YTD Review

A quick update on the past year or so.  I didnt do an update on 2010, so this encompasses that too.

The good news is that from January 2010 onwards and through 2011, revenue and new business has been firm.  This was a good transition from 2009, which was very light.

Information Professionals is establishing a board of Directors this year, starting with an advisory board which will morph into a company board thereafter.  We will also be putting the detail into and implementing our new structure for growth.  This is now well underway, although my attention has been on other growth opportunities, which turned into distractions, for the first part of 2011.  These other growth opportunities were two acquisitions, both of which did not eventuate. 

After they were both largely dead, I had lunch with a fairly new friend of mine who has spent a large part of 2011 trying to recover his business after major flood damage in Brisbane in January.  He said the two things that will kill a deal like these is the business broker and the seller's legal advisor.  Well it was my shout at that point on because he was spot on.  Plenty of lessons learned and some great confirmation from someone else with some more experience than I in these things.

Of course, I will continue working on some other projects in addition to Information Professionals.  I reported a year ago on NetSmart Solutions, and its name has now changed to SmartNet Presence (SNP). 

SNP looks after all internet, social media and marketing systems for Information Professionals.  It is already earning firm revenue in its own right and has achieved some great results for its clients...pushing search rankings and click through rates via social media and integration of a business's internet presence, including the automation of marketing activity.  Its aim is to Help Business People to Love Their Businesses (again), particularly growing businesses where the load and complexity is increasing.  It is at http://www.smartnetpresence.com/

There are other projects at different stages, including an idea that was pitched to the Big Idea Qld campaign, although we missed out on getting their support for that.  It is still progressing albeit in a different approach.

On Being Short Term(inal)

Many governments are under financial pressure right now.  It will be interesting to see how they react to this pressure

Some recent examples are notable here in Queensland with Brisbane City Council (BCC) taking some action to cut current costs and Queensland Government taking action to try and cut future costs (i.e. lower risk).

BCC recently shut down the very popular http://www.ourbrisbane.com.au/ site.  A site that I and many others visited, providing a terrific community service for the city.  Between 700,000 and 1M people visited this site monthly!  It cost BCC $1M a year to maintain.  Yet the only choice they could see was to shut it down, stating that they will migrate its required functions to the main council website.

For anyone involved in internet marketing and community building, a site that attracts 700k-1M people monthly is creating enormous value for many people and no doubt has even higher value creation potential. 
Yet the short term easy solution was to destroy that value.  As a rate payer I would have wanted a better result.

At the same time, BCC seems to be changing its policy to the way it manages its projects, reducing short-term costs and accepting higher risk in the hope that these risks won't create more costs later.  BCC's project delivery has been very good in recent years so perhaps they feel they can afford this risk.  Go back 10 years and it may have been a different story.  Whether the current cost management priorities are being set with full recall on corporate memory, well perhaps time will tell.

An alternative view is the Queensland Government's recent appointment of a whole of government CIO (Chief Information Officer) reporting directly to the Minister for ICT and "responsible for ICT project management, policy development and implementation, and workforce across Government".  On the back of some recent ICT Management disasters, this government has some very fresh and raw experiences which is driving a more risk averse position that can reduce the potential of future costs, even at some short-term cost.

Short-term thinking versus long-term is a major consideration for all business people.  One of the most notable examples was when Branson bought back ownership of Virgin Records because he couldn't operate his business having to explain and be driven by quarterly profit drivers.

How well our government decision makers are operating in this respect only time will tell.

Article on closure of Ourbrisbane.com.au

Opinions on the closure

Press release on Qld Gov CIO role

Corporate Social Responsibility Not Just For Billionaires

While the Brisbane Courier Mail profiled Chuck Feeney hunting Millionaires, business can connect with its customers and contribute in small ways as this Brisbane example shows.

Information Professionals, a Brisbane consulting firm, is a member of B1G1, a site that assists organisations to contribute effectively to causes they and their clients believe in. Paul Dunn, a successful Australian businessman over many years founded B1G1 in Singapore, recently wrote about Mark Nicholls, the founder of Information Professionals and their approach to giving.
The B1G1 site says “Imagine what it would be like to have your business making a difference simply and effectively just by doing what you do every day”. Since its inception, B1G1 has overseen more than 1.4 million giving transactions.

Paul said of Mark Nicholls and Information Professionals, and their recent campaign:
“Mark Nicholls at Information Professionals in Brisbane, Australia does some great things to help his clients sort out their IT strategy and implementation. And what he also does very, very well is business giving that really connects. He does it humbly. No great big ‘song and dance’. But just in a lovely low-key, almost under-stated way. And it's that, as well as the giving itself, that really connects“.
The Information Professionals campaign gave kids in Nepal internet access and kids in Borneo education, for every Information Professionals’ client that downloaded one or more of a series of reports that were available on the company’s website.

The follow up e-mail said “The great news is that we had 420 downloads of the reports we offered. So I have organised for 420 days of education for the kids of Borneo AND another 420 days of internet access for the orphans in Nepal. Together we have made a difference to the lives of hundreds of kids...thank you and congratulations.”

As Paul says, “Business Giving is often not ‘connecting’ - it’s simply ‘donate to this charity’.” There are many ways to give, and to connect your team, your clients, and your suppliers to the charitable outcomes they are helping you generate. And Information Professionals and B1G1 have shown us that we don’t need to be billionaires to do so.

Nice Ad, shame about the change

Virgin Australia's new ad campaign is upbeat, but how much is fluff and how much is real?

The Virgin Australia campaign that promotes the integration of Virgin Blue, Pacific Blue, V Australia and one other airline (that escapes me) under the one Virgin Australia brand is a great concept.  It always confused me why they had so many brands, and I know it confused others too.

I have an airfare booked to LA in August with V Australia.  It is booked using Velocity Rewards Points.  I have tried changing that flight by a few days.  I spoke to Velocity on Friday and they said no problems, but needed to put me through to V Australia to make the change. After some time on hold I got told they would do a call back.  Late Fri I got the call back, they missed me and left a msg.  This mornng (Monday), I rang the number they gave me, it was a Virgin Australia number.  I thought, wow the integration is happening.  But when talking with the consultant, they told me they needed to transfer me to V Australia for this change.  On speaking to V Australia, they said I need to speak to Velocity, the same Velocity that had me on hold speaking to V Australia about the same thing on Frday.

The one brand is great, but how long before they can deliver on their promise of one airline, or are they really going to do this, or is it just hype...hmmm we'll see.  The marketing hype has got in front of the reality on this ocassion....it's no wonder we all get skeptical.

By the way, I wrote this post while I was on hold, waiting for someone at Velocity to pick up the phone...still on hold, wish me luck.

Making A Fresh Start

Wow...nine months!!  That is how long since my last post.

Possibly an appropriate period of time for me to grow a fresh view about my blogging and bring to life my new commitment.

This new commitment is to the regularity of my posts, both this blog, and to the Information Professionals blog http://blog.informpros.com/

I don't have a personal trainer these days, but I have in the past over many years.  But my best training, when I am at my fittest, and when I have been most committed, has never been supported by a personal trainer.  The motivation and desire comes from within.  Sure, I have had coaches and training buddies and sometimes not, but the one thing that is there when I am at my best is the personal commitment.

I have some freinds and colleagues that do some counselling.  One of the things they speak of is ensuring that clients that they counsel do not create a dependency on them.  That is, they give their clients the life skills to operate independent of them.  Perhaps that is the difference between good counselling and poor counselling (also mirrored in good consulting and poor consulting ... but I shall not get sidetracked here).

My point is that I tried a few things to try and get my posts happening but I didn't do the one thing necessary.  I didn't personally commit to make it happen and change my behaviour accordingly.  Me being compliant to a Personal Trainer may help, but if the only motivation is being compliant then mediocre results will follow.  The personal commitment is required and this is what I am now making.

From now on, I shall be posting at a minimum monthly to both my blogs and on many occassions more common than that.  That is my commitment.

A Professional Family Tree

Andrew Garner from Ernst & Young (EY) is now supposed to be leading a team to look at the what the new Queensland Health payroll solution should be. With this EY gig this rounds out a full complement of consulting firms getting different slices of the pie when it comes to Queensland Health and Shared Services provision in Queensland Government. Of course, we won't talk about it being consulting advice that recommended the whole shared services initiative and corptech in the first place. That discussion would sidetrack this blog post markedly.


My post was to congratulate Andrew on this gig. Since his recent connection to EY and more recent move back to Brisbane from Canberra, Andrew has been everywhere.

Some of you would know that Andrew was part of my team at Queensland Rail (QR). He, like all of us, learnt a lot on that project, and created some great results for QR. It is great to see him continue on as he has.

Andrew's boss at IBM was Norman Scott. Norman was the partner overseeing the IBM services we used at QR. A piece of trivia is that I hired Norman into his first ever job in Australia. It was a 3 mth contract as an Oracle programmer in the early 90's. I never saw Norman until almost a decade later. Norman never tells anyone that story. Perhaps it takes away from the mystique.

Having supervised at least two partners before they became partners in the big firms, maybe I should be seeking some talent spotting fees. I suspect I'd have a fat chance of that!

PS. If you are not sure what I am referrign to at Queensland Health, see this.

Education Opportunity

Those of you who know me, know I put a lot of investment into my own education.  There is an event coming up that I can recommend because of one trainer/coach/educator/leader in particular I am a fan of.

That is a guy by the name of Joel Roberts.  I saw Joel in Singapore earlier this year.  When it comes to packaging your message and being heard in a "Sound Bite, Headline, Hyperlink world" then Joel is the man with the plan helping you create your phrase that pays...OK that will do...must be getting late.

Check it out here for gigs in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne.