Replicating the Business Strategy of Others
Information Management Magazine, March 2006
Over the past few years, we have constantly referred to enterprise metadata as a business complete with products, services, solutions, processes and customer service support. This business thought process is formed from the beliefs and principles held within a business model. Business models convert technology to economic value-add components by adding innovation to the economic model of the business itself. So where do you look for business models? Being a bit on the lazy side, I simply steal from other businesses, as the following list indicates.
Dell: Cut Out All of the Crap and Eliminate the Bureaucracy. Dell, a multibillion-dollar manufacturer of personal computers, was founded by Michael Dell at University of Texas and is one of the world's largest corporations. Their success is a result of focusing on improving delivery times, cutting operation costs and maintaining customer service levels. The shorthand version of their business strategy is that Dell cuts out all of the crap and bureaucracy from the business process. How can we eliminate the wasted process steps, quality impediments and the technology hurdles when deploying enterprise metadata? Clearly defining the business processes is a great starting place, then working to streamline them to the highest degree possible. Perhaps we could set up a prize for suggesting the elimination of the stupidest thing we do that gets in the way of progress.
IBM: Add Services and Solutions Galore. IBM proved that you can take any organization, no matter how big, and change the focus of the business from products to services and solutions. Enterprise metadata must do the same thing as technology, standards and methodologies continue to evolve. Our value-add will come more from the services and packaged solutions that address the needs of the business. This change will force us to focus less on increasing functionality and more on the processes and the quality of the solution. While this may sound wimpy coming from a 22-year veteran of IT, the reality is that standardization, outsourcing and innovation will drive you toward IBM's business model sooner or later.
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Harley Davidson: Brand Excessively, Tattoos for Everyone. Eighteen percent of Harley owners are willing to get the brand logo tattooed in places that are better left unsaid. Branding is the process of developing, guiding and managing the perceptions of the organization. Selling, marketing and branding metadata management is about creating a perception of value. Metadata management will have a perception, either by design or by default. What does your management or architecture community think of your metadata program? What have you done in the last three weeks to impact or alter that belief? The totality of the metadata brand includes the visual, emotional, rational and cultural image associated with metadata as perceived by your customers, suppliers, management and architecture community. The whole idea is to manage the total package and value-add of the program. No, I have not tattooed "metadata rules" on my arm. Well, not yet anyway.
Lowes: Customer Service - Hire for Knowledge and Service Attitude. Peter Glenn once commented, "We don't give good service, we don't get good service and worst of all, we don't expect good service." The world of IT clearly has a long way to go to get customer service right. While many people look at us as metadata, the product, the reality is that we enable metadata technology. Technology enablement results when you take your products and add knowledge, experience and a service attitude. While not every IT person can be converted to a service specialist overnight, the transformation to the Free Agent Nation (See Daniel Pink) will require us to move beyond the product focus in the near future.1 Recently I was involved with a project to roll out advanced collaboration products to a small community of users. After weeks of discussion on the architecture, technology and infrastructure, no one mentioned the need to actually support the end user. While your vendors or partners may provide hardware and software support, they don't provide very good client support.
Dutch Boy: Design - Don't Be Better, Be Different. You got to love the redesign of the paint bucket that Dutch Boy has done in the last few years. The traditional paint bucket has been around for a very long time, and no one ever questioned why. Why is the bucket so heavy, why is it so hard to open and close, why does the paint always drip on the floor? Finally someone did ask why, and they created a product that is both better and different. Metadata needs to be on a continuous improvement plan in order to develop value over the long term. Expertise in metadata is not about applying known best practices to a well-defined problem set. As one Greek philosopher said, "Anyone can drive a ship in calm water." True innovation comes from applying metadata to new areas where value has yet to be defined.
Home Depot: Self Service - You Can Do It and We Can Help. Many years ago, my father owned an electrical supply store, and I can still remember many of the product lines, like the 5230-I receptacle or the 1451-I switch. Our business was not a self-service organization, and unlike Home Depot, our slogan was not, "How can we help?" We assumed that the customer wanted high-end support and not a do-it-yourself design. That was the 1980s, and most retail stores have moved from the expert-guided model to the self-service model. Information technology has traditionally been pushed out as an expert-driven business model. In the early years of computers, end users were not exposed to graphical user interfaces and personal productivity software. Those days are long gone. The sophistication of the end user continues to grow, which enables us to move toward the self-service model. If an 80-year-old can sign on to Amazon.com, order a book, pay online, track delivery and even post a review, then we can self-serve the metadata environment.
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