By Tom
Adelstein of Bynari,
Inc.
[ The opinions expressed by authors on Linux Today
are their own. They speak only for themselves and not for Linux
Today. ]
On the ground of intersecting highways, join hands with your
allies – Sun Tzu
Main Entry: syn·er·gism
Pronunciation: ‘si-n&r-“ji-z&m
Function: noun
Etymology: New Latin synergismus, from Greek synergos
Date: 1910
: interaction of discrete agencies (as industrial firms), agents
(as drugs), or conditions such that the total effect is greater
than the sum of the individual effects
Consultancies thrive on alliances. The
best consultancies provide teams of professionals to manage their
alliances and make them work. Where would companies like SAP be
without their alliances?
Some of us can define the theory behind business alliances
mathematically as Einstein did with physics. For example, the axiom
of an alliance steps out of a Newtonian world into one where simple
math fails. When, one plus one equals three. This notion involves
entities instead of things. In this context three entities exist in
an alliance which includes you and your partner and then a third
entity called us or we.
Sun Micro Systems has a high quality alliance management group.
I discovered how they worked on an assignment with one of the
global consultancies. At that time, our team needed a Sun Ultra
Sparc server for a project. Coincidentally, the Dallas office of
Sun Micro Systems shared a floor in our building with us. Not
knowing better, I wandered into the waiting room and began asking
for a sales person. Within a few minutes I had an 800 telephone
number and person to call. That group lived in the Boston area.
Once I contacted the gentleman assigned to our Company, I
discovered an incredible resource. Call him Jason for now. He made
miracles occur.
First, he got me a special development computer under very
favorable terms. He then demonstrated more knowledge of our company
than anyone I could find in our own management. He knew the names
of people already working on projects such as mine. He knew who in
the Company excelled and who failed in almost every initiative. He
gave me names and telephone numbers of people to call within my own
Company as resources to further our project. I couldn’t get that
kind of information from anyone in our own Company.
Jason saved the best for last. Within fifteen minutes he knew my
strengths and weaknesses. One of the strengths he discovered
included my experience in retail and e-commerce. While on the first
call, Jason conferenced me into a product manager in Menlo Park
looking for a global consulting firm to act as an integrator for a
new product Sun launched.
I went to Menlo Park, met the gentleman, his boss and the Vice
President of the division. A week later, I provided them with a
written plan and they accepted the proposal and appointed us as
their first global integrator. Next, they introduced us to their
third party software vendor and arranged for us to begin a project
with one of their “high visibility” customers. Without question
Jason arranged one of the biggest wins our Company had that
year.
Alliances Within the Linux Community
One criticism I have of the Linux business community revolves
around how they manage their alliances or how they ignore them. I
would name this song the “valley of lost opportunity”. Linux
businesses need to take a lesson from Oracle, Microsoft and SAP.
Another lesson they might take would come from the Linux
development community on how to create a miracle by working
together.
Like a poorly run company, the Linux business community takes
the worker for granted. In poorly run companies you will find
leadership exists on the factory floor not in management. The
informal communication network or the grapevine manages the
dissemination of information while management rides on the back of
the worker.
The major distributions want to build channels. I consider this
a sign of inexperience and the lack of business acumen. The
predominate attitude displayed by them is something like “you know
me so you owe me”. The other attitude revolves around the notion
that they already have all the answers and time is all that they
need to succeed.
Outside of the Linux business community we can see the mistakes
and successes others have made. They serve as guides. Someone said
that he who does not learn from history is destined to repeat
it.
Take Compaq’s strategy as a good example of a bad notion.
Management of Compaq built a sales channel through distributors and
so called partners. They practically invented the notion of “the
server” in the Wintel world. The sales channel represents something
they use to sell product.
Compaq’s latest moves allow us to see their dominate response
patterns and their value system. Eaten up with envy, Compaq tries
to copy Dell and Gateway. They want to sell their computers direct.
Compaq doesn’t operate like Gateway or Dell and if they ever catch
on they have too much bulk to maneuver.
Gateway considers its customers as strategic partners. They make
money and continue to grow because they embrace their customer as a
part of the whole. At Gateway, they only exist for the customer.
They know it, talk it and walk it. Management maintains a strategic
alliance with their workers, also. That strategic alliance empowers
their value system to permeate the company and seep out to the
customer. Call this management by inclusion. Also, you might notice
that Gateway offers lifetime support to their customers.
You can not imitate sincerity. People whose only motivation
involves money believe that the only way to succeed is to use money
as the temptress. If we make it cheap enough “they will come” is
the mantra of such people. Such a mantra will bring the worst
customers a company could want. They can have the business they
pursue. Let them all haggle over pennies.
The Test of Linux in Business
Success will reveal the pretenders. Many companies have gone
public, raised ten of millions of dollars and failed. Such
organizations are clichés.
Other companies have refused the popular strategy of Wall Street
and demonstrated success anyway. Afterward, they offered to share
their success with the financial community by becoming a public
company. We will see.
What This Means for the Linux
Consultant
The Linux consultant has a tight rope in front of him or her. I
want the kind of alliance Sun Micro System offers but I want it in
a Linux company. Don’t you?
I want to feel like a part of the whole like a hologram. When
holograms shatter, you can still see the whole image in the broken
parts. People who observed this have said that the whole is in the
parts of the parts make up the whole.
In the event we don’t have such a company in the Linux business
community, the next best thing is networking. We already network
but in a loose manner. We don’t see much networking within the
consulting area.
The components for successful networking include a central
information center, a base of human resources spread out in a
geographical area and a fair sharing arrangement. When those
components exist then the channel becomes the network and vice
versa.
Daisytek represents a good example of this rationale. Daisytek
sells computer supplies such as paper, ink cartridges, tape, and so
on. Daisytek began its life by making those little spinning wheels
for typewriters and printers. You may not recall this, but we used
to print on machines that had plastic impact wheels. If you wanted
to change a type font, you changed wheels.
Today, Daisytek sells computer supplies through its alliances.
Someone realized that the majority of their business came from
independent dealers. So, they set up a program to manage their
distributors web sites, drop ship product from their own facility
and handle returns and allowances. I’ve heard that a high majority
of their business comes from electronic commerce. They don’t
compete with their distributors (like Compaq), they serve their
distributors.
Next Steps and the Guerilla
In the absense of good leadership in the Linux business community,
we can adopt some guerilla business tactics. Like someone at IBM
said, “if they won’t give it to us, we can do like the Linux guys
and do it ourselves.”
If you take all of the individual Linux consultants making a
living by working with a few clients and add them together, you
have a huge consulting practice. I recommend forming alliances with
Linux businesses and with yourselves. Organize the same way the
development community has.
The formula we use for doing business on the Web involves four
factors. A Web site must have content. That content will create a
community of interest. A community of interest creates branding.
Branding allows for the existence of commerce. When you form an
alliance, set up a web site, fill it with content, promote
yourselves and let people know how to easily contact you. In short,
create an identity.
Organize on diverse geographical but socially compatible terms.
Having a Chinese firm in your network may not allow a Florida based
consulting firm to share business opportunities. Then again,
depending on the opportunities, it might.
Establish business processes that work. Learn how to open a
“ticket”, account for your time, and “close out” the ticket.
Provide a convenient means to record time and expenses and bill
it.
Follow up every engagement and make sure the customer got what
they wanted. Make sure the alliance partner had a win. Build a
database of solutions for everyone to share. One may not be very
good at firewalls but someone else did one and you can easily
follow his notes and duplicate the result.
Alliances provide synergism. Be on the constant look out for
people with whom to partner. Do it because it serves others as well
as ourselves. The money will follow if you put your value system
first and practice it.
This article is the seventh in a series on Consultative Sales
and Marketing. Linux Today has published the earlier articles and
they reside in the site’s archives. You can find them by using the
search feature of the Linux Today web site.
Tom
Adelstein, CPA, is the CIO/CFO of Bynari, Inc. He’s the author of several
books and articles on business and technology and has management,
consulting and hands-on experience in the Information Technology
field.