Being ready for the technology changes for the future
There are fads and then there are innovations that completely change the way we do things. We have to keep an eye across the horizon and generate the awareness of what will change this industry in the future. Visualize our frenzied customers looking at Business Intelligence reports on large thin transparent LCD panels with lots of dashboards and scorecards, slicing and dicing the data at the speed of thought. Their UI is not a keyboard, it is voice and touch. They patch in a colleague on the field who shows up on a small window using 3G mobile technology and can not only discuss but also see some of the dashboards on his iPad. A price-point decision is hanging. Back at the office details about the Enterprise Planning systems, market trends, price points on raw material, and competition pricing information is bubbling up on the panel as the discussion continues. A lot of what-if-analysis is done quickly and finally an educated decision. A decision is quickly taken, a competitive strategy executed, a customer made happy, a deal struck. What will be our contribution in this visual? The future technology will not only be based on disruptive changes in hardware, cloud, virtualization, cheap-scalable architectures, green etc. but also intensely mobile, networked in multiple ways, collaborative, mash-up applications created from a variety of inter-related business applications. All for one cause – Stay ahead in the game. Keep that in mind, our job is to keep our customer Ahead in the game.
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
BHAGs for a Services Company
“We worked furiously to realize our goals. Because we didn’t have fear, we could do something drastic.”
- Masaru Ibuka, Founder, Sony Corporation, 1991.
A good BHAG appears to border between plausible and simply outrageous. Successful companies however, don’t think that way. They achieve their audacious goals because it simply never occurs to them that they can’t do what they set out to do. They bring a mind-set change, make radical moves and fire up a sense of urgency. Why should we be any different? Here are some of the key elements, which if addressed aggressively, can make BHAGs happen.
Deep customer awareness: Customer business intimacy and awareness of their business ecosystem is of utmost importance for any vendor to develop deep-rooted relationships. Our ability to answer a few questions on behalf of the customer will provide valuable insights. What is our customer’s business? Who are their end-customers? Who are their competitors? How can they increase market share? What is their business vision, goals and priorities? Figuring out how we can help achieve that goal and translate possibility to reality is solely our responsibility. The journey to becoming our customer’s Trusted Partner starts by asking, “How do we make our influence so pronounced that the customer always considers us before embarking on new strategic initiatives?” The ability to shape our customer’s agenda, and earn the “seat at the table” when the most important strategies and plans are worked out should be our urgent priority. It takes commitment, effort, sincerity of purpose and patience but the fruits are worth the pain.
Strengthening our value proposition: Our value proposition will seldom stand critical review if we do not know the customer. Deep customer awareness helps building unique value propositions. How much of our work positively influences the customer’s core business? How far does our value proposition go beyond cost savings and performance gains? Customers are demanding different value propositions now and that is reshaping the way we compete. The stronger we get on creating value propositions; faster will be our move towards executing strategic projects that influence business outcomes. With more of our services directly influencing customer’s business outcomes, our presence is fortified. Such services then invite a fair discussion of premium pricing proven by delivered metrics and data points.
Creating the unique client experience: This should become one of our key differentiators. Ideally, even before we start responding to a hot new prospect, we need to devote time to figure out how we will create a unique experience as we engage the customer. The right moves will ensure that the customer senses this refreshing change in the way we do business. Across multiple touch points key factors like access to talent, access to leadership, candid dialogue around risk assessment and risk sharing, transparency of processes, attention to details and above all quality of communication play strongly. Over time, customers value predictability of service just as much as quality of service.
Branding - personal and Organizational: A brand is a promise of what the customer can expect. Our brand must be distinctive and command a certain respect when discussions of a particular nature of services come up. Most importantly, markets we operate in must know and understand our brand. Sustained effort is required to achieve this. Have you asked yourself What is your personal brand? Go ahead and try. It reveals some secrets that apply to our Company’s branding as well. Each of us is a brand ambassador, we build our brand and we build our organization’s.
People: People are our greatest strength. To meet leadership demands as we grow we have to build leaders from within to preserve our core values. Research shows that it is not quality of leadership, but the continuity of quality leadership that matters most. However, there is a premium to pay – retention. Retaining our best talent is a collective responsibility, more often in ways beyond common imagination. The Trusted Partner stage takes years to build; it grows only through many-to-many relationships at multiple levels and needs consistency of our customer facing people over time.
Finally, there is a strong co-relation between employees and our brand. Not only does our employer brand support our business strategy, it defines for our employees what our customers should experience.
Chetan Manjarekar
Chetan.manjarekar@gmail.com
- Masaru Ibuka, Founder, Sony Corporation, 1991.
A good BHAG appears to border between plausible and simply outrageous. Successful companies however, don’t think that way. They achieve their audacious goals because it simply never occurs to them that they can’t do what they set out to do. They bring a mind-set change, make radical moves and fire up a sense of urgency. Why should we be any different? Here are some of the key elements, which if addressed aggressively, can make BHAGs happen.
Deep customer awareness: Customer business intimacy and awareness of their business ecosystem is of utmost importance for any vendor to develop deep-rooted relationships. Our ability to answer a few questions on behalf of the customer will provide valuable insights. What is our customer’s business? Who are their end-customers? Who are their competitors? How can they increase market share? What is their business vision, goals and priorities? Figuring out how we can help achieve that goal and translate possibility to reality is solely our responsibility. The journey to becoming our customer’s Trusted Partner starts by asking, “How do we make our influence so pronounced that the customer always considers us before embarking on new strategic initiatives?” The ability to shape our customer’s agenda, and earn the “seat at the table” when the most important strategies and plans are worked out should be our urgent priority. It takes commitment, effort, sincerity of purpose and patience but the fruits are worth the pain.
Strengthening our value proposition: Our value proposition will seldom stand critical review if we do not know the customer. Deep customer awareness helps building unique value propositions. How much of our work positively influences the customer’s core business? How far does our value proposition go beyond cost savings and performance gains? Customers are demanding different value propositions now and that is reshaping the way we compete. The stronger we get on creating value propositions; faster will be our move towards executing strategic projects that influence business outcomes. With more of our services directly influencing customer’s business outcomes, our presence is fortified. Such services then invite a fair discussion of premium pricing proven by delivered metrics and data points.
Creating the unique client experience: This should become one of our key differentiators. Ideally, even before we start responding to a hot new prospect, we need to devote time to figure out how we will create a unique experience as we engage the customer. The right moves will ensure that the customer senses this refreshing change in the way we do business. Across multiple touch points key factors like access to talent, access to leadership, candid dialogue around risk assessment and risk sharing, transparency of processes, attention to details and above all quality of communication play strongly. Over time, customers value predictability of service just as much as quality of service.
Branding - personal and Organizational: A brand is a promise of what the customer can expect. Our brand must be distinctive and command a certain respect when discussions of a particular nature of services come up. Most importantly, markets we operate in must know and understand our brand. Sustained effort is required to achieve this. Have you asked yourself What is your personal brand? Go ahead and try. It reveals some secrets that apply to our Company’s branding as well. Each of us is a brand ambassador, we build our brand and we build our organization’s.
People: People are our greatest strength. To meet leadership demands as we grow we have to build leaders from within to preserve our core values. Research shows that it is not quality of leadership, but the continuity of quality leadership that matters most. However, there is a premium to pay – retention. Retaining our best talent is a collective responsibility, more often in ways beyond common imagination. The Trusted Partner stage takes years to build; it grows only through many-to-many relationships at multiple levels and needs consistency of our customer facing people over time.
Finally, there is a strong co-relation between employees and our brand. Not only does our employer brand support our business strategy, it defines for our employees what our customers should experience.
Chetan Manjarekar
Chetan.manjarekar@gmail.com
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Social Networking - the new face of IT
IT is fascinating, it has actually shrunk the world to a global village where it is easy to know more about more people than ever before. Thanks to some upcoming and some established social networking web sites that serve a simple purpose - getting people together. By nature we all love to be in touch, we love to express thoughts, we show off our coolest pictures, we invite friends to check out our cool videos. Be it YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and several others, past couple of years have provided a terrific way to really know the person behind a face you put across a name. Add to it the numerous blogging opportunities that can really add another deeper dimension to what you want to know about somebody. Social networking opportunities actually driving the advent of Web 2.0 technologies are now leveraged beyond the boundaries of homes.
In the corporate world the embrace of Web 2.0 technologies is yet to be really noticed, however, casual usage of such means to network with distant teams and colleagues has already started to pick up. This is forcing big IT vendors to re-think their product design strategies to provide Web2.0 enabling technologies as part of the bundle. This is eventually in the hope that one day we will be better 'networked' at work as well. Funny though it may sound, it is a reality in several organizations. Chances are you interact with somebody on such forums more often than you meet her at the Company cafeteria. What about folks who are working with you remotely....?
Welcome to the world of offshorization. From where this blog is authored, offshorization is a commonly known phenomena - to put it mildly. The use of social computing technologies is leveraged in the IT Offshorization world by savvy customer managers who want to learn more about their offshore vendors' teams. They go beyond the long distance tele-conferences and video conferences that discuss project status and mostly business. For instance when a project team in Mumbai posts its cool Quarterly Party video on YouTube their manager at the customer's end 8000 miles apart gets to know the team in an environment she has never seen. With growing time constraints at the work place it is hard to dig in such details about your team through calls and emails. It is this "connect and share" experience on a platform that is mutually neutral puts everybody at instant ease. Ideas, thoughts, feelings let themselves out more easily. You know elements of different personalities of the people that not only matter to your business, but you as an individual. No matter where they are in this global village.
Are you an IT Director/Manager with teams working remotely? How much do you know about your teams beyond their IT capabilities and skills? Chances are many of your team members are already on Facebook, Flickr, or on Orkut. If not ask them to show up on your favorite site. Share your thoughts, share your videos, reach out! Try it with your team and see.
In the corporate world the embrace of Web 2.0 technologies is yet to be really noticed, however, casual usage of such means to network with distant teams and colleagues has already started to pick up. This is forcing big IT vendors to re-think their product design strategies to provide Web2.0 enabling technologies as part of the bundle. This is eventually in the hope that one day we will be better 'networked' at work as well. Funny though it may sound, it is a reality in several organizations. Chances are you interact with somebody on such forums more often than you meet her at the Company cafeteria. What about folks who are working with you remotely....?
Welcome to the world of offshorization. From where this blog is authored, offshorization is a commonly known phenomena - to put it mildly. The use of social computing technologies is leveraged in the IT Offshorization world by savvy customer managers who want to learn more about their offshore vendors' teams. They go beyond the long distance tele-conferences and video conferences that discuss project status and mostly business. For instance when a project team in Mumbai posts its cool Quarterly Party video on YouTube their manager at the customer's end 8000 miles apart gets to know the team in an environment she has never seen. With growing time constraints at the work place it is hard to dig in such details about your team through calls and emails. It is this "connect and share" experience on a platform that is mutually neutral puts everybody at instant ease. Ideas, thoughts, feelings let themselves out more easily. You know elements of different personalities of the people that not only matter to your business, but you as an individual. No matter where they are in this global village.
Are you an IT Director/Manager with teams working remotely? How much do you know about your teams beyond their IT capabilities and skills? Chances are many of your team members are already on Facebook, Flickr, or on Orkut. If not ask them to show up on your favorite site. Share your thoughts, share your videos, reach out! Try it with your team and see.
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