|
"Are we
blinded by e-light"
Martyn Daniels, Strategic Development
Director, VISTA Computer Services
International Distribution and Supply Chain
Specialist Meeting Frankfurt, October 2000
We can all relate to the driver, but today
we now have to relate to the rabbits. We are
caught in the glare of e-light of the
e-revolutions that are bearing down on us at
an alarming rate. What is certain, is that we
can’t all expect this vehicle to brake and
give us time to move.
Change within publishing is taking place at
an alarming rate. Today, we all face many
challenges in our business journeys. The
question is, how we respond.
Do we:
- prepare against surprise - and build
defence mechanism against the change
- prepare for surprise - and adapt to
respond quickly to the changes as they occur
- or do we, recognizing the potential
opportunities available, prepare the
surprise itself
Today I intend to overview some of the
traffic, that is bearing down on us and to
offer some insights that may help us on our
journeys and avoid us being caught, transfixed
and blinded by the lights
The changes taking place today are
significant. Larger players are getting larger
and are changing the economies of scale and
scope, vertical integration is blurring the
roles of some within the supply chain, media
convergence is introducing new players and
globalization is challenging many of the
traditional publishing "rules". Convergence
and consolidation, is by itself, reshaping the
supply chain.
We are all familiar with the impact that
the likes of Guttenberg, Ingram and others had
in shaping today's publishing environment. You
may not be as familiar with the changes that
effected the UK market in the 18th century.
However, the 18th century literacy revolution
completely changed the roles of booksellers,
authors, printers and publishers. It redefined
the value chain and removed a number of
significant players. Like Guttenberg, Ingram
and others, the likes of Robert Dodsley
prepared the surprise in this revolution. The
question we all must now ask is, who is
preparing the surprise today?
Today, everyone is grappling with movement
on these Product and Market axis. We all start
from different positions, we all have
different goals and different time-scales in
which we aim to achieve them. Each of the
following axis has a different impact,
according to our roles within the value chain
and the sector in which we operate:
| Physical |
Vs |
Online |
| Direct Market Reactive
|
Vs |
Customer Driven |
| Direct Market Reactive
|
Vs |
Direct Market Reactive Vs Customer
Driven |
| Print and Distribute |
Vs |
Distribute and Print |
| Print in Case |
Vs |
Print on Demand |
| Out of Print |
Vs |
Always in Print |
| Front List |
Vs |
Back List |
| Consolidated |
Vs |
Fragmented |
| Sale or Return |
Vs |
Firm sale |
| Territory pricing |
Vs |
Global pricing |
The questions we now all need to ask are:
Where exactly are we? What is the position
of the marketplace? Where do we want to go and
in what timescales? What are the associated
actions and risks.
Digitization is a subject in itself. The
question of whether the ebook as we see it to
today is a mere transitional stage like the
CDROM and that broadband online technologies
are the end game is another debate. The impact
of the ebook alone is however forcing us to
revisit standard such as the ISBN and the
internet can clearly claim credit for the long
overdue emergence of ONIX / EPICS standards.
The jury remains out on the DOI.
In many cases we are not dealing with a
future we can predict or control. We can't
adopt a wait and see policy, if we do will not
have the competencies to compete and more
importantly will probably find others, sitting
in our seat and eating our dinner.
Earlier this year I asked a similar
audience to this, the following questions:
- When Simon and Schuster published
“Riding the Bullet” by Stephen King and made
it only available by digital download over
the Internet, how many downloads were
achieved in the first 24 hours?
- How many digital and e-articles appeared
in The Bookseller in the first quarter of
this year?
- How many online e-tailers databases are
updated daily and weekly online with rich
Bibliographic information via BookData?
The answers now seem dated, but when asked
less than half the audience got any one
question correct and they were extremely
conservative in their responses.
We only need to open up our press today it
see that the publishing e-lights are switched
on.
The speed of change should not be doubted.
A recent article in "wired" pointed out that
technology is now outstripping Moore's law,
which to-date, has accurately predicted the
exponential rise computing processing power to
time.
That change is happening should not be
doubted. That all change costs money is a
fact.
I think Terry McGraw captures the issue
perfectly when he says its now about the speed
of change.
However, we also have to remember that for
some time the current traditional environment
will still be the major revenue generator and
will still require continued support and
investment
In 1996, as a result of our research
programme "Publishing in the 21ts Century", we
predicted that the shift from physical to
digital product would gather momentum in the
year 2000, but that it would still represent
the minority of the overall product mix. We
also predicted that by 2020 the position would
flip, with physical product becoming the
minority of the mix. We are clearly moving in
this direction and therefore face with an
interesting quandary?
If we accept that overall growth in the
market is at a marginal, say 3% to 5% and we
take a hypothetical books and journals
publisher with revenues around $80 million, we
see marginal growth across the total business
over the next 5 years. However we must respect
that the e-publishing revenues will grow.
We could expect e-publishing growth over
the same period to rise to 25% of revenues.
Some may say this is conservative, others that
it is generous. The point is that if we accept
the principle, we have to accept that revenues
from the physical product must decline to
compensate the switch to electronic product.
The principle is simple, if the revenues
remain relative flat and electronic revenues
is growing, then physical revenues must reduce
The publishers now find themselves having
to continue to support the cost of the
declining physical product overhead with
declining revenues. Whilst at the other end
they are having to invest heavily to make the
e-publishing transition in order to realize
the new potential revenues. A clear double
wammy and new squeeze on the margins.
In this new environment we need to step
back and realize we need to re-evaluate how we
do business, the marketplace in which we do
business, partners we do business with, our
competitors etc. This is not an IT or
logistics issue it is a corporate one that
clearly forces strategic vision, corporate
consensus and corporate action if we are to
avoid being paralyzed by e-lights. Piecemeal
actions are no longer the answer
I have drawn up 7 principles of e-business
that I believe you should consider when
formulating or reviewing your corporate
e-business strategy. They are not
comprehensive neither are they mandatory. They
just make a lot of sense in this brave new
world.
First is a focus on your core
competency.
Recognizing the key elements of trading
involve:
- Content the product in a digital,
physical or any combination of media
- Context the bibliographic information
that describes the product
- Commerce the commercials and customer
information and processes
Just as within any environment, all are
essential within the e-business world, 2 out
of 3 will not do. All are linked irrespective
of whether you are selling virtual or physical
product or servicing customers the on the
Internet
The key question to ask is where is your
core competency, where do you add value in the
evolving value chain and proposition?
Some may believe that they provided added
value and competitive advantage by doing all
three themselves and that they are truly
self-sufficient.
You may develop and publish content, but
can you provide it in every format, every type
of ebook, Digitally distribute it, and provide
it on demand? Or do you recognise the
competency of others and outsource those
tasks? Are you equally focused across your
full list? Are you now focusing on being
"never out of print?"
These are just a fraction of the new
players on the radar of publishing who deal
with content and need to be evaluated,
understood and positioned. Many will fail, but
what is certain, is that a number will succeed
and will radically change aspects of
publishing as we known them today. Are you
comfortable that you understand their
competencies and value add?
Remember, only a few years ago Amazon was
dismissed by many. An interesting thought to
ponder…is that all major trade publishers now
have a clear vested interest in Amazon’s
continued growth and success and that failure
of the some of the dotcom’s could have a fatal
impact on some.
Ask yourselves what the role of the
wholesaler is today? Look at how many are
currently positioning themselves for tomorrow.
They clearly are embracing digital
distribution, they are clearly providing total
web fulfillment services to many bookstores,
they are providing drop shipment and could
even be regarded by some as distributors. What
is their core competency and value add and
where do they now position themselves in
tomorrow's supply chain?
Second is a focus on Integration - not
replication
When it comes to online fulfillment
Publishers have a clear choice - replicate
their commercial systems online or seamlessly
integrated their e-business activity with
their existing systems and existing
information.
Unfortunately, many have learned the hard
way. The skill and knowledge set required to
achieve this business integration, is
different to that owned by even the best web
designers let alone the “garage boys”, that
are all too often here today and gone
tomorrow.
An example of replication. The commercial
systems feed the digital warehouse in real
time, with information on customers, products,
trading terms etc. The consumer enters via an
intermediary and selects the ebook and
required format. They submit an order on
behalf of the consumer to the digital
warehouse, who proceed to download the ebook
to the consumer and confirm the transmission
to the etailor and the sale to the publisher.
Finally, the publisher's commercial systems
raise an invoice to the etailer. Seems fairly
straightforward, until you start to think
about the synchronization between the Digital
warehouse and the publisher's commercial
systems and the fact the digital warehouse
will have to virtually replicate the
publisher's commercial systems etc.
Unfortunately this process is not fictional
but is one fraught with risk.
When we look at the integration options, we
start to remove duplication and
synchronization of data and replication of
functionality. The solution is simple and
importantly recognizes the core competencies
of those involved and importantly is
consistent with physical fulfillment.
There are many people who we now have to
interface with. We need to think about how we
interface them. Integration not replication is
the only answer. Many who adopt a replication
route will fail not because their digital
warehouse was wrong but because they
introduced risk and cost when it could have
been avoided. Think about how you will need to
synchronize functionality and data and not just
with one but many partners. Critically, you
are not just replicating your functionality
and data, you could find, you are also giving
away your customers and your interface with
them.
Third focus on a Standard Interface
Many believe that the ability to process a
credit card transition is all that is required
today and that B2B and B2C are completely
separate.
Increasingly, the demands of servicing even
the B2C customers will become complex. They
themselves will be more demanding and their
needs will be driven not by what publishers
can provide but by their total e-experience.
The need to manage all customer’s through a
standard interface is compelling. It offers
standardization, commercial flexibility,
development economics and effective customer
service.
Fourth focus on Core Relationships
across the Value Chain
In one of our research reports, "The Impact
on The Publishing Value Chain of Online
Networks", we created, from the work of
Professor Michael Porter, a modified
Publishing Value Chain. It is critical that we
focus on product and customer information and
the associated trading terms across this
lifecycle.
As illustrated by the initiatives such as
ONIX/EPICS and the earlier BIC Basic, product
information does not just materialise when the
product hits the warehouse and neither does it
stop there. Over 70 % of customer Service
calls are about basic information. The demand
for product information is exploding, after
all if you can't find it you can't value it
and you can't buy it.
Today all the major chains, e-tailers,
wholesalers all have book in hand processes.
Collectively this is a huge cost to all. It's
primarily focus is to collect rich information
which is often not available any other way.
The problem is that this is too late in the
lifecycle.
Inconsistent and inaccurate information is
costing this industry millions and also losing
sales.
The question is not so much as to who will
provide the information to the marketplace,
but how publishers will produce and provide
the information in a timely manner.
To survive in this new environment, all
publishers now need a rich product database
with full export capability as much as they
need a customer database and fulfillment
system.
Fifth focus on the different user /
community perspectives
Yesterday we would have built different
systems for different users groups and even
different networks.
Our problem is that we all have:
- Close relatives and friends with whom we
share close information. (our Intranet)
- More distant relatives and friends we
see less frequently and share less
information with (our Extranet)
- Finally, relatives and people we only
see at births, marriages and deaths and
share little information with (our
Internet).
However we have all three types within the
same user groups and their individual
closeness will vary over time.
In addition, we also have to recognise that
the difference between what one group
customers wants and another group may vary as
little as 5%. There is often more commonality
than we think.
We now need to recognise that there are
many community builders out there. However we
need to be wary. Some want to totally own
their community, others only wish to be
service providers. In all cases, we have to
recognise what is best for the user and the
community and ensure that intermediaries don't
lock you out from even knowing who your
customers are.
Again Terry McGraw recognizes the key focus
required. Sharing information and trust, and
in doing so understanding behaviour become
important if not critical factors. Some today
will give these away in the belief they are
growing business, they are wrong, they are
giving away their future.
Sixth - focus on servicing everybody -
not the just the few
Although it is relatively easy for large
publishers to trade electronically with large
booksellers, this is often restricted to base
transactions and rarely filters down to the
80% that constitute 20% of value and volume
but a high cost of service.
Here we see traditional communications such
as fax, phone and even post. EDI or e-commerce
is often too complex and costly to prevail, is
not real time and doesn’t deal with customer
service queries effectively.
Also we need to remember that 40% of the UK
Book trade is export, they can’t be ignored,
they need 24 x 7 hour access to their
information and ability to trade both
efficiently and effectively.
Last - focus on Web access
Yesterday users wanted an integrated
desktop, one from which they could access all
their information in a consistent manner.
Today is no different except it is no longer
restricted to the confines of the local
environment, it is global and more important
people now only want to see and have access to
their world. They want "My Web",
identification, personalization and
consistency from anywhere and anytime.
ebusiness is about providing solutions to all
both inside and outside of the organization.
Theses seven principles are not fixed they
are fluid, they will evolve but they are
today's issues. The technology exists, the
opportunities exist what is now required is a
broad e-business vision, a corporate strategy
and the business commitment to make it happen.
Today we must stop thinking that ebusiness
is different. It is business.
We now need to cross the road, recognise
the opportunities, actions and risks and avoid
being caught in the glare of the e-light.
Return to top of page
Learning to Manage in the World of the
Unexpected
Paper By Martyn Daniels
Published as Chapter 3
Information in Action: Putting
Knowledge to Work in the Publishing Industry
1999,
©VISTA
Computer Services
ISBN 0952556685
3.
Learning to Manage in the World of the
Unexpected
"In an economy where the only certainty is
uncertainty, the one sure source of lasting
competitive advantage is knowledge"
Ikujiro Nonaka
1
When we set out on a journey, we have many
decisions to make:
•
Which route should we take?
•
What conditions will we face?
•
How long will it take?
•
Do we know of any delays, road works, and
hazards?
•
Have we sufficient gas to make the journey?
We know how to drive and how to minimize
the risk of accidents. We understand the
automobile's dashboard and the many messages
it conveys. But even with all this
preparation, information and experience, we
know we have to expect the unexpected.
When on our journey we are faced with a new
road sign, an oncoming car flashing its
headlights at us, or a warning light on our
dashboard, we recognize the potential risk
associated with the message and take
appropriate action. We collate all the
information available to us at the time,
relate this to our experience and knowledge,
and decide what we should do.
Our business journeys towards our strategic
and tactical goals are no different, just more
complex. We are all in different vehicles with
different capabilities, moving at different
speeds, often going in different directions.
We all want to avoid tailbacks, getting lost,
accident, break down – and running out of gas!
However, we often find ourselves confronted
with the unexpected; then we have to draw on
our personal and organizational skills and
knowledge to manoeuvre around the obstacle and
continue our journey.
Unfortunately, the information signals we
receive – from both inside and outside the
organization – are obscure and ambiguous.
Often the information is out of date, which
means that our responses, instead of being
proactive, can only be reactive. In many
instances, the person who is best equipped
with the experience and knowledge to deal with
a particular issue is not the one who receives
the relevant information.
Before we start to look for a response to
these issues, we must reflect on the
contribution that technology has already made
in capturing and exploiting information,
experience and knowledge and, as a result,
providing competitive advantage to the
companies that have used it effectively.
3.1 Yesterday's Journeys
Automating the process and accumulating the
transactional data
"So far computer users still use the new
technology only to do faster what they have
always done before, crunch conventional
numbers"
2
We have all in the past experienced some
degree of success in reducing the cost of
doing business. We have automated data entry,
reduced accounting and clerical resources and
significantly reduced the cost of processing
transactions. We have also enabled our
organizations to grow, handling greater
volumes of data more effectively. It is
difficult if not impossible to imagine the
same levels of growth being achieved using the
old paper- and people-intensive business
systems.
However, in automating our business
processes, we implemented little change; the
processes remained essentially the same as
they were before they were automated. In many
instances, innovative “best practice”
solutions to particular problems were neither
widely identified nor widely adopted. As a
result, these frequently remained proprietary
to an organization or an industry sector.
Taking the view that the individual
organization always knew best, "packaged"
system solutions were customized to support
proprietary practices and processes and as a
result became unsupportable by the vendor.
These "batch based" business system
solutions were all too often inward looking
and focused not on the supply or value chains
but on internal organizational processes.
Competitive advantage was seen as flowing from
reduction in the business's cost base, even if
this reduction was made at the expense of
others in the chain. Investment in technology
was high – and any competitive advantage
gained proved unsustainable.
Businesses created "data islands" that did
little to provide the organization with the
information it required for making its
tactical – let alone its strategic –
decisions. These "islands" of data were often
hard to locate within the organization. It was
cumbersome to extract useable information from
them and it required specialists to provide or
amend the simplest of reports. In many cases,
the data was incorrect, inconsistent or out of
date.
Organizations made many of their decisions
entirely "blind of the facts". Despite the
investment in technology, they remained
totally reliant on the internal,
unsystematized expertise and knowledge on
which they had always depended.
"In the absence of learning, companies and
individuals, simply repeat old practices.
Change remains cosmetic and improvements are
either fortuitous or short lived"
3
Providing power to the desktop but not
the organization
The PC and local network revolution brought
a realignment of focus from the organization
and the back office to the user. This change,
together with previously unimaginable local
computing power and software capability,
broadened the computing franchise beyond the
IT specialists.
We now found ourselves wielding new tools
that could download the data, manipulate it
and report on it more effectively and
efficiently than ever before. However, we
often found a significant gap between those
who could and those who just thought they
could. Newly empowered users often spent hours
designing (and over-engineering) spreadsheets
and other analysis tools.
The data was certainly turned into
information – of a sort. However, in this “new
frontier” environment, it was still doubtful
that the right information reached the right
people at the right time.
The more that data was collated and
analyzed, the more information we wanted. Our
thirst could not be quenched. All too often we
failed to stop and think – we just had to
analyze everything. Every finance department
had its own spreadsheet "magician". The
autonomous became even more autonomous. We had
deployed "island technology" that spawned
"island information" and the information
created even more information in this
seemingly lawless maze.
The myriad "information islands" that now
dominate the publishing front office often
inhibit easy access to comprehensive
information covering the complete life-cycle
of a title. However, we need to recognize that
the information alone is effectively valueless
unless we can also find ways of capturing and
exploiting the organizational knowledge that
gives it context.
In this era, competitive advantage was
still seen as residing in the ability to
analyze a business's performance in detail, to
seek out inefficiency and to apply corrective
action. However, it turned out that monitoring
the organization was hard: all too often,
conflicts occurred when two departments
presented two (or more!) different
perspectives using precisely the same
information.
Investment in technology remained high,
technical effort across the organization rose
sharply and any competitive advantage again
proved unsustainable. Organizations became
increasingly "sceptical about the facts" and
were still totally reliant on –and exposed to
– that internal decision making expertise and
knowledge they had always used.
Information is not static and lives all
around us
"Most organizations have habits and
structures that keep them at arm's length from
the rest of the world"
4
In the second paper in this series,
"Profiting From Tomorrow's Customers",
5 we highlighted many of the issues
surrounding the publishing supply chain and
the growing shift from a product-oriented
business to a customer-driven one. We
highlighted the often-adversarial
relationships that existed then and that
(perhaps to a lesser extent) still exist
today.
Sharing of data, let alone information,
with trading partners is only now starting to
take place across the industry. Publishing
still lags a long way behind other industries
in the area of EDI (electronic data
interchange). Such sharing of information as
does exist in the book industry would be
regarded as unacceptably meagre in many other
trading communities today.
However, movement is perceptible. The
industry has started to confront the massive
gaps in information that have existed between
trading partners across the publishing supply
chain.
• In the subscription sector, it is
recognized that the vast majority of claims –
and the resultant costs – are a direct result
of there being little or no sharing of
publication schedules.
• In the book sector, over 65% of calls to
publisher's customer service departments are
inquiries on price, availability and the
status of an order.
Organizations are beginning to realize that
significant efficiency can be gained by the
adoption of "open information trading" with
their supply chain partners.
EDI will address a considerable proportion
of the transactional information exchanges but
will not address real time requests for
information. Innovative services, such as
PubEasy.com,
6 Ingram I,
6 Oasis
6 and others,
are starting to redefine information access,
presentation and exchange. Other industry
services such as BookTrack
6 and BookScan 5
are now collating and analyzing cross-industry
information.
In the third and fourth papers in this
series,
7 we highlighted many of the
issues relating to the publishing value chain
and the information and technology needs of
the core "value adding" front office
activities within publishing. Integrating
information from the myriad of "information
islands" that dominate the front office is
often a daunting task. What is more, bridging
the cultural divide between publishing back
and front office is not as important as
bridging the information divide between these
two areas of the business.
Significant competitive advantage can flow
from sharing data and information both within
the organization and in trading partnerships.
However, realizing the benefits from this
activity requires vision, commitment and
co-operation between "information traders".
Data standards are also essential, not just
between the different trading partners but
also within the organization!
However, merely throwing information "over
the wall" without the insight and knowledge
that gives it meaning does not create the
"win-win" environment that is essential for
future success.
"There is no future for hermetically sealed
closed systems in the networked economy."
8
Yesterday's journeys brought us greater
efficiency and started to unlock the
information available from inside and outside
the organization. In doing so, they served to
highlight the exposure of the organization to
inadequate management of its information and
knowledge resources.
3.2 The dynamic landscape we now live in
3.2.1 Convergence, convergence, convergence
Not only does everyone now have internal
systems and information sources, we have many
external ones as well. We are all continually
bombarded with email and have increasingly
high mountains of it to climb every day. We
still have the telephone; thanks to mobile
telephony, we can no longer escape from its
call. If we do escape briefly, we have a
string of voice mails, all crying out for our
attention. We still have the constant arrival
of faxes and even traditional "snail mail”
seems never to decline in volume.
We are, as individuals, becoming
increasingly "open all hours", to do business
with anyone, from anywhere and at anytime. We
are continuously "plugged in" to the
information and communication network.
"I meet refuges coming out of Kosovo with
the few possessions they could carry. I was
amazed to see them carrying their cellular
phones with them"
9
Will it get worse? “Certainly” is the only
possible answer. Potentially at least, we are
now recipients of more information in one day
than Jane Austen or Mark Twain would have
received in a decade. Telecommunication and
information services will continue to merge
and develop. Anytime, anywhere access to
information (and others’ access to us) will
become inescapable. At the same time, the
quality and utility of that access will
improve. We will find the "office in our
hands" a reality.
Most of us can remember life without
laptops, mobile phones, personal organizers;
our new employees will never have known life
without them. The new workforce will expect,
indeed demand, much greater and more
sophisticated use of technology.
King Canute failed to hold back the tide.
The question today is not how we can contain
this new tidal wave of intrusion, but how we
can manage and exploit it to our advantage. We
will need automatic filters on what we receive
and when we receive it – and we will need to
personalize these to reflect our individual
needs. In a world of convergence, we will need
to find new ways of establishing lines of
demarcation between our social and working
lives.
Publishing and the media are at the very
heart of this technology convergence. The
formats and channels in which content is
delivered (with its supportive contextual
information) are rapidly evolving.
The speed at which this convergence is
happening is frightening, even to a
professional technologist. We are constantly
being bombarded with new and innovative
technology and prototype applications. If we
thought that the choice in the beginning
between Betamax and VHS was a close call, then
we are in for some tough decisions.
Broadcasting and telecommunications
technologies are converging, along with the
infrastructure and tools that we use to access
them; at the same time, their carrying
capacity is increasing exponentially.
What this all means for the future is
uncertain. Who will dominate this marketplace
and what their offer will be remains unclear.
What is certain is that out of today's myriad
of options will emerge a winner, just as in
the past we had IBM (mainframes), DEC
(midrange), Intel (PC chips), Microsoft (PC
Windows), Oracle (relational databases) and
SAP (ERP software). What may be worth noting
is that no dominant technology position has
ever proved to be defendable against the next
wave – at least, not yet.
3.2.2 Drowning in the sea of data
"Mistakes get repeated, but smart decisions
do not. Most important, the old ways of
thinking are never discussed, so they are
still in place to spawn new mishaps"
10
As with telecommunications, we are
increasingly being bombarded with
“information”. Some of it is still only
“data”; some has been collated and analyzed
and can now claim to be “information”.
Nevertheless it is clear that we all spend far
too much time and effort reading the wrong
news.
We have office systems which create their
own information flows, some structured and
some not. How many emails and attached reports
are circulated to us just “for your
information”? We now have the all too simple
capability to fire off at random "just in
case" information. Are we expecting some sort
of response, a reaction – or are we merely
covering our backs? Irrespective of our
expectations, the recipient has to make some
decision about it. To make that decision, at
least part of what we send has to be read by
all those to whom we send it.
We also have external feeds, both in the
form of transactional and operational
information and access to external market
information. These feeds are sometimes
"pushed" at us in the form of an online
newsletter or alerts; alternatively we have to
go and pull the information in the form of
online "self service".
We are increasingly information and
communication slaves, all conscious that
non-participation in the information chain
(both creating and digesting) is a not an
option; exclusion from the chain could have a
terminal effect if not on our business then at
least on our careers.
Ask yourself these questions:
•
How much of my day is now spent dealing with
"noise"?
•
What percentage of all the information I
receive actually makes a difference?
•
What information don't I get that would really
make a difference?
" Who depends on me for information? And on
whom do I depend? Everyone should be
constantly thinking through what information
he or she needs to do the job and to make a
contribution"
11
Management by exception must be the goal –
with automated profiling and filtering of
information an essential means of reaching
that goal.
However, we often forget that communication
is a two way process. What information do we
send to others today that instead of enriching
their contribution potentially dilutes it?
There is little point in giving trading
partners advanced supply chain information,
such as demand forecasts, if they are unable
to use it effectively, or choose to ignore it,
or, worse, actively use the information as a
weapon against us.
We need to learn the art of navigating a
safe passage through this sea of data and to
ensure that in doing so we do not
inadvertently sink those on whom we also
depend.
3.2.3 The e-business environment
"With electronic business not only
commercial transactions but whole businesses
will go online"
12
The migration from e-commerce to e-business
is so significant and difficult to achieve
that many companies will miss the boat and
perish as a result. The move from the physical
world to the virtual world is not just about
digital product; it is about doing business,
irrespective of whether the product itself is
physical, virtual or multi-format.
Early adopters may be seen to be operating
at a commercial disadvantage, apparently
spending money for little or no tangible
return. They are however learning the new
rules, establishing their brands and gaining
knowledge about customers and the market that
will be essential to their survival.
3.2.4 The net redefines the customer
"Electronic commerce gets over hyped today.
There's nothing dramatic about the fact that
an order that used to come on paper now comes
on the Internet. What's profound is when
buyers and sellers who never would have been
matched before are being matched"
13
We speak today about ERP (Enterprise
Resource Planning) and “Enterprise Systems”
but these are already being overtaken by CRM
(Customer Relationship Management) and
“Customer Systems”. Vendors are realizing that
information about their customers sales are
not enough and that they need to understand
their buying patterns and preferences.
Categorizing customers by this analysis can be
far more productive than by sales and
territory alone.
The traditional vendor driven publishing
model is fast becoming extinct. Power has
already shifted firmly to the intermediary but
is moving at an increasing speed to the
consumer. Those who ignore this – and the
rising role of the Infomediaries – may well
find themselves not driving the development of
their products and the market but firmly being
driven by others down the supply chain.14
"Customers don't have to buy the books -
the mere fact that they looked for information
about such books can be recorded and marketed
to others"
15
The customer is king in the world of "MyNet"
"There's no such thing as a personal
computer in the future. There are only
available appliances. You'll use your smart
card or smart ring or some sort of proximity
device, the device knows who you are, what
you're authorized to access - and you type in
your password to get whatever service you paid
for"
16
Utility of access works two ways and comes
with a heavy price. Consumers can be accessed
and targeted just as easily as they can access
and target vendors and information. Consumers
are besieged, telemarketers phoning at home at
all hours, direct marketers stuffing the
mailbox with junk mail, relationship marketers
demanding more information. "Spam" junk email
now constitutes 10% of all worldwide email.
Yesterday the consumer was happy to give
their personal information and often had the
option to refuse its reuse or sale to third
parties. Today we only have to view our PC
files to see the profusion of "cookies" that
are being deposited in them. Customers
understand that their information and feedback
has real value and is no longer an
afterthought. It has the potential to become
"the tail that wags the dog".
• A 1996 DIRECT survey found 83% of those
surveyed said there should be a law requiring
an opt-in procedure for names to be included
on direct mail lists
• A 1998 survey of more than 10,000 World
Wide web users by Graphic, Visualization &
Usability (GVU) found that 72% of Internet
users believed there should be new laws to
protect privacy on the Internet and that 82%
of users objected to the sale of personal
information.
• A 1998 Business Week poll found that 53%
of respondents said government should pass
laws now for how personal information can be
captured and used online, a figure 3 times
higher than the number of consumers who
supported the idea that the government should
let trade groups develop voluntary privacy
standards.17
Another aspect of this new environment is
the development of Intelligent Agent
technology. We are all familiar with the
search services available on the Internet.
Without the search engines, we would not be
capable of finding the haystack, let alone the
needle. These agents collect information and
allow us to search against it. However they
perform simple "word match" searches (however
sophisticated these may be) and are "dumb" as
to the relevance of what they find to any
particular individual.
A new breed of tools are taking this one
stage further and are starting to search more
intelligently against specific requirements
and on a narrower range of directly relevant
sites. Comparison shoppers, for example, are
powerful aids to the user who is searching for
the "best buy" – and can kill traffic to sites
that are not in their search path. If
customers see value in their service, then
there is much to be lost in blocking their
entry. However, who is then the real service
provider to the customer?
Infomediaries18 are
now using agent technologies both to profile
users and to enable users to profile
themselves. This profiling then enables the
user to be automatically alerted to any new
information or services that match their
profile. This technology has the potential to
make a really significant impact on everything
we do, both in our commercial and in our
social lives.
Imagine for example a bookstore that
currently generates insufficient trade to
warrant a call from a sales representative.
The bookstore’s buyer inevitably goes to a
wholesaler today. With more sophisticated
tools, publishers could profile these
accounts, not just by their sales history
(which only says what they bought), but
against their own description of what they
want, when they want it, and those many other
factors that together create an “intelligent
profile” of their business.
This would then present the opportunity,
for example, to "push" appropriate marketing
and promotional materials to them at the
appropriate time. Potentially a "win–win"
solution – and one that could address a
significant proportion of today’s supply chain
issues.
3.3 Learning to swim in the sea of data
"A Corporation's success today lies more in
its intellectual and systems capabilities than
in its physical assets"
19
How do we prepare for the unexpected and
arm ourselves react more quickly – or to
pre-empt the surprise? We need to focus on what
we need to know in order to perform our
individual tasks and to remove unnecessary
data that is currently cluttering our vision.
The schematic in Figure 1generically
depicts the different information roles within
any organization. The framework is defined by
the type of actions required from a member of
staff, from routine everyday tasks to
exceptional ones and from those that are often
heavily systematized to those that require
substantial intellectual "knowledge" input.
Figure 1

Clerical Support activities require routine
and systematized information flows that feed
regular inputs, that can be processed and
output to the next activity in the chain. The
information is transactional and needs to be
minimized to facilitate efficiency. This area
of activity is where the paper chain (and
resultant paper mountains) need urgently to
migrate online and where integration and
portable technologies such as hand held
terminals, radio frequency, and mobile
telephony can bring significant efficiency.
The overall objective is to "feed the
conveyor-belt" and ensure that operations are
kept moving.
Users need workflow tools that provide "to
do lists", automated routing, process
management and full integration of their
information and communication systems and
services. They also require full online
enquiry and entry capabilities and minimal
paper reporting.
The service objective is: "check it in
and check it out".
Process Management activities differ from
the clerical ones in that these are focused
not on the performance of tasks but on the
performance of process. Process managers
require access to the same transactional
information used in the clerical process but
their usage of the data and their application
requirements are very different. They often
require access to associated information from
a number of sources to enable them to manage
risk and change in the day to day activities
associated with the process.
Users here still require workflow tools but
in this case to alert them to process
exceptions, performance bottlenecks and future
resource requirements. They also need basic
analysis and standard online reporting against
targets, thresholds and trends.
In today's flat organizational structures,
a program manager may be involved in the
management of a process or processes not just
within a single functional area but right
across the whole business. This involves the
management of cross-functional teams and
appropriate allocation of resources. The
resource information associated with these
dynamics is similar to that found in the
traditional project management toolkit; this
adds a further dimension to the information
requirement.
The service objective is: "keep today on
schedule".
"Strong businesses and economies draw on
deep reservoirs of know-how and expertise"
20
Business Analysis activities tend to be
associated not so much with process, but with
monitoring and analyzing overall business
activities and performance. This analysis may
be prompted by a variance to that expected or
by a search to discover the parameters that
effect an operation or process. All involve
deep "data mining" of the information.
"Data mining" describes the functionality
required to drill down through a huge volume
of data, tapping off into specific rich
“seams” as necessary. This involves not
viewing information in a single dimension but
in multiple dimensions.
Analysis is often performed "offline",
often using a Data Warehouse, in which both
operational information and information from
many other sources has been aggregated. This
approach protects live operational data from
the performance demands of the analysis
techniques while at the same time providing
analysts with both the performance they
require and the wider business picture. The
tools used vary considerably from the PC
spreadsheet to very sophisticated modelling and
forecasting tools. It is important that the
results of any analysis can be presented in a
graphical and accessible format using industry
standard tools.
The service objective is to enable the
analyst to: "turn over the stones and look for
the issues".
Enterprise Decision Support is focused at
managing the key performance indicators (KPIs)
within the business. The activity is focused
not on “fixing what isn't broke”, but
identifying what is broke and fixing it, or
even more importantly on identifying what
could be breaking and taking actions to
prevent the fracture. There is also an
often-unrecognized need to understand where
and why performance is exceeded. The role is
proactive as well as reactive and users need
to be able to pose sophisticated "what if"
questions against information at a high level.
.
This area of activity is at the senior
executive level and again needs to accommodate
external as well as internal information
sources. However, unlike the "search and
discovery" role of the analyst, executives
need an active feed that alerts them to where
they need to look more closely at information.
This type of approach can be referred to as
"traffic lighting". They do not need to know
when the lights are green but only when they
are on amber or red. When on amber they also
need to understand if they are about to turn
green – or red.
The service object is to: "identify which
key performance indicators need attention".
"The management of knowledge involves
essentially the creation of behaviours that
allow people to transform information into
business results"
21
All too often we seek a single solution or
toolkit that covers all these disparate needs
for information; we end up by servicing only
lowest common denominator needs.
Alternatively, we develop lots of different
information islands and become incapable of a
complete and consistent understanding of the
business.
3.4 A technology architecture for the
millennium publishing business
Few new technologies suddenly appear and
get instantly deployed. They need to mature.
They develop from what is initially announced,
start to be adapted to meet a specific need,
then when viable they start to be widely
adopted. Finally, they go full circle and
spawn new technology.
This should not be seen to imply that we
believe that all announcements end up being
adopted or even that all adaptations progress.
There are many good ideas and good
technologies that never made it.
However, if we look at publishing, we can
see a number of examples of this virtuous
circle of development. Today the e-book is a
classic example that may be somewhere around
the initial adaptation stage. Radio frequency
tagging is another example where the
technology has been adapted to address the
issue of bookstore shrinkage, but where its
adoption is now waiting for the price of the
technology to drop sufficiently. Wide spread
adoption may eventually depend on the
potential use of RF in managing returns.
In last year's white paper in this series,6
we first introduced a schematic architecture
for systems to support publishing. Having
reviewed and qualified this basic
architecture, it has now been further refined
and developed to become a driving vision of
how we see the future being serviced. This
vision should not be seen as “finished”, it is
continuing to develop. What we envisaged some
six months ago is being enhanced as we
continue to adapt and adopt it.
The unique architecture is focused on
delivering front and back office solutions for
publishers that are full integrated with
e-business applications. These business
solutions are able to access the corporate
databases that underpin the business and
provide a common user presentation for the
information.
The business processes that are required to
support publishing activities and projects are
controlled by use of work flow and data flow
technology and a powerful reporting tool. The
architecture also includes a powerful decision
support and analysis tool to provide intuitive
access and presentation of all the business
information within the organization.
The schematic in Figure 2 depicts this
architecture
Figure 2 
The Databases are built on the core
publishing foundations of Content, Context and
Commerce.
•
Content consists of the books, chapters,
journals, issues, pictures, and fragments of
information in all its many formats.
•
Context is the product and bibliographic
information that describes the content and
enables you and your customers to find it and
establish its value.
•
Commerce is the final dimension, the business
information that relates to pricing, sales,
inventory, customers and royalties systems.
The process management and control layer
focuses on the need to manage and control the
business across its operational activities and
also various product and project life cycles.
•
Work Flow technology enables the various
activities within a process to be integrated
and for them to be controlled from start to
finish.
•
Data Flow technology enables the flow of
content and its associated context, to be
managed and controlled from receipt of
manuscript to delivery of finished product.
Business Transaction Processing provides a framework
that is focused at supporting any publisher’s
specific requirements across the total life
cycle of a product, from conception to final
royalty payment. Different activities within a
publisher will require different aspects of
the functionality and will need individual
combinations of the back and front office
applications as well as e-business solutions.
This layer incorporates not only the front
office applications that are shown
but also back office applications (customer
service, ordering and fulfillment,
distribution and warehousing, finance and
administration, royalties and inventory
management). Also in this layer are the
e-business applications that open all of the
company’s applications to communication with
the outside world. This recognizes that the
successful operation of a publishing company
implies the management a “virtual
organization” with many out-sourced
operations.
Information Management focuses on using
database and knowledge technologies to
enable all information to be accessed and
analyzed both at summary and detail levels.
The User Presentation layer recognizes the
need for consistency and integration of data
and its presentation through a standard user
interface. Today, the user interface is a
Windows Client for internal use and a Web
Browser externally. We need to satisfy both
and recognize that they will shortly converge,
with the browser becoming the dominant
presentation technology for the next
millennium.
In order to understand the significant
changes that an information and knowledge
driven environment will have, it is necessary
to develop these latter layers further.
3.4.1 Information Management
We regard the application and database
layers as being the primary information feeds
into the business. Figure 4 shows the three
primary feeds.
Figure 3

The traditional approach is to view the
corporate analysis and reporting layer simply
in the context of the corporate data
warehouse. The warehouse is a storage
aggregation of all the corporate information
within a structured relational database
environment. However, this perspective often
limits the vision and development to focus
only on operational needs and creates a narrow
perspective on the overall organizational
needs.
As we have already discussed, we can no
longer afford to ignore perspectives provided
by external information; there is also a need
to deliver a wide range of types of
information in a consistent user interface,
not just commercial information but also
contextual information, and even completely
unstructured information.
The architecture also acknowledges the
critical relationship between information and
one of the key knowledge-adding inputs –
process. The requirement to manage, control,
monitor the business processes and product
development is achieved through the sub layers
and tools provided by Workflow and Dataflow.
Given the different information roles and
needs we discussed earlier, we can now extend
this critical aspect of the architecture even
further as depicted in Figure 4.
Figure 4

3.4.2 Preparing for "MyNet"
It is not possible to ensure that your
customers in the future will not elect to bar
you from their world. The technology is
rapidly becoming available for them to profile
what they want, when they want it and how they
want it. Full self-service is becoming a
reality; e-business is not something you
should be thinking about, it is something you
must be doing now. Those who enter the fray
late will have to spend heavily on the skills
and knowledge to enable them simply to stay in
the game; if they fail to make the migration
to customer relationship management they will
surely perish in the world of the infomediary
and permissions marketing.
Figure 5 depicts how the new permission
layers will need to be accommodated.
Figure 5

We can now further develop the vision to
recognize this new and evolving environment.
This vision is shown in Figure 10, which we
believe sets the agenda for tomorrow's
solutions, incorporating the extended
information needs and knowledge input.
Figure 6

3.5 Beware – technology at work
Remember all those dreams we only partially
realized: the paperless office, teleworking,
the virtual organization? All too often we
were presented with the prototype but tactical
priorities dictated our direction and we
adopted a "wait and see" approach.
Today the pace of technology change is
quickening and it is no longer an option to
join the marathon at mile 21.
“Business must compete by exploiting
capabilities which its competitors cannot
easily match or imitate. These distinctive
capabilities are not raw materials, land or
access to cheap labour. They must be knowledge,
skills and creativity…That is why we will only
compete successfully in future if we create an
economy that is genuinely knowledge driven.”
23
Learning to learn continually is our
hardest task. This is not restricted to the
organization itself, or to relationships with
trading partners and customers, or to new
channels to market, or to evolving product
formats, or to business processes, or to
organizational structure. It encompasses all
of these and more. It is about learning to
adapt, adopt and advance technology. It about
learning to share information within a new
"open" commercial environment. It is about
reducing the organization's current exposure
to risk from the failure effectively to manage
knowledge and information assets. It is about
tapping into and exploiting all the
information and knowledge available to provide
a secure future for the organization and the
individual within it.
"We can know more than we can tell"
24
Notes and references:
1. Ikujiro Nonaka, "The Knowledge Creating
Company", Harvard Business Review Nov - Dec
1991
2. Peter F Drucker, "The
Coming of the New
Organization", Harvard Business Review, Jan -
Feb 1988
3. David A Garvin, "Building a learning
organization", Harvard Business Review, July -
Aug 1993
4. S Davis, C Meyer, "Blur: the speed of
change in the connected economy" ,Addison
Wesley 1998
5. M Bide and M Shatzkin (Eds)
"Profiting From Tomorrow's Customers" the
second report in the Publishing in the 21st
Century research series, London and New York:
VISTA Computer Services (1996)
6. PubEasy.com, E-business Internet trading
service developed by VISTA Computer Services
Ingram I , a self service Internet service
developed by the Ingram Book Company OASIS
BookTrack, a retail sales analysis and
reporting service developed for the UK market
by J Whitaker Information Services BookScan, a
retail sales analysis and reporting service
developed for the US market by BookScan Inc.
7. M Bide and M Shatzkin (Eds)
"From N to X - The publishing value chain" the
third report in the Publishing in the 21st
Century research series, London and New York:
VISTA Computer Services (1997)
M
Bide and M Shatzkin (Eds)"Supporting
Creativity: Bringing Technology to Front
Office Operations" the forth report in the
Publishing in the 21st Century research
series, London and New York: VISTA Computer
Services (1998)
8. K Kelly, "New Rules for the New Economy:
Twelve dependable principles for thriving in a
turbulent world" Wired, Sept 1997
9. Richard Gere, CNN May, 1999
10. Art Kliener and George Roth, "How to
make experience your companies best teacher"
Harvard Business Review Sept -Oct 1997
11. Peter F Drucker, "The
Coming of the New
Organization", Harvard Business Review, Jan -
Feb 1988
12. Gigabyte - an annual review of the
Information Technology Sector, Granville
Equity Research, 1999
13. Bill Gates , Microsoft 1999
14. See further chapter 11
in this report
15. John Hagel III, Marc Singer, "Net
Worth", Harvard Business School Press, 1999
16. Scott McNealy, Sun Microsystems, 1999
17. John Hagel III and
Singer M "Net Worth" Harvard Business School
Press (1999)
18. See further chapter 11
in this report
19. "Our Competitive Future" UK Government
Department of Trade and Industry White Paper,
1998
20. A Braganza and Dr K Breu, "Management
Focus" Cranfield School of Management, winter
1998
21. Ibid
22. M Bide and M Shatzkin
(Eds)"Supporting
Creativity: Bringing Technology to Front
Office Operations" the forth report in the
Publishing in the 21st Century research
series, London and New York: VISTA Computer
Services (1998)
23. J B Quinn, P Anderson, S
Finkelstein "Managing Professional Intellect"
Harvard Business Review March - April 1996
24. Michael Polanyi quoted
in "Gigabyte" (see above n12)
Return to top of page
Drive with Care: People with Technology at
Work
Presentation: M Daniels, VISTA "Information
in Action" conference London and New York,
1999
We all, took a journey to get here today
and in taking that journey we faced many
decisions. In fact I took a journey which I
expected to be half an hour, it took an hour.
But we all faced decisions about which route
should we take, how long, what conditions,
what delays - road works, hazards unknown to
us. Do we have sufficient petrol to make the
journey? We all know how to manage the down
the risk of accident and we understand the car
dashboard and the many signals it conveys. But
with all this preparation, knowledge and
information, we know one thing is certain - we
have to expect the unexpected.
A business journey is no different, merely
more complex. We often find ourselves in
different vehicles, with different
capabilities, going at different speeds, often
in different directions. But what we all want
to do is avoid jams, accidents and breakdowns
and of course - running out of petrol.
However, with all this experience and all this
knowledge, we are confronted everyday with the
unexpected and we have to draw upon a large
volume of skill and knowledge within the
organisation that enables us to manoeuvre and
move forward. The signals, the information
that we receive within our businesses is often
obscure. It comes from not only within the
organisation but now increasingly from out
with the organisation and instead of being
proactive a lot of the information that we
receive and how we deal with it is reactive
and overly reactive. Often, the person who is
the best equipped with the skills to deal with
that the issue in itself, is not the person
that receives the information.
What I want to do today is look at some of
the journeys that we took yesterday, look at
some of the challenges that confront us today,
look at information and its utility within the
business and finally look at a potential
business architectural and technology model.
If we look at yesterday’s journeys,
automating the transactions, we all
experienced a huge amount of success in
reducing the cost of doing business, we
automated data entry, we reduced clerical
administration and accounting and we reduced
the cost of processing transactions. In fact
it is difficult to see how we could have
achieved the growth that we have all
experienced under the old paper and people
processes. However, Peter Drucker got it
right, very little has changed, the processes
within our businesses have remained basically
the same. Often proprietary to an organisation
and proprietary to an industry sector.
Solutions are often inward looking and not
focussed on the supply chain or the value
chains but internal processes. Competitive
advantage has been seen as driving down cost,
reducing the cost of doing business, even if
it has been at the expense of others within
the chain. Clearly we have not learnt a lot.
What are the results of this automation? Well
we have ended up with data islands, we have
ended up with information that is hard to
find, hard to extract, where we often rely on
a specialist to produce the simplest of
reports, and by the way you have got to wait.
And often when we get the information it is
out of date.
Many decisions are made blind of the facts
today and we remain very reliant on that
organisation knowledge and skills inherent
within the organisation. We clearly have an
information and knowledge business exposure;
we probably don’t recognise it. If we look at
yesterday’s journeys also we have to look at
the PC and local area network revolution. This
was great we empowered the user. Well we did
that so well that we found users that spent
hours designing and over-engineering
spreadsheets, power point presentations, word
documents etc, etc, etc. And the gap was
great, it was a significant gap between those
who could and those who thought they could,
and we can all relate to that. But the thing
that was underlying is that is still
questionable whether the right information
reached the right people at the right time.
All too often we failed to stop and think we
just had to analyse everything. Ask yourself
how many finance departments and marketing
departments now have their own little Merlin’s
who are the spreadsheet whiz kids within your
organisations, I think you all can relate to
that. What we found as a result of all this
was that we had island technology, that
spawned island information, and that
information created more information and
rather than making it easier to find
information it was even more difficult to get
it in what was now a seamlessly lawless maze
of information. If we look at the mirriad of
information islands that exist within the
publisher’s front office it’s hardly
surprising that it is virtually impossible to
look at the information across the lifecycle
of a title in any coherent manner. We still
had, in fact we had increased our business
exposure with regards to knowledge and
information.
So that is two journeys down, the third
journey was about sharing information with
trading partners it is hardly surprising we
discovered the obvious, information is not
just internal. Sharing of data and information
is critical but publishing still lags a hell
of a long way behind other industries. And
what information sharing takes place within
publishing would be unaccepted to many
industries today. However, movement has at
least started. Throwing data internally or
externally over the wall whether it is to
trading partners or to colleagues without the
insight and knowledge that makes it into
information does not create the win win
environment that we all seek to achieve it
just merely replaces the postman.
So if we move over to today’s challenges, I
think you can relate to this - how many of you
feel like you are drowning in a sea of data? I
do. We are bombarded with information, some of
it is still only data, some of it has been
collated into information, but we spend far
too much time dealing with the wrong news. How
many e-mails are circulated just for
information? We now have the capability of
firing off ‘just in case information’ are we
expecting a response, a reaction or are we
just merely covering our backs? Irrespective
what you have to start thinking about is it
all has to be read, it all has to be
assimilated. We now, in the last 30 years have
produced more information and published more
information than in the previous 5,000 years.
We can now externally get information pushed
at us from newsletters and alerts and we can
pull information in the form of self-service.
One thing that is very frightening though, is
that we all recognise that non-participation
is a non-option, exclusion from the
information chain has a terminal effect. Maybe
on our businesses and definitely on our
personal careers. How much of the information
that you receive today makes a difference? How
much of your time and day is spent dealing
with noise? What information don’t you receive
that would make a difference? Most importantly
what are you doing about it? We have to take
responsibility to learn to navigate safe
passage. However, we must remember that we
must not sink those on whom we also may
depend.
The next challenge is equally as daunting,
in fact it is probably even more daunting, it
is that of convergence and intrusion. We are
now open all hours. We used to be able to
switch off the phone, but now due to mobile
communications – we can’t, in fact we can
never escape the phone and when we do we find
a string of voicemails all crying out for our
attention. We still have the constant delivery
of faxes, e-mails and snail mail. We are
constantly plugged in; anybody who thinks that
they are not constantly plugged in is kidding
themselves. We will do business with
everybody, from anywhere at any time. Will it
get worse? – Yes, telecommunications and
information services are converging at an
alarming rate. It is not just about access to
it is also about the utility of access
becoming inescapable. We can all remember life
without laptops, personal phones, personal
organisers etc. Unfortunately our new staff
never knew life without them.
I’d like you to forget about SGML and XML
and think about WML (wireless mark up
language), or VXML (voice extendable mark up
language) forget about GSM, what about GPRS –
full e-mail and web browsing by a mobile
communications, what about UMNTS which is due
out in 2003, full broad brand wireless by
mobile networks. We have to start thinking
about convergence in a big way. King Canute
failed to stop the tide. The question today is
not whether we stop or contain, but how we
manage and control this new wave of intrusion.
We all need an automatic filter what we
receive, when we receive it, and an absolute
requirement to personalise this to reflect our
individual needs. In the world of convergence
it is essential that we establish new lines of
demarcation between our social life and our
work life.
Another challenge that we face today is
that of e-business. The change from e-commerce
to e-business is not understood by many. But
it is so significant that many companies will
miss the boat and will perish. It is not about
physical world to the virtual world, it is not
about digital product, it is not about any of
these, it is about doing business irrespective
of whether the product is physical, virtual or
a combination of the two. The interesting
thing is that early adopters may be seen to be
working at a commercial disadvantage, they may
be seen to be spending a lot of money with
little return. They are getting huge return,
they are learning the new rules, they are
establishing brand, but most importantly they
are getting knowledge and information about
customers and the market which will be
essential to competing in the new century and
their survival. So what about the consumers?
Well consumers today are besieged, we all in
this audience have telemarketers ringing us at
all hour, direct marketers stuffing post into
our post boxes, relationship marketers wanting
to know our every movements. 10% of worldwide
e-mail is junk spam mail. Yesterday the
vendor never really knew, ask yourselves -
the publishers never really knew whether the
customer was giving them 10%, 20% or 100% of
their business.
We talked about relationship marketing,
getting to know the customers every habits and
taking a share of the wallet. But the reality
is we didn’t, today consumers can be accessed
and targeted in the on-line world but what we
must remember is that they just as easily can
target and access vendors and information.
Yesterday the customer was happy to give
personal information; he often had the option
to refuse its use or sale to third parties.
Today I ask you to look at your PC files and
look at the profusion of cookies that are
planted within them. What is quite clear is
that now customers are starting to understand
their information and feedback has real value
and could become the tail that wags the dog.
The customer is going to be king in the world
of MyNet. We now find ourselves moving speed
into a new permissions marketing environment
which is very significant in terms of
information. It is more significant for those
that are going to become the new infomediaries
who manage and control access to the
information and channel to market.
The traditional vendor driven publishing
model is now under pressure; in fact, it is
going to die. Those who ignore this in the
rising role of infomediaries may find that
they are not driving the development of their
products in the market but are firmly being
driven by others down the supply chain who own
the information, knowledge and access to the
market. In this new personalised world
publishers need to ensure that infomediaries
don’t filter them out from their readers. So
how do we prepare for the unexpected? Our
first priority is quite clear, we must learn
to swim in the sea of data. The schematic that
is coming up depicts the basic information
roles within the organisation and it varies by
the actions required, from the routine to the
exceptional, and from the systemised to those
that are heavily dependant on human knowledge
input. What we often do when we have designed
systems in the past is try and satisfy all
requirements by a single solution and end up
servicing the lowest common denominator or
alternatively we create different islands of
information that are incapable of consistently
seeing both the macro and micro perspectives.
If we look at these quadrangles we clearly see
the need to support clerical activities, the
routine activities, the heavily systemised
activities. Here it is about transactional
information, here it is about automating as
much as possible to gain maximum efficiency,
and it is about checking it in and checking it
out. Process management is often viewed the
same way but it isn’t it is completely
different here it is not about focusing on the
performance of the task, it is about the
performance of the process. Although it is
still the same information the usage and needs
differ greatly and also it requires additional
information about resource allocation and the
management of risk and change. It is all about
keeping today on schedule.
The business analyst activities are
different again. Here we are talking about
monitoring and analysing overall business
activities and performance actually looking at
variance to exception, discovering the
parameters that effect an operation or a
process, data mining its about drilling down a
wide volume of data, tapping into specific
scenes and often not in a single dimensional
view but in a multiple dimensional view. Here
often analysis is performed on a data
warehouse where the operational information
from both internal to the organisation and
external to the organisation could be
aggregated. This approach obviously protects
the operational environment from the
performance demands
of these techniques and also provides the
analyst with both the wider business picture
and the performance they require. The tools
used vary considerably, from the spreadsheet
to sophisticated modelling and forecasting tools. The service objective is to enable the
analyst to "turn over the stones and look for
the issues".
Management Decision Support is focused at
the business key performance indicators, the
issues that really matter. We are talking about management by exception,
this is where we are talking about identifying
what needs attention. Not fixing what isn’t
broke but identifying what is broke and fixing
it and what may be breaking and taking
preventative action. It also needs to be
proactive as well as reactive. Unlike the
analyst the executive needs are proactive feed
alerts, he hasn’t got time to go drilling
down. He needs what we call traffic lighting,
he doesn’t need to know when the signals are
green, he needs to know when they are on red
he also when they are on amber, and when on
amber he also needs to know in which direction
that the information is going. Here it is all
about management by exception, identifying and
understanding the issues that need attention.
Finally, I want to review a publishing
business technology architecture that meets
the challenges in information and knowledge.
What is quite clear when you actually look at
information and knowledge management is that a
piece meal approach to a business is no good
enough. In last years’ white paper we
identified a unique publishing architecture
that separated the constituent elements of
both technology and its utility and what we
discovered last year was not finite it has
evolved and what we think of it now will be
different in 6 months time as we continue to
adapt and adopt it. If we look at the original
concept, first of all it was built on
databases, the database foundation in
publishing is straight forward – content,
books, chapters, journals, issues, pictures
fragments etc. Context, the product
information that describes the content and
enables you and your customers to find and
value it, and commerce the business
information – pricing, inventory, customer
sales etc. On top of that we have a number of
business solutions, in the past we looked at
these as applications all embracing, we now
have to change our view of these, they are
just merely processing engines.
If we actually look at these a bit closer
we have back office engines that form a
comprehensive operations environment handling
products from warehouse to reader – and the
support, customer service, ordering
fulfilment. We are all familiar with these
engines, but they are now engines not
applications. There is a need for engines that
deal with e-business and EDI – significantly
different but recognising the critical role of
standards and also the emergence of
self-service over the Internet. And we have
front office engines that focus on supporting
editorial, production, and marketing and
rights functions. Now all of these engines
could be supplied separately by different
vendors, in different formats etc, etc. but
what is important and what is critical is that
we have a seamless integration of that
processing from author to warehouse. We then
have a process layer and control layer which
looks across the whole product and project
life cycles and operations where we have
consistency of analysis and reporting, we have
data flow managing the flow of product, and
work flow managing the flow of the process and
controlling the process and then on top we
have the converging presentation layer with
windows and browsers.
Having looked at this we now need to look
again, more closely and look at what is the
impact of information and knowledge driven
environment could have on this model. First of
all, it quite clear that we now need to break
down the different information needs and
utility and provide consistency across the
business. The obvious approach is to provide
this through a data warehouse, but we must
remember that we no longer ignore external
information, and this is not just dealing with
commercial information but also contextual
information and even unstructured information.
What we have done is to extend that further
and reflect this within the different usages
that we had already identified. Moving the
work flow and data flow down closer to the
engines that deal with the processing, because
in fact they are process engines themselves.
However, we need to actually look at and
prepare for the world of MI-NET, how are we
going to deal with MI-NET, how are we going to
deal with ensuring that the customer does not
elect to bar us form their world?, or where
they have elected to use us that we optimise
that election? We need to profile, profile
wealth within the organisation and external to
the organisation of what is required, when it
is required and how it is required. The
schematic depicts how new access permission
layers will need to be accommodated both
internal and external to the organisation. But
we need to beware, those that enter this
permissions environment late will spend
heavily on the skills and knowledge to enable
them just to compete. If they fail to make the
migration in customer relationship management
they will perish in the world of the info-mediary
and permissions marketing.
The new vision clearly sets out the agenda
incorporating the extended information needs
and knowledge input, what we have to do is be
prepared that we now see clearly on the road
ahead people with technology at work. What we
must remember however, is can you remember all
those dreams? The paperless office,
tele-worketing, the virtual organisation, all
too often in the past we have been presented
with a prototype – and tactical priorities
have dictated our direction, we have adopted a
wait and see strategy. Today the pace of
technology is changing and quickening at such
a speed that it is no longer an option to join
this marathon at mile twenty-one. You will not
have the capabilities, competencies and skills
within your organisations to even get to mile
twenty-six.
Learning to continually learn is one of the
hardest tasks, it is not restricted to the
organisation, the relationships with trading
partners and customers, new channels to
market, the evolving products, formats, the
business processes, the organisational
structure, it is all these and more. It is
about learning to adapt, adopt and advance
technology, it is about learning to share
information within a new open commercial
environment, it is about tapping into and
exploiting all of the information and
knowledge available both internal and external
to your organisations. But what is clear – it
is about reducing your organisations knowledge
and information exposure.
Return to top of page
Focusing in a Fuzzy World: Trading in the
Networked World
The Institute of Information Scientists 40th
Anniversary Conference, Sheffield. July 8-11,
1998 Speech by Martyn Daniels
I am pleased to be here addressing your 40th
anniversary conference. I am also pleased and
proud that it is Sheffield. My second home
where I grew up, was, or was not educated and
where I started my career.
When I started my career some 30 years ago
this year, the employment exchange presented
me with an interesting decision. Whether to go
to work in a Computer Department of a major
electrical retailer, Henry Wigfalls, or go to
work at English Steel. The career councillor
advised me that English Steel was a job for
life, offered a real career and that computers
were still a bit iffy. I didn’t like the
thought of going down Attercliffe every day so
I choose computers and never looked back.
If we look at Sheffield over those 30 years we
see the steel capital become a steel village,
a shift from heavy manufacturing to service
industry. Sheffield is now the sports capital
of the UK and you only need to drive down the
east end to see the difference. Where
Hatfields once stood proud now read Meadowhall.
But technology has also not stood still. Far
from it we all know what has happened and the
impact it has had. However, we are now faced
with a revolution, not evolution and one
driven by a technology – The Internet. The
world of the information networked
environment. We all know that the Internet is
dynamic and is growing at a phenomenal rate.
It is pervasive and what we thought of it six
months ago is probably different to what we
think today and what we will think of it in
six months time. It is challenging all our
previous thinking and our commercial
environment. But does it pass the "so what
test"? Will it change what we do, what we
sell, how we do it , who we do it with and our
supply and value chains?
The answer to all the above is a resounding,
yes.
Why is it introducing such change and what new
properties does it introduce that enable it to
have such an impact?
- It does not respect geography -- after
all where is the USA in a virtual world,
companies can be oceans apart and still
climb into the same boat. How many know or
care where the head office of Amazon.com is?
- It challenges territorial pricing, that
was designed for the physical world and its
many domains.
- It challenges the traditional thinking
on our bottom line -- image you owned the
goose that laid golden eggs. The balance
sheet just says one goose and assigns no
value to future earnings. Doesn’t Amazon.com
make this challenge today?
- It demands a global economy and could
promote harmonisation, far quicker and wider
than imagined in the corridors of Washington
and Brussels. It is in fact truly stateless.
- It does not respect time – nine to five
is dead , 24 x 365 now rules.
- It does not respect size as a
competitive advantage and enables the small
to be big by connecting to the capabilities
of others and at the same time remain agile
and adaptable because of their size.
- It does not respect ownership or
commerce – it was
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