{"id":11982,"date":"2009-02-06T15:00:38","date_gmt":"2009-02-06T14:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/192.220.58.236\/blog\/?p=135"},"modified":"2009-02-06T15:00:38","modified_gmt":"2009-02-06T14:00:38","slug":"good_advice_for_bad_times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/2009\/02\/good_advice_for_bad_times.html","title":{"rendered":"Good Advice for Bad Times?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"duck but keep swimming\" style=\"border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px; display: inline; border-left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px\" height=\"462\" alt=\"duck but keep swimming\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/WindowsLiveWriter\/GoodAdviceforBadTimes_8DCB\/duck%20but%20keep%20swimming_31467c74-ad3a-4a8d-a373-e51bcf7d2774.jpg?resize=480%2C462&#038;ssl=1\" width=\"480\" border=\"0\" \/> <\/p>\n<p>Following the lead of <a href=\"http:\/\/marklogic.blogspot.com\/2009\/02\/hard-times-strategies-for-publishers.html\" target=\"_blank\">Dave Kellogg<\/a> (i.e. shamelessly copying), here&#8217;s a link to an excellent article on &quot;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.greenhousegrows.com\/publications\/01-2009\/article1.html\" target=\"_blank\">Counter-Intuitive Tactics for Bad Times<\/a>&quot;. <\/p>\n<p>The article is for high-tech industries looking to weather the crisis. I&#8217;ve copied Dave&#8217;s paraphrasing below, swapping his comments with mine, related to SAP BusinessObjects:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Invest in product development, not sales. (BI is a big investment focus of SAP. We&#8217;re integrating BI across the suite, and with the rest of the SAP technology, and innovating with the <a href=\"http:\/\/labs.businessobjects.com\" target=\"_blank\">BusinessObjects labs<\/a>.) <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Turn salespeople into consultants. (SAP sales and consulting teams have deep industry expertise, and we&#8217;re training them how to get the best out of the new analytics on offer.) <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Put your customer first. (There is increasing focus on making BI easier to by integrating it into <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.amrresearch.com\/enterprisesoftware\/2008\/11\/sap-adds-more-bite-size-applications.html\" target=\"_blank\">industry and role-specific solutions<\/a>) <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Build value through relationships as well as products. (I believe that SAP has the strongest relationships with its customers in the industry &#8212; and you don&#8217;t get that overnight) <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Look for evergreen and counter-cyclical sectors. (As explained in a <a href=\"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/2009\/01\/why_will_2009_be_a_great_year.html\" target=\"_blank\">previous post<\/a>, analysts consider BI a &quot;recession proof technology&quot;:) <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Cut costs with a scalpel, not a hatchet. (And that takes business intelligence. I like the phrase &quot;measure twice, cut once&quot; &#8212; cutting costs it&#8217;s too important to get wrong the first time, you don&#8217;t get a do-over. And I like Dave&#8217;s comment: &quot;My first reaction to an across-the-board cut is that management either couldn&#8217;t or didn&#8217;t take the time to figure out a more strategic way to do its job&quot;.) <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Be ready for <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Black_Swan\">black swans<\/a>. (by definition, BI probably can&#8217;t help you spot a black swan, but it may be essential to help you deal with the effects.) <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>______________________________________<\/p>\n<p>Photo credit: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/mikebaird\/393737660\/\" target=\"_blank\">mikebaird<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Bad times are ahead for everybody, hi-tech companies included. What should they do about it?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6210,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[160,204],"class_list":["post-11982","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-bi","tag-business-intelligence"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/duck-but-keep-swimming_31467c74-ad3a-4a8d-a373-e51bcf7d2774-1.jpg?fit=480%2C462&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3X9RF-37g","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11982","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11982"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11982\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}