Although every transaction has a Customer and a Vendor the picture is becoming blurred - it's all about roles in Networks for which win-win is an essential condition.
The opportunity to transform such processes is now overwhelming, but it will require creation of value and willingness to share.
It all starts with realizing that the 'Effectiveness' (E) of processes has two components - Quality (Q) and Productivity (P) - thus E = f(Q,P). Trouble is that Q and P are tightly coupled so once optimized with today's processes the only escape is INNOVATION.
One methodology that recognizes this is AXIOMATIC DESIGN that zigzags: CN<>FR<>DP<>PV.
Look up AD in Google and imagine how it can be applied to B2B Mobile Processes but realize that process transformation is rarely achieved without a holistic review of process, organization and software.
One vision for a future in which Customers, Vendors, Academia, Investors and Governments collaborate as SBNs (smart business networks), in pre-competitive mode, to create World-Wide Wealth & Welfare is presented as a scenario at http://www.w-w-w-w.org/videos/wwww.MissionPossible.mp4
Gartner: CRM is in trouble – and it could be worse than we think
FIRST - this dialogue is emerging as one of the best published, by anybody, to date.......thank-you to the few of the 2400 readers who have shared their opinions so openly.
SECOND - my '0.02 worth', as one respondee so eloquently put it, is a DISSENTING OPINION!
I quote a comment that I made in 1986, published in Pharmacia News, Special Issue:
"Sales Managers in some companies still insist that sales representatives spend most of their time 'selling'. They have not understood that interaction between the sales force and the market is the ideal opportunity to collect the 'cusomer need' information that enables the company to offer the right products to true potential customers at the right time to influence their purchase decisions. "
"The customer is not always right."
In his latest book, ‘Re-inspire’ Tom Peters states that it’s a mistake to simply be customer-driven. As Tom says “it’s the best way to destroy a company.”
"Good management is about giving our best customers what they want ... right?"
"Right. And that's the problem."
Clayton Christensen in his book The Innovator’s Dilemma says: “The highest-performing companies have well developed systems for killing ideas that their customers don’t want. As a result, these companies find it very difficult to invest adequate resources in disruptive technologies—lower-margin opportunities that their customers don’t want—until those same customers decide that they want them.And by then it's too late."
The bottom line is that if vendors don't perceive customer =NEEDS= before the customer it's too late to be CUSTOMER-INSPIRING which surely would be an enviable POSITIONING (positioning has to be earned!) . So while other respondees have stated that CRM interaction will be customer 'initiated in the future, that maybe is what customers say they WANT, but I'm sure that most customers would prefer to be INSPIRED with respect to NEEDS than to get competing offers for what they say they 'WANT'. Being customer-inspiring is to think INDUCTIVELY rather than DEDUCTIVELY.
So what about PFCN? Profitable Fulfillment of Customer Need......or would you prefer PFCW? Profitable Fulfillment of Customer Wants. Surely Customers will be pleased to allow inductive-thinking vendors to 'profitably fulfill their (customer) needs'.
Now, with respect to what CRM users will look for in CRM systems, I suggest that CRM system users really have only one NEED, and that is to conduct their processes EFFECTIVELY - where EFFECTIVENESS (E) is defined as a function of QUALITY (Q) and PRODUCTIVITY (P) - where the latter is reciprical of cost of conducting the process, being such as 'selling' or ' delivering' which, by-the-way, are the processes conducted by two-thirds of all mobile workers. SaaS might marginally improve the 'Productivity' of these processes (by automating the old processes) but will certainly not increase the Quality of processes and will eliminate any hope of 'process' being a sustainable competitive advantage because all users will be constrained by the generic SaaS.
There is a fundamental problem with CRM design and that is that the Functional Requirements (FRs), defined by TOLERANCES on QUALITY and PRODUCTIVITY of processes are COUPLED - and the only way to break out of this strong coupling is by process re-engineering. A little-known approach to this dilemma is AXIOMATIC DESIGN.
So the future is ORDER-BASED DESIGN of CRM systems that enable TRANSFORMED processes.
MOBILE PROCESS SERVICE, for example, will be an emerging service that will enable TRANSFORMED mobile processes - which, of course, includes Selling and Delivering of tangible products and such as field engineering services.
The future belongs to Sustainable Competitive Advantage secured through Transformed Business Processes.
The future is 'MOBILE PROCESS SERVICE' (MPS).
MPS is a way of thinking that re-engineers mobile processes starting with the basic fact that what users need is 'EFFECTIVE' (E) processes. EFFECTIVENESS has two components - high QUALITY (Q) and high PRODUCTIVITY (P).
E = f(Q,P) in which Q and P are (unfortunately) highly 'coupled'; one minimizes coupling through SYSTEMIC INNOVATION. The SaaS dimension per se is just a minor component of the equation.
Outsourcing IS necessary to TRANSFORM processes in order to create economies of scale and flexibility - that is a whole new discussion. The reward today for outsourcing (SaaS) to get generic system operation economy does not justify the risk.
Companies have only one NEED - to run their business processes EFFECTIVELY (E). Effective processes result in high profits (i.e. high 'R' of ROI - if 'I' is kept under control of course).
But E has two components - Quality (Q) and Productivity (P), in which P is (mainly) the reciprocal of cost.
Because in this life one:
a) expects to pay for what one gets (because of market pricing), and
b) gets what one pays for (because of consumer protection laws)
Now .......Q and P are, in AXIOMATIC DESIGN terms === COUPLED ===.
Actually Q and P are usually related as an S-curve on which there is only one optimal trade-off point for Q and P. To improve profit requires that the equation of the S-curve be changed (i.e. shape/displacement). This requires BPE (business process engineering and subsequent re-engineering).
Business processes, especially B2B (business to business), but certainly also B2C (business to consumer) - B2C which is the main Ryanair business today - is very COMPLEX. Thus BPE is very complex and thus changing the S-curve shape will also be complex.
THUS - Ryanair needs a range of methodologies and, in turn a range of tools to help them ENGINEER THEIR PROCESSES in order that further Productivity gains do not degrade Quality to the extent that net Effectiveness, and hence Profit deteriorates.
Ryanair is an interesting example of the Michael Porter warning in his Competitive Advantage book published over a decade ago, "DO NOT GET CAUGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF COST v. DIFFERENTIATION".
But, as Michael Porter adds "UNLESS YOU HAVE AN INNOVATION".
An example of transformation of a segment of Enterprise Mobility, in which an innovation called PFCN (profitable fulfillment of customer needs) operates IN-THE-MIDDLE (between Cost and Differentiation) without getting caught is emerging in an on-going collaboration between Users, Vendors, Academia and Governments.
The PFCN Vision has already been broadcast in the Canadian Dragons' Den by Sir George the Dragon Slayer under the acronym MPS (mobile process service) - but the penny is yet to drop!
It is simply a coincidence with the appearance of this article that the participants in the MPS initiative will invite the airline industry, INCLUDING RYANAIR and Ireland, to join the ongoing 'Birth of the Mobile Process Service market' initiative.
Conception has already occurred. What a (k)night - namely Sir George - made that happen!
Now Conception to Birth will take nine months...we are almost human!
Watch this web-site for news during the ongoing gestation period.....
If the architecture is high integrity distributed databases, with bi-directional asynchronous replication (driven by such as iAnywhere), the consequence of outages ANYWHERE IN THE SYSTEM is negligable.
On 25 May, dressed as St. George the Dragon Slayer, I was in the CBC Toronto Dragons' Den seeking 250 K Can$ to build a Pedagogic Demo of concept in preparation for a Multi-National Conference for which hosting/chairing offered by a Distinguished Professor in Canada to be attended by my cluster of academic mentors . Last week Dragons' Den broadcast date of my 25 May taping session was confirmed - it will be 28 October.
Microsoft Dynamics has one on the key components, so now I'm VERY interested to get in touch with Steve Balmer....... he is RIGHT ON!
For Canadians I have made a proposition whereby Nortel, like a Phoenix, can rise from the dust to create one of the five billion dollar companies advocated by Sir Terry Matthews at his recent Key-note address at an Industry Canada conference. "JUST DO IT" he said. Sadly there are not so many out there with Sir Terry's attitude....
Brian (alias St. George the Dragon Slayer) in Sweden.
MyCustomer hereby has my permiision to establish contact with me by e-mail....
My answers
Although every transaction has a Customer and a Vendor the picture is becoming blurred - it's all about roles in Networks for which win-win is an essential condition.
The opportunity to transform such processes is now overwhelming, but it will require creation of value and willingness to share.
It all starts with realizing that the 'Effectiveness' (E) of processes has two components - Quality (Q) and Productivity (P) - thus E = f(Q,P). Trouble is that Q and P are tightly coupled so once optimized with today's processes the only escape is INNOVATION.
One methodology that recognizes this is AXIOMATIC DESIGN that zigzags: CN<>FR<>DP<>PV.
Look up AD in Google and imagine how it can be applied to B2B Mobile Processes but realize that process transformation is rarely achieved without a holistic review of process, organization and software.
One vision for a future in which Customers, Vendors, Academia, Investors and Governments collaborate as SBNs (smart business networks), in pre-competitive mode, to create World-Wide Wealth & Welfare is presented as a scenario at http://www.w-w-w-w.org/videos/wwww.MissionPossible.mp4
Brian Keedwell, Stockholm
Gartner: CRM is in trouble – and it could be worse than we think
FIRST - this dialogue is emerging as one of the best published, by anybody, to date.......thank-you to the few of the 2400 readers who have shared their opinions so openly.
SECOND - my '0.02 worth', as one respondee so eloquently put it, is a DISSENTING OPINION!
I quote a comment that I made in 1986, published in Pharmacia News, Special Issue:
"Sales Managers in some companies still insist that sales representatives spend most of their time 'selling'. They have not understood that interaction between the sales force and the market is the ideal opportunity to collect the 'cusomer need' information that enables the company to offer the right products to true potential customers at the right time to influence their purchase decisions. "
"The customer is not always right."
In his latest book, ‘Re-inspire’ Tom Peters states that it’s a mistake to simply be customer-driven. As Tom says “it’s the best way to destroy a company.”
"Good management is about giving our best customers what they want ... right?"
"Right. And that's the problem."
Clayton Christensen in his book The Innovator’s Dilemma says: “The highest-performing companies have well developed systems for killing ideas that their customers don’t want. As a result, these companies find it very difficult to invest adequate resources in disruptive technologies—lower-margin opportunities that their customers don’t want—until those same customers decide that they want them.And by then it's too late."
The bottom line is that if vendors don't perceive customer =NEEDS= before the customer it's too late to be CUSTOMER-INSPIRING which surely would be an enviable POSITIONING (positioning has to be earned!) . So while other respondees have stated that CRM interaction will be customer 'initiated in the future, that maybe is what customers say they WANT, but I'm sure that most customers would prefer to be INSPIRED with respect to NEEDS than to get competing offers for what they say they 'WANT'. Being customer-inspiring is to think INDUCTIVELY rather than DEDUCTIVELY.
So what about PFCN? Profitable Fulfillment of Customer Need......or would you prefer PFCW? Profitable Fulfillment of Customer Wants. Surely Customers will be pleased to allow inductive-thinking vendors to 'profitably fulfill their (customer) needs'.
Now, with respect to what CRM users will look for in CRM systems, I suggest that CRM system users really have only one NEED, and that is to conduct their processes EFFECTIVELY - where EFFECTIVENESS (E) is defined as a function of QUALITY (Q) and PRODUCTIVITY (P) - where the latter is reciprical of cost of conducting the process, being such as 'selling' or ' delivering' which, by-the-way, are the processes conducted by two-thirds of all mobile workers. SaaS might marginally improve the 'Productivity' of these processes (by automating the old processes) but will certainly not increase the Quality of processes and will eliminate any hope of 'process' being a sustainable competitive advantage because all users will be constrained by the generic SaaS.
There is a fundamental problem with CRM design and that is that the Functional Requirements (FRs), defined by TOLERANCES on QUALITY and PRODUCTIVITY of processes are COUPLED - and the only way to break out of this strong coupling is by process re-engineering. A little-known approach to this dilemma is AXIOMATIC DESIGN.
So the future is ORDER-BASED DESIGN of CRM systems that enable TRANSFORMED processes.
MOBILE PROCESS SERVICE, for example, will be an emerging service that will enable TRANSFORMED mobile processes - which, of course, includes Selling and Delivering of tangible products and such as field engineering services.
That's the DISSENTING 0.02 worth for today.
Respectfully
Brian
The future belongs to Sustainable Competitive Advantage secured through Transformed Business Processes.
The future is 'MOBILE PROCESS SERVICE' (MPS).
MPS is a way of thinking that re-engineers mobile processes starting with the basic fact that what users need is 'EFFECTIVE' (E) processes. EFFECTIVENESS has two components - high QUALITY (Q) and high PRODUCTIVITY (P).
E = f(Q,P) in which Q and P are (unfortunately) highly 'coupled'; one minimizes coupling through SYSTEMIC INNOVATION. The SaaS dimension per se is just a minor component of the equation.
Outsourcing IS necessary to TRANSFORM processes in order to create economies of scale and flexibility - that is a whole new discussion. The reward today for outsourcing (SaaS) to get generic system operation economy does not justify the risk.
Companies have only one NEED - to run their business processes EFFECTIVELY (E). Effective processes result in high profits (i.e. high 'R' of ROI - if 'I' is kept under control of course).
But E has two components - Quality (Q) and Productivity (P), in which P is (mainly) the reciprocal of cost.
Because in this life one:
a) expects to pay for what one gets (because of market pricing), and
b) gets what one pays for (because of consumer protection laws)
Now .......Q and P are, in AXIOMATIC DESIGN terms === COUPLED ===.
Actually Q and P are usually related as an S-curve on which there is only one optimal trade-off point for Q and P. To improve profit requires that the equation of the S-curve be changed (i.e. shape/displacement). This requires BPE (business process engineering and subsequent re-engineering).
Business processes, especially B2B (business to business), but certainly also B2C (business to consumer) - B2C which is the main Ryanair business today - is very COMPLEX. Thus BPE is very complex and thus changing the S-curve shape will also be complex.
THUS - Ryanair needs a range of methodologies and, in turn a range of tools to help them ENGINEER THEIR PROCESSES in order that further Productivity gains do not degrade Quality to the extent that net Effectiveness, and hence Profit deteriorates.
Ryanair is an interesting example of the Michael Porter warning in his Competitive Advantage book published over a decade ago, "DO NOT GET CAUGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF COST v. DIFFERENTIATION".
But, as Michael Porter adds "UNLESS YOU HAVE AN INNOVATION".
An example of transformation of a segment of Enterprise Mobility, in which an innovation called PFCN (profitable fulfillment of customer needs) operates IN-THE-MIDDLE (between Cost and Differentiation) without getting caught is emerging in an on-going collaboration between Users, Vendors, Academia and Governments.
The PFCN Vision has already been broadcast in the Canadian Dragons' Den by Sir George the Dragon Slayer under the acronym MPS (mobile process service) - but the penny is yet to drop!
It is simply a coincidence with the appearance of this article that the participants in the MPS initiative will invite the airline industry, INCLUDING RYANAIR and Ireland, to join the ongoing 'Birth of the Mobile Process Service market' initiative.
Conception has already occurred. What a (k)night - namely Sir George - made that happen!
Now Conception to Birth will take nine months...we are almost human!
Watch this web-site for news during the ongoing gestation period.....
Brian Keedwell, Integrated Marketing
If the architecture is high integrity distributed databases, with bi-directional asynchronous replication (driven by such as iAnywhere), the consequence of outages ANYWHERE IN THE SYSTEM is negligable.
Here's the link: https://www.mycustomer.com/topic/technology/ballmer
MOBILE PROCESS SERVICE (for Enterprise Mobility)
On 25 May, dressed as St. George the Dragon Slayer, I was in the CBC Toronto Dragons' Den seeking 250 K Can$ to build a Pedagogic Demo of concept in preparation for a Multi-National Conference for which hosting/chairing offered by a Distinguished Professor in Canada to be attended by my cluster of academic mentors . Last week Dragons' Den broadcast date of my 25 May taping session was confirmed - it will be 28 October.
Microsoft Dynamics has one on the key components, so now I'm VERY interested to get in touch with Steve Balmer....... he is RIGHT ON!
For Canadians I have made a proposition whereby Nortel, like a Phoenix, can rise from the dust to create one of the five billion dollar companies advocated by Sir Terry Matthews at his recent Key-note address at an Industry Canada conference. "JUST DO IT" he said. Sadly there are not so many out there with Sir Terry's attitude....
Brian (alias St. George the Dragon Slayer) in Sweden.
MyCustomer hereby has my permiision to establish contact with me by e-mail....
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