Collaboration Awakening

Consumers have embraced the developments and improvements in mobile technology in a more robust and faster cycle.  This is due to the acceptance and even reliance on technology in our day-to-day lives that has grown over the last twenty years.  One of the reasons for this is the pervasive availability and speed of wireless Internet service.  The availability of the Internet has turned these tools into utilities that we go to on an ever increasing basis for information at our fingertips.  Another aspect of these tools and technology is the growth of social networks that people have embraced to extend their reach and their interaction with others.  

These social networks have brought together a level of collaboration that is breathtaking in the expanse and the level of sharing and collaboration.  Social networks and collaboration add another layer to the web of information available through the Internet and these technologies.  These interacting webs support the ability to obtain information in a manner, speed and expanse that was unheard of thirty years ago.  Looked at from this perspective it is not surprising at all that consumers are utilizing these webs of collaboration to develop and enhance new shopping habits.  The beauty of this web construction is that if one strand of the web snaps, or cannot provide pertinent information there are a hundred other strands that may be able to provide the information.

This framework of consumer collaboration put retailers in quite a predicament; they can develop a fortress mentality to try to fight off the consumer collaboration, or they can embrace and support the collaboration.  There is another very important contributing factor influencing these reactions, the investment that may be required to participate.  This cost can be overwhelming and requires a paradigm shift to address.  This requires that retailers adopt an agile, or continuous investment, method to support the ever changing capability requirements.  

This continuous investment model supports the retailers requirement to change quickly to support new requirements without throwing discarding earlier investments.  This model allows the retailer to experiment by adding new components and swapping out components that no longer support the consumer shopping habits or the business requirements.  In fact this continuous investment model when coupled with a robust continuous improvement program for both software and business process capabilities will become the key future success factor for the retail industry.  This will also reverberate across the entire supply chain from the raw material supplier to the consumer.

 

And now for the audience participation portion of the show…

ECommerce will have wide ranging impacts on both the retail and manufacturing sectors.  How can you focus these abilities to improve the consumers’ experience?  Improving the consumers experience will require a re-evaluation of the sales channels, the manufacturing channels and practices and the supply chain channels and practices from the raw materials to the consumers’ homes.  In order to ensure and maintain success in this new reality you must harness the tools and capabilities in many new areas.  How can you support these continuously changing requirements?

Consumers And Technology

Technology has become a dual driving force in relation to consumers and this force is driving and changing the consumer social practices which in turn is also driving changes into their shopping practices.  I have come to think of it as an infinity loop where technology manufacturers develop and market new technology to consumers and then the consumers use that new technology to simplify their shopping habits with all other retailers.  Mobile technology is currently the key driving force to these changes however this is simply the latest tool in the technology world.

In the initial wave of Internet technologies the desktop computer was the driving factor and the capabilities basically doubled every two years, driving consumers to new purchases to obtain the new technologies.  Next these new capabilities and cost reductions were driven by laptops which also drove consumers to replace the desktop workstations with laptops which allowed them mobility inside and outside their house.  We finally reached the point when the advancements were not so dramatic and wireless capabilities started to lead the capabilities improvements which allowed mobile technology to flourish.  

We are now in the mobile technology wave and by comparison we are seeing the same dramatic advances in mobile technology that we saw previously in the initial wave of Internet technologies.  Unsurprisingly we are also seeing the eager consumer adoption of this technology which is now driving dramatic changes in consumer shopping practices.  In this current wave the combination of technology tools, improvements in wireless availability and bandwidth and the mobility of the tools have come together to drive increasingly dramatic changes in consumer shopping habits.  The key to this current wave is the impact of the mobile software; there’s an app for everything now.  

These new capabilities are in essence pitting one retail sector against another; the success of the technology retail sector is directly impacting the other retail sectors from CPG to apparel to entertainment.  New software mobile apps are now encouraging and supporting these new shopping habits that allows consumers to shop prices and products from all stores while standing in one store.  This is why I compared these practices as an infinity loop.  

Each iteration of this loop now is delivering more power to the consumer and with the new mobile apps the consumer is able to harness this new power to increase their leverage with retailers.  As I have previously discussed retailers have been fighting these improvements in consumer capabilities but they must soon realize that they cannot hope to fight this wave when there is another member of the retail market that is realizing new success and sales increases with every improvement in this new mobile technology.  This is why I have promoted the continuous improvement cycle to allow retailers to react to the changes.

Collaboration And Technology

The advancement and even the direction of collaboration is beginning to be driven now by consumer adoption and more importantly, consumers mashing up the technology in new ways to build virtual communities.  These new capabilities are being driven by the curiosity of the young who have grown up immersed in the technology.  I have said before that business, and especially retailers, should incorporate methods to obtain input from the young and especially teens regarding technology utilization.  The rate of adoption and then dropping technologies and tools is amazing and rather than ignoring this as an example of short attention spans business should recognize it for what it truly is, a trend for the future.

I have discussed many times the importance of a continuous improvement program in supporting business and technology improvements in a manner that allows for consumable change.  When you bring these points together you come to the realization that a continuous improvement strategy must be developed to take into account all aspects of your business.  This should be viewed as a key business survival strategy.  Consumers are being driven into an ever quickening cycle of change by mobile and computer technology by the electronics industry so that industry can maintain sales and grow income.  This has been embraced by the consumer and especially the young consumer and turned into accepted practice.  Add to this the increasing use of cloud technology to support anywhere, anytime, access and the result is a quickening change cycle for business and especially retailers.

It will be necessary for retailers to chase these changes in capabilities, technologies and practices in order to succeed in the future.  The only way to maintain this necessary rate of change is to implement a continuous improvement strategy.  This incorporates the listen, do,evaluate practice that will support a thoughtful change of process and technology in a manner that allows the retailer to maintain currency with consumer practices and capabilities.  Business will no longer be able to engage in a multi-year implementation program, instead they must embrace and implement a multi-year improvement strategy.  

This continuous improvement strategy requires a flexible, component based, framework that supports exchanging and replacement of components to support the discontinuous rate of change driven by the market.  You eat an elephant one bite at a time and you can engage and react to changes in technology and practices one bite at a time.  The continuous improvement strategy embraces and supports these requirements that are sustainable by the business. Because of the rate of change in adopting and then dropping practices retailers can only succeed by incorporating this continuous improvement strategy.

 

And now for the audience participation portion of the show…

ECommerce will have wide ranging impacts on both the retail and manufacturing sectors.  How can you focus these abilities to improve the consumers’ experience?  Improving the consumers experience will require a re-evaluation of the sales channels, the manufacturing channels and practices and the supply chain channels and practices from the raw materials to the consumers’ homes.  In order to ensure and maintain success in this new reality you must harness the tools and capabilities in many new areas.  How can you support these continuously changing requirements?