Joe's Jottings
Jottings Number 60, Reply A, by Bob Johnson and Mike Short:
Date: Thu, 22 Aug 96 14:41:02 -0700
I read the attached 'jotting" re Branding with high interest. I strongly believe that internal IT must "brand" and be identified as value added vs benchmarked competitors. Many of the barriers cited are clearly alive witnin HP. At a less global level, we in ISST-HRD have attempted to "brand" our offerings and differentiate based upon value add (quality of instructors, quality of CBTs, content tied to internal environment, ease of registration, delivery at convenient sites, etc.) We don't get it all correct and we're not as tied to customer as the author suggests (we sometimes assume that customers will want training released timed to the release of products, such as, NT, without surveying or querrying customers), but within our budgeted means we're attempting to build "brand loyalty" to ISST-HRD offerings. One area where we have a great opportunity and challenge to build brand recognition and loyalty is with LEARNING EXPRESS, our delivery infrastructure for self-paced training at desktops worldwide. While making the delivery infrastructure available to all orgs wishing to distribute "pay per view" offerings, we are taking steps to allow ourselves (and other groups, if interested), to "brand" those items where we warranty not only the delivery infrastructure but also the content. We do this with special logo icons on all products and literature. We're attempting to build the image in our customer base....if it has the HRD LEARNING EXPRESS logo we can count on the quality and usefulness of this product. I realize that this is a narrow interpretation of the message from Fortini-Campbell, but see the potential for it broadening to include products from other orgs who value a positive image and customer loyalty. We have built into the infrastructure the capability to share "pay per view" revenue with content providing organizations....thus the opportunity to push the process cross organizationally. Barriers/internal competitors continue to be an issue......but I value your attempts to push the message to the larger HP community. Many more comments, but time running out for now. Bob Johnson (Manager, ISST - HRD)
When we speak of 'whole product' we are referring to a product 'offering' that includes the product surrounded by the services and other appurtenances necessary to deliver the 'product' as a complete solution to a problem rather than a point product. The HP-IT Infrastructure and it's associated 'branding' is an accumulation/aggregation of experiences with receiving or delivering these offerings and products. I think it is important to think of products as surrounded by these services+ so that our 'offerings' begin to have a 'whole' content feeling to those that experience them. We can then begin to think about what we want those feeling to be.....and then call it our 'brand'. So first we have to identify the key attributes of the branding and then modify those attributes to achieve the desired brand 'feeling'. All this considered, what we have here is a way to look at a large domain such that we can identify 'common characteristics' about products/services (offerings) delivered. What we have here is the concept of 'domain analysis' on the domain 'HP-IT infrastructure'. What we are trying to achieve is a way to create top quality 'feelings' (excellent services and products) whose attributes are common. This brings up a more fundamental, and in my view, more important issue. How do we identify 'common assets' in HP-IT so that when problem 'patterns' recur we can already have solution assets available and locatable to engineer the new solution much faster than ever before. I believe that the fundamental lever that will differentiate HP or HP-IT from existing internal or external groups is our ability to catalog, classify, index, and publicize the existing asset we so cavalierly discard after each creation process today. We create a solution for one division for help desk and then redo the process, choose another software suite, and implement with a new project plan for the next division. I believe we are suffering from the 'three legged stool' syndrome. We reward processes and people who create things. We reward people who gather things and reuse them to achieve something, although this is rare. We don't, however, reward those who are responsible or who want to be responsible for 'finding' reusable assets, cataloging them (which takes domain expertise on a par with creators), classifying them and publicizing them. USA industry will eventually find that the answer to 'time to market' is not hire more people or even re-engineer the process (although this helps). The answer is to create building blocks...the same building blocks we already create each day....and then combine them in new and different ways. In the software industry we call this reuse. But in ALL jobs there are reusable assets like memos, rfps, proposals, charts, measurement reports, etc.. that could be leveraged if we learn to place value on it and on the domain experts who will need to do it. Without domain experts we simply accumulate 'infoglut'. The domain expert's job is as much to 'remove' unnecessary assets as to identify and make available new assets. When the three legged stool has all it's legs then HP-IT and other organizations can create, MANAGE, and use its assets in a way that allows the branding attributes to be as consistent as HP printers, or Rolex watches. Regards, Mike Short 567-8594