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Editor's Notebook: 2006 Marketing Excellence Awards Well folks, it's award season again. ITSMA's Marketing Excellence Awards, the tech industry's Academy Awards for marketing services and solutions, kick off this month with our annual call for nominations. This means we're looking for your latest and greatest examples of services and solutions marketing success. We've changed the categories a bit this year; as usual, though, we cover a broad range of essential marketing priorities and challenges. The 2006 categories are:
The deadline for award submissions is June 16, 2006, and we'll unveil the winners at our annual marketing conference in Cambridge, MA, on November 15-16. Please check out the guidelines and application forms at http://www.itsma.com/news/mea. We're looking forward to seeing your best. Any questions on the program, please let me know.  [TOP OF PAGE] What's Hot: Marketing in the New Digital Channels "[We're] in the beginning stages of initiating an SAP implementation for an expanding chemical firm…. We are considering Accenture and Wipro and are leaning toward Accenture. Does anyone have any advice or suggestions regarding this selection, or these two firms?" You might not think that business and technology decision makers would toss such an important question to the wilds of the public Web, but they do, every day. This very query in the online community ITtoolbox prompted a series of replies and conversation on the pros and cons of the companies in question, alternate suggestions such as BearingPoint and Satyam, and ideas on how best to evaluate the firms and negotiate a deal. The rise of online communities like ITtoolbox, TechTarget, the CIO Executive Council, AlwaysOn, and many others has turbocharged the traditional word of mouth that has always been essential for technology decision making. ITtoolbox alone has more than 700 discussion groups, with more than 80 specifically dedicated to vendor selection for different types of technology and services. Of course, online communities are just part of the story. New digital tools and channels are continuing to proliferate at a dizzying rate. And although it's still early days, much of the initial skepticism from the business world about blogging, RSS, podcasting, and the like has eased. More and more companies have recognized the promise of online conversation and collaboration, and they're beginning, at least, to dabble with digital marketing's next generation. As marketers get more serious about the new online channels, there seem to be four common stumbling blocks.
While getting started can be daunting, industry leaders like IBM, HP, Microsoft, BMC, AT&T, Sun, and others are moving rapidly and reaping the dividends of a more engaging online strategy. The biggest challenge, according to Mike Smith, director of global e-business and Internet at BMC, is accepting the scale of necessary change: "Most marketing has been built around the idea of a corporate veil and the ability to control a story. But now everyone can get the real story. A lot of traditional marketing no longer applies." To learn more about marketing in the new digital channels, consider joining our upcoming Web briefing, Digital Priorities: New Tools for Connecting with Customers on April 12. ITSMA's upcoming research study, Marketing in the New Spheres of Influence, will provide sponsoring companies with a fuller sense of what's working now and how best to engage in the new channels. For more information on the study, visit http://www.itsma.com/Research/prospectus/mk0575_spheres.htm.
The InterviewMarketing to Today’s CIO: An Interview with Gartner’s Ellen Kitzis Ellen Kitzis, group vice president at Gartner, former member of the global leadership team of Gartner's CIO Executive Programs, and co-author of The New CIO Leader: Setting the Agenda and Delivering Results, recently sat down with ITSMA to talk about the two types of CIO, how you can identify them, and the incredible opportunity that most technology providers pass on. ITSMA: In your book, you talk about two types of CIOs: the chief technology mechanics and the new CIOs who take a more strategic view. Tell us more about that. Kitzis: Although the book, for illustrative purposes, establishes two types of CIOs, there is really a continuum. At one extreme there are CIOs who are still working in the world of the CIO mechanic, very driven by operational characteristics of the business. They are more focused on technology infrastructure than competitive advantage. We know that there are CIOs at the other extreme who are aggressively involved in their businesses, able to lead their companies, engage in the business, and energize the enterprises around new strategies and opportunities. Most CIOs fall somewhere on the continuum of these two extremes—mechanic versus new CIO leader. We also identified three different kinds of enterprises:
CIOs in these three types of organizations are under different economic pressures. For example, CIOs in companies fighting for survival are largely driven to do things to manage risk and reduce costs. CIOs in organizations that are maintaining competitiveness are doing a very interesting balancing act. They are also concentrating on economic controls and efficiencies, but at the same time, they are looking at things that affect efficiencies, growth, and effectiveness. And then there are the CIOs in breakaway organizations, who are very much focused on introducing change and innovation. Their attention is on launching new products and new services for the enterprise. They aggressively increase their business investments, including IT budgets, as they pursue competitive advantage. ITSMA: How would you recommend identifying types of CIOs? Kitzis: There are many ways of doing it. First of all, look at who the CIOs report to. Do they report to a CEO or to someone lower down the business model? Do they have an organization that is staffed with individuals who engage and work with the business? Can they effectively translate business requirements to an external services provider, or do they constantly suggest that they’re going to have to get that from the business leaders? By answering these kinds of questions, you can begin to sense the difference between the new CIO leader who is considered a peer or player in the enterprise versus someone who is essentially managing a budget that everyone else owns. ITSMA: The new CIO is about leadership. Leadership requires a vision and point of view. Where do CIOs get the input and stimulate ideas to formulate their points of view? Is it possible for vendors to stimulate dialogue? Kitzis: Oh, absolutely, and by the way, this is an opportunity that services providers appear to have missed out on. A CIO’s vision is informed by a lot of things. Certainly it is informed by his sense of the business and his own knowledge, but it is also influenced by the possibilities of what technology can or cannot be. Services providers should spend time with CIOs helping them understand the potential around ways in which new and emerging technologies, solutions, or services might affect their business models. There is an incredible opportunity for services providers to help CIOs early on in the strategy formulation process. Too often the tendency is to rush into selling a particular solution rather than engaging the CIO in the thought leadership part of the process. Services providers find this a challenge because they cannot necessarily count on a return for the investment of their time. Furthermore, it requires services providers to be willing to show CIOs what is “under the covers.” There would have to be collaboration early in the solutions development process. There has to be a willingness to share and expose. My sense is that CIOs, at the end of the day, can only work with a handful of really good partners. To be a really good partner to the CIO, a services provider has to do more than deliver on a promise (although that too is important). The services provider has to help the CIO think about the possibilities. Thinking about possibilities is often the difference between a CIO who’s viewed as somebody who manages IT versus a CIO who is an effective leader in the enterprise. To hear directly from CIOs about how they want to work with technology providers, attend Solutions from the Outside In: ITSMA’s 2006 Marketing Leadership Forum in San Francisco, CA on April 25-26. To register, visit www.itsma.com/leadershipforum. On the JobIKON: Creating a Culture to Improve the Customer ExperienceIn 2001, IKON Management Services (IMS), the onsite services division of IKON Office Solutions, noticed a troubling pattern of customer defections. Customers were looking for help strengthening document processes, controlling costs, and improving their market positions, but IKON’s corporate structure and departmental silos limited the kind of collaboration customers craved. At the same time, competitors were aggressively trying to lure IKON customers away. To stem the tide of defections, IMS launched an initiative it named “Clean Sweep,” which involved interviewing more than 600 new and existing customers to understand their experiences with IKON and solicit suggestions for improvement. Nearly all the feedback revolved around five key areas:
To tackle each of these issues, IMS formed five large cross-functional teams, each team numbering more than 100 frontline individuals from sales, marketing, operations, training, human resources, and finance. The scale of the initiative was staggering, but it clearly reflected how seriously management felt about understanding the issues and implementing change. The result of IMS’s introspection and solicitation of customer views? IKON Service Excellence, a collection of over 200 tools and best practices assembled to provide a consistent and high-quality customer experience. The IKON Service Excellence Methodology The IKON Service Excellence methodology maps directly to the problem areas identified during Clean Sweep. The company set goals for each area, and then put tools, processes, and metrics in place.
Success with Service Excellence The IKON Service Excellence methodology enables the company’s onsite field personnel to provide a consistent and high-quality customer experience. It has increased IMS’s retention rate by 7% and reduced account cancellations by 35%. It has also enabled the company to better communicate with its customers and proactively innovate its business process. “IKON recognized that simply telling customers and prospects about its capabilities and showing them services brochures were ineffective,” said Julie Schwartz, senior vice president of Thought Leadership and chief research officer at ITSMA. “It put its money where its mouth was and invested heavily in improving the customer experience. No amount of advertising or telemarketing can accomplish what IKON Service Excellence has done. The company’s commitment has paid off, and we expect that it will continue to do so for a long time to come.” —Lori Weiner, lweiner@itsma.com For a more detailed account of IKON’s customer experience initiative—including critical success factors—please see ITSMA’s new Case Study at http://www.itsma.com/research/abstracts/cs0012.htm. Research Desk Software Support Services: To Bundle or Not to Bundle, That Is the Question Maintenance revenue streams at software companies are under pressure. In a recent ITSMA study, nearly two-thirds of the customers interviewed reported that their departments are being asked to reduce the amount spent on software support services. How will they do this? The top strategy for reducing software support costs is contract renegotiation—a whopping 84% of respondents said they are attempting to renegotiate existing contracts to get the same service levels at lower prices. The good news for software companies, however, is that customers are in no hurry to sign up for support services from third-party providers. Third-party maintainers may charge up to 50% less than the software vendors, but their services are limited to bug fixes and help desk support. ITSMA’s research shows that the primary driver of value for software maintenance contracts is major software upgrades. Approximately 90% of those interviewed prefer all-inclusive maintenance contracts that include usage support and bug fixes, as well as major software upgrades. Software vendors contemplating unbundling usage support and major upgrades should reflect on these findings and consider surveying their installed customer base before making a final decision. —Julie Schwartz, jschwartz@itsma.com
Who Leads the EMEA Telecom Service Provider Market?Those who operate in the EMEA telecom service provider market know that it is fragmented, complex, and in the midst of a flurry of mergers, acquisitions, and divestiture. While this makes it an undisputedly demanding market to play in, it also provides ample opportunity for providers to win mind share and market share through effective differentiation. Although it can’t be said that any one company “owns” the market, new research out of ITSMA Europe puts Cisco, IBM Global Services, and Nortel at the top of the list for unaided awareness for network rollout and support services; these three also lead in overall preference for the service provider market as a whole. Cisco, Accenture, and Ericsson, meanwhile, head the unaided awareness list for network professional services.
For more information about the report, which contains detailed data and analysis of EMEA buyers assess leading network services firms and the market as a whole, please visit http://www.itsma.com/research/abstracts/BNW005.htm —Michael Longy, mlongy@itsma.com
Upcoming Studies: Sponsorship OpportunitiesITSMA is currently recruiting sponsors for two multiclient studies, each of which provides great opportunities to gain new insight and competitive data on critical market concerns, from sales practices and performance to connecting with customers in the new online channels. Click on the links below for more information. Selling Professional Services: Benchmarks and Best Practices Marketing in the New Spheres of Influence, in collaboration with
Digital Influence Group Upcoming Events Digital Priorities: New Tools for Connecting with Customers Solutions from the Outside In: ITSMA's 2006 Marketing Leadership
Forum Next Steps in Solutions Marketing Winning Private Sector Solutions Contracts Differentiation and Reputation Management: Top Priorities for Marketing Professional Services
Collaborating For Growth: ITSMA's Annual European Marketing Forum
Ask ITSMA! Do you have a services marketing question? (c) Copyright 2006, ITSMA Please forward this newsletter, but only in its entirety. Public citation or publication of any information herein is encouraged but subject to US and international copyright law and conventions. Any citation must include full attribution to ITSMA. Individual graphics or paragraphs can be published without permission as long as attribution to ITSMA is included. Publication of longer selections or complete articles requires ITSMA permission. For permission or more information, contact pr@itsma.com. [TOP OF PAGE] Subscription Information Subscriptions are available in text and HTML versions. To SUBSCRIBE or to change the format of your subscription, visit http://www.itsma.com/aspfiles/press/ezine.asp. To UNSUBSCRIBE, please email us at unsubscribe@itsma.com or mail us at ITSMA Subscriptions, 420 Bedford Street, Suite 110, Lexington, MA 02420, USA. Back issues of ITSMA E-ZINE are available at http://www.itsma.com/News/ezine/default.htm. |
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