Content Toll Road
Spath was on his way to the Enterprise Touchpoint Collection Summit 03, the company offsite he was sponsoring to get everyone creating content for external consumption. His own presentation was going to be on the benefits of a content distributional strategy. He was sure that his memo on not reading at work would come up. That seemed to be the unavoidable topic these days.
It was a fine day for the drive. It was a fine day to contemplate where the summit would take them. The sign pointing the way to the toll road were up ahead. Attraction marketing sucking the customes on to the road, a road with hopefully only a few exists, so the customers stay on the road and pay the next toll. But, back to attraction marketing, those points of initial contact the customer has with the product that will lead them to more contacts and to the sale and the sales, providing just a small bit of attraction content and a link waiting for conversion. Take me to the next link. Then, the next. Does that sound like CRM, well it's not. The CRM system sits over to the side recording the contacts, but the contacts have to be built into the documents and they drive the response and fullment elements. There has to be something to link to, something to get. But, we're ahead of ourselves here as we drive from sign to sign, from sign to entrance ramp.
So Spath was on the toll road. It seemed like any other highway. Just then he hit the toll booth and went digging for change. These guys only took cash, so like a software startup trying to meet the standards established for software documentation by the market dominators, Spath had to scratch around for change. Cars were piling up behind him as he frantically searched for the money to move on down the road. Toll booths and market barriers, the entry barrier, look pretty much the same: stakeholder expectations and costs.
The toll road didn't really work hard to sell itself like say a can of corn where you buy a branded good, because you always buy it, and you buy it without thinking too far in advance. You take the toll road when you have the money, otherwise you drive the long way around. If this toll road had been software, you would have seen a lot more signs in the form of press mentions generated by press releases, you would have seen a few white papers, you would have requested a discussion with a sales rep, then you would have met the sales rep and gotten a proposal before finally buying. In the B2B arena, it takes five direct mail pieces to make the sale.
Driving down the toll road is hardly like using software. You get your tips of the day from the billboards and the skywatch traffic segment on the radio. You might even call for technical support or directions on your cell phone. And, you might have to pull over to consult a map or in the case where you've run out of gas or had some other system failure.
No, software has more content involved. If it's not the user manual or the online help or the web based content, it might be the marcom for the next upgrade. Spath thought about this as he pulled into the next toll booth luckily he had the money situation resolved. One day he'd get an EZ-tag, but not today.
Before the toll booth, Spath could see the pre-sale enactment chain before him. That was behind him now. Exiting the toll booth he had the post-sale enactment chain ahead of him. Ah, the sign for the service island. Yes, he was sold. He'd pull in and buy some 3rd party, complementing vendor goods. He'd avoid the EZ-tag upgrade. He'd be experiencing more of the value chain, and the extended information touchpoint collection. Heck, he might even engage with the experiential touchpoint collection. The guy taking Spath's breakfast taco order was one of those touchpoints. How would the CRM system capture this contact.
Getting back on the road Spath watched the mile markers click by. Documents, man months, and of course dollars the main concern of CFOs flowing from the company to the customer and back.
Imagining the Italian countryside, Spath runs by a billboard full of Italian words. Translation, globalization, internationalization, localization wait down the road that the enterprise touchpoint collection follows.
Spath then realizes that he'd come to his exit. As a customer, he'd pay one last toll, the exit barrier, the last market barrier. He wondered about the exit costs of his own products. He was sure that those costs don't show up in his total cost of ownership (TCO).
He'd be leaving the toll road behind even as he mastered it. He'd make the trip again, but he was no longer held hostage to the enactment chain. Instead, the experience and his expertise would bring him back to the road. Maybe he'd remember to get a roll of quaters, or an EZ-tag before his next trip. Maybe there wouldn't be any market barriers. Maybe the tolls would be lower. He wouldn't need a map again. The toll road has so many touchpoints and hardly any duplication of content by functional business units. The toll road had an optimized enterprise touchpoint collection, which resulted from an optimized content distributional strategy.
So pulling into the conference, it was apparent to Spath that the information touchpoint collection has followed him off the road. He still had to pay for this offsite, but the ROI suppored the investment. Spath wondered if there were any negative use costs associated with holding an offsite. He'd figure that out later. Well, the explicit costs anyway.
It was a fine day for the drive. It was a fine day to contemplate where the summit would take them. The sign pointing the way to the toll road were up ahead. Attraction marketing sucking the customes on to the road, a road with hopefully only a few exists, so the customers stay on the road and pay the next toll. But, back to attraction marketing, those points of initial contact the customer has with the product that will lead them to more contacts and to the sale and the sales, providing just a small bit of attraction content and a link waiting for conversion. Take me to the next link. Then, the next. Does that sound like CRM, well it's not. The CRM system sits over to the side recording the contacts, but the contacts have to be built into the documents and they drive the response and fullment elements. There has to be something to link to, something to get. But, we're ahead of ourselves here as we drive from sign to sign, from sign to entrance ramp.
So Spath was on the toll road. It seemed like any other highway. Just then he hit the toll booth and went digging for change. These guys only took cash, so like a software startup trying to meet the standards established for software documentation by the market dominators, Spath had to scratch around for change. Cars were piling up behind him as he frantically searched for the money to move on down the road. Toll booths and market barriers, the entry barrier, look pretty much the same: stakeholder expectations and costs.
The toll road didn't really work hard to sell itself like say a can of corn where you buy a branded good, because you always buy it, and you buy it without thinking too far in advance. You take the toll road when you have the money, otherwise you drive the long way around. If this toll road had been software, you would have seen a lot more signs in the form of press mentions generated by press releases, you would have seen a few white papers, you would have requested a discussion with a sales rep, then you would have met the sales rep and gotten a proposal before finally buying. In the B2B arena, it takes five direct mail pieces to make the sale.
Driving down the toll road is hardly like using software. You get your tips of the day from the billboards and the skywatch traffic segment on the radio. You might even call for technical support or directions on your cell phone. And, you might have to pull over to consult a map or in the case where you've run out of gas or had some other system failure.
No, software has more content involved. If it's not the user manual or the online help or the web based content, it might be the marcom for the next upgrade. Spath thought about this as he pulled into the next toll booth luckily he had the money situation resolved. One day he'd get an EZ-tag, but not today.
Before the toll booth, Spath could see the pre-sale enactment chain before him. That was behind him now. Exiting the toll booth he had the post-sale enactment chain ahead of him. Ah, the sign for the service island. Yes, he was sold. He'd pull in and buy some 3rd party, complementing vendor goods. He'd avoid the EZ-tag upgrade. He'd be experiencing more of the value chain, and the extended information touchpoint collection. Heck, he might even engage with the experiential touchpoint collection. The guy taking Spath's breakfast taco order was one of those touchpoints. How would the CRM system capture this contact.
Getting back on the road Spath watched the mile markers click by. Documents, man months, and of course dollars the main concern of CFOs flowing from the company to the customer and back.
Imagining the Italian countryside, Spath runs by a billboard full of Italian words. Translation, globalization, internationalization, localization wait down the road that the enterprise touchpoint collection follows.
Spath then realizes that he'd come to his exit. As a customer, he'd pay one last toll, the exit barrier, the last market barrier. He wondered about the exit costs of his own products. He was sure that those costs don't show up in his total cost of ownership (TCO).
He'd be leaving the toll road behind even as he mastered it. He'd make the trip again, but he was no longer held hostage to the enactment chain. Instead, the experience and his expertise would bring him back to the road. Maybe he'd remember to get a roll of quaters, or an EZ-tag before his next trip. Maybe there wouldn't be any market barriers. Maybe the tolls would be lower. He wouldn't need a map again. The toll road has so many touchpoints and hardly any duplication of content by functional business units. The toll road had an optimized enterprise touchpoint collection, which resulted from an optimized content distributional strategy.
So pulling into the conference, it was apparent to Spath that the information touchpoint collection has followed him off the road. He still had to pay for this offsite, but the ROI suppored the investment. Spath wondered if there were any negative use costs associated with holding an offsite. He'd figure that out later. Well, the explicit costs anyway.
posted by Dave at 8:41 AM
1 comments
