These are brief synopses of some of the most exciting engagements in which I have played a major role.  As you'll note, there is a wide variety here, from e-business and knowledge strategy to strategic development of web solutions.  I invite you to call or email with questions or comments.
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• Electronic Commerce Strategy for Fortune 50 Manufacturer
• Strategy for Enterprise Transformation of Electronic Devices Company
• Feasibility study for software product line transformation
• Knowledge-driven customer care solution
• Launch and manage high visibility marketing alliance
• Create enterprise Knowledge Management infrastructure
• Design creative production processes for JIT print collateral system

Electronic Commerce Strategy for Fortune 50 Manufacturer­(top)

Business Challenge

Assist consumer durable goods manufacturer to launch an electronic commerce business to sell large-ticket items to consumers directly via the Internet.  As member of multidisciplinary team, conduct research on Internet strategy for websites, consumer behavior and technology developments.  Provide analysis and understanding of market, client capabilities and competitor activity.

Role

Electronic commerce and Internet strategy specialist.

Rollout

Have contributed to design of engagement and scope of recommendations.  Will advise client on strategy of how to transform its business from traditional "push" model of product development/design/manufacturing/distribution to "pull" e-commerce model in which client will partner with key customer segments to design, sell and service products across the life cycle, using web applications.  To play leading role in transforming corporate knowledge management strategy for client's 35+ product-oriented, push strategy websites.

Projected Results

• Successful iterative implementation of definitive e-commerce strategy that will assist client in keeping and growing its market position, especially with key customer segments who are web-centric.
• Significant increase in ability for client to know its customers in real time.  This information will increasingly drive client's business strategy.
• Increased business performance of existing websites.

Enterprise Transformation of Electronic Devices Company­(top)

Business Challenge

Advise executive team of Illinois-based electronic devices manufacturer and distributor on electronic commerce strategy.  Benchmark traditional competitors as well as new entrants entering business from e-commerce perspective.  Analyze client business processes, and consult on migration to e-commerce business model.

Role

Engagement Manager, working for CEO/ CIO/CFO team.

Rollout

Set up and manage project management office to coordinate several projects relating to e-commerce.  Partner with client professionals in marketing, information technology, product development, customer service and distribution to drive strategy and implementation of websites, intranet and extranets.  Mentor management and line employees on e-commerce processes and opportunities to think about their customers--and their business--differently.

Projected Results

• Client will have a succinct vision of what it will look like as an e-commerce company and why.  Moreover, it will have a clear path of migration.
• Centralizing processes for gathering, organizing and using customer information will give the client much more insight as to what its customers want--in real time.  This will enable it to grow market share quickly.

Feasibility Study for Internet-based Software Transformation­(top)

Business Challenge

Advise executive team on viability of transitioning software product line from proprietary, mainframe-based architecture to open, web-ready, Object Oriented Technology architecture.  Study banking trends for Internet-based transactions as well as customer base reaction to major technology initiative.  Deliver results in very compressed time frame.  Consult to executive team on using findings to generate enthusiasm within organization to mobilize for major change.

Role

Engagement Manager, working for Chief Information Officer.

Rollout

Designed engagement to leverage highest-quality available research on client's segment of banking software, procured research and used for industry background, minimizing duplication of original research.  Conducted literature survey, produced analytical presentation, and created various knowledge products to communicate findings through client organization.  Designed and executed survey.

Projected Results

• Broad organizational support for paradigm shift, achieved through involving majority of functions and departments in information gathering and interpretation.
• Informed executive team able to be proactive in educating strategic partners and customer base on opportunities gained by change in technology profile.

Knowledge-driven Customer Care Solution   ­(top)

Business Challenge

Drive conversion, penetration and retention goals of major services organization (Bigserv) through implementing knowledge management-oriented customer intimacy solution delivered through customer extranets.

Role

Engagement manager, taking the lead in designing engagement and pitching to existing client.  Devised innovative R&D engagement to be a hybrid between customer care and business development.

Rollout

Designed engagement with two strategic goals: 1) to reduce Bigserv's cost of service by enabling its clients to access work as it was being performed and 2) to drive additional revenue through high-value clients and to convert prospects away from Bigserv competitors in favor of Bigserv.  Projected involvement of Bigserv project professionals as well as 16 high-value clients and prospects in the engagement, inviting them to participate in R&D beta extranet program.

Targeted complex service/product delivery processes that were very interactive between Bigserv project teams and their counterparts within client organizations.  Designed extranet prototypes to serve as repositories for all project documents, minimizing version control problems and tightening cycle times by providing real-time access to project information as it flowed between Bigserv and its clients.

Responded to Bigserv clients' and prospects' needs for high-quality knowledge to support strategic decision-making processes.  Within extranets, designed centralized knowledge repository for relevant white papers, market information and newsletters to which targeted clients and prospects could be given access.  Real-time, exclusive access to high-quality information was very desirable to Bigserv clients.

Projected Results

• Significant increase in productivity (at least 20%) of Bigserv project professionals, through reduced time spent in version tracking, emailing documents to clients and waiting for clients to email corrections to documents.
• At least 25% increased engagement profitability for Bigserv due administration efficiency gains.
• Increased satisfaction of Bigserv professionals and clients due to enhanced responsiveness and less frustration.
• Significant number of new Bigserv clients among prospect participants, who develop close working relationships with Bigserv project managers and learn how Bigserv collects and delivers value-added information to clients.
• Enhanced client relationships among participants and other clients as they are given access to extranets.

Business Challenge

Create and manage strategic marketing alliance between leading edge consulting boutique (EnvpEdge) and global hardware/software/services corporation (GlobalTechCo).  Utilize EnvpEdge's pioneering implementation of new technology with Fortune 500 client as success story to validate new technology.  Execute aggressive campaign to promote success of new technology.

Role

Engagement Manager for EnvpEdge; chief interface for several of GlobalTechCo's PR and marketing agencies as well as marketing management within two of GlobalTechCo's marketing organizations and EnvpEdge's marketing and technology groups.

Rollout

Played key role in visioning and realizing the execution of marketing alliance: conducted needs analysis, and created processes to optimize contributions of EnvpEdge and GlobalTechCo and drive promotion of new technology's robustness and suitability for enterprise applications.  Co-managed joint media activity and national barnstorming tour: directed EnvpEdge's participation in highly visible conferences, seminars and road show appearances as well as interviews with national press.  Created partner relationships with GlobalTechCo marketing groups and several vendors that enabled joint execution of program with tight deadlines.

Results

• Successfully promoted new technology that has since changed the way in which information is organized, managed and delivered on a global scale.
• Achieved overnight transformation of EnvpEdge's media profile: scored dozens of hits in national technology, business and verticalized publications.
• Authored white paper, "Adding Marketing Value as a GlobalTechCo Partner: the EnvpEdge Case Study," which defined best practices for strategic partners and contributed to GlobalTechCo's ability to scale new marketing alliance program to Europe/Pacific Rim.

 

Enterprise Knowledge Management Infrastructure  ­(top)

Business Challenge

Design and implement knowledge infrastructure to drive revenue growth of 12-state region of global services organization (INC).  Conduct needs assessment, create communications and knowledge processes and lead implementation of technology/knowledge solution.

Role

Engagement Manager, working for board of director body and marketing team.  Lead role in marketing and knowledge management.  Oversaw design and implementation of intranet to serve 20 offices and 12 states.

Rollout

Conducted knowledge needs assessment in light of marketing and business development goals.  Reengineered marketing and communications processes to drive cross-selling among service and product groups, to allow broader scope of employees to leverage marketing activities and to streamline business development activity.   Built intranet to serve as knowledge repository and distribution network.  Trained and mentored project staff in intranet development and workflow analysis.

Results

• Lower marketing and practice management costs driven by centralized information storage/sharing as well as reduction in communications cycle time.
• Lower administrative costs due to direct authoring by knowledge experts.
• Lower infrastructure costs due to pull communications' lower demand for disk space.
• Enhanced responsiveness to business development and client service opportunities since marketing and information tools will be available on demand from the field.
• Reduction in marketing collateral production and distribution costs by delivering digitized proposals, marketing documents and brochures.

Just-In-Time Print Collateral System   ­(top)

Business Challenge

Led creation of print collateral design processes for consulting firm (Btique) with several technology groups, with highly compressed time frame, skeleton staff and limited resources.  Challenged to create 30 original four color pieces within two months.

Role

Engagement Manager, working directly with CEO and sales and marketing executives.

Rollout

Btique was following a highly targeted business development strategy and designed specialized products that needed print collateral support.  Began engagement by reusing color palette and several images and themes from recently completed corporate brochure.  Created highly original four color stock, and warehoused in Btique offices and its commercial printer.  Designed templates by which Btique marketing professionals could drop copy (text) into stock and print off existing laser printers, enabling Btique to print collateral to order, on short notice and achieve a four color look.  For larger runs, Btique marketing staff would email documents to Btique's commercial printer.

Results

• Diluted capital investments 200% by reusing graphical elements from corporate brochure.

Cut costs by more than 250%, increased responsiveness to rapidly changing market demands, and reduced collateral development time and costs five-fold.
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You can think of these thoughts as beta releases of articles, white papers or projects in progress, or perhaps I threw a couple in for the hell of it.  Those that morph into more detailed treatment do not take permanent residence here, and I encourage you to give me your feedback and questions.  Even better, contribute your own!  Take the plunge and contribute a muse today ;-).
 
• Insights on B2B acceleration
• Marcom leadership required
• What are knowledge systems?
• What are knowledge products?
• The Critical Decision Support Concept inherent in Knowledge Value
• The looming content management challenge

Insights on Acceleration   ­(top)

Acceleration, Force and Mass

 

Fundamentals in physics, which explain the relationship among acceleration, force and mass, can provide some insight into the B2B Accelerator’s value proposition because, in a figurative sense, the size and functioning of organizations can be related to mass.

Let acceleration represent a B2B’s progressive market movement at an increasing rate of change.  When a B2B scales up its operation, its acceleration is subject to the inverse relationship between force and mass.  The larger the B2B’s mass (m), the more force and resources (f) must be applied to maintain acceleration (a).

The B2B Accelerator is designed and organized specifically to provide high bandwidth resources to rapidly scaling B2Bs.  As their growth continues, their organizational mass (including virtual) increases, which will increase their demand for resources, which will be supplied internally and externally.  The providers within the B2B Accelerator have been selected because they understand scale; most of them have significant experience with global, complex enterprises.  They also have track records with e-business, entrepreneurship and thought leadership.

The synthesis of global enterprises, which are by definition BAMs, and innovative e-business companies (B2Bs) is certain in principle; however, how it will unfold in practice is largely unknown.  The B2B Accelerator is focused on helping companies succeed in this dramatic new conclusion.
 

Marcom Leadership Required   ­(top)

As I point out throughout this webspace, I believe that marketing communications (marcom) has the opportunity and the obligation to play a leading role in transforming enterprise strategies for information and knowledge management. Due to the advances in communications distribution and management systems, notably web technology, marcom can contribute serious competitive advantage to companies who choose an early adoption approach to transform their marketing and communications processes. (from upcoming article, The Challenge for Marketing Communications in the New Information Era).

What are Knowledge Systems?   ­(top)

As many have by now discovered, interactivity drives customers' insatiable desire for relevant information.  Whether you're dealing with websites, extranets or intranets, customers expect new and interesting content frequently, if not continuously.  This presents the site owner with a dilemma: the content experts, people who conduct their company's core business (engineers, programmers, marketers) often have little web design experience and little time.  Does the company: 1) outsource the process, paying web designers to get the content from the content experts; 2) train the content experts in web design; 3) buy content in much the same way as with canned newsletters?

Ironically, much of the information that customers want, the company's content experts have and use to do their jobs, but it's not in a form that can be used as content for a website, intranet or extranet.  Knowledge systems is my term for intelligent processes by which existing information used by company content experts is repurposed for an intranet, extranet or website.  To create knowledge systems, I look at the strategic purpose of the site (or part of it), what decisions customers are trying to make and what information helps them to make those decisions.  Then I look at the content experts, how they work and what information they have.  Then we create optimal processes that produce the content.  This often involves a combination of the first two options mentioned above.  Of course, I conduct the process mapping within the overall context of the company's information flow, and I help the company to create and implement life cycles for the content, so it can often be reused several times over.  That's leverage!
 

What are Knowledge Products?   ­(top)

As mentioned immediately above, significant leverage can be attained by reusing content intelligently.  Therefore, I term significant content pieces knowledge products because they can be managed like a product line, using professional marketing strategies.  Within a knowledge product line, each product has unique features and characteristics which will be appealing to different kinds of customer demographics at different times.  The knowledge product manager can manage the life cycles of various products to obtain optimal results.

The Critical Decision Support Concept inherent in Knowledge Value­(top)

 
The first step in dealing with the content issue is to determine what customer group(s) is(are) targeted by the website, intranet or extranet. Moreover, if we approach the project with a marketing headset, we ask, What decision(s) does the customer want to make, and what information will support the customer in making a decision that is favorable to us?  Of course, this discussion should take place within the context of a customer value life cycle model in which we can trace the customer's decisions in the long term.

The Looming Content Management Challenge ­(top)

 
The business benefits that companies derive from their intranets, and even more so from their extranets, will be largely driven by how well they are designed, both from the IT point of view and from the processes that govern content management. Content creation, management and disposal, according to a life cycle plan that emphasizes appropriate leveraging and reuse will reduce costs while enhancing marketing communications benefits. This is not to mention the challenge of the imminent content explosion, which will be driven by the newest crop of content creation software with save as html features. Processes to guide content creation will be critical in helping enterprises to channel their staffs' willingness to contribute productively.
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This is where you can read synopses of articles and papers that I have written on the development of electronic knowledge enterprises that drive their expansion with e-business and knowledge strategy.  Some downloadable pdfs; email to inquire about others.  As always, various deliverables in progress ;-).
 
• Digitization, Standards and Disaggregating Organizations

Presentation given at The Midwest Academy of Management Conference, March 30, 2000
• E-Business Market Development and Dynamics

Presentation given at DePaul University Kellstadt Graduate School of Business, October 28, 1999
• E-Business Market Development: the Rise of the Extended Enterprise

(white paper, 1999)
• Exploring the Communications Economics of Electronic Communities

(e-business brief, 1999)
• Using E-Business Strategies to Drive Value Chain Opportunities and Transformation

(white paper|working model, 1999)
• Using websites to transform customer relationships: a life cycle model

(white paper, 1999)




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Digitization, Standards and Disaggregating Organizations­(top)

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Presents some fundamental concepts of e-business and how they are exerting pressure on large organizations to disaggregate (split up).  Brief discussion of the e-business transformation life cycle as well as the selective change of business rules and how organizations must "delearn" in order to profit from e-business.  Also, the significance of logic, standards and digitization.

Download zip file of powerpoint: requires free copy of Stuffit for Macs (get it here) or Winzip for Windows (get it here)




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E-Business Market Development and Dynamics­(top)

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Presents several key concepts that underlie the current e-business transformation, including the vital role of knowledge in creating unique business propositions.  The highlight of the talk is the journey of the development of the extended enterprise, the employer of tomorrow for business students--and just about everyone else ;-).  Also discusses the e-business consulting market.

Download zip file of powerpoint: requires free copy of Stuffit for Macs (get it here) or Winzip for Windows (get it here)




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E-Business Market Development: the Rise of the Extended Enterprise­(top)

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The adoption of e-business strategy will culminate in the development of full-fledged electronic, “extended” enterprises that are connected with their partners and customers in electronic networks.  This paper is a high-level discussion of how and why the extended enterprise develops while it adopts e-business strategies.  It also presents critical role of knowledge in e-business and the extended enterprise.

An extended enterprise is one which leverages the potential of real-time, asynchronous communications to drive down transaction costs throughout its business; moreover, it tends to focus relentlessly on what it considers its core competencies, and it links with alliance, vendor and provider partners electronically to provide seamless full-service to customers without “owning” that capacity as integrated businesses have traditionally done.

The concept of an adoption curve, which describes the path to transformation to e-business, is useful because all industries are faced with adopting e-business strategies, which impact all business processes and add new ones.  The speed and depth of their adoption of these new processes will largely drive their market position within the next few years.

In addition, the industry in which the enterprise competes has its own rate and stages of e-business adoption, and a good amount of the enterprise’s strategic advantage going forward will be driven by its rate adoption compared to the industry’s.  Similarly, every person has an adoption curve.

Download zip file of pdf: requires free copy of Stuffit for Macs (get it here) or Winzip for Windows (get it here) as well as Adobe Acrobat Reader (get it here)




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Exploring the Communications Economics of Electronic Communities­(top)

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This brief explores the economic drivers behind Internet-oriented electronic communities as forums of communication and business activity.  An electronic community is one in which people communicate via email, newsgroups or websites.  For the purposes of this brief, we will assume that the community assembles people from disparate organizations, since it is that application that is often of the highest interest to Internet-enabled e-business strategies.  In addition, this brief will concentrate its analysis the value of communities and electronic communications on two chief characteristics, digitization and asynchronicity.  Prior to the analysis, it will briefly define and discuss electronic communities and why they are of such high interest to Internet-enabled e-business.

Download zip file of pdf: requires Stuffit for Macs (get it here) or Winzip for Windows (get it here) as well as Adobe Acrobat Reader (get it here)




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Using E-Business Strategies to Drive Value Chain Transformation­(top)

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E-Business offers a market changing opportunity to market-leading global enterprises whose function and viability is in large part driven by value chain and excellence in service strategies.  These enterprises lead or occupy a key part of a value network through which they, along with the other members of the chain, provide end customers products.

Most value chains are rife with paper- and analog-dominated communications processes that represent very high transaction costs when compared with electronic digital processes.  Exchanging the former for the latter, if managed correctly, sets off a complex chain of events for an enterprise that can drive it to lead its own transformation into an electronic enterprise.

The speed and degree to which an enterprise is electronic will enable it to execute more processes than its competitors and be connected to more networks: since e-business dramatically lowers transactional costs within the value chain, it can finance the enterprise’s rapid expansion.  This may well drive the vast success of the few at the expense of the many: as intricate electronic networks are formed, selection factors will be driven in large measure by an enterprise’s e-business competence.

Download zip file of pdf: requires free copy of Stuffit for Macs (get it here) or Winzip for Windows (get it here) as well as Adobe Acrobat Reader (get it here)

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Using Websites to Transform Customer Relationships: a Website Life Cycle Model­(top)

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The growth of e-commerce is nothing short of phenomenal, and it shows no signs of abating.  In fact, it only entered into the “Tornado Stage” only during the 1998 holiday season.  Most websites have grown steadily since they were launched, both in size and in importance within their respective firms’ overall strategies.  At the same time, most companies' experiences with their sites have been quite mixed: while most sites have produced marketing value in that they have reflected that their owners have been a "part of the phenomenon," the sites' track record for producing measurable business value has been spotty, a growing number of success stories notwithstanding.

Download zip file of pdf: requires Stuffit for Macs (get it here) or Winzip for Windows (get it here) as well as Adobe Acrobat Reader (get it here)