Categories: Future of Technology

Connecting not Cocooning

Posted by mattpoy on Posted in Communities, Future of Technology, Future of Work, Ideas, People, People Skills Talent, Technology Tagged , ,

Technology is a tool that should empower us to reach more people and bind us together, connecting communities, workplaces and ideas. Although technology helps create great individual experiences, social interaction is a basic need and fundamental part of humanity, and we must encourage against people locking themselves away in their rooms for hours on end, especially at meal times.

As part of this humanisation endeavour, here is an interesting story to share: a law firm research revealed that the senior management profile pages (usually found under About Us) of its website were the most visited. So the firm decided to turn up the spotlight, including the addition of video interviews with its lawyers which included answering unconventional questions!

The message was: you wont find corporate stuffed shirts here; we are real people who value relationships with other real people. I like that. Put technology to use as a platform to inject some personality into our companies and humanise what we do. It’s about people. It always is.

The best technology of all

Posted by mattpoy on Posted in Future of Technology, Future of Work, Ideas, People Tagged , , , ,

At an industry event I attended recently, industry stalwart Amy Cardel shared her views on the changes and impact of technology on doing business, but one simple statement has stuck – that the best technology of all is face to face.

Despite the overload of information, the bombardment of news and the almost permanent connectivity, building relationships with other human beings, talking through issues and needs and resolving them together, remain the best partnerships of all. Somewhere in my early blogs I wrote about similar things that the Tupperware company emphasised back in 1953, and the principles remain today. Sitting across a table, reading and reacting to body language, smiling. It isn’t rocket science.

At the same event I had the pleasure of meeting and listening to NBA superstar Shaquille O’Neal – he was inspirational, he was very funny and entertaining, but most of all he was a normal guy with good values. It’s about people, it always is.

Fine Margins

Posted by mattpoy on Posted in Future of Technology, Future of Work Tagged , ,

I harp on about the importance data, how it is the oil of the twenty-first century, but here is a quick story about just how fine the margins have become.

At the end of a winter Olympics, one national team – renowned for its skiers – won zero gold medals. Post-event the management team sat down to undertake the deepest analysis based on all the data it could muster.

They figured out that with just a 5% improvement in performance, they would have won almost every gold medal they competed in. That level of competition represents just how tough the modern world is out there – and how fine the margins are between great success and miserable failure.

Everyone has to be a technology company

Posted by mattpoy on Posted in Big Data, Future of Technology, Marketing, Technology Tagged , , ,

ChangeAgent_oilingthewheelsofchange500pxI have been following a story of two companies and how their brands are playing in almost completely different arenas and yet for the same customer.

One, let’s call them Goliath, has decided to change the colour of their product in order to reinvigorate sales. Same basis of the product, same distribution channel, same target audience.

David, our little guy, sells a similar product but not through stores. Instead he sells it online. Customers can’t touch or handle the product, but they can follow it on Instagram and Facebook pages and be part of a community of likeminded users. David still has a minority market share, but he is growing at a handsome rate. He also has a far lower cost base and is therefore more profitable. Rather than targeting only the audiences of the stores that sell his products, David can reach millions.

Goliath knows very little about their customer as all sales are through stores and usually in baskets full of other products. David knows everything about his customers. I see only one way out for Goliath; the smarter companies are going to be the ones that go out and buy the technology and engineers needed to drive disruption.

Every company has to be a technology company: if you are at the top of your sector today and you are not a technology company, you wont be at the top of your sector for long.

Women in Learning & Leadership

Posted by mattpoy on Posted in Big Data, Communities, Education, Future of Technology, Future of Work, Pearson, People, People Skills Talent, Skills, Talent, Technology Tagged , , , , , , ,

I was proud to be invited to speak at the Women in Learning & Leadership (WILL) event today in Manchester. It was a great meet with some very good speakers and lots of interaction and participation – Pearson at its best!

I opened with a quote from Accenture that stated digital is the main reason half the companies have disappeared from the Fortune 500 since the year 2000, and we delved into technologies impacting the workplace, education trends we need to be cognisant of and especially the need to attract and retain the best talent.

I referenced one well-known UK businessman who said, “You have to Kill Your Business,” and whilst dramatic, I agree that you have to embrace digital transformation and do business totally differently. We lamented the demise of Nokia and a former CEO made a great comment that they didn’t do anything wrong necessarily, but somehow the industry disrupted around them. The frightening aspect of this is that the traditional graph with a 30-degree growth line is now even referred to as the “path of doom;” in other words, if you are only growing at that rate, you may not survive the disruption. Plus those that are complacent are at greatest risk.

We don’t own our ideas for very long either, according to a former Marketing Officer of McDonalds – today we own our ideas “for about an hour and a half” before somebody is snapping at our heels updating and improving what we started. A simple yet great line cited from Cisco Chairman John Chambers summed it up: “It’s no longer a question of if or when the digital revolution will happen, we are in the middle of it.”

Somebody asked about AI in education: educators and teachers must not stop the drive of AI in the classroom; it is in the real world so if we don’t introduce it into our learning, the next generation wont be ready when they go out to the workplace – we must think of the future.

I closed by using the Fox and Hedgehog story to answer a question about why Pearson VUE is so successful at what we do – we have a laser focus on what we do and we hire and develop the best people.

What if I live to 100?

Posted by mattpoy on Posted in Education, Future of Technology, Future of Work, Ideas, Skills Tagged , , , ,

UBS adThe back page of the current Fortune magazine carried this advert (right) for UBS and it is worth underlining the impact of living for longer.

If we live to 100 in future, it is more than just savings plans and investments we will need to worry about. Very few will be able to retire and live off their savings for half a century, so how will we cope? We will most likely have a career that spans 60-years and have to learn new skills as generations change; furthermore cycles and trends of work mean where we start will in no way resemble how we finish working.

So as our knowledge and skills become redundant, we will have to update just to keep up. Education needs to start thinking today how to prepare future generations for such evolution – will a once in a lifetime education be the correct solution, surely not? The traditional college/university model was invented when our education would get you your first and last job, but our kids will hop from project to project as they see fit – choosing who they work for.

Because we live in a very dynamic society where people have lots of careers, where technology moves faster than we can keep up and whatever we learn expires very quickly, we need to ask if we are no longer faithful to one company or even one profession, why should we be faithful to one type of education at one institution, and at only one point in our lives?

Is the future big or small?

Posted by mattpoy on Posted in Future of Technology, Future of Work, Marketing Tagged , , ,

FreelancersWe have just returned from a couple of weeks driving along the Californian coastline, one of my favourite holiday spots, where I noticed a change.

When I first started visiting America I remember marvelling at some of the larger department stores such as Bloomingdales, Macy’s and Nordstrom. Today, these stores look like they are stuck in time, and that is if they are there at all. I sensed more boutique businesses, smaller operators and niche products which are of course supported by mammoth online platforms like Amazon that encourage them to thrive.

How much is technology responsible for this and have the large retailers missed the trend change, or have they been hamstrung by huge properties in malls and cannot move fast enough? Online shopping and service has certainly dented any rosy future for them in their current form.

As consumers we are happy to pay for convenience as ordering online has become slicker and quicker and where product choice is unparalleled. Equally no consumer can tell how large or small an online player really is; plus, who cares as long as the product is genuine and delivered on time to our doorstep.

Combine this with the fact that 20% of people have sold something online in the past year (Pew Research), the reduction in free time most people complain of, and the increase in freelance and contract work, and it all points to a new way of living and shopping which we have taken in our stride. It is likely to gather pace, never to return.

Part of me was saddened to see the old stalwarts fading or missing, but it reminded me that we are on a treadmill of tech-led change, and if we stand still we invariably go backwards.

OODA

Posted by mattpoy on Posted in Big Data, Customer Service, Future of Technology, Future of Work, Marketing, Technology Tagged , ,

ZaraOODA stands for Observation, Orientation, Decision and Action.

It is a decision making model that was created by a military strategist called John Boyd, where information is sent back from the field to the decision maker to construct and modify a new theory of attack. It is especially important when you don’t know how the opposition will respond to your first wave.

Boyd said the key wasn’t about the great plan of attack, but how you learn and evolve quickly – the speed with which your strategy could adapt.

I have referenced global retailer Zara before and they have grown to become one of the largest fashion retailers in the world. At the heart of their success is their ability to manufacture and respond to the latest fashions, having product on hangers within weeks.

The vital ingredient and differentiator is how we deal with information: how we digest and put data to use, adapt to changing market and competitive demands and make technology work for us to lead our customers to change.

Like the best military pilots, sportsmen or business leaders, it is about the gift of perception and reaction, to learn to manoeuvre midstream.

Thank you to Derek Thompson, author of the great little book Hit Makers, who introduced me to OODA.

One size fits One

Posted by mattpoy on Posted in Future of Technology, Future of Work, Marketing, People, Social Media Tagged , , , ,

bootsOne of the most exciting opportunities that technology brings to the table for businesses of every size is the utilisation of data to tailor their offering to each individual customer.

Although we are told that 95% of business data in the UK still remains untapped (Forrster Research), the opportunity to serve each individual’s needs and offer a truly bespoke service is mouth-watering at the prospect. This isn’t Harvey Specter and made-to-measure suits (for fans of the brilliant legal drama Suits), but more about understanding preferences, buying-patterns and data in the aggregate to shape future sales.

I have talked before about the correlation that WalMart made in the US between thunderstorms with sales of torches and pop-tarts! No in-store manager could ever have worked out the link, but the data made it sound obvious.

For those of us in a B2B environment, the dynamic is somewhat different, but we have an additional layer to use to our advantage. We don’t need to make over-the-top sales presentations to our prospects; customers tend to know who we are, they do their own research and they can find pretty much anything they want online. Plus in many cases today they reject sales people outright.

You can tell your story online – your website, blog, videos and customer case studies all wrapped up in your social presence will do as much talking as any salesperson. But augment this by building relationships at a human level, person to person, team to team over time, patiently and with integrity, and you have a formula that is very hard to beat.

One size fits one: the one thing technology can support every business with.

Customer Experience

Posted by mattpoy on Posted in Customer Service, Future of Technology, Ideas, Marketing, Technology, Uncategorized Tagged , ,

netflixWhen you consider the brands that genuinely stand out, they do so due to customer experience.

Why do people buy from Apple? For the product and design experience.

Why do people so many subscribe to Netflix? The experience of watching quality TV anytime, anywhere.

Why do people go to Selfridges? For the ‘yellow bag’ shopping experience.

How can technology help enhance the experience for your customers?