“Unwatering” New York subway tunnels within days: US Army Core of Engineers

Imagine the New York subways with
300-400 million gallons of water after Hurricane Sandy. Well, the US Army Core of Engineers
"Unwatering" team  are at  New York and expect
to get all this water out in a matter of days pumping through about a mile
of  subway at a time. 

The Unwatering team gets its
rather unusual name from its function and purpose i.e. remove water from where
it is not supposed to be, like inside a subway tunnel. Apparently the more
traditional "dewatering" is about removing water from a place where
the water could be like a swimming pool that you might want to dewater before
winter. The Unwatering team of the US Army Core of Engineers developed the
unwatering expertise from the 2005 Katrina flooding in New Orleans. 

There has been speculation in 2011 about events
like Hurricane Sandy becoming more common perhaps due to climate change. In any
case, many more cities in the world have to contend with subways that might get
flooded for one reason or another.

In 2010 -11 here are some
world cities that got flooded:

Given that many city authorities
across the world struggle with the dewatering problem and go out of action for
weeks here may be an opportunity for the Unwatering team of the US
Army Core of Engineers to help flood relief personnel in other countries with
the expertise they have developed in this kind of work.While unwatering  does not seem like an innovation in the global knowledge economy,  the knowledge and expertise that the  unwatering team is developing is extremely valuable to civic authorities across the world.

For most cities of the world would
take significantly more time than New York to clear water from subway tunnels. Contact StratoServe.

First time since the Great Blizzard of 1888, NYSE closes for two days for Hurricane Sandy

Hurricane Sandy has caused more
destruction than imagined with thousands without power across the region,
flooding of the New York subway, at
least 40 deaths, 3 feet of snow in West Virginia and the NYSE closed for
two days. The NYSE has been closed for two days due to weather for
the first time
since 1888 and the
Great Blizzard of 1888.  And you did not have computers and the
Internet in 1888 and also the motor car was yet to be commercialized and weather forecasting was a nascent science. 

As Arthur
Levitt former Chairman of the SEC says, this will shake the image of the NYSE. No one is saying that safety of the traders
or exchange employees is not important, but with a back-up plan the seat of
world capitalism should not have to shut down for two days. Obviously the NYSE
did not have confidence in a back-up "mirror" type of arrangement for
electronic trading through the NYSE Acra all electronic platform.  As the
video explains it was just that NYSE did not have the stomach to face technical
problems running the exchange electronically during Hurricane Sandy. NYSE folks
continue to be nervous after the Facebook IPO problems and the Knight
Capital Group trading software problems. Perhaps it is timely to do
whatever is necessary to have back-up arrangements so that an institution like
NYSE is not shut down for two days from a predicted weather event. Contact
StratoServe.

Hurricane Sandy: what can businesses really do?

Hurricane Sandy is arriving today at the East Coast of the US and is being
hailed as a "Super Storm."  Hurricanes are a rarity in the East
Coast and local and State Governments, private and public organizations are
pulling out all the stops to keep people safe. Businesses have to wonder what
they can do better, at least next time because it is turning out that Hurricane Irene last
year was not an isolated event for the US East Coast. Here are some
thoughts:

Transportation: In an
unprecedented cautionary move, Connecticut has banned trucks on highways from 11
am and all non-emergency travel on highways from 1.00 pm. Better safe than
sorry is the mantra of all officials across the region. The subway trains have
been closed in New York and generally transportation has ground to a halt
in the East
Coast according to CNN. If you are in the transportation business there is
nothing much you can do except share with customers you are delivering to that
there will be delays. Going forward improving delivery "status"
updates via digital  and social media means might at least keep everyone on the same page. Those
businesses that deliver their product or travel to customers or work need
to probably develop routines that can deal with several days of transport
disruption. Delivery schedules could perhaps come under review as soon as this
type of Caribbean hurricane is forecast which provides a week's lead time. If
the processes are in place – customers can be contacted for moving up
deliveries of supplies, before the storm.

Electricity: Electricity
companies across the region are a beleaguered lot. Contractor crews are moving
by road from Texas over 2000 miles (3200 km) away. Since everything is so dependent
on electricity life comes to a complete halt as water gets into substations,
trees fall on power lines and transformers burn out. Since food spoils in the
refrigerator and there is no electricity for the microwave or stove, folks dash
to the coffee shop who cannot offer coffee because most of their equipment is
based on electricity. It's probably time for smaller restaurants to look at the
cost benefit of getting generators or trying liquid petroleum gas as a
standby heating source. Between internet service providers, utility companies,
telephone and wireless providers there needs to be some way of providing a
solution to smaller businesses to keep going as power is restored.

Property Insurance:
Insurance companies and their customers need to probably explicitly deal with
what is hopefully not going to repeat every year. There is a flood
zone provision in most policies but insurance companies need to review their
estimates of what are flood zone regions in such hurricane situations.
Businesses probably should be more receptive and be willing to pay that extra
premium when the insurance company clearly spells out the payment after its actuarial
calculations.

Thus businesses can try and prepare better for transportation, electricity
and insurance matters going forward. Meanwhile this blog wishes all its US East
Coast readers safety during and after Hurricane Sandy. Contact
StratoServe.

B2B marketing opportunity appears when the Buying Center members face Buy Task challenges

That B2B marketing opportunity appears when the Buying Center members face
Buy Task challenges is a concept that is simple and obvious to the buying firm buying
center and strangely only to the more perceptive B2B marketer.

Here is how the Buy Task challenge plays
out for the Buying Center and spells B2B marketing opportunity for the
marketer:

  • Big problems with repeat buy tasks. This is rare and at the core of the thinking
    about B2B buyer-seller relationships. One reason that repeat buys go well
    is because these are familiar products or services that suppliers have fine-tuned
    and the buying company is able to absorb and use. It has developed
    internal people and processes to handle whatever these mid-tech suppliers
    might supply. Note that the supplier might have started as an innovative
    pioneering supplier and over time the buying organization got familiar
    with the offering and improved their ability to use them. Thus, there is no
    reason to change this type of high volume supplier. On the other hand, consider
    a product or service that the buying center buys typically is high
    tech/high knowledge (e.g. software development) and the supplier
    fails to deliver. Or it is low tech/low knowledge (e.g.  Facilities
    maintenance) and the current supplier has become unreliable. In both these
    scenarios the buying center scrambles to find alternative suppliers
    because the rest of the receiving
    processes     are in place. The user department is waiting for software
    that system analysts had clearly defined and the building has to be
    cleaned anyway!
  • Problems with modified re-buy: The buying center might look for new suppliers if
    there are problems that prevent using good current suppliers. Consider a
    modified piece of aerospace equipment needed for a defense
    application that must be made in the US. The existing foreign supplier,
    although a good one, is excluded from consideration.  This one
    is also relatively rare.
  • New task – opportunity: New task opportunity is truly the chance for new innovative
    B2B suppliers to shine. Here too incumbent suppliers who supply related
    stuff have an advantage because they can quickly add people and
    investments to supply the bare minimum that will work for the
    buying organization. The bare minimum is from knowing the buying
    organization and designing an offer that is highly competitive that also
    enjoys the “familiar vendor” advantage. The opportunity for the B2B
    marketer is to provide superior knowledge and innovative value that is
    based on the core competence and highly technical knowledge of the
    marketer organization. Keep in mind that while incumbent suppliers try
    to just get by, innovative new suppliers can bring entirely
    unthinkable value to the buying organization. And, many buying centers
    have members who are willing to give that break to innovative new
    suppliers because it helps the buying organization make a quantum leap.

To summarize, the big opportunity
for new suppliers in B2B markets is to look for organizations and buying
centers that are getting into a new task or looking at the old task with new
eyes, say when leadership/management changes. More on B2B marketing opportunities
and buying organization leadership /management changes in a later post. Contact StratoServe.

Google Search and the undecided voter in the US Presidential election

Who searches Google? Is the question
to ask when we think about the all-important undecided voter, in this US
Presidential election. According to Business Insider quoting a
study, by Politico and George Washington University, the undecided voter is estimated
to be a single Protestant white young women 18-29 years old without a college
degree who is weighing between being a soft democrat and also a Tea Party
empathizer. Undecided voters vote across parties for different positions on the ballot.
They do not watch debates but might be overhearing what friends are saying.
Given the characterization in this poll, it does seem likely that the undecided
voter will Google stuff closer to the election as things get even more
confusing. In other words, the undecided voter is not really dis-engaged as
made out in the funny Saturday Night Live piece.
Had the undecided voter not cared at all about the election then:

  • They would not go to vote, because they cared so little
  • And would not use the central route to persuasion
    that is sort of implied if you Google something

In other words, expect the undecided
voter to turn to Google as the election draws nearer.

On the theme of Google Searches and
elections there is an interesting piece by Seth Stephens Davidovitz in the New York Times. From
reading the summary of his research it makes sense to believe that "decided"
or rather "base" voters merely check out the failings of the
opposition on Google at least going by the location of the searcher in red or
blue states. But could it be that some of
these searches of controversy around candidates are really coming from the
undecided voter? Also it would be interesting to know how many of the folks
looking for polling information actually go out and vote.

Left out among Google searchers are one in five US adults who
do not use the Internet but are voters. The majority of non-users are older and
poorer Americans and those with less than $20,000/year income 
not using the Internet at all.This number is declining though.

Since the undecided voter in the Business Insider story is very likely an Internet user, we can expect her to do at least some searches on line
about candidates, polling places and make a decision. All in all the Internet
and Google Search should play an important role with the undecided voter. Contact StratoServe.

Newsweek to close print edition: should you close your bricks business and go all digital?

Newsweek has a print customer base of about 1.5 million;and has decided to go all digital. Should you close your bricks business and go all digital? No,
and here is why from the magazine business that should apply to other
brick/click combo businesses:

[Note: This post is from October 19, 2012 and was updated for formatting and video content on June 4, 2021. The post is of historical interest although several points persist to this day]

  • Bricks will always be there: So long as human beings have physical bodies and
    senses of touch taste, smell etc. the bricks world will have a market. It
    does feel nice to read a Newsweek or Time at the dentist’s waiting room.
    And when you get that 80-90% off offer for the print magazine you do tend
    to sign up. Time magazine has 3.3 million subscribers while
    Newsweek has about 1.5 million subscribers. 
  • Getting online paid subscribers is hard: According to Felix Salmon of Reuters
    , Huffington Post tried the paid subscriber model for just five issues
    before going free. There are almost no chances of picking up the 1.5 million
    subscribers that Newsweek print would have to convert to digital only. 
  • Thinking Brick costs is a fallacy: Newsweek Editor Tina Brown says that it costs $43 million to produce the print magazine including the paper, printing and distribution,
    before hiring a single writer. Going by this logic almost every venture
    that serves large numbers of people spend more around the supporting infrastructure.
    Thus every major university and hospital spends far more on the campus,
    equipment, managers, support staff than the faculty and doctors.
  • What business are you in – the US News case: What business are you in? is the question to ask. US News went all digital since 2010, and have an iPad subscription version at 99 cents that has very few takers – comparatively speaking. However, rankings in various categories like colleges etc. provide US News with a huge following. There are 50,000 subscribers for the college rankings detailed information at
    $29.00. There are 10 web clicks for rankings against two web clicks for
    news and note that both produce no revenue for US News. In other words, US News appears to be more in the rankings business than the news business.

One must wonder if Newsweek actually asked its print subscribers why they really subscribed to the print magazine, for when you have a customer base in the brick world you have an ongoing relationship in the CRM sense. Asking customers to change to digital en masse also raises the question of the technology adoption ability
of the entire customer base.

To summarize,if you have existing “bricks” customers make sure that they will be able and willing to pay for your product digitally before you go entirely digital.  

About StratoServe.

Priceless: integrating Mastercard offline purchase data with Google AdWords Search Advertising

Integrating Mastercard offline purchase data with online Google AdWords
Search Advertising is well, Priceless
! To the marketer that is. 

According to the wired.com
report, Mastercard is trying to sell aggregate data to marketers for the
holidays.The wired.com article wonders about exactly how Mastercard offline
purchase data could be useful in online applications and here is one
possibility by tailoring Google AdWords search advertising based on Mastercard
aggregate transaction data. 

So for example, if you used your Mastercard to buy online electronic gifts
after Black Friday or offline last minute clothing gifts on Dec 23, its
very likely that your behavior from last few years will not change. OK you
might have resolved at the 2012 New Year to do your holiday shopping
early… but that was back in January and now you are back at your old ways! At
an aggregate "big data" level, credit card data can point to customer
behaviors like off line clothing gifts on December 23 and online
electronics soon after black Friday in November. And you know that there are say
100,000 people, mostly men in their 30's and 40's in Cleveland Ohio who
did this for the last 3 years.

If you are an electronics retailer with a store in Cleveland Ohio
launching a geo-targeted Google AdWords search campaign at Cleveland Ohio with
keyword search terms that appeal to the demographic can be really effective.
Adding direct mail flyers, Facebook and banner advertising just focussing on
reaching this 100,000 very specific audience can also pay huge dividends.

For example, if your online sales margin on an electronic gift is say $20
and you precisely know a great deal about folks who bought this type of stuff
last year you can be lavish in your keyword bids with Google and what you are
willing to pay for Internet banners, direct mail etc. The point is , there is
nothing more powerful than accurate data about past buying behavior.

Unless of course, there is a major innovation like an iPhone or game system
that pushes traditional choices to the background. Here too, past transaction
data gives you a good idea of what groups or segments of customers bought
a lot of $20 gifts and who are the folks who spent in the $200-300 range who
might switch to a new iPhone or video game system.

The marketing possibilities are endless and I guess consumers have to start
getting used to this lack of privacy in the digital age. Consider that today
anyone can take a video shoot of anything from their cell phones like the Philadelphia wedding
brawl video. At least the Internet and transaction data will be aggregated
but anonymous – hopefully. Contact StratoServe.

Who is responsible for drafting the Product Innovation Charter (PIC)?

Who is responsible for drafting the Product Innovation Charter (PIC)? Is a question that innovative companies have. Well, the answer is that you must have a person at the CxO level who is the individual charged with developing the PIC. Here are some examples in say a manufacturing context:

  • A new equipment acquisition decision: You might not think of this as an innovation. But let us say the company has ongoing customers and are thinking about changing to manufacturing equipment that is more energy efficient, has less effluents and reduces wastage and improves product quality. Here the Chief Production/Manufacturing manager should be responsible for drafting the PIC. Why? Because when it is drafted … you can expect the CMO (Chief Marketing Officer) to ask whether the new equipment can do widget X which the old equipment could not.  This way the boundaries of the new acquisition will get well defined and the PIC will require a marketing member’s inputs. OK this is not a new product for the firm’s customers directly but it can have a huge impact if the right decisions are made from a final product innovation (widget X) point of view.
  • Think of an ERP system: The Chief Technology Officer (CTO) should be framing this PIC because Marketing might have questions about integrating CRM via mobile, Supply Chain might ask about capabilities to do Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) of outgoing shipments and HR and the safety folks might wonder if the ERP system being acquired allows for mobile applications for shop floor safety checks. Again, not a direct product innovation but something that can have a great impact on the enterprise as a whole and how innovations are executed.
  • New Products that face customers: For new products that face customers … like a Widget X , the folks who should be writing the PIC and getting the C-Suite to sign off is the Marketing and Sales Chief Officer. Why? Because policy on market facing innovations must be framed and negotiated by marketing. As indicated in an earlier post CMO’s feel that they should be spending 80% of their time with customers and only 20% internally. Not so, because it is the internal organization that is able to deliver and its really important to get buy in, processes in place for a botched launch of a poorly executed concept will have displeased customers and no repeat customers. And its repeat customers that keep business thriving.

To summarize, the PIC should be written and championed by a CxO whose performance is measured on the outcome and success of the PIC. OK you may not call it a PIC for getting a new ERP system but the principles of bringing co-operation across functions to serve customers better is the idea here. And best of all, it helps when CxO’s sign off on the PIC or are mentioned in CxO meeting minutes  to have approved it. The operational innovation team has much more legitimacy and clout to pull cross-disciplinary folks together. About StratoServe.

Why Early Supplier Involvement (ESI) for innovation is so difficult

Why Early Supplier Involvement (ESI) for innovation is so difficult when it comes
to execution is hard to understand. Here are some reasons why this might be
happening in your organization:

[ Note: This post (originally published on October 10, 2012 was updated with minor formatting changes on February 6, 2021]

  • Lack of top leadership engagement at the idea/concept stage:
    As explained in an earlier post, the biggest challenge for New Product or
    Innovation managers is to get the top leadership team to really focus at the early stages of deciding what. concept to pursue. The CEO and CMO (Chief Marketing Officer) might be sold a particular idea but the CFO might be too busy with the new
    ERP system being installed. It might also happen that the head of the
    Supply/Procurement function reports to the CFO. You can imagine the how effective the CFO might be in such a situation about updating the Head of Supply Management  regarding why  the concept that was decided. 
  • Supply Chain involved very late: The people who will deliver i.e. suppliers through the supply chain folks and even internal manufacturing folks are
    frequently not involved in the innovation team at the early stages. One
    reason is that marketing wants to figure out what might work in the market
    with customers. And involving the typical manufacturing/supply chain folks
    can mean some serious “can’t be done’s.” Not that these folks
    are naysayers but they know that inability to deliver could become a big
    problem as market launch draws near.
  • Late involvement doesn’t help: Involving people who’ll deliver later in the
    innovation process hobbles the innovation game. Because working on the
    CEO’s mandate people just seem to trudge along without the passion to
    create something that is better than the concept that market research
    revealed. What results is a sub-optimal product that does not entirely
    capture the essence of the concept that the top leadership had approved.
    Market success and sales are lukewarm at best.

So what is the solution to this ESI problem? Probably a first step is buy in and
commitment from top leadership, at the early stages when alternative concepts
are being evaluated. If top leadership is engaged at the early stages the
C-Suite discussion will bring up execution issues and people that can make
things happen will be tapped and suppliers who can deliver will find themselves
being invited to the innovation team meetings. For even the greatest idea is
lost without great execution that Early Supplier Involvement (ESI) can bring.

About StratoServe.

The Sales Funnel is not a one way funnel -web analytics data now confirms

The Sales Funnel is the holy grail of marketing
and ultimately sales and business itself. And now it turns out that the sales
funnel is not a one way funnel like funnels are. A funnel has a wide mouth
where the liquid is poured in and it comes out from the stem of the funnel
safely into a bottle or container like a gas tank with a narrow mouth. Gravity
is central to the idea of the sales funnel. If you have lots of leads and have
great qualifying mechanisms, you keep whittling down those leads to prospects,
warm prospects and that wonderful "closed" sale leading to lifetime
customer value and satisfaction.  Along with gravity, a central assumption
of the sales funnel is that the liquid (customer)has no mind of its own and
just flows downwards if you follow the right sales techniques and
principles.  Well, the idea of the one way sales funnel might be wrong.
Web analytics data as discussed
in an earlier post now seems to open up a perennial question. There is a
lot of back and forth between customer and selling firm and the funnel may not
be one way, after all. 

The Marketing Science
Institute's research priorities for 2012-14 points to this huge shift in
its "Priority 2:  Rethinking the Journey to Purchase and Beyond,
Whether Conceptualized as a Funnel or a More Iterative Process." 

The iteration
was not easy to see  in collected data earlier. If someone bought a car brand and you did
a survey, you might learn that that an important role model preferred the car
brand, the customer had a bad experience with the previous brand, there was a
great deal offered…. and so on. But all this if a) you surveyed b) the survey
was well designed and c) the customer actually participated. In fact, the last
one about participation could be most challenging.

No longer is
actual customer data so hard to gather. As explained in a previous post, every
visit to the website before the visitor places an order or fills up a contact
form can be tracked. So you know things like how many times the individual
visited the website, through direct visits or through organic search, AdWords,
social media or banners before "converting." And this does not count
any offline interactions like visiting the retail store, talking with a
co-worker at the water cooler or any discussions with visiting family over the
Columbus Day week end today. It also excludes anyone who decides to call in
their order and does not use the web ordering system.

Given that the
Sales Funnel has ruled our thinking for so long, it is ironic that the one way
nature of the sales funnel is being challenged by the mere availability
of data via free sources like Google Analytics. People do go back and forth
on the funnel, one more way that the Internet is changing business. Contact StratoServe.