Customer Collaboration

The definition of customers as it relates to collaboration must be expanded now to take into account all of the customers across the the extended collaborative partnership.  Thu customer relationship is extended across the supply chain along with the customers of each of the extended partners in a social network relationship that crosses in many places.  This customer collaboration requires support of customers as they relate to many partners where one customer can be part of many partners network with many different customer type relationships.  These relationships now have blurred the line in many cases in the customer - supplier relationship where one customer may be the supplier of many other customers.  This relationship makes for a much stronger and much more complicated collaborative network because of the navigation requirements demanded by these complicated relationships.  

Where does the one type of relationship begin and another type of relationship end?  This question actually may be inappropriate now in thes new extended networks because the demands crossover between both the relationship types and the needs of the partners at the time of the interaction.  Rather than a customer-to-supplier relationship there needs to be a growth in social relationship where the social network needs are supported by the partner with the immediate ability.  

Let me use Amazon as an example of the changing demands and capabilities of the customer-to-supplier relationship.  I am an Amazon customer that places an order for a particular product and as I am shopping I evaluate all of the other customer product rating and evaluations and then I review the questions that other customers have posed that have also been answered by customers that previously purchased the product.  I decide to make the purchase based on all of this information and then after the purchase I join the circle of marketing the product by providing a product review and responses to other customer questions.  These responses may go positive or negative and in the event of a negative response the product seller may engage the customer to both understand how to improve the product and also to resolve the negative situation.  At this point, as a customer I may engage with the seller on redesign of the product to improve ad resolve my issue so that I in turn will provide a positive reaction to the seller’s response.  

These types of activities are going on thousands of times a day in thousands of situations and technology provides the foundation to extend and expand these relationships.  Everyone in the network has effectively become a customer.  This is why the collaborative network is so important and must be nurtured and supported by the extended collaborative network of customers.

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?

Accelerating Change

The pace of change in the market is accelerating at a pace that is overwhelming many organizations due to the combination of technology, social networking and the entry and expansion of millennials in the marketplace.  This acceleration of change requires a robust process to sense and respond to the change in a continuous manner so that you do not fall behind in meeting the demands.  The importance of a maintaining a process that continuously monitors and alerts to changing demands cannot be highlighted enough in addition, this process must include your extended partners along with customers that interact with all of your extended partners.  Maintenance and support of these relationships are more important than ever now to support the process and methods required to sense and respond to changing demands.

In these circumstances require enhanced and extended collaboration across your extended partners and especially with the entire chain of customers in order to maintain your place and succeed in the changing market.  You must develop and provide a technical social framework for this interaction that encourages and supports collaboration at the point where and when it is most conducive and convenient to the partners.  Innovation and changes do not manifest in a schedule and there must be an open framework that encourages interaction and collaboration at the point and time when convenient or when the idea strikes.  You must be able to support collaboration and interaction based on your customer and partner schedules and you must realize that your customers and partners will be in different areas of the world and different timezones.  

Amazon does an amazing job of sensing and responding to customer and partner changing demands in their multidimensional framework that brings together customers purchasing products, partners selling products, manufacturers producing products and carriers delivering products.  This entire framework is maintained in a customer centric foundation that provides a means and the opportunities for all participants to obtain information and then respond to the information.  Amazon acts as both a guide and referee in this framework to ensure the voice of the customer remains the focus.  This, I think, is a key critical success factor for the continued success of the Amazon marketplace.  Another critical success factor is the culture of experimentation and encouragement to change that drives Amazon’s interaction with customers, partners and internal cross functional interactions.  The Amazon difference here is the focus on the customer experience rather than the benefits to the Amazon bottom line.     

I see that it is important to provide a platform for collaboration and social interaction supporting all partners and customers, however the customer focus is the ingredient that energizes and allows you to succeed.  Amazon has the methods exactly right in this market, in fact I would say that they are key to changing the market and the integration expectations and demands.  

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?

Continuous Transformation

Customers, products and service demands are continuously changing and transforming and the supply chain and businesses must also change and transform in order to meet these demands.  The market disruption we are seeing now is the result of major changes that is transforming the retail marketplace and the way that businesses interact with their customers.  In order to succeed you must change and transform with your customers to meet their changing demands.  This requires a means to sense and respond to the changing demands from your customers and your partners and even your partners customers.  No business can succeed alone and collaborative support of changing services and demands requires a process oriented approach in order to respond in a manner that allows you to maintain the rate and velocity of change.   

The continuous transformation in markets and especially customer demands requires a process of continuous improvement to sense and respond to the changing demands and services.  This continuous improvement process though is more difficult to implement and maintain because is must cross the entire chain of internal and external partners.  This requires a robust and transparent end to end collaborative partnership to maintain the level of collaboration and trust to support and react to the transformation changes that are washing over the marketplace. The results of this enhanced level of collaboration and continuous improvement will provide the capabilities to react to changing demands and also the process to identify the change and determine an appropriate reaction to the changing demands.

One important aspect to the continuous transformation process is information and the ability to collect, understand and then react to this information.  I would say that the troubles experienced in today’s marketplace are directly related to the information availability and utilization of the players.  The difficulty is not due to any one aspect, there are areas of information collection, information analysis and then reaction to the information that cross all partners within the chain.  This issue is caused by a combination of failures along with a lack of collaborative partnerships to allow for reaction to support the demands identified by the information.  Again, this requires a robust network of collaborative partners to analyze and react to the information and demands.

The marketplace is changing quickly and the velocity is increasing as customers across the marketplace react and incorporate new tools and capabilities into their practices and interactions.  This increased velocity has created a very big challenge for retailers that must be resolved by them or it will overcome them.  We are seeing the results of the velocity of transformation on retailers that have not reacted to the demands due to a combination of lack of information, lack of understanding and limited collaborative interaction with partners. I think the key challenge is understanding and accepting the information and demands of the market and customers.   

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?