Category: Business

I apologize to all of you out there for not getting back to the warranty claims thing.  I do intend to get back to that line of posts, including more in depth configuration, but my time has been consumed in the infrastructure world of late.  Namely, building myself a new virtual server box that can be used for testing.  This all sounds pretty easy, but believe me, it’s been far more time consuming than I imagined.  My only saving grace is that I blogged a lot tricks a while back that have helped me out of a jam.  So today, I wanted to talk about the high level steps it takes to build a new system, using virtual server.

Now, virtualbox is my virtual server system of choice, and I love it.  It’s been good.  One of the things I love about it is the clone feature.  It allows me to take a previous snapshot or current state and convert that into a brand new system.  That’s what I’m doing now.  I had an ERP 6.0 EHP4 system I’ve been using for development, and now I need one for testing.  I thought I had one…  but that’s a long story 🙂  Anyway, I chose to clone a snapshot of the EHP4 system before any development work was done.  This gave me a good starting point (side note, be careful if you clone a system, then delete it, then try to clone it again.  I had a lot of trouble making that work with virtualbox).

Now, once I had my cloned system, it needed a lot of work.  First and foremost, it was built on a windows platform, so I needed to get all the updates installed.  If you use windows, you know that there are a LOT of updates, especially going back almost 2 years.  ha ha ha.The next thing I needed to do is move all of the configuration transports back onto this box.  Now a huge deal, but had to wait a while for dropbox to re-synch in order to get everything available, and then one by one, import and install each transport.  Next, I need this to be it’s own instance number.  Good thing I did a post on that a while ago to remind me of all the steps to do this.  However, I was running into issues making it work, so I needed to upgrade the kernel first.  Again, good thing I had a post on that too 🙂  Then I thought… well, I should be on Kernel 720, so I upgraded that too.  So far so good, but suffice it to say, none of these steps are quick.  Now, I want to have this system up to date on all the support packs, particularly related to Web Dynpro, to make sure it can run on as many browsers as possible for testing.  I can’t believe how long this takes.  It’s been running for nearly 2 days.  I guess that’s what happens when you’re 9 – 15 levels down.  Oops.  Anyway, once this finally finishes, I can run SGEN to compile all the changes and take a virtualbox snapshot.  Then I’m finally ready.  (of cource… the next mission will be to create another system with Netweaver 7.3.  I’m sure there will be posts on that soon).

As always, thanks for reading,

Well, if you’ve been reading me for any length of time, I’m sure you know that I started this whole blog initiative because of some marketing stuff that I listened to and followed for a while.  I learned some good stuff from it, but most of it I’ve since left behind, because a lot of the concepts were geared toward selling things on the web.  If you know anything about SAP, it’s not the sort of things that someone is going to whip out a credit card and buy (unless it’s an e-book).  But the blogging thing I’ve stuck with.  It’s been around 18 months that I’ve been doing it hardcore.  I really didn’t expect it to last this long.  Some days it’s a royal pain trying to figure out what I’m going to write about next.  Other days, I know what I can write about, I just don’t have the time to pull the screen shots and do some real in depth configuration, but to quote one of my little boy’s favorite movies, I “just keep swimming”.

The crossroads I’m at is this.  I was under the impression that blogging good content increases your SEO ranking and helps to promote you in organic search.  I am far from understanding much about SEO, but I have been learning enough to know that if you stick with it long enough, it can be “free” publicity straight from google.  Now, the question comes down to where I want to promote.  Perhaps some one out there can give me some guidance on this…  I have two business, my consulting business that I”m trying to move away from, and my software business that I’m trying to move toward.  Our website is undergoing a major revamp and I hope you’ll all check it out when it’s finished.  My partner and I are in different camps on where to blog.  Do we each keep a separate site and blog in our own ways, and periodically blog at Javellin?  Do we both blog at Javellin exclusively?  or do we copy selected content from our own blogs and post it on Javellin?

Now, I was ready to push everything of mine to the new site, in hopes of generating better SEO for the real business.  My partner is worried about losing our content and thinks it better to just link back to it, or “move” selected blogs to Javellin.  anyone out there know the right answer to this?  Am I worried about nothing?  If content is duplicated, do you get punished by google?  is linking a blog to a website help organic search at all?  Guess I’m wondering if any web guru’s out there might know the answer.

Sorry for not being more informative…  today is a question day to y’all.

Thanks for reading,

Well, like always, my life is full of fun little twists and turns.  We have our upcoming MFG conference in Vegas coming up.  Some of the cool things we are looking to do include a Proximity Web Dynpro Application and a mobile app.  Well, the problem is that we needed a new server to run a couple more systems.  Namely, systems new enough to handle web dynpro on any browser and mobility.  So, as CTO, I needed to get myself a new server.

Well, it’s a nice one, 32GB of memory, 3TB HDD, etc.  Well, I waited for a while and it finally showed up.  I was like a kid at Christmas.  I quickly ran up to my office and started to get it up and running.  Well, things were rolling along, I got dropbox installed, norton, virtual box and the like.  Then spent 3 hours copying 500GB of data to start my new system.  I even created a new clone system and start to get that started.   So after a full day of working, I was feeling pretty good about myself.  I got up the next morning, and suddenly the system wouldn’t fire up.  I tried playing with BIO’s, rebooting, unplugging all the usb drives etc…  still no love.  I come to find that Windows 7 professional has issues with drives bigger than 2TB.  I was a bit perturbed…  especially since the company I bought this from specializing in upgrading systems.

So, after a full day of work, the only choice I had to use the emergency disks and install Windows 8.  Well, learned my lessons…  first, be careful letting your hardware exceed your software, second, don’t believe that a company knows everything.

Thanks for reading,

I recently had a big revelation.  I was talking to a guy that does marketing through Linked-in.  I was already intrigued by the idea, so I met with him.  He spun things in a whole new light for me.  I realized that up til now, everything I’ve done is pretty much bottom up selling.  I try to convince service technicians or maybe managers that they need what I’m offering.  When in reality, I’m pitching to wrong people.

The key things I took away from our talk was that you really have to sell to the people with the money.  While it’s great to be able to convince the end users how great your stuff is and how much easier it will make their lives, in the end of the day, I’d be depending on them to sell it to their management, who in turn would need to keep selling it up the chain.  How could I possibly expect someone 3 layers removed to be able to sell my stuff as well as I can?  When I looked at it, my bottom approach was pretty much expecting someone else to do the work for me…  it’s not going to happen (at least not often).

The people I need to sell to are at the top.  The people with CXX in their title are the best place to start =)  Now, this of course brings up a whole new set of issues for me, including fashioning a new message geared toward the CEO, CTO, CFO etc.  Today’s message to any of you out there just getting started, think carefully about your audience.  I didn’t, so now I have to change my thinking.  The good news is that it isn’t wasted work.  If you can’t convince the people that will use it that it’s good, they’ll push back and you likely won’t get the sale.  The key is to be able to sell your stuff all the way down the line.    My next mission is putting together a new message for the top down selling approach.

thanks for reading,

I was sitting at a small coffee shop recently, and had a revelation.  As I was sitting there working, I heard a conversation going on at the counter.  I quickly determined that one guy was the owner.  He was extremely friendly to everyone, but the part that struck me was the way he went on and on about the new things coming to his shop.  He talked about how the new addition of soup was going so well, and how he just found this great new flavor (cream of tomato if you care), then he went to talk about the new truffles they would soon be bringing in.  He was so excited about all these little things and he couldn’t wait to tell anyone that would listen.While I noticed that a lot of the people he told this stuff to half listened or feigned interest in the vain of courtesy, occasionally someone else would say… “I could really go for a truffle right now”…  or something else.

Well, this really struck a chord with me.  Here was a small business owner truly excited about what he was doing.  He loved it, and loved to tell anyone that would listen.  It made me take a second look at my own attitude to my new business.  For example, when I meet someone new and the conversation goes to “what do you for a living”…  I always reply with software consulting, and kind of down play it.  I just came to the conclusion today that I design and sell software for small to midsized businesses using SAP.  I consult to pay the bills (for now), but it’s temporary.  Until I have the mindset that I’m in the software business, not the consulting business, how can I ever get there.

Listening to owner today, really made me stop and look at my own interactions with people.  In general, I tend to take the approach that I don’t want to bore someone with what I do.  Because of this, I don’t expand on my ideas, I don’t get excited, and worst of all, I don’t reinforce that dream in my own head.  All because I project onto others that they might be bored hearing about what I do.  So, my new goal is to shift my own mindset.  Be excited about my software business, introduce myself as a designer and seller of software.  People can make up their own mind if they want to listen to me… but until I can start to get as excited as Frank and his truffles, my chances of success won’t increase each day.

So, with that, I hope you are living your dream.  I hope you’re excited about what you’re doing right now or are trying to do in the future.  The more excited you are, the better chance you can make someone else excited about your dream.

Thanks for reading,

Since it’s the holiday season, I hope y’all won’t mind that there haven’t been as many posts as normal.  I’m trying to take a page from my favorite podcaster, Jack Spirko, and focus on my family this time of year.  So that means, enjoying my time with them and taking a little break from work (not an easy thing for me).

Anyway, I hope everyone has a safe and fun New Year’s Eve and a relaxing New Year’s Day.  Talk to you more next year 🙂

I hope everyone has a great Christmas.  Take this time to enjoy your family and loved one.  I’m going to take a couple of days off and I’ll be back soon.  I want to focus on my family during this great time of year, and I hope y’all do the same.

Remember why we all work so hard…  for me it’s my family and love of the challenge…  but always family first.

Merry Christmas.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, so I hope everyone enjoys a great day with family and friends.