Web as Service Platform. Marketing with an SD-logic?

January 4, 2012 1 Comment

stuck in the spider's web by looking at the web as a marcomm channel.

stuck in the spider's web by looking at the web as a marcomm channel.

Social media: marketing’s new wonder channel?

I often hear and read marketers about the opportunities brought along by social media. Now, I don’t want to dismiss these opportunities. Those are certainly there. The type of opportunities however are often misunderstood by marketers. They tend to see this as nothing more than a new marketing and communication channel. Consequently, social platforms are tools to push messages towards potential customers. Of course, social can be used for the purpose of lead generation or just mind-blowing advertising, but it won’t bring the benefits expected by marketers. My point here is that the ‘Web’ and the ‘social web’ in particular ought to be looked at from a Service-Design logic instead of a Good-Design logic. I believe it will help marketers realize there goals by deploying the web and social platforms in the correct manner.

SD-logic versus GD-logic: basic principle

In the industrial age, the dominant logic about economic exchange was based on the exchange of “goods”. As a result, a GD-logic focuses on tangible resources, added value and (monetary) transactions. Over time however new perspectives emerged. Those new visions look at intangible resources, co-created value and relationships. This new perspective is commonly known as a SD-logic or service design. I believe that marketing should start thinking from this perspective. A perspective in which service provision is fundamental to economic exchange rather than goods.

Marketing logic: SD-logic versus GD-logic

A GD marketing logic limits marketers in creativity for seeing opportunities in value co-creation with customers and other stakeholders. What’s more, this focus on transactional exchange ignores aspects like customer loyalty and puts constraints on developing the lifetime value of the customer for the company at stake. The S-D logic on the other hand broadens the logic of exchange – both socially and economically.

Web as Service Platform

Web as Service Platform

The Web and The Social Web from an SD-Logic

The internet and the web are well-known and mostly deployed as a mean to share information. Or: the web is seen as just another marketing communication channel.

That’s actually a pity because the web also brings along loads of opportunities for process optimization. And process optimization is often about service design thinking, which I believe is at the core about ‘servicing a.k.a. making things easier’.

Improving a business process is making things easier. And what’s more, it often means that you build strategic competitive advantages – as you’re able to get the same (better) result at lower costs.

To overcome overlooking the options when developing a digital-enabled enterprise and/or marketing strategy, one better investigates and lists down the options for process integration.

Who’s in for an exercise on process optimization through the web and the social web?

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Future Role of Social Media for Belgian Railway Company NMBS.

December 27, 2011 11 Comments

Unofficial Twitter Accounts NMBS demonstrate the need

Unofficial Twitter Accounts for NMBS demonstrate the need

As a result of my latest ‘interim project’, I’ve been travelling to Brussels by train every single day for about 3 months. The choice for taking the train is rather logic. Belgium is world-leader in ‘urban sprawl’. One cannot expect to reach Brussels easily by car. Hence the choice of taking a one-and-a-half hour train ride. And as railway services are still a public service in Belgium, all journeys are organized by the same company: NMBS.

NMBS is going through hard times these days. They cope with a genuine structural issue. Trains are cancelled and delayed daily. And what’s even more striking: customers are often not properly informed about cancellations and delays.

My three months proved enough to realize NMBS can’t undo all timetable issues. After all, much has to do with the inability to expand some key railway stations (like Brussels). There’s simply no room for growth anymore. It’s a mobility and infrastructure problem. Let’s leave that to spatial planners, shall we? Those same three months however also proved sufficient to see that the NMBS could do much more with regards to customer service. And that’s an issue marketers and business people can tackle without spatial planners. So here we go.

Social media can and should play a key role for customer service by railway companies like NMBS. But before we explain the future role of social media for the NMBS, let’s ask ourselves two simple questions:

  • Do our customers want support through social media?
  • Do we have employees willing to provide that service?

    • Need for customer service on social media?

    Customers definitely want to be informed about delays and cancellations through social media. After all those platforms allow to give real-time personalized information. What’s more: with the ever-increasing adoption of smartphones, most travellers are constantly connected while on the train.

    It’s very interesting to see the artefacts of this need: the numerous unofficial NMBS Twitter accounts. Those accounts are basically bottom-up initiatives by real travellers who do not work for the company but do engage with a community of ‘train travelers”. No way you can ignore the need if you look at those accounts.

    NMBS employees want to officialize their activities on social media - conversation on Twitter

    NMBS employees want to officialize their activities on social media - conversation on Twitter

    Do we have resources to provide customer service via social networks?

    Yes! The NMBS most definitely has those resources. The image on the right depicts an image of a Twitter conversation between NMBS employees and a traveler.

    The Dutch conversation states: “we are pleading for this service! Correct, fast and clear information”.

    The above sentence points to an interesting aspect. The NMBS employees are actually aware of the situation and want to help. On the other hand, the corporation, hasn’t set up official structures to manage this.

    So in fact, NMBS is in a very strong position. They have employees who love their job and organization and want to speak about it publicly on social networks. That’s something most companies can only dream about. NMBS should take advantage of this high level of employee engagement. They should stimulate the current people to grow and contribute to overall customer satisfaction.

    Why should NMBS empower all employees on social?
    First of all, it’s quite unthinkable that railway services will remain a public service. As Belgium is a part of the European Union who always favors liberal, free and open markets, one can expect future guidelines and/or demands to liberalize the railway services market. We’ve seen those demands before within other industries like Telco, Energy and Postal services. Those industries are now typically known for their fierce competition and new customer focus (vs. customer service to bring value). If NMBS manages to set-up customer service through social media, it will have a competitive edge in a deregulated market.

    But then again, the question remains the same: Will the liberalization result in on-time services and consequently improve the customer’s quality of life? Frankly I don’t know. One should ask an Englishman to know whether private railway services are better than public railway services.

    Second, because of my experience which made me happy and willing to travel with NMBS for future endeavours. The story is detailed below.

    Employee engagement - NMBS unofficially provides me Customer Service

    Employee engagement - NMBS unofficially provides me Customer Service

    My experience: train driver @RikiU2 helps me out

    December 14 2011. I had a rather intense day at work. I was incredibly looking forward to a lazy evening with my girlfriend while traveling home by train. When suddenly the train came to stop in the middle of nowhere. That sometimes happens, but this time it took a lot of time. After 15 minutes, my co-travelers started to get worried and frustrated. After all, they were once again to be later at home than foreseen and – what seemed even worse – there was no information whatsoever about why we did not continue our journey anymore. At one moment however, after about half an hour, the intercom of the train informed us about “a prior train in need will cause a delay of this trip”. Hooray! We were informed. Nobody, including myself, however knew what a “train in need” exactly was. It was some sort of tipping point for most of the travelers, including myself. It triggered me to shoot the question “what is a train in need?” on Twitter. It was more a helpless act than that I expected to have an answer to the question. Nothing was less true however. One clever train driver was at home and followed the #nmbs hashtag. As that hashtag was mentioned in my tweet, my demand came on the radar. I received an answer on my question and was consequently informed about the exact time delay, etc.

    Result: I could inform the people waiting for me, was happy again and was willing to continue traveling with NMBS in the future.

    What does all above teach us about the future role of social media for customer service?

    The above teaches us that social is truly a synonym for change. Things have changed and will continue to change. It would not be very intelligent to ‘ban’ social media platforms to employees. After all, they can act as a customer service representative or contribute to WOM advertising efforts, etc. For this reason companies should stimulate their employees to go online and speak in the name of the company. All companies should strive to realize this “superstar company state”. One great example of a superstar company is Dell – who transforms all employees into brand embassadors and certified customer service reps by providing them the necessary tools and training.

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The future CIO is not an engineer.

October 14, 2011 6 Comments

World has changed, IT should change.

World has changed, IT should change.

I believe the world has changed, forever.
CIO and IT leaders need to re-align to this change so to further prove their value in the future.
As a result the IT department is increasingly attracting business profiles who serve as an intermediary between information technology and business processes.
Next to that, the rise of social media and the so-called consumerization of IT spurs new communication across business units, resulting in a ‘flat’ organization. It’s exactly here that IT can prove its value.
The CIO needs to be a true leader. He must think strategically and have impact on the company’s decisions. To fully realize this, IT must look for the human side again – both in the IT organization itself and in the IT systems. Hence our bold statement “the future CIO is not an engineer”.

Change because IT changed

Until recently IT innovation merely took place within the business spheres. Nowadays, we witness the opposite: IT innovation moved into consumer domain. One can firmly state that companies like Apple and Google develop smart services and devices for the consumer first.

It should not come as a surprise that those services and devices are increasingly entering the corporate world. What’s even more: the new generation of knowledge workers is expecting the same ease in their professional spheres. Unfortunately many companies aren’t deploying similar tools. In my view they aren’t doing it because of their attitude. They believe bringing in those solutions isn’t very secure. This attitude needs to change.

From personal to personalized computing

We could describe loads of technological innovation that contributed to this shift (multi-core processors, lithium-ion batteries, development in “flash memories”, …) but the most important aspect is that it transformed the way many people experience computing. The PC may have been personal, a smartphone or tablet is almost intimate and you can take it almost anywhere. The PC is indeed personal but nowhere near as customizable as the smartphone or tablet. The way Apple marketed these devices has only enforced the notion of technology as something personal.

Cloud computing to drive mobile computing

Cloud Computing

Cloud Computing

For much of the personal-computing era, the content that people needed for work or entertainment had to be stored on the PC’s hard disks or on external hard drives and corporate servers. Today data and content more and more reside in the “Cloud”: large server infrastructures, often run by Google or Amazon, where huge amounts of data are stored for retrieval from almost anywhere in the world.

The rise of the cloud has also created an explosion of other consumer-focussed web services. These include big social networks such as Facebook and FourSquare. These services enforce the use of cloud instead of hard disk drive.

Other small companies are also placing powerful tech tools in people’s hands. Dropbox (or the Belgian equivalent of Filip Tack, Nomadesk) lets users upload assets via an easy-to-use interface and then retrieve them from many different devices.

The app way of life

Mobile computing relies heavily on apps. But apps are nothing more than chunks of software that get things done. However, the impact cannot be underestimated. It turned people into creatures who do not longer want to wait upon a PC hard disk that reacts to the request. Apps are simple, cheap and give instant gratification. Something that’s not that easy on PC, especially when dealing with legacy software solutions within corporate environments.

Personal Technology at Work

We are about to see a new generation (Gen Y) entering the work space. You’re about to recruit from a generation whose expectations of technology have been profoundly shaped by Facebook, mobile apps and other innovations (like cloud storage). But do not understand this wrongly. It’s not only the new generation of digital natives who are horrified by the corporate IT systems. The rapid spread of tablets and smartphones, and the attraction of social networks and other online tools such as Twitter, mean that people of all ages have grown accustomed to having powerful yet easy-to-use technologies at their fingertips. Many of them want the same stuff at work too.

But that’s not everything. There’s a change in society as well. The change of gradually blurring lines between private and business lives, which means that people rely on technology much more to allow them to work or play anywhere at any time.

Personal Technology at Work

Personal Technology at Work

Do not underestimate the impact of personal technologies at work

Studies point out that a lot of IT departments underestimate how much employees are using their own technology, including social networks and other web services for work. Internal tech teams are often accused of falsely using the “security” concern to justify tight control about which devices workers may and may not use.

CIO and IT need re-alignment

Historically many IT departments have treated people as tech stupid who should do what they are told by the engineers. Now however IT departments are facing a challenge to their authority. Much of what workers are demanding is the right to use their own smartphones and tablets for work, to mix business and personal data on them and to personalize them with their own apps. This frankly is the anathema to IT departments running digital dictatorship.

Rather than a few geeky people bringing in technology, today it’s a full army of employees. Left undetected, their DIY efforts could cause sensitive corporate data to leak and open digital doors to hackers. However, this treat seems exaggerated. Verizon published a study in 2010 that concluded that most of the corporate data breaches were due to direct attacks on corporate servers, not to mobile devices.

The best policy for CIO’s is consequently allowing these devices but to make sure there’s reasonable security on it. Pretending it’s not there would be really stupid.

The new role of CIO and IT department?

Not so long ago many internal tech teams focused on installing gigantic software systems to handle business processes like accounting or human resources. Most of these are now in place, though they require maintenance. This means IT now has more time to be a partner supporting business divisions. Enabling workers to use the gadgets that they consider best for their job is part of this strategic realignment. Wise companies are not just embracing the consumerization of IT. They are also turning innovations from personal technology to their advantage.

The CIO needs to be a true leader. He must think strategically and have impact on the company’s decisions. To fully realize this, IT must look for the human side again – both in the IT organization itself and in the IT systems. Hence our bold statement “the future CIO is not an engineer”.

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