When I moved to San Francisco from Boston about a year ago the biggest change was not the weather, the food, or the hills, but the commute to the office. In Boston it took me about a half hour to walk to work across the Charles River via the Mass Ave. Bridge and through MIT’s main campus. In San Francisco it takes me about a half hour to drive down Van Ness to the 101, and down the 101 to Foster City, where Forrester’s main Bay Area office is inconveniently located (public transportation is unfortunately about a 1.5 to 2 hour ordeal, since the office is no where near CalTrain or BART).

Needless to say, this new set-up required a car, and I had not owned a car since high school — a red 1976 Impala station wagon, in case you were wondering. Like many Americans I embraced the freedom of a car and decided to go full bore and get myself a GPS for easy navigation to client sites, weekend get-aways, (eventual) cross-country drives, and alley trapping. The Garmin Nuvi 660 was the big winner and I have been pleased with the purchase. One of my favorite features has been the built-in traffic; the device has saved me from getting stuck in several major jams. However a couple of months ago the traffic subscription expired. Since I had been impressed with the results so far I decided to plunk down the $60.00 to get traffic for life.

This is where the trouble began . . .

Like many companies Garmin has a handy online purchasing process for many of its services, so one afternoon I grabbed my GPS, headed to my computer and set out to update the subscription. I was moving along quite nicely — I had found my device in their list and had found the traffic service — when I was surprised to see step 4 (below).

GPS? Check. Power source? We’re plugged into the computer so, check. Turn the key in the ignition . . . umm, my computer doesn’t come with an ignition.

After a few moments too long of dumbfounded staring I realized that Garmin either expected me to have an internet connection in my car, or I was to go to my car, find the receiver unit ID, and come back to input it. Now, I’m not a lazy man, but I was very close to packing it in right here. Since I live in San Francisco and park the car on the street, the trek to the car is not as simple as stepping into the garage and turning on the car. For me this meant first remembering where I parked, and second walking up and over Russian Hill — a brief aside, never try to park in Russian Hill unless its 10AM to 4PM Monday through Friday.

After completing this task I returned to my computer, continued my way through the process, handed over my credit card, and was presented with my next obstacle: a 16-digit HEX code that needed to be input back into the GPS once I returned yet again to the car.

Well, dear reader, you should be happy to know that I survived, and once again receive traffic updates on my GPS. Despite my triumph I couldn’t help but wonder how many others were less fortunate, and fell out of the process along the way and, further still, how much that cost Garmin in lost revenue. So, I decided to do a very rough back of the envelope calculation (most numbers are conservative guesses):

Estimated 2008 Device Sales: 18 million
Percent that are traffic enabled: 20%
Traffic enabled devices in 2008: 3.6 million

Percent of people with traffic devices that would pay for traffic: 10%
Potential traffic sales: 360,000

Percent of people who drop out of the online form: 10%
Lost purchases: 36,000
Lost revenue at $60 per purchase: $2.16 million

What would be the cost of at least informing me I would need to make the trip back and form to my car, or telling me what I would need before getting started? My guess is nothing at all.

Comments Off

One of the major knocks on SaaS (and Web based apps in general) is what happens when you have no connectivity. As an analyst I travel a fair deal and many of my most productive hours are spent sitting on a plane responding to email, writing reports, and catching up on all the research I should be reading but often don’t have time for. What I can’t do: file my expense reports, close my CRM records, or complete my end-of-quarter evaluations. All of these apps are delivered to me online.

All things considered this has never been that big of a deal for me. But it hasn’t stopped SaaS critics from knocking these apps as insufficient. Not surprisingly there have been two ways to handle such concerns. First — the route taken by Etelos, Zoho (via GoogleGears), and others — is building apps that have the ability to go offline and then sync back up on re-connectivity. This works quite well with Outlook and my mail file, but frankly gets pretty complicated when we start talking about collaborative applications like spreadsheets, powerpoint decks, or Word documents, all of which are leading candidates for SaaS delivery. The second tactic — the route that Google seems to be taking, despite GoogleGears — is to wait it out; connectivity will eventually catch up to the apps.

Right now I have to give a big vote for the latter tactic. As I write I’m somewhere over Pennsylvania on an American Airlines flight from JFK to SFO. I’m on my way home from Thanksgiving and using Gogo, the Aircell offering available now on select AA routes. Though I couldn’t use iPass — the single best application Forrester provides us — sign up for Gogo was fast and efficient. I even had a brief chat conversation with a customer service rep to get things squared away. The connectivity is fantastic and, if I were to be honest, better than I’ve had the last week in Connecticut (thank you Stamford Sheraton). With one easy transaction one of the last places I get stuck without connectivity is gone — at least when I fly from JFO to SFO. Best of all Hulu is working like a champ. Now I just have to get those damned expense reports filed . . . as soon as I’m done with this episode of It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia.

Comments Off

I just got back from a week in Tokyo — sorry about the light posting — where I was consulting and running a workshop. I have to say: Tokyo is a BIG city! I spent a year in London back in 2002-2003, and while London seems to spread out over most of the island nothing quite prepared me for Tokyo. Every direction you look, all the way to the horizon its just skyscraper after skyscraper; clusters of them going on forever.

As for the picture above, that’s what much of the city felt like, a complete blur. Its nice to be home — until tomorrow anyway. If you are heading to the IBM Software Analyst conference let me know.

View Comments