Disqus - Latest Comments for sfrancis

Re: Another RPA Acquisition: IBM buys WDG

sfrancis — Wed, 15 Jul 2020 11:05:30 -0000

Already some interesting analysis from HfS :

https://www.horsesforsource...

"10 reasons why IBM’s move will have such an extreme impact on the existing automation market"

Re: SXSW PanelPicker®

sfrancis — Tue, 13 Aug 2019 15:18:08 -0000

We've all seen failures to launch at SXSW, despite it being a great place to make an impression, or to build community, or to throw an event that will be talk of the town(SXSW) for years to come. I'm biased, but Cindy's team puts on amazing events at SXSW for her clients, and I'm looking forward to seeing her translate that into great advice for others' to put on their events. Part of putting on a great event at SXSW is understanding the dynamics of austin and the dynamics of SXSW in combination, to get the best results. And what I love most is when I have an event to put on, she challenges why we're doing it and what winning looks like. This might be one of the more practical events this year :)

Re: The Combustive Nature of Digital Transformation

sfrancis — Tue, 16 Jul 2019 12:34:57 -0000

this is a great post, Ed, thank you for sharing!

Re: How to turn ROI into ROMG with RPA

sfrancis — Tue, 16 Jul 2019 12:33:17 -0000

more discussions on ROI on this forum:
https://www.itcentralstatio...

But I have to say, I still like our approach to ROMG the best! :) Go big with your plans for ROI, not small!

Re: The Tortoise And The Hare

sfrancis — Sun, 13 Jan 2019 00:57:04 -0000

Just seems to me we have the tortoise and the hare backwards in this analogy. I completely respect the philosophical debate and both sides of it (and i've benefited from both types of ecosystems, and from specifically both of these), but so far it looks like two players are winning. that's hardly bad news, and the jury is still out on what it means for the future. But if Apple wanted to play the "hare" they would have licensed iOS to all the OEMs to manufacture...

Re: My Amicus Brief

sfrancis — Wed, 28 Nov 2018 12:01:00 -0000

Size of the market doesn't dictate costs per se. Applications on Windows typically cost more than App Store apps, and this was true even before there were more iPhones than Windows devices... And the price (average or median) has declined since the first year apps were allowed, it hasn't gone up... so the harm is?...
It isn't clear that android users pay less for their apps, and they have a real cost in terms of unsafe applications that apple store customers don't have, when they go around the google play store entirely. ie, there is an exchange of value.
you mentioned some inconveniences but it is hard to show actual economic harm to consumers... which is typically the standard for anti-competitive rulings.

Re: My Amicus Brief

sfrancis — Tue, 27 Nov 2018 14:48:24 -0000

the statement at the end: "the result is higher costs for consumers, less choice, and ultimately less innovation" doesn't stand up to scrutiny. The costs of apps on the app store (and google's store) are the lowest for commercial software of any platform in the universe that i'm aware of. Games that would have gone for $40-80 on a PS4 go for 4.99 on the app store, and the median price of all applications is zero (free). If anything, the challenge to developers now is how to make enough money to make a living on the app store - not because of the fees but because user expectations are set so low on pricing that if they ask for a reasonable price, no customer will pay for it...

I think the main issue is that no one can really show economic harm.

Re: 10 Years of Blogging

sfrancis — Mon, 12 Nov 2018 11:30:31 -0000

difference is that i'm only (mostly) blogging from Austin instead of paradise :)

Re: 10 Years of Blogging

sfrancis — Fri, 09 Nov 2018 11:15:22 -0000

Thanks Ryan! hard to believe it's been 10 years already...!

Re: Austin Airport Expansion(s) – Love it

sfrancis — Thu, 04 Oct 2018 16:36:09 -0000

https://www.bizjournals.com...

Looks like another direct flight - this one on Lufthansa between Austin and Frankfurt - 5 days a week. That's kind of amazing:

"German airline Deutsche Lufthansa AG announced Thursday nonstop flights between Austin-Bergstrom International Airport and Frankfurt, Germany, starting May 3, 2019." and

"Commerce and business both here in Central Texas and Germany will be made more easily accessible for job creators in both countries," Wilson said at a Thursday news conference.

"Frankfurt has one of the world's busiest airports with connections to the rest of the world, the continent and beyond," he added.

I think it's huge. more option, and great options. And Texas has a huge population with German heritage - a fact probably not known by many outside Texas. The whole BBQ culture here has German roots (mixed with other influences). Maybe the connection will be a little easier to make now :)

Re: The Customer Journey is the (only) Process that Matters

sfrancis — Thu, 06 Sep 2018 11:50:15 -0000

I like your post - I think customer journey came up seemingly as something separate because so much focus on process was internal, so little of it on this KEY feature that is how is the customer journey affected. Pushing work onto the customer without considering whether it was work they wanted to do or not.

In the same way, calling the customer journey the only process that matters might be hyperbole, but it is calling attention to something that doesn't get enough yet: customer journey is a process, full stop; and customer journey is critical to your business, full stop.

I think most business trends are only relevant in the moment they come to prominence -because they are usually a reaction to some current state of affairs.. Once that state of affairs changes, the advice seems ridiculous (either redundant, obvious, unnecessary, oversimplified, or no longer correct because circumstances have changed!).

Re: Human Capital

sfrancis — Tue, 04 Sep 2018 12:31:36 -0000

Tax is just a way to fund the government. lower labor taxes to whatever capital taxes are... (if that's the right level to fund government). phrased another way - why should labor be taxed at a higher rate - when the labor performed gets no geometric result for the person performing the labor (effectively, the tax rate is even that much higher). (capital's benefit from government services being geometric sounds like an argument for higher taxes on capital, rather than lower, if our argument is that we should tax the benefit received...).

Re: Human Capital

sfrancis — Mon, 03 Sep 2018 22:55:16 -0000

would be interesting to tax labor and capital the same percentage (not sure what the right percentage is, just saying it would be interesting if it was the same percentage). value them the same, explicitly, in the tax code.

Re: Being Public

sfrancis — Mon, 27 Aug 2018 12:09:24 -0000

Appreciate this rebuttal of several straw-man arguments I've seen on this topic over the years.

Re: SXSW PanelPicker®

sfrancis — Thu, 23 Aug 2018 16:34:12 -0000

Nice James, hope to get to see this one live!

Re: Your “New” Digital Systems are Now the New Legacy Systems…

sfrancis — Thu, 22 Feb 2018 23:09:08 -0000

Matt, it's a good corollary issue to the post above- creating friction in critical systems by bogging the team and systems down with non-critical implementations...!

Re: Large Models in BPMN

sfrancis — Thu, 08 Feb 2018 00:39:41 -0000

I think it's an interesting idea, but I think BPMN is probably the wrong basis for a 3D representation - after all, it is designed for 2D : )

Also, in virtual / 3D geometry, the laws of physics don't apply. What's inside an object can be bigger than the object itself :) There are interesting opportunities, but they probably mean re-imagining how you would model or represent a process from first principles... !

( I always liked the layering idea - think of those old biology transparencies of the human body - you peel the first layer back and now the skin is gone and you see the musculature, and eventually just the skeleton. )

Re: Impressions from Fortune Global Forum 2017

sfrancis — Sun, 07 Jan 2018 19:26:04 -0000

thanks Flournoy - more in the hopper, soon to come!

Re: User Experience and Empathy in Process Transformation

sfrancis — Fri, 22 Dec 2017 11:32:45 -0000

Such a good point, Matthew - trust is essential for the kinds of solutions we want to build and deploy! Without it there will be (for understandable reasons) a lot of friction.

Re: Trust us: Use the Coach View Framework

sfrancis — Mon, 06 Nov 2017 14:12:52 -0000

Matt, great questions.
As you can imagine we had a few reasons for this. First, our intent was for Brazos Portal to live outside the context of a single process instance. Those types of UIs are good candidates to consider whether or not they should be built with the coach view framework (often they still should, but this is a good spot-check).
A second reason, was so that the Portal could be deployed independent of the IBM BPM infrastructure while still connecting to it or leveraging it.
A third reason is that we wanted Brazos Portal to be available to clients who want to leverage it as a front end for other products' tasks - Salesforce, custom applications, or BPM tooling.

Having said that, it isn't a limitation of the Coach View Framework for the complexity - we can build these kinds of interfaces as Coach Views- but certainly federation is a deal breaker at some level if you build inside the coach view framework. You need some specific back-end implementation to handle that stuff.

We have some interesting stuff to show you (Brazos Dashboards) that will likely satisfy the need if you need more "in-coach-view-framework" views of tasks and whatnot. It just doesn't handle the more complex architecture issues like federation!

Re: More International Flights in/out of Austin

sfrancis — Sun, 29 Oct 2017 18:00:55 -0000

that is an excellent idea! :)

Re: Robotic Process Automation

sfrancis — Mon, 23 Oct 2017 12:31:08 -0000

Anoop - interestingly, much like the BPM space, each vendor comes to the table with different perspective and disposition. Automation Anywhere has a new partnership with IBM that makes tying it together with IBM's process and decision assets very attractive, but there are other products with strengths and weaknesses depending on your goals and your IT landscape. Over time I think AA has a real advantage in the structure of their partnership with IBM.
And of course happy to do a more in-depth analysis based on your situation if you're interested.

Re: Southeast Asia

sfrancis — Mon, 16 Oct 2017 22:03:39 -0000

matches my experience in that region of the world from 4 years ago - glad to hear that the there is a continuing sense of optimism!

Re: Locked and Unlocked Phones

sfrancis — Sun, 08 Oct 2017 17:39:15 -0000

someone might mistakenly believe this is an android vs. iphone issue - it is more likely just a "when and who did you buy your phone from" issue. if you bought from Apple in the last two years, it is likely unlocked. If you bought from a service provider... then it is likely locked. I haven't had any trouble unlocking old phones - but current phone is also unlocked, which is nicer!

Re: Business Processes and RPA

sfrancis — Mon, 25 Sep 2017 11:29:54 -0000

thanks for sharing, Adeel!