Aligning Markets and Technology for Business Process Improvement is a Must Have in a Tough Economy

Good businesses are always interested in reducing the guesswork, cycle times, and costs associated with product development and going to market. At the same time, the challenge is to increase customer satisfaction, loyalty and profitability. Since the economic conditions have deteriorated in the last 18 months or so, aligning the markets and customers you serve with technology solutions is now a must have instead of nice option in a more forgiving business climate.

Part of how to reduce the guesswork, cycle times, and costs associated with product development and marketing for many companies is aligning what they know about the markets they serve, or could serve, and their distinctive technology capabilities. The next step is to translate this into customer and user relevant products and services that are positively engaging and highly valued.

There are a few high visibility examples that do this well for specific customers. One is the iPhone. So well are the user experiences and business results that the combination of T-Mobile, Google, their G1 smart phone and the Android operating system; are challenged to be fast followers of the iPhone. The same with Sony Eriksson, Nokia and the X1 Smart Phone; playing catch-up with touchscreens, high performance networks, and hopefully, positive user experiences to compete with the iPhone’s market aligned technology success (that has bled into non-Apple markets) for critical market share and revenue.

Companies do not have to be large titans to align their markets and technologies for success. How to do this is a discipline and a process that even firms with excellent marketing and technology resources frequently find difficult.

Sean Van Tyne, the AVP of User Experience for Technology Strategy at LPL Financial www.beanvantyne.com and I have developed a specific process to align markets and technologies. We did this to meet the needs of several clients, many of which we worked on together with great results prior to Sean joining LPL Financial. We have CEOs, CIOs, Marketing Directors, Product Managers and Designers asking us for advice on how to improve the relationship between their markets and technologies to not only lower costs, but also to help with customer loyalty, margin retention and top line growth.

In response to this, we decided to put together a half day seminar. We started preparing over 14 months ago, targeting October 2008.  When we started, we thought the economy would take a downturn. We could not have imaged what would take place in the coming months. These changes make business process improvement frameworks like Market Aligned User Experience more urgent than ever.

I hope you can join us at the seminar. Here is the information-

Market Aligned User Experience Seminar

Date: Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Time: 7:30am – 8:00 am: Continental breakfast, registration and Networking
800am – 12:00pm: The Market Aligned User Experience Seminar

Place: Doubletree Hotel San Diego, Del Mar, 11915 El Camino Real, San Diego, California 92130-2539.

To register or for more information-  www.beanvantyne.com

Add comment September 26th, 2008