Psst… Business Process Management (BPM) has a “dirty little secret”….

BPM and practitioners of BPM like to craft beautiful and elegant Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) based process solutions with all the “bells and whistles” associated with the “who, what, and when” that those processes should take.  However, they almost never look at how those processes actually perform.  Oh, sure… practitioners of BPM assume that their processes always perform as expected and/or they perform as intended…

But they rarely look back to make sure the process actually delivers the correct results.

A perfect example of this might be the “analyst community” of Wall Street.  While they don’t put their processes in BPEL, Wall Street analysts have their own defined processes that generate results.  However, rarely do they look back to see if their “prediction” results actually match reality.  Recently, I ran across an article by Philip Elmer-DeWitt that does an excellent job of grading the “process results” of Wall Street analysts looking at Apple.  As you can see, not many analysts did a good job of predicting Apple’s recent revenues report.

Unfortunately, there aren’t as many internal “reporters” who give such good graphical representations of the performance of various BPM processes.

In telecommunications, this concept becomes more and more important as telecom service providers rely more on automated processes to provide event processing and product/service order management solutions.  The BPM practitioners are doing a great job of looking at how to design processes, but rarely do they look at the results of their process.  More often than not they leave that someone else….

Do you agree that telecom BPM practitioners rely too heavily on their design and not enough on their results?

Post your comments below or email (John.Myers@BlueBuffaloGroup.com) / twitter (@JohnLMyers44) me directly.

Telecom organizations have long understood the concept of customer acquisition vs customer retention…. It is much easier to keep and maintain current customers than it is to pay to add new customers.

Joseph Jaffe has a new book out that gives added credence to that relationship and perhaps guides telecom marketing and customer care organizations on how to best utilize existing customer relationships.   Or even better how telecom service providers can utilize their customer relationships to provide partner organizations with value-added experience with the telecom’s customers via either mobile devices or the “new frontier” of IPTV via addressable advertising.

1to1 has an excerpt from the book. My favor segment was the following:

• The sharp and clinical scalpel of digital trumps the blunt hatchet of advertising.
• The fluid and pervasive conversation washes away the unidirectional current of communication.
• The meaningful and long-lasting commitment of retention deeply resonates over the superficial and materialistic attraction of acquisition.

The highlighted sections talk directly to how if you have the information about the habits and interests of customers, you can tailor a retention message directly to them.  This allows for those customers to tell great product/service stories to their “friends and family”.  This enhances the value of the resources spent on the retention program.

Telecom service providers have a distinct advantage in providing this directed, pervasive conversation since they have more information about their customers and their behavior than any other organization.  That includes the “800lb gorilla” known as Google…

Do you think that telecoms can capitalize before someone else (google, apple, et al) can? 

Post your comments below or email (John.Myers@BlueBuffaloGroup.com) / twitter (@JohnLMyers44) me directly.

In the world of business intelligence, there is nothing more valuable than the raw data that is the foundation of the end-state analysis.  In the world of telecommunications, there is nothing more valuable than the data on the activities of customers for network management, customer care and marketing activities.

It now appears that an organization has bridged the long-standing barriers between carriers to share their data with anyone.  Kevin Fitchard reviews the announcement from Ground Truth and how they hope to make an impact on mobile web usage.

For my part, I look forward to the developments from Ground Truth and to see if they can leverage the “Switzerland of Data” arrangement that they have carved for themselves… Also to stay out of the news for any leakage of data or mis-use. ( See the NSA and call detail records… )

• Do you think that Ground Truth will succeed as an independent company?
• Be acquired by an organization that will threaten the ‘truce’ among carriers (ie Google?)?
• Fail to capture a strong business position?

Post your comments below or email (John.Myers@BlueBuffaloGroup.com) / twitter (@JohnLMyers44) me directly.

I am not a favorite of organizations that spend a disproportionate amount of their time and corporate resources in litigation.  My best example is/was the the open source patent company that found it was easier to make money by suing those who infringed on their patents rather than actually implementing them.

HOWEVER…. ( and who didn’t see that coming…) I am enjoying the news that Tivo is once again fighting the good fight against those who would dilute the Tivo “concept” with their own DVR offerings.  This time Jeff Baumgartner looks at recent legal action between Tivo, AT&T and Microsoft.

Tivo… You go girl… boy… tv with antenna! Go on fighting for your patents and putting together quality products ( …like an HD DirecTv DVR… hint hint… )

NOTE – My favorite quote from Baumgartner’s piece was the fact that Tivo has already collected $400m in judgments, final and in progress, from other folks who thought that Tivo might not fight it…. Reminds me of the story in the movie “A Flash of Genius”.

Another Tuesday… Another comment on the guys from Philly…

This time I am intrigued by the continuing efforts by Comcast and others to implement metered billing for data access.  Karl Bode’s piece talks about how Comcast is offering test versions of usage metering software for their data plans.

While I agree that ISPs have a business case for metered usage of data… I also think that North American’s consumer market has had “all you can eat” data access plans for so long that they will be resistant to moving back to a metered billing model.

How do you think that the revenue opportunities outweigh the poor PR aspects of metered usage?

Post your comments below or email (John.Myers@BlueBuffaloGroup.com) / twitter (@JohnLMyers44) me directly.

I found a recent piece from Monica Alleven to have an interesting component to it.  The piece focused on the performance of the various ESPN mobile content offerings since the demise of the Mobile ESPN MVNO (mobile virtual network operator) a few years ago.  In the piece, Alleven says the following:

“Shelving its MVNO doesn’t seem to have hurt ESPN Mobile.”

This seemed curious to me since I didn’t particular view the MVNO play to be part of ESPN’s core competencies, but rather a distraction.

While price was the main reason I didn’t embrace Mobile ESPN, I found the fact that I had plenty of relatively free substitutes to Mobile ESPN content via equivalents (ie mobile web browser, desktop access).  To this day I continue to ( …and according the Alleven’s piece many others as well… ) access the ESPN website via iPhone provide just as much value to ESPN as they attempted to gain with their MVNO (ie eyeballs and clicks).

NOTE – The ESPN “Devil/Angel” logo was just too good to resist… ;)

I have to say that I always appreciated the concept of “leaving sleeping dogs lie” or its rough equivalent in the western states… “if you mess with the bull, you will get the horns…”.

In its case against the FCC, I fear that Comcast may awaken the legislative process and/or get an unwanted dose of the “horns” of the FCC.

In a very good piece by Jolelle Tessler, Comcast appears to have a bent on getting a ruling that states the FCC does not have the ability to enforce Net Neutrality rules.  My favorite part of Tessler’s piece is the following:

“An appeals court ruling that rejects this argument could draw Congress into the matter to give the FCC the power to regulate broadband as an information service. Several key lawmakers have already drafted legislation to mandate network neutrality. Or it could force the agency to consider reclassifying broadband as a more heavily regulated telecommunications service that would be subject to non-discrimination rules.”

By putting this case into the legal process, Comcast could very well close out any wiggle room associated with the FCC on the definitions of Net Neutrality and even make the world of Internet access even more regulated rather than less…

How do you view the wisdom of the Comcast legal strategy?

Post your comments below or email (John.Myers@BlueBuffaloGroup.com) / twitter (@JohnLMyers44) me directly.

In an era where the movie Avatar is making significant amounts of money, buzz and accolades because of the new fashion it presents its content – 3D, IMAX, blue…; there is a new way to look at content presentation – the small screen of the smart phone and/or the net book.

In this, many are consuming content ( …music, short-video, movies, gaming… ) on something not bound by a cable or a set of walls.  These content consumers have a huge appetite for both the content and the bandwidth that allows them to access that content anywhere.  Below shows some of the avenues for content access and their growth rates between now and 2013 compliments of Morgan Stanley via eMarketer.

NOTE – Even as telecom organizations promote the usage of their wireless data networks via new subscribers and up-sell opportunities to existing customers with the message of “unlimited data plans”; many telecoms are currently looking for ways to ‘curb’ their customers usage of the data network to prevent an “AOL-esqe” situation when AOL opened their network to unlimited usage in the 1990s.

Ever since I first saw the Maxicode “bar code” in the early 1990’s; I thought that they were a “neat” invention.  Instead of boring bar code you could have something more “fun”.  It also turns out that the Maxicode is more functional than the standard bar code in particular if you are attempting to scan at a relatively high rate of speed during the package delivery process… Enter the unofficial term of the UPS code.

Now imagine being able to use the Maxicode as part of a mobile marketing campaign.  emailed or MMS-ed to a targeted user, the Maxicode could provide great amounts of information about campaign, targeted user, etc… Imagine nor more… Andrew Berg looks at the pros and cons of using 2d bar codes like the Maxicode for mobile advertising.

In his piece, Berg tackles some of the great uses of this type of bar coding for mobile advertising.  Most of them are forward looking creative ideas from the “marketing folks”.

The cons associated with the use of targeted ads in this manner appear to be the folks in IT and Legal.  IT seems to think that out fitting all Best Buys and Walmarts to read touch screen smart phones is an overly expensive proposition.  Also, the risk management guys from Legal don’t really want expensive smart phones in the hands of “un-trained” front-line staff members.

In both cases, I firmly believe that pilot programs in targeted area could prove out this implementation of marketing ideas with technical savvy.  Simply saying “no” doesn’t seem like the proper answer to build both marketing and technical competitive advantage.

Do you agree that IT can strangle ‘great’ marketing ideas? Or can Marketing get too attached to “shiny things” and often need to be reigned in?

Post your comments below or email (John.Myers@BlueBuffaloGroup.com) / twitter (@JohnLMyers44) me directly.

“Its hazards are hostile to us all. Its conquest deserves the best of all mankind, and its opportunity for peaceful cooperation many never come again. But why, some say… Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask why climb the highest mountain? We choose to go…and to do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.”

John F. Kennedy September 12th 1962