OT: ERP PR done right

[Walter Vaughan <wv...@steelerubber.com>]

Over the past year I have read about the lack of PR around ofBiz, and getting 
pointy haired bosses to accept something as wild as ofBiz as "best of breed" 
rather than "well this is cheaper, so lets do this".

Today in my mail with about 5 or 6 magazines, was a copy of a magazine called 
"businessminds"... "Smart Ideas to help run your business".

This thing is a true work of art.

The cover had a glued on outside front page with an engaging picture of a cute 
20-30 something woman on her way to her corner office, and the bottom half had a 
offer to win a free Dell laptop. The real cover has a pair of conductor hands 
with a lead article entitled "On Being a LEADER", and other teasers as if it was 
just magazine like Baseline, CIO...

Inside front cover is a two page spread from GM leasing. Page 5 has ad for a 
Chevy Pickkup, page 7 has ad from CDW and McAfee, page 9 has PitneyBowes selling 
a small business meter with a 60 day free trial and $50 postage, oddly on page 
13 PitneyBowes thinks that I should buy my toner cartridges from them. Packet8 
had a two page spread on page 18 and 19 on their hosted VOIP solution, and 
PitneyBowes had two more ads later on. I mention all of these ads because it 
added incredibly to the experience I had as I was reading the articles.

Page 38 and 38 had a section on gadgets called "Rightstuff" with a larger than 
life picture of the cool toy of 2007 the AppleiPhone, and other cool stuff. To 
even throw me off the scent even more page 40 and 41 is a two page ad for 
FileMaker Pro 8.5.

They even had a marketplace section in the back with the 1/4 page ad for one of 
those endless lap pools, and the inside back cover has an ad for the United 
States Post Office package delivery, and the outside back cover is Dell hawking 
laptops.

I read several of the articles, and they were extremely well written and very 
valuable to someone like me. What bothered me is this magazine seemed too 
perfect. Kind of like some sort of Stepford Wife magazine, so I dug a little 
deeper, or rather looked harder at the cover and publisher's page.

Sage Software. Hum. Home of Mas500 ERP, Mas90&200 ERP, who knows how many other 
commercial ERP's that they own today. They sent this to me.

My point is that this was executed to perfection. It cost a Gazillion $USD, but 
it was done perfectly. I don't know if they embedded some sort of pheromone to 
make me like Sage better, or if they did something with hidden images, but after 
I got done reading it, I thought, "Hum those people at Sage must know something 
about business to come up with a magazine like this."

There was only one advertisement for Sage, and it was an ad that ran across the 
bottom of two pages, had a cute woman in the middle of one of those 360 degree 
photographs who was "Mangaging everything from payroll to paper cuts. That's 
Sage 360."

I wonder if that's going to be a stumbling block for future acceptance of open 
source based ERP installations, or is it an opportunity if we move soon. Maybe 
it's not the pointy haired boss, but rather how to we reach out to the "pony 
tailed boss?" Women really don't think like men. They view relationships 
differently than men. They look at visual items in the perspective of seeing 
themselves, vs. men looking at visual items as somthing of attainment.

How do we reach out to women? That might be how this project remains effective 
and thriving in the next decade.

--
Walter

Re: OT: ERP PR done right

[Jacques Le Roux <ja...@les7arts.com>]

David,

Interesting.

The most spectacular failures in the project so far have been the
speculative ones that didn't end up meeting a client need (of course
the whole project was somewhat speculative initially). Some of these
things may eventually see a growth in attention, but for now the
Entity Code Generator is definitely dead code and the OFBiz Workflow
Engine is mostly dead, and of course hundreds of thousands of lines
of other code has been thrown away, usually because of replacement,
but sometimes because it never met the intended need.

What was the Entity Code Generator  exactly ?

Thanks

Jacques (sorry my email client did not put any ">" in front of your
message, maybe because it was signed ?)

-David

Re: OT: ERP PR done right

[Shi Jinghai <sh...@langhua.cn>]

> Entity Code Generator is definitely dead code and the OFBiz Workflow  
> Engine is mostly dead, and of course hundreds of thousands of lines  

I guess this is because BUSINESS is more on rulers rather than workflow processes.

Admire OFBiz's service structure, it's quite happy to dance on it.

Shi Jinghai/Beijing Langhua Ltd.

Re: OT: ERP PR done right

["David E. Jones" <jo...@hotwaxmedia.com>]

On Mar 20, 2007, at 2:16 AM, Ian McNulty wrote:

> For the full Goldman story see http://www.davidgoldman-sage.com/ 
> Entrepenuer_Resume.htm
>
> And the moral of the tale (apart from the perils of not listening  
> to your father's advice?
>
> Well, a couple of quotes from the Goldman story stand out:
>
>>
>>     Even in these early days he was driven by customer needs. “The
>>     Customer is King” was the title of a large and colourful  
>> poster of
>>     a Lion behind his desk.
>>
>
>> From the outset the emphasis of the company was on marketing -  
>> being driven by the needs of the customer rather than the  
>> technology. In fact David said, “Sage is a marketing company that  
>> happens to sell software.” Branding was everything to the  
>> fledgling company, and everything was done in order to create and  
>> then strengthen the Sage brand. This approach allowed Sagesoft, as  
>> it was by this stage, to achieve market dominance, overtaking  
>> their competitors, all of whom already had products selling in the  
>> market place.
>>
>
> Put that in your pipe and smoke it, as my Dad used to say :)

This is an interesting point of view. As I read this what struck me  
was that OFBiz may not be a "marketing company", but being a user- 
driven open source project everything that goes into the project and  
survives over time is very much need based. These days I'd say around  
90% of the effort that goes into OFBiz is for a specific user need,  
and the remaining 10% indirectly meets a user need.

The most spectacular failures in the project so far have been the  
speculative ones that didn't end up meeting a client need (of course  
the whole project was somewhat speculative initially). Some of these  
things may eventually see a growth in attention, but for now the  
Entity Code Generator is definitely dead code and the OFBiz Workflow  
Engine is mostly dead, and of course hundreds of thousands of lines  
of other code has been thrown away, usually because of replacement,  
but sometimes because it never met the intended need.

-David

Re: OT: ERP PR done right

[Ian McNulty <ia...@mcnultymedia.co.uk>]

Walter,

I found your post really interesting. More so because I come from the 
same place as Sage - Newcastle upon Tyne, UK. I had no idea they were 
making such an impact in North Carolina. Thanks for taking the trouble 
to let us know.

I don't know about the differences between men and women, but I do know 
quite a lot about how Sage was founded and how it developed.

I think I've already mentioned some of this in a previous post, but it 
might be worth going into a little more depth here.

My Dad sold printing machines. One of his customers was a small printing 
company in Newcastle called Campbell Graphics, run by a guy called David 
Goldman. Throughout the early eighties, Dad passed on a string of tales 
about how Goldman had hired this student from Newcastle University who 
was develop an accounting package for the new microcomputers in his 
spare time. I had been working mainframes so thought microcomputers were 
nothing more than toys and developing software for them nothing more 
than a joke. My Dad didn't agree. But he was just a common-or-garden 
printer who had left school at 15. What did he know? Well, as it turned 
out, quite a lot more than me actually. How many times have I kicked 
myself since for not listening to him?

For the first couple of years I was proved right. They sold less than a 
hundred! But the tipping point turned out to be the launch of the 
Amstrad PCW. I thought that was an even bigger joke. Whilst Intel are 
releasing the 80286 and Microsoft are releasing DOS, Amstrad launches 
machines running obsolete 8-bit Z80s running CP/M? Do me a favour! But 
Goldman didn't think so. He adapted Sage to run on CP/M and watched 
sales leap to 300 month!

For the full Goldman story see 
http://www.davidgoldman-sage.com/Entrepenuer_Resume.htm

And the moral of the tale (apart from the perils of not listening to 
your father's advice?

Well, a couple of quotes from the Goldman story stand out:

>
>     Even in these early days he was driven by customer needs. “The
>     Customer is King” was the title of a large and colourful poster of
>     a Lion behind his desk.
>

> From the outset the emphasis of the company was on marketing - being 
> driven by the needs of the customer rather than the technology. In 
> fact David said, “Sage is a marketing company that happens to sell 
> software.” Branding was everything to the fledgling company, and 
> everything was done in order to create and then strengthen the Sage 
> brand. This approach allowed Sagesoft, as it was by this stage, to 
> achieve market dominance, overtaking their competitors, all of whom 
> already had products selling in the market place.
>

Put that in your pipe and smoke it, as my Dad used to say :)

Ian




Walter Vaughan wrote:
> Over the past year I have read about the lack of PR around ofBiz, and 
> getting pointy haired bosses to accept something as wild as ofBiz as 
> "best of breed" rather than "well this is cheaper, so lets do this".
>
> Today in my mail with about 5 or 6 magazines, was a copy of a magazine 
> called "businessminds"... "Smart Ideas to help run your business".
>
> This thing is a true work of art.
>
> The cover had a glued on outside front page with an engaging picture 
> of a cute 20-30 something woman on her way to her corner office, and 
> the bottom half had a offer to win a free Dell laptop. The real cover 
> has a pair of conductor hands with a lead article entitled "On Being a 
> LEADER", and other teasers as if it was just magazine like Baseline, 
> CIO...
>
> Inside front cover is a two page spread from GM leasing. Page 5 has ad 
> for a Chevy Pickkup, page 7 has ad from CDW and McAfee, page 9 has 
> PitneyBowes selling a small business meter with a 60 day free trial 
> and $50 postage, oddly on page 13 PitneyBowes thinks that I should buy 
> my toner cartridges from them. Packet8 had a two page spread on page 
> 18 and 19 on their hosted VOIP solution, and PitneyBowes had two more 
> ads later on. I mention all of these ads because it added incredibly 
> to the experience I had as I was reading the articles.
>
> Page 38 and 38 had a section on gadgets called "Rightstuff" with a 
> larger than life picture of the cool toy of 2007 the AppleiPhone, and 
> other cool stuff. To even throw me off the scent even more page 40 and 
> 41 is a two page ad for FileMaker Pro 8.5.
>
> They even had a marketplace section in the back with the 1/4 page ad 
> for one of those endless lap pools, and the inside back cover has an 
> ad for the United States Post Office package delivery, and the outside 
> back cover is Dell hawking laptops.
>
> I read several of the articles, and they were extremely well written 
> and very valuable to someone like me. What bothered me is this 
> magazine seemed too perfect. Kind of like some sort of Stepford Wife 
> magazine, so I dug a little deeper, or rather looked harder at the 
> cover and publisher's page.
>
> Sage Software. Hum. Home of Mas500 ERP, Mas90&200 ERP, who knows how 
> many other commercial ERP's that they own today. They sent this to me.
>
> My point is that this was executed to perfection. It cost a Gazillion 
> $USD, but it was done perfectly. I don't know if they embedded some 
> sort of pheromone to make me like Sage better, or if they did 
> something with hidden images, but after I got done reading it, I 
> thought, "Hum those people at Sage must know something about business 
> to come up with a magazine like this."
>
> There was only one advertisement for Sage, and it was an ad that ran 
> across the bottom of two pages, had a cute woman in the middle of one 
> of those 360 degree photographs who was "Mangaging everything from 
> payroll to paper cuts. That's Sage 360."
>
> I wonder if that's going to be a stumbling block for future acceptance 
> of open source based ERP installations, or is it an opportunity if we 
> move soon. Maybe it's not the pointy haired boss, but rather how to we 
> reach out to the "pony tailed boss?" Women really don't think like 
> men. They view relationships differently than men. They look at visual 
> items in the perspective of seeing themselves, vs. men looking at 
> visual items as somthing of attainment.
>
> How do we reach out to women? That might be how this project remains 
> effective and thriving in the next decade.
>
> -- 
> Walter
>
>