Dashboarditis

This is so true. And highly representative of where my former company thinks it's going to find a niche in the marketplace.

A sceptic's guide to web strategy

I've recently joined the Strategic Services department in my newly merged company where, I've been told by my new line manager, "there's no place for cynicism". I think he meant scepticism, but contrary to the perception you may have of me, I wasn't being anything but positive at the time. In fact I uttered not one negative word.
But I have to challenge the perception of companies like ours that they're somehow going to challenge the leading consultancies, break into their markets and offer clients incisive advice about their business strategy. There's such a level of naïvety about how clients may -- and should -- react to some jumped up person in their 20s or 30s who has just read Michael Porter's Competitive Advantage and thinks that no one else has, despite the fact it's been taught on almost every business course in the western world in the last ten years.
So we're selling our intellectual property in Situational Analysis, Business Intelligence, Strategy, etc. as though our clients were inept gits who don't know their own business. I say we're selling this, but of course we're not. What we are selling is user research, usability, and brand development because most businesses haven't ever addressed these issues and are confused by them. If our clients really wanted Business Intelligence and felt they couldn't read all the books produced by McKinsey, they'd go out and hire one of the Big 5 or an individual who used to work for them. But to think that anyone with any experience of a consultancy would ask us to come in and tell them how to run their business is foolhardy, to put it politely. We should be finding a niche that clients have limited exposure to but know is important: content management, for example.
This is all borne out by the "strategy" project at the moment, which is probably the least strategic project I've ever worked on. One of those where I say, "I wouldn't have started from here if I were you".
Our web strategy offering should be:

• Are you expectations from your web applications realistic? This applies to both websites and intra/extranet-style applications.


• Does your brand work on-line?


• Which technologies should you be using to deliver your requirements?


• Do you understand what's easy or difficult to do on the web?


• What else can you achieve on-line that you hadn't thought of before?

That's it. Web stuff's not that complicated, but if your head's out of the web, it can be daunting. But thinking you can persuade clients to part with thousands of pounds each day without being sceptical is about as far from a strategic approach to our value proposition as you can get.

Web 2.0, apparently

The analyst firm Gartner has been harping on about "global-class computing" for some time now, telling us how Google and eBay aren't really web sites but platforms and if we want to move to the next generation of the web, business will need to follow a similar model and think outside the enterprise box.
While it suits Gartner and those of us working in web development to think that the next generation of technology is here and that there is a clear threshold we need merely step across in order to attain super-webdom, Gartner's approach has all the symptoms of a futurologist's thinking. Specifically, it is based on technological possibilities rather than real requirements and is devoid of political insight.
While it's true that businesses should not need to host every application under the sun in order to provide a bit of brochure-ware with no idea of return on investment, there needs to be a compelling reason for people to make use of the always on, available from everywhere super fast web. And what's more — get this — it's actually got to work, securely, for people who don't need to be trained but who can make informed choices about their browsing preferences.
Content and interfaces need to be better. When I start up my application even at OS level, if I'm shopping I want the system to find me the cheapest product availabe. If I'm looking for an authoritative answer I don't want to be taken to Wikipedia. And above all I don't want to open up an application and have a couple of hundred offers for penis-stimulating pharmaceuticals.
The thing that gets me most about these predictions however is that they always forget the most important part of the internet: infrastructure. Anyone reading these reports would think that making a request to a web site or mail server and getting a response was some kind of auto-magical process, unworthy of comment.
Without infrastructure the web is nothing and beyond the shores of the developed world that's pretty much what you have. The entire African continent has barely as many internet connections as Manhattan island. Meanwhile there is dispute over who controls the internet's addressing system which, by a quirk of fate, currently resides with the U.S. government. Most states would prefer to see this control ceded to the United Nations, but not George Bush. He sees a danger in allowing countries which may prevent freedom of speech in controlling internet domains, but actually the fear should be that the U.S. will in future be able to simply cut an entire nation out of the internet: email, web access to uncensored content, everything. I guess it's better than dropping bombs on 'em. Meanwhile, what of the people working behind the screens? Will the global-class players act as such? Will Amazon allow trades union representation and remove the glass ceiling that prevents you from reaching management unless you're male and white? Will eBay recognise a duty to the consumer rather than training all its support staff to deny any errors and lay all the blame with whoever has just lost their money when their credit card details are stolen?
Web 2.0 will need to address such issues if it's not going to become yet another method for making capital, irrespective of social responsibility.

The art of consultancy

Confidence — I believe it's Epicurus who tells us — is the mean between rashness and cowardice. Consequently it is a prerequisite for those of us who work in the service industries, particularly consultancy.
You should be rash enough to think that even in your short visit to an organisation you can identify endemic issues in the way they work that no one there will have spotted, while wary of stating the bleedin' obvious. You should don your mettle and cast yourself headlong into office politics, careful of treadng on toes. You should be brazen about your subject knowledge, but timorous that any conception you have of best practice could be an appropriate solution.
Above all, be afraid that your client might discover you're a bullshitter and be brave when they do.