Make the Technology work for your Online Internet Customer

Posted by arlene

The technology can do anything that you want it to do. If your technology advisors say anything else then you are being poorly advised. And there is a lot of poor advice out there given by those who are out of date. Maybe those who were never really up to date.

They simply don’t get it. The difference between the superb and the average is immense. Just because the guy in front of you can say and understand words that you struggle with does not make him the person to trust. It’s worth paying huge premiums to get the best.

This is more interested in what the technology can do than the details of the technology itself. But just for completeness we thought we would include a 65-word shopping list that should be enough for you to ask for the technology that your e-customers need:

“An E-Business platform that will support the process and people that deliver the e-business proposition. Capable of being changed rapidly and allowing e-customers to create personalized products and services. One that integrates customer communication and relationship management over multiple channels including the internet interactive Television, voice, branch and mobile wireless devices. One that is capable of integrating customer-facing system with support systems with support systems and back end systems.”

Without such a system even some of the mighty electronic only brands may find themselves as poorly placed to exploit real-world locations as the powerful real-world brands have been to exploit new electronic channels. The new winners will be those who have recognized the importance of serving the e-customer across multiple channels in a myriad of ways. Multi-channel companies that build technology systems and attitudes that can cope with innovations, that actively seek change and improvement.

You need the best people

If a business does not understand the new technology or its differences then it will need the help of those who do. Unfortunately the best brains, the best implementers, the quirkiest, the zaniest, the most valuable innovators no longer want to work for businesses that do not get it.

Business will have to learn to love them, challenge them, and reward them. Fun, life, work, respect are all on their must-have lists. They know that there is a better way and are not prepared to play 15 years of company politics to put it into action.

While the bitter cynics wait for the failed optimists to return to the fold from their dot.com adventures, something has already changed forever (or as long as we will both live which is long enough). Everyone with the talent or the belief has seen a better more exciting way.⁶¹ And that will not simply disappear because of a heavy slump in new economy stocks.

If you treat these people as they were before they left, you will lose their real attention permanently. Even if you get them back, the creative drain away from innovation for your company to other projects may well continue.

It’s a problem that besets business and even nations. France has lost 30,000 of its top IT people to the US over the past five years. Every year it loses 20% of its graduates from the Grandes Ecoles. It is not only that there is more money in Silicon Valley, it is that there is more belief in possibilities and dreams.

The fight for the e-customer demands the best, motivated people at every level of the business. It is a fight for talent. The grooming of talent. Attract and retain the team so that they can attract and retain the e-customer.

They want as much as the e-customer, maybe more. They want to belong to something with a heart. Something worth boasting about. Worth busting a gut for. Every time a good person leaves the team it’s like the brain losing a set of memories and brain cells. Even if the person is replaced the memories are still gone. From the person answering the e-mails to the person who maintains the database to person who designs your quality procedures. The people are the business. IBM’s Director of Internet Technology puts it succinctly: ‘The war is for talent and we want to have it’.

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