Jeff's Blog

Hi There!  My name is Jeff Welsh In 1991, I founded STAR BASE Consulting, Inc. to better meet the application development, IT outsourcing, and IT strategy needs of the Greater Southwest Ohio community.  I have been involved with IT and several other businesses since 1981.  

I will be blogging about Information Technology Consulting, IT strategy,  and IT staffing.  We cover the Greater Cincinnati and Greater Dayton Ohio areas, so I’m sure I will be talking about what is happing around Ohio IT Services along with Southeast Indiana and Northern Kentucky.   I hope you will find reading worth while and maybe even informative.

Away from the office, I am a husband and father of two sons.  I serve in a leadership capacity at Legacy Christian Church.  I enjoy classic cars and riding my motorcycle.  Don’t be surprised if some of those topics creep into my blog from time to time.

The results are in!  Techserve Alliance and Inverno released the results of the first of its kind study of IT Staffing firms, clients and candidates.  This is the first study of its kind to examine the flexible IT workforce from three distinct perspectives: clients, candidates and staffing firms. The findings, based on the responses of more than 700 survey participants, provide an in depth analysis of the state of the IT staffing industry.  The survey was conducted online between June 11, 2012 and October 4, 2012.  In the next few posts, I will be sharing some interesting points from the survey. 
 

This first point is from the candidate perspective and mirrors our own recent experience with a C# candidate.  Almost 1/3 of IT professionals found their most recent position in two weeks or less.  Most candidates, (84%) accepted a position within 3 months.  This means if you are hiring and you have a very qualified candidate presented, you have to move fast or you run the risk of losing out on the talent.
 

How do you know if the person is qualified or not?  One way is to work with a reputable IT Staffing firm.  You can find reputable firms by searching here.
 

We recently had a situation where one of our candidates was working with more than one firm.  This is not too un-common; I have touched on this subject before in this post here.  The other firm did not do a very good job of presenting this person.  They probably slapped their logo on his resume and sent it off to the client along with a number of others that “looked good”.  The candidate did not hear anything from the other firm. 

We, on the other hand, took time to understand this person and used our Now you know^TM assessment to get an un-biased gauge of his skills.  We found him to be very strong in the skills that several of our clients were looking for.  We talked with him on where we would like to present him and that’s when we learned of a potential conflict.  A quick call to the client confirmed the client was working with another firm as well and if he was submitted by them, they would get the credit.  BTW, what’s his name?

Fortunately, we are members of Techserve Alliance and industry best practices in this case call for the candidate to decide who should represent him at the client.  We have a Right to represent form that we had the candidate fill out for this client.  That way there is no conflict. 

The moral of the story is this: If you are a candidate, make sure the firms you are working with are doing a good job of representing you and know where they are sending your resume.  We recommend that you work with no more than 2 firms.  If there is a conflict, then you should decide who is doing a better job of representing you.

If you are on the hiring side, and hiring for IT, then hire an IT staffing firm, not someone that does several types of jobs.  Don’t let them sell you on how deep their database is, according to the latest Techserve Alliance operating metrics report, less that 30% of the positions are filled from their own proprietary database.  (Ours is over 50% because we are focused on IT in the Cincinnati and Dayton areas).  We all have access to the same internet resources.  If all you needed was a stack of resumes that has been poorly scrutinized, most staff augmentation firms would be fine.  But you don't have time to cull through 20 resumes to find the person with the real experience.  Isn't that what you're paying that staffing firm to do?

Obamacare  is a topic that is usually not discussed in most IT (Information Technology) departments.  Unless your business is healthcare related, why would you?   I’m sure there is going to be more discussion about it in the coming year. 

Most people know that Obamacare will be fully implemented next year.  What most do not know is that this year is the look back year.  The look back year will determine the number of employees an employer has. This number will determine what is mandated by the law.  There is a lot of discussions going on right now in the executive suite about head count, specifically how to reduce it.  I was just in a meeting this morning where the topic came up.  IT departments are not immune to the discussion.  So Mr. IT Director, what are you going to do when you have to cut X number of FTE’s? 

Fortunately, we have some solutions like Talent on Demand and CIO on Demand

Attention Cincinnati and Dayton IT professionals:  The IBM Tech Trends Report is in.  You can view a copy here.  Over 4000 IT professionals from 26 countries participated in this survey.  It should be no surprise that the top application development areas are in business analytics, cloud computing, mobile and social business. 

Specific skills needed by application developers were java, .net, xml, php and html5.  Not any real surprises here either.  Fortunately, STAR BASE is a leading Cincinnati IT consulting company and can provide IT staffing for any of those areas and skill sets.  

We recently closed a deal that was a real team effort.   What was really special about this team effort was that it included our client.  They worked with us in a completely collaborative manner (as partners should).   Our search was for an IT job that required knowledge of PHP and SQL.  In addition, the person had to be a cultural fit in our client’s organization.   We do not bombard our clients with resumes and hope something sticks. Having been in IT for over 30 years and interviewed thousands of people, we can do a pretty good job at narrowing the list down.

We found a couple of good candidates, one whom we have worked with before on a project who was a very senior person and the other was more of a junior person. The junior person was interviewed by the client first and the feed back was that we absolutely nailed the cultural fit, but there was some concern about the technical skills.  We are able to validate technical skills very quickly with our Know you KnowTM process, so we had to convince the client that their evaluation was off the mark. 

Most technical interviews are very subjective and if the candidate does not give the exact answer the technical person is looking for, they question his/her abilities.  Another common problem is where stump the programmer is played.  Our assessment was this person was proficient in the skills needed.  Since the client validated the soft skills, we just needed to demonstrate that we had given them the almost perfect candidate. 

After talking with our client, about our findings, we offered to give their senior developer (who was not convinced) an assessment.  They agreed and the results could not have come out better.  Fortunately, their senior developer scored better than our junior developer candidate, but not by much.  The results also showed that in the areas where their developer was not as strong, our candidate was very strong.  Our opinion was they would compliment each other very well.   Their senior developer said, “The test is very thorough, but at the same time it mostly avoids asking some of those “obscure” questions that don’t matter very much.  I appreciate the nice balance of questions that were asked.  I will re-review the test result information that you sent us…”

This is a new client for us and we were able to bring value to them and we all worked very well as a team in a very collaborative manner.   It’s refreshing!!

Weary Cincinnati/Dayton IT job seekers hope it’s true. Politicians declare that it should be true. Parents of young graduates with Computer Science degrees need it to be true. So is it? Are businesses beginning to backsource (bring IT services that they had offshored back to the U.S.) in significant ways? What about outsourced jobs? Are those moving back in-house?

This month, STAR BASE invites you to help us answer these outsourcing and backsourcing questions by participating in our 2011 Pulse Survey. This brief and confidential survey will go a long way in helping us all better understand the outsourcing/offshoring strategies businesses like yours are embracing today.

And, if you are motivated by swag the way I am, here’s another reason to take our survey. All participants are entered into a drawing for a Powermat wireless charging station. So take a moment, take the survey and share your backsourcing story with STAR BASE.

I attended, along with my team, some great sales and recruiting training recently.  The instructor was fantastic.  His mantra is:  Having clients’ interview more than one person is a waste of their time.  We are the IT talent hiring experts, so if they interview more, we have let them down.  This is so similar to my own philosophy; I think I may adopt it. 

Actually we have practiced that approach for years.  As a matter of fact, we have one client that doesn’t even bother to interview from us any more.  They simply give us the skill set and a date they want the person to start and we take it from there.  It’s taken us a few years to earn that trust and it has proven over and over again to save them a lot of time and effort.  

One of my fellow Techserve Alliance members sent out an article that I thought was pretty interesting.  You can view the original article here.  It reinforced the idea that local talent is important.  STAR BASE, Inc. has always focused on Cincinnati and Dayton IT talent, so I felt validated.  Some of you may think I’m crazy for talking about a Talent Battle while unemployment is still so high.  I don’t think so, because some IT talent is already hard to find.  Here are some key points from the article in winning the up coming Talent Battle.

1. Eliminate Past Biases.  Many companies don’t consider candidates who they have interviewed but declined previously. There is often a strong bias against them, as in, “We interviewed that guy in January, and he wasn’t any good …” Given that most companies don’t have highly refined selection processes; this is an error in strategy.  Most companies’ selection process is very subjective.  For companies to win, they will need to revisit local talent who they may have interviewed previously for other roles.
2. Don’t Overweight Experience and Technical Skills.  Most companies routinely overweight years of experience and technical skills through the interview process.  A question that needs to be asked is, “Is it possible for someone with five years of experience to outperform someone with ten years of experience? How is that possible?” Smart IT service providers will help their customers select on the portfolio of attributes that drive success in a job, being careful to not overweight less-predictive candidate attributes such as years of experience. Doing so will increase the candidate pool that is available locally.
3. Map your Internal Talent.  Now more than ever, developing internal talent is a smart strategy, as it also correlates to reduced attrition. So for those jobs that can be sourced internally, organizations will be well served by doing so, provided it supports the local search strategy.
4. Measure the Opportunity Cost of Key Vacancies.  Understand the business case for paying relocation. There could be a good argument for what jobs might warrant a rich pot of relocation dollars. This will put you ahead of the game.
5. Focus on the Local. Now would be a good time to look at your suppliers and choose ones that are local and focus on the local.  (I think I may know of one…)
6. Outsmart Your Competitors.  Smart companies will quickly recognize that improving the value package offered to employees to attract and keep more local talent carries far greater ROI than buying someone out of their underwater mortgage, or letting a key role in the organization sit vacant.
 7. Keep Your Best:  As always, the best local talent to attract and recruit are the strong performers who are already working for your company. But most companies have cut bonuses, reduced merit increases, and kept job promotions to a minimum in order to control costs during recent challenging economic times.

Now is a good time to think about your Talent Strategy.  Don’t get caught short in the up coming Talent Battle.

 

See Part One here.  These deadly sins are not limited to IT Consulting in Cincinnati, but everywhere.  I wish that someone would have shared the list below with me earlier in my career.  It might have saved me a few grey hairs and sleepless nights.  I have to admit, I have been guilty of a couple of these in the past, but that’s why it’s called experience.

5. Blame it on Rio.  And I am not talking about the movie, I am talking about pushing the mistake/error onto something else like, the Operating System, another consultant or worse, one of the client’s employees.  While the problem could very well be any of those things, your job as a professional consultant is to find solutions and to set an example in leadership and even diplomacy.  While you may see glaring errors or mistakes and perhaps your way would have been the better way to do something it is best to keep the criticism and commentary to yourself. (See #3 in Part One)

6. Bubble gum and baling wire.  Many times consultants are brought in to fix something.  The last thing you want to do is to take a shortcut that you aren't sure will last. Band-Aids are fine if you know you are coming back to make a more permanent fix. But eventually, those shortcuts will fail and will need further attention and the time to failure is an unknown. It could be the minute you drive away or months later. This is not the type of chance you want to take. It frustrates the client, and it makes you look bad.  You also don’t want to make the client totally dependent on you.  A client told me once that Peter (not the real name) is very talented; the problem is he is the only one that knows how it works and can manage it.

7. Showing up, Gotta Go. (AKA I gotta hangnail).  Once you’re on a gig, most clients want to see you on some sort of regular basis and some might have a “core hours” expectation.  It’s important for both the client and the consultant to know what each should expect.  I once heard a client make a comment about another consultant that went something like this: “Larry(not the real name) runs out of here all the time and uses sickleave for a hang nail!” 

Here is another list that has some similar ideas here.  I’m sure there are others.  So go forth and sin no more!
 

You have probably heard your parents or grand-parents talk about when they were younger and how they had to walk to school, up hill both ways.  When they shared this story with you it was to prepare you for times when things weren’t so easy and to provide you with their knowledge and advice from their hard earned experience. I wish that someone would have shared the list below with me earlier in my career.  It might have saved me a few grey hairs and sleepless nights.  I have to admit, I have been guilty of a couple of these in the past, but that’s why it’s called experience.

1. Bill for time not worked.  This will be the quickest way to end up out of a consulting gig. Make sure you bill the client only for the time you actually work. This can be tricky if your clients are friends. When you go to a job like this, you know there will be a period of time spent socializing, especially when you first arrive. Don't bill for this time. Start the billing period when you start working.  Sometimes clients will have celebrations during the day.  If you don’t want to appear anti-social, by not going, just don’t bill.  If there are any questions, ask the account manager to find out. If you are the account manager, ask your client manager at one of your one to one meetings if it’s ok to bill.  Some client’s have a culture where that is part of the expectation.

2. Negotiate rates and make deals with the client.  If you work for a consulting firm, you know there are channels for clients to go though to make requests..  Most firms have some sort of account manager to handle those issues.  Direct the client to the account manager.  I had one consultant that actually went so far as to look in the client’s AP system to see how much we were getting paid and then wanted to negotiate a higher rate with the client.  This particular action did not end well for the consultant and he has not been able to be considered for other assignments in this client even when his skill set was ideal.  Never, ever work out a side deal or moonlight with a client this can comprise your integrity and jeopardize the trust between  you, the consulting company and inevitably the client.

3. Act like a prima donna.  Yes, you’re good, that’s why you have been hired. I actually heard a consultant tell the client that their employees were stupid.  Hello? You are there to serve those employees.  You don’t know what kind of constraints they have had to work with.  Hind sight is always 20-20.  Its always far better to politely make suggestions. You may find out your brilliant idea was considered previously and there was a very valid reason for it not being implemented.  It’s much better to NOT have egg on your face or your foot in your mouth.

4. Miscommunicate or undercommunicate when engaged at a client I believe that the client should know what is going on with their project.  Many times I have had to be the bearer of bad news.  I also like weekly status reports to let the client know what I have worked on and what I’m planning on doing.  If at all possible I like to let them know a percent complete.  Years ago, I heard another consultant tell the client he was “unit testing”.  The client assumed that meant he had all the functionality done and was testing.  The reality was he had about 10% of the functionality done and was testing just that one small piece.  When the truth came out, it was not pretty.

Tomorrow I will finish off the last 3 sins.
To be continued……

In Part one, I introduced the idea of Test Data Management or TDM.  TDM is not something unique to IT Applications in Cincinnati, Dayton or to Ohio. It’s something that will need to be addressed nationwide.  With more and more government regulations and data privacy concerns, it will be more and more important to not only manage production data, but also test data used for quality assurance as well. 

One of the aspects of good TDM is for the obfuscation (sometimes referred to as de-identification or masking) of data values from a production database in order to make the test instances “safe”.   One of the challenges is preserving data distributions and referential integrity–even across distributed database systems.  This is particularly important in the healthcare and financial industries where PHI (Personal Health Information), social security numbers or banking information could get exposed.

Another aspect is the challenge of maintaining security around the test databases themselves.   Many companies have tight security around production data, but next to none around test and developer data.   Often this data is just a copy of production data that is not masked in any way.   According to a Ponemon Institute study, data breach incidents cost U.S. companies $202 per compromised customer record in 2008, that is compared to $197 in 2007.  With the cases studied a range of 4,200 to 113,000 records that were affected. 

Do any of you reading this have a little twinge in your stomach?  Can’t anything be easy anymore?  Maybe some RX is in order.  That was EASY!!!!
 

I had lunch today with one of our Cincinnati customers and he made the comment that his company had eliminated a lot of costs via their IT applications.  He also said there was no more low hanging fruit in their IT applications.  Everything is integrated and there are no easy changes. I laughed and said there is nothing easy any more; even my easy button quit talking!

In today’s world some IT applications have grown quite complex.  It was not that long ago an application developer that knew business could do the business analysis, the technical design, program the application, test and implement it.
Enterprise IT applications today require a team of dedicated professional working together and a good process methodology.  Many members of the team are specialized in a particular skill or a part in the development process.

One of the things that is sometimes overlooked or gets glossed over is testing and quality assurance.  I have even heard developers say “why should I test, that’s what we have users for”.   Because systems have become so integrated and complex, quality assurance is not something to be taken lightly.  As a matter of fact, it is quickly becoming a specialty in and of its self.  There are many aspects to quality assurance, but one that I think we will be seeing a lot more of in the coming months and years is the notion of Test Data Management.   To be continued……….

 

Happy New Year!!!  Welcome to a new year, new decade and a new beginning. 

As the recession recedes and recovery takes hold, IT executives are looking at their project lists and trying to decide what their priorities are.  Should we do application development in house or bring in an IT consulting company?  Should we consider an open source application?   What is the ROI?  What’s a company to do?   It doesn’t matter if your company is in Cincinnati, Dayton or Katmandu, the questions are the same.

Last month we did a pulse survey to see how IT leaders are managing ROI measurement.  The results were surprising and sparked a lot of conversation here at STAR BASE, Inc.  The thing that surprised us the most was the number of companies that did NOT look at ROI before doing a project.   Most of our respondents (58%) do not.

Some of conversations we have had revolved around the idea of doing a project or installing an application just to stay in the game.   Could you imagine a company of any size today functioning without email?  I could argue that there is negative ROI with amount of time managing my email in box takes! 

For those that measure ROI, only about half see the actual ROI align with the projected ROI most of the time.  The other half report that they see the actual ROI align with the projected ROI less than half the time and most said seldom or never.  I have often said that if management knew how much it was really going to cost to install that new ERP system before they started, they probably wouldn’t.

Since most of our respondents don’t look at ROI and of those that did, half said the ROI did not align, my question is this:  How do you decide what projects to do?  Are most companies spending money on IT because they need to “keep up with the Jones’ “?  Is it because installing that new ERP will look good on everyone’s resume?

Get your copy of our ROI Survey results by going here.

I was reading this article and as a Cincinnati based IT consulting firm owner, found it interesting.  Social networks are influencing our everyday lives more and more each day.  This research was conducted by Don Bulmer from SAP and Vanessa DiMauro  According to them, there were six key findings:

1. Professional decision-making is becoming more social - enter the era of Social Media Peer Groups (SMPG).
Professionals want to be collaborative in the decision-cycle but not be marketed or sold to online; however online marketing is a preferred activity by companies.
2. The big three have emerged as leading professional networks: LinkedIn, Facebook & Twitter.
The convergence of Internet, mobile, and social media has taken significant shape as professionals rely on anywhere access to information, relationships and networks.
3. Professional networks are emerging as decision-support tools.
Decision-makers are broadening reach to gather information especially among active users.
4. Professionals trust online information almost as much as information gotten from in-person.
Information obtained from offline networks still have highest levels of trust with slight advantage over online (offline: 92% - combined strongly/somewhat trust; online: 83% combined strongly/somewhat trust).
5. Reliance on web-based professional networks and online communities has increased significantly over the past 3 years.
Three quarters of respondents rely on professional networks to support business decisions
6. Social Media use patterns are not pre-determined by age or organizational affiliation.
Younger (20-35) and older professionals (55+) are more active users of social tools than middle aged professionals.
There are more people collaborating outside their company wall than within their organizational intranet.

After reading this, a Bad Company tune came to mind, “Run with the Pack”.  There is certainly safety in numbers.  My question is this:  If everyone is doing the same thing, are they giving up any competitive advantages?

 

I am part of the LinkedIn community and a member of several groups in LinkedIn.  One of the groups I am a member of is the IBM i Professionals group.  I get a weekly summary of activity and sometimes there are comments on the posts that people have made.  Usually there are no more than 3-5 comments.  What caught my attention is a LinkedIn post that had 23 comments.   The original post referenced this blog post:  http://blog.angustheitchap.com/?p=159  In this post, the author talks about the iSeries application development community needing to pull together to DO something about the lack of support for the platform.  He asks the question: What have YOU done for the IBM i platform this week?

As a former iSeries application developer, I thought it was a good question, perhaps about 10 years too late, but a good question none the less.  Let me state for the record that the iSeries is a great platform and it is without a doubt the best box for business that IBM has. 

The problem is that it is a victim of its own success.  There is no other platform where an application written in the 1980’s could still run un-touched even though the underlying hardware has changed numerous times.  To me the core issue is this: IBM is no longer in the hardware business; meaning they don’t derive that much revenue from hardware anymore.  The majority of IBM’s revenue comes from services.  The iSeries does not need or generate the services revenue that other platforms do.  So in my opinion, it’s an economic issue and no amount of doing or community is going to change that.

In part one; I talked about some of the IT Strategies and business strategies that were discussed at the Techserve Alliance conference we recently attended.  I’ll admit I’m a sucker for quaint sayings and one of the speakers had a good one:  It’s time to take the Basset hound to the farm.  So what does that have to do with IT Strategy or business?

Plenty, takin’ the basset hound to the farm means it’s time to re-think what you are doing, why you are doing it, and who is doing it.  It’s time to eliminate products, services, processes or people that are not delivering value to the business.  This is not just an IT strategy, but an important business strategy as well.  It is critically important to make sure both business and IT are aligned. 

The trick is to figure out what your basset hound(s) are.  Every business that has been around for any length of time has one or more of these.  It may be a line of products that are kept in stock because it “rounds out the product line”, when the reality is the items are not that important.   It could be a service that our “customers really want”, but in reality  the service does not deliver value or it could be that “special process” that you do “because we have always done it that way”.  Then there is Bob.  Everybody likes Bob. Bob has been around forever and knows everything.  The problem is Bob doesn’t really do anything.

It’s always better to take the basset hound to the farm on your own terms rather than be forced into it by circumstances.  Take for example the company in New England that manufactured parts for submarines.  When the ship yard closed a few years ago, they were forced to change.  They redeployed their manufacturing expertise and now make parts for the medical industry.  What could they have accomplished if they had manufactured both parts for submarines and medical devices?  Could the business have been double the size?

That’s where an outside consultant can help.  They can be objective and bring an outside perspective to your current business and IT strategy.  STAR BASE is in a good position to teach old dogs new tricks”.  (Who let the dogs out? Who? Who?!)

Seems like it has been a while since I have had a chance to do a post.  For the last 3 weeks things have been absolutely crazy in our IT consulting world, but in a good way.  We had a chance to go to the Techserve Alliance national conference in Las Vegas.  I have heard all the jokes, including the one about it staying in Vegas.   We did learn that just because you are pre-checked with the airline, does not mean that your bags are.   We got our bags checked with literally a minute to spare and fortunately all made it back to Cincinnati.

Upon return, we signed a support contract for a new customer.  They trust us enough to outsource their entire IT applications support to us.  We have a real life example of an IT Strategy that was discussed at the conference (See #3).  Not only was IT strategy discussed but business strategy as well.  Here are some highlights:

1. Market Differentiation - customers have lots of choices, how will you stand out?

2. Improve Systems and methodology for delivering service- excellence, efficiency, depth of service.

3. Outsource what you can-eliminate the busy work that does not add strategic value.

4. Deal with the economy being slow to recover till 2012, spend your money wisely, hire wisely, fire quickly, and refine what is working, stop what is not.           

5. Build Alliances with like minded providers in different industries and sell collaboratively to serve the customers' need.

My favorite of these five is number four.  Said another way, its takin’ the basset hound to the farm.  I’ll expand more on that in my next post.

Its good to see Cincinnati and Dayton area companies starting to embrace open source as an alternative to custom application development.  As an IT Strategy consultant, I can say there is a place for both.

STAR BASE, Inc. just landed another Magento project.  I have written about Magento before and this post has links to several others.   These are not your father’s shareware packages. The packages we are working with are what I’m calling Commercial Open Source. 

I’m curious, why have you or your company not implemented an open source option?  Is it because the light at the end of the tunnel looks more like a train?  Maybe we’re just ahead of the curve again and I need a little bit of Patience.

 

Come on, come on, come on, come on now Touch me, babe!  Can't you see that I am not afraid? ....... Yea, I have been listening to The Doors again.  See the complete lyrics here.  Actually we are trying to decide how, when and what to do marketing wise or as we say internally, how many times to “touch” the client.  Even a Cincinnati based Information Technology Firm is not immune to the FUD Factor.  What’s an IT Consulting Service firm to do?

One of the things that has stuck with me from my marketing class at MIT  is when the professor said that the quickest way to burn through a million dollars and have nothing to show for it, was to start marketing and advertising. We certainly need to be marketing, but if companies’ are not in a position to buy, are the marketing dollars wasted? 

Having been around for 19 years, this is the 3rd economic downturn we have experienced.  We have come out of each one a little wiser and a little stronger.  We have been positioning to leap frog our competitors during this one.  We have seen an up tick in activity, just like everyone else.  This is the 64 dollar question:  Is now the time to spend the marketing dollars?

Since today I have more questions than answers, I invite you to leave comments on How?, When?, How often?  What means?  You would like to be marketed to.  Comments will be posted following this blog, so contribute and check back to see what others think.