We kill $10 elephants
Often as we travel around the country people ask us what we do and what
exactly is “Usability Engineering,” “Business Technology
Integration,” “6-dimensional Modeling”
or any of the other weapons that we bring to bear on our customers’ problems. To
simplify, Peter started to use the metaphor “We kill $10 elephants,” which for
those of us not raised in Africa may require a little more explanation.
In Africa, where Peter grew up, everyone knows that a really good elephant
will cost you around $1,000 – but occasionally you will find “a really great
deal” and get one for $10. So you jump on it. In systems — whether building systems, infrastructure systems, or
technology systems, or even, for that matter, human-centric systems
— the same
bargain mentality applies.
We often hear "But that’s all we could afford!" And our response is: “OK, but
did you calculate the real cost of not doing it right the first time?” In
other words, how much is this “bargain solution” really going to cost you over
its lifetime in rework and remediation. Most
of the time, the client is so busy “feeding” and “disciplining” the cheap
(demanding, recalcitrant, balky, bad-tempered) elephant and its real world
problems — i.e., throwing good money after bad — they have absolutely no time to
even think about what it’s really costing them.
Take a step back from your major problems and just post labels on each and
think about how many of them are due to trying to work around a poor investment.
The biggest mistake many of our clients make is to think they’re stuck with the
bad bargain,
and stuck with the escalating operating costs that go along with it.
Well, today we don't actually shoot elephants (unless you specifically
request it), but we do help our clients extricate themselves from owning their
equivalent. When we can, we prefer to stop our clients from buying the wrong thing, and we do
that principally with due diligence tools such as usability engineering,
feasibility studies, impact analyses and multi-dimensional modeling technologies
(like 6-Dimensional Modeling) that can run sophisticated what-if simulations.
But if you're stuck with a $10 elephant, we can help you redirect,
remediate, redesign to get that elephant earning its keep — or maybe trade it in
for a better-behaved one.
Usability engineering is a key tool, but thirty years
of high-level troubleshooting in a broad range of industries is the skill that
directs the tool. Our philosophy is to look at the whole picture, including
reasonable life cycle return on investment, to help our clients drive rational
decisions that optimize their resources at all times. In short, we help our
clients to really see for the first time where major problems exist, what
their true cost is, what the options are to resolve them and what the return on
investment is to resolving them.
While our methods and technologies work in all industries, we have more
experience in the utility, petrochemical, aerospace, civil engineering, defense
and construction industries. We don hard hats to work in the mud, and pencil
protectors to work in the data room. Our Business Technology
Integration practice is a particular application of the $10 elephant
metaphor to management information systems. Our Happy
Schools practice is a specific application of advanced technologies to
educational infrastructure. What we frequently hear from our
clients when they have major failures in their building / hospital / educational
/ industrial / service / technological system is that “The occasional failure is
just the basic cost of doing this.” Very rarely do we hear the other side of the
coin: “This is the real cost to our organization of not having done this right
the first time.” Quite often, it’s never been calculated.
Next time someone offers you a $10 elephant, take a deep breath and work out
the real cost of owning, maintaining, and constantly retraining a
demanding, recalcitrant, balky, bad-tempered beast.
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