Or consider Ushahidi CrowdMap, a cloud-based application that has helped increase the transparency of Kenyan elections and the effectiveness of Haitian earthquake relief. The Arab Spring reached critical mass largely due to Twitter and Facebook. Basic mobile phones have increased the transparency and efficiency of fish markets in Kerala, India, increasing the availability of fish to consumers, and of incomes to fisherman.5 While success for most businesses might be defined by profitability or market share, for a nonprofit or enlightened corporation it can (also) be measured through the achievement of social goals and alignment with values. Rather than – or in addition to – being profit-maximizing, author Dan Pink calls these organizations “purpose-maximizing.”6
Information Excellence
Although implementation details of the four digital disciplines of necessity vary in their application across industry verticals and by firm, as generic competitive strategies, they are easy to understand.
Information excellence is not shorthand for data quality, but the employment of comprehensive real-time information, predictive analytics, dynamic optimization, and integrated virtual and physical operations to implement better business processes and to better use assets.
“Better” as perceived by customers in terms of quality and performance. “Better” in terms of financial metrics, such as returns on invested capital through better asset utilization. “Better” in seamlessly integrating the virtual and physical worlds of information and operations. “Better” in terms of activities, process design, and rightsizing assets – doing things right – and outcomes – doing the right things. “Better” as in faster, cheaper, more flexible, higher quality, more reliable, more convenient, easier to use, more available, or more sustainable. “Better” as in making better decisions; executing those decisions with higher likelihood of success; and doing it all faster than the competition. Business processes are not limited to internal back-office constructs, but extend to customers, customers' customers, and end-users, as well as to supply chain partners and other stakeholders.
Businesses can exploit information throughout virtually all processes. Which customers should be targeted with promotions? Which services are most profitable and should receive incremental marketing investments? Which direct mail layout results in the greatest response rate? Which products will sell the most this season and thus should be inventoried to minimize stock-outs? Those are obvious kinds of questions that big data and predictive analytics can help answer. But it isn't just sales, marketing, or supply chain optimization. How about whose air conditioner should be lowered or shut off to avoid brown-outs? Which of the candidates is best for this job? How fast should this train go? Which potholes should be fixed first? Is this melanoma? The essence of information excellence is acquiring data, analyzing it, synthesizing information and insight, and then making decisions and optimizing virtual and physical processes, customer experiences, and relationships.
For example, UPS plans its routes via ORION (On-Road Integrated Optimization and Navigation), which implements state-of-the-art algorithms to minimize driving distance and fuel consumption while minimizing late deliveries.7 If an average truck needs to make 120 stops, there are 6,689,502,913,449,135,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 different possible sequences of stops, not including additional options to get from one stop to the next.8 UPS has 55,000 such routes in the United States alone, and therefore 55,000 such calculations to perform. Every day. This type of problem is obviously not amenable to human solution, and to make things even more complex, ORION needs to balance out an optimal solution with a degree of delivery consistency. UPS expects to save several hundred million dollars annually when ORION is fully deployed.
Kroger's QueVision system uses infrared cameras to track shopper arrivals, feeding a proprietary algorithm that then predicts the number of cashiers needed, reducing average wait time eightfold. And Kroger isn't just focusing on its own processes; it's also aiding consumers with theirs: a mobile app will plot out optimal paths through the store based on grocery lists.9
Chapter 7 will delve into Burberry, which has leveraged information excellence to achieve dramatic growth in the luxury goods industry, by offering streamed fashion shows live at stores on the world's biggest digital signage, deploying mirrors in dressing rooms that magically display runway clips of the clothing items being tried on, and by arming store personnel with a customer's purchase history on an opt-in basis to ensure fashion consistency.
Solution Leadership
Solution leadership is a broad concept encompassing extensible, adaptable, smart digital products and services connected to cloud-based capabilities and an expansive partner ecosystem including social networks, which all together offer a unique, differentiated “product-service system” that can grow exponentially – in terms of features, customer adoption, and revenues – via network effects.
The original Apple iPod was a better product, thanks to its innovative click wheel, elegant design, and features such as random shuffle. It was also a better solution, thanks to iTunes and access to a near-infinite library of songs. The Apple iPhone was a better product, thanks to its innovative touchscreen, elegant design, and ease of use. It was a better solution, thanks to the App Store and the third-party app developer community. Thanks to network effects, more customers mean more apps, and more apps mean more customers. More of both mean more money: the Apple App Store crossed the $10 billion per year revenue threshold in 2013,10 and grew another 50 percent in 2014.11
Services are becoming smart, digital, and connected, too: Pandora, TiVo, Netflix, and Shazam are connected services, driven by the cloud. Amazon.com is a connected retail service. But it isn't just virtual services: Domino's pizzerias are connected; the water and electric and cable utility services have points of presence such as smart meters and set-top boxes that are connected; Staples in-store copiers are connected; Uber transportation services are connected; FedEx and UPS delivery services are connected; and so on.
Products and services aren't limited to handheld devices or web applications running on PCs. BMW Group has driven past treating cars as standalone products and now views them as smart, digitalized12 solutions that tie to a global cloud of data centers, offering solutions ranging from entertainment to real-time traffic information, access to social networks such as Facebook and Twitter and services such as Pandora and Yelp. Nike has sprinted past the idea of athletic shoes as just products, and now sees them as integrated with cloud-based activity trackers, digital coaching services, and social networks such as Facebook. GE sells aircraft engines and wind turbines, but is flying high by tying them back to engineers and customers who are fed enormous amounts of data to maximize performance and improve designs. Chapter 10 will delve into Nike's approach to solution leadership through the Nike+ flexible partner ecosystem, and Chapter 17 will examine GE in more depth.
Collective Intimacy
Firms know that social media should be a part of their strategy. Today's successful businesses are exploiting social media to engage with millions or hundreds of millions of customers, enhancing personal relationships with those customers 140 characters at a time. But collective intimacy is much more than that; at its heart it is about developing intimate, value-added relationships with every customer. Collective intimacy goes beyond mass personalization to develop a unique relationship with each engaged customer, based on insights derived from all customers using big data algorithms.
Only a few industry leaders