Category Archives: Business Planning

Pause : Edit : Delete – My new year’s resolution for content management

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Last week, Apple confirmed it had acquired SnappyCam, an iPhone photo app that is capable of taking 20 frames per second.

At first glance, this seems like a great improvement on the iPhone camera function – until you start to think about some of the implications:

1. Does this mean we’ll be creating (and uploading, sharing, archiving) 20 times more digital photos than we do already?

2. Does Apple intend to remove some other functionality from the iPhone to make way for this enhancement (on the basis that they have just about packed in everything they can in the current iPhone 5S, and processing power and memory capacity are relatively finite)?

3. When will we ever find time to look at all these superfluous/supernumerous photos that Apple will be encouraging us to take?

For myself, I realise that I actually take far fewer photos than I did 10 years ago. In fact, I have never owned a digital camera, and basically lost interest in photography when it became virtually impossible to obtain film for my Nikon APS SLR camera. Previously, I had been using one of the very first Canon IXUS APS models, and before that, for many years I owned a solid and reliable 35mm SLR camera – a Praktica that was made in the former East Germany.  And while I have been using an iPhone to take photos for several years, I do so much more rarely than with any dedicated camera I have owned, even though the smart phone camera technology is much easier and more immediate.

Perhaps the ease of use is part of the problem with digital photography – there’s so little effort required, and practically zero cost involved, so it’s natural that some people just snap away with very little thought or consideration. Besides, if we don’t like a particular photo, we can just delete it. But I wonder if we are being disciplined enough in consigning our mistakes to the Trash icon. Yes, we save, upload and share our better attempts (and maybe we will look at them more than a few times over the years), but do we cull the rest?

I reflected on this as I began the process of clearing out my attic prior to an imminent house move. I found a large box of photographs, all neatly arranged in albums (by chronology and geography – no option to “tag” who was in the shot), representing a major investment in time and money over the years – the cost of the cameras themselves, the effort in composing each and every shot, the cost (and anticipation) involved to get the prints back from the developing lab (plus the mix of sheer horror and pleasant surprise with the results – and those frequently patronising labels telling me the film was under/over exposed… And while I do recall looking at some of these photos from time to time, for much of the past 10 years they have sat ignored and untouched in that same box. I’ll be the first to admit that not every picture was vital, essential let alone unique (for example, how many other tourists have taken photos of the Great Wall of China?), and while many of them still evoked vivid memories, and most of them conveyed a sense of narrative, I realise that I had to impose a more stringent editorial policy on what was deemed worthy of keeping.

So, in the age of digital content, when it seems we can take an infinite number of photos, capture endless hours of video, stream non-stop music and download whole libraries, I am resolved to adopt the following approach to my own content management:

PAUSE

Before saving/archiving any new content, take stock and consider whether I am ever going to want to view/watch/listen/play/read it again.

EDIT

Having decided it is really worthy of taking up space on my hard drive, catalogue it appropriately for easy retrieval. In addition, undertake regular culling of the archive. (What I found to my taste 5 years ago might not appeal today…)

DELETE

Anything that does not survive the above processes must be erased (not just backed up to the cloud or to another hard drive).

As businesses and organizations, we would also do well to apply a similar pruning process to our own operations, especially when we are facing certain constraints on capacity and resources. For example, before embarking on a new project or launching a new product, shouldn’t we be asking ourselves: what projects/products can we discontinue? When setting annual budgets and targets, shouldn’t we be questioning our assumptions on “continuing operations” – just because “we’ve always done it this way”, doesn’t mean we should continue to do so. When we reflect on what is important, can we really be sure we aren’t carrying any excess baggage? Part of this process will be driven by the need to prioritise resources, part of it will be determined by understanding what our customers and stakeholders truly value. Ultimately, what remains will likely be determined by its purpose and its relevance.

If you haven’t looked at that photo on your smart phone in over a year, what is it still doing there?

Focus, Focus, Focus: from great idea to MVP in one (not so) easy lesson

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Last week’s Lean Startup Melbourne session explored what it takes to turn your great startup idea into a minimum viable product (MVP) before launching in the market. And as the entrepreneurs pitching their product ideas soon found out, it’s all about focus: on the problem you are solving, on the solution you are offering, and on connecting with your target customer.

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The evening’s event was once again hosted by Inspire9, and generously sponsored by BlueChilli, and the ever-entertaining and animated Kussowski Brothers, along with newcomers Startup Victoria and Xero.

As well as a panel comprising 4 of Melbourne’s leading startup experts, there were a couple of lightning talks from Sidekicker and Attendly on how to find a tech co-founder, and how to identify your customer respectively.

On to the evening’s brave pitchers:

First up was ClassWired, a platform for helping ESL classes go digital. Building on personal and professional experience, the product aims to make ESL lesson content more social and the student experience more personal. The challenge is that the ESL market is divided between a handful of major players (who are easy to identify, but could leverage their scale to deploy their own solutions), and a large pool of independent teachers (who are harder to reach). While a need may exist for more interactive ESL content, the panel felt the revenue model lacked clarity, and as yet there was no compelling reason for customer adoption. ClassWired could establish some differentiation through superior instructional design, or by building content development tools for use by tutors.

Next came a presentation by Reflow, which entertained and baffled in equal measure. The product is designed to handle high-volume messaging traffic, from sensory, mobile and web sources across logistics, apps and environmental monitoring. Although the pitch was deep on technical domain knowledge, and again drew heavily on personal and professional experience, the panel was unclear as to the precise problem being addressed, and the solution being offered. Talk of “virtual hair dryers” and “sensory message overload” only helped to confuse the audience. Maybe there are opportunities in outsourcing, or in data analytics – but with cheap and plentiful hosting capacity out there, Reflow needs to find some focus.

Changing tone and gears came StillReel, which streams digital art to an LCD monitor near you. With the idea of bringing limited-edition digital artworks to a wider audience, StillReel offers a monthly subscription model, and is exploring the consumer, commercial and corporate markets. Leaving aside the concept of scarcity value in digital art, the overall feedback suggested that the market needs to be clearly defined, and the offering made more explicit. Is it simply art? Is it entertainment? Is it pandering to the elite? From my perspective, Brian Eno has created a different model via 77 Million Paintings, and no doubt social media is already “liberating” digital art and video from the galleries and museums.

Curated shopping service, YourGrocer offered the best and most succinct presentation on the night, and told a great story about how the experience of “validation in Brunswick” has helped them build a viable business connecting local grocery outlets with time-poor customers. With several options for revenue streams, supplier partnerships and even a franchise model, YourGrocer could be spoilt for choice – but like everyone else, they need to focus (and decide whether they are a community service, a social enterprise or a commercial venture).

Finally, MeetLinkShare offers virtual data rooms – a service somewhat clumsily describing itself as “The Swiss Army Knife of Mobile Collaboration”. Having built a proven platform for secure team-based document and content sharing (including annotations, tags, custom fields, multimedia and version control etc.) the team is now contemplating two significant (but quite separate) market segments: 1) Virtual Data Rooms for SME’s and 2) Private Tutors. They are also seeking a new round of funding. Again, the panel’s recommendation was to find their customer focus, although with some smart and distinct branding, it’s possible that MeetLinkShare could service both markets.

Conclusion

Having a great idea is not enough – as I learned very early on in product development, there may be an opportunity in the market, but is there a market in the opportunity? A couple of things missing from most of these presentations were:

  • a clear definition of both the upstream and downstream markets;
  • an understanding of the customer value chain (and how to monetize it); and
  • the specific contribution that each product, service or solution brings to their chosen domain.

It was also apparent that each of the pitches have opportunities across indirect applications, or within adjacent markets – so part of the challenge is knowing how to gain sufficient traction in one segment that will provide momentum (and relevance) to move into the next growth phase.

Disclosure: The author is not affiliated with any of the businesses mentioned in this blog, although he does acknowledge the receipt of 2 free beers and a couple of slices of pizza from the organisers.

6 Melbourne Graduates of Boot Camp for Start-Ups

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Another Monday night in Melbourne’s silicon laneway, another Monday night meeting of Lean Start-Up Melbourne. This month’s event, generously supported by inspire9, Kussowski Brothers, BlueChilli and Alphastation, featured 6 start-ups who have recently completed the AngelCube accelerator programme.

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In no particular order, here are Angelcube’s Class of 2013:

A couple of the presenting founders, Tablo and Coinjar, have both been mentioned previously in this blog. I’m still very impressed with the simplicity of Tablo, a self-publishing platform for ebooks, and if they can figure out a B2B or aggregation model, I think they will have a great future.

As for Coinjar, the idea is right (a trading and merchant platform for Bitcoins) but there are still too many regulatory uncertainties and other risks associated with virtual currencies. And as the good people of Hong Kong know only too well, even established voucher schemes such as cake coupons backed by real money and physical goods can have a detrimental effect on local markets…

OutTrippin is a cross between 99Designs, TripAdvisor and Airbnb – selling curated travel itineraries and booking facilities for FITs (free and independent travellers). My sense is that while there is an opportunity in this space, the trick will be to successfully match trip planners and holidaymakers. Given the initial focus on the niche honeymoon market, it will be interesting to see how much traction OutTrippin can generate in the next 12-18 months (given the long-term planning logistics of most wedding events….).

etaskr is an insourcing solution for larger companies – combining elements of Elance, Freelancer, oDesk, Yammer and LinkedIn. It aims to match employee skills (not job function or department) with specific tasks, to enable organisations to better utilise available resources to meet fluctuating workflow volumes. Based on audience questions raised on the night, etaskr may need to look at back-end solutions that facilitate intra-company cost allocation and revenue recognition – good luck with that one!

I will be the first to admit that I can’t really get my head around c8apps – a mobile gaming platform for fantasy sports. I’m probably the wrong demographic for this type of offering, so I can’t really express a view – but the fact that c8apps claim to have some significant media deals in the pipeline and are engaging with several major sporting codes probably means they are doing something right; unfortunately, I just don’t get it myself.

Finally, OziRig is bringing custom-designed professional rigging equipment to the global  film and photography industry. Essentially a component sourcing and assembly model, OziRig aims to undercut the competition on price and service – but several members of the Lean Start-Up audience wondered about the risks of copyright and design infringement.

These 6 graduates of the boot camp for start-ups are now embarking on a round of investor pitches in the USA. I wish them well and every success.

Footnote: Thanks to the sponsors for some much appreciated beer and pizza on the night. And for a couple of alternative perspectives on the evening’s events, please check out my fellow bloggers: Chris Chinchilla and Innerloop.

Some gratuitous advice for customer service managers – 7 handy hints

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I make no apologies for the fact that this week’s post is something of a rant. But in venting my spleen I hope to offer some invaluable and sincere feedback to customer service managers everywhere.

Over recent weeks, I have had numerous phone conversations with front line customer service staff working for utilities, telcos and financial institutions. From my personal experience, these companies appear to be among the most frustrating companies to deal with, but my comments could equally apply to retailers, hotels, travel agents, software vendors, local governments or logistics companies.

Here are my suggestions on how customer service managers could improve their performance:

1. Train team members on the full product or service life-cycle – There is nothing worse than being passed off to a never-ending chain of “specialists”, people who know only their own few centimeters of the billing or fulfillment process (albeit their knowledge is probably several kilometers deep…). I am not saying they all have to be experts at everything, but having at least a common and consistent understanding of the end-to-end process would be a great start.

2. Update all team members on latest product and service changes on a timely basis – Following on from the above, I get really annoyed when given contradictory information from different client-facing employees, especially when the person I am speaking to is clearly not up-to-date with the company’s own offerings.

3. Tell the teams not to keep blaming the “system” – For one thing, the “system” is only as good as the humans who designed it. For another, the “system” is not some abstract or imaginary force over which nobody has any control. Often those designers are their colleagues. So in criticising the system for any shortcomings, the customer service representatives are in effect criticising their fellow employees and by extension, the company itself.

4. Listen to customer feedback relayed by the front line employees – For the most part, customers actually want to help service providers to do better. They don’t give their feedback so it can be ignored and disregarded – they would like it to be acknowledged, followed up and acted upon. No doubt most front-line employees would also like to think they are being taken seriously – but often I think there is an element of “shooting the messenger” which dissuades employees from raising genuine customer feedback and criticism with their managers.

5. Give customer service teams clear parameters to exercise their discretion – I understand that organizations require consistency, and they also expect adherence to operating guidelines and protocols. However, it gives me very little pleasure to have to go over the head of a front line employee to speak to a supervisor or team leader, who then ends up making their subordinate look ineffective because they have the “power” to reverse that erroneous charge on my bill. Rather than forcing customers to escalate issues in order to get attention from further up the chain of command, how about providing front line teams with more individual discretion as to how they can resolve customer complaints? I once heard of a major hotel chain that empowered front desk employees by granting them a program and quota of refunds, rewards, upgrades, discounts which they could allocate and award as they saw fit to address guest issues.

6. Learn to be more customer-centric, not product-led – So many service providers like to believe they focus on the customer. In fact, we know that customers are managed according to the products they purchase and the services they subscribe to. How often are internal systems jargon and inward-looking product terms used as a justification for a particular client outcome? To me, this demonstrates that many organizations are not interested in serving their customers – they are often rigidly organised around product processes and internal systems.

7. Don’t expect customers to train customer service staff (and certainly not for nothing) – Finally, we know that many organisations record in-bound customer calls. Sometimes, they bother to listen to the recordings. Occasionally, they might even contact the customer to seek more information. But rarely, if ever, do they contact their customers to say they listened, they heard and they did something about the issue. Sure, feel free to use my customer feedback for “staff training and coaching purposes”, but please give credit where credit is due. A voucher or a discount off my next bill would be a nice gesture!

While most retail markets are competitive, and customers have at least some choice between providers, the reality is that we all need access to gas, water, electricity, telecommunication and banking services. All of these sectors are highly regulated (and in some cases they also enjoy government protections), which by necessity reduces the amount of choice. Wouldn’t it be nice if these powerful and monopolistic companies used their enviable market position to benefit their customers, rather than taking them for granted?