LeveragePoint Value Management Blog

Turning the Corner

An old aphorism suggests that “when the paradigm changes everything gets reset to zero.” Such is the case today as companies struggle with ever-increasing change. The rules of the game no longer apply. It has become painfully obvious that the new competitive market values adaptability an order of magnitude higher than stability. Indeed, Thomas Friedman has suggested that economic stability will actually cause companies to fall farther behind. Rugged, adaptable entrepreneurs and the systems that support them, by contrast, will be empowered.

This reality provides a compass for today’s C-level leaders who need to direct their organizations to a footing of real-time adaptation. Rapid access to the right information is critical, but information alone is not enough. People need to have information organized in frameworks that let them think clearly, collaborate to come to the best decision, and then to act quickly and effectively. Knowledge is increasingly required--not as a stable library of proven solutions--but rather as an instantly-available, strategy-driven, situation-specific and personalized application. The ability to tap into knowledge within and beyond the enterprise is emerging as a critical ingredient for corporate success and an important lever for competitive strategy. 

At LeveragePoint we are addressing this need by providing on-line frameworks that help to capture collective corporate expertise and blend it with best practice, tools and data. This gives knowledge workers a huge advantage in both quality of output and time to task. By blending hierarchical and open systems, the knowledge worker is promoted to the status of “knowledge warrior,” armed with his own knowledge as well as the contextually-relevant collaborative expertise of the enterprise and beyond. 

Recently a F-50 company asked LeveragePoint for a solution that would do more than just deploy an important method throughout the marketing organization. They also wanted to make that knowledge available as marketers were doing their jobs, and to capture the creativity and innovation that takes place in the field when those methods are applied. If they could do that, then they could evolve their targeted methods based on new information and suggested changes from those who were using them. The LeveragePoint “eWorking” platform provided both solutions: knowledge delivered in the smallest needed chunks, as required to do one’s job, and a rapid iteration of their process—which was improved several times within just a few months—based on usage and feedback.

In times of rapid change, it is said, you don’t need to go the wrong way to fail. Standing still is all that is required, because the edge comes to you. The current economic meltdown has only sharpened our recognition that what we have been doing until now has become not only less productive, but—let’s be honest—time consuming and dysfunctional. At a time when “expertise” can be captured and “collective knowledge” can be shared instantly, conventional training programs or knowledge delivered in bulky slidedecks can be like using a buggy whip on a car.

 

None of the old skills are sufficient to turn the corner. A new way of thinking about information, knowledge and action is required. Unfortunately, in too many cases, what is touted as “out of the box thinking” is simply the same thinking inside a different box, old wine in new bottles.

LeveragePoint has dedicated itself to activating, embedding and evolving business methods using technologies that are defined by the needs of the new paradigm. When our clients turn the corner with us, they discover that capabilities previously out of reach are now considered an indispensable part of their strategic arsenal.

Jonathon Levy

Chief Strategy Officer

LeveragePoint at SemTech 2009

LeveragePoint will be attending SemTech 2009 in San Jose in the week of June 15. There's an important reason why we are presenting there. We are focused on helping companies to activate, embed and evolve their marketing strategies. We do this by providing eWorking environments that blend tools for implementing marketing frameworks with the data needed to execute, and we support these applications with rich learning and collaboration. Semantic solutions lie at the heart of the advanced capabilities of this integrated approach.

So why be in San Jose? SemTech is the premier event for applications of semantic technology and the semantic web. The focus is applications and not the underlying standards (RDF, RDFS and OWL) or the many fascinating academic issues. And the applications of the semantic web are many and growing. One of last year’s stars, PowerSet, was acquired shortly after by Microsoft and has recently reemerged as the new search engine BING. This year will feature applications from healthcare, intelligence and eCommerce and new approaches to search and data integration.

These are important to LeveragePoint and the value we bring our customers. In today’s world marketing depends on deep understanding of how value is created for customers (which is what LeveragePoint for Value Management does). This understanding is built on a set of concepts such as the how people buy (buying process), market segmentation, customer profile, brand benefit ladder, multichannel marketing mix and so on. This interconnected set of concepts is informed by data, and in today’s rapidly changing environment marketers must balance the need for consistent messages and strategy with rapid response to changing circumstances. The old practice, in which marketing strategy was captured into large PowerPoint slide presentations, often prepared by consulting firms, backed by data organized into spreadsheets and the occasional database, is just too disjointed and difficult to manage to be effective in the 21st C. It is too far from the people who actually implement strategy (and should be part of how it is made) and from the customer conversations that are shaping our world.  A new approach is needed.

The new approach will leverage the semantic web. The semantic web makes it possible to organize and link together large sets of concepts, to connect these concepts to relevant data, and then use this model to make inferences about additional concepts. The best known example is the Gene Ontology but companies such as LeveragePoint are now emerging to apply this approach to business challenges. A new trend in the data, or a change in the underlying concepts, can instantly be propagated through the system to see, for example, how a change in value driver can make a company rethink its segmentation strategy and adjust its pricing or its value messages. The result is real-time change management. Companies can keep in better touch with their markets and align more quickly to changes in strategy and external conditions.

At Semtech LeveragePoint will be participating on a panel on Semantic Wikis organized by Mark Greaves of Vulcan. This panel, on Tuesday June 16 from 2:00 to 5:30 will go into depth on the technology behind semantic wikis such as the Semantic MediaWiki, new directions for development, and real world applications (this is where we come in). LeveragePoint uses Semantic MediaWiki, Semantic Forms and the Halo Extensions to provide some of its advanced functionality.

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Steven Forth

CEO

Connecting Strategy to Results With eWorking

eWorking is a new way of activating business methods using an online platform that combines online tools, collaboration, and data eith eLearning in a single interface. It is used while people are actually performing their jobs, which is when the best learning takes place. Unlike conventional training, with eWorking the required expertise is collected in the background and delivered at the point of need, reducing the distance between learning and doing to zero. eWorking is an impactful way to activate corporate strategy because it creates measurable business results in real time.

eWorking is also an extremely practical way to rapidly drive best practice to the people in the field, where day-to-day operating decisions are being made. By embedding learning within doing, needed knowledge is available at the point of application. The person in the field is more aware of the choices they are making and of their anticipated outcomes.

eWorking creates a "virtuous cycle" that leverages collective intelligence by embedding "carbon" (human collaboration) in the "silicon" (online tool). The result is real-time change management, evolving and improving methods, tools, and best practice through application, measurement, and feedback from the users in the field.

The CMO of a large chemicals company recently told her colleagues of an eWorking program—LeveragePoint for Value Management—that they put in place last year to increase speed and business impact of their marketing pricing professionals.

She told the story of a marketing professional who had just come onto a project. He had some of the needed expertise and knowledge, but was lacking the full picture and there was nobody to quickly bring him up to speed. However, with eWorking, the previous project leader’s expertise had already been embedded in the tool he was using to create the required output, an Economic Value Estimation (EVE) for an important new product launch. Even though his predecessor was no longer with the company, the new project leader was able to benefit from his experience and expertise. The eWorking tool made the required coaching and examples available exactly as he needed it; no more, and no less. The output was created on time and was of very high quality and contributed greatly to the successful launch.

With eWorking, "expertise" is not something that someone has; rather, it is something that one uses—the result of a creative interface of individual experience and knowledge added to the collective experience and knowledge of the organization. It is far more powerful than eLearning because it puts the expertise of the entire enterprise at the fingertips of the user, and captures best practice and experience of the front-line people who apply the methods, driving the evolution of business methods and iterating those methods in real time.

Here’s how it works:

1. Leverages collective intelligence — by identifying, capturing, and transparently linking the knowledge that people carry in their heads with vetted sources of knowledge, and delivering it in the right context to the right people in the right amount at exactly the right time.

2. Embeds carbon in the silicon — by combining human coaches, coworkers, experts, and advisors with personalized learning objects within the same platform at the time they are needed.

3. Real-time change management — by opening a channel from the field that reveals how well strategy is being executed, and the effectiveness of business methods in achieving business goals. As a result, management can be rapidly improve or change those methods to adapt to unpredictable circumstances. The tool can be instantly updated with improved methods and best practice.

The bottom line: eWorking helps professionals move beyond what they know to what is known, transforming what they can do to what can be done. It creates a supportive "productivity zone" around each knowledge worker, an interface composed of tools, best practices, shared information from colleagues, and data, which is contextually linked to knowledge, methods, and process to drive consistently excellent performance.

Jonathon Levy
Chief Strategy Officer