WebProWorld Marketing Forum |
Bluecasting--The
Next Spam King
What if, in real life, only 15% of the people you approached for a conversation
responded to you? You’d probably feel like a shmuck, a social pariah.
Online
and offline conversions
These forums are really useful - I would like to thank you all for the great contributions
always made. Q1: We use Online and Offline marketing and I was wondering if there
is away around this situation.
Research
Question
I am planning to put together a content rich e-zine (newsletter) with relevant
to-the-point how-to tips for business management / leadership development.
|
|
08.24.05
The
Emergence Of The Real World Enterprise
 By
Don DePalma
Large companies have begun planning infrastructural and organizational responses
to the increased velocity of business change and internet-accelerated data flow.
This real-time responsiveness is long overdue and will make corporations more
able to flex with changing business requirements. However, I believe that many
real-time enterprise initiatives will fall short of their goals because they fail
to account for a major change in how giants like IBM, Merck, and Toyota operate
on a planetary level.
No longer just multinational, these supranational "world enterprises" gird the
planet with development labs, centers of competence, adaptive manufacturing plants,
and customer service centers. Ideally they develop goods and services from inception
to meet the needs of many markets; they rely on in-country subsidiaries to identify
the value and adapt world-ready products to appeal to national tastes. These companies
design their wares, manufacture them, and manage supporting data and document
repositories to comply with national legislation and conventions from cradle to
grave.
The Real World Enterprise Does Not Stop at Borders
Aspirants to becoming a world enterprise must deal with a flood of code, content,
and data that does not respect national borders. They have to create language
and locale-independent processes to transform this content into a form, language,
and style appropriate to the needs of consumers in disparate markets and roles.
Three realities will drive forward-thinking companies to become real world enterprises.
Many corporate IT groups already operate like software development houses.
Java, microprocessors, and Linux continue to creep inside an ever widening array
of devices. Manufacturers of cars, medical devices, phones, and MP3 players must
choose LCDs that display Roman, Arabic, Cyrillic, and Chinese characters. Worldwide
roll-outs of complex offerings like BMW's iDrive depend on localized variants
being available in all markets at the same time. These IT groups will come to
resemble independent software vendors in composition, metrics, and schedules.
Global marketing pivots on websites. Consumers in São Paulo can see products
and prices on your domestic website as soon as you post them. At best, this crossborder
transparency creates demand. At worst, it embarrasses you by showcasing products
that you can't deliver because you don't have a Portuguese interface or a Brazilian
distributor. To avoid embarrassing inconsistency and confusion, real world enterprises
will harmonize branding and messaging across their global sites.
The real world enterprise flows across borders. Most companies will consider
"foreign" operations to be outside the scope of the real-time enterprise - until
the next unwelcome surprise originates in a business unit that operates in a language,
currency, and practice unknown at headquarters. Real world enterprise executives
should never be surprised by chaotic economic conditions, aggressive competitors,
restrictive legislation, international supply chains, and traumatic shifts in
customer demand. These factors demand the monitoring, analysis, and transfer of
huge volumes of information wherever your company operates, putting a new burden
on database, knowledge, and enterprise resource management systems.
What does this mean in practice? To deliver on the promise of the world enterprise,
companies will have to think less about being an American or German company and
more about structures, products, organizations, and applications that work globally
first, nationally second. To execute on this vision hey will need to adopt and
adapt the techniques of simultaneously shipping digital deliverables, products
that embed multilingual content, internal dataflows, and inter-company communications
across international boundaries. This won't be news to larger software and computer
hardware suppliers that "simship" products to many international. However, this
effort will put a strain on development, marketing, and support organizations
long accustomed to simple product roll-outs within a single national market.
About the Author:
Globalization, internationalization, and translation and localization industry
expert and analyst Don DePalma is the founder of research and consulting firm
Common Sense Advisory. For additional information, visit www.commonsenseadvisory.com
or e-mail Melissa@commonsenseadvisory.com. |
