The Inovis Blog

Bands, like The Grateful Dead, Pearl Jam, Dave Matthew’s Band, Phish, WideSpread Panic (Jon Gatrell’s favorite group) and others, have thrived creatively, personally and financially by embracing the collective, the community, their fan bases and going against the grain of the traditional music business – for example, allowing bootlegging (not moonshine….but concert tapes and videos that spawned underground trading communities and industries).

At the end of the day, what’s good for the community, like grilled cheese sandwiches (never ate one, wasn’t a huge Dead fan ……but you get the point and it shows some love to my colleagues in the Bay Area), is good for the artist – the King or Queen (cue Freddie Mercury) of that particular supply and demand chain.

Radiohead, a critically acclaimed and commercially successful UK band, is going against the grain (if there is any grain left in the music industry). The band is a free agent – no label – and is offering its latest album (“In Rainbows”) for download only (at least for now until the box set comes out for $80 a pop) and fans, interested parties (like myself) can literally name their price for the download. When it comes to settle on an album price, the site simply states, “It’s up to you.”

Wait for it….wait for it…here comes the point, which is painfully obvious to anyone who has been paying attention. The music business has already been turned upside down, on its side, twirled in a couple spin cycles and bounced off a cliff.

Now comes this news.

Over the past 10+ years, there have been any number of digital distribution, e-commerce case studies that trumpet the potential for

e-commerce to transform or disrupt traditional business models – of course depending on your individual perspective. Napster, eBay, PayPal, Amazon, Yahoo, iPods and iTunes, P2P networks, My Space, Google……Those were game changers of the past generation, even though they are all still relevant, important and in some cases really innovative and cool.

In the case of Radiohead and the music industry, here is yet another wrinkle for retailers and suppliers to consider. But at least this is a familiar ripple and not a complete sea change.

For companies of all types but retailers and suppliers in particular, the next wave of  e-commerce, Web and social computing applications are going to change the rules of “the game” just as dramatically. Mashups, Wikkis, Blogs, Second Life, integration of IM are new ripples in the ocean, but some of them could drive wholesale sea changes for business.

In B2B, we talk about Actionable Intelligence, Web 2.0 and Software as a Service/Managed Services as game changers. Do you have any thoughts about what the next game changer could be for your business?

Ran across a very informative analysis written by Bob Kantin President of SalesProposals.com, Michael J. Nick, President of ROI4Sales, and Tim Sullivan, Development Director at SPISales.com.

It focused on how to train a sales force into being top sellers, what they call eagles, and how what used to be a commodity-transaction sales process has evolved into a complex selling process that requires building relationships.

Sales professionals must become business consultants that provide a clear return on investment (ROI) proposition to retain a competitive advantage in the current market.

The author’s ask three important questions to assess the skills and tools a sales force brings to play in the sales process. We found the information relevant from an IT buyer’s perspective as helpful guidelines in evaluating an IT purchasing decision based on the selling skills and knowledge level of the seller.

1. Do your sales pros follow a consultative sales process built around their unique products & services?
2. Can the sales pro deliver an accurate and fair ROI for their products/services that will make or save you money?
3. Are the sales pros creating informative proposals focused on your needs?

Additional information and resources are provided on how to use an ROI analysis system, and an automated proposal production system. There is also a simple, effective self-assessment that outlines the current effectiveness of a sales pro’s consultative approach. It’s a good read for both buyers and sellers and a free download with registration at itbusinessedge.com.

Photo taken from: http://www.nextgenerationinsights.com

After reading Gene Phifer on SOA, Business Mashups at Gartner ITExpo, I find that both Gene Phifer and Kelly Shaw have valid points. However, I think it’s important to view Kelly’s comment from a different angle. Rather than considering Gene’s opinion as “only thinking of half the problem,” consider instead that he has pointed out an opportunity with twice the potential!

 It seems to me that we may all be talking about two totally different types of Mashups. I would label the most common types as “content” or “informational” mashups. This variety is seen everywhere and is so common, we may not even realize it’s a ‘content’ mashup when we see it. MSN.com, ask.com, mapquest.com, or any search on any search engine, all show some form of a Mashup. Most, as Kelly points out, purely provide information with little to no functionality, but we have grown to expect this type of data when we visit certain sites. The types of Mashups that I feel we need more of are ‘application’ or ‘functional’ mashups. This type of Mashup is what I believe Kelly was referring to. Giving a person the ability to access multiple aspects of their jobs from one screen that automatically provides intelligent data related to what is going on, and having the ability to react and share information between the different applications presented on the screen…this is the Mashup that we all need in our daily lives.

I have been involved in many application development projects where this is exactly what we are trying to achieve. I have seen applications that let customer service reps see customer data, quotes, and trouble tickets related to different assets and recent communication with the customer they are speaking to in real-time without having to dig for the information. This application gives them a serious edge over an organization that may not have this data, or even worse, they have it but they don’t benefit from it because it’s too much of a hassle to retrieve the data.

Another project I’m working on now would provide data when you’re entering a Purchase Requisition to submit for approval. This application would give the user the ability to see the budget item that is affected by this requisition, as well as the ability to see the purchase history of the Vendor that the order would be going to, and knowing how this effects not only the budget, but also vendor discounts, etc… without having to ever leave the page or go into 5 different applications.

There’s a lot of technology out there that will make this type of Mashup a reality. I have seen much done with Microsoft SharePoint & Lotus Notes. As technology advances and tools like IBM Mashup Hub and QEDWiki allow users to create more and more functionality and not just present data, we will see great advances in everyone’s productivity.