Agile Outsourcing

"Communication barriers, time zone and cultural differences all hinder offshore development. But what if offshore titans learn to work with collaborative techniques?" By Scott W. Ambler

Scott has written an article very close to our hearts. My company and I have been involved in many large and small product development outsourcing projects over the last decade. We ourselves have seen the great difference made by collaboration tools over this period. When we started in mid 90's, Internet basically meant email only as far as enabling collaboration between far-flung members of a software development team. Then came Instant Messenger - and that was the first dramatic step. At a time when international telephony costs were astronomical (I remember at one time paying more than $1 per minute between USA and India), instant messengers really enabled team members to be always connected.

At that time online collaboration tools for project management were still not there - eRooms - that Documentum bought out later was one of the first major one. However, my company was building its own workflow and document management products at the time, and we came up with Newgen eWorkStyle - a web-based collaboration suite that provided project spaces, integrated document management, workflow, bulletin boards, messaging, group calendar and other tools. The product may have been a little ahead of time as far as the Asian markets were concerned, but we ourselves have been using it for our Outsourced Product Development business ever since.

Today, we have many projects where teams span 3 or 4 countries - e.g. R&D in Japan, Product Management in USA, Marketing inputs from USA and Europe, etc. Use of Newgen eWorkStyle and other collaborative tools like a secure, within the firewall implementation of Jabber instant messenger, GotoMeeting, GotoMyPC, etc. enables team members to be literally on the same page. Some time back we also started using Web 2.0 and Office 2.0 tools - Google Spreadsheet is an excellent example. Other tools we use are Open Office, Writely, Thumbstacks, Zoho, etc.

If you would like to have more information about Newgen's multi-shore Outsourced Product Development services and how we use collaboration tools to bring teams close together, write me an email at sanjay [at] newgen [dot] net.

You can read Scott's full article at Dr. Dobb's Portal

IT Redux - The 10 Flatteners

I attended a very interesting event this morning - arranged by Ismael Ghalimi, CEO of Intalio. Apart from being CEO of Intalio, Ismael is also a leading proponent of Office 2.0 and the convergence of SOA/BPM with simple, next generation front-end interfaces like those provided by Office 2.0 applications. Apart from my interest in the BPM space and outsourcing (both of which are my company's commercial offerings), it was the title of the event that tickled me into attending.

Ever since Tom Friedman's book came out, outsourcing has moved out from being discussed in only technology and business circles to being discussed in every social circle. Indeed, the impact of this book is so great, I sometimes call it the best brochureware for the Indian and other offshore outsourcing vendors. The case Friedman makes is both compelling and self evident. And Ismael did a good job of connecting Friedman's postulates with his own anecdotes and show a way for small technology companies to leverage this macro level global shift.

The event was co-sponsored by an outsourcing company called Lohika ("Logic" in Ukrainian) from Ukraine - seemed like an enthusiastic bunch of people and must be doing a great job for Intalio for Ismael to endorse them so publicly. Of course, Lohika gave a good pitch for why Ukraine and their company is a good outsourcing partner to small to mid-size product companies. However, the larger lesson is that all startups and small to mid-size companies need to have a very active outsourcing strategy as an integral part of their business plan if they want to succeed. And as Lohika's VP of Engineering put it very well, it's not just about cost anymore -of course cost is the key driving factor - we wouldn't be talking outsourcing today if it weren't for cost, but lower cost is a given with any offshore outsourcing plan. However, cost is not a determining factor when it comes to your choice of outsourcing partner. The points that Lohika made were:

- Partnership
- Innovation
- Requirement specification process

I may want to add to that and say that the key to finding a good partner is to find one that has a good track record in onboarding (bringing requisite skills on board), training and retention, ability to handle up and down movement in resource levels, and mature processes and quality standards.

On innovation, I must point out that if you are a product development company, hiring an IT services company will not work - you need a partner with a product development mindset. Commercial software products are developed keeping in mind the requirements of hundreds of thousands, if not millions of customers - very different from a custom application development project. The software engineering processes, the innovation mindset, the quality standards are all very different in case of product development outsourcing.

Of course finding such partners is no easy task - I might want to plug for my company here - apart from providing outsourced product development services to our partners, we are first and foremost a product development company ourselves. My company - Newgen Software (www.newgensoft.com) - is the leading provider of BPMS and ECM suites in India and Asia. We have translated our ability to develop and market software products into a winning service for our partners.

Well, running out of time - gotta rush for my post lunch meeting. However I will post some more later - specially on Ismael's points about the open source model and his company's unique approach to sales and marketing. There are some good pointers there for the way these things would be done in the future - but there are also things to be cautious about - it ain't as easy as it seems.

technorati tags: BPM, friedman, the+world+is+flat, outsourcing, offshore, product, development, software, office+2.0, web+2.0

Words of wisdom from Peter Drucker that BPM practitioners might want to pay heed to

So much of what we call management consists in making it difficult for people to work.
- Peter Drucker

technorati tags: peter+drucker, BPM, management

Gartner BPM Summit

I'm attending the Gartner BPM Summit for the first time this year. The location is great - Opryland in Nashville. While I have a passing interest in country music, my brother is somewhat of an authority on it - he finished a Master's program in ethno-musicology in another Tennessee university and went on to do a doctorate in the same. Anyway, it's a curious location - high-tech combined with old world tradition.

I hope to be blogging about my experiences at the Gartner summit - I don't know if Gartner is doing anything special for bloggers - if you know anything about it do let me know. Also, I'd like to meet other bloggers who are attending Gartner BPM summit. You can leave me a message on this blog and we can get together at conference venue.

BEA's acquisition of Fuego - and its impact on valuation of other BPM vendors

BEA bought Fuego for $87.5 million, almost 6-8 times Fuego's last year revenues which were in the $11-$14 million range. What does that say about the valuation of other BPM vendors? How about Ultimus - as per Deloitte and Touche Technology Fast 500, Ultimus had revenues of over $18 million in 2004. Given their excellent growth rate, they must have done anywhere between $30-$35 million in 2005. So are we looking at a possible $200 million plus buyout for Ultimus? I'm sure Rashid must be running these figures in his mind right now :-)

As BPM becomes more mainstream, a consolidation is bound to occur and some of these companies make excellent targets for big players like Microsoft and others who are still rounding up their portfolios.

Compliance and the CIO - Express Computer

Compliance is becoming top priority for CIO's - not only in USA but also in India as Indian companies increasingly become an integral part of the global supply chain. “Compliance is moving away from being seen as a cost-oriented process forced upon organisations to being an absolute imperative for smooth business operations, although limited to large organisations where IT is mission-critical,” says Diwakar Nigam, Chairman and CEO of India's leading provider of BPM and ECM solutions. Newgen's Compliance Manager - built on the class leading Newgen OmniFlow platform is providing Indian companies and excellent tool to get their compliance projects up to speed.

Check out more details here.

BEA Buys Fuego for $87.5M

BPM is headed for prime time - IBM has always been a big player, TIBCO bought Staffware a coupleo years back, last year Oracle made some big moves and bought Collaxa, Microsoft with its BizTalk suite has been dabbling for some time - an now BEA makes a big commitment shelling out almost a 100 million dollars to buy Fuego. I wonder what this would mean for the remaining independent pure plays in the market - Ultimus, Handysoft, Intalio, Savvion, etc.

IT|Redux � The World is Flat

Here's a great piece relating the 10 flatteners from Tom Friedman's "the World is Flat" and the rise of BPM.

IT|Redux � The World is Flat

technorati tags: BPM, SAAS, SOA, The+World+is+Flat, Thomas, Friedman, Intalio, Business+Process+Management

Active Journal of Business Process Management

Here's another good blog on BPM that I came across recently. They have a nice collection of articles on BPM and some product reviews. Look it up at

technorati tags: bpm, business, process, management, him, human, interaction, management

HIM - Human Interaction Management

There's a new buzzword in the BPM space - HIM (Human Interactions Management

Human Interaction Management: "There are a number of collaborative activities that go beyond workflow and knowledge management, which I call human interaction management, and that is going to be the next envelope pushed in the whole BPM space." - Peter Fingar

While I appreciate the new focus on the human side of processes, I am not sure that this is entirely new. Wasn't Workflow and then BPM supposed to be able to take care of both machine to machine and machine to human interactions in a process? Maybe I am missing something here. Please feel free to share your thoughts...

technorati tags: HIM, human, interaction, management, business, process, management, bpm

Technorati: Favorite Buttons

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Five Reasons to Invest in Process Management

Intelligent Enterprise Magazine: Analysis: Five Reasons to Invest in Process Management: "BPM is both a management philosophy and a software tool. As a management philosophy, it calls for organizations to document, analyze and measure their business activities not in terms of discrete functions such as marketing, sales, manufacturing and customer service but in terms of end-to-end business processes that cross functional boundaries."

Very precise article by Bruce Silver - he does a great job of capturing the essence of BPM solutions and articulating the benefits in simple, yet powerful terms.

CIOs strive to improve business processes | InfoWorld | News | 2006-01-23 | By Elizabeth Montalbano, IDG News Service

While the top business priority is improving business processes, top technology priority is business intelligence applications.

Although I can appreciate how business intelligence applications may help in improving business processes, I am kind of surprised that BPM suites do not get a mention in this survey - or maybe I am missing something here. Would appreciate any comments from readers who have access to the full survey.

Survey: CIOs strive to improve business processes | InfoWorld | News | 2006-01-23 | By Elizabeth Montalbano, IDG News Service: "A recent survey of global chief information officers (CIOs) found that using IT to make improvements to a company's business processes is the top priority for them in 2006, according to Gartner Inc."

Business Standard - Serious Developer - Profile of Mr. Diwakar Nigam

Business Standard is profiling some of the luminaries of the Indian IT industry. This one features Mr. Diwakar Nigam - often regarded as the original software product leader in India. While most other Indian IT companies focused on delivering IT services, Diwakar carried the torch in terms of building his own intellectual property and delivering products and solutions that were truly "Made in India".

ICE World

Let the Good Times Roll by Guy Kawasaki: The Top Ten Lies of Entrepreneurs

Let the Good Times Roll by Guy Kawasaki: The Top Ten Lies of Entrepreneurs: "Blogger. n. Someone with nothing to say writing for someone with nothing to do."

Newgen Software helps SEC, Philippines improve access to company information

Newgen Software - India's leading provider of Business Process Management and Document Management solutions recently assisted Philippines' Securities and Exchange Commission launch an Internet-based service that aims to ease and hasten access to information on companies.

This is just one in a long string of successes that New Delhi based Newgen Software Technologies has achieved in the last few years after it started leveraging its leadership position in BPM and EDMS in the Indian market. Today Newgen is perhaps the leading provider of such solutions in much of Asia, Middle East, even Africa.

Companies like Newgen have a lot to offer to Enterprise and Government customers in Asia - their focus on end-to-end solution delivery, leverage of their own IPR (intellectual property rights), offshore resource base and pricing, understanding of application requirements attained over almost 15 years of experience in these markets give them an edge over US based majors in these areas.

Newsbreak

NASSCOM Product summit to honor Newgen Software and others for championing software product development

My company - Newgen Software - was recently honored by NASSCOM as an outstanding company in the area of packaged software products. Newgen under Diwakar's leadership has long been a leading light in developing its own intellectual property in the software arena. Today, we are by far the leading provider of Business Process Management and Document Management solutions in India and the emerging markets encompassing South East Asia, Far East Asia, the Middle East and Africa.

Click on the link below for the complete article from CIOL.
CIOL : News : NASSCOM Product summit to honor six companies: "NASSCOM Product summit to honor six companies
The event provides an overview of India's existing positioning in the packaged software segment and the future product scenario in the country
Goutam Das
Monday, December 05, 2005

BANGALORE: Six Indian software product companies will be honored at this year's Nasscom Product Summit in Bangalore on December 6. Cranes Software, Impulsesoft Pvt. Ltd, Newgen Software, Pramati Technologies, Ramco Systems, and Tejas Networks are the 'outstanding' ones, chosen based on factors such as the management team, marketing strategy, proprietary nature of products or services and financials.

The summit is being held in association with the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore's NSRCEL. The entrepreneurial learning arm of IIMB is planning to develop the department into a hub for angel investors and create an ecosystem for product firms by offering evaluation or due-deligence service free to the angel investor, similar to what happens at US where leading universities organize a platform for nurturing startups.

Prof. TR Madanmohan of IIMB, also a member of the Nasscom Product Forum, explained that early stage capital is not easy and but innovation has not ceased either going by the number of new product companies emerging across cities in India ? he estimates 364 such firms in India.
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Wikis in Business

Wikis are yet to make a major dent in the business market. Once touted as the killer collaboration application, the format is not quite suitable for many of the processes that take place in a typical business. Businesses do not always run by peer review or consensus - in fact the more successful leadership styles do not necessarily encourage too much consensus building, etc.

Also, Wikis are notoriously prone to being misused - as the LA Times and Wikipedia incidents have shown recently.

Anyway, here is a good primer on Wikis and their potential use in the workplace.

Russell Beattie Notebook ? RealNames Next

Russell Beattie Notebook ? RealNames Next

It's strange how I was thinking of the same thing this morning - when I saw my wife keying in full url's like www.webmd.com. And I was reminded of the Realnames concept from a few years back too. That made me wonder as to why this never took off.

But then I thought some more and I noticed my own usage of the web browser - strangely I observed that in most cases I was just putting in the descriptive word for a website or company that I wanted to visit and the google address bar search combined with the setting to take me to the most appropriate result did the rest (you can do the same by configuring your browser address field to use Yahoo search or MSN search and it will take you to the most appropriate result). Now granted that sometimes it doesn't take you to the right website, however the same issues would be there with Realnames also. As it is, in USA there are companies with same names registered in different states. How will you decide who gets to register the name? What about all the other companies with the same name? How about the international stuff - when the web started, US was way ahead and everyone accepted that US based ICANN will administed the .com domain. How are you going to get every country in the world to accept such a scheme at this time - when the growth of internet is much faster in other countries.

My suggestion is that you let Google and other search providers to worry about taking you to the best match - no need to reinvent the wheel.