“Time keeps on slippin’, slippin’, slippin’ into the future…”
From “Fly Like An Eagle” by the Steve Miller Band
Well, yes, of course we are perpetually moving one direction across the time continuum; and along the way we adapt to new technologies and advance as a civilization.
Take communications for example, a little over 3 years ago the iPad didn’t even exist and now they are everywhere – giving people the ability to communicate in a whole new way and arriving with a whole new set of possibilities and challenges for business.
But this happens all the time right? Before the iPad there was the smart phone, the fax, the desktop computer, the typewriter, I could go on and on but you get the idea. Things are always changing in business and that is a big part of the challenge in staying competitive and profitable.
Moving organizations forward so they can “Fly Like an Eagle” and truly increase profitability and market share takes a lot of planning and hard work. Consideration of change and the acknowledgement that things will be a lot different in 5 years than they are today are really important when choosing the technology that supports your business.
But before we move ahead and advance as a civilization, or as a company, we have to know where we are, what processes are currently in place, what technology supports the business, where the redundancies are, what initiatives are underway… Basically, you have to ask yourself a whole lot of questions.
Lets pretend we don’t have to worry about the reality of a complex enterprise, lets take it down to the basics…
First, at the core of communications are the information and content that we are putting in front of our customers. If it is to be meaningful, personal, relevant and compliant it has to be properly assembled. That takes knowledge from across the enterprise, so we have to work better together and collaborate more effectively while building the communication.
Second, unfortunately we don’t have a crystal ball so we don’t know how the customer will want to engage our enterprise (mail box, web portal, iPad App, really cool future device thingy), for all we know they may jump from one to another and then back, but we know they will need to understand our message whether it is a bill, marketing communication or otherwise. So we need to organize our business for today and the future, consolidate all of these different ways of communicating so we don’t have to manage a bunch of silos that make adapting to changes in regulation, branding and pretty much anything a nightmare.
So, don’t let your profits go slippin’, slippin’, slippin’ away as communication evolves. Make a detailed plan so you can “Fly Like an Eagle”.
