citizen Evangelist

Found an interesting note in RedHerring. Apparently there was a study in 2004 which provided some market feedback on the latest Trends in the software pricing arena.

Some 496 respondents, both vendor executives and enterprises, were surveyed in the September study, Key Trends in Software Pricing and Licensing. Licensing company Macrovision, the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA), Centralized Electronic Licensing User Group (CELUG), and SoftSummit jointly conducted the survey.

I haven’t received this type of feedback during my experience working in the ASP market for the last 9 years. However, this may be more in line with those software organizations who are making the transition from installed software to hosted models. I wonder what ever came of this study.

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When I was young, I attended a “lab” school. This was essentially a school designed to teach teachers how to teach… and one of the bi-products was that students were taught by teachers in training.

I suppose in the first six years of my life, I was subjected to more testing that most folks face through their entire scholastic program. As a result, I’ve always had an affinity for the various tests that one can be given.

Since I decided to return for my MBA, I’ve taken a couple of these that appear to be gaining greater relevance in my life. The first is the MBTI (Myers-Briggs Type Indicator). Some information on Myers-Briggs can be found here.

As it would turn out, my “Type” is ENTP. There are some descriptions provided here. Of course, this is just a sample of the information that can be found here.

It’s interesting how many ways this information can be used when looking at organizations and their group dynamics. There used to be a number of places where you could go to get access to a free analysis. Those sites appear to have discontinued this offering. I suppose that you can get started here, but there will be some costs. Additionally, I know that you can typically get access to a test through a local university and many HR organizations offer these to their employees as well.

Thank goodness that there are a diversity of perspectives and personalities.

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In the same spirit offered by Charles, I think it is important to be self-reflective and learn from our observations. I tend to get ahead of myself and loose people along the way. Thanks for reminding me that this blog exercise is about more than just me.

As producers, I think we forget this far too often. We get so damn enamored with the toys we’re building that we think that everyone else on the planet should understand the importance of what we’re trying to accomplish. Funny, isn’t it? Charles… I’ll work on it.

Cheryl reinforces this message with her post on designing with the customer in mind. The thing I loved about this was the fact that it touches on two of the areas that I’m most interested in: Crowdsourcing & Personalization. I really do believe that we can all have it our way… the challenge is in making sure that we can get it at prices we can afford.

Peter also does a great job in touching on this point. One method to personalize is to create an experience that is convenient. We are creatures of habit and appreciate the ability to return to the familiar. If the vendor makes that process convenient and enjoyable, we’re continue to patronize those establishments. Now, that is valuable.

It seems that Jared also appreciates personalization of his experience. Reputation systems (such as ratings engines) make it easy for users to discover new products and services. Look for people you know and see what they like. Look for products and sort by those which are most popular. Make my experience relevant by anticipating my needs based upon what I like. Nice. Fun. Easy. That is valuable also.

Now, Tami picks up where Jared failed to go: don’t ask me for information unless you plan on showing me the value. Right on. Aren’t we all just sick to death of the million question surveys that result in absolutely no value? Surveys suck. I say that with confidence even though I continue to go back to them as a discovery tool. We really need to get a better option on the market quickly.

I’m working with Eric on a way to do just that. You know… the key element which seems to be missing in most vendor approaches is reciprocity. The whole belief that if they are going to ask something of me (a customer) they had damned well better be respectful enough to show me the same damn courtesy. I’m sick and tired of “buying” into a solution only to find out that “for a mere ____ extra” I can get what I was thought was included in the purchase.

As Brian points out, the “let’s segment our customer base” process is leading to companies chopping up their customers like a mess of hamburger. That’s a nasty thought isn’t it? While nasty, I think it creates a fairly accurate depiction of what’s going on. When you take a living being.. .an experience, and chop it up that way….. it can’t and won’t survive. Further, if you leave it like that, it gets real ugly really fast.

Isn’t it time that we get real?

We are all part of this community… and the more we try to “Extract Value” before we create it…. the more zero sum game events take place.

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Many businesses find great wealth in focusing on the small things. For example, banks and other financial institutions are very fond of the benefits of partial percentages and fractional cents. When collected together, the sum of those parts is quite exciting.

What if there were an opportunity to do the same thing with time? After all, time is money, and based upon my earlier arbitrage post, wouldn’t there be an opportunity to do some great things?

Let’s start with calculating my spare time. Each year, I have time I can invest in projects of my fancy. That time can be broken down into these categories (assuming 365 days per year):
hours: 8,760
minutes: 525,600
seconds: 31,536,000

Now, in most cases, I’m going to have certain amounts of that time allocated to things that I really need. Those things are going to include sleeping, eating, and working.

Let’s say that I’m going to sleep 8 hours per day. On average I eat two real meals, and I spend and hour on each. For work, I’ll falsely state that I only spend 8 hours each day at work, five days a week (40 hours).  Of course, I do get sick time, vacation, and holidays. For argument sake, let’s say that there are 1′840 hours which are allocated as work (2080 work hour possible per year - 80 hours for holiday - 80 hours for vacation - 80 hours for sick/personal time).

The annual time allocated will include:

Sleep: 2,920 hours (8hrs x 365 days)
Eating: 730 hours (2hrs x 365 days)
Working: 1,840 hours

Allocated time: 5,490 hours per year

Now, let’s figure out how much time I have left to discretionally invest.

Available hours: 8,760 hours
- Allocated hours: 5,490 hours
======================
Free hours: 3,270 hours

Stated in the same terms as above:
Free hours: 3,270
Minutes: 196,200
Seconds: 11,772,000

Now, imagine that I can get 24 seconds of your time to complete a small project. What would that be worth? In general, the amount of time required to complete a project will take much longer than this, but we’re talking about less than 1/2 of a minute. This represents
0.00020% of your free time per year…

Now, imagine that I can get 10% of the population to give me 45 seconds of time.

Population Clock:
U.S. 299,315,488
World 6,530,710,933
13:14 GMT (EST+5) Jul 26, 2006

US: 29.9 million people x 24 seconds = 718,357,171 seconds
World: 653.1 million people x 24 seconds = 15,673,706,239 seconds

Let’s make that tangible:
US time: 11.9 million minutes = 199,544 hours = 8,314 days = 22.8 years
World time: 261.2 million minutes = 4.4 million hours = 181,408 days = 497 years

Now.. we can argue about my assumptions… but let’s create one more calculation. What if I would normally need to pay minimum wage to accomplish these tasks, but was able to offer a solution which eliminated that cost? What type of value creation are we talking about?

US: 199,544 hours x $5.15 USD = $ 1,027,650 USD
World: 4.4 million hours x $5.15 USD = $ 22,422,107 USD

Now.. imagine I could get that accomplished more than one time per year.

Following the example of Linus’ Law, which states “given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow,” I believe that we can expand this to state that given enough eyeballs, all problems are shallow. And, I think that the companies who figure out how to leverage this crowdsourcing framework are going to drive the next wave of innovation.

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According to one analyst (Gartner I believe), the F1000 spends 1 trillion on marketing annually. $1 Trillion USD. Not million. Not Billion. Trillion.

The Evangelists for Customer Evangelists once again reinforce my intuition with the note on “Marketing isn’t broke, Its Broken.” I think I’m going to need to subscribe to Forrester at some point… if Peter Kim is on the angle I think he may be. His write-up: Reinventing the marketing Organization offers the following executive summary:

Today’s marketing organizations are broken. Three out of four marketing
departments have reorganized in the past two years. Almost 80% of marketers don’t influence a critical customer interaction like customer service, and 85% don’t even own the “four Ps” of marketing anymore. To regain effectiveness, marketers must transition to a Customer-Centric Marketing Organization. Doing so requires: 1) redesigning P&Ls and metrics; 2) shifting culture away from marketing communications; 3) investing in a customer relationship infrastructure; and 4) rethinking agency relationships.

I’ve been toying with the idea of using “Fire Marketing“ as a provocative claim for the solution we’re working on building. I’ve been working around the marketing organization for most of my career so I’m well within that definition, but its clear that something needs to be done.

As I’ve continued to observe what is going on in the market, it is my assumption that marketing is largely being executed as a functional role, not a strategic mission. In its classical sense, the four Ps (Price, Place, Product, & Promotion) implies so much more than what most marketers are responsible for in today’s world. In most of the organizations I’ve worked with, Pricing is held by finance or the executives. Product is owned by engineering or product management. Place is owned by operations. Promotion is owned by marketing.

Peter Drucker once said “The aim of marketing is to make selling superfluous.” When the four responsibilities are separated like that, its really hard for me to call the function marketing. It seems only logical that it should be called promotion. If the only level you have to adjust is promotion, no wonder so much money is spent and spent so poorly.

This is a symptom of the organizational dysfunction that exists… and I suppose is, in part, the responsibility of marketers to educate their companies as to the right path.

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