Mens Et Opera - Reloaded

For readers who might be interested, I thought it would be useful to gather together in one place links to various posts on Omnichannel and customer-centricity. On to the posts. It's the customer, stupid! The "relational gap" in the Australian Retail sector  The misleading Omnichannel...thing Business as a Calling: How Catchoftheday and Tinyme fulfill their call Omnichannel doesn't necessarily mean customer happiness Does Product-Centricity conflic with Customer-Centricity? Drop Shipping: the competitive advantage of pure players over bricks and mortar What's customer experience, anyway? "The Company is like a verb whose subject is the customer" Enjoy!

According to the authors, convergence is the key to reaching customers in the new world of digital communication. If you are like me interested in how digital innovation is transforming businesses at their core, this book is for you.    Convergence is all about breaking down silos to build a more cohesive organisation to respond to the exigencies of the new and empowered customer. The authors make a strong argument against the traditional way of structuring marketing, technology, and creativity.  They no longer must be separate worlds, speaking different languages, using different kinds of talent. For businesses to succeed today, this has to change. Their argument revolves around five fundamental principles: 1.   Customer centricity. Instead of paying lip service to it, the authors actually point out that customer-centricity inevitably lead to disruption. Most organizations are beholden to some age-old organizational chart and not structured around th...

How to help senior management understand the Web and adapt the business, culture, teams and workflows accordingly? No fluff, no theory — just techniques and strategies that worked in practice, and showed results.  This is the brilliance of Boag’s book. I normally find myself skimming business and marketing books, gleaning what I need. But I couldn't just glance at this one. Paul’s book  comes at a great time for me. I am staggered by the number of times I come across extremely obvious cases where a better digital adaptation would bring about superior customer satisfaction and brand loyalty. You see companies still battle with Omni-channel, in-store wi-fi, personalized product information, poor mobile presence, etc. One can think of these issues as just technical inefficiencies that will soon or later be overcome. Here is where Paul hits hard. He argues, that the Digital is fundamentally a cultural change. The hierarchical structure of (large) organisations doesn't si...

There is a discontinuity point in almost everything we do. Anytime we make a choice we are choosing a different path because we believe that the current course of events would lead us towards a dead-end. A "quit point", however, is more than just a mere decision point. When you quit, you are saying (and betting): "things are going well now but that won't last long because bla bla..." Bla bla is what substantiates your bet. Conversely, you also are saying (and betting):"this way is gonna land us bla bla but we are going to slog away for awhile". Simple question: "why don't you quit when bad things are impending?". Easy answer: "you, your product, your service, your 'whatever you are in' will be off the market by then". You are not the smartest guy in the room. Second (hard) question: "what do you properly mean by 'quit'?". In order to quit you have to abandon a piece of something to gain a piece of som...

One of the most remarkable concepts about creating a business, is its underlying idea and the process to translate it into reality. The idea comes from a sharp observation of reality in all its factors, this is called attitude: the most valuable asset of any successful entrepreneur.  Then, the capacity to cut through reality to surface what is truly important to realize and what not (the latter being very tricky, indeed). Subsequently, the process is made of  strategy and tactics. Deal with the material you face and shape the idea accordingly. Many companies fail because of this lack of realism: great idea, deep observation and an illogical optimism: "It will work!". The majority, however, fail because of a slapdash work on the idea. A business model is just that: a model. It is not reality. An old cliche proves to be true: "the map is not the territory". Your model must emerge from a strong observation (the extent of demand or the potential to induce it) and be ali...

First thing: a good product. Well, now some "spice": 1. The pizza maker: just use his spare time going around the tables cheerfully chatting with the diners 2. Location, just adjacent to a top-market restaurant. Top-class people like to break the routine 3. Few outdoor tables, no queue (in/out), no reservation, no ads, no frills: just pizza and some delicious entrees 4. A clear vision: I work for people who can spread the idea . Wow! I will! That's Lucio Pizzeria in Sydney. It's worth trying it out. Is it a purple cow ? Maybe not, pizza is just an invisible product. But Lucio is on the right track turning a simple pizzeria into a "must-try". I guess people go there dragged by the good pizza and return to share with Lucio his brilliant idea. Friendly. It'll catch on.

A very strong idea is to moderate a forum and defend G.W. Bush. No sooner said than done: http://www.storialibera.it/forum/viewtopic.php?f=54&t=222 My readers are gonna plummet...or maybe not!