Improvement and Change
Posted on January 13, 2008
Categories: Engagement, Experience, Experimentation, Marketing | 5 Comments
I learned something from my last few posts: The people who read this blog like to respond by e-mail. OK, maybe I’m generalizing based on just a few events (e-mails in response to posts), but I do get e-mail, and I don’t get many comments.
I didn’t intend to experiment to find out how my “market” likes to engage. But what I did was, on a small scale, the kind of experiment in which marketers engage every day: Put something out into a market or segment and see how people respond. Do the same thing (at the same time) to comparable but different versions of the same “thing” (offer, message, whatever) in different but comparable markets or segments and you’ll end up with a good idea of what works and what doesn’t.
Marketers do this all the time. And, I hope, as a result they improve how they talk to their market.
Marketers (and, I’ve noticed, many companies) are not as good at the kind of experimentation that creates change. It’s really not that different. Experiment with things you have not yet tried. Try a new medium for communication - outbound, inbound or (preferably) two-way. Try a few all at once. See if any work. Maybe try a structure to a program, or create something in your market that’s never been created before. It might not work, but it might, and even if it doesn’t, you’ve learned something about having the conversation with your market that your current structure would never have allowed you to learn.
Using simple methods, like piloting, controlled experiments, and allowing the emergence of what works and what doesn’t, this type of experimentation can be successful in almost every organization. And when you learn what works, and then work to improve it, you create the kind of marketing innovation that puts you ahead of your competition.
Why does this matter? I will refrain from beating the now-tired drum of “the market is changing” (which really means your buyer is changing) - we all know it’s true, and will continue to be. If you’re trying the same things over and over again (even if you are improving them every time), you will become irrelevant.
Why does it matter now? In the past year, I’ve seen several companies start to see their marketing effectiveness eroding, only because they won’t (or don’t know how to) try something new. And I don’t know if I believe the doom-and-gloom economic forecasts, but I do believe that the market will become more challenging in 2008 than it was in 2007.
So the question is: are you going to keep doing what made you successful last year, and let someone else find a new way to beat you? or are you going to experiment with new ideas and find the new way to beat them?
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October 10, 2008
Posted on January 1, 2008
Categories: Leadership, Management, Marketing, conversation, creativity | Start the Conversation
It’s a new year, and that probably means that you’ve made a bunch of resolutions and now you’re thinking about how you’re going to make all of those resolutions happen. There’s no shortage of resolutions to be made, and I’ve made more than a few of my own (breaking a long tradition of refusing to focus on the new year as a useful time to incite change).
But over the past year, I’ve begun to see something of a disconnect between the resolutions we’ve made in our work as marketers and the challenges we face as marketers.
In my conversations with marketing leaders, mostly in the business-to-business world, I’ve heard lists of resolutions that include: getting better at measuring campaign results, using the latest technology to run campaigns or to reach prospects, doing a better job of generating quality leads for the sales team, building award-winning branding and advertising, quantifying the results of our new-media efforts, and creating a “green” effort for our brand. There are many more, but the ones that fell into these categories were the most popular.
But then I look at the same conversations and I read the marketing press (and lots of other well-respected blogs that are too numerous to link here) and I conclude that marketing leaders, executives in particular are facing some key challenges: short marketing executive tenure (particularly CMOs), marketing needs more of a seat at the leadership/strategy table, the value of marketing is not well-recognized or accepted (with some even calling for the elimination of the marketing executive role completely).
Does better measurement mean that the value of marketing can be demonstrated better. Well, yes and no. I’d argue that it can demonstrate the value of marketing programs and campaigns. But does measuring lead quantity, lead quality, relationship value, conversational metrics, and all the other traditional and new media metrics we put in place show how the CMO contributes to the overall strategy of the organization?
I’ve seen only one measurement in an organization that demonstrates that anyone (or everyone) is making a valuable contribution: revenue. But I am left asking this question: does measuring the revenue result of marketing programs place a value on the CMO’s contribution?
I don’t know the answer to that question. Yet. But I look at another key executive, the CFO as a point of comparison. Why? Like the CMO, the CFO has measurement responsibility, fiduciary responsibility (for financial position as opposed to brand and market position), and no direct responsibility for revenue creation. What can we learn from the fact that the CFO has such a strong strategic role in nearly every company?
And here’s where we get back to that new year’s resolution thing. My one resolution for this year, as it relates to improving my effectiveness as a marketing leader, is to be able to make new year’s resolutions next year that are consistent with the challenges I face and help me move my effectiveness and my contribution to my company forward.
This means I have to understand the key question I’ve raised here: What underlies the apparent disconnect between marketing leadership and the expectations of corporate leadership? It seems that whatever this disconnect is, is the underlying cause of short CMO tenure, perceived lack of a strategic role “at the table” for marketing, and so many of the other issues I’ve seen raised in the past year (or two, or three, or ten).
And as with so much of what we learn, this will be a conversation. I know I’ll be having this conversation with many people in this field, and I’ll issue my usual and truly sincere invitation to you to participate. I still believe the larger the crowd the better the wisdom.
And as with any resolution, if I want to accomplish it this year, I have to be well on my way by the time we’re three-quarters of the way through the year. So I’ve picked a date that’s meaningful to me (no, it’s not my birthday) by which I hope to have moved much closer to some conclusions and answers.
Care to engage in the conversation?
Reading Your Spirograph
Posted on July 8, 2007
Categories: Brand, Community | Start the Conversation
I’ve been reading a lot over the past few weeks on the explosion of social networks. It’s hard to read marketing blogs and not read about Twitter or Facebook, and how they relate to Pownce and LinkedIn and all the other options. Oddly, I don’t find myself at all confused. I’m on LinkedIn and Facebook, Twitter and Pownce (and more). There’s crossover among the people, but from my perspective I know intuitively what (and who) goes on Facebook and what (and who) goes on LinkedIn.
Why? I have circles - more than one. People who find me to be a worthwhile business contact gather around me in that context and form my community of business associates. People who find me interesting as a friend gather around me and form my social community (as is social life). Some people are in both. There are more circles than that, some very closely related, some not, some entirely within others (my friends from school is a subset of all my friends). If I tried to draw it, it might look something like an unbalanced spirograph.
Marketing perspective 1: Your market looks just like this. Your customers, your prospective customers, people who might one day be customers all create the community which gathers around you (because they find what you are saying and the experience you offer interesting - but that’s a whole conversation in itself - look for more posts soon). But they have different reasons. Some like the lifestyle implications of being your customer, some like the way you care for them (I hope), and there are so many more. Knowing what these are, and what they can become means you can understand the kinds of experiences you must offer to engage the various communities.
Marketing perspective 2: In each of these circles - the communities in which you survive as a producer of experiences (note: not “business,” not “goods and services”) some of the community members are very close to you (maybe your most loyal customers) and some are on the edge, maybe moving in and out of your community as it suits them. Knowing who is where and why is critical to knowing your market, and being able to engage them in conversation and deliver a relevant engaging experience.
Reading the unbalanced spirograph that is your community, knowing its shape, knowing its distribution means being able to serve it well.
Knowing how it might change means being able to change with it.
Being able to create new circles (where neither you nor your competitors are delivering relevant experiences today) means being able to create disruption.
What does your spirograph look like?
What if your navel stared back?
Posted on July 8, 2007
Categories: Community, Technology | 5 Comments
From Mashable:
Bloggers! Here Comes Navel Gaze Sunday
A trend: sometime every Saturday afternoon Eastern Time (now), tech bloggers run low on real news, and a story about bloggers themselves gets an unnecessary amount of airtime. On Sunday, it rises to a rabble before dying down as the Monday news starts coming in - call it Navel Gaze Sunday if you like
No, there’s nothing really disruptive about this at all. But it does lead me to ask whether bloggers (in general) are creating communities around themselves, or are the collective “they” just one community?
If you choose to start or use a blog to promote yourself, your company, your book or whatever ideas you want to put out into the market, while you are working to make it less promotional and more a part of the so-called blogosphere, you also have to remember that it needs to appeal to YOUR community, and not the community of bloggers.
You tell me: By talking about bloggers talking about bloggers on my blog on Sunday, have I participated in the tradition I just tried to warn against? Would it have been possible not to?
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Circle of Conversation
Posted on July 5, 2007
Categories: Brand, Community, Marketing | Start the Conversation
This image was not created to represent a market. But it does. And it shows a dimension of a market that’s often overlooked.
I found this on FaceBook, it’s an application called FriendWheel. You are at the center of the circle (this is a sample by the author of the application) with all of your friends around you. The lines represent the connections among your friends. If you were in high-school, it might show the potential for people gossiping about you.
But, a market? YES!
Your market - the collection of people (businesses - or actually the people in them) who buy from you, who want to buy from you, who have bought from you and might again (or might not) - is not a straight-line list (though that’s how we often think of our customers and prospects - as just a list). Your market is the group of people who have gathered around your company and your products because they find you interesting and engaging (the same reason your friends hang around you). And you (your company and all the people in it) are at the center of that crowd.
But the conversation is not just bi-directional (you’re doing pretty well if you are truly having a bi-directional conversation). There are conversations happening in all directions around you. Most don’t include you, but if they are happening around you, they are, more than likely, about you.
Your brand (the total experience and impression of you in the collective minds of the market) is being defined in these conversations. So look carefully at those lines that connect the members of your market community to one another. They show you how closely your market participants are connected, and how they are connected. They’ll help you understand where the conversation is taking place and how you can get closer to it.
Why? Because the conversation that defines your brand - and your success - is happening. And when your market is about to be disrupted, it is in these conversations that you’ll learn about it. Are you listening?
Happy 4th of July!
Posted on July 4, 2007
Categories: Differentiation, Establishment | Start the Conversation
I know I’ve been a bit behind in posting recently, but I want to take this opportunity to wish everyone here in the U.S. (and any Americans abroad who might find their way here) a Happy 4th!
And lest we be reminded of this one too many times (and I hope I’m not sounding jingoistic here), it was 231 years ago that a small group of very smart people had a very different and disruptive idea. They gathered a community around them and created something never seen before - a democratic (system of government, not party) nation.
For much of what we call the “western” world, this is now commonplace. But it’s always possible, for better or worse, that somewhere in the world disruptive political change might be happening again today (it’s happened a few times since 1776).
But I’ll offer my admiration to those who dared to think differently and stake their lives on it (among them one of my most admired people). And I’ll remember that the ability and imperative to create change never ends, and applies to all of our institutions and every part of our lives.
Rethinking the Bus
Posted on June 21, 2007
Categories: Experience, Innovation, creativity | 3 Comments
Sometimes those of us in the tech business can get fooled into thinking we’re the only business where any real experimentation and innovation can happen. Of course, we’d be wrong, but here’s a great example of how the most seemingly mundane and bureaucratic organization can innovate, and (we hope) improve life for their community (aka customers).
Yesterday, AC Transit (a bus company that serves Contra Costa and Alameda Counties east of San Francisco) announced some significant changes to their schedule. Among these were such unusual routes as a “senior citizen route” which (according to the news report I heard) stops at shopping malls, hospitals and nursing homes.
But the most interesting idea is the “Flex Bus.” This bus picks up riders at one of three locations in the city of Newark, and takes them to any (yes, any) bus stop they want anywhere in the city. According to an AC Transit spokesperson:
If you’re the only one on the bus when you board, the bus will drive off and take you straight to whereever you want to go with no stops.
I’m reasonably sure that this whole idea violates all of the traditional notions of efficiency in public transit. I’m also reasonable sure there was lots of opposition to the plan.
All of that because it’s innovative. It’s an attempt to bring a level of service and convenience to the community (riders, customers) that has never even been conceived in public transit. It gives everyone a whole new experience on the bus.
I don’t know nearly enough about public transit to tell if this might work. But I give AC Transit lots of credit for trying.
We in the tech industry love to experiment with new products, services and technologies to deliver better experiences to our customers. This reminds us that anyone, anywhere and in any business (agency, organization) can be just as innovative and can deliver just as unique a customer experience.
How innovative is your customer experience?
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The Visible Experience
Posted on June 12, 2007
Categories: Brand, Differentiation, Engagement, Marketing | Start the Conversation
Experience counts. I don’t mean work experience, or the kind of wisdom that gives you insight, but the experience your customer (or prospective customer) has interacting with your company. Your customer’s Experience is the heart of your brand, and the heart of your customer’s decision to stay your customer.
Last week, I had two experiences which stood in stark contrast, and reinforced this.
First the good news:
I was invited to join a (relatively) new business-focused social networking service called Visible Path. In order to vet members to some degree, the service requires that your e-mail be a valid, non-spammer, domain (maybe more than that, I don’t fully know their criteria). So when I went to sign up, the site challenged me. The way it was stated caused me to interpret the requirement as the site admin’s desire to make an arbitrary judgment about my worthiness to join. This did not go over well, and I chose to, rather than join, fire off a rather scalding e-mail to the first contact person I could find on their web site. Within 2-3 minutes, I had a response back from Kathleen Bruno, who asked me to call her directly.
I did. She asked me what had cause me to think this, and how they could improve the process. We talked about this for nearly 30 minutes, discussing everything from word usage to my ideas for how to make the sequence friendlier and more transparent (there’s that word again!). She even told me who else in the company would also hear about my feedback.
This conversation turned my experience of Visible Path from one of a company who is clueless about networking (as an exclusive club?) to one that wants to engage users and make a valuable place to connect with others.
The initial experience was not good (I don’t think it’s completely my privacy fanatacism, either). But the response was outstanding. Here’s a company that “gets it.” They seem to care about the experience. They seem to care about making my experience useful, friendly and productive.
I’ve since completed the sign-up process and will be testing this very interesting new social-networking-for-business service to see if all of the cool stuff they offer really helps me (I’ll keep you posted!) (and, I’m not yet a raving fan of the service, but I am a raving fan of Kathleen!)
And now the bad news:
I spent this past weekend in Deerfield, IL. I stayed at the Embassy Suites (it was the designated hotel for the function). For those of you who know the Embassy Suites, you know they offer a reasonable breakfast buffet. Fortunately, this buffet included some hot food, like eggs and pancakes. Unfortunately, it also included cooked-to-order omeletes. Why is that unfortunate? In order to get any hot food at all, you have to wait in the omelet line. And on the weekend, the hotel is not populated with speed-focused businesspeople, but rather throngs of tourists, all clamoring for as much free food as possible (and ordering 4, 5 or more items). The line when I arrived was 45 minutes long. I didn’t wait.
I did, however, run into the manager as I left the line. I suggested that maybe the scrambled eggs could be placed in a chafing dish outside the line - not as fresh, but far more efficient. I made one or two other suggestions as well in my desire to be helpful and point out the error of their ways.
His response? He told me why my suggestions were bad ideas. He told me that my ideas were not what other guests wanted. All of this is probably true (I’m no hotelier, after all). But it left me thinking: This hotel doesn’t care what I think. They offer a generic service, and don’t care if I take it or leave it. (For the record, I’ll be leaving it next time I’m in Deerfield).
My experience of this hotel was one which does not care about its guests, one that does not listen, and one that does not care to improve my experience.
Contrast that to my new friend Ms. Bruno at Visible Path, who cared enough to want my personal experience to be a good one. I’ll be spending time using that service.
As is my habit, I pose the question: How are your customers experiencing your company? Are you sure? And what are you doing to make sure?
After all, Experience isn’t everything. When it comes to customers, it’s the only thing.
I Am Your Customer!
Posted on May 31, 2007
Categories: Management, Marketing | Start the Conversation
Last week, a friend who is new to technology marketing, commenting on key trends said: “SMB [small and mid-size business] is one of the biggest trends right now.” If you’ve been around the technology business for the last few years, you’ve seen it, also. Every company who has traditionally sold to the enterprise (the largest companies, the Fortune 500, Global 2000, etc.) wants to sell to the “SMB.”
An “SMB” is not a trend. A business - any business of any size - is a (prospective) customer. (did I really have to point that out?)
I’ve heard this play out in several companies with which I’ve been associated: Someone contacts the company asking for information. The response is “you’re an SMB - you need to talk to our new SMB department (group, team, whatever).” This is a bit like telling the prospect calling from Buenos Aires to call the Brussels office because “you’re international” (hint: no, they are not - they are domestic; just not in the same country as you).
So let me offer this challenge: Can we please stop calling SMB a trend. Segmenting your market by size is fine - if you can identify unique needs and buying patterns based on size. But the so-called SMB market has always been there. The fact that enterprise-focused companies have been unable to address it is not the problem of the (prospective) customers in that market - it’s the problem of the vendor!
So, please, remember: a small or mid-sized business is not a trend - it is your customer. Act like it.
Adoption Happens
Posted on May 28, 2007
Categories: Establishment, Marketing, Technology | Start the Conversation
In his blog last week, Gartner analyst Jeffrey Mann responds to Cisco’s Parvesh Sethi touting the capabilities of Cisco’s IP phones:
I’ve seen quite a few IP phones on people’s desks, and I’m sure that some people are doing innovative things with them. However, I usually see them being used as, well, phones. The phones may have an IP address and lots of great possibilities, but I have yet to encounter anyone who uses even 20% of those possibilities. Most people just pick them up to dial, much as they have been doing for decades.
Am I missing something? I respect Mr. Mann greatly, but I think there’s a point missing from this argument.
Whenever a new - and disruptive - technology arrives, even when it’s widely deployed and the benefits are obvious, the adoption of the most advanced features takes some time (remember your technology adoption life cycle?).
I don’t mean to be cynical here, but let’s face it: If I had an IP phone on my desk, I’d use it to make calls (sorry, I’m with Steve Jobs on this one: the killer app for (cell) phones is still making calls). Given my penchant for playing with tech toys, I’d probably play with all of the advanced features, too. And I’d learn which ones are actually useful for me (not necessarily the same ones for everyone, either). But I’m an “early adopter” and not everyone is - in fact, very few people are.
But the fact that the technology is there, and it’s being marketed and made available means that - if it’s useful - it will eventually be used.
Bringing a disruptive technology to market happens in stages. In order for a majority of customers to understand the technology, it has to fit into the context of something they do today. It can be better and different, but in this case, a phone is still a phone and makes calls and does some other cools stuff.
The important lessons for disruptive marketers: Only when it’s accepted that the disruptive technology can fit into common activities does it get the chance to realize its disruptive potential and begin to change those activities, or obviate them and create new ones.
A Step in the Right Direction
Posted on May 28, 2007
Categories: Differentiation, Marketing, Sales | Start the Conversation
On Friday, CNN reported that Saturn dealerships will now have Toyotas and Hondas (and, oddly, Chevys) on hand for customers to test-drive side-by-side with the Saturns they hope you will buy.
While not an uncommon tactic for technology companies (where nearly every vendor produces comparison charts that, while biased of course, compare their product to chosen competitor(s) ), this is new for car dealerships, whose sales tactics have often relied on getting you to make a deal before you ever had a chance to see a competitor’s model (also called pulling the wool over our collective eyes).
Saturn has finally admitted that its customers are going to check out the competition no matter what they do, so why not let them do it right in our shop where we can also engage them in the conversation about why our product is the best. It’s still a tactic to get us to buy before we go to the competitor’s shop, but all they are doing here is avoiding the conversation we might have with the competitor’s salesperson - who most assuredly won’t offer the same level of open comparison.
I might be biased by the fact that I love my Saturn, but I’d say after a few years of taking heavy criticism for some poor tactics and decisions, this one is a step in the right direction - and more importantly one from which all marketers can learn.
How confident are you that, when seen side-by-side with the competition, your customer will choose your product? (if you’re not, then you should think hard about changing your product!)
Disrupting Because of…
Posted on May 28, 2007
Categories: Differentiation, Engagement, creativity | Start the Conversation
Doc Searls defines what he calls the because effect
This is what you get when your new business isn’t just about inventing and controlling technologies and standards, but about taking advantage of the new opportunities opened up by fresh new technologies and standards. For example, making money because of blogging, or RSS, or desktop Linux, or whatever — rather than just with those things
In the technology business, we tend to be very obsessed with the technology itself. So many companies claim that what differentiates them is the technology (often only certain features of the technology) and sometimes it’s true, but not often.
But many of the real opportunities exist in taking advantage of all of the technology we’ve invented to do things (anything from business processes to making new friends) differently - and better than ever. Or what can be done because of the technology.
Think about the people making money by running businesses in Second Life. They are not in the technology business, but they are in the design or fun or entertainment (or whatever) business. And their business is able to have the reach is does because of Second Life. You can even say the same for the large corporations who have established a presence in this virtual world. They are able to better interact with partners, customers, etc., because of the technology.
There are two things I ask myself everyday:
1) How am I making use of all of the technology and capabilities available to me to engage my market? to attract new prospective customers? to start an interesting conversation? You might say, what am I doing different/better because of the technology I have at my disposal?
2) I market technology. What are my customers doing different/better because of the technology I market? We marketers like to think in terms of benefits (many of which are not really benefits at all). But if you pose the question this way, the benefit becomes very clear.
What are you making possible for your customers that was not possible before?
A Very Very Long Run
Posted on May 14, 2007
Categories: Establishment, Items of Interest, Management | Start the Conversation
Disruptive Marketing is not just about creating disruption and displacing established market participants. It’s also about how established participants respond to and ultimately capitalize on (and sometimes eliminate) disruptive threats.
This story from Business Week is the story of just such a company. It started with
The world’s oldest continuously operating family business ended its impressive run last year
1,428 years. That’s a very very long time to be in business. In the technology industry where I live, many businesses are lucky to be around for more than five years.
Ultimately, according to this article, the business wasn’t displaced or made irrelevant (through a market disruption), but faded away in a series of mis-directed financial decisions.
But what struck me as interesting was the way that this company made decisions over its incredible millenium-and-a-half run. They refused to comply with established protocols and societal norms. They focused (until near the end) relentlessly on doing the one thing they knew better than anyone else, and they found ways that worked for them to overcome change on a scope that most businesses can barely conceive.
The result was a business that sustained financial, economic, political and military storms of nearly every conceivable variety. It is what they chose to do differently - making business and management decisions that defied the norms - that kept them stable over a very very long run.
It also points out that sometimes the best way to capitalize on disruption is not to respond at all - just let it wash over you and keep going.
One of the most common debates I see in businesses today is about the meaning of, and response to, competitors (and others) actions. There tends to be a common pattern to these discussions: panic, some analysis, then an increasing sense of urgency to act.
I can’t say what the decisions of Kongo Gumi’s management were a millenium ago, but from the history it seems to me that there must have been lots of decisions not to act in these situation.
An idea that might help many companies today is to include in the set of possible decisions “do nothing differently” and rely on the plans in place to succeed. Then play out that scenario next to ones that include the panic-driven actions. I have seen this work effectively far more often than you might expect.
My question is: Do you have the courage to trust your direction and not respond with panic?
Recursive Differentiation
Posted on May 13, 2007
Categories: Differentiation, Marketing | 4 Comments
In order to understand recursion, one must first understand recursion. (Author Unknown)
The topic of competitive differentiation has been coming up in quite a few conversations lately. The context is usually a discussion on how to create “sustainable competitive advantage.” A variety of different frameworks are used to describe it, from Michael Porter’s classic to the currently in-vogue.
When I’m asked how to do this, I have only one answer: you can’t. You can (and must!) create both a process and a culture that continuously creates competitive advantage.
There are lots of ways to create competitive differentiation. A better product. More service. Something free. Customer service. Appealing to needs as yet unmet (even with the same product/service). Hire better people. Spend more on R&D. Create a “faster” organization. Lower your transaction costs. I can go on and on…and some of these things will work for a short period of time, and some for longer.
But can you create sustainable competitive advantage? Every single thing you can do can be copied by your competition. Most things can be done better (they can leapfrog you - and will).
There is really only one way to create “sustainable competitive advantage” and that is to sustain the effort of creating competitive advantage. Sound recursive? It is.
I’ll offer a recursive description of this process.
How to create competitive advantage:
- Do something disruptive. Create something that will not just frustrate your competition, but that will do the market equivalent of rendering them speechless.
- Assume that your competition (known or unknown) has matched you and outdone you.
- Based on the position you are in after that assumption, create competitive advantage.
And you know that if you don’t do this, your competition will.
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Consumer-Class
Posted on May 10, 2007
Categories: Differentiation, Products, Technology | Start the Conversation
I’ve spent the last two days at Software 2007, and while enjoying the show and my fellow attendees tremendously, I noticed that there was a phrase (a very common one in the software industry, in fact) that I heard over and over: “Enterprise-Class”
Typically this is a phrase used by software companies to indicate that their software can handle the intense demands of the largest multi-national companies combined with their very large communities of suppliers, partners, customers, etc.
In this context, I was hearing it from SaaS vendors trying to convince the audience that their applications were more than conveniences for small business, but rather ready for prime time and the so-called real business of large enterprises.
Add that to the fact that this conference (as so many are lately) is centered around Enterprise 2.0, and I began to wonder: Does “enterprise-class” matter?
Consider: Enterprise class usually means three things:
- Scalability: The ability to handle transaction volume, data storage needs, etc for a very large number of simultaneous users and still give good response time and performance.
- Security: The ability to protect data where it’s stored, in transit (over the network) and at all of the endpoints and nodes with sufficiently high levels of security so that it can’t be stolen. Also the ability to ensure that only people who are authorized to see certain data can get to it at all, plus the ability to provide business continuity in case of disaster. And to do all of this in ways that meet a tangled web of regulatory requirements.
- Flexibility: The ability to adapt to different contexts, tasks, etc. And the ability to configure both the application functions and the user interface to meet the needs and preferences of every individual user.
Let me compare those requirements to the requirements that might be placed on a successful Web2.0-style consumer application (think Google - search, calendar, reader, whatever) or small-to-mid-size-business applications (say, WebEx meetings or SalesForce.com CRM):
- Scalability: These applications must scale to enormous numbers of users (sometimes in the millions, rather than the thousands of an enterprise) and data transfer and storage requirements. Moreover, where enterprise applications can be rolled-out in a planned way (and therefore additional demands on the system predicted and defined), SaaS applications must respond to unpredictable demands which can grow very quickly if the application/service becomes popular.
- Security: SaaS applicaitions may or may not be subject to regulatory requirements, but they are subject to the requirements of the market. They must be able to keep user data and user content secure and be sure access controls are in place and highly effective. For small businesses they must still meet all of the business requirements. But imagine the exodus from the service if consumer data were compromised (see any number of recent examples). In addition, these applications/services do not reside behind firewalls, so they must be built to be hacker-proof in ways that an enterprise application is often immune (mostly) from.
- Flexibility: These application must not only allow so much flexibility that every user can personalize their experience, but it must be easy enough for users to do it themselves. Small businesses must be able to create the custom restrictions, processes, roles, etc. that meet their unique needs. Not everything needs to be customizable, but most of the experience should be. On top of that, there is an increasing demand for these applications/services to be published as web-services in some form, so that they can be used in more flexible ways.
“Enterprise-class” has become such a loaded and popular buzzword that no marketing department can seem to go without using it. But that’s just getting caught up in the buzzword.
I realized as I considered this comparison that this is another element of the “2.0″ shift that is turning the market inside-out in so many ways. And it led me to ask:
Does my enterprise really want an “enterprise-class” application? or a “consumer-class” application?
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