Mar 22 2006

Direct marketing works

As a PR/marketing professional working in the IT world, it is sometimes easy to forget that offline marketing techniques still have their place. While I have become a little disenchanted with trade shows, BIW still experiments with such events (next month, one of my colleagues will be at an IT Showcase event in Leeds, and we will again be at Technology World), and we will be part of the NCCTP contingent at the IT Construction Forum conference on 24 May.

In the meantime, I noticed on the US MarketWire service a press release from one of Autodesk’s marketing consultancies. Goodman Marketing Partners (GMP) has won some ‘Addy’s’ (advertising awards) for various direct marketing campaigns targeting decision makers in the US homebuilding sector:

"To attract their attention, GMP conceived, designed, produced and mailed a 3-dimensional package that gave Buzzsaw prominent visual recognition and engaged recipients through the use of various involvement devices. The direct marketing program generated multiple appointments for the Buzzsaw sales force and helped Autodesk secure a positive return on investment."

I’d love to know what the "3-dimensional package" was and what the "various involvement devices" were!

Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2006/03/direct_marketin/

Mar 20 2006

SaaS making headway

Allen Bernard in ASPnews.com, in an article SaaS Making Headway (Again), writes about the growing acceptance of the Software as a Service (SaaS) model as the likes of IBM, Microsoft, SAP and Oracle throw their weight behind the approach.

He quotes some high-flying hype from an IBM press release "Pacific Crest predicts the SaaS market will grow at 25% per year through 2010 and AMR Research shows that 78% of survey respondents are either currently using SaaS or plan to in the near future."

A lot of the revenues will, however, come from IBM and others pushing the model forwards – "the pure-play market of SaaS providers — those companies whose business models are based on selling subscriptions to hosted solutions — is really only $70 to $100 million in revenue per year." … "The pure plays have no way to drive the market that big, into the billions of dollars," but "when the big companies say this is a trend that has legs, it gives the market some momentum. … if these companies are saying it’s a good thing, then it must be safe for customers to dive in here."

Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2006/03/saas_making_hea/

Mar 20 2006

Collaboration consolidation (5)

At WorldCADaccess, Ralph Grabowski linked to an Engineering News Record interview with Scott Unger, CEO of Constructware, undertaken soon after the proposed acquisition by Autodesk was announced. Much of the piece focuses on how Constructware got started, but there were a couple of questions looking to the future.

Q: You were recently acquired by Autodesk. What does this mean for your future personally and professionally?

SU: From a professional standpoint, I will be employed by Autodesk. I see that as a great educational opportunity for me to learn within a large corporate environment. It’s an extremely large company compared to Constructware. It’s also an opportunity to further develop my leadership skills. It will be a fun challenge to put the two organizations together.

Q: What can we expect to see in the future?

SU: Technology in construction is in its infancy. There are a lot of efficiency opportunities that can be done now, but there will be a tremendous number more down the road. It’s all about making things easier, faster and cheaper for our clients and providing them with efficiency and productivity. We’re in the infancy of what we’ll be able to provide our clients. Five years down the road, what we will be able to do will be mind-boggling.

Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2006/03/collaboration_c_1/

Mar 20 2006

Catching up

What only one update in a week? What have I been up to since I got back from the Boston conference?

On Tuesday, I met up with an old PR friend – internal communications consultant (and fellow cyclist) Liam Fitzpatrick (Working Communication) – and then with Peter Goodwin of the PIX Protocol – hoping to develop the PIX offering further this year. Both meetings took place in the new St James’s Square headquarters of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations; I’ve been a full member for some years, and with the new ‘drop-in’ facilities (complete with free wi-fi) for members, I think it will be a regular meeting place from now on.

Wednesday saw me attend a CICA seminar on IT and the law: Marketing and e-Commerce, held at Arup’s offices in Fitzroy Square. I wrote about the CICA last month, and was pleased that the seminar enabled me to meet the new CICA manager Davendra Patel (interestingly, we share some common ground in that we both worked for Carillion; he was also involved with Carillion’s first investigations into extranet technologies, notably through their involvement with Bidcom UK). Unfortunately, while the seminar content was excellent, only a handful of delegates attended – underlining my concerns about purpose, direction and continued viability of the CICA.

On Thursday, I had a morning meeting at Crest Nicholson in Weybridge, then spent the afternoon at my desk at BIW in Woking, clearing as much work as possible ahead of another day out of the office. On Friday, I went up to Manchester to speak to project management students of Nuno Gil at Manchester Business School (my second trip to talk to his students); I also met with one of his doctoral students, Amjad el-Tayeh, who is working on a project, IDRAK, supporting ‘digital socialisation’ in capital engineering design projects – a good chance to brush down my postgraduate sociology studies.

Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2006/03/catching_up/

Mar 13 2006

Red Star Causeway

A few weeks ago, I noted the re-branding of Ramesys to RedSky IT (and the unfortunate coincidence with an explosion at a nearby oil depot). Today, I noticed that another UK-based AEC IT vendor (a competitor to Ramesys in some sectors) has rebranded.

Causeway Technologies’ website is now a feast of red, black and orange; the old sober blue corporate identity has been replaced by a more contemporary logo complete with a jauntily angled red star and a new strapline: "Beyond the Seen". Collaboration no longer appears among the product offerings on the home page – you have to drill down into ‘Enterprise content management’.

Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2006/03/red_star_causew/

Mar 10 2006

Harvard conference, March 2006 (4)

It’s been a fascinating day here in Boston. The Harvard Graduate School of Design hosted a conference which brought together well over 100 people from all over north America (plus a handful from the UK) to discuss its research and the implications for the US construction industry.

Burcin Becerik summarised some of the key findings from her research, looking at tangible, quasi-tangible and intangible benefits. Among the first category, the average time taken to conclude requests for information (RFIs) could be reduced from 14 days to 5.4 days, with RFI issue time savings worth around $21k in employee costs; FedEx savings on document transfer could amount to over $50,000 per annum; and annual e-bidding (e-tendering) cost savings of £52,000 were also possible. In relation to overall project budgets, use of online collaboration and project management (OCPM) tools cost between 0.02% and 0.15% (a figure on the high side due to customisation expenses).

There was an interesting discussion (in a session held in the atmospheric surroundings of the neighbouring Swedenborg Chapel) about how to handle email. Kitchell Contractors (users of Meridian’s ProjectTalk) imported emails and saved them as PDFs; Meridian’s Sue Watkins recommended changing individuals’ behaviour by adopting a policy of not accepting messages that aren’t on the system – we heard a similar policy was also successfully adopted when architects tried faxing responses to RFIs.

From my UK experience, a familiar theme was raised again and again during the day: the importance of implementation to address people and culture issues. I was particularly interested in comments from Harvard’s Dr Karen Stephenson on how teams could be encouraged to adapt more collaborative approaches (talk of ‘trust indexes’ and risk vulnerabilities – must find out more about this), while a fellow panel member, a lawyer, said the US industry was still too adversarial, describing the use of OCPM by companies controlling the software as "claim-building". Concerns about costs and security need to be balanced by a realistic appreciation of the status quo – GSA‘s Stephen Hagan wondered why firms were happy to watch their drawings disappear down the street on the back of a bicycle courier yet questioned use of a secure web-based OCPM tool!

UK provider Business Collaborator’s Tim Blower participated in a panel discussion on ‘new frontiers’ looking at use of BC by Nationwide Building Society, represented by Stephen Head, and Royal Bank of Scotland, represented by Atkins’ Marek Suchowski. All the projects in this session seemed highly rated by the ultimate customer, perhaps because the technology was exploited to move beyond simple document management to the support of key project processes.

The final session reviewed the research from the sponsors’ perspective and looked at future research needs. The importance of training and implementation, ‘top-down’ OCPM ‘champions’, and contracts to mandate use of the systems were all raised. In one of my contributions from the floor, I repeated the often-heard UK mantra about successful collaboration being 80% people and processes and 20% technology (even 90/10); I urged teams to consider measures to support ‘bottom-up’ adoption, the need to address culture issues at industry, inter-company, intra-company and individual levels, how tools could be used to enrich the working life of end-users such as document controllers, but needed populating with useful data to make initial experiences rewarding; I also supported a point made by Tim Blower about the US learning from the UK experience, not least the vendors getting together to market the technologies, and the resulting NCCTP’s effort to create an XML standard for data exchange between the vendors’ solutions, and – of course – I used the opportunity to plug the book!

I also met lots more interesting people including: Constructware users from contractor P J Dick; Gary de Plessis from Autodesk’s collaboration group; Richard Jackson from Fiatech (in spirited exchange with Julie Meeker of Arizona-based Hunt Construction Group – interested in the PIX Protocol); Scott Arfsten of 3D/i; and Tarek Baghat of PMA Consultants.

I hope this isn’t the last time I come over to such an event – there is much the UK sector can learn from the US (and vice-versa), and it will take more than a single conference to create that understanding. Having written a book about construction collaboration technologies in the context of the UK AEC market, perhaps there is scope for a similar book on the US market? Better still, maybe there is mileage in writing a book that draws together and contrasts and compares experiences on both sides of the Atlantic? I would be prepared to collaborate on such a project if someone was ready to grasp the US nettle.

Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2006/03/harvard_confere_1/

Mar 09 2006

Harvard conference, March 2006 (3)

I have just returned from the opening reception and dinner of the Harvard conference on construction collaboration technologies. I encountered some familiar faces (from the UK: Tim Blower from Business Collaborator and his client Marek Suchocki from Atkins/Bank of Scotland; from the US: Burcin Becerik and Spiro Pollalis of Harvard Graduate School of Design), and met some new ones, including: CEO Scott Unger and Natalie Cheney of Constructware, Stephen Carter of eBuild.ca, Sue Watkins of Meridian Systems, and – over dinner – CEO Eric Leighton and Jim Smith of Loadspring (interesting chat regarding, ASPs, MSPs and ISO27001).

Tim described BIW Technologies to Sue and Natalie as "the UK equivalent of Constructware" (which I think was meant to be positive); he differentiated us by explaining that BIW was a pure application service provider (ASP), while BC provided solutions that could be hosted in-house (and rebranded) if required. We both enthused about the NCCTP as a positive step forward for UK-based vendors, and our north American counterparts seemed interested in finding out more about the NCCTP standard and the NCCTP marketing initiatives.

I came away from the evening event with a thick blue paper-back book – "Computer aided collaboration in managing construction" by Burcin and Spiro – which all delegates have been challenged to read by tomorrow morning….. If I manage this, and if I get the opportunity tomorrow, I will post further updates from the conference as it happens.

Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2006/03/harvard_confere/

Mar 08 2006

Wi-fi access, again, plus WiMax

I return to this topic from time to time. Sometimes I’m frustrated at the penny-pinching practices of some establishments who charge an arm and a leg for a few minutes wi-fi access (the latest culprit is Attingo, charging six Euros for 30 minutes access at Amsterdam’s Schipol airport yesterday); sometimes, I find cheap or even free wi-fi access (not least today in Boston).

Today, I read in Silicon.com that The Cloud is to create a wi-fi network across the Square Mile of the City of London (in addition to its project at Canary Wharf, and in eight cities and three other London boroughs – see post), though it will still be something that uses have to pay for (unlike that in nearby Islington). I have blogged before about using DoBo wi-fi at London Bridge, but if I was a regular in the Thames-side area, I could also use the eight-mile long Thames Online mesh network (free trial service available, see TechWeb story).

It is all getting a bit confusing – and Silicon.com recognises this. In a leader today, Making wi-fi a must-have, it argues:

"… one of the big barriers to adoption is payments. Workers don’t want to have to pay one company for access when they are surfing over a coffee in a West End café, then pay another company for access on a train and then a third back over in the City. People want the same roaming experience they get with mobile phones – switch it on and go. Until that happens, for many businesses wi-fi will remain a nice curiosity rather than a must-have."

One thing I did pick out of the initial Silicon.com story, though, was the possibility that the City’s wi-fi network could, in due course, be superseded by WiMax (today, the BBC reports Intel speeds up WiMax plan; Red Herring says Intel Merging Wi-Fi with WiMax). But will we have the same confusing picture if that technology becomes available?

Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2006/03/wifi_access_aga-2/

Mar 08 2006

Collaboration consolidation (4)

In a series of Autodesk update articles, Susan Smith at AECcafe.com underlines the Autodesk logic regarding the Constructware acquisition (see previous post):

“Amar Hanspal spoke about Autodesk’s recent acquisition of Constructware. He said that Buzzsaw provides a central repository for data, its strength is in being used for design and pre-construction. It is useful in the flow of information and early states of preconstruction, providing a single source of project information. “We need to get more into the construction process, i.e., we need cost information, communications, RFI, change orders, etc. so people have a comprehensive view of what’s going on,” said Hanspal.

“We’ve been taking a build approach with Buzzsaw, but with Constructware we found a company that was compatible and complementary and they offered us general contractor and engineering companies that complemented our customer base.” These two products are both chasing the same problem from different views. The purchase nets Autodesk 1,000 new users, who are a combination of large construction companies, with a strong base in government, schools, universities and on the commercial side, homebuilders.

Indirectly, this confirms what we’ve always known about Autodesk Buzzsaw: that it is weak when it comes to managing construction – as opposed to design-related – processes; this may be even more the case if one talks about managing UK-specific construction processes. (The number of users seems a bit low, but perhaps this should read ‘customers’?)

Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2006/03/collaboration_c/

Mar 07 2006

Aconex selected for train station development

I noticed another couple of new press releases from Aconex yesterday. The ‘train station’ release is worth a short note, not least because it says “Costain has selected Aconex” – a notable achievement in the UK construction project extranet market as Costain has for some years been a strong advocate of rival provider Business Collaborator. Perhaps the real reason Costain opted for Aconex here has more to do with the input of Aconex’s Australian compatriot Multiplex – already an influential Aconex customer.

Correction (09 May 2006): Today I received an email from Costain requesting that the comments about Costain in the above post be removed: “The information and comments are untrue as the product has been selected and managed by the client“. I am happy to publish this correction (and to apologise to anyone misled by the original post). The error arose from an honest reading of Aconex’s news release and an awareness of Multiplex’s association with the White City project and with Aconex (as at 10am BST this morning, the Aconex website still carried the news release claim that “Costain has selected Aconex”; the same news is also carried at BuildingTalk.com).

Update (12 May 2006): See new post dated 12 May 2006 on this matter.

(Original post from a free wireless network at the Irving guest-house, Harvard, Cambridge MA – I’m here for the Harvard conference on project extranets, 8-9 March, as are a few other delegates, apparently.)

Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2006/03/aconex_selected-2/

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