- Customer Service Strategies and the Role of IT
31 Jul 09 | Single Topic Reports
IT services are a key route to adding business value and resilience in a recession. Essentially, our research shows firms are becoming more specialised or more integrated so as to create better experiences for their customers. They are moving rapidly into new, innovative services and organisation models are becoming more complex as firms seek to address a multitude of new markets at various stages of development.
Enterprise IT is well positioned to play a major role in services because services generally require a closer cooperation between the business unit and IT than is often the case in products. But to seize this growing role, IT must become much more aware of the business design issues that make all the difference in determining the profitability or ‘stickiness’ of a customer service offering.
This report can help you and your colleagues understand the value that IT can offer in creating attractive business services to better serve your customers and provides key case studies of how certain organisations are already succeeding in this area. The report will appeal not only to CIOs but also any business leader interested in product marketing, innovation and business strategy.
Further information
If you would like to understand this topic further and its implications for your organisation, contact your Account Representative.
- Advanced Models for Business/IT Innovation
18 May 09 | Presentation
Driven by global competition, firms in the developed world are seeking new approaches to adding value, searching for unmet demand beyond today’s highly contested markets. At the LEF, we see three basic approaches to this. The first is smarter products that have more functionality and can command a premium price. The second is a superior customer experience through careful design of the customer interface and a ‘customer centric’ culture. The third is enhanced services that offer value and support that the customer cannot easily realize for themselves.
Kirt Mead, who leads the LEF EP research in this area, will discuss how the most advanced firms are innovating along these three dimensions, how these strategies are being affected by recent economic events, and on the implications for both the business and the IT organization.
See event: From the Boardroom to the Cloud – Are Business and IT Organized for the Future? (18 May 2009)
- The Global Recession - IT's Role, Impact and Future
30 Apr 09 | Position Papers
In this paper, we seek to provide a broad overview of IT's surprisingly important – and not sufficiently recognised – role in the current recession, as well as the effects of the recession on Enterprise IT. It will appeal not only to the CIO community but also the business leader community by exposing you to ideas and stimulating discussion. In the first half of the document, we explain how in many ways this recession was enabled and exacerbated by IT. The second section looks closely at Enterprise IT and the IT industry itself, and lastly we look ahead as history shows us that deep recessions often clear the way for new and more productive economic landscapes. Finally, we highlight a few individuals who we believe are ahead of tomorrow’s curve.
Read David Moschella on Financial Times (24 July 2009) discussing Recession Reveals the Dark Side of Advanced IT
Read David Moschella on Investors Business Daily (24 June 2009) discussing Did Complicated High Tech Help Spur Meltdown?
Read David Moschella on Forbes.com (1 June 2009) discussing IT's Role in the Recession
Read David Moschella on BusinessWeek (11 May 2009) discussing Are We Losing Control of Technology?
- Customer Centricity, the Marketing Function, and the Role of IT
30 Sep 08 | Presentation
Whatever homilies one hears about the importance of the customer, few firms are really customer centric today, not really concerned about the quality of the customer’s experience. But now a much more tech-facile and demanding customer is changing this situation. Ever more facile with Web 2.0 and other advanced technologies, customers are forcing their suppliers to raise their game, especially regarding the quality of the experience offered over the Internet channel.
In this web conference, Kirt Mead outlines some of the innovative approaches leading firms are using to build successful relationships with the new customer and re-invent the marketing function for a technology age.
See event: Customer Centricity, the Marketing Function, and the Role of IT (30 September 2008)
To view the recording for this web conference, please click on 'View Recording' link below:
View Recording
- Customer Centricity and the Role of IT
29 Sep 08 | Single Topic Reports
There is a general trend that we have observed in business organizations of every type: they are becoming more ‘customer-centric’ – that is, providing their customers with a higher-quality, more personalized and integrated experience, particularly over the Internet. Generally speaking, customer centricity means moving away from the traditional, inside-out, ‘we know best’ orientation of most companies, and towards an outside-in perspective in which the customer is placed at the centre of the relationship, and the supplier’s organization boundaries are largely transparent. Customer-centric firms also recognize that customers live in a wider business ecosystem, where communities, aggregators and other actors play an increasingly important role.
We usually find that IT needs to change to support changes in the business and its organization. But in this case the reverse also appears to be true. When a company begins to do substantial business over the web, customer centricity often becomes an imperative and begins to drive larger cultural and organizational change within the firm.
Achieving true customer centricity requires a number of specific organizational goals, actions and skills that few firms or their IT departments have fully in place today. Technology is blurring the lines between the Marketing and IT functions, as companies and their staff require a double-deep mix of skills that leverages the marketing potential of the web, but also meets the complex information management needs of the enterprise. While historically corporate Marketing and IT often had a distant and not particularly warm relationship, now increasingly they need to function as one effective team. The CIO often faces the choice of aggressively seeking to build this new partnership, or of watching Enterprise IT get passed over in favour of other alternatives.
- Enterprise vs Product IT - The Influence of Industry and the Business Model on IT Positioning and Strategy
26 Mar 08 | Presentation
CIOs often discuss approaches to IT strategy and to reaching alignment with the business without explicit reference to the actual situation of the business or its industry. But a recent research project by the Leading Edge Forum shows that IT’s positioning and ability to engage with business leaders is strongly influenced by the company’s industry and organization. Generally speaking, Enterprise IT is better positioned in a services company (that is, hotels, financial services) than it is in a product company (high tech, chemicals). It is better positioned in a company that is focused on one business than it is in a diverse group. Enterprise IT has particular problems in high tech groups where the product divisions have their own ‘product IT’ groups developing IT embedded in the products. IT is best positioned in industries with strong needs for operational integration, such as airlines or automobiles.
In this web conference, Kirt Mead, who led the Enterprise vs Product IT project, will discuss these results in more detail, illustrating key points with example firms that were interviewed. He will identify some rough guidelines for how Enterprise IT should best proceed in each industry and organizational situation.
See event: Enterprise vs Product IT - The Influence of Industry and the Business Model on IT Positioning and Strategy (26 March 2008)
- Enterprise IT vs. Product IT – Factors Influencing Cooperation and Integration
3 Dec 07 | Single Topic Reports
In this report, for the sake of brevity, we will call the top three areas in the figure ‘product IT’ – IT that is embedded in or essential to what the business offers to its customers. The ability of the traditional IT department (‘Enterprise IT’) to participate in these new developments varies considerably from one firm to another. In many companies, particularly those selling high-tech products, ‘product IT’ is in the hands of engineering or product development groups (‘Product IT’), and Enterprise IT often has difficulty participating at all. But in firms selling services, particularly financial services, the cooperation between Enterprise IT and Product IT is often close and fruitful.
- Drivers of Business IT – Product IT Cooperation
15 Nov 07 | Presentation
Recent LEF research demonstrates that the ability of Business IT to play a significant role in IT embedded in products and services depends on many factors, including the industry, the firm’s organization, and the organization of IT. The leadership of the CIO is also an important factor. In this session, Kirt discussed several examples of success and failure and draw lessons for CIOs.
See event: Business IT vs Product IT – Cooperation or Competition? (15 November 2007) - The Impact of Information Technology – an Industry-Specific Perspective
15 Nov 07 | Presentation
While a great deal has been written about the impact of IT on large enterprises, the vast majority has been generic in nature, with little effort to recognize the fundamentally different ways that IT affects specific industry sectors. Our research clearly shows that how IT is positioned and managed differs sharply depending upon whether a business is primarily focused on producing physical products (cars, food, appliances), services (healthcare, transportation, education), or information (banking, insurance, media). In this session, David Moschella described the overall role and impact of IT across major economic sectors, and what this means to the enterprise IT mandate.
- Case Study - Raytheon Space and Airborne Systems
15 Nov 07 | Presentation
Raytheon Company, with 2006 sales of $20.3 billion, is a technology leader specializing in defence, homeland security and other government markets throughout the world. The company consists of six businesses providing state-of-the-art electronics, mission systems integration and other capabilities in the areas of sensing; effects; and command, control, communications and intelligence systems, as well as a broad range of mission support services. These businesses cooperate on integrated product solutions to meet emerging DoD architectures and mission requirements. In this session, Terry explained the role that IT performs to enable increased cross-divisional cooperation.
See event: Business IT vs Product IT – Cooperation or Competition? (15 November 2007)