forecasting systems, stand-alone or as a module of a broader financial system. If you are a vendor or user of a sytem you'd like to tell us about, especially for start-ups and businesses in the £5-£500m range, please comment with a suitable link.

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Cloud Computing - Hot Air or Business Reality?

Cloud computing is BIG BENEFITS, BIG RISKS.

Has the cloud just generated a lot of hot air, or is it Business Reality?

Weekly Review - Office 2010 launched

In the article on PowerPivots, I mentioned Office 2010 was due for full release sometime in late June. Well Microsoft slipped it out during this last week, mid-June. Microsoft are so convinced of the value of Office 2010 that existing office users need to pay full price for the upgrade. So is it worth it? What else can be used?

By sheer coincidence I have two laptops on my desk. My trusty steed running Windows XP and Office 2003 - or not so trusty as I lost count of the number of re-boots I had to do yesterday (Thanks Microsoft! Or is it Adobe Flash Reader? Apparently not. OK, it could be a hardware problem. Looks like a problem with wireless networking, as a 3G dongle fixes it. So let's blame Microsoft!). The other is my wife's Windows 7 laptop that I'm using to write this, which runs Office 2007.

Why do I still run XP/2003? Partly because of XP's compatibility with my trusty printer. But mainly because I prefer Word 2003, for two reasons:

1. Compatability with clients and other third parties is key. With so many still running Office 2003, it's easier to be one or two steps behind those with 2007 or 2010 rather than be ahead of those with 2003. It's better to only use 2003 functions so no-one finds they cannot read or use 2007 files I would otherwise send them.
2. I far prefer the old menu system rather than the new ribbons. This is partly familiarity with where things are, but mainly because the ribbons simply take up too much room on the screen, especially for portrait Word documents. (Why aren't laptop screens square, so there's room for working space and menus when working in both portrait and landscape modes?)

So is Office 2010 so "valuable" and worthwhile it would be worth upgrading? Some commentators suggest this is a must-have, but mainly for Excel's superior capabilities in management reporting, such as PowerPivot and sparklines. But what about other users?

A word of warning!

I've just received this email from a colleague who is tech savvy: "I upgraded to Office 2010 and have spent the past four days trying to repair the damage it caused...!" Well 2010 is going to have to be good to be worth this pain! I'm awaiting his response on why he was compelled to upgrade, other than to learn about it.

Versions of Office 2010

The software components are available individually, but there are 3 "suites" of the on-premise version:

1. "Home and Student" that includes Word, Excel, Powerpoint and OneNote


2. "Home and Business" (aka SME) that adds Outlook


3. Pro that adds Access and Publisher

Project 2010 and Visio 2010 are available separately.

The standard pack for the Student and SME versions, at least when bought in a store, includes 3-user licences to use at home, whereas Pro can only be used on a desktop plus a laptop for the same user.

For new PCs, single user licences of the suites are available which cut the cost approximately in half.

There's also a "Starter" version, replacing "Works", that does the basics for Word, Excel and PowerPoint, but does not have useful features such as Excel pivot tables. It is only available pre-loaded onto new PCs.

There is also a free online "Office Web Apps" version of the "Home and Student" version, to let Microsoft dip a toe into the cloud, and compete with the likes of GoogleApps (see comparison below). However I can find no mention on Microsoft's UK web site, and avaiilability is limited

It's then worth comparing Office 2010 against earlier versions and alternatives, and considering compatibility (which is fundamentally the reason I use Office rather than anything else):

Comparison of Office 2010 to Office 2007 / compatibility

This article on Wikipedia sets out the key differences between 2010 and 2007, both for improvements and what has been removed. There's also the history of development.

Key changes include:

• Changes to the user interface, including ability to customise those darned ribbons
• Larger spreadsheets plus PowerPivots in Excel
• But you can no longer save a PowerPoint file as a web page
  

Previous releases have often included a change in file structure. there are no fundamental changes in 2010 iover 2007 (but see notes re 2003)

Comparison of Office 2010 to Office 2003 / compatibility

In Office 2007, the Open XML file format was introduced for Word, Excel and PowerPoint, which has been continued in 2010. Users of Office 2003 should download the "compatibility pack" to be able to read, edit and save documents in that file format.

There can also be issues with macros when moving from 2003 to 2007/2010.

Comparison of Windows and Mac versions / compatibility

Microsoft has tolerated Apple , and in 1997 kept Apple afloat, in my view principally to avoid monopoly problems. Nonetheless Office is available for the Mac. After all, Excel was written for the Mac before it was ported to Windows.

In recent years Mac users have had to wait a while after each Windows release:

• Office 2003 became Office 2004 for the Mac.


• Office 2007 became Office 2008.


• Office 2010 will become Office 2011, albeit expected to be released in 2010
  

Generally the PC and equivalent Mac version should be exactly in sync, although differences in available fonts can cause issues, and there can be individual problems. Incompatibility is one reason why pdf files came into existence, as a snapshot of the file as the author intended them to be seen.

The same file format issues exist Mac 2004 to 2008/2011 as for PC 2003 to 2007/2010, with an equivalent fix,

Comparison to OpenOffice / compatibility

Now part of the Oracle stable, OpenOffice is free software, for any purpose, written as one consistent suite covering 5 aspects:

1. Writer (word processor)
2. Calc (spreadsheet)
3. Impress (presentations)
4. Draw
5. Base (database)

The latest version 3 is marketed for Office 2003 users as an alternative to upgrading to 2007 or 2010. Whilst the official website talks about reading Office files, it is especially quiet about writing files that Office can read - it suggests that everyone should have OpenOffice! Why not?

Here's an independent review of OpenOffice 3.0

Comparison to GoogleDocs / compatibility

If it's collaboration you're after, or just simple free software for words, spreadsheets and presentations, then GoogleDocs is worth a look.

It benefits from the advantages and suffers from the risks of cloud computing, but in some respects no more so than sending documents via unencrypted email.

Here's a comparison of GoogleApps with Office Web Apps

There is a useful Office plug-in called Offisync available to convert Office documents to GoogleApps for collaboration.


In Conclusion

If you do not exchange documents with other people, or only have to read what people send you, then OpenOffice and GoogleApps provide cheaper and probably adequate alternatives to Office.

If you are buying new PCs and you need Office, then Office 2010 is clearly the way to go. Office 2007 users can upgrade relatively easily, albeit it at a cost of re-licensing. For those people who have stuck with Office 2003, and avoided Office 2007/Vista, then this is probably the right time to move to Office 2010 with Windows 7 . Excel users who use it heavily for reporting will benefit from larger spreadsheets and PowerPivots, though watch out for issues with macros if moving from 2003. Corporates and SMEs will need to carefully consider all the ramifications.

If you are using a Mac, Office 2008 should be basically compatible with both Office 2007 and Office 2010 files, with Office 2011 for Mac available later this year.

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Social Networking - Monetizing Facebook Business Apps

In previous articles we’ve looked at “apps” (applications) for Facebook:
1. Standard packaged apps
2. Customised apps used by the UK political parties to spread the word approaching the general election

Let’s look at a couple of custom-written apps for commercial businesses, the first of which is the simplest form – customised Facebook pages

Marmite. Do you love it or hate it? They have taken this question and produced a series of Facebook marketing campaigns. The one earlier in 2010 was a mock election between two “parties”l:

• The “Love Party"
• “Marmite - Hate it” which promises to ‘Stop the Spread’ of Marmite

There are also various other Facebook sites for Marmite (type Marmite into Facebook’s search)

During the "election" they had apps to help “spread the word”, just like the main UK political parties did. But these have been removed now the Marmite election is over.

Another household food brand has taken apps a stage further. Pringles has 3.4million “fans”, and has set up two apps:

1. “Pringoooals”, playing on the World Cup theme
2. “Oversharers” where a user can use a Pringles-sponsored button to tell friends when they blab too much in their status updates.

Both the Marmite and Pringles examples are in the B2C space, principally because Facebook provides the vast numbers of people that are a B2C marketer’s dream.

Monetizing Facebook apps more directly has been described as “the holy grail”. We’ll look at this in the next apps article.

If you know of any other good apps examples, B2B or B2C, do add a comment.

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Escaping Excel Hell - Add-Ins for Excel

In an earlier article I mentioned that there are three principle ways to escape Excel hell.

The first is to make better use of the version you have, or upgrade to Excel 2010.


The second is to replace it with a database or specialist software such as budgeting/reporting.

The third is to use add-ins or integration. Looking at add-ins, there are several that are worth evaluating:

1. For dashboards: Excel gauges from Pendragon Systems, as in the graphic above. Click here for this example and a free trial.
2. For graphics: Sparklines for Excel (SfE)
3. For business intelligence – analysis and reporting: PowerOLAP 9 using Excel as a front end, from BIOLAP in the UK
4. For statutory accounts production: VT Final Accounts
   

If anyone has hands-on experience of any of these tools, good or painful, please comment. Likewise if there are any other favourites or best-to-avoids! Suppliers are equally welcome to comment.

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Performance Management - KPIs and the Brewery Analogy

Yes, that got your attention! But why the association between KPIs and breweries?

KPIs are of two types:

(1) KPDs – Key Performance Drivers
(2) KRMs – Key Results Metrics.

It’s the KPDs that are the real Key Performance “Indicators”, providing information about how well the underlying business processes are running.

Let’s think for the moment of a business as a money-making machine. There are typically a number of key stages with any business, in this example B2B (business to business):

1. Marketing function generates interest
2. Sales closes deals
3. Operations supplies the product or service
   
4. Finance collects the customer payment. and pays suppliers and staff
   

How do you monitor how well each of these (and any other) stages are working?

We are talking about business processes. So let’s look at how to monitor a manufacturing process. Yes, let’s look at a brewery, and imagine you are in the control room. What would you want to see on the control panels?

Simplifying the brewing process, we have at least six key stages:

• Receipt of raw materials
• Preparation for fermentation (Mash Tun, Copper and Hopback)
  
• Fermentation
• Filtration
• Bottling & Casing
• Despatch & sale

For fermentation you’ll want to know a number of key metrics, perhaps:

• Temperature & pressure (probably on gauges)
• Quantity of raw materials added per batch or hour
• Quantity of finished product compared to “standard” for the amount of raw materials (yield)
• Alcoholic strength produced
• Etc etc

These are all non-financial metrics, and are a mix of KPDs (driving the process) and KRMs (the result of the process).

Applying a similar approach to a sales team, for example, you can benefit from setting KPDs & KRMs for managing the sales funnel. Weekly metrics might include “value of quotes per week by salesman” plus “conversion rate from quote to sale.within x weeks”, where x is appropriate for the length of the sales cycle.

There’s the old phrase “What gets measured gets done”. You therefore need to be careful about which metrics you use, to ensure that in combination they drive behaviour that is congruent with the business’s goals. This is especially relevant where there are fractions e.g. converted quotes divided by total quotes raised. This is because it is easier to improve the metric by reducing the number of quotes in this example, by excluding those that are not virtually certain of success, than by actually improving the closing process. If the business prefers that quotes are also raised in situations where the order is not virtually certain, there needs to be another metric that encourages staff to raise them.

If you’d like further information, I wrote a whole series of articles on Performance Management . Or just give me a call.

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Cloud Computing - Hot Air or Business Reality?

Cloud computing is BIG BENEFITS, BIG RISKS. Is use of the cloud living on a wing and a prayer? Or is the cloud business-ready?

See recent article Hot Air or Business Reality?

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Weekly review – iPhone 4 launch / iPad availability / PowerPoint’s role

Apple iPhone 4

Normally I wouldn't talk about mobile phones in this blog. But with little exciting in the news this last week, the sheer power of modern mobiles and their growing importance for internet access (and my own N95 8GB being eligible for an upgrade!), I’m taking a little more interest than normal in the mobile market.

Hot on the heels of the Apple iPad is the iPhone 4. It is the "iPhone 4" not the "iPhone 4G", communicating at most using 3G. (4G, whether it is LTE being trialed by O2, or full IMTA, won't be available commercially in the UK for some time). The iPhone 4 is available from Thursday June 24th from all five UK mobile networks (O2, Orange, T-Mobile, Three & Vodafone, plus resellers such as Carphone Warehouse & Phones-4-U). Only O2 appear to have announced their tariffs, which unlike the iPad includes an iPhone 4 in the monthly contracts.

The original iPhone took the world by storm three years ago. The iPhone 4 is a distinct improvement on the previous models, such as by providing multi-tasking and a 5MP camera. But many are saying that other manufacturers’ phones, many using the “Android” operating system may be a better bet, especially the HTC Desire, Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 and the Blackberrys.

The iPhone 4 offers significant functionality, including better resolution display, and HD-quality videoing.

To a certain extent the choice between the iPhone and other smartphones is what “apps” (applications) are available for the “platforms”. It's also the age-old battle between the Mac OS available only for "lovable" Apple products (in this case the iPhone) and an operating system available usually more cheaply on a variety of manufacturers’ devices (in this case “Android”).

It may be a matter of choosing between heart and head.


Apple iPad Update

The iPad is still very difficult to get hold of in the UK. There were some of the iPad models without the 3G micro-SIM slot available directly from Apple shops over this last weekend. Currys and PCWorld seemed to be sold out around the south east at least, but both now offer a stock availability checker (click on the links above, then your region, then model at bottom of page then "Click here to check the availability in your area"). For the 3G models, which allow connection to the 3G mobile data network for an extra subscription, it should hopefully only be a matter of days before new stock is available.

But which model? Check for yourself, but unless you are going to be loading a lot of videos onto the iPad, the entry-level 16GB should be sufficient. Instead of bigger storage, why not save your money and buy a decent case and other accessories instead? The choice is yours.

For 3G services, there's a big disparity in tariffs among the operators, none of which include an iPad, which has to be bought separately as above. So which operator?

Here are the Apps available for iPad and previous articles on the iPad:

• MobileMe (item 3)
• iPad - Fashion Fad or Business Workhorse

PowerPoint – Presentation or Persuasion?

You'll find this an interesting take on the role of PowerPoint from Graham, Jones, the “Internet Phychologist”.

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Social Networking - Tips & Facebook Privacy

So I’m told, the Forces teach alpine skiing to novices by taking them to the top of a black run and letting them compete to make their own way to the bottom. True or not, they wouldn’t let them try without some form of briefing on how to ski and on safety.

The same is true for social networking. The best way is to just have a go, but you need to know some basics to “keep safe”. Here's just a few tips to get you started ...

Twitter

For Twitter it’s worth knowing that “Usernames” are case sensitive. So set yourself up as camWElls and that’s what will appear on each of your tweets for ever. Maybe you want to set up SafeSaaS, so do it like that (and I just have!). But having registered SafeSaaS, no-one else can register variants such as safesaas or SAFESAAS.

It’s also worth knowing you can delete tweets, if there’s a mistake,. But if they feed automatically into another system such as LinkedIn, it’s best to assume that it won’t be deleted there.

Facebook

For Facebook, you can have as many "walls" as you like, all called "camwells" - here is a "product/service" & this is a "local business". But so can anyone else add a wall with your business name (go on try another camwells!) . So worth checking periodically for pass-offs, "fakes" and any other problems.

Blogging and Forums

In blogging and forums, some let you edit/delete a post once you’ve made it, some let you edit/delete comments, but few do both. So worth knowing which is which, and being extra careful with those that don’t allow edits. [Note to self, I can edit this post but can’t edit any comments I add later]

There’s 1001 other tips for each of these systems you’ll find by doing a few searches.

Keeping Mum

Some years ago I heard a talk on ethics. The speaker asked how we would feel if an "indiscretion" were to appear on the front page of the Times. You’ve no doubt seen stories in the papers about “inappropriate” private emails going global electronically, and which have really bitten the originator (and others) in the backside.

It’s worth assuming that any electronic communication could be passed on and seen by anyone - I've certainly seen this happen accidentally - such as forwarded emails including an earlier private email conversation with someone else.

Social networking takes this to a new level. Do a Google search on your child, your employee or indeed yourself and see what comes up. Photos legless at the office party? Slagging off their boss? Children giving away details you’d rather they kept secret?

MORE ON FACEBOOK PRIVACY

A week ago we looked at Facebook privacy, which is an important “safety” issue if you, your business and/or your family are going to use it. After all “With the popularity of Facebook, it is becoming hard to keep your personal life personal”. At that time, I looked at the official announcements by Facebook.

I also promised to look closer at what the rest of the world is saying, around three key elements:

1. What can people see and do on your "wall"?
2. What can computers & "bots" see?
3. What information is Facebook is actively giving or selling to advertisers and other people?

Unfortunately, Facebook can change the rules whenever it wants, as it has done recently. Let’s look at the aspects In reverse order:

What information is Facebook actively giving or selling to advertisers and other people?

In the early days, Facebook reckoned it “owned” the data, photos etc loaded onto its website. This is not the case with the current Ts&Cs, which state:

• “You own all of the content and information you post on Facebook, and you can control how it is shared through your privacy and application settings.”
• “…subject to your privacy and application settings: you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook ("IP License")”……
• “When you publish content or information using the "everyone" setting, it means that you are allowing everyone, including people off of Facebook, to access and use that information, and to associate it with you (i.e., your name and profile picture”
• Re ShareLinks: “You give us permission to use and allow others to use such links and content on Facebook”

You have to appreciate that Facebook is a free service, paid for principally by advertisers. Facebook can and does use and “sell”information, subject to your privacy settings, as stated above. This is set out in some detail in their privacy policy section 5 “How We Use Your Information”

What can computers & "bots" see?

According to the Irish Times “It’s not so much that this data is being sold to companies as being handed out willy-nilly to the wider internet. Anyone can interrogate and add to Facebook’s databases now with its “Graph API” feature. The escalation in the amount of data Facebook is making public largely comes from its attempts to feed this open interface more useful information.”

According to the Independent Mail “Websites and applications can get data about you through your friends, your profile will show up in Google searches and your info pre-populates into certain websites.”

What can people see and do on your "wall"?

As Facebook evolved from being a small group of friends at Harvard to some 400 million users, the concept of "friends" was developed. The privacy settings allow 4 options

1. Friends – these are people you have individually allowed to access and/or post information
2. Friends of friends – you can let certain information be seen not only by your friends but by their friends also
3. Everyone – the whole world
4. Customise - where you can allow access by (and/or hide from) specific people if you require

How can this all be controlled?

Under the “Account” menu in the top right hand corner of the Facebook screens, once you have logged in there are two sections :

1. Application settings
2. Privacy settings

Unfortunately the default in many cases is “Everyone”. Before you use Facebook, either for the first time or any further, it’s worth reviewing the advice in this article “Keep Out: Getting your privacy back on Facebook“ posted yes

PostScript 17th June: An open letter to the CEO of Facebook has been sent, highlighting remaining privacy issues.

Happy socializing! But do be careful!!

We'll look at privacy for businesses and organisations, which is important but somewhat different, in a separate article.

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Escaping Excel Hell – Forecasting and Budgeting

Budgeting and forecasting in the mid-market is an oddity. Corporate systems exist, such as Cognos Planning (formerly Adaytum), but these are often too expensive for mid-sized organisations.

At the lower end there is the likes of Sage Forecasting. But in the mid-market?

Microsoft bought ProClarity, which was transformed into PerformancePoint. Moments later it was morphed into SharePoint, but the budgeting was dropped: As announced by a firm who had built their business on it: “The major shakeup of PerformancePoint announced on 23rd January 2009, sees the Monitoring and Analytics arm of the product being re-branded ‘PerformancePoint Services’, while the Planning element is being discontinued. PerformancePoint Services will become a feature of the much larger Microsoft Office SharePoint Server. This has taken the Microsoft BI market completely by surprise and has affected both suppliers and customers alike.” Thanks Microsoft!

That brings us back to that good old workhorse, Excel (also from Microsoft). But we’ve looked previously at the significant drawbacks of using Excel for budgeting, especially when multi-user collaboration is needed.

Surely the cloud can bring us something powerful yet affordable? Yes, but little as yet. Leading the marketing battle is Adaptive Planning . To follow....
(see the subsequent article)

Performance Management - Dashboards

CIMA, the management accountants, have produced a useful paper that sets out the role of management dashboards within the overall topic of performance management – “Improving decision making in organisations - Unlocking business intelligence” . This was published in September 2008, so some of the details are a little out of date - for example Microsoft PerformancePoint has now been incorporated into SharePoint, but dropping the budgeting functionality.

CIMA also run a series of public Masterclasses that cover dashboards. Discounts are available for CIMA & ICAEW members and some other people - see details for each course, pages 10-13.

A lot of people like speedometer “gauges”, as in the graphic above. Here is an example that can be incorporated into Excel.

Cloud Computing – Hot Air or Business Reality?

Thanks to Microsoft for reminding me of a paper by Ted Schadler of Forrester Research. He advised CFOs to take a close look at cloud computing for email, collaboration and enterprise applications.

The points are equally valid today, though Ted focused principally on benefits. So let’s look at both the pros and cons

Key Benefits

Ted mentioned three key benefits:

1. Speed: Accelerate a project roll-out

Cloud services (SaaS, PaaS & IaaS) are hosted remotely. Typically quicker to get through budget approval, and no need to wait for delivery of hardware etc. But for SaaS, which involves packaged software, don’t be fooled by statements that all you need to do is pay monthly fee and forget about help with set-up, project management, change management, training etc. These need to match those of an equivalent on-premise solution, whether you start with a pilot or a full-scale implementation. A requirements specification is also recommended, at least to establish which SaaS system(s) should be trialed.

2. Focus: Outsource non-core competencies to a service provider

Let the “specialists worry about the nuts and bolts so that you don’t have to” is a compelling argument, especially for small and medium-sized businesses that often struggle to do the basics in back-up, disaster recovery and general systems administration. It can help release IT staff for better things in larger organisations.

3. Funding: Pay as you go rather than pay up front.

This is also compelling for any application, but especially when the services offered would be completely unaffordable to run in-house. However less money up-front to the supplier reduces what they can spend on quality pre-sales work, and raises the risk of suppliers going out of business (compared to traditional package software houses) unless they are well funded.

Further benefits for Software as a Service (SaaS cloud)

Continuing this article focusing on SaaS cloud, various other useful papers have been published. These take a more balanced view of pros and cons. These include “The business case for Software as a Service” by Intellect (representing UK IT vendors) and “Cloud Computing – a guide for business managers” by the IT faculty of the ICAEW (representing users). From these documents and my own experience I’d like to add five more principal benefits to those highlighted by Forrester:

1. Functionality can be shared from any location with an internet connection, from any device with a compatible internet browser. This allows remote access from multiple sites, by mobile workers, and collaboration with third parties (including customers and suppliers)
2. Regular upgrades provide new functionality more quickly, without the hassle of installing them. However there are issues with upgrades in multi-tenant systems (see below).
3. Easy to increase usage when needed (but not so easy to reduce it)
4. Easier to pilot an application, and withdraw quickly if necessary at lower cost and embarrassment!
5. Better backup and disaster recovery than a typical on-premise installation, certainly for smaller  businesses

Cons, Pitfalls & Risks

Turning to the “cons”, this is my take from 10 years using SaaS systems for ecommerce, email, ebanking and other purposes. As Intellect says “While the SaaS model offers significant advantages over on-premise, it does carry potential risks that must also be considered”:

1. Top of my list is reliance on an internet connection. As Andy Scott says “Loss of Internet = loss of information systems. PERIOD.” At each place of use, it is a must to have at least two totally independent reasonably high-speed internet connections, either broadband + 4G, 2 different 4G services, or some other combination.
2. Top of most people’s concerns is security. "Security" covers a multitude of sins, from internet reliance (as above), user access, encryption, vendor staff, leavers/transferees, to back-up and disaster recovery. This all needs to be within compliance with the relevant Data Protection legislation (e.g. for FCA). There may in fact be an improvement using SaaS by comparison to your existing on-premise solution, but needs a careful look.
   
3. Security is closely related to data ownership. What’s in the vendor’s contract? Do you have (or can you quickly get) your own data back-ups, and the ability to move to another service if and when you need to?
4. As mentioned above, upgrades are both an advantage and potentially a critical issue, depending on the SaaS vendor and how it operates. Issues exist around timing, testing, user procedures, training, etc
5. SaaS solutions can usually be configured, can often be integrated with other systems, but can rarely be customised as easily as on-premise solutions. What you see is what you get!
6. Contingency planning is vital. Any lack of a credible contingency plan for a business critical application needs careful consideration, depending on the circumstances.

Ever "positive but cautious"

The quality (and indeed acceptability) of a specific supplier and its offering for a specific application is fundamental to the success of your cloud adventure. There’s no escaping proper due diligence! Assuming the cloud is an acceptable approach for the specific application, given the available offerings, it’s a question of which cloud.

Weekly review - Broadband risks / Smartphone vulnerability / iPad

There’s two important pieces of news this week, plus an update on the Apple iPad:

(1) BT workers are to be balloted on strike action.

If you are reliant on the internet for cloud computing applications, accessing other websites or just for email, would the loss of your internet connection be a body blow?

Here in Maidenhead a couple of years ago, someone vandalized a section of BT cabling serving several hundred homes and businesses. For several days no-one in the area could make land-line phone calls, automatically authorize card payments, or access the internet through BT. A strike may have the same effects.

Fortunately I have a 3G dongle which I use when away from base, and BT diverted incoming calls to my mobile, so the landline loss was little more than a nuisance. But what about all the internet-enabled devices in your business or home?

Larger organisations will have their own redundancy solutions (though I’ve seen several go without internet access for hours if not days). For smaller installations it is worth considering broadband routers that have a 3G service in-built. Here’s an example from Billion where they say “The auto fail-over feature ensures maximum connectivity and minimum interruption by quickly and smoothly connecting to a 3G network in the event that your ADSL line fails.” It’s available from places like Maplins. Not cheap, but worth it?

(2) Viruses for Smartphones?

PCW recently reported that a few of the new Samsung Wave smartphones had been shipped with a computer trojan virus pre-loaded onto the microSD card. Connecting the phone to a PC using auto-run would allow the trojan to attempt to infect the PC. Copying the file would potentially pass it on to other PCs.

It’s a stark reminder that it’s not only PCs that are vulnerable, even if the devices only act as a carrier, as with the Wave.

It’s also worth remembering that the Apple Mac is virtually immune from viruses and other threats (though can never protect from phishing and other threats that don’t take place on the device itself). Apple says "The Mac is designed with built-in technologies that provide protection against malicious software and security threats right out of the box". Norton onetheless sell an anti-virus solution for the Mac, principally to avoid passing on infected files to PC users like with the Wave (the term "dual protection" only refers to getting a copy of the Windows version in case you are running both Windows and Apple OS X on the same machine ). Other companies also provide Mac anti-virus, and here's a useful round-up of Mac security risks and protection.

With strong security solutions readily available, could someone tell me why the world puts up with Windows vulnerability?

(3) A little more on the iPad

By the way, when the iPad was first announced, the Apple website said that the "mobileme" service would allow you to remotely wipe everything from your iPad instantly in the event of theft or loss (provided presumably it’s switched on and accessing the internet). This is similar to the "mobileme" service for iPhone.

Social networking - Facebook privacy changes

A week ago, Facebook changed their privacy settings, after much criticism of their previous approach. What's the view a week on?

Firstly here's the BBC's take on the new screens. Facebook's CEO Mark Zuckerberg explains the rationale. Further official details are here.

Secondly Facebook yesterday released a new privacy page, in the form of a Facebook wall. This is being continuously updated with new advice and privacy material. They also released a second, short explanatory video, called "Controlling Sharing on Facebook: Part II".

If you still think there is work for Facebook to do on privacy, then you can provide feedback directly.

3 types of privacy

There are in fact three types of privacy relevant to Facebook:

1. What people can see and do on your "wall"
2. What computers & "bots" can see
3. What information Facebook is actively giving or selling to advertisers and other people
   

... to be continued ...

Excel Hell - ways to escape

Over the last few weeks we've looked at various ways to escape Excel Hell.

I hope you find this summary useful:





(1) Replacing Excel

Moving from Excel to a database solution for order processing

Using other tools for budgeting and forecasting


(2) Enhancing Excel

With add-ins or integration

Dashboard gauges


(3) Upgrading to Excel 2010

PowerPivot

Business Intelligence – PowerPivot for Excel 2010

It’s very difficult to be enthusiastic about a Microsoft product that promises to “help improve IT efficiency” when I’ve lost so much time with Windows playing up. Apologies for the rant, but when I loaded a document about PowerPivot from the Microsoft website, the processor went to 100% on some set of background tasks Windows wouldn’t let me see or manage.

This stopped me from making any progress on writing this article, which was going to be a lot longer. It will now have to be only a short introduction! Then came an error message presented from Adobe Reader. No wonder Apple doesn’t want Adobe software on their iPad!!

Anyway ... back to PowerPivot

Last week we looked at “Business Intelligence – what the hell does it mean?” David Carter pointed out that a common BI tool is the pivot table functionality within Excel. This started in Excel in primitive form right back in 1993.

Pivot tables (which are also available in other spreadsheets and BI software) can automatically sort, count, and total the data stored in one table or spreadsheet and create a second table (called a "pivot table") displaying the summarized data.

PowerPivot (formerly known as Project Gemini) takes this a stage further as an add-in for Excel 2010. As Robert Cain at “ArcaneCode” says in his article “Introducing Microsoft PowerPivot”
“PowerPivot sits inside Microsoft Excel [2010 only]. It not only can create basic pivot tables but has all the full featured functionality of Excel at its disposal. It can format pivot tables in a wide array of styles, create pivot charts and graphs, and combine these together into useful dashboards. Additionally PowerPivot has a rich set of mathematical functionally, combining the existing functions already in Excel with an additional set of functions called Data Analysis eXpressions or DAX”

He’s summarised this article with further diagrams in a concise presentation. This also describes the relationship with SharePoint 2010 to distribute PowerPivot reports across an organisation.

Robert’s article and presentation date back to last November. From the official Microsoft site, it’s not worth seeing the videos (unless you’ve got time to waste, and haven’t eaten recently!). But it is worth reading the latest pdf I mentioned: (It seems to load better from Internet Explorer than Firefox)

PowerPivot vs SQL Server Analysis Services (SSaS)

So if PowerPivot is effectively bringing Analysis Services functionality from Microsoft SQL Server into Excel on the desktop, is there any future role for Analysis Services?

Microsoft’s view is that “power users” in the end–user community will be able to use PowerPivot for many reporting requirements, but SSAS will remain an IT-department tool for more complex requirements.

PowerPivot vs PerformancePoint

Then wasn't PerformancePoint supposed to be "Microsoft Business Intelligence"? Well yes PerformancePoint is still here (despite losing its budgeting/forecasting capability). If you've got a stiff drink to hand, then this white paper explains how to use PowerPivot within Sharepoint 2010.

PowerPivot vs OLAP

I’ve also heard it said that “pre-calculated cubes become obsolete overnight”. Perhaps suppliers of traditional multi-dimensional OLAP software would like to comment

Availability of Excel 2010

Excel 2010 will be available in all three versions of Office 2010 for home, SME and Pro use. It will run on Windows XP (SP3 only), Vista, Windows 7 and equivalent server systems (see full technical requirements). As of 12th May, Office 2010 has been a “release candidate” trial version of the Pro version. Beta versions of the home and SME versions are also available.

Full release of all three versions is expected towards the end of June 2010, though no precise date has been published, pending feedback from the trial and beta users. A comparison of the contents of the three versions is here, where you can also place advance orders. Microsoft obviously benefit from this, but could anyone explain why it would be worth doing? Cheaper?

Upgrade from earlier versions of Excel

Those who buy Office 2007 after 5 March 2010 will get a free upgrade to Office 2010 – but there are stringent conditions that must be checked first. Earlier purchases will not be entitled to any upgrade discount. Once Office 2010 is fully available, worth looking whether 2007 can be bought more cheaply than 2010 (from an official source), and then upgrade for free. But check carefully how this would be done before purchase, especially if you have Office 2003 or 2007 already installed!

Cloud Industry Code of Practice

Is it only in London where you wait hours for a bus, and then two or three (or maybe even four) come along at once?

The Cloud industry has made a number of initiatives to improve the overall approach to the market, for the good of both vendors and users.

The latest initiative is the 2009-formed “Cloud Industry Forum” which has published an “Industry Code of Practice” under a public consultation recently. Anyone who would like to download a copy and perhaps submit feedback should click here as soon as possible.

The Intellect Technology Association (“Intellect”), which represents the IT, telecoms and electronics vendors, has also published a “Business case for Software as a Service“. Although the title suggests a preference for SaaS, the document is actually a very balanced, concise yet useful factual summary of the two approaches.

There is a summary of security issues on page 13. Some of the key points made are:

“While the SaaS model offers significant advantages over on-premise, it does carry potential risks that must also be considered.”

“For SaaS providers [security] is mission critical, and is generally taken very seriously to the point where data security is as important, if not more so, than the SaaS product itself.”

“…it is worth contrasting [SaaS] with your in-house security and compliance before becoming unnecessarily worried about storing your data outside your organization”

Whilst my experience of using SaaS systems first hand suggests there are aspects that need to be added to both documents, both are worth reading if you are a vendor or user of SaaS services.

Further thoughts on the Cloud Industry

Keeping to the transport theme, it’s interesting to think that when the Titanic went down, shipping didn’t stop. However when the Hindenburg burst into flames, it was the end of giant passenger-carrying airships for many years. The difference? In the case of ships, there were no credible alternatives. For airships, there were credible alternatives, and any advantages were outweighed by the risks.

Whatever the cause of the Hindenberg disaster (the hydrogen may have only fuelled a fire that had started elsewhere), the effect was the same – the death of the passenger airship industry.

The cloud industry is relatively new, and on-premise remains a credible alternative. Whilst a major problem in a cloud system might not be a disaster in the sense of the Hindenberg, would the cloud industry be immune from a Hindenberg-equivalent disaster that would take the cloud industry to its knees?

Or for the sake of both users and vendors, should the industry be looking very carefully for any “Hindenberg” risks, be they equivalent to hydrogen, or less obvious? The “Industry Code of Practice” is a good step towards making sure the industry avoids a disaster, and can recover should one occur. Who would want a lower quality cloud vendor to sink the whole industry?