Are Your Processes Begging for Change?

Posted on August 4, 2008 by David

Peter Drucker identified process need as one potential source of innovation in an organization. In his definition, he describes a process need as an improvement that is obvious to almost everyone involved yet no one has taken action to make it happen.

I offer the following as sample number one of a process need:

If the methods of payment you accept generate enough comments that you feel compelled to post a sign to preempt the complaints, you have yourself a mighty fine process need innovation opportunity!

The solution here is obvious and a thoroughly solved business problem. However, the short-sightedness of a small business owner unwilling to pay credit card transactions fees leaves thier cashier on the cutting edge of 1970s technology.

For sample number 2, I give you the donut drive around:

A register upgrade at this Dunkin Donuts shop eliminated the ability to take or change an order at the window. Thus, this sign directing their valued customers to please circle the building and stop at the speaker/microphone this time!

These rather silly examples prove the point: what is screaming out for improvement in your organization that you no longer even see because it has become normal? What metaphorical (or actual!) signs have you put up for your customers so they will stop complaining about your broken processes?

Trading Value for Money Leads to Profits. Amazing!

Posted on July 25, 2008 by David

Poking fun at the airlines is too easy these days but I think Southwest shows how you can actually make profits by giving value to your customers in exchange for money (crazy concept, I know!) in an otherwise troubled market.

According to the New York Times today, Southwest just posted a profit for their 69th straight quarter. A very big part of this has been do to their savvy fuel hedges limiting their exposure to the run up in oil. However, they have also revamped their pricing structure by not only raising fares, but offering a new class that gives advanced boarding, a free drink and an extra frequent flyer credit. The new class, Business Select, could generated about $100 million in new revenue.

Compare this to the other airlines who have not protected their fuel prices and are charging for previously ‘free’ services, such as baggage, without adding any additional value, terminally angering their customers.

Southwest, meanwhile, is advertising that ‘bags fly for free’ on their home page. I imagine that their executives must have to suppress giggles quite often as they dance around the rest of this sclerotic industry.

Are you offering value to your customers, visitors, clients or members? Taking captive markets for granted is risky in the long run: they have a habit of breaking out eventually.

David Gammel's Web Strategy Report, Volume 1, Issue 3

Posted on July 21, 2008 by David

Thoughts On Strategy: Web Site Governance is Not the Answer

Web site governance is the process of implementing policies and standards for managing the content published on an organization’s web site.
Complex organizations tend to generate complex and unresponsive web site governance practices.
Here is the problem with web site governance:
- Governance is about control, not success.
- Governance is about limiting, not enabling.
- Governance is about rules rather than innovation.
Some governance processes are required to manage any web site.
However, an overly governance-oriented mindset ensures mediocrity as your best possible outcome.
So what is the answer?
- Your web team should be vested in helping your other units to succeed in their goals rather than comply with rules.
- Your web staff should be valued as critical business advisors rather than denigrated as fussy bureaucrats.
- Your web team should be positioned more as an in-house professional services firm than as a traffic cop.

Case Study: Managing a Memo

For this month’s case, I’ll share a web site governance experience I had when I led the web team for a large membership society. This organization had many committees and Boards, each of which had their own needs and desires for the organizations web site. This is the typical cat herding kind of management task.

One day I received a printed memo via snail mail from the chair of one of the boards, copied to the top executives on staff and a good part of the Board of Directors. The memo demanded a large button on the home page to feature content related to their activities.

So, I’m faced with a memo copied to half the leadership of the association demanding a specific change to the home page of the site, which we manage very carefully. My options in this scenario included:

Caving to the demand and just doing it;
Refusing outright (which would an uphill battle), or;
Figure out what prompted the memo and try to address that need.

You can guess which I did based on the first part of this newsletter. I called the Chair and we discussed what her Board does and what she hoped would be different for them by adding a button to the home page. This friendly discussion revealed that searches on key phrases in the local search engine did not turn up their content in the first page of results. I was able to replicate this problem immediately.

We had several tools with which to tune search results. I asked if they would be satisfied if I could improve the search results dramatically for their key phrases. They said they would, so I did, and they were.

An overly governance driven management process for the web site would have likely resulted in no button on the home page but it would not have delved into the actual need that this group had.

The Web is there to help the rest of the organization to succeed, not to fulfill content management policies. If you always keep that in mind you will create much more value than you do frustration.

High Geekery: Any sufficiently advanced technology…

I recently needed to use Internet Explorer in order to access some systems for one of my clients. This is not as much of a challenge as it used to be for someone based on a Mac now that Apple uses Intel chips in their hardware.

I am using Windows XP on VMWare Fusion, which allows windows applications to run as if they were native to the Apple operating system.

The following scenario made me think of Arthur C. Clarke’s famous quote: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

I dragged a file from Apple’s Finder into a folder in Windows Explorer. The directory in Windows Explorer was actually on a remote server I had connected to via WebDAV in Windows Explorer. So this file went from my native Mac filesystem to a simulated Windows operating system which then transmitted it to a directory on Windows Server hundreds of miles away from me.

All via a single drag-and-drop of the file.

That description is definitely high geekery but, believe me, so many different things have to be solved for that kind of operation to be feasible that I was awed.

Three Reasons Branded Online Communities Fail

Posted on July 21, 2008 by David

A Deloitte consultant just released result of a study of 100 businesses with online communities. From the WSJ:

One of the hot investments for businesses these days is online communities that help customers feel connected to a brand. But most of these efforts produce fancy Web sites that few people ever visit. The problem: Businesses are focusing on the value an online community can provide to themselves, not the community.

The three main reasons for failure were not surprising:

Focusing on the technology over the value of the community to its members;
Failure to assign experienced staff to develop the community;
Poor or no metrics for measuring success.

Let’s tackle those one at a time:

Bells & Whistles
It is so very tempting to focus on the gee whiz things you can do with technology, especially with the very hot social media arena. However, you have to center all of these efforts on the value you will provide to your anticipated community members, making sure that is aligned to deliver some value for your company or organization when it takes off. Constantly ask yourself “So what?” as you develop your plans. Once you have the value identified you can make rational choices about the technology you choose to deploy.

Leadership and Management
Would you launch a new product or service line without an experienced person to develop and manage it? Not usually, no. The same goes for online communities. They require care and feeding and interaction to do successfully. This requires dedicated staff who can interact with others online effectively and keep your online space focused on the value it should provide to participants and the company. It boggles the mind to read the story linked above and realize many of these companies spent over a $1 million on their site and then put half a staff person in place to run it.

Measuring Success
This goes back to value: your measures for success must tell you if you are creating the value you planned to achieve. Are your community members getting value? Is this participation generating value for the sponsoring company? Simply pages views and site registration won’t do. If you goal is to convert community members into customers, be sure you have processes and tools in place to measure that conversion rather than simply hope for the best.

(Story spotted via the most excellent CMSWatch.)

S.F. officials locked out of computer network

Posted on July 15, 2008 by David

I think a couple William Gibson novels start out this way: S.F. officials locked out of computer network

A disgruntled city computer engineer has virtually commandeered San Francisco’s new multimillion-dollar computer network, altering it to deny access to top administrators even as he sits in jail on $5 million bail, authorities said Monday.

This is likely the result of a failed management process rather than a technical vulnerability. In fact, the system must be pretty secure if they are still trying to get in!

With systems this large, you have to have audits and monitoring of everyone with significant access, including those doing the monitoring. Otherwise, stuff like this becomes possible.

Plus, this guy was a known problem for quite some time, apparently. Always make sure you’ve secured the network before trying to terminate the top system administrator.

(Via Deane at Gadgetopia.)

Example of Cultural Localization in Print Media

Posted on July 14, 2008 by David

An article in today’s NYT’s business section provides a great example of culturally localizing and delivering products with an existing global brand: Western Magazines Find a Receptive Audience in India.

Most of the new Western magazines being published in India are not really Western at all — they are written, photographed, edited and designed almost completely in India. Many are published under licensing agreements with the media company that owns the name. Even though they are all published in English, their content may be completely different from their American or British counterparts.

While the name may be familiar to an American reader, the flavor is distinctly Indian. Instead of Heloise’s syndicated household hints column, for example, Good Housekeeping runs “Ask Mrs. Singh.” This month, Mrs. Singh tackles how to keep your home fresh during the monsoons that sweep through India during the summer (rubber mats and fresh flowers help).

This very same approach should be considered with your online media as well. Are your existing products, services, marketing, content and design applicable to your desired international audiences? Are you offering articles about desert living to people currently being soaked by a monsoon? It is often tempting to just build a one-size fits all approach online but that rarely maximizes your results.

Any sufficiently advanced technology…

Posted on June 24, 2008 by David

This week I needed to use Internet Explorer in order to access some systems for one of my clients. This is not as much of a challenge as it used to be for someone based on a Mac now that Apple uses Intel chips in their hardware.