Our People: Mark's Blog

Episode 55: Information-centric Marketing

Advertising looks like a fun business. Ads must be creative (well, they should be), the business is constantly changing, and companies are always seeking new ways to be heard. There are some legendary industry innovations like infomercials. Imagine getting people to watch a full length commercial like is was a real TV program. Go figure. I never would have thought it possible. Infomercials seem to be taking over airline entertainment as well. Today, instead of a movie, we get to watch these short “entertainment” segments from the TV networks that essentially advertise their shows.

 The disruption happening here is that the number of places where an advertiser can effectively use a “push” model (e.g. forcing a captive audience to watch something) continue to diminish as more and more information gets delivered in a pull models. With on-demand systems, and even Tivo, we can simply bypass what we don’t want to see. To combat this issue advertisers continue to get more creative and deliver better content. Just look at Superbowl commercials – they are often better than the game!

The one place that has been a disappointment to me, however, has been the in development of pull marketing, often called permission marketing.

What a great opportunity for companies to distinguish themselves. I, as a consumer, actually give some companies permission to send me information. We all do this from time to time and it is kind of unavoidable with some things like airline and hotel loyalty programs. What is amazing to me is that, even with this opportunity, most companies still send out information that is generic, irrelevant, and just a waste of time. Why doesn’t a company figure out that, after 47 attempts, I may not want their credit card. I know, they do these things as “mass mailings” but imagine how much happier a customer I would be if they sent me something I wanted!

I believe companies are basically squandering their permission marketing opportunity by not using their information to their advantage. A typical company will have lots of information about me, especially if I interact with them regularly. For example, most airlines know where and how much I like to fly, even my seat preferences. They could easily get more of my business by offering me discounts on things that are appealing to me. Instead of offering something I want, I get credit card offers and discount offers to places that I don't want to go...

The trick is going to be for companies to take a more information-centric approach and literally develop personalized marketing campaigns. Imagine that instead of targeting markets with broad brush programs, they could deliver an integrated marketing campaign to every individual consumer. The campaign would stress the points known to be key factors for that individual and any special discounts or offers would be targeted to known areas of value.

We have the technology economically do this today and I believe that personalized marketing will become the new benchmark. Companies that can leverage their information will be the winners.

Mark…

Episode 54: Collaboration 2.0

I spent the past week in the UK and Europe talking to customers about their IT strategies and priorities. It was a great trip; I always enjoy getting direct perspectives and I find it especially valuable to spend time outside of the US. One of the most pervasive and consistent conversations was around collaboration technologies. Specifically, these conversations were about how a companies’ IT strategy can enable more effective collaboration.

As I was holding these meetings, I was also personally transitioning to my new role in CMA. To communicate our initial plans and get feedback, we used conference calls, web-casts, town hall meetings, and global Emails. As I began to interact with the various team members from around the world, it really became apparent to me how much had changed in terms of collaboration.  Each of us is now using a wide mixture of the tools to communicate and collaborate; and we each have our personal preferences.

While this is no great revelation in itself the fact is however that there is no one preferred, or even best way, to collaborate. A person might argue that sitting down and having a face to face meeting is always the best, but that is simply not the case. For example, I will often IM or Email someone 20 feet away to ask a quick question or send an update.

I believe, for large companies, there are 3 key characteristics of collaboration that need to be addressed: I will label these

• Global Collaboration
• Generational Collaboration
• Contextual Collaboration.

Global Collaboration and Global Companies

EMC, like most large companies, is a “Global Company.” Being a successful global company these days has a whole new meaning in terms of how we must operate. In the past, I would characterize most large multinational companies as being, for example, a US company, with “operations” in given countries. While selling products globally, the company would still identify itself as an American, Japanese, or German, etc. company. This identification is no longer even relevant in today’s marketplace. To operate globally, companies must now innovate, operate, support their customers, and most importantly, collaborate around the world as if they were a “local company.”

To do this, companies must do more than just sell the same product and services around the world; truly global companies must posses the ability to leverage their global strengths while also understanding and reacting to unique needs and priorities. To do this, companies must use every means possible to build collaboration and communications capabilities that enable global teams.

Generational Collaboration

Most people (my age at least) will remember having at least one boss, that when confronted with the Email phenomenon, dealt with it by having an administrator print out his/her Email to read and then would hand write replies for the administrator to transcribe a response.  At the time I was amused by the individual’s unwillingness to embrace change. Today, many of us face these same communications shifts as our kids communicate and collaborate in whole new ways.

The next generation of employees is communicating and collaborating in whole new ways and so companies must adapt their methodologies and IT strategies to embrace these new forms of collaboration in order to get the full value and remain competitive. From Blogging to IM, we have a whole new generation of communication modes. Even gaming is changing how we prefer to collaborate and even how we make decisions.

Contextual Collaboration

As I noted, there is no one “right” way to collaborate. The ideal method will depend on many factors. One principle factor is to understand the context. In this case, by context, I mean the situation. Where are the team members or participants? Is this a discussion or is a decision needed? Are there time zone constraints, language constraints, etc? The list goes on…..

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So, collaboration is no longer a simple matter. Our companies are more global, our employees have new preferences and we simply have more tools at our disposal. Success in IT used to be mostly about building best-in-class ERP, CRM, operations, and Email systems. The critical differential today will be how a companies build their IT and Information Infrastructures to embrace and facilitate global, multi-cultural, and multi-medium collaboration.

The answer though (for IT and Business Managers) as to a strategy, however, is very simple – ENABLE EVERYTHING – especially the low-cost alternatives to travel. I believe that companies that embrace these new methods of collaboration will gain a significant competitive edge over those that choose to constrain their employees to today’s methods.

In the next blog, I want to talk about ideas to differentiate your collaboration strategy.

Mark…

 

 

Episode 53: A New Gig

Well, I have a new gig. I am now moving over into an operational role to lead the CMA (Content Management and Archiving) Business. I will also continue to manage the Technology Ventures Group. For those who have known me for the past 5 years (at EMC) this may seem like an unusual move but, for most of my career, I have been in General Manager roles. EMC was really my first exposure to roles like CTO and CDO. Ahhh- back to having a quota! 

I have had 4 different roles since joining EMC and each one has been exciting and different. I joined EMC as CTO. In this role I was able to focus on Technology Strategy and M&A. Next I moved over to mange OSO (Open SW Operations). This role was great in that I was able to build a strong connection to the Engineering teams and development processes. Co-Leading ESG (EMC Software Group), we focused on building a strong new team out of several acquisitions. Finally as CDO (Chief Development Officer) I focused a variety of roles with the primary purpose on building “One EMC” from a strategy, products, and technology standpoint.

It has all been so much fun – which, if you are lucky, is how your “work” should be! 

I am not a stranger to the CMA business. I have been involved either directly or indirectly with this great organization since the acquisition of Documentum. As I have said, I believe the industry is at a key inflection point. We are at the point where the bulk of the information we store and consume is unstructured and we need to start managing, and leveraging it much more effectively. We also need to make it available across multiple applications in a secure and flexible ways.

Up front, I will say this; I will be working with the CMA team to take the business to a whole new level! We will be leveraging and integrating the technology even more across EMC. We will establish even more depth to our strategic relationships to deliver more complete business solutions. We will create and integrate even more technology that will help people collaborate better and build more efficient business capabilities. With the prediction the 95% of the information we create in 2010 will be unstructured content – there is simply an incredible opportunity. 

I will clearly miss the deep involvement on the M&A and technology side as well as the great teams of people we have built in these areas but I will clearly also stay engaged with all of you and these efforts.

And yes, I intend to keep blogging on technology, management, strategy and ideas that interest me. More than ever I believe this is a great medium for communication. But now I need you all to buy stuff from me too – hey I have a quota! 

So, stay tuned. I can tell you all one thing; we will not be sitting still.

Mark…