Radovan Igliar
Agile Portfolio Management and Cost Attribution

• Association of Legal Entities
– Universities
– Academy of Science

• Members
– 27 universities
– Academy of science + departments
• Non-members
– 12 elementary schools
– 106 high schools
– 10 private universities
– 25
– 40
– 39 research public administration health
– 23
– 26 libraries other

• 60% Members
– Annual fee based upon size of the organization
– All services on best-effort basis
• 30% Non-members
– Connectivity – price list
– No models for extra services
• 10% Research
• Funding
Members
Non-members
Reseach

But …
Can I talk about charging model and cost-attribution …
.. if we are not certain in our product portfolio ?
I can talk, where we are now.

Attributing costs to products and services
• The solution was
– full-cost (cost – sharing)
– CRM
• Problem is – that we still don’t have the DATA
Let’s talk a little about problem-solving perspective

We identify a problem .

... and we feel stg. has to be done .

But we are engineers .
„Reasonably smart people can rationalize anything, but ‘engineers’ are especially gifted at this.”
Ash Maurya

We have (yet) sufficiency of resource …
„Reasonably smart people can rationalize anything, but ‘engineers’ are especially gifted at this.”
Ash Maurya

… so we start building solutions .
„Reasonably smart people can rationalize anything, but ‘engineers’ are especially gifted at this.”
Ash Maurya

Problem identification
• „We don’t know our users and how to communicate with them.“
• „We offer right services for the users, but ...“
• „We don’t know how does our services cost .“
• “We should present us in a better way.”

Looking for Solutions
IN REAL
• “We don’t know our users and how to communicate with them.”
Let’s implement CRM. Huray!
• “We offer right services for the users, but...”
We should focus on marketing. That will save us.
• “We don’t know how does our services cost .”
Let’s implement full-cost model. That’s the solution.
• “We should present us in a better way.”
Let’s make new website.

Looking for Solutions
IN REAL
• “We don’t know our users and how to communicate with them.”
CRM TOOL
• “We offer right services for the users, but...” marketing
PR
• “We don’t know how does our services cost .” full-cost
• “We should present us in a better way.” website
TOOL
ONE-WAY

Looking for Solutions
IN REAL
• “We don’t know our users and how to communicate with them.”
CRM
For whom?
Processes?
Do we have data?
• “We offer right services for the users, but...” marketing
Events
Website
• “We don’t know how does our services cost .” full-cost
Identifiers
Again -Data?
• “We should present us in a better way.” website
CMS
Structure

Looking for Solutions
IN REAL
• “We don’t know our users and how to communicate with them.”
CRM ½ year
• “We offer right services for the users, but...” marketing
2 years
• “We don’t know how does our services cost .” full-cost 1+ year
• “We should present us in a better way.” website
1 ½ year

Looking for Solutions
IN REAL
• … and establish a working group to solve it, and
• appoint people which identified the problem,
• but not those that should participate.

Looking for Solutions
IN REAL
• .. which leads to communication problems .

Looking for Solutions
• communicate
Get out of the building. ~ Steve Blank
• right services
Know our segment, products, and added value.
• cost
Know our market and products.
• present us
Start building customer channels. ~Eric Ries

Back to the
… cost attribution and charging models  .

Attributing costs to products and services
• The solution was full-cost and CRM.
• So working-groups were established.
• Accounting / Booking costs:
– 1. by project (due to fund policy)
– 2. by department (due to internal budgeting)
– 3. not by products
• CRM
– Public procurement on the SaaS software
• Problem is – that we still don’t have the DATA

Attributing costs to products and services
• Booking costs:
– 1. by project (due to fund policy)
– 2. by department (due to internal budgeting)
– 3. not by products (yet)
• 1+2 works with most extra service, if we don’t include share of the price for core services
(network, monitoring, NIC, DNS, etc.)
– metrics: fix rate, percentage, usage?
• so we still have to do (3), and to know our product portfolio

Attributing costs to products and services
• Nov. 2012
– Before only one service charged and offered
(connectivity to non-members)
– Other services offered to member on best-effort
– Product manager
• Dec. 2012
– Stg. Like „Service Board“ established
– Product portfolio
• Jan. 2013
– Business development dept. established
• Feb. 2013
– Proof-of-concepts projects

Attributing costs to products and services
• Product portfolio
– Lean Canvas
– Interviews with product owners
• Our approach
– Think big, start small, move fast
– Proof of concept projects

• Strategy
– EU/National level: Unclear and changing
– Internal: not just words, mean them
– Self-sustainability and not-competing
– Research
– Revenue vs.
vs.
Service-delivery
Profit
• Legal
– Members vs. non-members
– Legal form (Association of Legal Entities)
– Access policy to commercial R&D
– Opportunity to Public procurement

• Products and services
– Diversification
– Improving user experience
– Best effort vs.
Guarantee of quality
– Outsourcing vs. In-house
• Marketing
– Marketing strategy
– Identifying customer segments
– Building customer channels
– Communicating the added value
– Utilize unfair advantage
– Campaigns

• Finance
– Cost structure and cost sharing
– New business models
• Transformation of Culture
– History
– Sufficiency of resources
– Certainty
– Professional blindness

eduroam storage security mobile connectivity

• eduroam
Organizations want eduroam, but do not have all the resources.
We have the knowledge, but not personal resources.
– New business model
– Focus on revenue
– Outsourcing of the technical installation
– User support (24/7 support desk)
– Cost structure and cost sharing
– Quality of service

• double-house connection
Commercial R&D companies
– New business models
– Access-policy
– Framework for state aid for R&D&I
– Marketing

• Data storage
– Diversification
• Basic service – in membership fees
• Extra service - pricing
– Cost-sharing
– Focus on profit
– Marketing

• Antispam mail gateway
– New business models
– Customer need evaluation
– Product life-cycle and planning
– Focus on profit

N: Radovan Igliar
E: radovan.igliar@cesnet.cz
W: https://www.cesnet.cz/
L: http://cz.linkedin.com/in/proteo/