Competing about peoples time

It seems like the competiton in real time collaboration isn’t between the companies delivering solutions, but a competition of getting people to spend time with them, rather than somewhere else – like travelling.

I’m readig in the Norwegian IT section of DN that Gartner (Sydney conference) announced that their estimates for 2009 is a loss of 2,1 million business travels, and that those “seats” will be replaced with telepresence, video and webconferencing meetings instead. This is of course great news for companies delivering such solutions and bad news for airliners and travel agencies.

This should make Cisco, Polycom, Tandberg and the small Norwegian company meetcon happy friends. But Gartner continues: Something new is evolving rapidly: an example is – Immersive workspaces. This is integrated solutions that builds on top of communities like second life. Web based, and with the ability, not only to “meet” (Video & audio) but also share presentations, your desktop and so forth. Gartner advices companies to get rid of old ideas of video conferensing, and adapt to more flexible collaborative integrated ideas of how to conduct work via the web.  (BKK in Norway just did and bought a solution from meetcon.no by the way) This might not be the best of news for the larger enerprices mentioned above, but rather gives smaller and more flexible web based solutions a competitive benefit?

As you may kow I’ve been writing about this for quite a while (just scroll and see former postings) and it’s fun notising that Gartner predict such a rapid developement.

Using Buzz ords such as multichannel strategies

Lesson one: Do not use a buzz word unless you can explain what it means!
Lesson two: Listen to what has become a common meaning of a buzz word.
Lesson three: Be willing to learn more, and adjust what you state.

Multichannel what is it ? what does it mean ?
Multichannel is NOT only using several channels…  if it is  some message (advert, campaign, branding – or whatever) is used in some sort of inter- chained way it’s still NOT Multichannel – it might be, and could easily NOT be.

Mostly the term is used to describe  retail- or e-commerce strategies where several channels are put in effect to reach – and connect with their target groups.
The idea is to let the consumer be more in charge of the transaction process, than before, and to let the consumer be exposed to an opportunity to become aware, interact and finally buy a service or product via several channels. In order to make this happen the various channels has to be coordinated, influenced by each other and provide a flow (memory between them) so that the customer experience a seamless connection with the sender of the messages. It’s sort of a artificial intelligence experience for the customer, where one message is followed up toward the customer in other channels, that give an opportunity to act, start a process and finalize it via several channels used.

But these principles could also be put in use for other areas?  
Like delivering our tax declarations, – getting information of car registrations, depths owners registered on a specific car is only some examples.
It should involve several channels, interconnected in some sort, have interaction with the “customer” of some kind and give a desired result fo the end user – like a service provided, and so on.

Still – A commercial – or public campaign- or branding activites using several channels is not a multi- channel strategy – it’s still an old fashioned Channel mix.