October 9, 2000

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Secret CIO:
Playing The Standards Game

Vendors support compatibility, as long as it provides an advantage over the competition

By Herbert W. Lovelace

o matter how much we understand a situation intellectually, it doesn't really hit home until we experience it personally. The examples are legion--you have sympathy for friends whose mobility is limited because they now have a child, but you don't really relate to their position until your own offspring arrives. Or we may know the importance of not tempting fate by driving too long with the needle hovering near empty, but it's not until we get stuck on a highway late at night that we vow never again to pass a gas station without checking the gauge.

Having been in the IT industry a long time, I know the importance of standardization--I've initiated more than my fair share of projects to achieve it. I have righteously accepted the undying enmity of colleagues by eliminating multiple desktop suites from the company. Of course, I had compassion for their conversion difficulties--meaning that I added money to the training budget and allocated a few extra people to the support team--but, as CIO, I never experienced a problem. The manager of the changeover project graciously (and wisely) decided to use me as a test case. In other words, my PC disappeared as I was going into a planning meeting one morning and reappeared the following dawn, accoutered with the latest software and with my data files arranged just the way I wanted.

I had quite forgotten that event when upon returning home one Friday evening, seeking the solace of the hearth and a quiet drink with Cindy, I learned that our next-door neighbor had stopped over for some technical advice. It seems that Arthur had decided to change his mail program to a new and improved one (in his opinion) produced by a different vendor.

Mellowed by the marvelous dinner I saw being cooked (and the beverage in my hand), I called and said I'd be over later that night to square away his problem. He thanked me with heartwarming gratitude and I smiled, content in the satisfaction that I was doing my part to save another human being from the vagaries of technology.

After thoroughly enjoying our meal (which exceeded my expectations), I said to Cindy that I would be back shortly. She frowned and asked if it wouldn't be wiser to wait until the morning, since my ability to predict how long it takes me to do anything on the computer varies from wildly optimistic to insanely less than realistic. I smiled, gave her a kiss, and departed.

It was only after I had been at Arthur's machine for a hour or so, knocking down one roadblock after another under his admiring gaze, that I hit the real stumbling block--and realized why standards that ensure compatibility are good and probably should be required of vendors under threat of immersion in boiling transmission fluid. Being unable to figure out why the message import wizard wouldn't work, I decided to try an end-run around the bottleneck by instead exporting his messages from the old program to the new format. Then it hit me. Even though I was dealing with the two most popular mail programs on the planet, neither could export messages to the other--only (or so they claim) import them. So as the clock struck the bewitching hour, I finally admitted defeat and said that I would sleep on the problem and see him over the weekend.

On the walk home, I thought about the situation. I could envision the vendors' reasoning: Why should we spend our money to make it easy for a customer to switch from us? We should be using our resources to make it easy for him to switch to us!

On the other hand, wouldn't it be nice if all of these fine words we hear every day about the importance of the customer were translated into action? Just imagine advertising which said something like, "In the future, we intend to remain the best, but we'll ensure your right to choose."

On second thought, maybe these companies do support standards (theirs) and are sincerely interested in making the customer's life easier--as long as you want to use their products. After all, if switching to someone else's program is so potentially painful that it isn't worth the trouble to even try, look at all the time you've saved.

Herbert W. Lovelace shares his experiences (changing most names, including his own, to protect the guilty) as CIO of a multibillion dollar international company. Send him E-mail at lovelace@home.com and read his online column at InformationWeek.com, where he will provide real--and sometimes whimsical--answers to your questions.

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