The Resource Collaborative

Talent Acquisition and Hiring - a New Approach

5 Hashtags to Define Company Culture

by

Company Culture text

THE PREMISE: If an alien landed in your office on a day when everyone was operating at peak performance, your “culture” is how they would describe your business.

1. #THEFISHSTINKSFROMTHEHEADDOWN – The leader of your organization exemplifies the culture.
2. #EMPATHYANDCOMMUNICATION – How do you communicate with one another?
3. #DECISIONMAKING – How are decisions made and by whom?
4. #STRUCTURE/PACE – Are you starting or growing or maintaining?
5. #DIVERSITYANDINCLUSION – How is your employee retention rate?

We look forward to your comments…and do not hesitate to contact Ellen Shepard.

ellen.shepard@trcollaborative.com

Sparking Innovation within your IT Team

by

technology-team

The best technology teams today are those who have a commanding understanding of the business of their organization and then are able to fast forward to enable the business prerogatives with innovative technology – i.e., competitive advantage.

Technologists are usually very interested in the latest “tech stuff” out there…truly superior technologists are those who can imagine how to apply the appropriate “tech stuff” to empower their businesses…this may mean leaving a widget or two in the dust, but the results will be creating value for the organization.

pushingtheenvelope

As you build your technology team, you need “doers”, those who want to apply known technology and get real satisfaction out of the completion an effective deployment can deliver. In addition to this critical attribute, I have found that in any group of technologists, there are those who really have a natural curiosity and constantly want to push the envelope and see how far a hypothesis can go…these are the folks who you want to cultivate as innovators.

There was a time when we could have robust technology R & D budgets to sift through possibilities and send only those with solid results through to deployment. Today, technology changes so quickly, having a formal R & D function may not be practical. Instead, you should be looking to hire members for your team who will produce results and will also naturally “test” new possibilities.

These folks have certain attributes to look for:

*Good Listeners – they need to hear what the business is requesting to make certain their curiosity stays the course of “value”;

*Domain Experts – they understand the business of the organization thoroughly and keep abreast of goals and visions;

*Consensus Drivers – they have credibility across the organization

*Collaborators – they do not think technology drives the business, they allow the business to walk arm in arm with any initiative

Oh, and they should be great technologists! Certainly not an afterthought, but as you can see, an innovator needs more than excellent hard skills, they need to be leaders!

How do you enable innovation on your teams? For team-building expertise, please contact us:

TRC at info@TRCollaborative.com

Has Your Organization Reached Digital Customer Maturity?

by

Tormented? Driven Witless?
 Whipsawed by Competition?
Business-Men-running-down-the-street1
Ah, the race is on…who will win the customer? The “C” group in most organizations has been scurrying to structure a plan to enact the technologies and processes to keep pace with the ever-changing road of data to the prize, “the customer”! Have you taken measure of your organization’s digital maturity? According to McKinsey, “A company’s digital quotient (DQ) is a function of how well defined its long-term digital strategy is, its effectiveness in implementing that strategy, and the strength of its organizational infrastructure and information technologies.”  How you engage customers digitally matters profoundly! It matters because of immediate opportunities for sales and because many of the decisions a customer makes are informed by the quality of their experiences all along their journey.
Technology
The rate at which changes in technologies are hitting the consumer is with lightning speed and organizations need to be able to be proactively innovative…ensuring the customer journey is satisfying, embraced and yields results. Organizations need to gather and assess information, data in all forms to get a full 360 degree understanding of their customer. Create a compelling customized customer experience that is relevant at all stages along the customer journey.
about_us
Organizations need to be willing to dedicate teams to the consistent pursuit of iterative testing, learning, and scaling—at a pace that many may find challenging.

In some organizations this initiative has suffered due to the ongoing conversation about which functional business group should lead this process. Then there are the organizations who have made significant progress by establishing cross-functional teams comprised of representatives from marketing, e-commerce, IT, channel management, finance, and legal. Often these teams operate in a “war room” posture – prototyping, reviewing campaign results, making tough decisions quickly and always trying a new idea.

Often, organizations find that they require skill-sets they do not have onboard. Since most of these folks are in high demand, an innovative cross-functional team could decide to re-train internal resources, recruit bright college graduates who have grown up with many of the analytical and web design skills needed, or collaborate with specialty resource providers, like TRC (www.trcollaborative.com) to assist them in their team building.

By all accounts organizations who succeed in this new age of customized marketing will look like customer centric technology organizations – embrace it!

    It’s Always Been All about the Customer!

    by

    All of this fuss about predictive insights into customer behavior, customer market share and customer focus is not new…It all started many years ago when technology folks introduced the concept of contact lists and files…way before most CRM systems, as a way for sales and marketing folks to keep their contacts and activities in some reasonable order. Then, Zeus of Marketing said “this is not enough”…we need to be able to track what we are doing with each prospective customer and continue to do so once they are our customer – enter, the CRM system!

    cloud-and-big-data

    Fast forward a few years and I can remember when large diverse service organizations, like commercial/retail banks realized there was yet more to be had…we have customers who participate in one area of our service offerings and we should be able to capitalize on this information across the enterprise to be able to qualify them for other “go to market” opportunities. This was no little wake-up call…this was a technology revolution in its infancy…enter large relational databases and data warehouses with the capability to gather and house all of this customer information. At this point, the tools needed to retrieve this information in useable format, were complex and could most productively be used by an IT staff in responding to requests from the various marketing/product teams.

    consult
    We are in the midst of an exciting opportunity to, once again, transform the organization’s customer relationship capabilities. What makes this time so different is that if positioned collaboratively, the IT Team can finally take its place at the table, not as an enabler or support arm, but as an integral part of the business’s capability to identify, target and service customers, not only from within the organization, but now from anywhere, anytime!

    img_TeamWork

    To do this effectively, both IT and Marketing needs to understand the digital transformations that need to occur and agree to face them as one team. It is time for these groups to work together to produce measurable results – ah, and that should mean reaping the accolades, and walking across the coals of the fires together! This will require a clear understanding of emerging and disrupting technologies – by everyone… the huge difference today, from when we have done this in the past, is that now your business success is tied to how well you understand, deliver and manage emerging technologies.

    How are you handling this transformation within your organization? How is the Technology-Marketing relationship evolving? What has worked best?

    For more scintillating conversation that makes your day…please comment on our blog and follow us on LinkedIn & Twitter

    Data Governance: DATA, DATA, Who Owns It, And Who Cares?

    by

    IT-technician-checking-ne-007

    Through the hallowed halls of many a corporate IT department there continues to be an ongoing conversation about data governance, or put more simply, what is critical data, who “owns” it and who has a stake in the information culled from this data.  Often, when faced with decisions that seem to have a technology solution behind them, organizations submit to the seemingly easier road and throw the responsibility into the lap of the IT department…after all, this is technology generated “stuff”.

    If our conversation were to turn toward bits of data, this would seem plausible as they would not be useful at that level.  However, once we coin the “stuff” as “data”, the possibilities for the use of this “stuff” as information has it take on a whole other meaning, which suggests a different way of thinking about the business process of data creation, gathering, storing, reporting, etc.

    In enter the folks who “need” this data in the form of information to solve a business imperative.  They are the people who “care”.  As with most acts of creation, keeping responsibility for reliability and accuracy closest to the source usually guarantees this possibility.  Ah, but then what happens when this data moves into the form of information and is handed off to those who need it?

    Screen Shot 2014-08-20 at 12.29.57 PM

    Now, who is responsible for the care and feeding of this information?  Theory and some experience along the way, say those who have a need for something will nurture it best.

    I hope you have garnered the not so subtle difference between data and information…Let’s go back to where we started and set-up a couple of premises:

    Data is created, gathered, stored, reported through technological processes, as defined by people who need information from this data.

    files-to-people-smaller_1

     

    Information is data that is in useful form, as requested by those who need it, usually to solve a business imperative.

     

    computer-data-backup

     Governance is the act of rule setting and monitoring.  In the case of data or information governance, it is like the county seat for these valuable commodities.  They cannot be separated since they reside symbiotically.

    data security

    There was a time in our not so long ago technological world that the answer to the question, “DATA, DATA – WHO OWNS THE DATA & WHO CARES?” would be easy to answer.  Technology had not become sophisticated enough to unleash the fruits of its labor into the business world without tight control.  That day has passed…We now have savvy technology users throughout organizations who can quickly learn the processes necessary for them to avail themselves of what they need to perform their jobs – what the firm needs to increase revenue – and what predicative analysis can shine on the future planning for a firm.

    Is it time for IT departments to step back from the Data Governance forefront, maintain the back-end processing, ensure tools are available to users and allow the organization to govern its data and information?  How are you handling this in your organization?  What is working and what is challenging?

     

    Computer Monitors Shaking Hands

    For top notch technology resources, please contact The Resource Collaborative at info@trcollaborative.com.