Recently, FirstRain had the opportunity to sponsor a dynamic event on leaving the competition behind, hosted by the Silicon Valley chapter of Strategic and Competitive Intelligence Professionals (SCIP).
SCIP has the mission to “be the premier advocate for the skilled use of intelligence to enhance business decision-making and organizational performance to create competitive advantage.”
Photo by Jop Baylon
This recent event included information on SCIP by the Silicon Valley chapter head, Alok Vasudeva, and a presentation on escaping velocity by Michael Eckhardt. Eckhardt, Managing Director & Senior Workshop Leader for Chasm Institute was also a contributing author to Geoffrey Moore’s book, Escape Velocity: Free Your Company’s Future from the Pull of the Past. You likely remember Geoffrey Moore’s name from his bestseller, Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling Technology Projects to Mainstream Customers.
Photo by Jop Baylon
Eckhardt presented and highlighted the assessment of competitive dynamics using those frameworks and tools depicted in Moore’s book. According to Alok Vasudeva, this chapter event was one of SCIP’s best attended in number, with a global audience ranging from Canadians to Brazilians.
Appreciative of the opportunity to hear Eckhardt speak, we dove into note taking, live-tweeting the whole way. The Hierarchy of Powers outlines 5 ‘powers’ a company must align in order to escape velocity. We challenge you all to evaluate your own powers.
A convenient example, and no stranger to Moore, Apple once analyzed seems to have a solid 4 out of 5 powers in action.
Giving us a glimpse into the future, Eckhardt outlined the top 9 tech trends that will be driving the next $1,000,000,000,000 of revenue for 2017-2018.
Because of our own industry focus, it was exciting for us to see the words “Analytics”, “Big Data”, and “Real-Time” in big letters as top revenue drivers. However, we’re still plenty excited about the trends outside our direct space that many of the attendees at the event are top leaders in. With the security and privacy market trending almost daily on every news forum from the national to the tech-specific, we’re looking forward to watching the major changes innovative companies will bring to the table.
After this event, we’re looking forward to finishing Escape Velocity and using it in customer conversations. We don’t want to give too much away but here’s a final teaser on the strategic wisdom strung throughout Moore’s pages,
“Leadership is about being in service to a higher cause; management is about ensuring that service is appropriately rewarded. Both are necessary. You just can’t put the focus on rewards first.” – Moore (p.13)
A big thank you to Alok Vasudeva for organizing, and for inviting FirstRain to participate in and sponsor, this engaging and enlightening Silicon Valley chapter event. We had a lovely evening and look forward to participating in future SCIP events.
Photo by Jop Baylon
If you are interested in learning more about how FirstRain can help you in your go-to-market strategies please contact Daniela Barbosa, our VP Marketing and Partnerships, to schedule a demo or to get more information.
Few things indicate an industrial revolution better than a controversial topic that ironically becomes a unifying factor. The biggest, boldest, headlines shout that 3 in 4 Americans are afraid to drive in an autonomous car, Uber and the DMV are head to head, and the autonomous car industry has the potential to eliminate jobs in up to 128 industries. However, other headlines have written a different story. From companies to technology to cars themselves, the Autonomous Car market is driving us all into a new, collaborative future.
Considered an initial stretch on the roadway to fully autonomous cars, V2V technology, vehicle-to-vehicle, is a wireless network enabling cars to converse with each other. At the next level, the technology would extend to V2I, vehicle-to-infrastructure, enabling cars and say, stoplights, to communicate as well. Consider a future city that is completely connected, from autonomous cars to smart buildings.
Collaboration is not just in the future. Even now, auto manufacturers and car service companies are establishing surprising relationships in order to win this grounded version of the “race to space”. Industry giant General Motors has reached out to carpool service application, Lyft, to test self-driving taxis. Alphabet, Google parent and Autonomous Car technology leader, may now be an Autonomous Car social leader as well in its car project, Waymo. The company already paired with Chrysler Pacifica minivans and is now in talks with Honda on accommodating Waymo’s self-driving technology in an upcoming model – a significant change from Google’s small, bubble cars I pass on our Bay Area roads. In a recent development, Audi and Nvidia have united over autonomous cars.
Those large companies seeking committed relationships, are resulting in start-up acquisitions at every turn:
Why do Autonomous Cars drive such cooperation? Maybe it is the cars’ origin – a unique world of technological cooperation. Founder of Comma.ai and iPhone unlocking, 26-year old George Hotz, has published open-source software and hardware driving agents in an effort to “become the Android of self-driving cars”. Consistent with this approach, Linux has devoted a foundation project to the mission of “creating open source software solutions for automotive applications.” The project, Automotive Grade Linux, or simply AGL, recently released the most advanced version of its platform yet. The AGL community is made up of nearly 90 companies with an impressive roster of Ford, Honda, Toyota, and more.
“This unprecedented level of collaboration is a clear indication that the automotive industry is adopting an open source development methodology that is resulting in faster innovation with more frequent software releases and new features.”
Dan Cauchy
Executive Director, Automotive Grade Linux
Maybe you’re not a fan of jumping on bandwagons. But with expectations of 21 million autonomous vehicles sold globally by 2035, it might be time for all of us to take a seat in any wagon pulled by the Autonomous Car.
This blog is part of an Industry & Market Series – analyzing what FirstRain users are tracking at the moment in order to gain advantage for the moment.
Each social network has its own persona. We have the style icon, all looks, in Instagram and the hotheaded, no-filter urbanite that is Twitter. Then, there’s the socialite, Facebook, and the professional, LinkedIn – both who seem to be undergoing respective identity crises.
Traditionally a sharing point for family and friends, Facebook is crossing into professional realms. TechCrunch recently shared Facebook’s announcement that it is testing out job features. The idea is to give businesses the ability to promote job listings from their company Facebook pages. These recruitment features include job post creation, posting, and even the ability to receive applications. Similar to applying directly through LinkedIn, Facebook is considering a prepopulated format when applying through the network.
This isn’t the first time Facebook has tested LinkedIn-esque features. Last year, Facebook tested out “Profile Tags” that showcased a user’s interests, skills, and personality. Sound familiar? Take a peek at your LinkedIn endorsements.
LinkedIn users seem to be favoring the social aspect of the professional social network. My colleague finds about every third LinkedIn update on her feed to be more personal than professional. However, it’s difficult to pinpoint what’s driving this behavior.
A confusion of what is “work related” is possibly to blame for the increasing clutter on our LinkedIn feeds. For example, the included quote was pulled from a lengthy LinkedIn post.
The quote was accompanied by a big, smiling, “selfie.” Though work and career are essential themes to the post, the emotional description and personal image reflect Facebook’s intimate reputation more than that of the professional networking psyche originally associated with LinkedIn.
The pseudo-work related post formula has spread like wildfire across LinkedIn. Always, a personal photograph follows the assertion. Another “selfie” shot I came across this morning was captioned, “Ready for my first interview!” I can’t image any interviewer not checking the LinkedIn profile of candidates before meeting.
Alongside the emotional, personal posts popping up throughout your updates are the political statements. Statements an employee wouldn’t dare utter in the office are suddenly posted for every co-worker to see in dark gray Source Sans font.
Rather than these posts being overlooked, LinkedIn users can’t resist the bait. Each political post is accompanied by Tweet-worthy replies from every part of the political spectrum. Even posts without political themes are subject to these users.
There’s no confusion of these being unrelated to work (unless one’s industry is, in fact, politics) so what’s driving users to share these on LinkedIn?
LinkedIn may be, accidentally or not, encouraging unprofessional behavior. Just as Facebook has begun to mimic LinkedIn, LinkedIn is mimicking other social networks, especially those heavy on the social. Earlier this year, LinkedIn began developing its own version of Facebook’s “Instant Articles”.
Nowadays anyone can “publish an article” to LinkedIn’s “news” in the same style used by any unprofessional blogging platform including the micro-blogging network Tumblr, with its neo-new wave, post-punk persona. After publishing a blog an article, it will be conveniently placed into the view of their connections via LinkedIn’s “Recommended Reads” emails’ “Published by your network” section. If you play the game right, as outlined here by this highly-shared author, LinkedIn Editors will push your news to the featured #dailyrundowns. Though curated by the human hand, the Daily Rundown sometimes consolidates trends across all interests, creating one noisy summary. Take a look at the below headline on death.
In a world of information overload, the last thing we need is a noisy, one-stop shop. From retail to news to TV channels, our society is demanding filtered, specific access points to what we consume. If LinkedIn loses its sense of self, we lose a productive, professional networking tool and the relevant-information sharing possibilities it offers. On the flip side, if Facebook loses its carefree persona, I may have to limit the number of cat photos I post.
Still not sure the lines are being blurred? Check out this comment made on LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner’s recent update:
Finalizing your 2017 B2B Marketing strategy? Make sure you check in on what your B2C colleagues are doing too. In the annual “State of the Connected Customer” report for 2016 by Salesforce Research, surveyed marketers identified getting smart about personalization as a top requirement for meeting their marketing expectations in 2017.
Personalizing consumer messages has become the status quo for most B2C marketers. I have nearly a dozen emails sitting in my inbox, from this weekend alone, recommending cosmetics for my personal skin type and mobile apps for my personal habits. However, personalized messages aren’t just for B2C. Even for B2B, buyers increasingly voice that they want to be treated like humans, not numbers.
Forbes predicts that in 2017, B2B marketing focuses will include:
The two trends aren’t so separated. The answer to humanizing B2B messages with personalization can actually be found in those new data and analytic technologies. In the coming year, personalized experiences for business buyers will emanate from multiple channels including deployment of digital content, social interaction, and user communities.
The 2016 “State of Marketing” report by Salesforce Research shows over half of marketing leaders worldwide are set to increase spending on marketing tools and technology over the next couple years. The investments are driven directly by customer demand. For example,
Image: “State of the Connected Customer” Salesforce Research
For a tangible representation of this statistic, consider the possibilities of personalized, B2B marketing.
Targeted Messages and Target Markets
Your internal data reveals businesses are more likely to invest in your consulting services within a quarter of a new COO coming in. Using external data analysis of executive movements, you can deliver personalized messages to your target customers, automatically and effectively.
Engagement and Relationships
Your hospitality special events team is looking for opportunity indications around a prospect such as new industry conferences or changes in marketing spending. Events are automatically discovered, enabling your personalized messages to potential buyers that encourage your hospitality services over those of your competition.
With in-depth data and analytics becoming increasingly available, effective and personalized B2B marketing has become possible. It’s time to see your business buyers as more than just businesses.
You’ve heard about the recent cyber attacks. Everyone has. Now, everyone is questioning his or her own cyber security status. Take a look at today’s trending business Cyber Security terms, provided by FirstRain.
As we think over what we can do to make ourselves more secure, vendors in the space are thinking about market opportunities. Playing on current consumer awareness, Aerohive Networks announced their new solution that they claim could have prevented the recent events. Even start-ups are getting noticed by addressing the trend. Circle, a mobile payment application, was quick to reassure consumers on the safety of mobile commerce.
More than just an awareness opportunity, top companies are tackling major business opportunities in the industry, as indicated by FirstRain’s exploration map below. IBM’s recent news release announced that their security division is releasing a cyber security offering to protect banking customers. With finance being the main concern, Visa and Intel announced a collaboration agreement to create better payment security for connected devices, ranging from personal computers to wearable technologies. The companies assign the rising Cyber Security opportunities to the rise of the Internet of Things (IoT) market. Echoing this, Microsoft plans to release a security program for its own IoT service, Azure.
Other signs that the Cyber Security Industry is the hot market of the moment include the spike in acquisitions made by major corporations of cyber security companies. Recently, Samsung Electronics announced it will be acquiring start-up enterprise software company, Tachyon Mobility to “build up their cyber security businesses with acquisitions.”
With Cyber Security heating up, this might lead to the security breakthrough, so to speak, that we need. Author and CIO, Tim Elkins states that “security isn’t an IT problem; it’s a business problem.” If so, IT might just start to receive the attention, budget, and opportunity to transform the industry. However, regardless if you are a vendor or a buyer, in tech or retail, following movements in Cyber Security is essential to business success. In other words, always be prepared because it just makes good sense.
This blog is part of an Industry & Market Series – analyzing what FirstRain users are tracking at the moment in order to gain advantage for the moment.
We’ve heard of Hunters and Farmers. However, a recent webinar from Top Sales World, “Account Based Selling: Stop Selling & Start Guiding”, claims the Fisherman is the true MVP of selling. But who is the Fisherman?
An old, overlooked friend, the Fisherman is described by a 1990s article in relation to recruiting as a patient hirer with diverse requirements. The current seller definition follows the same tone. According to the Optis Group, the fishing salesperson is calm, realistic, and collaborative. For many, this sounds far from the aggressive Don Draper they think of. However, it seems increasingly likely that the Fisherman is the same person responsible for your top sales.
A survey was conducted on top salespeople in order to identify their core persona in terms of attributes that explain drive, motivations, and actions. I attended the survey’s accompanying webinar, “The Persona of Top Sales Professionals” by Velocify. Though this was intentionally not a personality test but rather a look into their perception of the world, for the purpose of testing my Fisherman hypotheses, I answered a short Myers Briggs test according to the survey’s top results and descriptions. Think of this as my Rosetta stone for comparing the Fisherman ideal to the current top sales performers’ persona.
The top answers by top salespeople indicate an ESTJ personality type. According to the Account Based Selling webinar, the Fisherman guides, not pushes, leads through the sales pipeline with support, advice, and appropriate interjection. Similar to Fishermen, ESTJs are described as those that provide “clear advice and guidance” while leading the way down difficult routes.
Dedicated planners, ESTJs value preparation and follow-through. This aligns nicely with the idea that knowledge and relevancy is key to Account Based Selling. Jonathan Farrington, host of the Account Based Selling webinar, proposes that to achieve relevancy, and therefore effective selling, knowledge must go beyond just product knowledge to encompass industry, sector, competitive, company, business, and self-knowledge. This concept carries over into the survey results with the group answering “knowledge is powerful” as essential to sales was the group found to have the highest quota attainment at 170%.
With solid comparisons found between Fishermen and the persona of current top salespeople, the metaphor may in fact be a useful tool for hirers of salespeople or current salespeople looking to adjust their own selling approach to modern consumers.
According to the webinars referenced:
Sometimes it seems that executives change positions faster than your morning coffee can brew. However, even when executive changes affect your business directly, you might be the last to know.
It can be overwhelming, keeping track of the perpetually changing status for management in your companies of interest – customers, partners, or competitors. Often we are forced to just rely on the traditional online professional networking platforms like LinkedIn, for professional updates.
Unfortunately, LinkedIn is dependent on user inputs for updates, and much of its value as a business intelligence tool is stunted by a trend involving executive level professionals neglecting their LinkedIn presence.
How Professionals are Using LinkedIn
LinkedIn is meant to encourage connections, learning, and sharing. Users of LinkedIn build a professional identity online, a concept inspired by traditional paper resumes, to build networks with colleagues and classmates while maintaining a presence in the job market.
For Market Research
In addition to its most famous uses as a job-search tool and professional social network, LinkedIn claims you can find “the latest news, inspiration, and insights you need to be great at what you do.”
Motivated by the claim, LinkedIn users have been applying the network to marketing and sales research. A solid 41% of B2B marketers consider LinkedIn their default social platform, as indicated in a 2015 Social Media Marketing industry report.
For Building Brand Awareness
It’s true that LinkedIn is brimming with information. Companies eagerly post content, hoping to hop on the social marketing wagon and build brand awareness. You can cultivate this awareness with LinkedIn when you have a well-maintained company page, augmented with equally well-maintained executive profiles. However, LinkedIn tends to be biased since a company’s own social media experts curate and manage company-specific information.
When Executives Don’t Give LinkedIn What it Needs to Succeed
Although executive profiles are a positive tool for brand cultivation on LinkedIn, many C-level employees do not maintain their profiles, if they have one at all. A creator of multiple start-ups, Shaun McConnon, publicly boasts about not being on LinkedIn. Those top executives who do have LinkedIn often neglect this presence to the extent of violating the main rule for LinkedIn success: always keep your profile updated.
According to recruiter Andrew Johnson, not maintaining your LinkedIn profile could be for a number of reasons, including:
Here at FirstRain, we noticed a rising trend in executive-level employees neglecting or forgoing LinkedIn profiles. If you follow us on Twitter, you have seen some examples of Management Changes across various industries:
Event detected 8/23/16 and tweeted on 8/30/16
Since LinkedIn updates originate from the users themselves, this trend of slow to non-existent updating throws a major wrench into the network’s use as a timely and useful research tool to understand management turnover.
Event detected on 8/5/16 and tweeted on 8/10/16
To see more of our management turnover updates, head over to our Twitter page.
How Does this Affect You?
If you are relying on LinkedIn alone, you might be missing top-level changes in companies of interest. Such changes often indicate a shift in direction in terms of company control, power, culture, or even a combination.
In sales or account management, an executive change can act as a catalyst for relationship development. Management changes can cause previously out-of-reach companies to become more hospitable or better aligned with your product or service. On the other side, if a change stems from a negative cause, think layoffs or poor leadership, you may consider the change a reason to contact your account.
At the end of the day, meaningful and valuable business relationships are possible only when you know your accounts intimately and executive level changes are a key part of this.
Don’t Jump Ship, Just Grab Another Oar
LinkedIn isn’t sinking and there’s no reason to jump. Instead, simply supplement the network with a tailored research tool. FirstRain presents key insights on your customer, competitors, and industries of interest in a streamlined manner so you receive the updates you rely on without the noise. Unlike other business analytics engines, FirstRain incorporates the business web and social media content for a one-stop shop of business intelligence.
Management changes are highlighted in at-a-glance panels and cover management and executive hires, departures or internal moves within a company, and board changes. Management Change analytics include senior level hires and retirements, executive promotions and resignations, and even plans for departure. To easily consume these key insights, the changes are presented for a specific company, account, industry, or topic of interest and can be further filtered down by your choosing.
Events detected 8/10-18 on and tweeted on 8/18/16
Where LinkedIn is lacking, there’s FirstRain to help.
Want to see just how FirstRain fits into your day? Here’s a video for those of you in sales. For those of you in marketing, read this overview.
Have thoughts you want to share or questions you need to ask? We’d love to hear from you.
This is part of the FirstRain Persona Series.
Every company needs an executive leader with a lion mentality. One that won’t shy away from a tough deal, someone that has mastered an intuitive awareness of how and when to nurture new business, and one that can lead the rest of the sales pack with a clear vision. And across many enterprise C-suites, Sales now has a direct seat at the table.
With today’s fast moving digital marketplace, the objectives of a sales executive continue to transform the traditional sales role. Sales responsibilities are inheritably linked to revenue goals and the tasks have brought on new members to the C-suite, such as the Chief Sales Officer, Chief Commercial Officer and Chief Revenue Officer. To keep things simple in this persona post, we will refer to these C-Suite level lions as the Chief Sales Officer.
Today, CSOs are constantly leveraging a sales strategy and market trends that will create the most impact for the enterprise, evaluating ways for new revenue streams, analyzing market disruptions and always, always on the hunt for business opportunities.
Clearly, the role today involves more than managing sales teams and includes strategic goals such as finding niche market opportunities and enterprise solutions to better position the company’s products and services. With characteristics of a true pioneer, they are always steps ahead and on the quest to competently execute a sales plan and turn value propositions into business deals.
In the Venture Beat article, “The Rise of the Chief Revenue Officer: Silicon Valley’s new secret sauce,” the author states, “A great CRO must be able to wedge into any aspect of the company to lay the underpinnings of a scalable revenue engine and tune everything for execution.” CSOs must continually assess and re-assess the current marketplace and then look for avenues to implement acute strategic business analysis to meet and exceed revenue goals.
Identifying what will create the strongest impact for the enterprise is the first step; deciding what steps to take next requires setting both, short-term and long-term goals; does the company continue to make deals more profitable and lower cost of sales, does it need to expand current contracts or scale products and service offerings into new industries, does the company leverage cross selling, does the company win in competitive situations, does the company provide thought leadership, does the company create sustainable teams and of course, they must execute.
Quarter after quarter CSOs must measure activities, technology and marketing strategy campaigns and understand what works, what doesn’t and ensure that they are introducing their products with the most compelling value proposition and approach into the market. The mindset is results-driven and efficiently integrating activities that will ignite results, both short-term and long-term is a must.
In addressing the need for a CSO, Greg Alexander of Sales BenchMark Index (SBI) writes, “A CSO understands how change ripples throughout an organization. They understand how decisions affect organizations, markets, product lines, competitors and business units.” – CSO’s leadership style must demonstrate an intuitive understanding of industry analysis, region, contract deals and clearly match them to the appropriate team members that will get the job done. They must always strategically seek, nurture and create business relationships for the profitability and product expansion of the business.
CSOs must find ways to connect the dots within an enterprise and bring more revenue streams in a constantly changing market. Relentlessly, they solicit new ideas to approach more streams of business and strengthen value propositions within different industries, often partnering with the Chief Marketing Officer to present the strongest, sometimes aggressive, go-to-market-strategy into play. Together, they will assess the strength of a business deal, with the aid of marketing campaigns, and deploy salespeople to initiate contact, and work together with product development to ensure that the product presentation maximizes value factors for the end markets.
Today’s CSOs must understand disruptions and their competitors, and be agile with a clear mindset, bold attitude and a keen insight of the best marketing strategy. They are responsible for connecting the dots; finding sales intelligence and new value propositions to better target go-to-markets and finding ways to move enterprise solutions forward, making the business profitable and expanding value in the product offering.
Partnering with other members of the C-suite is crucial to the successful growth of the enterprise. To transcend value through different industries in today’s digital marketplace, CSOs need competitive intelligence tools that show them the way, like FirstRain, that uses modern day technology not only to predict business opportunities but rather align business deals with real customer needs. FirstRain’s dynamic platforms aligns:
The responsibility for the growth and acquisition of new business is heavy, but with the successful integration of competitive intelligence tools and a solid marketing strategy, CSOs can propel a company forward.
CSOs do a lot of talking to nurture business relationships, but at the end of the day, their role is all about measurable results. True, successful sales leaders have a sixth sense of where profitability and business development must stand within their company’s initiatives, and partnering with sales intelligence tools that deliver them a cunning, comprehensive view of their customers and markets, allows them to execute on their sales acumen with real smart data.
Like a lion on the hunt, sales executives must have an acute awareness of their environment, and understand what small step will cause a disruption, when it is best to go in for the kill and when it is best to act patiently and wait for a bigger meal.
To read additional posts on FirstRain buyer Personas:
Digital business has made a once linear marketplace, fast-paced and in constant change, making it difficult for stagnant leadership mindsets to remain competitive. Successful business tactics that worked in the past, will leave you in the dust today. To optimize a business strategy, one must be able to adapt quickly to change, and be aware of risks, opportunities, market changes and trends. Enterprises must demonstrate agility to strive in the current marketplace by balancing essential leadership roles throughout the C-Suite.
Letting go of past behaviors is difficult, but with digital business dictating the customer market, enterprise leaders have to “let it go.” Gartner’s recent research report “Take Digital to the Core — Remaster Your Leadership Using Six Personas to Win in Digital Business” forms the argument that C-Suite level executives must learn to adapt to new digital business, as new technologies are constantly disrupting industries and more and more companies become marginalized. The article warns leaders that using “mature” business practices will cause enterprises to miss out breakthrough opportunities.
Adapting to change is not easy, and rather than changing your leadership team, teams should instead self-assess, find strong traits, acknowledge weaknesses and promote to fill in the voids to create a rock-star, digitally-ready, executive team. As Gartner points out in this research, management behaviors should be complementary of one another, and these six personas will help fill in the gaps:
In this research, Gartner makes a strong argument that by re-mastering leadership styles, with these six personas, your enterprise will be fit for the modern day challenges of digital business. Business competition and practices, specifically within the C-suite, have changed in the past five years forcing leaders, executives and VPs to readjust. People need to adapt to digital business no matter how successful previous tactics were. Fill in leadership gaps with a digital-business-ready executive team!
To read the full Gartner report you can register for free here: “Take Digital to the Core — Remaster Your Leadership Using Six Personas to Win in Digital Business”
To read additional posts on FirstRain buyer Personas:
This is part of the FirstRain Persona Series.
Customers are demanding more of a digital experience, and the rise of a Chief Digital Officer (CDO) has soared to fulfill the need. Providing customers with the most valuable digital experience is a CDO’s primary objective.
In the past, executives with digital oversight roles concentrated on magnifying a company’s online presence and brand. Today, however, the role of a Chief Digital Officer is truly focused on the customer experience.
The fact of the matter is that buyers are no longer making purchasing decisions, or accessing portals solely from a desktop computer, but rather via mobile platforms, emails, and social media —on the go. Thus, CDO’s are challenged with meeting the demands of a fast-paced consumer society that is always moving.
Customers access platforms and consume vast amounts of product information via different touch points: cell phones, tablets, emails, internal enterprise platforms, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, the web, video streams, vines, Periscope, etc. Today’s digital market demands seamless execution from all these platforms and CDO’s are leading that charge.
Coupled with a strong, robust digital strategy a CDO facilitates the customer experience, but how can that help grow your business?
A deep understanding of market trends and consumer behavior must be leveraged across all customer touch points; from small marketing campaigns, to large scale product launches. This often involves leaders in business development, and becomes fundamental to helping a business evolve in today’s marketplace.
A recent McKinsey article on “The Transformer in Chief” stresses, “It’s up to the CDO to identify those functions where digital is critical: for example, investing in automation capabilities to rapidly respond to customer interactions, developing sophisticated reporting and analytics capabilities to interpret customer needs, building innovative interfaces to gather customer data (for example, an alternative payment method), and creating mechanisms to deliver content and offers across all relevant channels.”
Chief Digital Officers must identify the customer facing journey, drive customer engagement, and make sure that the dashboard touch points that she decides to implement for her company responds to market demands in real time. They are responsible for putting the tools in place to interpret customer insights with a main strategic goal of responding to customer engagement needs.
Customer intelligence tools such as FirstRain, helps interpret customer behavior via market trends, industry changes, and social media. Target market analysis of what is trending in relationship to business goals and objectives are crucial for driving a business forward. After all, the customer is always right, right?
Fundamentally understanding customer needs and how they intersect with revenue goals can make or break a digital strategy, making the role of a Chief Digital Officer pivotal for any industry. A CDO must demonstrate agility to respond and adapt quickly to customer demands/needs, and are often faced with making bold decisions.
Wired.com asserts, “The CDO will drive the digital functional excellence from strategy to infrastructure and ensure that we have the right competence and capabilities to support and leverage the business from a digital perspective.”
CDO’s are not only the liaison between customer and product but become key partners with CIOs, CMOs, Sales Officers and CFOs. They communicate the intricacies of market trends, new technology developments and customer behavior to create a digital strategy that is mindful of all these shifting plates, with the end goal to meet revenue objectives.
In today’s hyperactive commerce market, a strong digital strategy is necessary. If done successfully, a CDO can move their company’s business platform to not only meet the demands of the customer, but also revenue goals of the enterprise.
For further reading from our C-Suite buyer persona series:
