In doing analysis for web company that provides online solutions for managing commercial and residential contractor bids and work processes, we were looking for examples of great technology integration stories. We immediately raised up the seamless integration between the iPod and iTunes as a great customer experience. It is so easy that there is no user manual needed, but this is a rare exception.  

In looking for other ideas, I was thinking about integration between Google Maps and GPS devices and searched Google for examples. To be fair to Google, since I love their products, this example is now a bit dated. However, let’s go through the ”quick” online instructions about how to do the Google Maps / TomTom integration, which was the top hit that I found. The concept of integrating Google Maps with a GPS had my mind racing about the big ideas, ease of use and maybe being able to put street-level pictures as landmarks on your GPS, which would be so useful and cool. However, the instructions became an immediate deflator to my expectations. A promise of 20 minutes work, talk of finding disks and cables that came with the device and checking software versions titled, “2.1.2.121″, left me feeling like there is no need to go past number 2 on the 9 step integration process. It sounded like the old world of MP3 players and Napster, when the customer experience was very fragmented and a barrier to adoption. If you are working to launch a new service or product, make sure your customer experience is nothing like the instructions copied at the end of this post.  

The main point of this post is to point out how a poor customer experience can quickly take away all of the excitement and leave deflated expectations with your customers. By the time I finished looking at how Google Maps and TomTom could work together, I was sure that I wouldn’t even attempt it. I started thinking about if Apple had all of that wrapped up tight on an iPhone app anyway. And I also thought that if Google would put together a solutions team to build a well integrated map/GPS application across the web and a GPS-enabled Android phone, that could be great.

So then I searched on ”Google Maps Android GPS” and found what I would have expected from Google. If you haven’t seen this site and video, it is worth a look and maybe even the investment to work with a beta product. http://www.google.com/mobile/navigation/#p=default. Now this looks like something to get excited about again!

As you look to launch your next cool web-app, think about your customer’s journey in using your solution and if the excitement and expectations will be met by a customer experience that is a barrier to purchase, wait until you are ready to do it right.

Michael Kanazawa is Chief Executive of Bedrock Dissero and co-author of Big Ideas to Big Results.

Google / TomTom Instructions: 

Here’s How:

1. You will need a TomTom brand in-car GPS receiver to make use of this feature. Google Maps does not currently support other brands.
2. Install the TomTom Home software from a disk that came with your GO or ONE device. Update your Home software to the latest version (2.1.2.121 or later) for free by visiting the TomTom PLUS services page. Apple-compatible Home software is available for download, as well.
3. Connect your GPS receiver to your personal computer with its included USB cable or docking station. Turn on the GPS, and touch “yes” when it asks to connect to the computer.
4. You are ready to search for and upload a destination into your GPS. Open your Web browser and go to Google Maps .
5. Type a destination into the “Search Maps” box in Google Maps. Google Maps has powerful search features, a good reason for using it in concert with your GPS.
6. When you have identified the destination you sought, click on the “send” link (with the envelope icon) in the upper right of the destination map window.
7. A dialog box will apear with the options to send to “e-mail,” “car,” or “GPS”. Choose GPS. This selection will automaically start your TomTom Home software with the selected destination information (and its exact coordinates) in place.
8. The TomTom Home software has now captured your chosen destination, and you have the options of showing on a simulated GPS map, navigating to the destination, or saving the destination to your favorites file. I find saving to favorites to be the most useful of these three options.
9. Now that you’ve mastered Google Maps-to-GPS, you can quickly update your favorites, and plan trips around pre-selected and pre-uploaded destinations. You’ll spend more time on fun or business, and much less time looking for destinations!

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Most of us would rather not go to a hospital. When we do go, it often seems that most of the staff aren’t too happy to see us there either. Individual medical professionals and staff can sometimes be friendly one-on-one, but nobody greets you, nobody welcomes you, and you spned most of the time sitting around in uncomfortable chairs, reading dull magazines, and trying to not breathe the air in the cramped waiting rooms.

I don’t write this post as an endorsement of Kaiser, but I recently went to a Kaiser facility and was extremely surprised by the great service. It provides a great view into transforming of customer experiences. In the case of Kaiser, admittedly I was expecting the worst. The ‘Thrive’ branding seems so perfect, but how could a large company in such a tough industry transform such a typically negative experience into a positive one? Kaiser proved, at least in my case, that it could be done. Anyone who provides service to the general public could learn from the detailed and simple steps Kaiser has taken to make the customer experience far exceed the expectations.

While still expecting the worst, I entered the lobby and went to the reception desk to ask where I was supposed to go first. The woman, realizing I was a new member, first welcomed me to Kaiser and then explained where to go. There was a large open atrium in the center of the building, so it seemed like the air was more fresh than a typical medical center. On the second floor, there were open waiting areas and clearly marked paths for waiting lines and large service counters. This was in comparison to the typical sign on a small closed window to the administrative area saying, “please wait until you are called.”  I lined up and was quickly welcomed again as a new member and signed in.

Because they had my core information already on the magnetic card, I was not handed a clip board and forms to fill out, answering for the 100th time that I’m not allergic to any medicines. That was a welcome change. Without going into too many details, she suggested a couple of tests and set up a prescription. Down the hall, I stopped by the pharmacy (very convenient) and the pharmacist welcomed me as well to Kaiser and asked about the book I was reading and then proceeded to explain the prescription.

It was all going so smoothly, the people were unbelievably nice, and it just seemed like something should be more negative, like prior visits to the doctor. I asked the pharmacist where the lab was for the blood sample. He said it was down in the basement of the hospital area. OK, for sure, that must be like a dungeon, with the workers who don’t get to have windows work and are cranky, over-worked, under-appreciated and snappy with patients.

Upon entering the lab area, there were not long lines and angry people. On the wall was a “take-a-number” machine. I somewhat rolled my eyes and though, here we go…this should be about an hour of wasted time. But, again, there was a large and low service desk and big digital signs showing excatly which number (person) was being called. It was just sinking in at how efficient the whole system was, similar to how Southwest boards airplanes, and my number was called. The people were very friendly, talkative and just good people.

I left Kaiser feeling like I had not been to a medical appointment at all. It was almost confusing becasue the customer experience was so drastically different and better than my expectations. Looking back on the experience, it was completely differentiated mostly by very small details and simply an attention by everyone (facilities, waiting room architects, process flow designers and staff) to put a feeling of ‘Thrive’ into every aspect of the experience. If a hospital environment can be transformed, so can any mediocre and undifferentiated customer operation in any industry.

A few tips for designing your customer experience:

1. Map your customer’s ‘journey’ from the time they consider your services until the time they depart.
2. Identify the major steps they take (e.g., not knowing where to go, waiting in lines, sitting in waiting rooms)
3. For each step, identify where there are major negative aspects, or counter-points, to what the customer might expect. Identify where there are opportunities to positively impact the customer’s experience as a signature point of serivce. Look for those specific things you can do to live up to your brand promise. In Kaiser’s case, it was ‘Thrive’.
4. Engage your broader employee team in designing specific changes, such as the ‘take a number’ system if that works for you, or training on friendly greetings and customer service, or ropes to signify lines and a a feeling of efficiency and fairness in waiting. These small changes do not have to cost a lot of money, but they do need to be specifically planned, continuously improved, and delivered consistently by employees who believe that what they are doing makes a difference.

Michael Kanazawa is Chief Executive of Bedrock Dissero and co-author of Big Ideas to Big Results.

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It is interesting to see how the complex system of consumer spending, retail and the general economy are playing against each other this holiday season. Helen Bulwik, our retail expert at Bedrock Dissero, was recently interviewed for an ABC-TV report on retail trends in 2009. In this she pointed out that in 2008, there were 70+ percent discounts on products prior to Christmas. This was necessary to get shoppers into stores and behind the scenes, there was a great amount of excess inventory that retailers knew needed to be reduced quickly in the face of weak consumer demand.

The business model for retail success has changed dramatically in 2009. Retailers have trimmed inventories both in terms of overall levels as well as focused on far fewer product categories in favor of highly targeted offerings to their core customer base. I can’t help mentioning that this is yet another proof point for the need for businesses to continue to stay focused on doing more on fewer high impact customer need areas.

The good news for retailers is that there are not the drastic discounts necessary to attract shoppers in 2009. For the economy it is a good sign to see pricing stay firm, yet have consumer demand remain strong enough to result in higher retail sales this holiday season despite fewer discounts. There may still be some major retail failures in 2010, but the pricing and sales trends are a good indication of strength of the sector after coming through a devastating 2009.

Michael Kanazawa is Chief Executive of Bedrock Dissero and co-author of Big Ideas to Big Results.

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As the economy continues to remain in tough shape, companies have held to the mantra that “cash is king.” This is certainly true as companies use cash reserves to maintain operations, while revenues falter. However, there is a second “king” that is emerging in importance as well. That is the customer.

During the booming economy, many companies were able to take consumer demand for granted at a macro level. The more products offered, the more stores opened, the greater the revenues. It was simple. This translated into less attention to truly delivering great customer experiences in terms of meeting true needs or offering excellent customer service. There is a building awareness of the need to re-focus companies from solely driving on internal operations efficiencies and financial structures and into delivering great customer experiences.

Some companies, such as Apple and Southwest Airlines were already focused on customer experience well before the economic meltdown and are faring the downturn much better.

Although I don’t write about our own business often on this blog, there is news to share on that front. We have entered into an agreement with Bedrock Branding to merge our firms to offer solutions to develop and deliver extraordinary customer experiences with a matching external brand promise. There is a sense of integrity and value when a company’s brand promise is backed up by real-world customer experiences that at least meet, if not exceed, expectations.

There is a building emphasis around customer experience that will build further through 2009 and beyond. Consumers will be willing to spend on compelling offers and experiences, not just on thoughtless purchases. This is a long-cycle trend that is reversing. The successful companies of the future will survive the downturn based on making the customer “king” and will be the only ones to break free of the rapid commoditization that will continue to challenge profit margins with the growing global economy.

Michael Kanazawa is Chief Executive of Bedrock Dissero and co-author of Big Ideas to Big Results.

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As we enter the normal stategic and business planning season it is clear that things are different this cycle. We are all being forced to ask tough questions about how we’ll invest, carefully, for 2010. I’ve been in several strategic planning sessions with both clients and in our own company where a single question is disturbing the status quo. The question boils down to asking, “is our current business model and approach over-engineered and over-built…and if so, how do we get it right for the coming years?” There is a fantastic Wired Magazine article you can use to spark the right conversation within your team that will help you target investments in the right areas.

For a long run with the expanding economy, there was an underlying assumption that none of us seemed to question, and that was that good should always be driven to great. However, there is a cost to making everything great, everything world-class, everything super-engineered for excellence. This also tied to a trend where innovation meant bigger, faster, more features and, of course, a price premium for having the best and latest.

This last week I was meeting with a person from Cisco about a tool we are developing that can track business trends and customer interest in companies, brands, products and preferences in real time. It turns the excercise that used to take a team of strategy analysts 2-3 months to complete as a one-time exercise that might cost $100K to $250K as a consulting project into a real-time system. Of cousre it would never replace the knowledge, creativity, experience and judgment of senior strategists and operating executives to make the final decisions. But, it would turn a very expensive, manual process, into a system solution that is good enough to generate the insights that are needed for executive decision making.

The person from Cisco pointed me to an article from Wired Magazine that really captures the essence of our thinking behind this new market monitoring system, which may not be as perfect in appearance as a PowerPoint deck scrubbed by a team of well trained undergrads and MBAs from top universities, but as a trade-off, it will be available in real-time, always up to date, based on the same oveall strategic thinking disciplines and structure, and will cost a lot less. That’s what Wired describes as a Good Enough winner.

It is always tough to think that things you spent so much time on perfecting may not be valued going forward, but that is sometimes how progress works. The Wired article does a great job of describing this trend in legal services, unmanned aircraft, video cameras, and healthcare. They discuss the trend towards innovation being applied to get to simpler, lower cost and better solutions for customers.

We very likley are at a point where many industries are overbuilt and overengineered on things that customers don’t care about enough to pay for anymore. As you enter this year’s strategic planning process, take an extra moment to prehaps have your team read this article and think about how the “good enough” may apply as a screen for how you build your strategy, investment and budget plans for 2010. And to be clear, “good enough” doesn’t mean to do a mediocre job, it means understanding what your customers really need the most and focusing innovation on how to do that better, faster, cheaper…and simpler than before. To me, the watchword for strategic planning in 2010 should be “simplify.” Good luck in rallying your team to this cause. I’m sure I’ll need it as well as we stir things up in our planning as well.

Michael Kanazawa is Chief Executive of Bedrock Dissero and co-author of Big Ideas to Big Results.

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Someday, the picture on the right of a typical cubicle farm will look just as obsolete as the rows of desks with the boss watching from behind on the left. For some workers, someday is today. And the good news is that the solutions for today are actually less expensive, more flexible, better for effective work, sustainable and to most employees…really cool.  It is rare to find this type of business solution. 

This week we had an opportunity to meet an amazing group of people at Sun Microsystems. They have developed what is by far the best, most cost effective, most efficient, and cool workplaces that I’ve seen in years. In my work, I have the opportunity to see a lot of different work environments and use a lot of different collaboration platforms…some of which I’ve written about on the blog. However, this one was different….

The Sun Open Work Solutions group has set out to solve a problem and opportunity that has multiple constraints and is complex, but they’ve done a great job and there is a lot that others can learn from them. Almost every company of any size shares one thing in common, unfortunately, and that’s cubicles. These inventions worked well for creating some level of privacy, the feeling of “a place of my own” at the office, and efficient use of space. In static work environments where everyone comes to the office every day, works primarily alone on tasks, and work teams don’t change too often the cubicles work fine.

Today, it is much more common for people to be working at multiple geographic locations with employees spread across the globe, working in project teams that may flex throughout the year, and consider “home base” more their laptop than their physical desk at the office. I could go on about the Rolodex on the desk, hard-wired phone number extensions at the desk, and file drawers full of mainla folders, but we all know those reasons for being tethered to your physical desk are completely obsolete concepts at this point.

In addition, people have become much more productive by being able to work anywhere they have their laptop and a place to sit. Starbucks, airport lounges and home offices have become fully functioning offices for many workers as long as they have their cell phone and a WiFi connected laptop. They’ve learned how to work that way out of need and convenience and technology solutions have created that flexilibity.

We were not able to photograph the work environment, but they’ve described it to others and I’ll do my best to give you the picture. Imagine walking into your office building. As you exit the elevators on the inner core of the floor, you have meeting rooms, video conference room and breakaway individual work areas with walls to use for private 1:1 meetins or calls. In each case, these are more effective without the glare of direct sunlight and require more privacy. As you walk past these to your desk you, you enter an area that is much more wide open with individual work desks.

These desks are grouped in pods of team. Instead of upholstered panels to create some privacy to work, the desks are outfitted with multiple large displays. One has three panels, a 27″ monitor in the middle to work and two 21″ monitors on angles on the side that may have a video conferencing bridge with a co-worker on one and a shared “whiteboard” collaboration space on the other. Rather than just pinning the latest Dilbert cartoon to the panel, these provide high-value work space. Not only that, but monitors have come down so far in price that one of these desks with the monitors costs less than a typical cubicle setup. And for many workers, they prefer the high-tech version and even view it as a perq. Online tools, inexpensive web cams and video conferencing tie together individuals and groups with the plethora of video screens that have everyone virtually “working in the same room together.” Add to that some drop-in bars with rows of seats and places to connect your laptop, a brainstorming area with a huge digital whiteboard for local and remote workers to collaborate and comfortable seating throughout and it all creates a great solution that is cost-effective, highly efficient and appreciated by employees.

I may not have gotten these notes perfect on the real savings, but clearly there are real business profitability drivers.

• Reduce physical building space, which costs less for real estate and utilities - 15% cost savings.
• Reduce communiting and overall demands on the workspace which has had huge impact on the carbon footprint of the company.
• Improve employee time and cost by avoiding commuting - more than half of that time savings is given back to the business.

Below is a link to an interview with Anne Bamesberger, the leader of the group at Sun behind the innovative workspace that we toured. 

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/SunNews/2008/05/21/Sun-News-Anne-Bamesberger-about-iWork-and-Suns-award-by-the-EDF

It is clear that the workforce environment has changed and we are still working in a 30-40 year old configuration of cubicles. It may take some time for the infrastructure to truly turn over, but pay attention to these new forms of work. If you want to hire and retain innovative and high value employees, they expect an innovative and high value work environments. For once, there is a solution that truly is better, faster, and cheapers…and it just so happens to be really cool as well.

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A clip from the article shows a somewhat insulting list of what Strategic Planning 101 is all about. Usually I just ignore this type of advice, but in this case it was so far off the mark, I had to comment.  

______________________ARTICLE CLIP___________________

Strategic Planning 101

1. Get a bunch of smart people in a room together … without cell phones and Blackberrys
2. Have somebody present a completely honest analysis of the competitive situation
3. Throw out all the sacred cows and preconceived notions
4. Brainstorm new ideas until you can’t stand to look at each other anymore
5. Vote on them, take the top ten, assign each to an executive to develop a business plan
6. Meet back, present the plans, debate, decide on one or two to implement, and execute

At least you’d think that’s what they’re doing, right? All those high-paid executives with fiduciary responsibility can’t just be sitting around complaining and waiting to die. Or can they? What do you think? Do Syd and I expect too much from officers and directors that shareholders depend upon to make their investment worthwhile?

____________________________________________________________

This misguided view of what strategic planning has two major gaps that are the undoing of most efforts to set and execute strategy.

First, the process of strategic planning should never focus on competitors as a starting point. The core external information to guide a growth strategy and innovation is customer needs. Too often, companies simply look at more successful competitors or industry best-practices and try to copy their way into market leadership. The problem is that you can’t get into the lead by copying others. Also, in the case of the newspaper industry, the entire industry structure and business model needs to be re-invented. You need to not look at other newspaper companies, but rather at how consumers are relating to media, what other media sources are available to companies spending money to advertising, and what assets do you have that could be redefined to better servce those consumers and corporate customers of the newspaper.

Second, there is a huge misconception that executive leaders are supposed to be the ones with all of the answers. The BNET article lays out the typical solution of, “let’s get all the executives to an offsite, hammer out a strategy, and then go to employees and get their buy in to execute.” This is never a good idea. The better approach is to have senior executives confront the realities of the business from an external perspective and agree on areas of the business that need to change significantly. Then, engage the operational-level leaders in thinking through innovative ways to solve the problems or drive new growth, work together between executives and mid-level leaders to set up plans and then focus priorities on a very narrow number of high-impact initiatives. Align budgets and other resources to ensure proper focus and support. Finally, engage each level of employees in deciding what they can individually do to advance the key initiatives. This way, the ownership and accountability of the plans sits with a much broader set of people than just the handful of executives suggested in the article.

The reason company strategies don’t seem to change fast enough is that shifts in customer needs and markets are not fully comprehended or recognized as significant shifts fast enough. And, despite the efforts of a handful of executives at the top to repeatedly call for change, the full organization doesn’t move. This “Strategy 101″ article describes the ineffective approach that leads to companeis and industries failing. Exectuvies who serve as leaders keep focused on customers, challenge their teams to generate the right strategies and effectively engage the entire organization in driving change. The leaders recognize that they alone can not have all the answers or force all of the changes to occur. Business is made up of teams that need to be leveraged to generate success.

Michael Kanazawa is Chief Executive of Bedrock Dissero and co-author of Big Ideas to Big Results.

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There is a natural reaction when a major disruption in business occurs to go into survival mode. That means tunnel and short-term vision as well as tactical and reactionary measures. That can be a necessity for survival. However, a recent poll of the Strategic Planning Community (SPC), a business social network of strategic planners hosted by the Association of Strategic Planning (ASP), shows that for the most part, the knee-jerk reactions to the downturn have passed and most companies are moving towards more strategic moves.

Of respondents to the web survey on the SPC site, 82% reported that their companies are now thinking more strategically. Companies still operating in a purely tactical and survival mode, will likely find themselves being left behind when the economy turns. This result matches well with a recent Bain Consulting survey of global corporations where they report that “Almost eight of ten executives agree “our company will use this recession to improve our competitive position”

Some of the specific strategic questions suggested by the SPC members for companies can be categorized into two main groups that address both fundamental shifts in customer needs as well as business model changes. For a business, a shift in how you serve customers and how you generate profits are really the core fundamentals of a strategy.

In terms of customer needs, it is clear that there has been a sharp shift in demand across almost all industry sectors. Maintaining alignment with customer needs is one of the most important drivers of business success, prompting me to suggest the most important strategic question in the study to be, “What do our customers value most in what we deliver?” The intent is to be able to make cuts in areas that customers don’t value and increase focus on those areas that matter most. Business Week just ran an interesting article about how some companies are taking “de-featured” products that they sell in emerging economies and finding that bringing those into developed economies is proving highly successful. For customers is means lower prices with delivery of just the most critical features or capabilities.

Shifting to a different product mix can require shifts in cost structure and channels as well. In the study, several other strategists suggested asking questions about business models. Kenneth Hein, an Association of Strategic Planning member and Chief Strategist suggests asking, “How do we leverage our capabilities and capacity in a way that will allow us to expand while others are contracting or adopting a very defensive ‘hold on’ strategy.” Sue Arrell, another ASP member suggests looking for opportunities in the unexpected situation by asking, “What unintended consequences of today’s economic situation can we capitalize on in the future?”

Successful survival techniques in any situation rely on quick action to avoid immediate danger as a first step followed by a careful assessment of the situation and developing a plan of action to exit the situation. For some, it is possible to become frozen in fear and unable to think clearly and objectively about the plan for exit. For those who plan to exit this downturn successfully, now is the time to be repositioning for the new market realities and beginning to execute on steps to ensure successful exit.

Michael Kanazawa is Chief Executive of Bedrock Dissero and co-author of Big Ideas to Big Results.

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If you are responsible for improving performance of a professional services orgnaization or merging services organizations, you will find this webinar valuable in terms of specific benchmark performance metrics from the ”best-of-the-best” and a well proven process for transformation with some tools and case exmaples to apply to your business.

Video Link

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According to a recent IDC Global Retail Insights survey, 75% of retailers and 58% of consumer products manufacturers rank customer-centricity among top 3 keys to success. This finding aligns perfectly with our experience that the only way big ideas turn into big results is when those ideas are based in a deep understanding of customer needs and are executed by delivering a winning customer experience. There are some breakthroughs in approaches to listening to customers and tapping into their innovative ideas that the most innovative companies are applying today. Below are some simple descriptions and first implementation steps you can take to moving down this path.

1) Listen to customers, but listen closer to non-customers.

This is similar to to the idea of keeping your friends close and your enemies closer. Sometimes you learn more by listening to those who don’t see things your way than those who already agree. This tip is one very commonly overlooked when developing strategies for growth. Many companies listen to their sales force to understand strategic customer needs. This is one perspective, but the conversations tend to be short-term focused, are clouded by the vendor/customer relationship dynamic, and represent people who already see the world the way you do.

With the Wii, Nintendo converted non-customers of gaming systems by listening and creating a solution that moms would love to have in their homes. Southwest airlines converted non-customers of air travel by creating a price point and casual travel feel that matched bus travel, but was much faster. Netbooks are converting non-customers of expensive laptops into mobile computing users.

IMPLEMENTATION: To get started listening to non-customers, set up a specific research effort to call on customers who have left your business, sales leads which were lost, and targeting potential customers who have never been reached at all. Test if there is a lack of awareness of your company, a disagreement about the value proposition, or an unmet set of needs that you could begin to serve. This is where many breakthrough strategies originate.

2) Engage customers in open and direct innovation online

The most innovative companies are turning to a new set of online solutions to engage customers directly and openly into the innovation process. Cisco has been one of the most forward and successful, perhaps finding it’s next $1 billion product category through an online innovation campaign. They leveraged an online tool set from Bright Idea Software (Dissero’s strategic partner) to launch an open innovation contest that allowed anyone from around the world to suggest ideas, have them voted on by others, and collaborate and shape ideas together. The new solutions provide ways to open up and capture innovative ideas, engage with customers directly, and provide tools that filter the ideas so you can easily harvest only the best and most popular ideas for consideration internally. This allows you to truly tap the wisdom of the crowd, but not be overwhelmed with too many random and tactical ideas…like the old suggestion boxes that we’ve all come to detest. This is new technology, with new capabilities and a real breakthrough in business strategy.

Watch the video on this page to hear more about how Cisco did this and what the program accomplished.  http://www.cisco.com/web/solutions/iprize/index.html

Lego toys launched a site to let users design and purchase their own kits, which other people can purchase as well.  http://factory.lego.com/

Starbucks created the My Starbucks Idea site to gather direct customer input for new ideas of all types. These are voted on by others so the best ideas can rise to the surface.  http://mystarbucksidea.force.com/

IMPLEMENTATION: If you are interested in creating your own customer innovation site there are many considerations on technology platform, scope of ideas to request, and internal innovation management process to harvest the benefits. Dissero has partnered with Bright Idea Software to provide a full solution to quickly and easily get you in touch with your customers and begin tapping their innovative ideas, creating new revenue streams and great loyalty. The good news is that almost immediately and for the cost of a typical “ideation” brainstorming workshop or offsite with your management team, you can put in place a pilot program to engage customers, employees, and partners in searching for innovations. This will become as pervasive as having customer panels or user groups and much more extensive and powerful.

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