OSS are all about helping the customer in some way
“Problem-solving becomes a very important part of our makeup as we grow into maturity or move up the corporate ladder.” Zig Ziglar. What problems are our OSS trying to solve? Have you ever pondered what problems they could be solving? Sometimes our answers to the first question show the day-to-day issues that we’re trying to […]
“Omnichannel describes a coordinated, consistent strategy for engaging and interacting with your customers, and potential customers. This can take place at any and every channel touchpoint in the customer journey as shown in the graphic. These channels can include: actual and online stores; kiosks; digital signage; broadcast, electronic and print media; email; gaming consoles; online […]
“The day before yesterday, for the first time this attempt for us, we have conducted a “throw away meeting”.” Susumu Fujita (quote has been Google-translated from the original Japanese blog into English) [Another translation could be – “The day before yesterday, we held our first “throw away meeting.” This meeting was proposed in a recent […]
“The more you engage with customers the clearer things become and the easier it is to determine what you should be doing.” John Russell. I’ve noticed something curious with a few of the OSS products I’ve worked with. The customers use the products for one of their functions (eg as a database of records) but […]
This is the sixth in the Complete OSS re-write series of posts and relates to We don’t have enough skilled people. This series is designed to pose ideas on how the OSS industry could take a Control-Alt-Delete approach to all aspects of delivering operational support, which coincides with the inflection point underway in our industry […]
This is the fifth in the Complete OSS re-write series of posts and relates to What are the tangible benefits or insights. This series is designed to pose ideas on how the OSS industry could take a Control-Alt-Delete approach to all aspects of delivering operational support, which coincides with the inflection point underway in our industry via […]
This is the fourth in the Complete OSS re-write series of posts and relates to Our requirements keep changing. This series is designed to pose ideas on how the OSS industry could take a Control-Alt-Delete approach to all aspects of delivering operational support, which coincides with the inflection point underway in our industry via technologies such as […]
“The problem [with wizards] is that I think people expect magic. ” Peter Dart. Isn’t this so true? If you call any of your OSS tools “wizards” instead of just tools, users have a much higher expectation of what the tools can actually do? Call it a wizard and users expect to click one button […]
“Analyst predicts emergence of more shared networks, sees operators separating infrastructure from retail businesses. Major telecoms operators will in future make the decision to separate their network operations from the retail side of the business.” Mary Lennighan quoting John Strand here. Not exactly ground-breaking news, but certainly an interesting concept nonetheless. As noted here almost […]
“Digital platforms are worthless without content. They’re shiny sacks with bells and whistles, but without content, they’re empty sacks. It is not about pixels versus print. It is not about how you’re reading. It is about what you’re reading.” Maureen Dowd In a recent post, we talked about the merits of vertical vs horizontal code […]
“Essentially, RFPs [Request for Proposal] by their very nature are already flawed. You have described the situation you are in today and you are trying to fit the new technology to that situation. Assuming you are trying to transform your business, this is a dead end before you even start.” Paul Vedam in his article […]
“The engineering bias blinds people to this simple fact. The conventional thinking is that great products sell themselves; if you have great product, it will inevitably reach consumers. But nothing is further from the truth.” Peter Thiel (actually a notes essay from Peter Thiel’s CS183: Startup – Class 9 lecture). Distribution is one of an […]
“Ask your friends what business Google is in and the answer you’ll most likely get is “search.” And they would be wrong. Google is, first and foremost, an advertising company. A full 97 percent of its revenue comes from advertising on its various properties, including YouTube, plus partner sites through its AdSense product. Sure, Google […]
Another set of quotes from Peter Thiel below (actually a notes essay from Peter Thiel’s CS183: Startup – Class 4 lecture): “For a company to own its market, it must have some combination of brand, scale cost advantages, network effects, or proprietary technology“ “Brand is a tricky concept for investors to understand and identify in […]
“If you embrace special orders, you’re doing something difficult, scarce and worth seeking out.” Seth Godin here. Recent post, “Long Tail Dynamics in OSS,” highlighted the different bands of customers that a CSP services and the different OSS that they use to service each band. The head (the top-X customers by revenue) tends to get […]
The diagram above shows the head and the long tail of OSS, but also the tale of two distinct ways of thinking at some Tier-1 CSPs. The yellow band represents the head, the top-X (eg Top 100) customers, generally the major corporates, government, etc that spend massive amounts on communication services and expect a corresponding amount […]
“By now, most people know who Google is and what Google does. Google serves billions of online users in this country and around the world … With little or no revenue from its users, Google still manages to turn a healthy profit by selling advertisements within its products that rely in substantial part on users’ […]
“SMSes and push notifications have eight times higher response rates from consumers compared to emails. Thus, sending relevant and targeted push notifications would not only have higher response rates for the brand but also improve the shopping experience for the customer.” Nameet Potnis. It’s been a bit of a “marketing” week here on PAOSS. The […]
“If your experiment needs statistics, you ought to have done a better experiment [ed. unless it’s a marketing experiment 😉 ].” Ernest Rutherford. Assuming that yesterday’s hypothesis was correct and many of a CSP’s customers are looking for data to identify marketing opportunities, what valuable service can we make of that? Government-based Bureaus of Statistics […]
“One of the messages at the keynote included the fact that successful busineses now have a ratio of 4:1 in the marketing and sales. This means that to maximize company growth and sales, successful companies engage about four marketing specialists to one sales person. The traditional role of the Business Development Manager or Sales Manager is […]
