Recently, I had a chat with Kate Visconti, Managing Director of  Acumen Solutions, USA who takes care of the Sales Acceleration and Change Management Practice. She is also an Adjunct Professor with Santa Clara University, USA. It was an interesting & engaging conversation and here are the highlights of the discussion.

What was interesting to me was the points she made for successful adoption of technology in an enterprise - the importance of business process re-engineeering, change management as much the software or technology selection & upgrade itself and looking at the implementation itself thro' a customer lens.

I have believed for many years that these were the most critical aspects when it comes successful technology adoption & usage and often enough importance & attention is not paid within the organization and the stake holders to this area. Kate brought this out beautifully and reinforced this very well during our conversation.

Here is the summary of our chat:

Swami: How do you approach a technology implementation and what do you believe are key differences that you or your organization focuses on?

Kate: We always start any technology implementation with a first principle approach - how is the enterprise and their stakeholders currently thinking, feeling and doing with their workflow right now. We strongly focus on process innovation and not a run-of-the-mill implementation like other system integrators. We conduct multi-day workshops, build customer personas, enable collaborative  conversations across cross-functional groups to understand current issues and identify opportunities for optimization and automation. For us change management is as much important as the technology implementation itself. That's a key difference we believe we bring to the table & where I have seen successful technology transformation happen. 

Swami: When it comes to selecting or shortlisting technology platforms or software etc. and adopting technology across the organization, which are areas that are normally missed by them in your experience?

Kate: Most of them don't have an 'outside-in' approach and we bring that to play when we work with organizations. When a tech platform or software is selected, there is a lot of discussion on features, benefits etc. but very often during implementation, they don't see the technology from a customer's lens. We do a lot of shadowing to know how the current processes work, do customer research, customer experience benchmarking and often these are areas that are not often not given enough attention or missed most often.

Swami: Enterprises spend millions of dollars on acquiring licenses for tech & software and you have seen many successful technology implementations, adoption and transformation across enterprises, what do you believe is the secret sauce for their success?

Kate: What I have seen in enterprises where there have been successful technology transformation or adoption is that if there is an Engaged Executive Sponsor, the chances of success improve by at least 2 times! An engaged leadership committee which defines the vision & organizational priorities makes the next difference in the success as the technology road map, business outcomes and priorities get defined well. Engaged Stakeholders make the next difference - end-users, managers, executives, customers as they influence adoption and validate user experience across the enterprise. These I believe are the secret sauce to success and where I have seen this happen in organizations, things have been successful most of the time.

Swami: You also emphasize a lot on hand-holding the enterprises which your organization does after you implement the technology or software. That's a very interesting point that you make and in fact what kind of metrices do you track and for how long do you suggest one must do this?

Kate: I normally suggest we do this for 60-90 days ramp cycle depending on the scale and complexity of the project and implementation. We track a lot of metrices post implementation like:

1. Project Success - Both by way of budget and time
2. Adoption -  Quality of inputs that go into using the software or technology within the enterprise after roll-out - Timeliness, Completeness of the information, Not just no. of log-ins but demonstration of new user benefits and referrals etc.
3. Business before vs Business After - Benchmarking and looking at % increase in agreed business metrics, % decrease in, say, sales cycle or service cycle reduction etc.

These are some of the sample key metrices one should look at.

Swami: There is often an underestimation of the services costs which enterprises need to spend to make the technology transformation successful. There is a lot of focus on licenses fees, infra needed, maintenance & renewal fees etc. but much less attention is paid to services & costs associated with it. Right?

Kate: I totally agree with you, Swami. In my estimate, these may vary by project scope, complexity and these are directional just to give you a perspective that enterprises need to factor these services cost for a successful technology transformation - up to 30-40% factor for change management, engaged leadership, customer research, building alignment workshops, post implementation program adoption costs etc. These are over and above license fees and customization costs they would incur during the course of a 3-4 year project or program.

Swami: I saw that right at the start of our chat, you mentioned don't treat it like an IT project. What did you mean by that? 

Kate: I often quote from the point made by Forrester Research Chairman and Chief Executive Officer George Colony made on technology projects, that in this age it is transforming from IT projects to Business Technology projects thinking. This is a key difference to successful technology selection, implementation, adoption and usage. I also say - Don't treat it like an IT project but treat it like a customer project!

Last week, we saw Microsoft announcing the acquisition of Linked-In for US $ 26.2 billion. With the acquisition of Linked-In, Microsoft now has access to over 400 million accurate profiles of professionals from Linked-In across the world. Over the last year or two, I have been seeing this trend where large software vendors like Salesforce.com acquiring Jigsaw and Oracle acquiring Blue Kai, who predominantly own data. So, this got me to think, what are the implications one can expect or must see over the next few years with these kind of trends?

Meanwhile, I was also reading an interesting article written by Sangeet Paul Choudhary in his blog, where it is mentioned how Linked-In was trying to get into the enterprise CRM space but lacked the infrastructure & tools( post written by Myk Pono) and Sangeet's view on how Microsoft can take advantage of this acquisition but lacks the understanding of network & data layers.

The key questions that came-up to me was - What does it take for a software vendor to work  & behave like a data vendor or as a platform player? Also, how can all these data seamlessly flow into Microsoft's strategy of leveraging its Enterprise CRM, Windows, Azure, gaming business etc.?

To understand & appreciate this, first we need to look at some of Google's acquisition of DoubleClick, Andriod etc. way back in 2007 & 2004 which made a huge difference to their platform strategy. As Google transformed itself from a search to an online advertising platform, many of these acquisitions made sense - with Android becoming the defacto mobile OS platform while still Microsoft was managing Nokia as a Mobile Phone company and not as a platform.This led to the death of Nokia as a mobile phone brand, as Microsoft thought of it like a licensing business(which is their DNA) more than a mobile computing platform. 

If Microsoft needs to take advantage of Linked-In's acquisition & their data, then - the transformation of Microsoft as a platform company is critical. For example,they need to look at  Office365 as a central platform or a hub is critical. This free & paid subscription based platform must leverage the 400 million Linked-In professional's data for their own personal devices & computing services- Home PCs, mobiles, gaming consoles etc. This then can change the game for Microsoft. However, if we look back at history, neither Hotmail or Nokia was leveraged to its full by Microsoft due its software vendor thinking. Microsoft will have to change its strategy & execution this time.

The next most important question was the issue of Privacy. What is the sanctity of privacy information owned by Linked-In & do the limited or full permissions that was given to Linked-In by these 400 million professionals, hold good for Microsoft too or how does Microsoft use these in its platform intelligently without diluting any of the privacy issues that may arise? For this, the permission-based sharing professional community that Linked-In nurtured, needs to thrive, without advertising as the primary revenue driver unlike other online platforms like Google, Facebook etc.

For software vendors to transform & think like data vendors, it forces, disruptive platform thinking from them. It requires a services, community, subscription & marketplace mindset with a strong interplay between them. Only time will tell if Microsoft is able to make this mindset shift but transform they must, if they need to play this game on the web for a leadership position.

I was at the Loyalty Summit in Mumbai where I shared my thoughts on how "How IoT is the third age of marketing technology". Here's the presentation.

IoT is truly giving a voice to products! Also, it is changing the way data is getting generated from many products based on usage and giving customer engagement a new meaning.

When I talk and work with people and clients on many assignments, the challenge I find for enterprises to be customer-centric is, how to bring marketing & technology together. Increasingly, technology is getting adopted in many customer-centric channels like never before and marketing is getting more & more real time & thefore technology is becoming a nerve-centre for marketing. The future , I have always thought is the changing( or can I call it merging) role of marketing & technology folks and the need for them to work together.

I read an interesting article today, if there is a need for a CMTO ( Chief Marketing Technology Officer)! I thought this was quite interesting. Who  is a CMTO and what does he or she do?

" A chief marketing technology officer (CTMO) — use whatever label you prefer — is simply the lead marketing technologist, organizing and managing that team. He or she reports to the CMO, not the CIO. Again, this is ultimately a marketing responsibility. There should be collaboration with IT, of course, assuring that marketing fully leverages its infrastructure and complies with technical governance standards. But collaborating is better than being solely dependent."

I find this very thought provoking and I do feel this is doable. The role of the CMTO is to ensure the right technology - either already invested is leveraged across the enterprise or if to be invested is partnered and led by this role - to collaboratively ensure this is adopted enterprise-wide.

Finally, customers must see the benefit of technology in their interaction experience with any company. The role of the CMTO is to make this happen.