Tech Business Outlook for 2003

Year in Review Last year was at best a mediocre business environment. Using the consumer confidence index, business spending indices, and stock market indices as a guide, we can predict that next year will present us with a slow recovery at best. Given this outlook, it might be tempting to keep our heads in the…

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Managing the Marketing Cycle

The Deming Constant Improvement Cycle for business management can be simplified to measure, analyze, plan, and do. Sales and marketing, like other business processes, are continuous. As such, sales and marketing managers can also take a similarly structured approach to generating revenue. While there are many variants on the Deming Constant Improvement Cycle, I would…

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Best Practices: Customer Driven Product Strategy (Part 2 of 2)

We all know that a market-driven product strategy is required for success. But how should we craft one? Richard Leavitt, Sr. Director of Product Management of Insightful, shared four best practices he deploys to drive product strategies. First, Mr. Leavitt utilizes industry research provided by IDC and others. The analysts’ reports provide general industry knowledge,…

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Best Practices: Insightful Evolves with Market Frontier (Part 1 of 2)

Product lifecycles drive the frontier of industry dynamics in high tech markets. High tech business-to business-markets additionally face the difficulty of complexity in value offerings, purchasing drivers, and buying committees, as well as non-transparent pricing and highly targeted markets. To manage the dimensions of competition while competing on a rapidly evolving product lifecycle, CEO’s and…

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Bundled Products, Pricing, and Revenue

Wind River Announces Pricing Change On Friday, November 1, 2002, Wind River’s released its new pricing strategy. Their new pricing scheme is reflects two strategic choices. First, Wind River has opted for an annual subscription pricing plan over a per-project plan. Second, Wind River has created new software combinations bundling what were individual software products.…

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Discordant Messages

On Thursday, November 7th, Chicago hosted two events of high interest. At the Sheraton, business leaders met for the first day of the TransAtlantic Business Dialogue. Two blocks east on Michigan Avenue, opposition protesters congregated behind riot police lines. Yours truly witnessed the events, albeit only to attend the eBusiness Roundtable at the University of…

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CSA Explains… Disaster Recovery

While many of us are considering how to automate more business processes, create more intelligent appliances, and integrate more technology into our society, a few firms are solving the issues of what to do when these systems fail. At the CSA Explains … Disaster Recovery on 25 October 2002, David Chapa of DataStaff, Brian Wolfe…

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Organizationally Increasing the Customer Focus – Brad McLane at the Chicago GSB Marketing Roundtable

On Tuesday, 29 October 2002, Brad McLane of Russell Reynolds Associates, an Executive Search Firm, offered his insights into the growing importance of the Chief Marketing Officer in Industrial and B2B corporations. His talk, entitled “The Role of the Strategic Marketing Executive in Non-Consumer Driven Companies”, was both attentively received and critically examined by the…

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Shifting the Ground-rules of Tech Business

An attractive concept in high-tech business is that ideas are the trump card in setting corporate strategy. The creation and possession of intellectual property separates the power of technologically driven companies from other B2B businesses in their management of the industry landscape. For instance, consider how intellectual property can change negotiation power between suppliers and…

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Improved Pricing Practices

Nothing is more contentious in a company than prices. Those on the front lines would usually like to see a lower price so that they can close more sales and move more units. Those in operations would prefer to see high prices to cover the costs. Finance enters and they too want to see upward…

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