Author: piehlm

If you are like me, you have to travel from time to time.  Personally, I have multiple systems still running at home, regardless of where I am.  Inevitably, when I leave town, something goes down.  Not long ago, I left town for a weekend, and my cat pee’d on a surge protector and it popped the breaker for my office.  In that instance…  remote access would not have helped me.  Ha ha.

However, more times than not, a system needs to restart, or restarted without my permission.  Then my virtual servers all need to be restarted if I want SAP access.  So, remote access is a must have.  But I have discovered that my consulting clients all have differences in their security.  For example, I’ve had clients that block Teamviewer, but allow Chrome Remote Access.  I’ve had other clients that are the reverse.  Worst of all, you never know what might work, and what might be blocked.

For this reason, I recommend always having two different systems installed on every machine you might need remote access.  I personally use Chrome Remote and Teamviewer, since both are free.  I’ve used GoToMyPC for a long time and it worked great (but you have to pay for that).

Take my advise, keep 2 methods on every system.  Thanks for reading,

So, I started talking with a fellow consultant of mine and he had similar ideas.  He didn’t have the programming background, but could write a great spec and knew production inside and out.  He had this idea for that small companies would be begging for.  It was an MES (manufacturing execution system) without any bolt ons, interfaces, extra hardware, etc.  Just an easy way to get their job done.  It sounded good to me, and I knew I could build it.  So I started the coding, and eventually we came to realize, it would be better to go on this journey together.  We started brainstorming.  We both had a military background so we finally settled on Javelin Solutions.  The problem was that the URL was already taken, by a military company of course 🙂

So, we came up with JaveLLin (notice the 2 L’s).  The 2 L’s stand for Lean Logistics.  Looking back on much of my marketing literature, this really isn’t covered, and at the end of the day, perhaps doesn’t even matter.  But that’s why we have JaveLLin and not Javelin 🙂  We went through all the obligatory legal issues, formed a new company and waited for the money to start rolling in.  Strange, but it never did 🙁  We started doing trade shows, another incredibly expense when you are a start up.  We learned some expensive lessons on how to market ourselves at a show.  All the while, I was coding what was to become Proximity – Production Execution.  It took another 18 months before I finally realized this is what I needed to do for Service Management.  Meanwhile, we made an iOS application, presented at regional ASUG’s and even at the SAP Manufacturing Conference in Vegas.  We started building leads, but we were still fighting the uphill battle of a small fish in a very big pond.  We started to get smarter and got rid of a bunch of other applications.  It was a hard decision, especially for me, given the amount of time and energy I spent developing and refining them.  But it was the right move.  Soon, we were down to just Production Execution and Service Management.  Then, it was time to go back into learning mode for me.  I had to figure out ABAP Web Dynpro.  I slowly mastered a new skill and replaced all the old BSP code we originally designed.  So I spent my nights and weekends learning and coding… finally getting apps that looked better on the web.  Now to meet customer needs, we are moving to UI5 for all our applications.

Thanks for reading,

Well, you may have read my “origin story” for Paper Street Enterprises, but I figured it would be fun to tell you about how JaveLLin Solutions started.  The initial idea for the applications started about 2008.  That was when I first got the stroke of genius (or masochism) to build applications to help companies better run Service Management.  In my head, it all seemed so simple.  I would just build my own SAP system, then build an application and sell it.  Ugh…  if only reality were that kind.  I spent the better part of the next 3 months downloading, installing, running into errors and repeating.  All of this, just trying to build my first 4.7 SAP system.  I gained a whole new appreciation in this process for basis people.  I also acquired a distinct hatred for anything basis related 🙂  Of course, that hatred would grow as I attempted to build more systems…  but I’ll save that for later.  Once I finally got a working system, then I needed to put my first idea into practice.  My idea was to build an out of the box application that a company would use to provide a call center for their customers.  The idea was to build a web application that the end user could register their products, submit help desk tickets and more.  Easy right???  Not hardly.

Since I knew nothing about web programming, I had to figure out how to build a BSP (at the time, SAP’s go to method for web stuff).  So, I got the book, did all the exercises and slowly learned how to write a BSP application.  That took several months, and them my first disaster struck.  My hard drive crashed, and I had no backup of the virtual server that all of my worked resided on.  I had not only lost my coding work… but now I had to go back through the entire SAP installation process.  And then I needed to do all the system configuration (including building master data from scratch so I had something to work with).  I admit, my concepts got better, but it set me back multiple months.  By the time I had a product I felt good about, I had spent the better part of a year burning all my free time.  (Now, to top things off, I was recently married, so that meant free time was in short supply, so things kept moving even slower).  But I was not deterred.  I had a plan.  The next step was to become an SAP partner.  I did some homework, but not enough looking back.  I managed to spend a LOT of hard earned consulting dollars to become a partner and then get my application certified.  If you curious about my opinions on certification, check out my post about it from a couple years back.

As time went on, I built more and more applications.  Unfortunately, my focus was too scattered.  So I’d built WM apps, VC apps, Service apps…  and none of them were really cohesive.  I got my first sale, which was my dashboard for service management.  It was loosely based on some SAP developed dashboards for shipping.  I thought it was all down hill from there…  That was when I came up with a plan…

But I’ll save that for tomorrow,

Thanks for reading,

Well, Marvel has really capitalized on super heroes, and when they run out of stories going forward, they go backwards and tell you where they came from.  Because of this, I thought I’d do a little post to tell you my origin story 🙂

In 2006, I had spent the past few years working for Deloitte and then SAP.  I spent so much time working with other independent consultants.  They started to take me under their wing and show me just how easy it was to be independent.  All the things I was scared of including insurance, medical benefits, 401k etc had been shown to me to be so easy to handle on my own.  So, I went online and started my own company.  One of the first things I needed to figure out is what I should call my company.  Of course, there was the simple of name of Mike Piehl Consulting, but I didn’t like that approach.  So I went to my favorite movie, Fight Club.  In that movie, Ed Norton and Brad Pitt have the Paper Street Soap Company.  Well, I wasn’t making soap, so I decided that Paper Street Consulting would be perfect.  I submitted my name and got accepted.  (To this day, very few people recognize the reference, but I don’t care… still love that movie).

Once I had my company formed, I did my homework to find out what insurance I would get (health, business, life, etc.) and I started looking for my first contract.  I spent maybe a month looking, but it was no big deal, I was finishing up a client in California, so I was still employed.  When I accepted my first offer, I gave my notice and started my adventure.

Needless to say, my first contract was no piece of cake.  The work was easy, but the logistics were awful.  First off, I accepted an AI (or all inclusive) contract.  This meant that I got an extra $23/hour to cover travel, lodging, food, etc.  In my head, this looked great.  I was traveling to AZ and it was May.  Well, little did I realize how much prices fluctuated depending on the season.  When I did my research, everything was cheap since it was summer in Arizona.  Well, with each passing week, prices kept creeping higher.  I had already accepted the contract, so I needed to figure out how to live on a budget.  I flew Sun Country from MSP to PHX every week.  I rented a room from a guy who also traveled, so we never crossed paths.  I went grocery shopping, bought a bed, some cheap linens and rented the smallest possible car from Enterprise.  I ended up making it work… but just barely.

Now, the biggest issue I had with this first gig was getting paid.  Payment terms were the biggest thing I paid no attention to.  It turned out it was net 30, from time of invoice, which meant 60 days before I got paid.  Well, I had enough saving to make this work.  The problem was that the company I contracted through kept telling me the “check was in the mail”.  At one point, I waited 4 months before I got my paycheck.  I did eventually get all my money…  but I exited the contract after 3 months and took a great local contract.  Believe me, I learned a lot about negotiating from my first contract.  If you ever think about getting into this game, feel free to reach out to me, I’d be happy to give you some pointers =)

Thanks for reading,

For all of my readers in the USA, please enjoy a great fourth of July.  I now live in the south, so it’s a guarantee I’ll be hearing fireworks well into the night 🙂

I hope you all enjoy a great day off.  I’ll skip any political stuff today.  Just be thankful for the liberty we still have and be sure to enjoy it.

Thanks for reading,