The Enterprise 2.0 Experience
Wednesday: June 20, 2007 8:24 AM
I make no apologies for being a rabid fan of the “The Experience Economy” book written by Pine and Gilmore. The insight and forward looking research has literally changed how we look at business and technology. The basic premise is that quality products and customer service are no longer differentiators of value. They are simply the price of entry in every business, including collaborative and social environments. Having the best product is now a commodity where even IBM and Microsoft’s products are being challenged by small vendors and open source solutions. What employees want is all of that plus positive, engaging, and memorable customer experiences. The interactions between the people and the environment shape the experience and the perception of value. The natural progression of value emerges as you move up the value chain from a commodity to a product offering, to a value-add service portfolio, and then to the customer experience. Within the technology world, we might say this is more of a solution versus an experience, but the descriptors are the same. Most of the examples provided are familiar to us all.
Coffee Bean – Maxwell House – Dunkin Donuts – Starbucks
Home Made Cake - Dunkin Hines – Kroger Bakery – Chucky Cheese
Corn – Cornflakes – Diner Serving Cereal – Cereality Cafes
Does this analogy work in the world of Collaboration? Can you really move up the value chain to deliver the Collaborative Experience? In their Book, Pine and Gilmore describe four experience classification or components that businesses can engage: Education, Esthetics, Escape, and Entertainment.
At first glance, education should be obvious and include training, education, web based seminars, and documentation. While the education part is correct, the active participation is limited in traditional education. Therefore, education here would include one-on-one training session that can be interactive and participatory. Also included would be consulting efforts, setup and configuration, and interactive tutorials like done in lab environments.
Esthetics is the easiest to understand because this focuses on what people can actually sense; as in the store design, back ground music, signage, and layout. In the virtual world this translates to design, usability, easy to use applications, findable information, and clear communications.
The Escapist describes the areas where the end user actively participates in the environment itself. Contributes and engages in the experience and in some cases takes on a whole new persona. Clearly, the business processes is an active engagement as well as the Community of Practice where users becomes the trainers. With the Web 2.0 technologies, the users can contribute to the best practices, faq, and rate content that they find usable. This in turn enriches your solution for the others customers.
Finally, the entertainment dimension comes into play where users simple observe the product or service. Now, we can bring in the education, training, and demonstration environments. Perhaps the word entertainment and education are the wrong words to choose but since this isn’t my model, we will stick with the author’s intent.
So, in the world of Collaboration what is the commodity? What is the product, service and the experience? The commodity is clear; it’s the architecture, infrastructure, tool, programs, Operating system, operational support, etc. The product is what you can do with the tool. People do want open source, Sharepoint, Mindquarry, or Connections. They want a place to share ideas, collaborate, meet, exchange documents, and connect with each other. These are the products of collaboration. The value-add service might include the training, education, setup, consulting, ordering, etc. Clearly the solution is the experience as describes in the prior paragraphs. The path is clear, it’s all about the Enterprise 2.0 Experience.
I make no apologies for being a rabid fan of the “The Experience Economy” book written by Pine and Gilmore. The insight and forward looking research has literally changed how we look at business and technology. The basic premise is that quality products and customer service are no longer differentiators of value. They are simply the price of entry in every business, including collaborative and social environments. Having the best product is now a commodity where even IBM and Microsoft’s products are being challenged by small vendors and open source solutions. What employees want is all of that plus positive, engaging, and memorable customer experiences. The interactions between the people and the environment shape the experience and the perception of value. The natural progression of value emerges as you move up the value chain from a commodity to a product offering, to a value-add service portfolio, and then to the customer experience. Within the technology world, we might say this is more of a solution versus an experience, but the descriptors are the same. Most of the examples provided are familiar to us all.
Coffee Bean – Maxwell House – Dunkin Donuts – Starbucks Home Made Cake - Dunkin Hines – Kroger Bakery – Chucky Cheese Corn – Cornflakes – Diner Serving Cereal – Cereality CafesDoes this analogy work in the world of Collaboration? Can you really move up the value chain to deliver the Collaborative Experience? In their Book, Pine and Gilmore describe four experience classification or components that businesses can engage: Education, Esthetics, Escape, and Entertainment.
At first glance, education should be obvious and include training, education, web based seminars, and documentation. While the education part is correct, the active participation is limited in traditional education. Therefore, education here would include one-on-one training session that can be interactive and participatory. Also included would be consulting efforts, setup and configuration, and interactive tutorials like done in lab environments.
Esthetics is the easiest to understand because this focuses on what people can actually sense; as in the store design, back ground music, signage, and layout. In the virtual world this translates to design, usability, easy to use applications, findable information, and clear communications.
The Escapist describes the areas where the end user actively participates in the environment itself. Contributes and engages in the experience and in some cases takes on a whole new persona. Clearly, the business processes is an active engagement as well as the Community of Practice where users becomes the trainers. With the Web 2.0 technologies, the users can contribute to the best practices, faq, and rate content that they find usable. This in turn enriches your solution for the others customers.
Finally, the entertainment dimension comes into play where users simple observe the product or service. Now, we can bring in the education, training, and demonstration environments. Perhaps the word entertainment and education are the wrong words to choose but since this isn’t my model, we will stick with the author’s intent.
So, in the world of Collaboration what is the commodity? What is the product, service and the experience? The commodity is clear; it’s the architecture, infrastructure, tool, programs, Operating system, operational support, etc. The product is what you can do with the tool. People do want open source, Sharepoint, Mindquarry, or Connections. They want a place to share ideas, collaborate, meet, exchange documents, and connect with each other. These are the products of collaboration. The value-add service might include the training, education, setup, consulting, ordering, etc. Clearly the solution is the experience as describes in the prior paragraphs. The path is clear, it’s all about the Enterprise 2.0 Experience.
