How do you monetise the advantages of mobile, cloud and digitisation? It’s a question that many are struggling to answer according to a recent poll carried out on behalf of CloudSense during the London leg of the recent Salesforce World Tour. Covering a complete range of businesses, the survey tells a story of major upheavals, lack of skills and, above all, confusion.
The majority of those delegates polled believe that the integration of cloud and mobile technologies will radically impact working processes (67%), help deliver completely new ways of engaging with customers (63%) and force organisations to be more inventive (59%).
Yet most also think that they don’t yet have the right tools or skills to keep up with the new digital world, or the right in-house technical expertise. Some 56% admit to either or both of these problems, 32% think they lack skills for ongoing development and 29% believe they would find it difficult to integrate cloud and on-premise platforms in their businesses today.
It’s an issue that an industry I know well - media and publishing - recognises to its cost. Fighting to survive as traditional revenues continue to slowly but steadily fade, it is currently using all its creative powers to help make online pay.
It’s true that some of the major players are moving in the right direction, reinventing themselves to better serve their readers with clubs, online forums, direct mail, offers, exhibitions and other initiatives. For example, both the Financial Times and The Times now offer ‘membership’ for subscribers including added extras such as investment portfolio tools and email briefings, exclusive events and previews and other tailored offers. .
But do others have the same will and drive to change and, if so, where do they start? Inevitably there is no easy, catch-all answer. This is a fluid and dynamic environment and what works with a regional title will not necessarily be right for a niche B2B publication. But there are two over-riding actions that will help.
First, they need to switch the focus from themselves to the reader or consumer. Surprisingly, readers have sometimes been taken for granted in the past. However, they can now change allegiance with a single finger swipe and not paying them enough attention is no longer just arrogant, it’s reckless too.
Second, they need to put the tools in place to enable them to do this. Often large and cumbersome enterprise-wide technology stacks just don’t have the agility today’s conditions demand. They need manual labour and extensive workarounds – and front offices dealing with subscribers’ queries or selling advertising are not effectively joined with back office workflow and data.
These tools must help provide a single view of each individual reader’s behaviour – covering print, digital and social media – so it can be far more responsive about providing personalised special offers and other incentives, including customised content. Many have a CRM system linked to core business areas, but few cover the entire organisation.
This brings me back to the cloud. The answer is a technology layer to enable this new fast response and flexibility, allowing the changes to flow seamlessly into existing workflow and processes. This layer can be easily implemented on top of legacy systems via the cloud. The fact that cloud solutions can be integrated, managed and maintained by the provider addresses the problem of IT skills highlighted in the survey.
As our poll also showed, businesses are only too aware of this urgent need to act. But budgets are tight, the outlook still uncertain and many still have to build their vision and communicate it to a risk-averse board. Most are simply too busy juggling their online and traditional publications. They know that digital is the future, but print advertising remains, for the time being their main source of revenue, so they can’t afford to totally re-focus. However, this shouldn’t prevent them from taking the first steps towards rebuilding for digital.
Yet cloud technology can be a relatively affordable and simple way in to a brighter future. It enables a flexibility which facilitates experimentation with new ideas and the ability to move on quickly to the next one if they don’t work. In this climate these organisation need to be ready for anything and cloud technology will enable them to re-imagine their strategies regularly.
It’s not the entire answer, but it can provide a much-needed lifeline to the media industry and beyond.
By Donna Nichols, vice president of media at CloudSense.
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