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There are two rivalries in Canada that I have enjoyed watching unfold; Rogers versus Bell Canada and Westjet versus Air Canada, more on the later in a future post.
 
Rogers and Bell are competing on a number of fronts Wireless, Internet, Business services and traditional landline phone service. Rogers versus Bell Canada is an interesting battle. Rogers is doing an excellent job at targeting young adults in the wireless cell phone market. Rogers’s ads are focused hip and well done. Bell Canada appears to be targeting Canadian wildlife. While their beaver mascots Frank and Gordon are cute and amusing I am not sure how good they are at generating business and winning subscribers or generating any brand recognition for Bell Canada. My take is that the beavers are probably more widely recognized than the services they promote. On the landline front Rogers is now aggressively targeting Bell Canada’s subscriber base with their “Home Phone” service. Again the ads are well done and targeted at a number of different demographics. Bell Canada as far as I can tell is letting Rogers have their way because I haven’t seen any ads promoting Bell landline services. This is one area where Bell needs to be more aggressive and fight to protect their cash cow before it starves. There is little from either company in terms of advertising on the Internet front. Bell does have one add with Frank and Gordon telling the neighbourhood to get off the Internet because of slow downs. In my opinion, the way this message is presented will be lost on the average consumer. The lone bright spot for Bell in is their business services. I have a business line from Bell and am very happy with the service.  

One of my personal experiences with Rogers and Bell is related to billing. I had requested that Bell consolidate my landline, wireless and Internet service. The response from the Bell representative at the time was that unfortunately that was not possible because the different billing systems for each division in Bell couldn’t exchange information and therefore they were incapable consolidating my bill. I have since switched my wireless and Internet services to Rogers. The story at Rogers is a stark contrast to Bell. I had a Wireless phone for my business and my cable services with Rogers, which I needed to keep separate. Rogers somehow figured out that both services were being billed from the same address and automatically consolidated my bill. This isn’t what I wanted and it did take some effort to separate the bills. I was, however, impressed by Rogers’s capability to recognize the two bills were from the same customer and quickly consolidate them to save costs from two different bills to the same address. I now have my Internet; wireless and cable services provided by Rogers and they all come on one bill. Bell may be able to do this now but guess what, it is too late.   

My prediction is that Rogers will keep chipping away at Bell. For my next post on Bell vs Rogers Clash of the Titans I am going to do a bit of research to establish some metrics for a more objective assessment of how the two are doing relative to each other.

Cheers,

Ian Graham 

 

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I saw a reference the other day in the Ottawa Business Journal to an organization that was developing policy planks to support the new and old economies. This got me thinking is there a new economy?   I must admit that I am a bit unclear on what exactly the new economy is. Really when you think about it there is only one economy. New products and services are developed that contribute to the growth of the economy but there isn’t a new economy or an old economy just an economy.   After contemplating the matter further you could probably divide the economy into three segments: value, service and knowledge. At the heart of the economy is the value segment. This is the domain of companies that produce innovation and significantly contribute value to the economy. In a concentric circle around the value segment is the service segment. The service segment is closely tied to the value segment and provides obviously enough services to support the income generated by the value segment of the economy. This would include things like real estate, cleaning, labour and other ancillary services needed to sustain the value segment. The third and final segment of the economy is the knowledge-based segment. This segment is like an umbrella over the value and service segments and provides ways of applying knowledge to improve process and act as a catalyst for development.      

When faced with a difficult or complicated decision that involves building consensus there is a tool I have developed that works amazingly well. I call it the “Option Analysis” tool. The concept is that with most challenging decisions you can come to a solution by weighing a number of options versus a set of criteria. A teamcan objectively arrive at a decision and build consensus among the stakeholders uses the Option Analysis tool. I have used this many times and it has always worked.   The Steps in the process are:   1)     Determine Options 2)     Generate Criteria 3)     Rate and Rank Criteria 4)     Evaluate the options   Determine Options Usually when I have used the option analysis the team has already developed a number of competing options with different team members having a preference for one option or the other. If you are in the position of starting fresh you could have a brain storming session on the different options available. Take the options and put each one in a separate column of an Excel spreadsheet. Once you have determined all the options available you are ready to generate a set of criteria.   Generate Criteria The next step in the process is to generate a set of criteria that will be used to evaluate the options. This usually takes 15 to 30 minutes or less depending on when the criteria ideas start to dry up. Remember that in the brainstorming session all criteria are good criteria and should not be judged. The intent is to get as many ideas for criteria as possible.   Rate and Rank Criteria 

Now that you have all of these wonderful criteria ideas you will need to rate and rank them. What I mean by rate and rank is determine the most important criteria and perhaps remove some of the criteria that may not be that important. Ideally you will have 10 – 15 criteria for evaluating the options. Take the criteria and put them in the rows of the Excel spreadsheet. The criteria should be in the left most column and the options across the top. This way you can use the matrix to have a value for each criterion under each option. The most important criteria is at the top of the criteria list, the second most important next to top and so on.   Evaluate the options The team now rates the criteria for each option. The options are rated on a scale Green, Yellow and Red.   Green – means good or excellent fit with the criteria Yellow – means neutral Red – means Bad    Each cell of the matrix is evaluated as Good (green), Neutral (yellow) or Bad (red) until the entire matrix is complete. Once you have completed filing in the matrix go back and have a look at the overall options.   The end result is usually that one of the options has more green than the others. Lots of green is good particularly if it is at the top under the most important criteria, lots of red is bad. You can get a pretty good perspective of which option is the best very quickly.   Best of all your entire team has developed the options, criteria and rated the criteria versus each option, this leads to objectivity and ultimately buy in to the choice of option. I have used this many times to resolve such issues as which processor to use for a new product, which vendor for a new power supply and even how to structure our logistics. The “Options Analysis” tool is simple and it works.            

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I attended a great event last night hosted by the Ottawa eBusiness Cluster. There were two presenters at the event Scott Lake from Shopify and Rick Anderson from Zip.ca. Both presentations were well done and very entertaining.
 
Zip.ca is Canada’s largest online distributor of DVD’s. The company has 52,000 titles available to their customers that are ordered online and distributed through traditional mail delivery services.
 
I wanted to take a minute to expand on Rick Anderson’s presentation because it is an excellent example of long tail marketing. The key concepts of long tail marketing are that:
 
1)     The lower the cost of distribution, the more you can economically offer without having to predict demand
2)     The more you can offer, the greater the chance that you will be able to tap latent demand for minority tastes that was unreachable through traditional retail
3)     Aggregate enough minority taste, and you’ll often find get a big new market.
 
Source: Chris Anderson blog
 
I agree with point number 2 and 3. Regarding point number 2, the more you can offer the greater the chance you will be able to tap into latent minority demand. Zip.ca offers approximately 52,000 titles and approximately 50% of their order fulfilment is from the top 600 titles.  I do not remember the exact statistics for revenue from the remaining 51,400 titles, however, the graph was a perfect long tail and Zip.ca is tapping into the latent demand with their extensive niche selection.
 
Regarding the first point, my understanding from the Zip.ca presentation is that even with low cost distribution being able to predict demand is essential to success. One of Zip.ca competitive advantages is their proprietary software, which allows them to predict and fulfil demand. The sticky issue related to point 1 is that inventory management is key to success as low distribution costs. The difference between Zip.ca and the Chris Anderson Universal Music post is that Zip.ca has physical inventory while Universal is downloading music online.  I would have thought that there were still issues and extra costs associated with Universal’s music distribution such as storing, hosting and transferring music online.
 
My conclusion is that Zip.ca is an excellent example of how the Internet enables Long Tail marketing.

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If the Acid test for greatness is focusing on results then the litmus test is a combination of a number of factors. I like to overlay the concepts from two of my favourite books; “Good to Great”, Jim Collins and “Principled Centred Leadership”, Steven Covey. The concepts in the later apply more to large organizations while those in “Good to Great” apply equally to companies of all sizes.   The cornerstone of any great company, at least in my opinion, is the Mission, Vision and Values (MVV). Does the company in question have a true MVV? A true MVV is one where the entire organization can rally around, believe in and live the MVV. The MVV must be something substantive that the entire organization has had a hand in crafting.   The second part of the Litmus test is corporate culture. Corporate culture is one of the key aspects of company success in Good to Great. Take this a step further and you have a culture of accomplishment that is focused on results. The aspects of culture that are relevant from Principled Centred Leadership are the personal (Trustworthy) and the interpersonal (Trust). Basically you have good people that trust each other, can work together and are focused on results.   The third part of the Litmus test is corporate adaptability where everyone feels empowered to do what is right and in the best interests of the organization. This is empowerment from the managerial level in Principled Centred Leadership and the “Hedgehog Concept” from Good to Great. In order to execute the hedgehog concept employees must be empowered.   

The fourth and final part of the Litmus test is Leadership and relates back to test number one the MVV. Organizational leadership must align the activities of the organization to be consistent with the MVV. This is alignment from Principled Centred Leadership and a “Level Five” leader from Good to Great.   The Litmus Test Checklist -         MVV -         Culture 

-         Adaptability  -         Leadership  

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The Rule of You and I  Sometimes you need to write to someone to ask a favour, request information, make an appointment or whatever. Whenever I right such a note there is a very simple rule to help improve the likelihood of the request being granted. This is the rule of you and I.  The rule of you and I is very simple, whenever you make a request make sure that the word you is used more often than the word I. If the number of you is less than the number of I the letter is rewritten until you is the most prominent. This tends to mean that the letter is written more from your reader’s perspective than your own. This can be very powerful and I use it on a regular basis. Best of all it works.  You or your (9)  I (6)

Cheers,  

 

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I attended an event last fall at the Kanata Holiday INN put on by OCRI (Ottawa Centre for Research and Innovation) and TON (The Ottawa Network). The title of the event was “Buddy can you spare a million” and a panel of 6 VC’s and Angels presented what they look for in opportunities. A very enjoyable and entertaining evening. Well done to OCRI and TON on their first joint event.   The 3 Ottawa area VC’s all seemed to focus on a very similar demographic for funding, primarily Telecom. Ottawa is known as a Telecom town and after watching the presentation I understand a big part of the reason why. VC in this city tends to focus on what they understand and that is Telecom. The focus is on big chunks of iron and the network.   

The presenter from Silicon Valley Bank (Oscar Jazdowski) had a very different perspective and a much broader demographic for funding. For example; fuel cell technology, display technology, applications, blogs and social networking. Interestingly enough all of these components are at the user side of the network and embedded in hand held devices and associated with the high growth area of user devices.   The two Angels from Ottawa had a similar perspective to Oscar and seemed to look at a wider variety of companies for funding. They’re more interested in the opportunity and protecting their investment than the type of technology. Irving Ebert described his criteria as “strategically opportunistic” and one of his investments includes DNA Genotek a very successful local firm that provides an oral swab kit for testing DNA.   

If Ottawa is going to advance and diversify its economy from Government and Telecom it will need to provide support for a much broader base of companies. If you are looking for funding and are in the other category (Other than Telecom) you will probably need to look further a field than Ottawa for funding.