Joining the Immedis board
One of the first engagements I had after launching Otter Advisory was with Scottish Equity Partners. I helped them with due diligence for an investment in an Irish global payroll provider, Immedis.As is the job in due diligence, I looked under the covers and...
On APIs and Onions.
I as I have said before, if were to have my time over as a product leader again, I would have been more assertive and downright belligerent about making sure that APIs were absolutely central to product design, and that no code would ship without a properly...
Rhinos and Enterprise Product Management. The Really Hot Interesting New Opportunity. Advice for Product Managers.
A chat with James Governor about HIPPOs caused me to search fruitlessly for a post that I knew I had written, and then find it lurking in my draft folder. Several tech companies, for instance, IBM, Dimension Data (now NTT) and...
AI kool-aid consumption: naivety and hubris?
The ability of AI technology and automation to discriminate at scale is well documented. Just this week we have seen both IBM and Amazon back-peddle on face recognition technologies. The dismal record of corporate recruitment sites for accessibility has been my hobby...
Product demo advice from Delia and Nat.
Recently I saw two product demos. Both were about 15 minutes long, but they were very different. One worked really well and one didn't. Both products are innovative and exciting. One demo was done by a professional pre-sales person. It told a simple story. Every field...
Doing the podcast/webcast/video thingy. With Jason Averbook.
I was an early adopter of podcasts. Craig Cmehil and I experimented with it back in the days of the Apple nano. After a long break, I'm gradually easing back on to the airwaves, thanks Dennis. The super smart folks at Utmost have invited Jason Averbook and me to talk...
Microsoft do this very well. So should you. #MSBuild
I spent some time this evening watching the Microsoft build event, mainly James Phillips' session on the Power stuff. (That isn't the proper name, but you know what I mean). I'll go back and watch the main keynotes, probably once I have read what my analyst peers make...
On niche specialization
I have spent most of my career working at, and analysing mega-vendors. Portfolios, markets, pricing maneuvers, customer leverage, acquisitions, suites, sales enablements, alignments and realignments, 'strategic' customers, MQ positions, rebrandings, integrations,...
It’s all about the data
We have heard from many analysts that this is HR's moment to shine. For HRTECH vendors too, this is an opportunity to prove that their stuff really works. eLearning consumption is way up, for instance, as is use of survey tools. Processes like Kurzarbeit in Germany...
Announcing a new offering: Otter Advisory Tech Marketing Services.
I hope everyone is well and staying safe. Over the last year or so, working with HR Tech software companies, bigger corporates and investors, I've noticed that many start ups, scale ups and even established vendors don’t have the optimal marketing set up. I‘d like to...