Hawaiian Un-conference Conscience

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Hawaiian Un-conference ConsciencePosted by Wayne on 8th July 2009

About the Author

Wayne

Wayne has worked in sales for a large portion of his life, and joined the StorMan family in 2007. Wayne frequently travels between both our New Zealand and United States offices and works in sales for both of these regions.

You can get in touch with Wayne via our Contact page.

Hopefully by now, you will have had time to read my other post about the Phonesmart Hawaiian Un-Conference. Thanks to some fantastic feedback, I have appointed myself the "Un-conference Conscience". Just to show you I am a man of my word, as well as a man of action, I thought I would update you on my adventures with regards to two ideas (potentially of exceptional value to you and your business) shared in Hawaii, at StorMan's "Round Table"...

1) Finding a way to standardise some reports generated by management software

2) Beginning the process of facilitating real time statistic feeds to the SSA.

Phonesmart

Bob Francis was kind enough to refer me to Anna Canlas, of the SSA. Before I go any further though, this morning (whilst on the phone) I received a separate call to action that you need to be made aware of. The SSA wants to assist storage businesses in this environment by publishing an information article on re-financing in this economy. If anyone who receives this has access to some information that might help the SSA, please get in touch with me so that I can pass it on to the team (the SSA have a very tight deadline).

Whilst on the subject of finance and (in general) the economy (which has led to challenges where finance is concerned), last year I was lucky enough to see a presentation at the CSSA event in San Diego. The chap presenting seems to have an exceptional handle on things of an economic nature. One would think this fair and reasonable, what with him being a Doctor. The presentation was highly educational, and more than once since seeing the presentation have I used the information presented to my great advantage. The presenter’s name is Dr. Christopher Thornberg, of Beacon Economics

This referral comes to you because of the courtesy extended by Erin King, of the CSSA. Thank you Erin!

Phonesmart

Anyway, back to the story. The SSA have worked very hard together on projects designed to collect and publish industry data, for the benefit of industry. Anna (from the SSA), whom it seems feels most comfortable on the technical side of things, described to me the “baby-steps” approach she has used to break this mammoth job into do-able “chunks”. The initial stage was for the SSA to identify exactly which data is most useful to collect and report on. Anna sent StorMan the related list and we are now looking at how we can incorporate reports to meet SSA’s requirements. Then the next phase for the SSA began, with the rest of the “Steps”, which are:

Step 1: Collect data on an annual basis

Step 2: Publish on an annual basis

Step 3: Complete Step 1 and Step 2 on a quarterly basis

Step 4 : Complete step 3 on a constant basis, in real time, perhaps with the assistance of software vendors.

Step 1 is live online now. Step 2 will follow, then Step 3. According to Anna, the biggest, single, current impediment to this valuable process is getting industry members to play the game. It seems the job of providing/submitting data to the SSA falls to people in the finance area of the storage company concerned (e.g. VP Finance or the Finance Controller / Comptroller).

Phonesmart

It is these people who possess the best ability to report accurate data, and (aside from the business owner of course) it could be argued that it is probably these people who have the biggest vested interest in the participation of data collection and analysis. Comments were made in Hawaii about how it seems the industry has to re-educate financial institutions on the substantial economic value the storage industry represents. You can help right now by urging your people who can provide the necessary data to do so for the SSA.

Phonesmart

If you wish your organization to participate please email me and I will send you the link so you and your organization can be “in the game”. The intention is that software vendors will be contacted and their participation discussed at Step 4, after the current system has gotten itself up and running. Software vendors will have to provide a mechanism so the reporting of data can be switched off at will by the storage operator. See? We will get there by employing these all important “Baby Steps”. Just keeping you in the loop...

Phonesmart