Silo Busting: How to Ensure Solutions Make it to Market

Posted by Glenn Gow on 05/22/07 at 10:24 PM under "Strategy and Planning","Operations and Execution"

In John Caddell’s blog, he talks about selling solutions.

The reason every product company wants to sell solutions is that every enterprise client wants to buy a solution to a business problem, not component parts that just might – maybe – provide a solution (until it breaks).

I agree with Ranjay Gulati’s comments in “Silo Busting” that it takes senior executive commitment. However, we have found that the coordination needs to occur not so much within account management, but much more in product development and marketing.

Silos need to be broken down to coordinate the development of multiple products (or product lines) into a solution. But who gets to say what a solution is? It’s a combination of sales and marketing. Sales needs to have input so they can commit to selling it.

Marketing, ultimately, has to own solution definition and solution marketing. Senior execs need to defend and sponsor this approach or the silos will go back to being independent non-solutions in search of a problem.

What are your thoughts on bringing solutions to market?

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Social Media: Opportunity and Risk

Posted by Glenn Gow on 05/19/07 at 06:43 AM under "Strategy and Planning","Operations and Execution"

Denise Shiffman writes about a report on the Inc. 500 by the Center for Marketing Research that speaks to smaller companies moving to social media faster than large companies.

The reason smaller companies are earlier adopters is that they perceive they have a lot less to lose. The larger companies are worried about their proprietary information getting out. They’re worried about losing control of their messaging. Their worried they won’t look good. They’re worried (by the attorneys) about legal issues.

This is not dissimilar to IBM’s early attempts to embrace Apache as a web server platform. “Oh no, we’ll get sued! We can’t control that code”, is what the attorneys said. And yet, IBM adopted it with a vengeance and rode a wave that really helped them grow their services business, because they saw the market opportunity and managed their risks.

THAT is what bigger companies need to do. SEE the market opportunity and if they’re concerned about risk, manage it, but don’t run away from this revolution because of it. In many ways, this is like cannibalization. Either you step in and be part of the revolution, or it will happen to you without you gaining from it in any way.

Big companies no longer have the control over messages that flow to decision-influencers, that they used to. Full control is gone. Big companies need to step in now to “participate in conversations”. Yes, this is a paradigm shift. That’s why they need to do it now and learn how to do it really well.

The world has already changed.

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Customer UI

Posted by Glenn Gow on 05/17/07 at 10:27 PM under "Strategy and Planning","Operations and Execution"

Francois Gossieaux’s blog on “customer UI” makes some excellent points about the total customer experience. Most companies are looking for efficiencies in their systems and ways to reduce costs, not ways to optimize the customer experience.

Furthermore, much of the challenge comes from “siloed” organizations that are building out customer-related experiences in an uncoordinated fashion.

He uses the term “touchpoints”. We work with our clients to understand the implications of being a customer through all the available touchpoints. Further challenges exist when you add channel partners into the mix.

One of the things we’ve done for clients has been to implement mystery shopper programs. Additionally, one of our favorite things to do is take a client (it must be a senior executive), through a series of customer experiences so they can experience it themselves. That person often becomes a powerful catalyst for change.

Francois also talks about how he likes Apple for how well integrated they are on this topic. Alas, even they aren’t perfect, as you can see in John Bruggeman’s discussion.

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