Disrupting The Game

Tag: CMO

CRM: the new centre of gravity
The migration of the corporate world’s centre of gravity from ERP and transaction management towards CRM and customer experience management was evident at Salesforce.com’s 13th annual Dreamforce jamboree in San Francisco last week.

The carnival that eats San Francisco for a week, produced yet another impressive set of numbers:
- 170,000 registered delegates (one fifth of the host city’s population)
- 2600 speakers
- 1600 sessions
- 400 exhibitors
- 10 million online viewers
With program sessions devoted to “wellness” and “inspirational leadership”, Dreamforce can be described as “the Burning Man festival but with everyone wearing clothes and talking all day about cloud computing”.

The core message was that companies must be committed to capturing, connecting and acting on customer data across the engagement spectrum with a dynamic, agile customer management platform.

SFDC is now the fourth largest software company in the world, after Microsoft, Oracle and SAP and is on track to become the first Software-as-a-Service subscription company to hit $US 10b in revenue.

None of the annual customer conferences organised by SFDC’s currently larger rivals _ Oracle’s OpenWorld, SAP’s SAPPHIRE Now, or Microsoft’s Convergence events _ go close to matching Dreamforce’s numbers. Customer management or what founder Mark Benioff describes as “customer success” is generating all the momentum and energy:

If your CRM _ meaning analytics, sales automation, marketing, service, collaboration and mobility _ is not pivotal to your company, then you have a major structural deficiency.

This old-school configuration, with CRM disconnected, does not work:
September 21, 2015
You can’t fake it

“No matter how much money you spend on advertising, you can’t convince customers that you provide better experiences than you do.”

This is one of my favorite quotes from Customer Experience guru Bruce Temkin. It features prominently in my Customer Experience is the New Marketing presentation, which I delivered at Alex Allwood’s Customer Experience is the Brand book launch on June 29 in Sydney and again, in an updated form, on December 14 to a CIO-CMO audience assembled by IDG Communications, the publishers of ComputerWorld and CMO Magazine, also in Sydney:

Here is the slide deck:

http://www.slideshare.net/MitchellMackey/mitchell-mackeys-customer-experience-is-the-new-marketing-june-29-2015-compatibility-mode

August 30, 2015
Who owns the customer experience?

Everybody agrees that we need to be customer-centric, customer focused and even customer obsessed, says Sirrus Decisions’ Megan Heuer in an excellent post.

Few B2B companies have the organisational and cultural agility necessary to make their customer experiences a genuine differentiator in the market place.

Heuer says that whilst the appointment of an empowered Chief Customer Experience Officer will help, the key is the development of a collaborative model that overcomes the siloed delivery of tactical measures and replaces them with a compelling strategic change for the better.

“In the most successful b-to-b companies, when it comes to helping buyers buy, sales, marketing and product have defined how they’ll align,” Heuer says,

“Alignment and execution are based on what buyers need and do when making a purchase and how each group helps with that. Note that none of these groups insist that they “own” the buyer. They coordinate the role of each group, and each is accountable for its part in delivering growth.

“A similar collaborative model can be developed around the customer experience. Each of the functions plays an important part, and interlock is in place to ensure collaboration. Rather than owning the customer, the focus is alignment around the customer, just as we do for the buyer.”

“A central function for customer experience definition provides insights and a roadmap, and a cross-functional team collectively defines the path to deliver on the strategy.”

April 30, 2014
Leading the brand experience: the CXO
Great customer experience doesn’t happen by accident. That’s why the most valuable player in your C-Suite should be the Chief Experience Officer (CXO).

Don’t have one? Is your company content to compete on price and commoditized product and service attributes; and leave the customer experience to chance?

Brand experience agency Jack Morton Worldwide doesn’t produce a flood of white papers, but what they do deliver is invariably stimulating.

Check out their their, latest: 5 Reasons to Hire (Or Become) A CXO.

The reasons are:
- Provide your brand with a competitive edge
- Champion “doing” versus “saying”
- Maximize your brand’s collaborative efforts
- Make friends with big data
- Build a genuine brand experience culture
Experience _ defined as the interactions between the company and the people that make its business work _ is truly mission-critical, deserving the full power and authority of a C-level owner.
October 13, 2013
The CMO role needs a new job description
It is time to redefine the B2B CMO’s job description according to Forrester Research analyst Laura Ramos in a new report titled “B2B CMOs Must Evolve or Move On”.

Laura says “CMOs stands at the crossroads of a redefined marketing remit”.

Digital channels, online social activity, and rapidly evolving personal technology mean business marketers must take on unfamiliar responsibilities to succeed.

New skills and cross-department teamwork are required to meet rising business expectations.

For this report, Forrester and the Business Marketing Association (BMA) jointly surveyed marketing executives about how they take on new world marketing demands.

Forrester concluded that the key to this transition will be the CMO’s ability to span organizational silos and focus corporate strategy, energy, and budget on enhancing knowledge of and engagement with customers.

“From skill development to board-level decision-making, CMOs have moved from a walk-on role to headlining the play.

“Yet, when we asked how they compensate for the growing demands to collaborate, staff up, and set direction, most admitted to simply rolling up their sleeves and working longer, harder hours at the expense of personal time.

“CMOs need to rethink the marketing strategy over tactics, prioritize collaborative opportunities, strengthen the marketing team, and collaborate with peers about how to put real customer needs front and centre.”

Here’s how Laura and her team see the new CMO job description.

Laura states that CMOs who rise to the challenges of this new mandate will work smarter when they:
- Keep their eye on company strategy, not campaign tactics
- Collaborate with peers to get more obsessed about customers
- Get fanatical about delegation
- Transform internal perceptions about the role of marketing
Personally, I relate to the need to delegate. Doing more with less just doesn’t cut it as a sustainable long-term approach.

If the issue is not strategic, doesn’t relate to customer value or brand health then the CMO should assign it to someone else in the team or the external partner network.
July 7, 2013
Are you Business Technology literate?

BT is the future not IT

Business Technology fluent?

Do you understand how best to engage at the intersection of BT, business processes and people?

If the answer is “no”, you may need to lift your game and extended your horizon.

Just as financial literacy is a “must” for any senior executive, today BT literacy is also at the top of the “must have” list.

Do you appreciate that almost all the disruptive new technology advances have occurred in the consumer space in recent years (think Apple, of course, and Google, Facebook and Amazon)?

Digital services are being consumed in radically different ways, on new and increasingly mobile devices.

The old, locked-down, risk adverse, complex corporate technology world is less and less relevant to future business success.

The leaders in the development of new generation business technology, such as Salesforce.com (the world’s most innovative company according to Forbes magazine for two consecutive years now, 2011 and 2012), Sugar CRM, Yammer and Workday, cite the consumer world as their inspiration with phrases such as “voluntary adoption is the new KPI”.

So, do you understand the term “multi-tenant architecture”? The significance of HTML 5? And the acronym API (Application Programing Interface) and what why it is important?

Of course, you don’t have to know how to code web pages in HTML 5, but you must have a sound, high-level understanding of the Internet-native technology backbone that should be driving your customer-driven business and enabling a differentiated brand experience.

It is no longer good enough to effectively abdicate technology decisions to your CIO and the IT department, whilst complaining at the same time about the absence of value.

In fact, why does your company still have a CIO?

Over the next five years, the executive role of the CIO will be diminished. The position will be eliminated at many companies, as BT-literate CFOs, COOs and CMOs asert their ascendancy by taking the lead in driving technology change that improves both the customer experience and profitability.

Forrester Research’s founder George Colony sums up the direction in this quote:

“Old IT was about uptime (and risk management). BT is about: agility, speed, speed, being bullet-proof, customer-centricity, and business-centricity.”

Forrester no longer has a CIO. Today they have a Chief Business Technology Officer (CBTO).

George says that while the actual title change is a small one, the symbolism is significant.

He has compelling views on the topic, which he articulates here and here.

As do other good thinkers such as Scott Brinker with his marketing technology blog and Advertising Age article.

August 12, 2012