Efficient Forums

Before you even start reading this post, I want you to know that it is a lot of sizzle and not much steak. And, I am okay with that because I am excited. It’s that simple.

If you have read my blog in the past, you probably figured out I like what we do at Efficient Forms (if not feel free to contact me at 303.785.8638). One of the coolest parts of my job is getting to see the diverse ways the Transaction Origination Platform (TOP) is being deployed. Four years ago, I could not have imagined a fraction of the potential uses for TOP.

We regularly have various entities (that find us from typically unlikely connections) present new and exciting uses of TOP that I had no clue would be such an exact fit. The really fascinating thing for me is TOP-created Content Enabled Vertical Applications (CEVAs) will potentially save lives and may drastically improve the lives of families in need, along with helping students apply to college and other socially responsible things. This makes us feel good, even though these CEVA uses are typically not our ideas. We just enable them.

An excellent research report on Content Enabled Vertical Applications was conducted by Gartner.

“Gartner believes that CEVAs and line-of-business offerings are the future for most traditional ECM vendors. CEVAs are used when business processes are driven by documents, forms and other content (applying for a mortgage is one example). Although enterprises have asked for this for years, and vendors have responded with standard products and lots of professional services, a transformation has occurred with more demand and focus being placed on repeatable solutions. When well-thought-out policies, information architecture and process management are put in place beforehand, CEVAs can deliver process improvements not only in terms of speed but also in terms of accountability and rigor.”

Originally, our motives were purely capitalistic. And while that is still a focus, it still amazes me to realize that the social benefits we can help many entities attain with TOP. As I have mentioned in previous blogs, our goal was to create “Turbo Tax®” for everything else, and what evolved was TOP, a CEVA creation machine that can produce socially responsible solutions and still provide us with the margins we look for.

So, who will come up with the most creative and socially beneficial use of TOP over the next year? Check back for regular updates, and who knows, we might even come up with Dave’s TOP 10 CEVAs list.

Okay, so what the heck was HP thinking? I know many other articles have discussed this subject (see below), some critical and some positive on HP purchasing EDS for $13 billion in cash. Cash?!?

Of course, I have no idea what was going on at HP other then some awfully great dancing by EDS officials. And since I have absolutely no idea what was going on, I will of course lend my two cents on the subject.

First of all, IBM seems to have found success from its purchase of Price Waterhouse Coopers Consulting, and many people dissed that move. Of course $3 billion wasn’t $13 billion, and my gut says that HP is no IBM.

I will suggest that there may be troubles for this merger down the road. I am not intimately knowledgeable with HP or EDS, but if my recent interactions are any indication of a larger trend (and it feels like it is), the current professional services business model seems to be in jeopardy. (”I’ll take EDS brings HP down for $13 billion, Alex.”)

In the last year, I have been exposed to numerous large entities, from large corporate fortune 500 companies to federal, state, county and city government entities, whom have begun to completely abandon the old adage “Nobody ever got fired for hiring IBM” (or insert any of the large professional services companies EDS, Accenture…). These entities are crying for specific Content Enabled Vertical Applications (CEVAs) that are specific to their business, but they don’t want to pay the outrageous amounts being charged by the professional service company to custom build these solutions.

These same entities also want to be able to easily configure the CEVA solutions to meet their evolving needs, which just doesn’t happen when professional services companies get paid by the hour or when they make much of their profit on change requests. It seems that some professional service companies are counting on the customer never knowing what they want until they first see what the professional service providers build (6 to 12 months later) and then realize, “it ain’t that!”

My belief is that professional service providers together with Enterprise Content Management (ECM) companies (like IBM, Oracle, EMC, etc.) need to quickly evolve to provide real CEVA solutions that are quickly deployed, maintained and adaptable to specific industries and diverse markets if they want to retain market share.

But, I don’t see it happening.

I will most likely expound on this topic again and again, but I would also like to find out your opinion. Or, share your experience, from any viewpoint. If you want more context, check out my previous posts on the CEVA subject or any post to get more information on Efficient Forms.

HP-EDS Merger Articles of Interest

The Street.com: Big Blue to Meet Its Match in HP-EDS
Fortune: Why HP is smart to gamble on EDS