Re-engineering Business Processes

Existing Business Process

We are often asked to layer on unique web-based toolsets to an existing business model. Such initiatives can include a combination of: database management, e-commerce, e-marketing, product knowledge and content management systems. Because of the complexity, demand on resources and the cost, clients may also want to implement such initiatives over time; and customers assume that these initiatives can be added easily, like the layers of a cake. Now just because you can do something (and someone will always tell you they can) …does not mean that you should.

What is really required is a business process assessment where the company can work with a web development partner to carefully consider the short and long term goals while mapping out the existing business process model for the organization. Once the existing model is defined we can then layer on a secondary map showing how the business process will change with the addition of new layered web initiatives. The unseen effects on an organization can be significant and the more we understand the objectives of such initiatives the better we can recommend streamlined solutions that consider unique business propositions that may not have been considered in the original plan.

New Business Process

Monetizing the business processes in an online environment is the one of the most attractive initiatives in this process and should be considered an enterprise level enhancement of the business model. With the advent of tablets such as the I-Pad and Playbook as well as a host of others, coupled with a do anything anywhere attitude that is beginning to grip the marketplace, companies are beginning to realize that if they embrace online sales initiatives through a well thought out initiatives they will reap the benefits for years to come.

As in any well designed growth initiatives, companies and organizations have to consider the many effects of changing the business model. Businesses have to ask themselves: How will we support online customer service in areas such as: returns or exchange policy, warrantees, product knowledge, delivery times, packaging, postage, etc. These are just a few examples that affect only one part of the business; many others parts are affected, such as: banking & currency exchange, company culture, human resources, accounting, product knowledge, marketing and sales, franchising and distribution; all with significant impact on the existing business model.

Taking the time to consider the broad ranging impact in planning an online implementation will ensure that the money you do choose to spend is well suited for your goals and objectives and generates results that will benefit any company or organization.

Making a Mountain out of Mole Hill

When you consider the relentless march of technology, the skittish state of the economy, proliferating media channels and the competition …organizations and companies are beginning to realize that they need better and more comprehensive solutions.

Certainly our experience has taught us that when customers are seeking solutions from us, we often need to combine business process planning, marketing consulting, interactive programming, e-commerce integration, dynamic creative and effective project management to deliver useful solutions on-time and on-budget. No longer can you sit back and wait for customers bring work to you... you have to research your customers, understand their needs and come up with innovative ideas/solutions to problems they may no yet know they have. You can demonstrate that innovative thinking by starting a dialogue with your customers by making recommendations that can help add additional revenue streams, leverage new technology, streamline their business or develop complementary partnerships.

This means that you as a business have to prepare and present concrete, innovative solutions when you make that first call to your current or potential customers. You need to better understand your customer segment by offering them something they just can’t get elsewhere. Customers today have less time and capacity to consider their situation carefully and often times overlook unique and beneficial opportunities that can change their fortunes. Below are some examples of how we have worked with our clients in just such a way.

Description: an existing business that has used traditional revenue stream from bricks and mortar operations. They also have a web presence with some limited capacity but primarily the web site is a qualifying site rather than sales oriented. Solution: calling a client, with ideas on how they can either partner, develop or create new products that complement their existing business model will be considered at the very least by the client.

Description: an association exists on a fixed budget, so they have a great deal of difficulty in leveraging their knowledge base or serving their members more effectively. Solution: recommend and source third party partner that may be willing to fund an initiative in exchange for access to your client s database, awareness on your web site or a stack in your initiative.

Description: A professional or group of associates is generating sales though his/her hourly wage and/or any ancillary sales or service opportunity they generate. Solution: Creating web based tools that automate parts of the process can helps free up valuable time for additional growth or just for more personal goals. Monetize the web based system to derive new and complementary product sales.

Description: a not-for-profit organization is under pressure to do more with less: Solution: recommending the creation of a combination of signature events that create profile and awareness in a community. Also develop web based tools that allow you to track participants ay events cross reference databases from each event to create ancillary and cross-sell opportunities.

The above examples come out of our experience but there are similar ideas that relate to every kind business. The result of this is that you have to consider your existing clients, past clients and potential clients and approach them with well researched and well thought out creative solutions to problems they may not even know they have.

The Disappearance of Championing

In a world where the spectacular is valued above all else… it is becoming more difficult by the day to be passionate and deliver above and beyond expectations. Increasingly, an overly bureaucratic process coupled with a general unwillingness to risk championing is the enemy of spectacular.

All too often, competing responsibilities, documentation, lack of knowledge, the need to be inclusive and politics results in very pedestrian, unimaginative media and communications projects. As companies and organizations have sought to gain control of budgets through technology the ability to champion unique or innovative solutions has been lost. The dizzying speed at which we must adapt to new technology is driven by a bureaucratic process with little consideration for wonderment, comprehension and behavioural change.

Gone are the artistic enhancements and creative touches that allow new media to speak to us in an emotional and responsive way. Changing behaviour and influencing decisions is a learned art that demands a unique combination of experience, creativity, technical savvy and a genuine sensitivity for the human condition. Story telling is still what it’s all about and to develop this kind of messaging demands championing.

As we have moved from a largely aural tradition of storytelling to modern multi-media extravaganzas …somehow the subtleties of story telling have been overwhelmed by “the cost of doing business” We seemed to be less influenced by creative and more focused on technology.

Championing is not about handing over power to a supplier but more about becoming enmeshed in the process and being passionate about the creative, in other words “excellence.” We all have to work with budgets and this isn’t a knock against budgets it’s a wakeup call to recognize the true value of any given project and the need to support its design and implementation in a way that helps change behaviour. It‘s incredible that we are working in a medium that can help change a companies fortune with one creatively inspired concept yet we seem unwilling to champion the idea of excellence.

It is important to recognize that it remains largely, senior management’s responsibility to empower championing within an organization and to show leadership in helping its management team better understand how a single creative idea can change the fortunes of a company, product or service.

Viral Marketing and YouTube

Now that December has arrived,  I have posted this seasonal video for your viewing pleasure. Interestingly enough it is also a terrific example of viral marketing. For those unfamiliar with the term viral marketing, Wikipedia defines it as an advertising or marketing technique that use pre-existing social networks to produce increases in brand awareness or to achieve other marketing objectives (such as product sales) through self-replicating viral processes, analogous to the spread of virus or computer viruses. It can be word-of-mouth delivered or enhanced by the network effects of the Internet. Viral promotions may take the form of video clips, interactive Flash games, advergames, ebooks, brandable software, images, or even text messages.

In this example, the video has caught the public attention and imagination. It was only posted November 13 but as of today, in a little over 2 weeks, has already garnered 5 million views! The sponsor of the video has their web address at the end of the video and with this many impressions has created a powerful presence for their brand awareness. Wouldn't you love to get 5 million impressions for your brand and at minimal cost (YouTube services are free)?

Social Networks – A State of Becoming

Bob Dylan suggested that we are at our best when we are “constantly in a state of becoming,” in the Martin Scorsese documentary, “No Direction Home” Our seemingly unrelenting rush towards all that is social and new seems to support his idea in a weird kind of way.

Who knew that Bob Dylan, the enigmatic soul of the 60’s would be the guru for business in the new millennium. Social networks have become an expression of the need to belong and the technology that supports it has given wings to this “constant state of becoming.”

Businesses are finally sitting up and taking notice of social networks as a means of spawning a customer dialogue about their products and services …allowing people to share where they are going, when they will be there and what they like about it. Your product or service can be the benefactor of this new social medium but, as there usually is with stuff like this…there is a catch. You have to plan and support these new mediums with dedicated resources, and when I say resources I mean people!

Businesses are not only supporting social networks discussions about their products but they are advertising on those networks in places like Face book like never before. All of this takes planning and co-ordination and there are business entrepreneurs out there right now building business models for the future that offer social network support, tied into online buying, unique social network customer discounts through software like Foursquare …and the beat goes on.

The upshot of all of this is that social networks, which are designed to be shared by and for the masses are slowly becoming the dominion of big businesses … hey wait a second, wasn’t an online presence supposed to level the playing field between big business and small business? If you are a big business the news is all good - you have the resources to plan and support social networks.

Small businesses, despair not … for you are in the constant state of becoming and you too can reach out to help fulfill this promise of consumerism, but you have to be smart about it and be selective about your marketing strategy. Understanding your marketplace and your audience and properly resourcing social network initiatives will define your success or failure in the very near future.

E-Learning – Focus on Content

While E-Learning has been around for awhile...most professed E-Learning experts have not been. They have evolved or re-invented themselves from technology based solutions such as selling/programming software or hardware. The marketplace is littered with such solutions with little or no thought to content.

Who is developing content and what expertise do they have? The answer is simple...few and little. Few developers have the capacity to synthesize complex E-learning content into meaningful information that can help change behaviour or teach new techniques. And there is little expertise in marshalling or repurposing media that will enhance comprehension.

My/our expertise goes back to interactive laser disc production in 1985 and the Interactive Design Workshop at the University of Nebraska. Myself and partner Doug Knipe worked together at Consumer Distributing to implement a more robust version of the Teledon project. Ostensibly it would allow Consumers’ shoppers to buy direct from a kiosk using a combination of laser disc imaging technology and the Teledon communication protocol.

Interactivity has changed; as has media technology, but the lessons learned on how humans interact with that technology have not. What it taught us was that technology was always secondary to an intuitive learning process and understanding how to synthesize typical dry text/graphic based content (PowerPoint) into behavioral learning is an art form.

" ...technology was always secondary to an intuitive learning process and understanding how to synthesize typical dry text/graphic based content (PowerPoint) into behavioral learning is an art form"

E-learning demands a team approach that includes skills in graphic design, scripting, video production, simulation design; audio production, illustration and perhaps the most important …project management. It is not a marriage of convenience between software/hardware developers and graphic design/video production companies!

Advertising Creative – Not a Game of Inches

When you miss...you miss big for the most part with advertising, Developing unique, attending grabbing creative that can affect people in a way that changes their behaviour is a complex process that involves an emotional investment. Most people involved in the process (insert client here) think they know and understand their audience and what motivates them. Unfortunately this is virtually never the case. Most clients are too close to the process of making and selling a product and don’t understand how their product fits into a lifestyle.

And more than that, great creative concepts, appeal to our artistic nature and you usually can’ put your finger on why it works…

it just does.  Try this left brain -right brain test to see what your predisposition is? Right brain people are generally considered to be more creative, yet left brain people of the world seem to control business so it tends to set up a clash of styles. Business decisions makers don’t understand the process can’t qualify it and can’t support the process with trust and patience and so they keep coming up lame creative. Perhaps even more important is, they do not believe in it and as a result they end to suffering the consequences in business.

Art and advertising go together, and when I say art I mean original art not graphic art. Today’s advertising is very forgettable with little thought or patience given to creative inspiration. Take an example of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec who has become famous as the bohemian art of the Moulin Rouge. He captured the spirit and emotion of the belle époque, the "beautiful era" in Paris, through his posters and prints. He painted café art (advertising) in Paris. Do you see any art like this in the malls and on the highways today?

The greatest advertising concepts in history are all based on humour, emotion and insight into the human psyche. For example Gary Gilmore, the infamous spree-killer, uttered the words “Let’s do it” just before being executed by a firing squad in 1977. A few years later the comment became an inspiration for Nike’s “Just Do It” campaign. If you really want to understand more about great creative take moment to check out the trailer for this great documentary on advertising creative called Art & Copy .. its a real eye opener.