This week marks a huge milestone for CustomWare. We're opening our new facility in Malaysia.

After launching in Malaysia in 2005, we moved into new premises on the 15th of September, 2006 and held our official launch ceremony. It was a great day, one where we paused and celebrated. Our team then was still small, maybe 5-6 over. We've now grown that to over 40.

It has taken us some time, but we've done it. Step by step, organically and fueled by our values.

I just landed in Malaysia and toured our new facility - it's three times the size, but has not lost the youthful energy and drive that we've had from the start.

Like we said in 2006 - "Together we work, Together we grow" - we did just that, and will continue to do so.

Thankyou to all those: past, present and future that have contributed to our success.

Over the last decade, and specifically the last 5 years has seen an explosion in social technologies. The impact of social technologies has been interesting to watch. I remember in 2003 when playing around with a beta of Confluence and realizing the potential that our small company could gain by having an intranet be a two-way street, that everyone could contribute. More importantly, we could start to capture Tacit Knowledge

Tacit Knowledge (from wikipedia)

"...people are not often aware of the knowledge they possess or how it can be valuable to others."

It was liberating as leader to use such a technology - instead of dealing with team members asking you questions and correcting forms or emails/procedures that we were working, they could contribute - cut out a roadblock in the system (usually me!) and move on.

Back then we also started blogging internally which also had a great impact on the efficincy of the business.

The adoption pattern that kept emerging was that we would jump into the new technology, the more open-minded team would embrace it, even if they didn't know exactly what the end solution would end up being - the closed-minded crowd would always doubt- "why would we want to do that?"

We went through the same cycle for blogging, for LinkedIn, for YouTube, for Flickr, for Facebook, for Twitter and emerging platforms such as Get Satisfaction and location services such as fourqquare. What is wierd is that even just listing these services out now, it seems so obvious that any person/business in our industry (and those industries that have knowledge workers) would be using them. Each goes through the 'cyncical cycle' of "why would I use that??" through to "haven't you got one?!"

Human API's

When looking at all of these services, I see them all as Human API's - in that they give information about the consumer, the person about who they are, what they enjoy doing, when, where and with what products & services. Connecting all of these sources of information together, and allowing smart organizations to utilize this knowledge to provide superior service is what the Social CRM wave is about - utilising the API to the person, the Human API.

Esteban Colsky posted a great article today on the Vendor roadmap to Scoail CRM (part 1)

Finally, the missing piece-de-resistance — the cherry on top of the sundae of sorts. The integration layer. Yeah, no more silos, no more standalone solutions, no more — well, whatever you want to call it. Social CRM must be integrated.

...

we need connectors, API calls, or whatchamacallits to do the job.

At CustomWare that is exactly what we do - we focus on integration and collaboration, connecting the lines between the systems and people (both internally within companies and externally in the community) - it is truly exciting times. Those organizations that will succeed will be the ones that use the data, the knowledge about their community and customers in unique and inspiring ways to enhance their brands.

Reminder - Atlassian Summit

Don't forget that we'll be at the Atlassian Summit next week in San Francisco - It has sold out (over 500 people!) - considering that Apple's WWDC is also on next week too, that is an amazing achievement and an eventful time ahead.

In 2003, CustomWare began working with Atlassian. At that stage, we were both small aussie startups - they focused on products, we focused on services. We both had tiny offices, and I remember visiting them every couple of weeks.

Seven or so years later and when the opportunity came up to be platinum sponsor of the Atlassian Summit, we didn't think twice. 2010 is a break through year for CustomWare. We launched in the USA in 2009 and I've now moved over here with my wife and kids to move things ahead.

Over the coming months, you'll see some big changes and improvements at CustomWare as we continue our growth across the USA, Europe and of course our home region in Asia Pacific.

Last year was a tough one for many businesses, and our resolve to rebuild our internal systems from the ground up and push into new markets will lay a great foundation for a prosperous 2010. Good luck!

It sometimes seems wierd posting about wiki's and Enterprise 2.0 as for our team it has been a natural way to work since the early days of our company. Right after accounting systems, issue tracking and source control, the wiki was one of our first major systems in our company and truly the first system that touched every team member and partner that we worked with - it crossed boundaries.

At that stage, it was interesting employing staff and team members that had never used a wiki before - it was certainly interesting watching those familiar with older more rigid and closed systems learn how to adapt to being open and transparent. Back then, it was us that was different.

Nowadays things have changed, and over time not being open, collaborative and transparent is seen as different. I remember being an early subscriber of using LinkedIn and being told that it was a silly idea - fast forward back to today and it is common practice to use LinkedIn not only to recruit, but also check references of a future possible employee. A phrase from speaking to a colleague in London who was hiring a few months back comes to mind - "If the candidate is not on LinkedIn, you really have to ask yourself, why not? Are they not connected, or is there something they don't want everyone to know". The truth is that you can't assume just because someone is private that they are bad - but you have to accept that the perception will change over time.

Enterprises now need to accept that Enterprise 2.0 is here and mainstream. Here's a nice video just released by Robert Mahowald, Research Director, IDC titled "IDC Video Podcast:: It's Time to Get Serious About Enterprise 2.0". Granted, it is not the most exciting video to watch, but has some great points and a prediction that within 5 years social collaboration tools will be an inseperable part of the enterprise collaboration environment.

Integration and Collaboration - the two ingredients that enable an organisation to increase business velocity.

In a refreshing change of news, Mike, Scott and the team at Atlassian have observed, planned and delivered to the market a unique offering.

For 5 days, you can buy a Atlassian software (Confluence and JIRA) 5 user licenses for only $5 http://www.atlassian.com/starter/. The proceeds of which, go to Room to Read
(http://www.roomtoread.org/), a charity aimed at assisting rural children around the world to read. The target is to hit 25k worth of sales, I think they will blitz this.

Not only is this a refreshing change for corporate social responsibility, and a nice warm feeling of giving to charity. It is also a leg up to those startup companies that can now afford to use best-in-class software.

This move will no doubt bring attention to Atlassian in the short term, but I think the benefits will be in the long term, as these small startup companies grow into larger ones - no doubt there will be some loyalty carry through.

Hat's off to the Atlassian team, and a challenge issued to the rest of the enterprise software community. Today Oracle bought Sun, but Atlassian also made a mark in their own unique way.

Great to be spending some time in the Bay Area again, I can now see a real hunger and buzz for Enterprise 2.0 - it is exciting to see the analysts and everyone really pushing the case, there is a real need and hunger for change - and my gut feel is that this "revolution" will be one of the biggest engines to push the world through (and out of) the current global recession.

The big thought in my mind at the moment is brushing through the hype and looking at what it really means for an organisation. Installing a wiki, starting a blog and getting social isn't going to happen over night. Just like business partnerships and even social relationships - these build over time and need to filter through an organisation. A good read from Bertrand Duperrin on how long adoption may take is at his blog.

Being an entrepreneur and running my company on a wiki since 2003 across 4 countries - we have been through many challenges attempting to instill a culture of transparency and openness. In such an environment, where I am CEO and have the leadership and influential role, it can still be extremely challenging to make this happen - the same issues apply as in Bertrands post but there are also many walls, challenges and roadblocks that will appear after the initial novelty wears off, and it comes to quarterly bonus KPI time. We also have a relatively young demographic, which should also remove some barriers for adoption - but it is still challenging! I can imagine what the government folks are going to have to go through to get someone who has been working for many decades in the same job to now work differently. Not my cup of tea.

Bottom line is that Enterprise 2.0 technologies are just a form of communication, they by themselves do not transform a business and increase the velocity of a business. A leader blogging, or using a wiki because they "have to" or because it is fashionable will not blog with their heart and soul. None of us can follow a leader that doesn't lead with vision, heart and passion.

There are many roadblocks that get in the way of business velocity - some of them are technical systems integration problems (right data in the right place at the right time), some of them are collaborative roadblocks (who knows what) and some are social roadblocks (corporate alignment) - you need to handle all of them (and possibly others!) - this is my vision.

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Today is my last day for a few months being based in the CustomWare Sydney office. We have a fun team and it is a bit sad to leave working with them each day.

For those that don't know, we're doubling up our efforts in our US office and I'm moving with my wife and kids for a few months.

Many people have asked the question "Why do this in the middle of a recession?" the answer is really simple for us. We currently have over 100 customers in the US that we currently work for remotely, and countless others that would like to deal with us locally. In economic times like this, you have to listen to your customers and the demands that they have and move your company in the best way to meet those needs.

I went to a talk by Brian Tracy a few weeks ago, where he had a gem of a quote:

"Sure, there is a recession on - but we chose not to participate"

...and I can only wholeheartedly agree!

I've been reading lots of online articles recently and yes, everyone is well and truly in the clouds. Seeing lots of interesting marketing as well, one that specifically caught my mind is vendors touting that they have a multi-tenanted architecture and that other hosted solutions are ASP model and then going in depth into this. I thought to myself - from a business perspective "who cares"?

If I am a customer paying for a SaaS/Hosted solution, then I dont really care about the details of the implementation do I? What I'm more concerned about is the reliability, credibility and impact that the service is going to have on my business (hopefully positive). When trying to explain the differences to a non-technical person, it is almost the same as trying to explain the differences between object oriented programming and procedural programming - a great discussion but again to a non-techie - who cares?

Like all approaches, each has its strengths and weaknesses, but we should always remember what the business is asking for and ultimately paying for.  

Imagine the feeling of receiving a Tweet early one morning from a customer, raising a support question. On stage, in front of the whole world.

I'm glad that we noticed the twitter and could respond

I was even happier that the issue got resolved. You can look it up the details on Twitter.

It got me thinking, again along the lines of Consulting and Professional Services 2.0, what would a "big" outsourcing company have done in this circumstance?

The following thoughts came to mind:

"Sorry sir, Twitter is not a valid channel for you to raise your support calls to us, according to section x y z of the agreement, to match the SLA we need you to fill in a form etc etc"

You can guess the rest of the story (if they actually knew what Twitter was in the first place!).

The natural feel I have is this - my customer is in trouble, he/she has communicated and reached out to me, lets help them.

It's not about putting obstacle courses in front of a customer that needs help, it's about solving their problem. That's like saying, "Sorry sir, you've called me on the phone, I only read faxes"! With Consulting and Professional Services 2.0, we still need to Delight the Customer

OK, so you're probably thinking something along the lines of "That's impossible, how would you maintain an SLA", my answer to that is quite simple and I learnt this lesson in 2001 when I signed my first enterprise customer (Fortune 50). We negotiated a support agreement with SLA's etc. and set out, as soon as he countersigned the agreement he slid open his bottom drawer and placed the agreement in the drawer and said something along the lines of: "Do your best, treat my team and my systems as if they were yours. If you do that, I should never have to look at this agreement. If I ever have to get the agreement out and look at SLA's, it's already too late". Of course, not all customers are the same and some lean on agreements more than others, but in my 8+ years of experience, trust and accessibility means more than an SLA.

A fitting quote from Mahatma Gandhi, sourced of various places on the web.

A customer is the most important visitor on our premises, he is not dependent on us. We are dependent on him. He is not an interruption in our work. He is the purpose of it. He is not an outsider in our business. He is part of it. We are not doing him a favor by serving him. He is doing us a favor by giving us an opportunity to do so.

I am often asked the question "what is your goal with/for CustomWare?" by customers and staff (both current and prospective) and my answer is as follows.

I'd love for CustomWare to do to the the IT Professional Services industry, what the open source movement did to the software market - and from that, I mean the following: IT Services have typically been (among other things) closed, proprietary, highly priced and non-customer centric. I think a lot of terrible things can and do happen, hidden behind a skilled project manager that can outfox a client. The client and vendor should be focussed on solving the business problem at hand, not on playing political games.

Services should be transparent, open, and aligned with the customer. When going about this task with our team, we looked at how the open source software model worked - the IP was set loose, and it was the service, the "ownership" and thought leadership that held the momentum. So with this, we decided to base our website on a wiki. 5 years later, we have over 1000 members from all over the world. It was wierd for some (and still is) but for us it feels natural. It is also inspiring to see some of the larger consulting firms also move into the "new thinking" direction of transparency.

Underneath what we call our Greenhouse strategy, and aligned with one of our company values - "Share the Knowledge" we maintain public WIKI's of FAQ's based upon some of the products that we work with - (you can find a list of them at http://wiki.customware.net]), we also open source many of the components that we develop, and offer them free of charge.

There is of course challenges in doing this as a services firm. We have many legal agreements with our customers that prevent us from disclosing information, so we have to work within those. So we respect those agreements and ensure that no "knowledge" is inappropriately placed or released.

In the age of "googling" for answers, sharing knowledge is key for Consulting 2.0, it's not about customer retention because you are the only one holding the knowledge - it is about customer retention because you provide the best service!

The best customer service is provided by employees and staff of a company, not sub-contractors. A company that only uses sub-contractors also is not as likely to contribute to the community, because it has to pay.

When picking your vendors, just like it has become standard for software vendors to contribute to community (code and knowledge) what do your services vendor(s) do?