Two subjects close to my heart at the minute. I’m currently doing a dissertation for my Masters degre (MscMIS) on the topic of franchising as a method of providing an optimal delivery model for services to the SME sector.
One of the key anchors of the paper is an investigation of some of the things learned in the Open Source world can provide mechanisms to deliver services to small bsuinesses, specifically through franchises or aggregated services consortia.
The impetus for the paper comes from my own experience providing a gamut of IT Services to the SME sector in my business (Patchcom Services). As a self employed IT service provider I quickly learned that one of the primary attributes that my clients get from my service is the persoanl relationship I have with them. Through knowledge of their IT systems and more importantly their business processes and culture that I gain from an ongoing relationship, I can much more effectively make recommendations and manage their technology infrastructure.
When I looked at the market for of those providing IT Services to the SME sector I recognised 2 distinct service provider types:
- Traditional IT Service Company.
- One-man-band sole traders providing either low end support or high end consultants.
Both these methods of delivering services seemed inherently flawed. The traditional IT Service company failed to build a coherent relationship with their clients and as such lost efficiency and failed to deliver optimum value. On the other end of the scale, one-man-bands, on the whole were far too specialised to provide any meaningful input to their SME clients goals.
Other factors also come into play such as the specifc traits of SME businesses as opposed to their larger cousins and economies and efficiencies of scale. After I chewed over these variables for a while and after experiencing first hand the power of Open Source’s distributed communities, on returning from EurOSCON in 2005 it hit me that the best way to deliver service to SMEs would be through a franchise / aggregated services model.
Much props to Roberto Gallopini for his articles on the subject. I firmly believe in his points, with one exception. When talking specifically about delivering Open Source services (or pretty much any professional service for that matter) the local element must be very strong. One of the key things that SME clients value is the personal relationship. Once they have a relationship with someone they trust, they are most often, quite willing to offload the responsibilty that person is willing to take, allowing them more time to focus on what they are good at. With a large multinational like Sun spearheading an Open Source franchise, I see there being great difficulty in maintaing that persoanl aspect. Especially since vendor lock in would be a primary concern!
Instead I see an International body (such as TOF-e), drawing standards from distinguished organisations such as ITIL at the higher end. Also by providing a platform for micro-enterprise IT service providers to manage their business and collaborate, contribute and source hardware / services etc, this top to bottom framework can effectively deliver consistent standards to clients. This model is not strictly franchising but more of an aggregated services model. Instead of the local IT service providers being branded as e.g. “TOF-e IT Service Providers”, they would be “Foo IT Solutions”… Powered by TOF-e.
Finally, the second leg of this view is that the mechanisms to create this type of organisation are right under our noses… in the open source world. Not only can the framework be built on Open Source products, the very tools that Open Source uses to operate a distributed community of people could be applied to ensure the best level of quality and adherence to standards. This idea is nothing new and has been researched in some detail (e.g. Mark Federman’s “The Penguinist Discourse”). Many people will scoff at the idea at taking concepts of Open Source out of the software world but in my research I hope to at least examine the potential of implementing Open Source practices in the specifc organisation structure described above.
Full Disclosure:
1. I am not affiliated directly with TOF-e.
2. I hope to use my research to create an open source application to deliver the service outlined above. (Any interested developers are welcome to join in! — to my knowledge there is nobody else working on something like this.)