The World is Upside Down

This blog spends a lot of pixels on the topic of CRM (Customer Relationship Management).  How can companies manage their customers.  How can we keep current customers loyal and retain them?  How can we find new customers who will be profitable and love us and stay with us?

Simple answer?

You can’t.

You don’t really manage customers anymore — if you ever did.  Perhaps the idea was always unreasonable.

Customers are people.  Newsflash.

People are unpredictable.  People are not, by nature, loyal.  If they were the divorce rate wouldn’t be at 50%.

People only care about what they care about NOW.  Today.  If you are selling Christmas trees to Jews they won’t care.  They don’t use them (well, some do but not many).

Customers buy what they WANT to buy and the key today is not in trying to manage your customers but in understanding who they are, what they want (or need) and making it easy for them to be in the right place at the right time with the right story.    Story is key here — because customers need to be able to find what they need when they need it.

And it needs to be simple.  Simple for customers to understand what your widget is.  Easy for them to understand why it matters to THEM (not you, they could care less about you) and then make it easy for them to get to the end result of what they want.   Intuitive (like a iPod, like a GUI (graphical user interface) versus a c: prompt).

The customer is now in charge of the world.  Realize it.  Embrace it.  So now more than ever is “know thy customer” and realize that while you need them, they don’t need you.  Unless you give them a reason to need you.

The Irony of it All

My last blog posed the question:  “Is Microsoft the next Dinosaur?”  My point was that most companies have a lifecycle, just like products do and people do.

Microsoft may or may not be at the precipice of a decline — it is really up to Microsoft.  The thing I always admired about Bill Gates in the “early days” (and I was a UNIX fan since I worked for AT&T Computer Systems) was that he was always paranoid.  He knew the internet could eclipse the OS as far as the center of the IT universe and so out came Internet Explorer.  Microsoft tried to win the search engine war — and after repeated lack of success has what looks like a nice product in Bing.

But no sooner did I post my Blog and get lots of comments (most not so nice from Microsoft proponents) along comes PC World with an article that asks the very same question I asked: 

Is Microsoft Following GM’s Road Map?

Analysis: GM’s bankruptcy marks the end of an era. Is Microsoft repeating the automaker’s mistakes?

J. Peter Bruzzese, InfoWorld

// Jun 3, 2009 6:00 pm

“Microsoft has faced a few serious bumps over the last 10 years but came out fine. . .Knowing the work Microsoft developers put into their products, I believe they are the saving grace of the company — as long as they are allowed to hear the voice of the people. This is an area where I’ve seen a problem.”

I worked for AT&T at the hey day of Bell Labs.  We had the brightest, most awesome minds around — just like Microsoft does today.   Microsoft ca be its own best friend or its own worst enemy.  Only time will tell.

Product Management Goes “Hi Tech” with PLM

For many years I was a product manager at Bell Labs. We used three ring binders, ISO 9000 (and then 9001) standards to ensure quality and a lot of Microsoft Excel(TM) and Microsoft Project(TM) worksheets.

The hardest part of the job was keeping the status up to date and making sure that all of the members of the team — both direct and matrixed (e.g. our counterparts in sales, marketing, support, etc.) knew what they needed to know so we could get to market on time and on budget.

Boy have times changed.

Major software players now offer something called PLM (short for Product Lifecycle Management). Lifecycle is the key word here. The software helps any type of product manufacturer (from shoes to NASA’s next generation space ship) from idea through design and manufacture, update cycles, service and support needs and even end of life decisions.

Back “in the day” at Bell Labs we worked on a six month cycle — which included everything from “patch releases” (bug fixes) to major next generation and even the generation beyond it planning that went out at least three years. That isn’t easy to do with three ring binders!

PLM promises to do for product development what ERP did for the factory floor and supply chain.

The article “What is PLM?” outlines the advantages companies can expect by using PLM software:

1. Shorter Time to Market
2. Better product quality
3. Reduction in prototyping costs
4. Savings through the re-use of the original data
5. A framework for product optimization
6. Savings in reduction in wastage.
7. Savings through the complete integration of engineering workflows

As an ex-product manager the biggest bang for the buck potential based on my experience is

• faster time to market
• fewer missed dates
• fewer “mis-matches” in PM / stakeholder expectations and engineering
• better quality control

In January of 2008 the Gartner Group released a report entitled “Magic Quadrant for Manufacturing Product Life Cycle Management, 4Q07.” where they list Siemens PLM, Dassault Systems, PTC, Autodesk, Oracle and SAP as providers of PLM software.

Siemens (formerly UGS) is rated the highest. Oracle acquired Agile (if you’ve heard of Agile). Gartner dropped Infor because their revenue was too low this past year — but if you are just learning about the various options you might want to consider looking at them.

In these economic times where the stock market is fluctuating and we may be heading for a recession any tool that can help you cut costs while getting to market faster PLM should definitely been on your radar to consider.