Fall 2014
Contributors Fall 2014
Final Word Fall 2014
For most of us, courtside seats are the closest we’ll ever get to life in the NBA. But for Erica Rau, vice president of marketing for the Sacramento Kings, it’s just the tip of the iceberg. Ms. Rau talked to us about how analytics have changed professional basketball for good, what the Kings hope to accomplish with their NBA 3.0 plan, and why the best parts of the job have nothing to do with what happens on the court. When it comes to fan appreciation and custom experiences, Ms. Rau and her team deliver a slam dunk.
Banking on Customers
Gone are the days when clients were beholden to a certain bank for all of their financial needs. Today, the highly competitive world of retail banking is defined by customer experience, technology, and convenience. As executive vice president of consumer banking and private wealth management at SunTrust Bank, Brad Dinsmore focuses his team of 15,000+ employees nationwide on the concept of an improved end-to-end experience instead of just customer satisfaction. Through the use of big data, customer feedback, and strategic insights, Mr. Dinsmore has helped lead SunTrust to develop offerings, training, and new services that help its customers bank how, when, and where they want. Mr. Dinsmore spoke with Jabian Consulting about what it’s like being compared to Nordstrom, how focusing on the core customer experience opens doors to new revenue streams, and why you’ll never find him hiding from his weaknesses.
Jabian Conversations Fall 2014
The beer industry has recently experienced a glut of new products from apple and lime flavored beers to beers with unique cans and packaging. But one man believes the best part about a beer should be the beer itself. And when that man is Billy Busch, whose family founded that other little brewery in St. Louis nearly 165 years ago, you should probably believe it, too. Mr. Busch shared with us how you don’t need fancy flavors or crazy cans to make an exceptional beer, what analytics can tell you about your customers, and why sometimes just making friends is the best way to run the business.
Engagement and Change: Taking the Pulse of Your Stakeholders
How do you increase the likelihood your stakeholders will adopt a change? Find the true drivers behind their motivation to change and their motivation to resist, and you are well on your way. Leaders of change programs often struggle to thoroughly diagnose the positive and negative drivers motivating stakeholders during times of change. Measuring the reaction to a change, either positive or negative, is complex. Unexpected resistance can slow or stop the adoption of a change. Failing to leverage engagement drivers that could motivate change and generate enthusiasm for it can cause unnecessary frustration and cost.
The Big Picture: Look Beyond the Status Quo of Business Strategy
Business customers punched the golden ticket for Research in Motion (RIM), inventor of BlackBerry. Yet, a focus on planning to gain support of the consumer market pushed RIM to ineffectively design strategy, steering the firm toward financial oblivion.
Everything I Need to Know About Business Integrations, I Learned in Kindergarten
Business integrations are inherently complex. Multiple work streams come together to merge two or more organizations, with the goal of realizing the value proposed by the deal. Project teams are often full of individuals with tremendous experience, advanced degrees, and a plethora of technical knowledge. With all of the planning, diligence, and expertise, it’s surprising to learn that many integrations still fail to realize their expected value — nearly half of those done for scale and more than two-thirds done for scope.
Putting the Value Back in Mergers and Acquisitions
Merger and acquisition activity has seen a steady recovery as the stockpiles of cash companies have on hand after the 2009 financial crisis become an avenue for growth. But with excess comes a tendency for waste, and when used as a growth strategy, many mergers and acquisitions fail to achieve the value potential at the outset of the deal.
Erythrophobia: The Fear of Red
Do you really know what is going on within your organization and the truth about the status of your projects? It is easy enough to trust what is presented on paper, but maybe it is time to take a deeper look and explore how a status report may be a sign of a broader problem within your organization.
Becoming a Better Product Manager Through Process-Based Thinking
Product managers need skills that range from strategic to tactical. At one end of the continuum, they must be able to think creatively to craft solutions to customer problems. At the other end of the spectrum, they must be detail-oriented, ensuring the teams building a product correctly carry out the business requirements.
Applying a Customer-Centric Approach to Process Improvement
Companies today are continually raising the bar to create amazing customer experiences. This trend affects process-improvement professionals directly, because improvement initiatives are often prioritized by financially driven decisions that don’t take into account the customer experience. But focusing only on the dollars and cents misses the additional improvement lift your business can gain by including a focus on the customer as well.
Software Vendor Selection: Uncovering the Obvious Requires Avoiding Common Pitfalls
So, you want to select a new piece of software for your organization. If you already have a tool in mind, have you considered the nuances of how the tool will tie into your organization’s processes? You can save substantial time and money in the long run by being methodical in your efforts to select software that is the right fit for your organization’s overall goals and supports your processes.
Automotive Industry Insights
A comprehensive look into the future of the automotive industry.
Why Some Companies Win: Gamification
Lots of kids hate math. You might have been one of them. It can be overwhelming, confusing, and mundane. It might have been the one thing between (finally!) completing your homework and playing outside.
Rethinking Success in Social Media
The gold standard of success in social media used to mean more likes, followers, or views. Then, the ability to buy those likes, followers, and views quickly called into question the accuracy of using them as a metric. People began searching for a new measuring stick. This pivot is not dissimilar to the evolution of nearly all marketing channels.
The Benefits of Digital Accessibility
The term “accessible” often brings to mind physical buildings, with handicapped parking, ramps, and the like. However, with today’s growing digital market, accessibility is expanding to new realms.
Clearing Up A Nebulous Subject: Intro to Cloud Services
More than half of U.S. businesses now use cloud computing, according to a 2013 Forbes report. Gartner puts cloud computing among its top strategic technology trends. And by 2017, Cisco reports, nearly two-thirds of all workloads will be processed in the cloud. But what exactly is cloud computing? How can it help companies and customers? If the cloud has left you in a fog, read on.
Lessons from Baseball: Becoming a Stronger Business Leader
Anyone who has ever watched a college football game on TV has likely seen the NCAA commercial noting how few college athletes take their sport to a professional level. While the odds of becoming a professional athlete are extremely low, just being a fan can be rewarding: cheering yourself hoarse with 60,000 other people; experiencing the dramatic comeback of the underdog as the last seconds tick off the game clock; and ultimately celebrating a game — or a season — well-played.
Implementing Strengths-Based Team Management: The Leap from Well-Rounded Individuals to Uniquely Strong Teams
The feature article in the Fall 2013 Jabian Journal made the case for a strengths-based approach to team management, citing empirical and theoretical evidence for a concentrated team focus on individual strengths and an outright rejection of proclivities toward diminishing weaknesses.
A Model for Mastery: Learning and Development in the Digital Age
Today’s combination of knowledge content and the learning mediums available to access that content offers tremendous flexibility to learning professionals and their constituents. At the same time, that flexibility can overwhelm professionals trying to build and manage learning and development programs. Organizations that are able to harness this flexibility and deploy it to their workforce, however, can increase learning and improve employee engagement.