"Spitting in the soup", or as it is more commonly encountered in French, "cracher dans la soupe", is an expression that is largely confined to the world of professional cycling to describe the behaviour of a cyclist who has revealed the secrets of the peloton, normally in relation to performance enhancing drug-taking. The implication being that by spitting in the ‘soup’, the individual spoils things for everyone else.
This series of blog posts about the BSS industry will not be revealing secret drug-taking, although you would be forgiven for thinking that the "strategic roadmaps" touted around by some major BSS vendors could only have been created whilst their authors were heavily drugged. The intention of this series is to draw back the veil from what has become over the last 10 years a broken and highly dysfunctional industry, by taking a look at some of the strategies (con tricks to you and me) employed on both sides of the BSS industry.
A rare but illuminating glimpse of what goes on in the industry was provided in the UK courts a few years ago when the BSkyB successfully sued BSS vendor, EDS, for significant damages (£300m+) in relation to a failed BSS replacement project. Such cases are extremely rare in the industry due to the huge corporate embarrassment on both sides of the fence, not to mention the enormous legal costs involved in fighting a protracted dispute in the high court. Normally such scenarios are settled behind closed doors, well away from any courtroom and subject to stern gagging conditions, to prevent the gory details of what has gone wrong being exposed to public (and industry) scrutiny.
The court's full written judgement is freely available here, and although it is a lengthy document (450 pages), it should be compulsory reading for anyone involved in the buying or selling of large scale IT solutions. As well as containing a multitude of fundamental lessons for the various parties to such transactions, the judgment also delivers some highly entertaining passages relating to the Sky counsel's hilarious courtroom demolition of the EDS bid mastermind, Joe Galloway's credibility.
Highlights of the Case
I have a trimmed the following down to some of the key highlights regarding Mr Galloway - but you can read a verbatim segment of the court judgement regarding Joe Galloway here.
Mr Galloway claims that he attended a College on the Virgin isle of St John.
Mr Galloway claims that he attended a College on the Virgin isle of St John.
- Straight away, Mr Galloway was discredited because the College was a 'buy a degree' online sham - the prosecuting QC bought the same degree as Mr Galloway's, from the same college, for his dog Lulu, who even got higher marks!
He proceeded to maintain the lie however stating that;
He would regularly travel to the college by getting a connecting flight to St. Thomas, which is the largest island and then fly to St. John.
Part of his time and study there was spent working on a project for Coca Cola at Coca Cola facilities
Clearly the old maxim caveat emptor was never more appropriate than in the case of the purchase of a BSS solution.
Industry insiders will chuckle to themselves at the constant references in both the Sky ITT document and EDS response document to "world class" this and "world class" that, as though the repeated use of that phrase would somehow on its own guarantee, a well "world class" outcome.
Now you may be thinking that what happened between Sky and EDS in this case was very much a one-off. Sadly, I have to inform you that the only unique element of the scenario is that it eventually ended up in court. The whole sorry catalogue of vendor misrepresentation, unrealistic operator expectations, inadequate requirement specifications, finger in the air pricing, non-existent resource allocation, unproven solution deployment, inadequate testing etc. etc. is pretty much the norm in the BSS industry for this type of project. I say all credit to Sky for having the balls (and deep pockets) to refuse to accept such woeful service execution from their vendor.
In my next article - "On The Hook" - I will address the seemingly hopeless plight of most telecoms operators with respect to their existing BSS platform.
You can read part two of John's article here
John Phillips is the Managing Director for CoralTree Systems.
John’s Code to Success: “I've never been afraid to venture beyond my existing technical skill-set, viewing any such scenarios as fantastic learning opportunities, rather than risks to be avoided. With today’s modern technologies, if a business requirement can be described in words, then it can almost always be developed and delivered.”
He would regularly travel to the college by getting a connecting flight to St. Thomas, which is the largest island and then fly to St. John.
- Turns out that whilst there is a runway on St. Thomas, there is no airport/runway on St.John (which is only two kilometers away), nor has there ever been - when pressed he replied "As I said before, I don't recall specifically"
Part of his time and study there was spent working on a project for Coca Cola at Coca Cola facilities
- Evidence provided by a solicitor that travelled to the Island and a US Virgin Isles senator - which was not challenged - showed that, just like the airport/runway, there has never been nor is there a Coca Cola office or facility on the island. No, infact, was/had there ever been a college of the name stated by Mr. Galloway.
- He did indeed provide the court with a book that he said was from his time spent at the college - it bore the barcode, stickers and pencil markings which linked it with a library on a Missouri college campus and had been recently acquired.
So what does this case tell us?
For those of you who wisely invest the time to read through the entire judgement, a number of striking features of the case will emerge:-
- The breath-taking willingness of the vendor to say and do virtually anything in order to win the business, an approach that can be summed up as "he who lies most, wins".
- The reliance of the vendor on obscure contractual wording to avoid liability for any such pre-contract (mis)representations.
- The failure of virtually everyone involved in the delivery of the project to follow "normal IT industry" planning, analysis, design, development and testing procedures.
- The overwhelming conclusion that having won the business, the vendor's delivery plan consisted of little more than "winging it".
Clearly the old maxim caveat emptor was never more appropriate than in the case of the purchase of a BSS solution.
Industry insiders will chuckle to themselves at the constant references in both the Sky ITT document and EDS response document to "world class" this and "world class" that, as though the repeated use of that phrase would somehow on its own guarantee, a well "world class" outcome.
Now you may be thinking that what happened between Sky and EDS in this case was very much a one-off. Sadly, I have to inform you that the only unique element of the scenario is that it eventually ended up in court. The whole sorry catalogue of vendor misrepresentation, unrealistic operator expectations, inadequate requirement specifications, finger in the air pricing, non-existent resource allocation, unproven solution deployment, inadequate testing etc. etc. is pretty much the norm in the BSS industry for this type of project. I say all credit to Sky for having the balls (and deep pockets) to refuse to accept such woeful service execution from their vendor.
In my next article - "On The Hook" - I will address the seemingly hopeless plight of most telecoms operators with respect to their existing BSS platform.
You can read part two of John's article here
John Phillips is the Managing Director for CoralTree Systems.
John’s Code to Success: “I've never been afraid to venture beyond my existing technical skill-set, viewing any such scenarios as fantastic learning opportunities, rather than risks to be avoided. With today’s modern technologies, if a business requirement can be described in words, then it can almost always be developed and delivered.”
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