Consumer Collaboration Community Practice

One of the key strategic objectives of the consumer collaboration community should be incorporating this community into the organization framework as a key practice of the organization.  This is not necessarily the initial position, however, the strategic plans should provide a pathway for the eventual incorporation into the the organization framework.  This community provides a method and the structure to directly interact with the consumer and incorporate this interaction into the both the internal framework and the external partner network.  This means of collecting data will become a critical benefit to your organization and extended partners because it is a direct input of unbiased reactions and actions from real customers.

I think that it is important though that you go through a development and vetting process of the collaboration community prior to the full incorporation as a practice.  The reason this is so critically important is because of the newness of this strategy and functionality.  This is brand new for retail organizations and because of this there will be quite a bit of experimentation required to work through the services, technology and practices before settling into a path and a framework that works for the organization.  So I think it is important to settle into this path and framework before incorporating into the overarching organizational framework.

Five years from now this consumer collaboration community will become the price of entry especially in the retail business.  As a comparison just look at the trajectory path of acceptance for Facebook and Twitter, five years ago these were just ‘kids toys’ and now they are both critical aspects of the retail marketing practices.  I see the consumer collaboration community as being on a similar trajectory and will become the common accepted practice very quickly simply because of the value that it can bring to your organization and by extension your extended network partners.  

I do not think that I am exaggerating when I say that the consumer community has the potential to bring greater value to your organization than any other social network practice we have seen.  I have not seen a tool or practice that combines customer retention, marketing, product development and quality evaluation with the underlying potential for big data collection and analytical capabilities.  You may think that I am over-hyping the potential so take a moment to review my previous discussions to get a better understanding of why I am putting so much potential into this initiative.  This is all new territory though in the business environment and it is important to understand going into this that there is no previous examples to follow and must be developed based on your own requirements and capabilities.  

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 consumer's experience?  Improving the consumer’s 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?

Collaboration Community Roadmap

I have mentioned that it is important to define and maintain a roadmap of achievement objectives and returns that can be measured to build support for the community.  Of course it should not be required to state this point because any business initiative should start with a plan and a roadmap. In the case of social networking and community support though I think it is even more important start with a clear and achievable plan.  This is a startup and as such requires a clear and achievable direction and a method to measure success along the way.  Even though I also state that this initiative requires a long term commitment I clearly understand that you will never maintain the commitment over the long term without a series of achievements along the way.

Developing the roadmap provides an opportunity to define the mission and then clearly define the objectives that can be achieved as a result of the roadmap.  When the mission and the objectives are defined you can then focus on the how you will meet the objectives.  This is project, or program, 101; first you define the ‘what’ and then you define the ‘how’.  This process method helps to evaluate and define reasonable and achievable objectives and schedule for meeting these objectives.  This will also encourage you to identify key stakeholders and partners and then define the expectations for these partners and stakeholders.  This will provide you with a clear proposal including objectives and schedule for review and approval from leadership.  This is critical to achieving the initial support to start the initiative.

The challenge though with this initiative, or program, is the nature of the community and the velocity of change in both technology and services supporting the community.  This is exactly the reason I suggest for embracing free and low cost cloud technology and services; it allows you to experiment with technology and services with a low entry cost so you can drop technology and services as the landscape changes.  This initiative will be difficult enough due to the fickle nature of the consumer and this requires the full focus from your organization and partners and this will not be helped if you were always worried about the cost of technology.  First you should focus on understanding and meeting the demands of the consumer while meeting the objectives of your initiative.

It is important to develop a roadmap and strategy to deliver the roadmap for any initiative and the consumer community is no different.  Utilizing cloud technologies and services allows a great deal of flexibility to experiment with community capabilities.  This is an important factor in the success of this initiative and should not be overlooked or underplayed.

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 consumer's experience?  Improving the consumer’s 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?

Collaboration Community Resource Investment

Resource commitment to support a consumer collaboration community is a long term commitment that requires that leadership from the retailer through the extended supply chain partners understand the long term nature of the commitment.  The resource commitment from the organization’s leaders requires a long term commitment in order to harvest the benefits.  As I have previously suggested, the greatest funding investment will be hiring the resources to support the community.  The good news though is that this investment is not required to start the community, in the startup phase current social media resources can be utilized to support the startup.  

This long term investment requirement is a large commitment and requires the care and feeding from the leadership in order to allow and encourage the community and practices to grow.  Do not underestimate the level of commitment and the timeline for the commitment, this is not a ‘one and done’ type of commitment where the leaders can say this is important and it just happens.  This will require the regular and continuous involvement of the organization leaders to demonstrate their commitment and their level of support of these activities in order to ensure the continued investment in resource time and focus continues.  As with any other new initiative, this will also require the continuous involvement, especially initially, Even as the time progresses, there is a requirement for continued involvement of the leaders to encourage expansion and growth of the community so that it does not die on the vine.

There will be many people and voices in the organization claiming this consumer community is unnecessary because of the other social networks supported by the organization.  This is a blatantly wrong headed view and must be overcome first with the commitment from leadership to support through the startup and then through the value derived from the community as it becomes an established framework and strategy in the organization.  

I am focused on this investment because I believe it is important to overcome the potential inertia the community will encounter.  It is also most important to view this as a long term investment that will require a long term commitment.  It is important to overcome the prevailing business short term focus and perspective with a long view of the potential.  I am not naive though, in order for the community to be given time to succeed it is important to define and achieve short term goals and benefits.  For this reason it is important to define and maintain a roadmap of achievement objectives and returns that can be measured.

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 consumer's experience?  Improving the consumer’s 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?