Push/Pull — My Mailbox is Full

We’ve been talking about the Push—Pull dilemma for some time (see: Push vs. Pull) so I was struck by the recent Techcrunch article on Push notification.

In the article, Steve Gillmor compares and contrasts how different communication technologies are used to educate, inform and elicit action. And he believes push notification technologies are a nascent trend that will have significant impact on corporate employees – sometime in the future.

The reasons are obvious: our mailboxes are overflowing – I get in excess of 400 emails a day, and it is very difficult to easily find the nuggets. Social media is a constant deluge of information – much of which is pure noise. Then there is all the general purpose and industry reading we must all do to stay current, much of which we “share” with others.

Why not a corporate “reader” that is a publishing/reading platform to inform employees and co-workers? Audience segmented, categorized, prioritized and with notification streams for critical alerts?

This becomes what Gillmor describes as the real “Big Data” and delivers real Big Value.

Create AND Curate

(This post is a follow-on to: “Now What?” and “What are we Waiting For?”  in which I explore ways to measurably increase employee productivity through the use of iPads and/or iPhones).

The iPad began life as a very effective media player or media consumption and presentation device. It is quite effective at playing music, interactive presentations, videos and retrieving email. This has led to its widespread adoption in mobile workforce communities (think sales forces) and has caused an explosion of creative development in the application and platform spaces – Prolifiq is one of these platform providers.

However, one of the questions we are often asked by customers looking at our platform for the first time is: “How are we ever going to be able to produce enough content to make this worthwhile?”

The simple answer is: Create and Curate.

Knowledge workers need to be knowledgeable – knowledgeable about their own company and products, their competition and their industries in general. Corporations spend a ton of money creating content for consumption by their own employees. The problem is they either: 1) publish it to a “portal” site hidden behind a VPN (virtual private network) connection that is cumbersome and unwieldy for remote employees, or 2) they “blast” it out to their employees via email, further burdening an already crowded communication channel. And, once delivered via email, it is really, really difficult to control what happens to this content (as evidenced by how many “confidential” internal memos end up in the hands of the press).

If one steps back and examines their organization, one realizes there is more than ample content to publish to mobile devices, and this content can be aggregated, syndicated, and controlled using appropriate standard operating procedures (SOPs), including approving who gets to see what. BusinessWeek has a great perspective on this.

Additionally, employees have the need to know what is going on around them. One way they do this is by surfing the web. Is it any wonder these activities have made Google larger than the entire US newspaper industry?

I repeat my question from my last entry: “What are we waiting for?” These converging trends represent a unique opportunity to repurpose created content, curate publicly available content, and then filter, manage and publish this content to appropriate employees. And, most importantly, know what content is being consumed by whom, when and what they are doing with it.

This can turn unproductive wait time into “knowledge-time” and you will likely never hear “nobody ever told me that.” And, that is a good, good thing.

Turned Off

Just before Christmas, I read where VW was turning off email after hours for its employees. Then today, I read how this may be a trend that is catching on.

This is an interesting phenomena that speaks as much to individuals’ commitment to work – and “situational awareness” as it does to the state of enterprise communications.

First, let’s look at individual communication habits. How many of us begin our day as Seth Godin discusses in his blog by checking our incoming mail? This can accomplish many things including: filling us in on what happened since we last checked, providing breaking news about performance, or alerting us to some critical timing event. It also conditions us to be in “response” mode as opposed to initiation mode.

Now let’s look at enterprise communications. In the mid 90s, “portals” were all the rage to communicate with employees – a PULL methodology. Let’s put up a website, segment our content and our people will come find the information. When we realized this wasn’t working, we started shifting time-sensitive communications to email; this way we could broadcast – a PUSH methodology – to our employees. Really, really important communications will be marked urgent. That will get their attention.

Killing email is the resultant backlash. This is a clear indication we are PUSHING too much information at our people and they have resorted to other means of communication (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Jive, Connections, etc.) to avoid the deluge. But, at the end of the day the technology is only as good as: 1) responsible use policies, 2) personal communications discipline, and 3) effective content.

Every new technology views itself as “THE disruptor” and will render all previous technologies obsolete. What is required is for us to: 1) think of what information we need to PROVIDE to our people, 2)  determine the best medium to use, 3) establish protocols, 4) develop the appropriate content for the medium and the message, and 4) measure effectiveness.

This discipline will result in employees who possess the knowledge to proactively reach their goals using all of the knowledge at their disposal.

Home Again

I am back in Portland after nearly two full weeks on the road in 6 cities visiting with customers, prospects, partners, potential partners, and pulling booth duty at Digital Pharma East. Despite how physically tiring a schedule like this is, I derive enormous energy from meeting and learning from all I encounter. Here are some highlights and observations:

1)      iPhoria is wearing off – 6 months ago, all you would hear is iPad, iPad, iPad; “I have to build an app.” Now the most common theme is: how does tablet/slate computing fit in the enterprise and how do we integrate with our systems, processes and workflows?

2)      Social media – there is a whole lot of talking about how social media COULD affect pharma; not so much about how social media IS affecting pharma. This is still mostly a hopeful and theoretical topic.

3)      Customer at the Center – several companies shared strategic and tactical viewpoints of how digital affects their customer at the center strategies. Great learnings from all. A senior BMS exec said it best by quoting their CEO, saying: “As we innovate in the laboratories, so must we innovate in the business.” He spent a fair amount of time talking about building enterprise-wide information architecture and leveraging it through all channels of marketing and selling.

4)      Sales reps will not be displaced by digital – while companies are striving for efficiencies in the selling and marketing, it is clear pharma is looking for ways to enhance how reps work and to define what their future will be (Rep of the Future).

5)      Change is the only constant – government regulations and regulators evolve (DDMAC changed their name), M&A and D continue (Abbott Labs decided to split in two), dangers lurk (Abbott sets aside $1.3 B for settlement; RIM/BlackBerry has major network outage), and technology continues to roll (iPhone 4S released; RIM unveils its new OS).

On Monday we unveiled our new offering for the iPad. The team nailed it. That’s not me talking; that’s the woman who came to our booth having read our ad and proceeded to describe our product to perfection.

I am headed back out again soon; I wonder what I will learn from you when we next meet.

Won’t Get Fooled Again

Over the last couple months I have attended four Life Sciences shows, and the majority of the content has consisted of iPad, iPad, iPad… Apple is the beneficiary of some incredible PR. My hat is off to them.

However, in a previous post I posited that “passing out iPads is NOT a mobile strategy.” This sentiment is borne out in a recent Manhattan Research study. Manhattan Research concludes: “…only 36 percent of 1,755 physicians surveyed who talk to reps with iPads or other tablets find the experience to be more beneficial than speaking with reps who use print materials or devices, such as laptops…”

Manhattan Research VP Monica Levy states, “Unfortunately, some of the detailing programs that are being rushed out the door are sub-par – really no better than something you’d see on tablet PCs six years ago. Doctors won’t waste their time with these.”

This situation reminds me of the early days of the internet (1994-1995) and websites 1.0. Remember? This is when we all thought we HAD to have a website. So, we took our print collateral, made it digital and turned up an electronic brochure – website 1.0. These first attempts did not fully leverage what the internet could do. So, the question is, “if we keep doing the same things, why do we expect different results?”

The iPad, and the promise of tablet (or slate) computing, is truly a game changer – if and only if – we truly leverage the capabilities it brings, how it can change the nature of work for reps, and how they interact with their customers. This new form factor will potentially transform the rep into the ROTF (rep of the future).

This transformation requires we look forward and deploy the applications that support how the ROTF works. Otherwise, we will be singing The Who’s famous refrain:

Meet the new boss.
Same as the old boss.