Business Community Management: Gateway to the New Frontier September 21, 2007
Posted by mukundmohan in News.trackback
Brian Sommer offers his unique perspective into the current state of software innovation in the business of customer relationship management. From his viewpoint, it’s not good. Check out his post Where Software Must Go on Software Safari. Tim Minahan picked up on it and offered his point of view on Supply Excellence with his post: What’s Next in Purchasing? Ask Your Supply Management System
He believes application vendors have lost their way in regards to innovation and wealth creation. They no longer remember how to create something really new. Instead, we get marginal innovation, he says, with new functionality, features and capabilities built around the margins of the same old solutions we’ve always had. Worse, SOA solutions are just re-working the same stuff by throwing more bolt-on capabilities around the margins.
The reason for this is simple: Applications have been all about accounting transaction processing. Almost every screen in every application product out there is an input form waiting for someone to enter data. What businesses need are systems that advise their ever scarcer mid-management and other workers as to what they should input.
Exactly!
Welcome to the emerging frontier of Business Community Management. At the end of Brian’s post, he promises more on the topic and leaves us with this thought provokers:
- innovation in applications is tied to understanding new constituents
Inherent in the BCM model is the principal of social connectedness. At the core of that principal is building a trusted network that encourages transactions between well-established users and new constituents.
- innovation requires attention to external events (not just accounting events) and their impact on the firm
The BCM dashboard view of supply chain visibility provides upstream and downstream real-time monitoring of all B2B collaborators across all formats and technologies. Visibility allows for serious proactive decision-making on transactions well beyond mere general ledger entries.
- ROI with software is attainable if vendors give up the TCO crutch and get with re-imagining new solutions that are value and wealth creating.
One of the many value propositions of the Business Community Management model is providing EDI & VAN solutions that reduce the TCO to realize an increase to speed to benefit and ROI.
Tim’s post noted above concludes with: True innovation will come with technology that can inform buyers (and other executives) of the right business decisions. Supply management organizations (and solution providers) that can leverage technology to help any buyer make optimal decisions and actions will have the true competitive advantage of consistent top performance.
That’s Actionable Intelligence, and that’s driving The Bottom Line of the Business Community Management model.
