Separating the Bytes from the B.S.

Builder 100 2008

2009-04-17T00:11:00.001-04:00

Last Year's Builder100 Presentation

Builder 100 2008

Men: PLEASE Stop Wearing Pink Ties

2008-03-07T14:57:00.002-05:00

It's hard to believe this has happened (or that I'm writing about it), but the "power tie" color of 2008 seems to be PINK. Sorry if I'm not PC about this... but dude, I can't take you seriously in a business situation if you're sitting across from me wearing a pink tie. Pink shirt ditto.
Sorry. Please go change your clothes.
Ladies - you're not off the hook here either. Pink is a color for little girls under the age of 7, not business executives of either gender.

I Want to Join the E-Street Band

2008-03-07T13:17:00.003-05:00

For Christmas, my wife scored us primo seats to the E-Street Band's visit to Rochester, NY. on March 6 '08. I'm sure many of my readers have seen Bruce Springsteen in concert - until last night I never had.

What a remarkable thing we experienced.

Rochester NY, dead of winter, "the boss" packed the war memorial arena (now the "Blue Cross Center" or something) to the rafters. That part isn't so remarkable, since "Miley Cyrus" no-doubt could do that. What got me (and I mean GOT me - in my gut) was the way this man...and his band of 30-some years connected with a slice of America 20,000 or so strong. I've never seen anything like it. No politician, no musical artist, no sporting venue, no other cult of
personality or any kind - nothing else comes close in my experience.

The audience ranged in age from little kids tagging along with their parents (or in many cases - grandparents) to the parents of the parents of the parents, and - I don't want to get corny here - but it was clearly a slice of American pie. Most everyone in attendance knew all the words to all the songs (even the new ones) and weren't afraid to join in. At times the crowd sing-along was as loud as the E-Street Band, even when they were blasting full-tilt.

For those 2 1/2 hours everyone forgot about their aches and pains (literal and otherwise) and were somehow transformed back to a night in the '70s, maybe listening to "Rosalita" at a local show in Jersey... or "Born to Run" in when the Boss came to SUNY Binghamton.. or the '80s for "Born in the USA".... or the '90s (erase that '88-95 stretch with no E-Street Band from
memory).... or maybe even to hear the new tunes on 'Magic' performed live. Unlike so many "come back" albums (Springsteen never went anywhere to 'come back' from) it deserves a place at the table with the classics.

Anyway... In an era where other touring "classic rockers" are merely shells of their former selves...one original member (barely functional) surrounded by half a dozen clueless (but technically perfect) clean-scrubbed 20-somethings fresh out of music school (paid for by
mommy and daddy)... the E-Street Band is the real deal. The same folks who have toured and recorded and hung out with Springsteen from the beginning. Good players - you bet - but not virtuosos, not hot-shots. Just some guys (and gals, pardon my non-PC prose here) getting together and playing the songs. Some of the folks in the front row painted a "Rosalita PLEASE" sign...Bruce grabbed it, saying "Man, I don't know if we remember it but we'll give it a shot..." and they were off and running. Maybe it was on the set list all along, but no matter - they gave it their best and brought the house down.

You got the feeling that just like the other 20,000 of us in the audience, those guys had spent the past 30 yrs watching each others' kids (and grand-kids) grow up, shared quite a few 'through sickness and through health' ups and downs...and hung out together. Super-bowls and backyard BBQs.

And unlike acts like the Stones, or the Eagles, or U2, or even the much-hyped Led Zep reunion... The E-Street Band didn't act like they were doing us a big f'ing favor to come play for us. Instead, they thanked us for having the party - like they would have driven up to Rochester, NY in the dead of winter for the get-together with friends and family...concert or not.

Buzzwords of the Month

2008-03-04T20:30:00.002-05:00

"Workforce Housing" - a.k.a. cardboard multi-family (or I suppose, 'cabbage row' single family detached housing) designed to "affordable" by the new crop of urban professionals with their shiny new "green collar" jobs. And the old-school blue collar jobs too.

I started hearing this term a few months ago... and it was all over IBS_2008. Having grown up in a company town where my uncle built a good share of company housing (A.K.A "Workforce Housing" from last-century) this is really nothing new. People working somewhere need a place to live near where they work... or eventually you don't have any worker-bees. Ask people struggling to work in Aspen or Palm Springs what their daily commute is like, and how long they'd like to keep making it to keep their $10/hr (or less) jobs. With $4-5/gallon gas looming (and other energy and transportation costs rising proportionally) - that whole scene is not long for the world IMO.

Of course, "Affordable" means if you're moving into the San Fran bay area maybe you'll only have to mortgage $350/SF, down from today's $450/SF. Meanwhile, in Canton, OH, it's still tough for builders to to get $100/SF on a hard cost of $60. This speaks to the "intrinsic value" of housing, and what I call the "Beanie Baby Trend" - but that's another post for another day.

Conestoga Laminated Log Homes - "Green" and High-tech log homes

2008-03-02T23:36:00.002-05:00

Saw a very interesting factory tour for Conestoga log homes http://www.conestogaloghome.com/) on PCN (Pennsylvania Cable Network - a state government channel on our local cable system). Conestoga manufactures a laminated "Log" out of dimensional lumber using scrap wood, fingerjoints and etc. (you know the drill) -- what caught my eye was their use of hsbCAD, (http://www.hsbcad.de/) a very advanced German CNC machining package that sits on top of Autodesk Architectural Desktop.

With this software they can actually simulate how the milling machinery will process each
piece. It's years ahead of what we think of as residential "CAD" - because it's designed to power the factory floor, not just design the building like a SoftPlan or Chief Architect (or CADsoft). The software also creates labels for every "log" in the package which are placed prior to shipment. Even electrical boxes are pre-routed into the logs (although these are done off-line... not part of the CAD-CNC process). The company built some very interesting machinery for these processes.

The laminated log approach also allows for a split design that can be insulated with rigid foam. The finished product looks more like "log cabin siding" than real logs, but it's a much greener choice if you're looking for the "log look".

Google's Grand Central - Unified Inbox/Messaging for Free.

2008-03-02T19:38:00.003-05:00

Can we be serious for a moment.... I'm starting to believe that when you say "the web" you're really saying "Google". And, it looks as if Google has done it again. I recently signed up for the private beta of its Grand Central unified inbox system. Grand Central is not new - prior to the acquisition by Google it was out there competing with uReach (http://www.ureach.com/) and other similar systems provided by the phone company (and others).

If you're not familiar with the idea of a unified inbox, it's pretty simple. On one hand...you give your callers a single number, and it follows you around... ringing whatever other phones you program. On the other hand... it consolidates all your messaging (Voice, Fax, Email, RSS, text messaging, other I can't remember) into one centralized place (the "Unified" in-box).

Getting to that one-stop shop is tougher, but once you get your old-fashioned analog
voice messages converted to the digital world, great things can happen. For instance - your unified inbox could take a voice message from someone, convert it to text, and send it back to your phone as a short text message - something you could respond to even if you were in the
middle of an important meeting. Or....by going the other way... text-to-speech... it could "read" you your email over the phone. Faxes,voice mail, e-mail, short-message-service and other stuff that might be coming down the pike can all be handled the same way.

But why is Google's entry into unified inbox such a big deal? Because Google is building a system that can organize and manage information unlike anything else in human history. (At least, near-earth history that we know about.) When you couple a unified inbox with Google's remarkable tagging system (in-use with GoogleNotebook and GoogleBookmarks), Google's document management system, Google's eMail system, and their massive search capability...the capability is staggering, and I think they're just getting started.

Where are the Answers?

2008-02-27T16:41:00.008-05:00

A couple years ago we started to take notice of some alarming demographic trends that seemed to be completely off the radar or our clients - they are:

Who are your buyers going to be in 5-10 yrs, and what's the plan to attract and keep them? and ...
Who are your EMPLOYEES, subs, suppliers going to be in 5-10 yrs, and ditto... what's the plan to attract and keep them ?

GenY (born between 1980-1995) are going to have a huge impact, as will the continued influx of immigrant labor.

So... here are a handful of things I've been focused on with clients since that 'revelation'.

Dude, Where's My Recovery ?
If and when there is a 'recovery'- the market is going to look nothing like it did in 2006. Those who 'get' the way other industries have adopted technology will be positioned for success - anyone else waiting around for another bubble are simply going to be out of the
game.
GenY and Their Impact:
Over the next decade there is going to be essentially a complete turn-over of not only buyers... but just as importantly employees, tradespeople, etc. This is a much bigger deal than just a 'generation shift' - this group really is different. Much different.
Green, Lean, and Clean: How? It's all about 'best practices' . To an outside observer, 'Green' has appeared out of nowhere, but in reality it's an overnight success, a generation in the making. Much of 'sustainable' and 'efficient' is the output from good building science, best construction practices, etc. With the right education we can kill several birds with one stone, and that stone is pretty simple: "do it right the first time". This is one area where technology can be a huge benefit to builders/remodelers.
Training Without Words:
In many parts of the country today, 70-80% of trades people on the ground are unable to read/write English at a level sufficient to follow simple instructions. Add to that a significant % who can't read or write ,period (functional illiteracy) and we have another challenge. How do we educate them ?

We believe one answer is web-based video tutorials that do not rely on written language. Think about that - it's a full-circle back to petroglyphs that only took 12,000 years. An example: installation videos delivered to a worker's cell phone in response to them scanning a bar code with their phone's camera. No, that's not science fiction, major corporations are working on it today. More later on this.

TAKE MY FLASH WEBSITE... PLEASE

2007-12-05T18:48:00.000-05:00

We have had some requests lately to integrate our .ASP-based "Consumer Website" - our killer real-time community/house/option/estimate engine that writes directly out of the Dynami Builder (tm) database and gives our client-builders an instant 360 view of their product data.... OK... end of sales pitch.... it's killer, check it out. --- with your Flash-based websites.

Yes it can be done. Take a look at this - pretty good basic tutorial Flash-to-ASP. http://www.smartwebby.com/Flash_and_ASP/basics.asp

As you can see- there will be extra steps and performance issues, etc. etc. But yes, we can make it work.

The real issue is your Flash-based website. When you build an entire interface and site using Flash, the ONLY human being who will benefit is your Flash consultant.

You lose
Your site visitors lose
Search engine crawlers lose (usually)
Your prospective buyers lose

Have I lost you too? What is "Flash" you're asking? Google it.
In a nutshell, Flash is a web technology, developed by Macromedia, now owned by Adobe. It is a closed, proprietary environment that allows you to create all manner of visual trickery on the web. A "rich multi-media experience" is what Flash proponents call it.

It's wonderful for displaying little bits of interactive fun, like an online video game... or a streaming movie, or even an interactive menu. But unfortunately the trend is to build the ENTIRE FRIGGING SITE in Flash, throwing caution (and all W3C Best Practices) out the window. Especially onerous are those "web authors" who really don't know what the F they're doing... they only know how to use the "Flash" authoring tools... or worse yet, one of the "Flash-alike" knockoff tools like "Swish". Somehow, these idiots convince our clients they'll have a richer, better, faster website than one that uses conventional coding/scripting techniques.

Baloney.

- I've yet to see a Flash website that was any easier to navigate, performed any better, or looked any better than scripted or static HTML site. Homebuilders are not video game designers, rock musicians, or movie producers. Those industries might benefit from the all-Flash approach... but I doubt it.

- Your users lose some very simple, but important capability when you use all-Flash. Like the ability for a reader to highlight, copy, and paste your address or phone number. Think about how many times you do that when surfing the web. Flash-generated site ? Forget it. If all they want to do is paste your phone number into their contact manager... they can't. Flash is a closed environment. You can't copy text, you can't write a hyperlink to a new tab, you can't do much of anything you can do with an HTML-generated page.

- The real killer - search engine optimization. What is the Google or Yahoo spider going to index on your all-Flash site ? Hmmmmm ? Answer - not much. Smart Flash developers have found ways around this... they insert static pages and meta data and do other tricks that can be spidered... the problem is, seems like none of these smart Flash developers have found homebuilder clients. The ones I've dealt with don't even know what I'm talking about when I mention this shortcoming. Shocking. Yeah good idea... build your client a pretty website that is essentially invisible to Google. That's serving your clients - NOT.

So friends - do yourself, your buyers, your employees and your subs who all depend on you a favor- save the Flash for little streaming movies and other minor features on your site. Pick up a copy of "Skip Intro" (Search it on Amazon) - the best treatise (so far) on how to... and how not to... use Flash on the web.

Look at the 20 most-utilized sites on the Internet: eBay, Amazon, Google, Wikipedia, CraigsList, etc... NONE of them are Flash-based. They must be doing something right.

I'm an Idiot ...Part 1001

2007-12-04T22:55:00.002-05:00

I just realized that the dude who sings in the Wallflowers (Jakob Dylan)
is Bob Dylan's son. Popular music pretty much suspended in time for me around
1978 or so. I can't tell you which "U2" record is better... I didn't think
Kurt Cobain deserved Hendrix-like hero status (Hendrix he ain't), and FM radio from the '80s and '90's - forget it.

So my head has been out of it for 30 years... that's longer than my WWII swing-band-sax playing father's was in 1970 when I was shocking him with Led Zep, Cream,
and anyone else with a guitar that needed plugging in.

Today's rap "artists" annoying the adults are not the same thing as the hippy musicians annoying the adults 30 years ago...my generation could play -
they didn't just loop or "sequence" . To me - the practice is no different than hacking a Picasso up into pieces with a utility knife, duct-taping it back together in a different order, and then claiming you painted it.

Shame on any songwriter who lets his/her stuff be used in that way. Just because you can scream some C.lassic RAP over the opening lick in 'Hotel California' does not put you in the same club with Don Henley. But unfortunately, Henley signed off on it...and that puts him in the same club with Kanye West and the boyz.

Speaking of the talentless (yet oh, so arrogant) Kanye... 0ne of the lamest things I've seen lately(if you discount Kanye's pre-schoolish "yo-where's the rest of my awards-yo" at the grammy's that is... ) was the talentless Kanye onstage with the Police, screaming YO..
YO... YO... YE-AH....YE-AH between the lines of "Message In A Bottle". Yikes.

DUDE, YOU'RE ONSTAGE WITH STING. SHUT THE F-UP AND LISTEN - YOU MIGHT LEARN SOMETHING . It's no wonder the recording industry is in the shape it's in.

Ghosts of Christmas Past and Present

2007-12-02T21:48:00.000-05:00

There is no more frustrating holiday chore (IMO) than hauling in an 8 or
9' Christmas tree, getting it in the stand, and then getting it to stand
plumb. Being the only still-living male in the family after 1980 or so,
I used to get stuck with "tree detail" for half a dozen family member
and our church. No "Currier and Ives" Christmas scenes here...sparkling
winter vistas, crackling fires, happy families sipping on their mulled
cider...

Nope, here in Northern PA it was more like Antarctic blasts of
below-zero temperatures, howling wind, swirling white-out snow and slick
icy walkways. Add to that a few too many trips to see Jack Daniels (me,
the relatives, and the neighbors).. it was a recipe for disaster, or at
least a good knock-down drag-out or two.

And finally.. those rickety metal tree stands:

Those were the last damned straw. An hour of knuckle-busting
back-throwing effort and we'd still have to tie the trees up or they'd
topple. We lost a couple of them when I was a kid. One almost caught the
curtains on fire. Of course that was back in the days when you could get
third-degree burns from the tree lights. Merry Christmas.

One year, all the metal stands went in the trash, and everyone (who I
had to set a tree up for) got one of those 2-part "wiggling" stands that
adjusts with a foot pedal... I have to admit that was the greatest
Christmas frustration-saver ever.

The second greatest is my "Fat Max". Those are the DIY laser level that
looks like a giant PowerLock. To be honest, I've used it a lot more than
I ever thought I would, not being a $4000 rotary laser and all..but it
does come in handy around the house for hanging pictures, closet shelves
- other homeowner stuff. Well, tonight I found what might be the best
use of all for "Fat Max" - plumbing up the damned Christmas tree.

Yup.. set that baby on "plumb" , point it at the tree so you get a line
on the middle of the base trunk... and across the angel's face at the
same time.. you got yourself a nice straight tree. Repeat from the
other side and you got yourself the true miracle of Christmas... a tree
that is straight in the stand from BOTH directions.

Hydrogen Cars - Finally ?

2007-12-02T14:27:00.000-05:00

I don't care where you come in on the political spectrum or what your (no pun intended)burning issue is (environment/climate change, hate depending on countries outside our borders... whatever) -- there are 1,000,001 reasons to limit our dependence on fossil fuels (of all kinds, from all places) and no good reasons I can think of not to. Zero.

In the late '70s, I was a college biology major. An inventor-dude came in to our science building demonstrating some kind of a hydrogen fuel cell engine he was building.

He believed that hydrogen would replace every other type of fuel in just a few years. Almost ideal... no polution to speak of ( the main by-product of burning pure hydrogen is water vapor) and... IF you can use renewable resources to make the hydrogen.... the cost to run the thing was almost FREE. Of course that meant needing a bunch of some kind of free energy to add to the system... sunlight, wind, waterfall, whatever you got.... or otherwise you'd need electricity, and lots of it. If you needed electricity, even that was better than what we were doing with gasoline vehicles.

But ...FREE? That sounded great to me and it seemed like everyone else would like it too. So why the hell were we still buring gasoline? I asked him.

Money. Follow the Money son.

He said crude oil had to get above $25/barrel (in 1979 dollars)for his solar electrolosis fuel cell idea to be viable ( $75 in today's dollars). Crude oil was spiking at the time, new federal subsidy money was becoming available for inventors and consumers alike. And there were all kinds of "experts" popping up in alternative fuels, but they were mostly passive solar heating hot water systems, windmills, new types of insulation, etc. Nuts and twigs stuff, not enough impact to replace oil in the economy.

Fast-forward 28 years... I was listening to a Coast-To-Coast AM the other night (http://www.coasttocoast.com/) and Dr. Michio Kaku (proponent of 'string theory'... Google it) was the guest. That night he was talking about a move to a hydrogen economy as a way to displace the use of fossil fuels. The hydrogen fuel cell car being produced by Honda came up for discussion. I didn't realize you could actually purchase a fuel cell vehicle (and technically you still can't yet...but it's only a few months away).

The Honda requires refueling either via one of their very scattered (2-3 prototype stations in Southern CA only ) or home re-fuelling stations, which will be powered by -- electricity, which is produced by.... oil, or coal.

So we're still not "getting it". Honda's system (like most mainstream fuel cell schemes today) is not eliminating fossil fuel... it's just moving it to a different place in the (no pun intended) energy pipeline. There are some savings - maybe 30% overall, from just buring the gasoline straight up, but that's a fly speck compared to what we need to cut the cord on foriegn oil.

Today, hydrogen comes from one of two places, and they both require carbon-based fuels to accomplish. You either need to add massive amounts of electricity to "electrolyse" water - splitting it into its component oxygen and hydrogen gasses - or you have to "reform" (re-form) natural gas or gasoline or some other fossil fuel into hydrogen, leaving you with a bunch of by-products you don't want, that aren't any better than the by-products from burning fossil fuels.

But what about this idea... let's take the half-a-trillion bucks we're going to dump into the middle ease over the next few years, and build a national system of solar-powered electrolosis facilities that can produce us an endless supply of hydrogen from seawater (or any water). We'll also need a distribution system of course, but that should be a piece of cake compared to other stuff we've accomplished in this country.

Hydrogen is the perfect fuel. It can be made from water. The by-product is Oxygen. It leaves behind only water (mostly) when it's burned. It could actually be produced at the point of use for many purposes. Like a mini-fuel cell system to power your laptop, re-fueled by a pod you sit in the window.

Honestly folks - build a solar-hydrogen economy and kiss the nut cases in the middle east good-bye. Kiss the massive pollution from China and other "developing" countries good-bye.

I don't know about plastic and all the other crap we make out of oil. I'm sure there are other ways to do all of that as well. And even if we needed some oil to make some stuff -- as long as we're not blowing through every drop of it we can find, we'd be better off than we are now.

WE'RE AMERICANS FOR CRISSAKE. THERE ISN'T ONE DAMNED THING WE CAN'T PULL OFF WHEN WE NEED TO. WELL - WE NEED TO. THIS IS SERIOUS.

We ALREADY KNOW how to do it. We've known how for at least 30 years (that's how long I've known anyway). Is ANYONE out there ready to stand up and get this done ?

MEETING BUILDERS WHERE THEY ARE:

2007-12-01T14:11:00.000-05:00

On a related note to my last post... one of the tenets we followed when building our production builder application "Dynami Builder" (http://www.dynamisolutions.com/) was 'meet the builder where they are' - we knew that anything more complicated than "minimally disruptive" could not/would not be deployed quickly at the client... and not getting it up and running quickly (6 months or less) means stretching out the ROI unacceptably... maybe to 'never'.

THE 80-20 RULE
Return On Investment stretching to "never" means "No Return - No Value". Thanks to research analysts like Forrester and Gartner Group, we now know that (in other industries at least) 8 out of 10 of ERP and CRM (big software) implementations FAIL. 80% failure rate overall, and I'm willing to bet our industry is that bad, or even worse. Think about the big "integrated" builder software systems... I've seen hundreds of builders attempt to stand them up, but can only count the ones who wind up using them as-intended on one hand.

Talk to the employees at even the most tech-savvy builders out there - Like Capital Pacific or John Weiland Homes - the ones who are written up over and over in the trade publications... and you will discover that their use of technology is nowhere near as robust as it is portrayed in the press. Sure, they use "BuilderXYZ"... but it turns out that they don't really release POs from it. Or, they use "SalesAutomationEasy" but are still printing out paper selection sheets. Or "WarrantyListMaker" but are having to re-key months of job information.

Small-Volume builders are no better. Take Synapse Software's "BuildWorks" as an example... even though BW will provide a nearly out-of-the-box mechanism for a builder to get accurate purchasing and job-costing out of QuickBooks... it requires some set-up in Excel. So you will find the typical user loading the accounting file only, and not using any of the Excel features that power the job-costing - even though they are relatively "free". And once they're set up, they could be saving a small builder thousands of dollars.

A MAJOR REASON SOFTWARE PROJECTS FAIL: STAFF TURNOVER
So several years ago now I started to research why those projects were failing at homebuilders, and I found the usual littany of reasons IT projects fail at any business... all relating to failure to follow the top-down protocol:

- Wrong vision by Sr. management (the Wrong Why)...
- Right vision but wrong objectives (the Wrong What)...
- Right leadership but wrong product selection (the Wrong How)...
- Right product choice, but no action plan (the Wrong Who/Where/When).

But one reason had nothing to do with intention or planning, and stuck out like a sore thumb - production builder staff turnover is typically very high, even at the management position level. It was not uncommon for me to start a project with one set of people, and after a year, nobody was left but the company owner.

Think about that.

So these weren't really "management teams" enabled to steer the ship on a common course. They were loose collections of people assigned titles by the company owner, but not given any framework to operate in, no metrics or benchmarks to manage their departments against, not given any recognition when things went well, but hammered mercilessly when they didn't.

Our IT project would often be the last straw... one more hassle they couldn't take, so they'd find new jobs at other builders (often with no notice or fanfare - they'd just split)... who weren't any better at management, and the cycle would repeat.

CALL US WHEN YOU'RE DONE...
So the software vendor (any vendor) comes in... evaluates the situation... gets a plan together (hopefully - not always)... and starts the implementation of their product or service. But their fatal mistake - they allow the builder's management team (remember, the team that really isn't a team...) to drive the velocity and urgency of the implementation, often because they're juggling way to many clients themselves to do it any other way. "When you're done with "A", call us and we'll come back and start "B"

Therein lies the problem:
By the time "A" is done, the staff member who did the data entry moves on to another job in another town... and "B" can't start because nobody knows where "A" was left off. So we're

I can not think of an IT project that lasted a year where I had all the same players as when I started.... but worse, I've personally been involved with a more than a dozen of these projects where the ONLY person remaining from the original management team... was the owner of the company!

And since he/she didn't make the project a personal priority in the beginning (abdicating responsibility to someone else instead), he/she was also in the dark, and by this time clueless, very PO-ed at the software vendor, and probably his/her consultant as well.

At that point - it's too late. At Dynami, we consider disengagement of the company owner to be a "Terminating Factor" -meaning 'game over' - suspend the implementation.

In my experience, anything else that gets accomplished after that happens, will occur in an environment of infinite mistrust and CYA, and winds up producing a fraction of the value it could have had everyone stayed on board.

Think of what one of your housing projects would be like if you took the "Call us When You're Done" approach with subs.

"Ok Tom... let me know when you're done with the drywall....then we'll start calling around for painters.... "

That's why, we decided to take a very pro-active approach to implementation. It's 16 weeks, period, because we drive it to be 16 weeks. We help the management team gell through regular accountability meetings, and we provide the builder with cutting-edge tools they can use to apply top-down thinking to any project. Even if a builder is considering other projects, software, whatever... if they do our "Blueprint" first, they will be in a much better place to tackle whatever they want later. Moving the management team forward together is the key to a successful software implementation project. If the builder has people on the team who shouldn't be there, or if the owner isn't ready to delegate and then step back and manage... the project has little chance of success.

Is Your Management Team the Greatest Risk of All ?

2007-12-01T13:42:00.000-05:00

When we (http://www.dynamisolutions.net/) roll into a production builder, we do an evaluation/analysis that involves a lot of fact-finding... investigation about workflow/process... analyzing existing data structures and documents...looking for product line opportunities... on and on. We call it a "Blueprint" (catchy, huh?) and the deliverable is a lengthy written implementation plan...before one lick of software is touched. Our "Blueprint" is primarily to figure out the best way to deploy our services...but if a builder is also considering a new accounting system or whatever else Dynami doesn't sell.. we use it to find those opportunities for our clients as well.

SMA (http://www.smaconsulting.net/) called this approach a "Scorecard"... Shinn Group does something similar. I'm sure every good management consultancy has their own approach to the same end. ( and if they don't.... run).

By the way...I've seen a lot of stuff out there (so-called small-builder or remodeler "management systems") that might ask the right questions... but they don't provide any answers beyond stating the obvious ("Are You Profitable" "Are You Backing Up Your Data", etc.) That's only 1/3 the solution. Before you decide on a course of action, you will need:

1) The right questions (What does my mark-up need to be for "X")

2) The right answers .... (here's your target, you're currently 10% under the average capture rate for "X", and this is what that means in terms of sales...)

and finally ...

3) The tools to get it done. (Here is the procedure, the software, the whatever to increase your capture rate by 10%)

Smaller operations might not need a "Blueprint" or a "Scorecard" (but it couldn't hurt).. but you still need to follow exactly the same approach.

THE TOP-DOWN APPROACH:
By now my readers are probably sick of this diatribe, and I hope you've all memorized it.
When evaluating anything, including technology (but also new work products, new hires, a new truck, different tools, an office party...) use a "top-down"approach. You can't move down the ladder until you have absolute clarity on the step above .

Here it is again in case you missed it: Top-Down means thinking in terms of...

WHY (Your mission/vision/purpose generally) --> then
WHAT (Your OBJECTIVES for this project specifically) --> then
HOW (the strategy.... in this particular case the software/tools you're going to use) and finally --> (drum roll please....)
WHO/WHAT/WHERE .... (the Action Plan)

= SUCCESS !!!
Bottom line, projects that take the top-down approach, are very likely to succeed, projects that don't are very likely to fail.

YOUR TEAM'S PROJECT READINESS = YOUR PROJECT RISKS:
Assuming you get through WHY,WHAT,HOW, you're still not out of the woods. The last step - the "Action Plan" requires RESOURCES. WHO=people WHEN=Time WHERE=Geography. Also money, another important resource to keep things rolling.

So, in addition to the vision, objectives, and strategy... you have to couch a project terms of your company's READINESS to take on a project of the scope required. This is one of many project "RISKS".

RISK #1: BITING OFF MORE THAN YOUR TEAM CAN CHEW:
Risks are very important to know - they are your crystal ball as to whether your approach will work, or leave you back whining about the latest shelfware you purchased. Minor "risks" can slow down a project or reduce your ROI.. major risks (also known as "terminating factors") can stop it in its tracks or put it in the ditch altogether.

Sure... standing up "BuildWhatEver", the latest/greatest end-to-end ERP solution might be the perfect solution from a feature/fuction standpoint... but do you REALISTICALLY have the resources internally to pull it off ?

To figure that one out, you need to know what it's going to take, specifically . (1550 MH of product planning.....1250 MH of proof of concept and Use Cases....1500 MH for deployment.... etc.) . A work-year is 2100-2500 hours rough and tough for most of us. If you are a one-man band with a part-time receptionist... you are NOT going to complete a project that requires an additional 4500 man-hours in the same year. But you MIGHT be able to do one that requires an extra 450. Then... next year you might be able to take on another one... etc.

The trick then, is to figure out which approach will give you the most bang for the buck within your capability to execute that approach. Some small companies can pull off an extra 1/2 time assignment... others not even close. It takes a lot of leadership to squeeze extra productivity out of staff in order to get it done... and it takes UNENDING commitment from the small business owner. The project might replace all your free time, weekends, and that yearly hunting trip to Montana. How bad do you want it, really ? Process/workflow improvement is hard work, but the results can be spectacular.

Of course, there is a lot more to this than the 4 one-liners in "top-down". Getting to clear mission and objectives can take weeks of soul-searching. Developing strategy around those objectives can take more weeks of elbow grease. Luckily there is are many pre-defined strategic planning methods that will get you there.

You can do it yourself if you're a small biz, but I don't recommend that approach. I think you'll do much better with:

1) Help from someone familiar with standard strategic planning process , and
2) Some objective new eyes on your operation to help you determine capacity.

THE AD HOC BOARD OF DIRECTORS/ EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE:
If you have the resources, you can hire a consultant to come in and help you... We're available. But whether you do that or not, the most effective thing a smaller company can do is establish what we would call an "Ad hoc board of directors" or an "Executive Committee". Builder20 clubs provide a peer-to-peer environment you can use.... or just "run it up the ladder with your wife and kids" is probably better than nothing. At some point I'll upload an excellent article on the ad hoc BOD , written by my mentor and friend Bob Whitten. Bob knows this better than anyone. Using an ad hoc BOD is a big part of the reason he was able to grow Wayne Homes of Ohio organically from a 200 to a 600 unit builder... and sell them to Centex in under seven years.

The main thing I'm trying to get across here is that YOU, the owner, needs to climb up to the 30,000' view so you can think outside the pressures of your day-to-day operation. The minute you become dis-engaged from your IT/SOFTWARE/PROCESS project, is the day it will start to fail.

The "Right" Software for Builders/Remodelers? It depends.

2007-12-01T11:55:00.000-05:00

Builders and remodelers are constantly quizzing me about "this product"
vs. "that product" - "which is better".

Short answer: "Need more information". Lots more.

Long Answer:

There are half a dozen approaches that are all valid.

- Industry specific all-in-one/ERP (CompuTool, ImproveBuild, etc.)
- Non-integrated, but interoperable best of breed in each category (Quickbooks plus ACT! plus VirtualBoss etc)
- All web-based
- All Microsoft, built on the Office platform
- All non-Microsoft built on open-source products
- Custom software development

Any, or all, or a combination, or something else entirely, might be what's
best for your business.

In order to figure out the right approach, I'd need a lot more information about your business, and you'd have to do some strategic planning. The IT needs of a single-line mass-market vinyl window replacer (huge lead volume, mass-market media buys...regional sales operation) are completely different from those of a high-end K+ B company (endless complex decisions from busy clients on the other coast, high-end craftspeople with limited resources, coordination of many professionals, materials from Europe... etc.) - and neither of those faces the challenges of the small-volume generalist (little or no support staff... non-tech-savvy trades...communications issues... customer satisfaction issues...) and neither of those is anything like a production-oriented builder (job-shop manufacturing without a roof... coupled with extreme CRM and sales automation needs)

You get the picture.

Useful open-source utilities

2007-11-30T23:02:00.000-05:00

I'm very careful of "free" utilities - more often than not they are loaded with, or are conduits for - spyware. These are totally safe, produced by the open-source community. These are what I use daily myself.

Paint.Net: Image Editor Similar in capability to PaintShop Pro v.8 or Photoshop 6 or so. A monumental open-source effort. Works great to tweak and resize images uploaded into Dynami Builder. http://www.getpaint.net/

PDF Creator Pro: Installs as a 'printer' and will turn any file into a tight .PDF with small file size. (many other competing solutions make giant files) http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/ .

IzArc: WinZip Replacement. Even though XP/Vista will “unzip” a basic .zip archive, more often than not a “zipped” installer won’t run or install unless you have a real utility to unpack it. This one works just as well as WinZip and will save you $40. http://www.izarc.org/

FileZilla: FTP Software. Equiv to CuteFTP or WS_FTP. A server version is also available. http://filezilla-project.org/

Office 2007/Business Contact Manager Resources

2007-11-30T09:57:00.000-05:00

If you would like to see what an Outlook2007/BCM implementation will "look" like... here are some ery good BCM sites, and a couple articles about Outlook™ 2007 and SharePoint™

Non-Geek Resources:

Office 2007™ and BCM Online Demo: Test out the Office Apps in your browser without downloading or installing anything. http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/products/HA101687261033.aspx

Good Article about Integrating SharePoint™ and Office 2007™ (non-geek) http://blogs.msdn.com/outlook/archive/2007/09/28/sharepoint-outlook-the-perfect-link.aspx

Content Management in Office 2007™: Some examples of actual document workflow using new OF2007 features. http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/suites/HA102348991033.aspx

Pinpoint Tools: Lon Ornstein developed a BCM add-in for Realtors which used to be an ACT! application… so he has the most knowledge of migrating from ACT! to BCM. He also co-authored "Outlook™ 2007/BCM for Dummies" http://www.pinpointtools.com

"Geek" Resources for those of you with deep desire to Code

Office and SharePoint™ Pro
http://www.officesharepointpro.com/

WindowsITPro (Geek) integration series (registration required)http://www.windowsitpro.com/Articles/ArticleID/95919/95919.html

A good SharePoint™ feature/function Blog
http://blogs.devleap.com/romeopruno/archive/2006/04/12/7175.aspx

Microsoft Official SharePoint™/OF2007 blogs (Note that we are using WSS 3.0) http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/default.aspx

Business Contact Manager Blog
http://blogs.msdn.com/bcm/default.aspx

An independent SharePoint™ Developer Blog http://www.u2u.info/Blogs/Patrick/default.aspx

SharePoint™ 3.0 FAQ
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsserver/sharepoint/bb684455.aspx

More on SP3/Office Integration
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepointtechnology/results.aspx?qu=Outlook+2007&av=WSU120

Maybe the wildest piece of music I have ever heard

2007-11-29T00:56:00.001-05:00

Was listening to the public classical station in my truck (no, that is not
my usual highbrow behavior... but many people do not realize I was a music
minor in college for a while, and every once in a while I like to 'sharpen
the saw' and see if I can still recognize one composer from another).
Anyway... a Vivaldi concerto for RECORDER came on. A recorder is a crude
penny whistle-like instrument with no keys... something you'd think of a kid
playing "Mary Had a Little Lamb" and "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" on in
first grade music class, not a serious musician backed by a symphonic
orchestra.

Recorder ensembles were common during the renaissance (1450-ish) and baroque
period (1650-ish)... there are all kinds of recorder "voices" from the
Garklien/Sopranino (tiny, high-pitched) to bass and even contra-bass
recorders... and they are all pleasant enough- but the music was usually
pretty simple (relatively) - chamber music, borderline boring. Recorders
have a very limited range - about 2 octaves, so there's not much "stretch".
To be honest, I didn't realize Vivaldi had composed stuff of this complexity
for recorders. This falls into the 'you learn something new (hopefully)
every day' category

This piece of music blew me away - it featured absolute over-the-top
virtuosity. You could imagine it (barely) being played on a keyed flute or
other modern instrument by a Julliard grad...but sure as heck not on a $20
wooden recorder. Got me thinking about how proficient human beings can
become at some really niche endeavors. Someone probably spent a decade or
two of their life learning to flawlessly execute this (and others) piece of
music. There might be hope for us yet.

Check it out if you have Rhapsody or some other 'rent-a-music' service.
Just search "Vivaldi Recorder Concerto" and you'll get some results. I wish
I could give you an exact title - not sure there are any (beyond
"Allegro...Largo... etc.". If I get better info, I will definitely post
back.

Outlook 2007 as "Mission Control"

2007-11-25T16:54:00.001-05:00

Yet another post in my "Office 2007™ is Actually Damned Good" series. While I think it's becoming clear the Windows™ operating system is pretty much headed nowhere (Vista™ by all accounts has been a major yawn at best, and the next Microsoft OS is years away), the advantages of using "real" Office 2007™ over the dozen or so alternatives are also becoming clear, at least to me.

Remember when Microsoft wasn’t “Getting” the online world ? Outlook™ couldn’t wire to anything except its own Exchange server, and

It's also clear that Microsoft is putting a lot of their eggs in the Office™ basket, and particularly the ability to wire Office 2007™ to various "stuff" online. Like SharePoint™ for example. Or other non-Microsoft sites and services.

Take OL2007 (MS shorthand for Outlook™ 2007) - as you can see in the screenshot above, I have my Outlook™ 2007 inbox turned into a pretty good “Unified Inbox” – meaning I can access just about everything in one spot. Exchange mail, Yahoo Mail, eFax faxes, my uReach inbox, SharePoint™ (including calendars, online/offline document libraries, other lists such as contacts and tasks, etc.) , plus a totally non-Microsoft inbox for these blog posts.

Even with all this – I’m just scratching the surface. I could, for example, also have voice mail from our office PBX system flow into my Exchange inbox. In a sense, Outlook™ is “becoming” my “operating system” - it’s the one piece of software I use 24/7.

I also think this spells eventual doom to other third-party developers. Two examples I can think of immediately – Small-business Accounting vendors (can you say “QuickBooks”) and third-party contact managers (think ACT!). Since Microsoft is rolling both basic accounting and CRM functionality directly into MSOffice, and then exposing all those components in Outlook™, I don’t think the other guys have a chance. Even though they all attempt to “integrate” with Office, it’s still a major kludge compared to just being there in the first place. I believe most users will give up a little feature/functionality in return for the convenience of having everything in one place.