Tag Archives: Business Continuity

Facebook down: “It’s us! no! our engineers caused it”!

27 Tuesday Jan 2015

Posted by in Business Continuity, New Trends, Open Compute Project

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You probably know by now that Facebook went down this morning for 50mn.

Some hackers claimed to have caused it when FB actually reported that they introduced a change in their configuration management system.

As I wrote previously, and tested with so many interviewees:

‘What is the first cause of incident in the industry?”

Forget people, software, hardware, your grandmother, the first cause of incident is CHANGE. I’m sure you have heard of the idiom “If it ain’t broken, don’t fix it.

So FB introduced a change in their configuration management system, which triggered an outage for billions of people. You can work out 1 billion x 50mn = time recovered for people to actually socializing with humans that they could see! Great news.

In recent years FB have pushed an initiative called “Facebook’s Open Compute Project”, designed to drive standardization and automation right through the datacenter).

It is very surprising, despite the resiliency and multiple datacenters, that one single change was able to take down such service during 50mn.

Christmas period was a nightmare for M&S general merchandise.

09 Friday Jan 2015

Posted by in Black Friday 2014

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M&S have conducted their quarter 3 2014/2015 management statement, and the news aren’t good.

Marc Bolland, Chief Executive, said: “We had a difficult quarter in General Merchandise, dominated by unseasonal conditions and an unsatisfactory performance in our e-commerce distribution centre.”

This is the second year in a row that M&S is blaming the weather conditions. (see Q3 2013/2014 press release).

Not a surprise  that M Bolland named their distribution centre as a cause of disruption as the CEO of John Lewis made an allusion to it on Monday.

Blaming the e-commerce distribution centre is not the solution on itself. I recommend M&S to review their entire ecosystem and capacity planning.

Should the retailers adapt their online stock levels to their actual capacity to deliver on time and on quality? Or the other way around, should they adapt their delivery capacity to meet the demand? In other words, does it make sense to sell 100 items when they know that they can deliver only 50 on time and on quality?

More information on Taking orders is great but how about delivering on time and on quality?

Xmas John Lewis’ sales tumbled and Black Friday is to be blamed!

07 Wednesday Jan 2015

Posted by in Digital Transformation, Retail

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We are now starting to get more data of the real impact of the Black Friday retail frenzy.

On the 10 December 2014, I wrote an article about delivery issues that some of the largest retailers faced as a result of Black Friday craziness. I was also interrogative on the real impact on the bottom line Black Friday will have on the entire peak trading period.

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John Lewis confirmed to the BBC that Black Friday was “more challenging profitability-wise”.

According to the Guardian, John Lewis saw sales fall back 1.4% in Christmas week as sales of electrical goods were pulled forward by the Black Friday promotional weekend.

Furthermore, John Lewis said to the BBC that “online purchases were behind a rise in Christmas sales, despite shop purchases falling over the festive period and like-for-like sales were up 4.8% in the five weeks to December 27 – as store sales dropped around 1%”.

John Lewis boss added “Black Friday is a blessing in the sky as we can achieve record sales online and that our customers can have confidence in the delivery”.

Andy Street made a direct comment on its competitors who weren’t able to deliver as a result of the massive surge in sales:

“it is quite challenging for the rest of the industry as it is pushing all this trading in one day”.    The proportion of sales taken online during one day compared to the entire festive period is a new thing in the UK and the “dependence on fulfillment”.

M Street do not think that the retailers “can put the genie back in the bottle”, however he hopes that next Black Friday won’t be bigger.

Street declared in the Guardian that he believed “John Lewis had outperformed rivals because of its investment in IT and delivery facilities, which meant it was able to meet online orders without any hitches during peak periods, including Black Friday”.

Well done to their Online team, analysts and architects who were able to get the investments and capacity solutions correctly sized and approved. This is pretty impressive when one day web visits were up 300% YoY.

It fair to say that Black Friday ‘effect’ is not as productive as retailers expected. Basically, it sounds that they are selling similar volumes but at a discounted price, hence impacting their profitability.

We are now waiting for Christmas sales data from John Lewis competitors.

Taking orders is great but how about delivering on time and on quality?

10 Wednesday Dec 2014

Posted by in Digital Transformation, Retail, Risk management

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In my last post I wrote about the issues that some of the large retailers had, in order to cope with the online demand on Black Friday. I also questioned the ability of the same retailers to deliver on time.

It was reported that M&S was Hit By Pre-Christmas Online Delivery Delays and that  “share price has fallen 3% as investors fear overall sales will be affected”.

Unfortunately, M&S aren’t an isolated case, as written by Zoe Wood in the Guardian, Christmas shopping surge puts retailers under strain online. In this article, we learn that Tesco Direct, Debenhams, and many other retailers are trying to clear the backlog of orders whilst impacting the delivery date of new orders.

Taking in consideration the entire commerce chain, including delivering on the retailer’s commitments:

Should the retailers be taking orders when they can’t deliver one time ?

A purchase isn’t just made of the item sold. Especially when everyone can compare online. The product is made of the online experience, the quality of the communication during the sale process until and after delivery, the delivery itself (timing, product condition, item missing) and the after sale services such as customer services and guarantee (for example John Lewis offers free extension guarantees).

Should the retailers adapt their online stock levels to their actual capacity to deliver on time and on quality? Or the other way around, should they adapt their delivery capacity to meet the demand? In other words, does it make sense to sell 100 items when they know that they can deliver only 50 on time and on quality?. Customers get frustrated.

The question is, would you accept as a customer to be informed during the online shopping process that your items can’t be delivered in store on time, potentially too late for xmas? Or is it an accepted inconvenience that the rebate offsets?

They are  number of lessons to be learnt from the Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales.  In particular, the operating costs incurred in order to minimise the delivery delays, coupled with the reduced margin and the impact on the delivery chain during the following days and weeks.

Overall, £810m was spent online just on Black Friday. It will be interesting  to know the total amount spent online until Christmas, hence the real impact on the bottom line for the entire peak trading period.

Black Friday

01 Monday Dec 2014

Posted by in Black Friday 2014

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According to the BBC, Amazon’s “website recorded orders for more than 5.5 million goods, with about 64 items sold per second.”

Meanwhile, Tesco direct, Argos, Currys and John Lewis implemented queuing on their site.

On Tesco Direct, the queuing technic involved a rolling 30-second period when your browser would try to access the site. If unsuccessful, the browser would start yet an other 30-second period.

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Argos had simply put an holding page up, informing their customers of the massive traffic and asking them to try again.

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In the case of Tesco Direct and of Argos, the tactic used was aimed at mitigating the customer’s experience already on the site.

Basically, the retailers  implemented an e-bouncer at the entrance to ensure that if you were lucky enough to be on the online shop, you could still move around and buy stuff. And if you were kept outside of the online shop, you would have to wait for someone to get out of the shop first before being allowed to get in.

The objective is to avoid that the entire online shop collapses and then no sales could be processed.

This tactic is required when the demand exceeds the technical capacities (software, infrastructure, network) of the online shop.

Meanwhile Amazon had put in place a smart demand management. The deals were opened for a period of time, openly communicated, informing customers of the remaining stock level, and offering a wait list when not full.

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Throwing more tin into the mix or e-bouncing shoppers is not the only answer and Amazon got it.  They developed a control demand strategy coupled with great marketing. Well-done Amazon.

The question is whether all  orders will be delivered on time. Some retailers have already extended the delay when you buy online and collect in store.

In my opinion, all these technical glitches are far less terrible than the events in stores. As Barbara Ellen wrote in The Observer, Sunday 30 November 2014: “The Black Friday shopping scrums are so shaming”.

IT under pressure: McKinsey Global Survey results

27 Thursday Mar 2014

Posted by in Talent Management

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Read the McKinsey report.

I’m interested in your views – Please contribute.

Mine is that the report is spot on number of points, but does not develop any recommendations.

I observed that technical & analytical skills are different, and unfortunately, with the increasing complexity of information systems, IT staff do need to connect the dots – ‘read the matrix’, or they aren’t capable of addressing the most complex situations because they remain in their own expertise silos, missing the big picture. Analytical training, use case scenarios, cross function-training, workshops, post mortem analysis and coaching are the keys. It takes time and energy, but certainly contribute to reduce the MTTR.

In addition, the report does point out the lack of clear career path. I designed in the past separate management and ‘individual contributor’ career paths, formalizing the expectations and more importantly:  an engineer becoming an expert will be recognized, compensated and valued, at comparable levels within the company and outside on the market.