Monday, September 26, 2016

The Wider CIO Role In A Digital Age

The role of the CIO has evolved over the last decade or so. In my opinion this is primarily as the technology services, digital products and online marketing industries have changed considerably over that period.

Cloud, Apps, SaaS, micro services, and a bunch of other technologies & paradigms now means that:
  • Hosting a online service with 99.9% availability is just a £10/month subscription rather than a £100,000 per year investment
  • Developers no longer go to offices and work where work is, but instead sit in their bedrooms and offer themselves to the most innovative opportunities
  • Your customer (or customer's customer) is now online at any time... and more than ever before likely to be viewing your services via a smartphone
  • The new Chief Digital Officer role came & went, with a lot of their work being picked-up by the CIO (and some by the CMO)
  • Vendor lock-in is less of a concern than a vendor that doesn't have an API

All this also means the CIO role in the digital age has become more strategic than ever to the CEO. 

This is because, as software replaces more and more things, every business is becoming a technology business.

Tuesday, September 20, 2016

Personas vs Customer Segmentation

I my opinion the process of developing customer segmentation is different from creating personas.
Segments are different customer types based upon similar attributes such as demographics (and usually just cuts of your existing customer data). They are typically used to focus marketing spend.

Personas should also go into defining the customer's attitude, propensity to buy, purchase history, device usage, etc. They are there to shape the user experience by giving you (crude) stereotypes to build product/functionality and create content for.

Wednesday, September 14, 2016

When Does The Nastiness Stop?

The World is a paradox.

As a parent we each teach our children to be considerate, share their possessions and respect others. "Everyone is equal", "play nicely with others" and other such phrases are stated to the younger generation in a concerted effort to encourage them to grow up with care and love for their fellow man.

But as adults we live in a dog-eat-dog world where some people in the playground of life refuse to play nicely with others.

Therefore as we grow up, we gradually come to realise that not all things are equal and that love & respect are a rare commodity. And that people don't always get the comeuppance they deserve.

Isn't it a shame?