While advisers are focussing on key aspects of RDR – such as qualifications and shift to adviser charging, they also need to pay attention to their communication strategy – i.e., changing communication needs of their customers. Social media is just one example of how the next generation does things differently, and how advisers may have to adapt to them.
Advisors may think that their current clients – the retiring baby boomers – still like the old fashioned face-to-face meetings. However, the object of their advise – their children, think differently. Naturally, the inheritors of the wealth are likely to gravitate towards the same advisors as their parents, but only as long as the advisors are serving their communication needs. The millennials (or Generation Y), are just not satisfied by one set of advise. They like to ‘trawl around’ on the web, engage in discussion forums, fish for more information on companies’ websites, comparison sites and social networks, before arriving at a decision. They are not happy with the annual statements received from the providers on their funds; they would like to view their funds at least once a month over the Internet.
Before they meet the advisers, they are sure to research the funds, their options, the comparative returns and thus go to the meeting ‘armed’ with a lot more information. And possibly, with an opinion on how they would like their funds to perform. In this situation, advisors need to (at least) aware of what is being discussed on these forum where their (potential) clients are actively engaged.
The millennials have – very often – conflicting priorities. More than the profit maximisations, they are driven towards ethics, morality and environment. Weren’t we the same a couple of decades ago? For them it is important to understand the green credentials of a firm (providers and advisors), their CSR activities and their ethics, before they would decide to invest in them.
Building and implementing a social media strategy is not difficult. It helps if advisors have a clear vision of their business, the profile of their clients and their expertise. Being a ‘Jack of all trades’ no longer work in this domain. Armed with your social media strategy, you have a clearer picture on who you want to target and for which products and services. Social media provides you an opportunity to engage with a much wider audience and understand the emerging needs of your potential clients. Once you have perfected the messaging on the social media, you’ll be surprised to find how quickly the message is being distributed to a very large audience (your potential clients). Your website is no longer a dull-and-drab page, but a ‘happening’ place for discussions on relevant (to your potential client) issues. Its like creating a new page every day. And pulling clients to your sites, by its contents.
While you are thinking about the new operating model in the post RDR world, it may be worth considering how to build these new practices in your business to be able to attract the next generation.
Showing posts with label Change Management. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Change Management. Show all posts
Tuesday, 18 October 2011
Tuesday, 28 June 2011
Customer Satisfaction is passé! Think Customer Advocacy!
Forget customer satisfaction. It is a thing of past; it reflects what has happened – you cannot build forward looking strategies on data from past events. In the world of social media, supported by smartphones and location tagging, you need to take customer satisfaction to the next level. Your customers need to be passionate about using your products and services and feel proud to talk about it. They are not your customers – they are advocates of your brand! And they love themselves and feel proud for doing just that!
Advocacy is very different from customer satisfaction or loyalty. A satisfied customer is happy to have used your products/services –he may return (and become loyal) or may not. Advocates are a breed apart. Advocates are ‘smitten’ by your brand – they see a reflection of their personality and values in your brand and seek to promote it. Advocacy is a relationship based on trust. Companies lose control of their brand message to the advocates who reach to the masses in an anonymous, everlasting way.
Advocates are the dreams for any company. But how do you go building advocates?
Start with the trolls: Surprised, are you? Trolls have the potential to generate a lot of negative vibes, doubts and apprehensions about your brand. They may not be factually correct – nevertheless, they sow a seed of doubt! Develop an environment where customers would not talk bad about your products/services. Identify and prioritise customers with high negativity and engage with them to fix the root issues. In many cases, the root cause of negativity is a trivial issue – which unattended, has snowballed. A small delay in response, a minor discrepancy in their invoice or a sour experience at your front office! All which could have been fixed with a simple solution, but were neglected and has become a sore point for the troll. It is still not late. Go ahead and fix it.
Very recently I stayed at an upmarket hotel at Bristol, UK. I was unfortunate to be trapped in a lift during a power outage! Being trapped in a lift where the emergency lights are not working and no one is responding to the alarm for over 25 minutes is a horrifying experience. I can’t blame the hotel for power outage! But I definitely blame the hotel for extremely poor handling of the situation after the event! The hotel staff seemed least bothered with the fact that a customer has been trapped in the lift for 25 minutes! Later when I complained to the hotel management (and even their CEO), I got the impression that (a) they doubt the trauma I experienced; and (b) it was not their fault as I was trapped due to power outage!
The experience of 25 minutes has converted me to a troll! Had they handled the post event in a positive way, I could (and definitely would) have commented on their excellent treatment of the situation!
Create the milieu for a positive customer service experience: Study the complaints from your customers – they have sufficient data on what does NOT work well in your business. What is the root cause of the problem in that department? My bet is (a) communications – internal, inter-functional communications; and/or (b) empowerment – the workers are not authorised to take initiative, or are not encouraged to do so! Develop effective internal communications where a worker does not think twice before taking a decision to deliver a positive customer experience. Reward and publicise such instances!
Take that extra step: when your customers least expect it and in return you will experience their long term commitment. A couple of years ago, I was travelling to Bangalore in India. My flight (Emirates) landed at Chennai from where I took a connecting flight to Bangalore. The domestic flight was through a local carrier – Kingfisher. When I landed at Bangalore I realised that I had a missing luggage (I was travelling with my family and hence 7 pieces of luggage). It was obviously not Kingfisher’s mistake as I had failed to collect my luggage at Chennai and hence did not check it in with Kingfisher. The Kingfisher ground staff went to his office and called the Emirates office at Chennai. When he was not able to locate my luggage, he took down my details and was finally able to track my luggage at Chennai airport. He arranged for the pickup and delivered it to my hotel in Bangalore. Of course, it cost a significant effort on the part of Kingfisher airlines! But it created a strong advocate of me for life – despite the fact that I have had quite a few instances of frustration since then.
Every customer experience adds to the trust. However, one ‘extra step’ experience can help build a life-time of trust and brand advocacy! In my earlier experience, had the hotel handled the post event positively, it might have been that ‘extra step’ required to turn me into an advocate! Their loss!
Companies now have the technologies to build deeper relationships with their customers – the social networks. Don’t underutilise the power of social networks by ‘promoting’ your brand. Rather encourage your fans/followers to share their experiences on the social networks. Encourage them to be creative and reward their creativity. You’ll be surprised by the response. Today, armed with a £50 digital camera and a computer or just their smartphone, customers can create extremely powerful messages for your brand, publicise and perpetuate them through the ‘likes’, reposts and retweets!
Customer Services have become the most important function in your organisation – even important than your sales and marketing. In this digital age consumers are seeking information as never before. It is the information that helps them make a buying decision. My buying decisions are being made by the group/community that I belong to and their recommendations. If I need to book a table at a restaurant, the first information I seek is customer’s reviews! I trust a Peter or a Jane who happens to be a friend of a friend of a friend more than I trust the restaurant’s ads!
Advocates play a key role in nudging people into buying decisions. Advocates are seemingly unbiased and people trust their recommendations/experience. The process of creating advocates requires a different level of customer service than you currently may have in your organisation. It requires a deeper segmentation of your customers into indifferent and satisfied. For the indifferent customers, emphasise the value that they receive over the price and create customised value drivers at the touch points.
For the satisfied customers, analyse their likes and dislikes (again trust social media to provide this information to you), align your values to those and build an emotional bond with them. Encourage them to share their experience – good or bad! Every bad experience gives you another opportunity to proactively engage with them and underline the importance that you ascribe to them! Create an ‘invitation only’ community for them where satisfied customers are able to comment on your ideas, future products/services and give suggestions. If possible, invite them to ‘exclusive’ events. And if you’re thinking about the returns on your investment, just consider the point when they turn advocates!
Matthew Rhoden summed this process very well by saying, “Satisfaction and loyalty are important, but they're old news. Forward-thinking companies will be the ones that identify and work with their customer advocates to genuinely build the brand, the customer base, and the bottom line.”
Advocacy is very different from customer satisfaction or loyalty. A satisfied customer is happy to have used your products/services –he may return (and become loyal) or may not. Advocates are a breed apart. Advocates are ‘smitten’ by your brand – they see a reflection of their personality and values in your brand and seek to promote it. Advocacy is a relationship based on trust. Companies lose control of their brand message to the advocates who reach to the masses in an anonymous, everlasting way.
Advocates are the dreams for any company. But how do you go building advocates?
Start with the trolls: Surprised, are you? Trolls have the potential to generate a lot of negative vibes, doubts and apprehensions about your brand. They may not be factually correct – nevertheless, they sow a seed of doubt! Develop an environment where customers would not talk bad about your products/services. Identify and prioritise customers with high negativity and engage with them to fix the root issues. In many cases, the root cause of negativity is a trivial issue – which unattended, has snowballed. A small delay in response, a minor discrepancy in their invoice or a sour experience at your front office! All which could have been fixed with a simple solution, but were neglected and has become a sore point for the troll. It is still not late. Go ahead and fix it.
Very recently I stayed at an upmarket hotel at Bristol, UK. I was unfortunate to be trapped in a lift during a power outage! Being trapped in a lift where the emergency lights are not working and no one is responding to the alarm for over 25 minutes is a horrifying experience. I can’t blame the hotel for power outage! But I definitely blame the hotel for extremely poor handling of the situation after the event! The hotel staff seemed least bothered with the fact that a customer has been trapped in the lift for 25 minutes! Later when I complained to the hotel management (and even their CEO), I got the impression that (a) they doubt the trauma I experienced; and (b) it was not their fault as I was trapped due to power outage!
The experience of 25 minutes has converted me to a troll! Had they handled the post event in a positive way, I could (and definitely would) have commented on their excellent treatment of the situation!
Create the milieu for a positive customer service experience: Study the complaints from your customers – they have sufficient data on what does NOT work well in your business. What is the root cause of the problem in that department? My bet is (a) communications – internal, inter-functional communications; and/or (b) empowerment – the workers are not authorised to take initiative, or are not encouraged to do so! Develop effective internal communications where a worker does not think twice before taking a decision to deliver a positive customer experience. Reward and publicise such instances!
Take that extra step: when your customers least expect it and in return you will experience their long term commitment. A couple of years ago, I was travelling to Bangalore in India. My flight (Emirates) landed at Chennai from where I took a connecting flight to Bangalore. The domestic flight was through a local carrier – Kingfisher. When I landed at Bangalore I realised that I had a missing luggage (I was travelling with my family and hence 7 pieces of luggage). It was obviously not Kingfisher’s mistake as I had failed to collect my luggage at Chennai and hence did not check it in with Kingfisher. The Kingfisher ground staff went to his office and called the Emirates office at Chennai. When he was not able to locate my luggage, he took down my details and was finally able to track my luggage at Chennai airport. He arranged for the pickup and delivered it to my hotel in Bangalore. Of course, it cost a significant effort on the part of Kingfisher airlines! But it created a strong advocate of me for life – despite the fact that I have had quite a few instances of frustration since then.
Every customer experience adds to the trust. However, one ‘extra step’ experience can help build a life-time of trust and brand advocacy! In my earlier experience, had the hotel handled the post event positively, it might have been that ‘extra step’ required to turn me into an advocate! Their loss!
Companies now have the technologies to build deeper relationships with their customers – the social networks. Don’t underutilise the power of social networks by ‘promoting’ your brand. Rather encourage your fans/followers to share their experiences on the social networks. Encourage them to be creative and reward their creativity. You’ll be surprised by the response. Today, armed with a £50 digital camera and a computer or just their smartphone, customers can create extremely powerful messages for your brand, publicise and perpetuate them through the ‘likes’, reposts and retweets!
Customer Services have become the most important function in your organisation – even important than your sales and marketing. In this digital age consumers are seeking information as never before. It is the information that helps them make a buying decision. My buying decisions are being made by the group/community that I belong to and their recommendations. If I need to book a table at a restaurant, the first information I seek is customer’s reviews! I trust a Peter or a Jane who happens to be a friend of a friend of a friend more than I trust the restaurant’s ads!
Advocates play a key role in nudging people into buying decisions. Advocates are seemingly unbiased and people trust their recommendations/experience. The process of creating advocates requires a different level of customer service than you currently may have in your organisation. It requires a deeper segmentation of your customers into indifferent and satisfied. For the indifferent customers, emphasise the value that they receive over the price and create customised value drivers at the touch points.
For the satisfied customers, analyse their likes and dislikes (again trust social media to provide this information to you), align your values to those and build an emotional bond with them. Encourage them to share their experience – good or bad! Every bad experience gives you another opportunity to proactively engage with them and underline the importance that you ascribe to them! Create an ‘invitation only’ community for them where satisfied customers are able to comment on your ideas, future products/services and give suggestions. If possible, invite them to ‘exclusive’ events. And if you’re thinking about the returns on your investment, just consider the point when they turn advocates!
Matthew Rhoden summed this process very well by saying, “Satisfaction and loyalty are important, but they're old news. Forward-thinking companies will be the ones that identify and work with their customer advocates to genuinely build the brand, the customer base, and the bottom line.”
Thursday, 9 June 2011
Customer Servicing @ Twitter
Twitter is just not to communicate with your friends; it can do a lot to your brand and your servicing.
What can 140 characters do for you? A LOT! Yes! A lot. Despite being designed as a two way communication channel for friends, Twitter has evolved to a serious business tool. And it just does not communicate your brand message. You can – and companies are doing it already – use it to enhance your customer support, turning customer complaints into customer compliments!
If you have not done so far, do a twitter search (search.twitter.com) for your brand. Chances are you’d come across people commenting on your products or services – some are good, and there may be some criticisms. So what do you do about it? You can (a) choose to avoid it; after all no one that you know uses twitter, or (b) deal with them head on. The first option can be risky. With 175 million (and growing) user base, the negative tweets have a fair chance of being commented upon, retweeted. And that does not hold your business in good stead. It is equally well known that the tweets do not stay on twitter. They are actively being included in web search results on Google and Bing, and are used to determine the (in)famous page rank on google. Think again, a web search on your product results in the first 5 results being negative tweets!
Little wonder why businesses are increasingly using Twitter and promoting it as a customer servicing tool. Creating a dedicated Twitter account for customer service (e.g., @CompanynameService or @CompanynameSupport) shows your customer you are treating Twitter as a legitimate way to talk to your business. It is just not there for brand building (often interpreted as one way communication), but to listen to customers and their issues. And you need not wait for customers to complain. Use Twitter search to find out if people have complained about your products and services before and start your conversation with them. Being proactive and searching out unhappy customers will earn a lot of accolades for your business. In addition you’d be seen as proactive and more likely to turn a (previously) dissatisfied customer into a ‘happy tweeter’.
Do not use Twitter to get involved into discussions with your customers. Use Twitter as a place to pick up an issue and move it quickly outside the forum to solve it. Of course, if you have solved the issue to the satisfaction of the customer, do ask him to tweet their feedback! If you are moving an issue away from Twitter, please remember that customer would expect the same promptness as on twitter. Just do a wild search on twitter to find out how many complaints are about the delay in response. If there’s a genuine reason for delay, reply to the customer’s tweets with the reason.
Twitter is a great way to build your brand while providing servicing to the irate customers. And it hardly costs anything. If your customers uses Twitter for raising their concern (or praising your business), you HAVE to be there to apprehend it and deal with it quickly and effectively. Nothing can be worse than unresponded tweets (and retweets, and re-retweets). If it has not been picked up by another irate customer, surely your competitors are not going to let it die down!
What can 140 characters do for you? A LOT! Yes! A lot. Despite being designed as a two way communication channel for friends, Twitter has evolved to a serious business tool. And it just does not communicate your brand message. You can – and companies are doing it already – use it to enhance your customer support, turning customer complaints into customer compliments!
If you have not done so far, do a twitter search (search.twitter.com) for your brand. Chances are you’d come across people commenting on your products or services – some are good, and there may be some criticisms. So what do you do about it? You can (a) choose to avoid it; after all no one that you know uses twitter, or (b) deal with them head on. The first option can be risky. With 175 million (and growing) user base, the negative tweets have a fair chance of being commented upon, retweeted. And that does not hold your business in good stead. It is equally well known that the tweets do not stay on twitter. They are actively being included in web search results on Google and Bing, and are used to determine the (in)famous page rank on google. Think again, a web search on your product results in the first 5 results being negative tweets!
Little wonder why businesses are increasingly using Twitter and promoting it as a customer servicing tool. Creating a dedicated Twitter account for customer service (e.g., @CompanynameService or @CompanynameSupport) shows your customer you are treating Twitter as a legitimate way to talk to your business. It is just not there for brand building (often interpreted as one way communication), but to listen to customers and their issues. And you need not wait for customers to complain. Use Twitter search to find out if people have complained about your products and services before and start your conversation with them. Being proactive and searching out unhappy customers will earn a lot of accolades for your business. In addition you’d be seen as proactive and more likely to turn a (previously) dissatisfied customer into a ‘happy tweeter’.
Do not use Twitter to get involved into discussions with your customers. Use Twitter as a place to pick up an issue and move it quickly outside the forum to solve it. Of course, if you have solved the issue to the satisfaction of the customer, do ask him to tweet their feedback! If you are moving an issue away from Twitter, please remember that customer would expect the same promptness as on twitter. Just do a wild search on twitter to find out how many complaints are about the delay in response. If there’s a genuine reason for delay, reply to the customer’s tweets with the reason.
Twitter is a great way to build your brand while providing servicing to the irate customers. And it hardly costs anything. If your customers uses Twitter for raising their concern (or praising your business), you HAVE to be there to apprehend it and deal with it quickly and effectively. Nothing can be worse than unresponded tweets (and retweets, and re-retweets). If it has not been picked up by another irate customer, surely your competitors are not going to let it die down!
Friday, 20 May 2011
Markeets and mongooses: Going Viral!
He was born in January 2009 and seven months later he was an international sensation with a fan following to die for: 700,00 followers on Facebook, 22,000 followers on Twitter, a separate gallery dedicated to his family on Flickr, and some months later a hugely successful autobiography. The only problem is, he’s a CGI anthropomorphic Russian Meerkat. Meet the famous Aleksandr Orlov from comparethemarket.com (or comparethemeerkat.com).
As his popularity grows, so does the twist in his family’s tragedies which viewers never tire to watch over and over again and share the through YouTube, FaceBook, Twitter and a host of social media sites. Aleksandr is every PR agency’s dream! Every company’s dream mascot. (and I do hope, using a twist on the spelling would help my blog too!)
Why does a campaign turn viral, when others don’t? What was special in this campaign? It was an advertisement for (yet another) comparison site with a plain Jane name! Yet, the meerkat caught the imagination of its viewers catapulting the website to the top!
One of the coolest things about the Web is that when an idea takes off, it can propel a brand or a company to seemingly instant fame and fortune. For Free. Whatever you call it – viral, buzz, word-of-mouth... – having other people tell you the story drives action. One person sends to another, then that person sends it to yet another and so on. The challenge for marketers is to harness the amazing power of word-of-mouse.
Let’s look at some of the products/campaigns that have been successful. Is there something we can learn from them?
Classic Case 1: Hotmail.com
The classic example of viral marketing is Hotmail.com, one of the first free Web-based e-mail services. The strategy is simple:
1. Give away free e-mail addresses and services,
2. Attach a simple tag at the bottom of every free message sent out: "Get your private, free email at http://www.hotmail.com" and,
3. Then stand back while people e-mail to their own network of friends and associates,
4. Who see the message,
5. Sign up for their own free e-mail service, and then
6. Propel the message still wider to their own ever-increasing circles of friends and associates.
Like tiny waves spreading ever farther from a single pebble dropped into a pond, a carefully designed viral marketing strategy ripples outward extremely rapidly.
Classic Case 2: Gmail
Unlike Hotmail, Gmail came up with a different strategy. It invited a select group to Gmail. The initial invitees had a limited number of invites. As PC users were getting used to Google, they were intrigued by the ‘exclusivity’ surrounding Gmail. Very soon, people were ‘begging’ the Gmail users for introductions. Some enterprising chaps even tried to ‘sell’ gmail accounts introductions on the web!
So what was different in this case? Exclusivity, obviously!
Case 3: Multi-level marketing
Use existing communication networks – Multi-level marketers have perfected this art. Social scientists tell us that each person has a network of 8 – 12 people in their close network of friends, family, and associates. Start with one and expect the communication/service/product to ride on this network. If you have a LinkedIn account you are aware of this geometric progression.
So what are the key elements of a successful viral marketing? Ralph Wilson, very aptly sums them up as follows:
1. Gives away products or services
2. Provides for effortless transfer to others
3. Scales easily from small to very large
4. Exploits common motivations and behaviors
5. Utilises existing communication networks
6. Takes advantage of others' resources
It is not necessary that all elements must be present for a campaign to turn viral. However, it is logical to assume that the more elements are present, the more powerful the results are likely to be.
The Internet provides a perfect nurturing ground for viral marketing. You devise a plot, weave a story (3 minutes maximum – keep YouTube in mind), put it on the web and start talking about it. It can begin from as simple as putting a link below your email signature, to posting a link on facebook and twitter. As you can see, the formula for success includes a combination of some great—and free— Web content (a video, blog entry, interactive tool, or e-book) that provides valuable information (or is groundbreaking or amazing or hilarious or involves a celebrity), plus a network of people to light the fire and links that make your content very easy to share.
While this looks fairly simple, I wish I could tell you whether your campaign will turn viral. Honestly, if I knew this secret, I’d not be here writing this blog! Having said that, the fact remains that viral marketing is one of the most exciting and powerful ways to reach your audiences. It is not easy to harness the power of word-of-mouse, but any company with thoughtful ideas to share – and clever ways to create interest in them – can, after some careful preparation, hit the jackpot. And, even if you do not this time, what do you have to lose?
As his popularity grows, so does the twist in his family’s tragedies which viewers never tire to watch over and over again and share the through YouTube, FaceBook, Twitter and a host of social media sites. Aleksandr is every PR agency’s dream! Every company’s dream mascot. (and I do hope, using a twist on the spelling would help my blog too!)
Why does a campaign turn viral, when others don’t? What was special in this campaign? It was an advertisement for (yet another) comparison site with a plain Jane name! Yet, the meerkat caught the imagination of its viewers catapulting the website to the top!
One of the coolest things about the Web is that when an idea takes off, it can propel a brand or a company to seemingly instant fame and fortune. For Free. Whatever you call it – viral, buzz, word-of-mouth... – having other people tell you the story drives action. One person sends to another, then that person sends it to yet another and so on. The challenge for marketers is to harness the amazing power of word-of-mouse.
Let’s look at some of the products/campaigns that have been successful. Is there something we can learn from them?
Classic Case 1: Hotmail.com
The classic example of viral marketing is Hotmail.com, one of the first free Web-based e-mail services. The strategy is simple:
1. Give away free e-mail addresses and services,
2. Attach a simple tag at the bottom of every free message sent out: "Get your private, free email at http://www.hotmail.com" and,
3. Then stand back while people e-mail to their own network of friends and associates,
4. Who see the message,
5. Sign up for their own free e-mail service, and then
6. Propel the message still wider to their own ever-increasing circles of friends and associates.
Like tiny waves spreading ever farther from a single pebble dropped into a pond, a carefully designed viral marketing strategy ripples outward extremely rapidly.
Classic Case 2: Gmail
Unlike Hotmail, Gmail came up with a different strategy. It invited a select group to Gmail. The initial invitees had a limited number of invites. As PC users were getting used to Google, they were intrigued by the ‘exclusivity’ surrounding Gmail. Very soon, people were ‘begging’ the Gmail users for introductions. Some enterprising chaps even tried to ‘sell’ gmail accounts introductions on the web!
So what was different in this case? Exclusivity, obviously!
Case 3: Multi-level marketing
Use existing communication networks – Multi-level marketers have perfected this art. Social scientists tell us that each person has a network of 8 – 12 people in their close network of friends, family, and associates. Start with one and expect the communication/service/product to ride on this network. If you have a LinkedIn account you are aware of this geometric progression.
So what are the key elements of a successful viral marketing? Ralph Wilson, very aptly sums them up as follows:
1. Gives away products or services
2. Provides for effortless transfer to others
3. Scales easily from small to very large
4. Exploits common motivations and behaviors
5. Utilises existing communication networks
6. Takes advantage of others' resources
It is not necessary that all elements must be present for a campaign to turn viral. However, it is logical to assume that the more elements are present, the more powerful the results are likely to be.
The Internet provides a perfect nurturing ground for viral marketing. You devise a plot, weave a story (3 minutes maximum – keep YouTube in mind), put it on the web and start talking about it. It can begin from as simple as putting a link below your email signature, to posting a link on facebook and twitter. As you can see, the formula for success includes a combination of some great—and free— Web content (a video, blog entry, interactive tool, or e-book) that provides valuable information (or is groundbreaking or amazing or hilarious or involves a celebrity), plus a network of people to light the fire and links that make your content very easy to share.
While this looks fairly simple, I wish I could tell you whether your campaign will turn viral. Honestly, if I knew this secret, I’d not be here writing this blog! Having said that, the fact remains that viral marketing is one of the most exciting and powerful ways to reach your audiences. It is not easy to harness the power of word-of-mouse, but any company with thoughtful ideas to share – and clever ways to create interest in them – can, after some careful preparation, hit the jackpot. And, even if you do not this time, what do you have to lose?
Thursday, 5 May 2011
Digital strategy can help manage your reputaion risk
Whatever be the size of your business, the most serious dent to your reputation can come from a single highly motivated individual armed with a $100 laptop and an internet connection.
Digital world has opened up a situation where businesses are constantly exposed to threats to their reputation. And the opposition may not be a competitor, or another business; a disgruntled customer, a sacked employee or even an imposter (see my earlier blog “Do you have a digital strategy in place?) , armed with a computer and an internet connection can cause serious dent to your business. Internet, and the profusion of digital forum has dramatically changed the rules of engagement. It has levelled the playing field between large businesses and single individual. What is required is the dedication and perseverance to post disparaging and (often) damaging contents about a business on key sites, stroking the flame the keeping it alive for a minimum time for it to start raging. And business leaders do not have any advance warning or time to reflect!
If your company comes into disrepute for any reason, you can expect
• A media grilling
• Negative public opinion that is hard to reverse
• Punitive fines, if applicable
• Unwanted attention from pressure groups
• Disastrous sales
• Reduced profits and revenue.
In this economic climate, can you afford it? How can you be prepared and be able to identify and kill these sparks early? What new tools or techniques do you need in your business to counter these sniper attacks?
The permanence of web comments makes the internet a challenging place for corporate reputations. There was a time when bad news that surfaced in traditional media might be expected to blow over in a couple of days. These days, however, just about every google search for a business’ name can dredge up gripes from years past. This is a good reason for communicators to take control of their online destiny and ensure they are in driving seat when it comes to steering their corporate reputation.
With a meaningful digital strategy in place, it can go a long way to keep you prepared for such situations. How does it work?
A digital strategy helps you think through the different future scenarios/events that your business can be exposed to. Let’s take the example of insurance industry. The industry has been at the receiving end of criticisms, since the onset of economic crisis. Websites, discussion forum, tweets are full of criticism on products, processes and people in the industry. Be it remunerations, bonuses, measly returns or unsettled claims, people get a (almost) perverse delight in posting criticisms on the digital forum. What is conspicuous is an almost lack of response of any kind from the companies. I am not trying to defend the insurance companies. But I cannot believe that they do not have a point of view which they would not like to share. And sometimes the insurance companies do share their points of view. But by the time, the response is written, re-written, reviewed and whetted by compliance, legal, marketing, communications etc, the number of ‘re-tweets’, post-shares and comments have far exceeded the response. The response is often apologetic, light and lost in the storm of responses.
In the current landscape you cannot afford to be reactive. Most often, you are aware of future events/triggers which have potential disruptive impact on your business. You need to have canned responses ready for it. Or, better still; offset the negative response by publishing your view point ahead of the reaction. Let’s take a hypothetical case. An insurance company has been imposed fines by a regulator for a breach. The business is aware of the fine days before it is made public by the regulator. The business can do well by identifying potential scenarios (read responses) to the news, the potential sites where the reaction would be published (for example, trade journals, blog sites of industry commentators, financial discussion forum and not to forget, their own Intranet). The marketing/PR/Strategy depart has pretty good idea of the extent of criticism that the news would generate. Armed with this insight, the business could prepare ‘wire frame’ responses to the (potential) reaction which could be quickly customised and posted, as the reactions are being aired. Or, even better, pre-empt the reaction by breaking the news themselves with details on the steps the company is taking to ensure that the breach is not repeated in future!
Planning ahead helps – this is a well known fact. Building and nurturing a mechanism to plan for such situations will relieve the business of herding the stakeholders into their war room every time there is a crisis. The mechanism to plan for such scenarios is your digital strategy team. It is a small group drawn from various key functions who understand the potential impact of various digital forum, and who are empowered to issue responses as the reactions are posted, or as an event unfolds! What helps them to perform this role is your digital strategy.
Today having a meaningful digital strategy is not less important than a business strategy. Digital space is emerging as the de facto place for sharing ideas and opinions. And, shaping them as well. In a recent survey conducted by @equalman production suggests that 78% of the consumers trust peer recommendations as against 14% who trust adverts! The various forum give you a perfect opportunity to be in touch with the popular discussions on your products and services, engage with the participants and help shape the opinion. If 78% of the users trust a peer review, there cannot be a better business case of having a presence on the digital space and engaging with them.
Your presence on the digital space also ensures that any disparaging comments/observations made are picked up and dealt with swiftly. A demographic analysis of the users can reveal wealth of opportunities for the business participating on the digital space. Analytics and insight forms a separate topic itself, which (hopefully) I will cover in a later blog.
In this world of mega-connectivity, businesses need to rethink their marketing/communication strategy to engage the customers and help shape opinion and nudge them into a buying scenario. The population is willing to listen and form an opinion on your products and services. Have you been engaging with them recently?
Digital world has opened up a situation where businesses are constantly exposed to threats to their reputation. And the opposition may not be a competitor, or another business; a disgruntled customer, a sacked employee or even an imposter (see my earlier blog “Do you have a digital strategy in place?) , armed with a computer and an internet connection can cause serious dent to your business. Internet, and the profusion of digital forum has dramatically changed the rules of engagement. It has levelled the playing field between large businesses and single individual. What is required is the dedication and perseverance to post disparaging and (often) damaging contents about a business on key sites, stroking the flame the keeping it alive for a minimum time for it to start raging. And business leaders do not have any advance warning or time to reflect!
If your company comes into disrepute for any reason, you can expect
• A media grilling
• Negative public opinion that is hard to reverse
• Punitive fines, if applicable
• Unwanted attention from pressure groups
• Disastrous sales
• Reduced profits and revenue.
In this economic climate, can you afford it? How can you be prepared and be able to identify and kill these sparks early? What new tools or techniques do you need in your business to counter these sniper attacks?
The permanence of web comments makes the internet a challenging place for corporate reputations. There was a time when bad news that surfaced in traditional media might be expected to blow over in a couple of days. These days, however, just about every google search for a business’ name can dredge up gripes from years past. This is a good reason for communicators to take control of their online destiny and ensure they are in driving seat when it comes to steering their corporate reputation.
With a meaningful digital strategy in place, it can go a long way to keep you prepared for such situations. How does it work?
A digital strategy helps you think through the different future scenarios/events that your business can be exposed to. Let’s take the example of insurance industry. The industry has been at the receiving end of criticisms, since the onset of economic crisis. Websites, discussion forum, tweets are full of criticism on products, processes and people in the industry. Be it remunerations, bonuses, measly returns or unsettled claims, people get a (almost) perverse delight in posting criticisms on the digital forum. What is conspicuous is an almost lack of response of any kind from the companies. I am not trying to defend the insurance companies. But I cannot believe that they do not have a point of view which they would not like to share. And sometimes the insurance companies do share their points of view. But by the time, the response is written, re-written, reviewed and whetted by compliance, legal, marketing, communications etc, the number of ‘re-tweets’, post-shares and comments have far exceeded the response. The response is often apologetic, light and lost in the storm of responses.
In the current landscape you cannot afford to be reactive. Most often, you are aware of future events/triggers which have potential disruptive impact on your business. You need to have canned responses ready for it. Or, better still; offset the negative response by publishing your view point ahead of the reaction. Let’s take a hypothetical case. An insurance company has been imposed fines by a regulator for a breach. The business is aware of the fine days before it is made public by the regulator. The business can do well by identifying potential scenarios (read responses) to the news, the potential sites where the reaction would be published (for example, trade journals, blog sites of industry commentators, financial discussion forum and not to forget, their own Intranet). The marketing/PR/Strategy depart has pretty good idea of the extent of criticism that the news would generate. Armed with this insight, the business could prepare ‘wire frame’ responses to the (potential) reaction which could be quickly customised and posted, as the reactions are being aired. Or, even better, pre-empt the reaction by breaking the news themselves with details on the steps the company is taking to ensure that the breach is not repeated in future!
Planning ahead helps – this is a well known fact. Building and nurturing a mechanism to plan for such situations will relieve the business of herding the stakeholders into their war room every time there is a crisis. The mechanism to plan for such scenarios is your digital strategy team. It is a small group drawn from various key functions who understand the potential impact of various digital forum, and who are empowered to issue responses as the reactions are posted, or as an event unfolds! What helps them to perform this role is your digital strategy.
Today having a meaningful digital strategy is not less important than a business strategy. Digital space is emerging as the de facto place for sharing ideas and opinions. And, shaping them as well. In a recent survey conducted by @equalman production suggests that 78% of the consumers trust peer recommendations as against 14% who trust adverts! The various forum give you a perfect opportunity to be in touch with the popular discussions on your products and services, engage with the participants and help shape the opinion. If 78% of the users trust a peer review, there cannot be a better business case of having a presence on the digital space and engaging with them.
Your presence on the digital space also ensures that any disparaging comments/observations made are picked up and dealt with swiftly. A demographic analysis of the users can reveal wealth of opportunities for the business participating on the digital space. Analytics and insight forms a separate topic itself, which (hopefully) I will cover in a later blog.
In this world of mega-connectivity, businesses need to rethink their marketing/communication strategy to engage the customers and help shape opinion and nudge them into a buying scenario. The population is willing to listen and form an opinion on your products and services. Have you been engaging with them recently?
Tuesday, 3 May 2011
Building Meaningful Digital Strategy
Issue: If consumers are spending 30% of their time online, why does marketing department spend only 5% of their budgets online?
We are amidst the second wave of excitement around digital. In the ‘90s, there was a lot of excitement around the new way of selling products and services to the customers. The euphoria was short-lived. There was nothing wrong with the channel – what we failed to realise that it takes a long time for habits to change.
Over the decade, as Internet grew, our target customers have become more active online, embracing all manner of new digital media habits—from social networks to smart phones—and they are continuing to spend more time and money online despite the economic meltdown. Unfortunately, digital marketing has been largely unable to benefit from this shift. The reason is simple: People no longer need what we offer to them. We continue to dish out what we had created in the ‘90s (or micro-improved variants of the same content) and expect our consumers to lap it up.
What gets passed around as Digital Way of engagement - spam emails, banners, commercials, pop-ups – no longer catches the fancy of customers. In fact, they are actively taking steps to get rid of them. Today, customers actively take part in selection of the content, presentation and audience.
And this is not a passing fad. Digital connectivity is here to stay. It will radically change the way a business engage with the world (consisting of customers, prospects, defectors and critics). As the ‘digital way of life’ sinks in people’s psyche, it is important that businesses recognise this trend and build strategies for it.
So what is a meaningful Digital Strategy?
Digital Strategy is NOT about Social Media. Social Media is – at best - a part of digital strategy. Neither are mailers, banners or pop-up. A mere presence on the web – be it website, or a presence on the social networks – does not constitute a digital strategy. There exists a wide divergence on the exact definition of Digital strategy. For the purpose of this blog, I have used a generic definition of digital strategy as a process of specifying an organisation's vision, goals, opportunities and initiatives in order to maximise the business benefits digital investments and efforts provide to the organisation. These can includes customer intelligence, collaboration, new product/market exploration, sales and service optimisation, enterprise technology architectures and processes, innovation and governance using marketing and customer-focused efforts such as web sites, mobile, eCommerce, social, site and search engine optimization, and advertising.
The profusion of social media sites, fuelled by easily accessible tools for content generation has put customers in the centre-stage. Connected customers have become ‘prosumers’ (borrowing a term from Alvin Toffler), producing and consuming information as they surf in the digital space. They actively seek to engage with the businesses for a variety of needs. They seek information, they provide feedback and are willing to be consulted. Being empowered, and equipped with the tools, they definitely not appreciate being ignored! If they have a point of view, they post it, share it and invite comments on it. Be it a product, service, provider or an event. They can be cryptic and post their views in less than 140 words (on Twitter), and/or provide details in greater length (on a blog), and/or provide visual evidences (Flicker) or even videos (YouTube). And the list does not end there! If your website does not provide enough information on your products/services or if they do not agree with your view, they can leave comments on your website using sidewiki!
This empowerment of the prosumer poses a great risk and an opportunity for businesses. The risks are pretty obvious. A serious (and malicious) campaign against your business can be launched with little effort and, if directed carefully, can cause serious damage to your brand. After the explosion of BP’s Deepwater Horizon drilling platform, for example, Leroy Stick (an alias) began publishing the tweets of a totally made-up representative of a similarly bogus BP global public relations division. While crude oil spilled into the Gulf of Mexico, devastating the regional ecology and economy, the satirical Twitterer (@BPGlobalPR) tweeted about the division’s lunch menu and other inane matters. Tens of thousands followed his updates—far more than the number who followed the real BP Twitter account. Through this low-cost effort, Stick helped keep Americans’ rage boiling as BP scrambled to plug the well and restore faith in its brand.
On the other hand, a well-thought strategy to engage with the prosumers on digital space, can provide new business opportunities, insights and opportunities to collaborate more actively with your customers and prospects alike. And that too, at a fraction of cost.
The prosumer seeks connectivity. The prosumer is looking at ways to engage with you. So why are businesses shying away from this opportunity to work closely with their customers and prospects. For one, they have little idea on the composition of the prosumers – who are they, what is their profile, are they my potential customers or just ‘teenagers wasting their time on the Net’. Second, businesses are (most often) unaware of what is being talked about them. Third, they are unclear how to channelize the prosumers into meaningful conversation, and for what purpose.
A meaningful digital strategy provides answers to precisely these questions, provides insight to the popular sentiments on your business and helps you build activities to enable you to engage with your market, build meaningful dialogue and prepares you to counter any negative sentiments arising out of internal or external factors.
Unfortunately, you cannot buy digital strategy off the shelf! Your digital strategy should reflect the uniqueness of your business. It should be based on a careful deliberation of the face that you want to present to the world, how you want to be perceived, the scenarios that you foresee and your typical response to the scenarios. These gets built and refined over time, as your digital engagement increases. Your digital strategy may get ‘dictated’ by the prosumers – they may disagree with your digital persona creating a situation for you to ‘think through’ the strategy again.
Scary as it may sound, building a digital strategy is as much simple (or complex) as thinking through your business/marketing strategy. The difference being, you work with ‘real’ insights gathered from the digital world, and the response to your strategy is far more quicker than any other strategy.
Before I end, one word of caution. Digital strategy is a one way street. You cannot decide to abandon it half-way. Once you have built your presence on the digital space and have decided to engage with the world, back-tracking can cause you more damage than before. In all my engagements, I do not fail to emphasise this over and over again. Before you start your journey, you need to be completely sure that this is the way forward, as it will radically change the way you engage with your customers and prospects going forward.
We are amidst the second wave of excitement around digital. In the ‘90s, there was a lot of excitement around the new way of selling products and services to the customers. The euphoria was short-lived. There was nothing wrong with the channel – what we failed to realise that it takes a long time for habits to change.
Over the decade, as Internet grew, our target customers have become more active online, embracing all manner of new digital media habits—from social networks to smart phones—and they are continuing to spend more time and money online despite the economic meltdown. Unfortunately, digital marketing has been largely unable to benefit from this shift. The reason is simple: People no longer need what we offer to them. We continue to dish out what we had created in the ‘90s (or micro-improved variants of the same content) and expect our consumers to lap it up.
What gets passed around as Digital Way of engagement - spam emails, banners, commercials, pop-ups – no longer catches the fancy of customers. In fact, they are actively taking steps to get rid of them. Today, customers actively take part in selection of the content, presentation and audience.
And this is not a passing fad. Digital connectivity is here to stay. It will radically change the way a business engage with the world (consisting of customers, prospects, defectors and critics). As the ‘digital way of life’ sinks in people’s psyche, it is important that businesses recognise this trend and build strategies for it.
So what is a meaningful Digital Strategy?
Digital Strategy is NOT about Social Media. Social Media is – at best - a part of digital strategy. Neither are mailers, banners or pop-up. A mere presence on the web – be it website, or a presence on the social networks – does not constitute a digital strategy. There exists a wide divergence on the exact definition of Digital strategy. For the purpose of this blog, I have used a generic definition of digital strategy as a process of specifying an organisation's vision, goals, opportunities and initiatives in order to maximise the business benefits digital investments and efforts provide to the organisation. These can includes customer intelligence, collaboration, new product/market exploration, sales and service optimisation, enterprise technology architectures and processes, innovation and governance using marketing and customer-focused efforts such as web sites, mobile, eCommerce, social, site and search engine optimization, and advertising.
The profusion of social media sites, fuelled by easily accessible tools for content generation has put customers in the centre-stage. Connected customers have become ‘prosumers’ (borrowing a term from Alvin Toffler), producing and consuming information as they surf in the digital space. They actively seek to engage with the businesses for a variety of needs. They seek information, they provide feedback and are willing to be consulted. Being empowered, and equipped with the tools, they definitely not appreciate being ignored! If they have a point of view, they post it, share it and invite comments on it. Be it a product, service, provider or an event. They can be cryptic and post their views in less than 140 words (on Twitter), and/or provide details in greater length (on a blog), and/or provide visual evidences (Flicker) or even videos (YouTube). And the list does not end there! If your website does not provide enough information on your products/services or if they do not agree with your view, they can leave comments on your website using sidewiki!
This empowerment of the prosumer poses a great risk and an opportunity for businesses. The risks are pretty obvious. A serious (and malicious) campaign against your business can be launched with little effort and, if directed carefully, can cause serious damage to your brand. After the explosion of BP’s Deepwater Horizon drilling platform, for example, Leroy Stick (an alias) began publishing the tweets of a totally made-up representative of a similarly bogus BP global public relations division. While crude oil spilled into the Gulf of Mexico, devastating the regional ecology and economy, the satirical Twitterer (@BPGlobalPR) tweeted about the division’s lunch menu and other inane matters. Tens of thousands followed his updates—far more than the number who followed the real BP Twitter account. Through this low-cost effort, Stick helped keep Americans’ rage boiling as BP scrambled to plug the well and restore faith in its brand.
On the other hand, a well-thought strategy to engage with the prosumers on digital space, can provide new business opportunities, insights and opportunities to collaborate more actively with your customers and prospects alike. And that too, at a fraction of cost.
The prosumer seeks connectivity. The prosumer is looking at ways to engage with you. So why are businesses shying away from this opportunity to work closely with their customers and prospects. For one, they have little idea on the composition of the prosumers – who are they, what is their profile, are they my potential customers or just ‘teenagers wasting their time on the Net’. Second, businesses are (most often) unaware of what is being talked about them. Third, they are unclear how to channelize the prosumers into meaningful conversation, and for what purpose.
A meaningful digital strategy provides answers to precisely these questions, provides insight to the popular sentiments on your business and helps you build activities to enable you to engage with your market, build meaningful dialogue and prepares you to counter any negative sentiments arising out of internal or external factors.
Unfortunately, you cannot buy digital strategy off the shelf! Your digital strategy should reflect the uniqueness of your business. It should be based on a careful deliberation of the face that you want to present to the world, how you want to be perceived, the scenarios that you foresee and your typical response to the scenarios. These gets built and refined over time, as your digital engagement increases. Your digital strategy may get ‘dictated’ by the prosumers – they may disagree with your digital persona creating a situation for you to ‘think through’ the strategy again.
Scary as it may sound, building a digital strategy is as much simple (or complex) as thinking through your business/marketing strategy. The difference being, you work with ‘real’ insights gathered from the digital world, and the response to your strategy is far more quicker than any other strategy.
Before I end, one word of caution. Digital strategy is a one way street. You cannot decide to abandon it half-way. Once you have built your presence on the digital space and have decided to engage with the world, back-tracking can cause you more damage than before. In all my engagements, I do not fail to emphasise this over and over again. Before you start your journey, you need to be completely sure that this is the way forward, as it will radically change the way you engage with your customers and prospects going forward.
Monday, 25 October 2010
Mobile BPM - Why do we have to wait so long for it?
Let’s face it. Mobile applications are here to stay. And they mean business! Gone are the days when iPhone Apps or Google Apps were for fun, or social networking. Increasingly, companies are building apps meant for serious business, designed to help their work-force and customers alike to improve their touch-point experience with the business.
Mobile apps face a serious challenge in being ‘too restrictive’. To quote Medhat Galal, If Business Process Management (BPM) is going to do for process what Google did for information, BPM must be mobile and always on. A good example is UPS or FedEx who have built their own ‘mobile BPM’ applications to meet their customers’ demands. Why can’t other companies do the same. The personnel working in the field only carries local information on his device (Laptop, Blackberry or even IPad). To a large extent they still remain locked out from the data which could help them access the most up to date information and close the meeting/sale successfully. “I will get back to you”, has a history of missed opportunities – ask any salesperson!
So what has prevented Mobile BPM to develop and be available for adoption. For one, the differing standards – Apple, versus Android versus Symbian versus RIM versus Windows Mobile versus.... has been a major barrier to adoption. Very recently Cordys has shown previews of mobile BPM for Google Apps that supports Smartphone. The smartphone support is enabled via a new Mobile Apps Composer offering, which allows users to design business processes for their smartphone. A good place to start building Mobile apps would be typically administrative and HR processes as they involve the review of limited amount of data that can be easily handled by mobiles. Imagine a senior executive logging on to the enterprise applications while waiting in an airport terminal or commuting to a meeting, and approving all the pending requests, leaves etc!!! Such a saving on time!
I believe the time is ripe for BPM vendors to take the step towards Mobile BPM. I hope to see that happening in the next couple of years!
Mobile apps face a serious challenge in being ‘too restrictive’. To quote Medhat Galal, If Business Process Management (BPM) is going to do for process what Google did for information, BPM must be mobile and always on. A good example is UPS or FedEx who have built their own ‘mobile BPM’ applications to meet their customers’ demands. Why can’t other companies do the same. The personnel working in the field only carries local information on his device (Laptop, Blackberry or even IPad). To a large extent they still remain locked out from the data which could help them access the most up to date information and close the meeting/sale successfully. “I will get back to you”, has a history of missed opportunities – ask any salesperson!
So what has prevented Mobile BPM to develop and be available for adoption. For one, the differing standards – Apple, versus Android versus Symbian versus RIM versus Windows Mobile versus.... has been a major barrier to adoption. Very recently Cordys has shown previews of mobile BPM for Google Apps that supports Smartphone. The smartphone support is enabled via a new Mobile Apps Composer offering, which allows users to design business processes for their smartphone. A good place to start building Mobile apps would be typically administrative and HR processes as they involve the review of limited amount of data that can be easily handled by mobiles. Imagine a senior executive logging on to the enterprise applications while waiting in an airport terminal or commuting to a meeting, and approving all the pending requests, leaves etc!!! Such a saving on time!
I believe the time is ripe for BPM vendors to take the step towards Mobile BPM. I hope to see that happening in the next couple of years!
Friday, 9 July 2010
Who cares about your business processes – and why you should care about them!
As change manager, I often find myself in a situation where there are many stakeholders pushing, pulling, wanting a say or ready to veto on any or (most often) every initiative related to change. Quite often I found myself in the thick of conflict resolution issues rather than progressing the change initiative. And once in, it takes a significant amount of effort to pull out of the hurricane.
Let’s admit! Change is hard and evokes strong reactions from the people who are (potentially) affected by it. And hence their reaction! I learnt it the hard way to stay calm in the eye of the hurricane and find the right balance between the competing perspectives.
Any project in an organisation affect people – some directly; some indirectly. It is important to identify the affected groups, group them on the basis of the impact and handle them accordingly. Easier said than done.
Who Cares?
Whatever be their impact on our project, we need to realise at the outset that they care about our business processes. And hence we need to care about them. We have to recognise that we have relationships with
Let’s take a closer look at them.
Customers and consumers: those we are in business to serve. This group may not be easy to identify. With multiple routes to market, multiple products and services for different markets, there is significant overlap within this group.
Owners: those who invest in us and direct our activity. This group includes the investors, board and senior executives. As before this group can have multiple sub-levels exercising varying degrees of control.
Staff: those who work on serving and supporting the business and its stakeholders. This group can be external (as in manning those functions that are not affected by your project) or internal.
Suppliers: those who provide products, services and resources to us. These can be further segmented based on what they supply
Community: Those who govern, guide or influence what and how we do what we do. This group includes the the regulators, watch-dogs, influencers and general public.
Competitors: those who fight in our market for our customers.
Enterprise: the organisation itself. We need to consider organisation itself as different from tis staff, owners and customers in its ability to be sustainable and freedom to act in its best interests.
Oddballs: Those who play conflicting roles. There are always a group who do not fit into the above categories as they may be playing multiple roles.
What do they care about?
Roger Burton, author of Business Process Management: Profiting from Process uses the ten principles of BPM to explain what the stakeholders care about. Honestly, the list can be used for any stake analysis. Here’s what he has to say:
Having tried various options, I am certain that while managing stakeholder relationships, one size DOES NOT fit all. Having said that, there exists a broad framework within which we can develop and nurture the relationships. Key areas to focus on and monitor are:
Thats my view. Would be happy to hear what others have to say about this.
Let’s admit! Change is hard and evokes strong reactions from the people who are (potentially) affected by it. And hence their reaction! I learnt it the hard way to stay calm in the eye of the hurricane and find the right balance between the competing perspectives.
Any project in an organisation affect people – some directly; some indirectly. It is important to identify the affected groups, group them on the basis of the impact and handle them accordingly. Easier said than done.
Who Cares?
Whatever be their impact on our project, we need to realise at the outset that they care about our business processes. And hence we need to care about them. We have to recognise that we have relationships with
- People outside our organisation
- People inside the organisation who are in the value stream
- People who manage and direct the functions within the value stream
- Peers and associates
- Systems/technologies that orchestrate the work in value stream.
Let’s take a closer look at them.
Customers and consumers: those we are in business to serve. This group may not be easy to identify. With multiple routes to market, multiple products and services for different markets, there is significant overlap within this group.
Owners: those who invest in us and direct our activity. This group includes the investors, board and senior executives. As before this group can have multiple sub-levels exercising varying degrees of control.
Staff: those who work on serving and supporting the business and its stakeholders. This group can be external (as in manning those functions that are not affected by your project) or internal.
Suppliers: those who provide products, services and resources to us. These can be further segmented based on what they supply
Community: Those who govern, guide or influence what and how we do what we do. This group includes the the regulators, watch-dogs, influencers and general public.
Competitors: those who fight in our market for our customers.
Enterprise: the organisation itself. We need to consider organisation itself as different from tis staff, owners and customers in its ability to be sustainable and freedom to act in its best interests.
Oddballs: Those who play conflicting roles. There are always a group who do not fit into the above categories as they may be playing multiple roles.
What do they care about?
Roger Burton, author of Business Process Management: Profiting from Process uses the ten principles of BPM to explain what the stakeholders care about. Honestly, the list can be used for any stake analysis. Here’s what he has to say:
- Business change must be performance driven - Performance is on behalf of the external stakeholders such as shareholders and customers.
- Business change must be stakeholder based - Change that does not deliver value to outsiders just adds cost.
- Business change decisions must be traceable to the stakeholder criteria - If we do not know and agree what is of importance to each stakeholder then change becomes a political process.
- The business must be segmented along business process lines to synchronize change - Processes serve stakeholders and are served by them. This is the heart of true cross functional process management.
- Business processes must be managed holistically - Managing the parts without managing the whole delivery of value to outsiders is a sure recipe for sub optimisation.
- Process renewal initiatives must inspire shared insight - The insight must be shared by stakeholders externally and internally and be the basis for design decisions.
- Process renewal initiatives must be conducted from the outside in - Process analysis and design starts and ends with assessments of outside value creation. Lean thinking is built on this concept. Bottom up (inside out) leads to broken processes.
- Process renewal initiatives must be conducted in an iterative, time-boxed approach - Stakeholders and change agents do not know what they do not know. This is the learning and trust building that delivers changes tested and accepted as they are developed.
- Business change is all about people - If all the people, both internal and external stakeholders, do not change, then performance will not either.
- Business change is a journey, not a destination - The management of stakeholder relationships will continue to be required since the destination is a moving target. Trust will have to be constantly assessed and built with all of those who care.
Having tried various options, I am certain that while managing stakeholder relationships, one size DOES NOT fit all. Having said that, there exists a broad framework within which we can develop and nurture the relationships. Key areas to focus on and monitor are:
- Stakeholder expectations and goals. Having an unambiguous idea of stakeholders’ expectations and connecting them to the potential benefits realised ensures that they are aligned to the project objectives from the start. Failure to include the stakeholders in project objectives often results in ‘skewed’ viewpoints about the initiative.
- Stakeholder interaction and exchange. Communications ALWAYS helps. It brings transparency to the project; rallies support and can provide useful insights during crucial phases. A triage like assessment of recent communications also helps in understanding relationship issues and opportunities.
- Knowledge shared. This ties in to the previous point on interactions and exchange. Weekly dash-boards and project status reports are helpful to an extent. However, in a change programme – especially a large initiative spanning across functions, stakeholders often seek more information than dashboards. What will the ‘new’ organisation look like? How do I perform the tasks that I am responsible for? Such questions are natural and should be answered to the best of ability. As the project team gets further insights, the previous answers should be revised and re-communicated. I have found that if you go back to the stakeholders with revised/updated knowledge, it helps to build a lot of confidence in the project, the team and wins you critical support.
- Commitments made. Commitments – very easy to make; difficult to deliver. Be sure to make a note of every commitment that you make to your stakeholders. It can be as small as forwarding an email to sending a detailed report/document which may require several person-days of work. If you are unable to meet the committed time-line, be sure to inform the stakeholders about the delay and indicate a new delivery date.
Thats my view. Would be happy to hear what others have to say about this.
Wednesday, 7 July 2010
Change Management - Revisited!
I tried to keep away from this topic. It's sticky; ambiguous and does no one good. However my fascination to the subject keeps on tugging the ropes.
And I'm back again!
Someone - not so long in the near past asked me the 'A B C of Change'. Well I answered to the best of my understanding. But within an hour, I was tempted to go back and withdraw what I said! Given this choice, I'd have redefined the ABC as "Anything But Change". Strong, isn't it?
I cannot claim to be an expert of change - but I cringe when someone seeks me out for a 'change' role! What I end up doing eventually is "A B C". And I wonder why we carry on the facade of change, if deep down within we do not want anything to change! I am still searching for answers!
Change is challenging; change is painful; change is laborious and expensive. Yet! Change is a MUST. And once we set our (real) intention to it - it is an exhilarating experience in itself.
We experience change in our everyday (out-of-work) life. We are used to it - or at least get used to it fairly soon. But the moment it comes to work (read organisation), the concept of change assumes gigantic proportions! We think of organisational change as something BIG! Something that needs to be handled with extreme care, by specialists. Something that would take months - if not years - to implement and at considerable costs! Large scale changes, enterprise overhaul, enterprise redirection are passe!
Change need not always be out-of-the-world-ish. A simple innovation - if nurtured - can leash enough potential energy to rock an enterprise tectonic plate. But how often their ideas and/or suggestions are given shape? They get lost in the corporate noise or swiftly amputated to preserve the status quo.
I just finished reading the oxymoronically (not sure if there's such a word, but hey, ho! its innovation!) titled book - Borrowing Brilliance by George Carlin. He gives six simple steps to corporate creativity. And to me it makes perfect sense. Here they are:
Step 1: DEFINING: Define the problem you are trying to solve
Step 2: BORROWING: Borrow ideas from places with similar problem
Step 3: COMBINING: Connect and combine these borrowed ideas
Step 4: INCUBATING: Allow the combinations to incubate into a solution
Step 5: JUDGING: Identify the strength and weakness of the solution
Step 6: ENHANCING: Eliminate the weak points while enhancing the strong ones.
While the first five steps are linear and build off each other, the sixth step is more of a haphazard one. It’s more organic, a self-organising process, one in which the process creates itself and is unique to each project. After passing judgment, you return to the problem, reconsider it, perhaps redefine it or decide to solve a completely different one. Your positive/negative judgments will develop your creative intuition and give you greater insight into what to borrow and where.
Once you understand this process, you can then build an innovation program within your organisation to foster this type of thinking. In fact, you can use this process, through collective collaboration, and involve your entire organisation in the creative process.
Corporate Creativity
Never before has the need for innovation and creativity felt more than now. Recession, fledging customer base, tightening regulations, shortest-ever product life cycle and xut-throat competition has led organisations to seek creative solutions to fuel their business growth. New ideas are being market-tested and implemented at more feverish pace than ever. Innovation and creativity now drive the market, replacing scarcity and price as the primary keys to success. It’s a wave that’s just beginning to crest, and you’ll need to ride that wave or else drown in the turbulence of its wake.
Most companies have very formal innovation function. Most often manned by skeletal team and facilitated by outside resources. The great misconceptions that result from formal/assisted innovation sessions are - often - more detrimental to the creative process than anything positive that results from the process itself. The constraints may leave out many important aspects of the creative thinking process. Carlin (again) suggests a simple receipe to incorporate creative thinking process into the daily processes in your organisation: Separate the concept development process into four different meetings, each with a different goal and different set of rules. These are:
1. A problem-definition meeting;
2. A borrowing-ideas meeting;
3. A new-idea meeting; and
4. The judgment of these ideas at a separate time.
The first meeting is essentially a data-dump. You are not interested in the solution, but in the problem itself. The problem needs to be analysed on all dimensions, separate the symptoms from the root cause and arrive at a hierarchy of problems. This step helps you delimit the scope of the problem. Quite often we 'jump' into the problem - only to end up identifying solutions for wrong (at worst) or less important (at best) problems.
Once you have identified your problems, organise them by sorting and grouping them. The next step is to assign different members of your team to different groups and ask them to research competitors, other industries or domains for similarities and the approach they adopted to solve them.
During the second meeting, teams present their research to each other. Essentially, they describe the problem that was assigned to them and explain how the same (or very similar issue) was handled by the competitors, or other companies or companies in other domains.
The third meeting is the idea generation meeting. You evaluate the results from the second meeting into what can work for you and in which way. This is a creative session and invitees should be encouraged to be creative but ready to shoot their ideas. Brainstorming? Yeah! Very close to it. In the initial days, when you are trying to instil the culture of innovation in your company, you are probably better off considering egos, organisation culture etc in mind.
The fourth (and there can be subsequent meetings as well) are about evaluating the shortlist of solutions and prioritising to take them further. You many have more than one good idea which you want to try them. Using a department, small group as a pilot to beta test the idea is always a healthy practice. More important, it wins you some early converts in your change programme.
Change is personal. Each person has a varying degree of adaptability to change. The level of resistance varies with the (perceived) impact on the person experiencing the change process. The 4 steps to corporate creativity helps dispel a lot of fear factor and ensures a wider participation from the organisation. Corporate creativity can work if, and only if, the sponsors understand the nature of creative thought and the process of innovation. Your teams are most effective when you use them to gather materials (remember police asking for citizens' help in search and rescue operation?). However, their search needs to be directed. This requires a leader - someone to coordinate the efforts!
I am a firm believer in the intellectual property residing in an organisation. Unfortunately, we pay outsiders (consultants) to flush them out of our organisation. Most often, once the assignment is over, the outsider walks away with most of the knowledge captured during the process. When have you scanned across the hall to seek a potential consultant in your organisation? What stops you from doing that?
And I'm back again!
Someone - not so long in the near past asked me the 'A B C of Change'. Well I answered to the best of my understanding. But within an hour, I was tempted to go back and withdraw what I said! Given this choice, I'd have redefined the ABC as "Anything But Change". Strong, isn't it?
I cannot claim to be an expert of change - but I cringe when someone seeks me out for a 'change' role! What I end up doing eventually is "A B C". And I wonder why we carry on the facade of change, if deep down within we do not want anything to change! I am still searching for answers!
Change is challenging; change is painful; change is laborious and expensive. Yet! Change is a MUST. And once we set our (real) intention to it - it is an exhilarating experience in itself.
We experience change in our everyday (out-of-work) life. We are used to it - or at least get used to it fairly soon. But the moment it comes to work (read organisation), the concept of change assumes gigantic proportions! We think of organisational change as something BIG! Something that needs to be handled with extreme care, by specialists. Something that would take months - if not years - to implement and at considerable costs! Large scale changes, enterprise overhaul, enterprise redirection are passe!
Change need not always be out-of-the-world-ish. A simple innovation - if nurtured - can leash enough potential energy to rock an enterprise tectonic plate. But how often their ideas and/or suggestions are given shape? They get lost in the corporate noise or swiftly amputated to preserve the status quo.
I just finished reading the oxymoronically (not sure if there's such a word, but hey, ho! its innovation!) titled book - Borrowing Brilliance by George Carlin. He gives six simple steps to corporate creativity. And to me it makes perfect sense. Here they are:
Step 1: DEFINING: Define the problem you are trying to solve
Step 2: BORROWING: Borrow ideas from places with similar problem
Step 3: COMBINING: Connect and combine these borrowed ideas
Step 4: INCUBATING: Allow the combinations to incubate into a solution
Step 5: JUDGING: Identify the strength and weakness of the solution
Step 6: ENHANCING: Eliminate the weak points while enhancing the strong ones.
While the first five steps are linear and build off each other, the sixth step is more of a haphazard one. It’s more organic, a self-organising process, one in which the process creates itself and is unique to each project. After passing judgment, you return to the problem, reconsider it, perhaps redefine it or decide to solve a completely different one. Your positive/negative judgments will develop your creative intuition and give you greater insight into what to borrow and where.
Once you understand this process, you can then build an innovation program within your organisation to foster this type of thinking. In fact, you can use this process, through collective collaboration, and involve your entire organisation in the creative process.
Corporate Creativity
Never before has the need for innovation and creativity felt more than now. Recession, fledging customer base, tightening regulations, shortest-ever product life cycle and xut-throat competition has led organisations to seek creative solutions to fuel their business growth. New ideas are being market-tested and implemented at more feverish pace than ever. Innovation and creativity now drive the market, replacing scarcity and price as the primary keys to success. It’s a wave that’s just beginning to crest, and you’ll need to ride that wave or else drown in the turbulence of its wake.
Most companies have very formal innovation function. Most often manned by skeletal team and facilitated by outside resources. The great misconceptions that result from formal/assisted innovation sessions are - often - more detrimental to the creative process than anything positive that results from the process itself. The constraints may leave out many important aspects of the creative thinking process. Carlin (again) suggests a simple receipe to incorporate creative thinking process into the daily processes in your organisation: Separate the concept development process into four different meetings, each with a different goal and different set of rules. These are:
1. A problem-definition meeting;
2. A borrowing-ideas meeting;
3. A new-idea meeting; and
4. The judgment of these ideas at a separate time.
The first meeting is essentially a data-dump. You are not interested in the solution, but in the problem itself. The problem needs to be analysed on all dimensions, separate the symptoms from the root cause and arrive at a hierarchy of problems. This step helps you delimit the scope of the problem. Quite often we 'jump' into the problem - only to end up identifying solutions for wrong (at worst) or less important (at best) problems.
Once you have identified your problems, organise them by sorting and grouping them. The next step is to assign different members of your team to different groups and ask them to research competitors, other industries or domains for similarities and the approach they adopted to solve them.
During the second meeting, teams present their research to each other. Essentially, they describe the problem that was assigned to them and explain how the same (or very similar issue) was handled by the competitors, or other companies or companies in other domains.
The third meeting is the idea generation meeting. You evaluate the results from the second meeting into what can work for you and in which way. This is a creative session and invitees should be encouraged to be creative but ready to shoot their ideas. Brainstorming? Yeah! Very close to it. In the initial days, when you are trying to instil the culture of innovation in your company, you are probably better off considering egos, organisation culture etc in mind.
The fourth (and there can be subsequent meetings as well) are about evaluating the shortlist of solutions and prioritising to take them further. You many have more than one good idea which you want to try them. Using a department, small group as a pilot to beta test the idea is always a healthy practice. More important, it wins you some early converts in your change programme.
Change is personal. Each person has a varying degree of adaptability to change. The level of resistance varies with the (perceived) impact on the person experiencing the change process. The 4 steps to corporate creativity helps dispel a lot of fear factor and ensures a wider participation from the organisation. Corporate creativity can work if, and only if, the sponsors understand the nature of creative thought and the process of innovation. Your teams are most effective when you use them to gather materials (remember police asking for citizens' help in search and rescue operation?). However, their search needs to be directed. This requires a leader - someone to coordinate the efforts!
I am a firm believer in the intellectual property residing in an organisation. Unfortunately, we pay outsiders (consultants) to flush them out of our organisation. Most often, once the assignment is over, the outsider walks away with most of the knowledge captured during the process. When have you scanned across the hall to seek a potential consultant in your organisation? What stops you from doing that?
Tuesday, 8 December 2009
Outsourcing: You need to understand what value means to you!
A couple of weeks ago, I was helping a client examine the efficacy of their sourcing initiative. The client had outsourced to an on-shore vendor who (apparently) was not seen as delivering value. My role was to examine the outsourced organisation and find the areas of conflict.
Outsourcing has been around for a while. In the post Y2K world, the business model caught the imagination of the businesses. What started off as a simple skill-augmentation based on cost arbitrage, soon developed into new forms – business process offshoring, Infrastructure outsourcing, total outsourcing and knowledge process outsourcing. The providers are continuously working on refining the business model, as customers’ appetite for sourcing grows.
Has outsourcing proven to be a reliable business model? Can businesses entrust all non-core activities to an outsourcing firm and confine their attention to their core-competencies? Can there be a virtual business with an extremely thin management layer, while all activities being supported by an outsourced model? We have to wait and watch.
While outsourcing has ingrained itself in the corporate strategy of the outsourcing companies, it still remains largely tactical. Very few organisations have approached outsourcing in a strategic manner. Having discussed the outsourcing initiatives with a number of organisations, I believe that despite all strategic intents, the outsourced operations are not perceived as an extension of the home office. There remains an intention to ‘squeeze the maximum’ out of the vendor from each new piece of work. And hence, a bumpy relationship with the vendor(s).
There any many such cases of not-so-smooth relationship existing between the two parties in an outsourcing deal.
So what has gone wrong? Or what has changed? The current economic climate has uncovered many (potential) points of conflict which have been kept under wraps. The downturn has forced senior management to explore cost saving initiatives within the organisation. Maintaining a large IT organisation and outsourcing definitely came under the spotlight. In addition, outsourcing companies have been known to cut costs to win new clients. The initial losses are amortised over a longer term by mining the client deeply and spreading services in new areas. A recession put an end to any new initiative.
Cost arbitrage holds good for the first year. Or may be second. In the first year, the purchaser gets as much as 30% - 40% gains simply by moving jobs offshore (lift-and-shift!). It looks very attractive on the balance sheet. During the second year, some more processes and/or systems get added to the offshored operations, and the magic continues. However, from the third year, if no serious efforts have been taken to ‘fix’ the processes/systems and gain through productivity improvements, better programme management and better governance, the reality hits hard. After having spoken to a large number of users, it was apparent that little effort was paid to improving the quality, removing operational constraints and integrate the offshored operation to the home office.
Vendors, on the other hand, regularly undercut prices to win a large deal. Once they have gained entry to the offices of a new client, the onsite person is pressured into expanding to new business functions, new systems or new service lines. Often the sheer difference in CMM levels between the client and vendor is sufficient to show budgetary gains in any projects that are undertaken. Vendors are very well aware that client organisations do not have any metrics to benchmark the performance. They definitely don’t encourage building any benchmarks either. Once sufficient volume of business has been acquired, the key skills (highly paid) are often replaced by rookies to cut costs. Ask a vendor about their ‘rookie ratio’ and watch their reaction. This is probably one of the best kept secrets from the clients.
So what is the best way forward?
I was interested and intrigued to find how companies treat their captive organisations. They are very similar to outsourced organisations. However they are run on an entirely different lines. While the captives are very similar to an outsourced entity, the approach of the parent company is very different towards it. It is an integral part of the organisation. There is no ‘us versus them’ feeling existing within the organisation. Due care is taken to build the knowledge base and motivation of the employees. The captive organisation employees are regularly integrated with the home organisation to inculcate the feeling of ‘oneness’. There is no desire to ‘squeeze’; relative capabilities of different teams are assessed for an optimal performance. The performance of the home and captive teams are evaluated on a similar basis.
The difference is very much in terms of the perception of business value that a buyer seeks from their sourcing initiative. In the case of outsourced business while the intention is to ‘squeeze’; in case of captive operations, the intention is to generate a sustainable value over longer period of time.
For the buyers of outsourced services, there is a lot to learn from the management of captive operations. Outsourced vendors have a business to run. As in any competitive scenario, they would use all possible means – foul or fair – to win a new business. It is important to understand their margins, their business challenges and work with them to mutual benefits. There is an urgent need to integrate the outsourced organisation to your home organisation. The integration needs to happen at a cultural, emotional and skill levels to get the best out of the employees of your outsourced organisation.
In one of the accounts that I used to manage for my employer, I would encourage client managers to spend at least 2 weeks working in the outsourced office. On their return, the managers had a completely different perspective of the remote office than they had before. And, this was after 2 years of outsourced relationship. The returning managers had a better grasp of the capabilities, working style and ethos of the remote office. On their part, the employees at the remote office connected better with the managers who had spent some time with them.
Another company has mandated that all senior employees from the offshore are rotated to the home office to build a rapport within the team.
While at home, companies take a lot of efforts toward people development, it is interesting to note that they rely on their vendor organisation’s capabilities to do this in the remote office. Your vendor organisation’s core capability is definitely not your line of business. Any capability development that would happen through them would not be aligned to your lines of business.
If outsourcing companies are seeking better value out of their initiatives, they need to explore the value that they seek out of it. I cannot it express it better than John Knowles, IT Director at Allianz, UK, who said, “You need to understand what value means to you”.
Thanks John for your insight and your wonderful comment. It aptly sums up the success of your organisation’s initiative in outsourcing!
- A leading life and pensions provider who had outsourced a substantial part of their IT to an outsourced vendor has recently hired a senior consultant to ‘fix’ the widening differences with their vendor. The relationship is less than 18 months old.
- The outsourcing partner of a leading mutual insurer has asked to raise the rates or agree to outsource more work. Duration of relationship – less than two years.
- A leading financial services firm has published a tender for seeking new vendor for their ITO initiative. Reason: The current vendor has not been able to understand their business priorities
John Knowles, Director IT Operations and Outsourcing at Allianz UK has setup a captive operation in India for his company. Amidst a number of 'outsourced operations', Allianz's captive operation is an island. It is not driven by motives of spreading across their client organisation like a rash. Nor is there monetary incentive for employees to perform at super-human levels. In our discussions John reflected on the challenges that he faced to maintain the employee morale. Unlike a typical outsourcing provider, he was not operating in price-war scenario. Nor was he interested in quick wins. Sheer perseverence, and investment in people has helped him scale his organisation to be a shared service centre across the global business.
If outsourcing companies are seeking better value out of their initiatives, they need to explore the value that they seek out of it. I cannot it express it better than John Knowles, IT Director at Allianz, UK, who said, “You need to understand what value means to you”.
Thanks John for your insight and your wonderful comment. It aptly sums up the success of your organisation’s initiative in outsourcing!
Thursday, 3 December 2009
Management of change is a tight rope walk!
The other day I was helping an ex-colleague respond to an online questionnaire for a potential job opportunity. The role was for Change Management. The potential employer - one of the Big 4s - had a very interesting question: "Which Change Management methodologies have you used in the past?". This question set me thinking. Have (we) consultants reduced such a delicate issue as Change to a methodology? And if were just about methodology, we can churm out potential change managers by huge numbers on the production line (a.k.a. management schools).
And if it is a process (i.e., set of discreet activities) that lead to a defined results, companies don't need Big 4 any more. Any BPO/ITO/KPO/XXO vendor can deliver the change from offshore. Big 4s, watch out!
I have handled transformation programmes (and the inherent change element) of varied sizes before. I have found it to be emotionally draining, very intense, but extremely rewarding experience. No amount of compensation can beat the sight of a (formerly) resistant person, helping their co-workers with their newly acquired skills.
Methodologies help. No doubt about it. But to the extent of developing an understanding of what goes in a change programme. If you select a change manager only on the basis of their knowledge of a particular methodology, I believe your change programme may be in for serious challenges.
And if it is a process (i.e., set of discreet activities) that lead to a defined results, companies don't need Big 4 any more. Any BPO/ITO/KPO/XXO vendor can deliver the change from offshore. Big 4s, watch out!
I have handled transformation programmes (and the inherent change element) of varied sizes before. I have found it to be emotionally draining, very intense, but extremely rewarding experience. No amount of compensation can beat the sight of a (formerly) resistant person, helping their co-workers with their newly acquired skills.
Methodologies help. No doubt about it. But to the extent of developing an understanding of what goes in a change programme. If you select a change manager only on the basis of their knowledge of a particular methodology, I believe your change programme may be in for serious challenges.
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