Month: July 2007 (Page 2 of 3)

We conducted our occasional poll on most pressing business drivers for providing localized content to customers during our July 11 webinar with Idiom and EMC. (See below for results.) A post-webinar email exchange about the results stimulated a discussion on the business impact of established versus emerging markets (geographic regions in which economies are still developing). How are global companies approaching growth strategies? We set out to look for indicators.

Two of the 12 Megatrends in B2B Marketing indentified by the Economist Intelligence Unit in a recent survey underscore the importance of emerging markets in reaching global executives. From the report:

“The geographic demographics of today will bear little resemblance to those of the next ten years. . . by 2017 China will become the world’s largest economy when growth is measured on purchasing power parity. . . for 2006, [study] sponsoring organizations are targeting Asia and central/eastern Europe more than the Americas and western Europe.”
“…there is a growing belief that the high-flyers of the next decade will arise from the ranks of today’s domestic companies (domcoms) in emerging markets.”

We also looked at the performance of companies reporting quarterly earnings this week. On an interactive Earnings Cheat Sheet available on wsj.com, analysts say that IBM’s expansion in Asia is a positive factor:

“In the first quarter, IBM’s Asia-Pacific revenue rose 10% to $4.5 billion, on growing demand in China and India and a turnaround in Japan. Management said in May that it plans to increase staffing in China by at least 10% in each of the next few years.”

And in commentary on Merrill Lynch’s global reach:

“Merrill’s non-U.S. revenue has been setting the pace and now accounts for more than half of its GMI total. In April, Merrill said it’s taking a $2.9 billion stake in Resona Holdings, the largest foreign investment ever in a Japanese bank.”

One question pertinent to Gilbane readers is the timing of real investment in content technologies that will enable businesses to realize potential in these markets. For what should enterprises plan, and when?

July 11 webinar attendees see other factors as more pressing drivers today. Time-to-market for simultaneous product shipments is the most important, global and product brand management least important.

These results are not surprising considering that the topic of the webinar was technical documentation for global markets. Participants were naturally inclined to be more concerned about shipping the documentation with the product and less concerned about brand management.

You’d think the CEO of a public company would have better things to do with his time than to blog anonymously about his company’s performance and trash the competition. But this seems not to be the case with John Mackey, chief executive of Whole Foods Market, whose “sock puppeting” behavior, “the act of creating a fake online identity to praise, defend or create the illusion of support for one’s self, allies or company” has now landed him in hot water with the Feds and competitors in the natural foods grocery business. Probably a gaggle of lawyers will figure out a way to solve the Mackey issue . . . at least for now.
Yet, this latest escapade got me thinking (once again) about the double-edge sword of social computing. Sometimes we can be too social – not just speaking out of turn but also crossing important organizational boundaries. In our era of instant communications, it is possible to communicate too freely.
What we need are a few good models for how we’re going to “collaborate” with one another over the Net—figuring out the boundaries without building walls. (By enterprise collaboration I mean exchanging and sharing both information and insights, to do our jobs better.) Behind all the Web 2.0 hype, I suspect there are a few pointers towards new models.
One of my current favorites for a new model is Lotus Connections, an integrated suite of five services for social software (IBM’s moniker for the market). These services are (a) communities, (b) social book marking, (c) enterprise profiles, (d) activities, and (e) blogs. Not surprisingly, these services are based on the ways that IBM typically does business. In fact, Connections productizes several internally developed IBM technologies.
I realize that I have the same feelings for Connections that I had with Lotus Notes in the early days of the groupware revolution – a terrific concept for a new computing paradigm, yet where the devil’s in the details. With a $110 per user price tag, IBM is focusing (for now) on the large enterprise marketplace. Designed to run inside an enterprise, Connections bundles restricted versions of WebSphere Application Server, DB2 Enterprise Database, and Tivoli Directory Integrator. To be sure, large organizations have large internal collaboration problems – such as quickly assembling ad hoc task teams of company experts who do not necessarily know one another to solve a pressing problem, or coordinating constantly changing schedules and deliverables.
But I am still bothered by the boundary problem of social computing – which Connections (despite all its promise) does little to address. Yes, as soon as we are authorized and authenticated by our networked environment, we can collaborate and share information. With current technologies, we’re living in a binary world. Either we’re inside the firewall/enterprise or we’re public on the Net. Either things are “private” or “public.”
In real life though, we’re dealing not with just black or white. Social computing’s going to have to do better, and be able to deal with many shades of gray. This means being able to manage content, schedules, and relationships across an “extended” enterprise – and being able to adjust the degree of connectedness we want to have with colleagues across different organizations.