Cloud-First, Mobile-First is not your business strategy, is "their business strategy".

Is it good? is it bad? Yes it is good, the cloud will help business to reduce costs and driving your applications to mobile device it is also good because your customers will interact with your business by using the "new PC" called "SmartPhone". But Cloud-First and Mobile-First it is not a business strategy for your business, it is a business strategy for IT Vendors (HP, Amazon, IBM, Microsoft, others...). 

There is no doubt, no question about it, all major IT vendors are on a "Cloud-First, Mobile-First". It don't even deserve explanation. It means trying to move all data to a cloud and all application to a mobile device.

Cloud-First is an evolution of outsourcing, when you move all that servers, apps and things that your don't understand (the stuff that IT people loves) out of your company, since your company is not making profits by having servers and paying for software itself.  It provides your company cost reducing benefits, but it is not a business strategy, just by putting you application on "the cloud" it does not mean you are going to make more money. And you can save some money but you need to make the numbers fit, it is not that you are going to save money like magic, maybe you need a migration, prepare your applications, invest more to go the cloud. So make your number rights, the cloud may assist you on reducing costs, but it is  not going to help you make money by itself. There may be examples on how to use the cloud to get more customers and more sales, but those are specific strategies and not just "The Cloud".
I remember hearing an IT salesman that it does not mean that all is going to be on the cloud and that it is expected that on companies will have a 50%/60% stuff on the cloud and the rest "on Premise". So, when we reach that day, the hype of the cloud will be over and IT vendors will be looking what is the next big things to offer.

Mobile-First, just sucks... why? Because as a IT people we already migrated from the mainframe, (centralized applications) to client-server applications to Unix. Then we migrated from Unix to Windows and migrated all applications to run on Windows. After that we thought that it will be better to migrate all to the web (client-server with a browser) and return to centralized applications. And now that the mobile smartphones worked so good, we (The IT guys) want to make more money by migrating you applications to iPhone and Android. What?. So for IT Vendors Mobile-First it is just an strategy to make you migrate to other technology again.

But don't get me wrong, a Mobile-First, strategy can really help you make increase sales if you really know your customers and if you product requires and gives value to an "always mobile" person. A banking payment tool may be a success on a Mobile-First strategy, since people want to be able to pay debts "on the go". But if the bank only wants to offers a view of your account without any ways to take action your money on that case maybe a Mobile application is not required at all.

From the technical point of view, creating stand-alone (client-server) applications for mobile phones on iPhone and Android is just getting back to the days that you have only Windows on the PCs . People that used MacOS or OS/2 was given the cold shoulder because they were a minority and developers didn't want to do application for those platforms, only Windows that had all the market share at that time. At some point developers and customers started to think that they need to be "platform independent" and moved applications to the web on open standards so it didn't matter if the final user has Windows or any other platform, he just required a browser that supported the web standard.  So, this is why smartphone developers are trying to do "hybrid" application development that with a few changes it will run on iPhone and Android. So maybe in a future we will be migrating the iPhone/Android apps to a more "hybrid" approach or maybe back to the web.

So Cloud-First and Mobile-First are real things that are happening today, we should not hide under a rock and/or ignore it. Using the mobile is a way to reach more customers, and using the cloud helps to save costs, but each case needs to be analyzed. Today the cloud and the smartphone are on the peak of the hype, but you always needs to put the strategy and numbers over the table first.

Pizza Hut Express Ecuador - 2x1 - Oh Por Dos! - ¿Publicidad Engañosa?

Nota: Esto representa mi opinión personal y me apreciación personal de lo que creo que son las matemáticas.  Si no te gusta, cambia de canal.

Hace poco estuve en Pizza Hut del Mall el Jardín comprando una pizza y encontré esta publicidad:

"Oh Por Dos!" 2x1 - Todos los días desde las 18:00 horas. Muy Bien !!

Así que iba a pedir una Pizza en esta promoción, me dieron el menú.

Esta bien, voy a pedir una Pizza Suprema Familiar por $28.99.

Pero antes se me ocurrió  ¿y si no quiero llevar dos? Me imagino que solo una pizza me debería salir lo mismo, por algo es dos por una.

Pero simplemente levanté la mirada y vi cuanto costaba una sola Pizza Suprema Familiar.

Esto me dice que una sola Pizza Suprema Familar cuesta $15.50. Ojo que son el mismo producto "Pizza Suprema Familiar" en ninguna parte dice que la "Suprema del menú" es distinta que la "Suprema del cartel".

Por lo tanto con la misma Pizza Suprema Familiar:

• Promoción 2x1 = $28.99
• Una sola Pizza =  $15.50
• Dos Pizzas sin promoción =  $31.00
• Diferencia entre Promoción 2x1 y Dos pizzas =  $1.01

Así que usando la matemática $28.99/$15.50 = 1,87032258

Por lo tanto la Promoción 2x1, debería ser 2x1,87032258

Le dije al gerente del local ... "Avísele a sus jefes que esta promoción esta equivocada" y me respondió, "Ya les dije pero no la quieren cambiar". 

¿Califica esto como "Publicidad Engañosa"?
¿O es que ya ha cambiando la matemática desde que me gradué del colegio?

Un proceso de Reembolso de Gastos Médicos

Advertencia: Este proceso fue armado en base a mi experiencia como cliente de esta empresa. No representa necesariamente su proceso real y completo, ni he sido contratado para documentar procesos en esta empresa.

No sé porque el día de hoy se me ocurrió documentar el proceso de “Reembolso de Servicios“ de una empresa de seguros médico como ejemplo en documentación del procesos.

Es un proceso muy conocido por todos los clientes y lo he hecho varias veces. Así que aquí vamos.

Voy a arrancar con los roles en este proceso:

• El cliente: Yo
• Operador de Reembolso: La señorita bien vestida que nos atiende. (Generalmente)
• Asesor Médico: La persona con título de medicina que esta presenta para resolver las preguntas del operador. (De lo que he podido ver le dicen “la Doc” o “el Doc”)

Aquí van los roles en el maravilloso IBM Websphere Business Modeler (WBM)

Ahora vamos a ver los “Elementos Empresariales” del proceso. Son todas las cosas que se piden, se transforman o se generan en el proceso. Aquí tenemos por ejemplo:

Algunos elementos empresariales pueden ir surgiendo cuando vamos documentando el proceso.

Pónganse a pensar que cada uno de estos elementos es un mundo. Pueden ser formularios, documentos de identidad, dinero,  recibos, papeles, etc. 

Bueno, como ponemos todo estos en un gráfico, ahora si arrancamos con el BPMn. 

Arranquemos con las tareas a breves rasgos y unamos las líneas.  Es un proceso simple (desde mi punto de vista) y lo documentamos con las tareas y las pasarelas según las decisiones.

Ahora lancemos con “Drag&Drop” los roles encima del dibujo para entender más quien hace que actividad. Con esto asignamos las tareas a los roles que definimos.

Ahora vamos a poner en el diagrama los “Elementos Empresariales”. Voy a poner todo los elementos que se mueven dentro del proceso.

He ingresado una nueva tarea que me faltó que era generar la copia de la cédula.  Es bueno revisar todos los documentos que quedan como resultado del proceso para conocer también en qué momento se crean y si falta alguna tarea. 

Tenemos como detonante del proceso una “Necesidad de Reembolso” que tiene el cliente. Por eso en Websphere Business Modeler (WBM) puede ver que ingresa el elemento desde el tope del diagrama en la izquierda. 

 

Miren también algo interesante, podemos documentar que cosas quedan como resultados al final de este proceso. Sé a simple vista con este proceso que como resultado voy a tener los documentos de soporte y el recibo del cliente.

Listo, creo que ahora tenemos un proceso borrador bien estructurado sobre el cual se puede trabajar.

Voy a cambiar el color de las tareas por rol (antes asigné un color a cada rol).

Ahora que pasará si cambio a la vista de carriles (swimnlines) por roles.

Ahh.. no está mal para un gráfico rápido. Muérete de la envida MS Visio.

Exporting from Websphere Business Modeler to .bpmn and Importing to BlueWorks Live.

Here goes another example of exporting a more complete process to Blueworks Live, by converting WBM to .bpmn.

This is the process on WBM.



This time I had exported more things. 1 Process diagram, 4 Business Items, 4 resources (roles).

This is how to graphic looks on Blueworks Live.
The good thing is that the swimnlines are with the "roles", so it was a good import. 

 

The bad thing is that Blueworks Live does not know what to do with the WBM Business Items and with the Input and Output of the model. 

Another good thing is that the documentation inside the activities get reflected on Blueworks Live.

 

The Technology that Screwed Businesses

When you think how technology had helped to
ruintransform businesses there are a few examples that came to my mind.

• Typewriters vs. Personal Computers. The Personal computer and word processors software has really marked the end of typewriters.

• Post Office vs. e-mail. The e-mail really transformed the communications and was the first Internet  "killer application".  The post office now it is important for sending packages and occasional postcards, the love letters are now sent by e-mail.

• Travel agencies vs. Online tickets. Ok, the Internet really screwed changed this business here in Ecuador. There used to be travel agencies next to travel agencies here, but now they are all gone.  All the people now buy their plane tickets directly over the Internet and cutting the middle man (travel agency).

• Photo film developing vs. Digital Photo. Kodak business went under the bridge when competing with digital photography. Some businessman just thought that people really want to print their pictures every time…..oops.

• Record Industries vs. Electronic Delivery Music. I talked to a friend in 1997 and told me that the MP3 format will not succeed. Well, you were wrong my Apple fanboi friend.  He told me that the songs were too big and the sound compression quality was not good enough. Later he bought an iPod and told everyone this was the great invention ever.  So, the Music record industry got screwed transformed.

• Book Publishers  vs. Electronic Delivery Books. Now, the gap between the book author and the customer got reduced with the launch of tablets and services to sell you electronic books. This industry didn’t save from the transformation.

…there are many more examples that came to mind. I only wanted to list the massive consumer services I can think about.

What’s happening today? Whats Next?

• Phone calls vs Internet VOIP. This is something that I don’t know why is taking so long. The “charge by minute phone call” should be extinct by these days. No international/regional/local phone call charges should apply anymore. But there must be an international conspiracy to maintain this “status quo”.  Sure there are alternatives, but there is a lack of a standard to replace the “Phone number digits” standard of the traditional phone companies.

• Personal Computer vs. SmartPhone. Yes PC, it is your time, you should pay what you did to typewriters. Now consumers will like to have a better phone to surf the internet and send emails instead of a big PC. That’s why every major PC vendor now offers phones (or tried to), they don’t want to get cut out of the way.  I don’t think that the PC is going to die since it is a better tool for people that create content (software, design, books, etc), but the behavior of consumer has changed because of the smartphones.

• TV vs. Internet TV. Yes, TV is going to get screwed changed by the internet soon. TV just got the initial transformation with services like Netflix. But which business is going to get screwed transformed this time?  TV networks? TV Studios? ….uhm… looks interesting. Is this why we have the Fox’s Rupert Murdoch complains about Google?

• IT Solutions Providers vs. The Cloud. Yes, we are getting screwed transformed with the Cloud. Now IT big vendors are offering the services directly to the customer cutting the middle man (us).  No more hardware installation, software installation, software support for us. Is this the dead of the “Business Partners”?…. Well, more like the “Transformation” of the Business Partner.

Did the business are getting really screwed?

No, I used the “screw” term just for fun. This transformation is the evolution of business.  There are businesses that want to stick to the past and don’t want to be moved from their comfort zone (just check SOPA supporters companies list).  The digital evolution/transformation of business is an unstoppable thing, and will help the consumers at the end.

Do you run a nice Business? Get ready to be transformed. (or screwed, whatever)