Spotlight: Ralph Norris

I read a lot.. blogs, magazines, newspapers, books, anything that stimulates the mind. About a month ago I was reading AFR Magazine and noticed a profile, “20 Questions with Ralph Norris”. For those of you that have never heard the name before, Ralph Norris is the current CEO of the Commonwealth Bank. Now a lot of these interviews I find rather boring. Don’t get me wrong, these are very smart people but they aren’t always the most captivating when it comes to the press, usually taking a “what’s the right answer for the shareholder” type approach. Ralph was different..

Here’s a quote that intrigued me..

“Business is all about people. Air New Zealand (where Ralph was previously CEO) was a company that thought its business was about flying planes, but its business is about flying people. I saw customer complaints fall 63%.”

Now I know you’re sitting there thinking, “yeh didn’t he get sucked in” but to me it’s enlightening to know. This CEO, whilst recognising his commitment to shareholders, actually places the emphasis on the consumer, the people who he is doing business with. It’s such a small thing to do, to look at the people using your product/service and say “how can we serve you better? what is it you need?”. A lot of the big guys have lost touch with this, Microsoft is a good example.

Ralph Norris: “.. I like to take a considered approach to things – respond rather than react.”

It got me thinking, “respond rather than react”. Those words touched something within me. Too often our emotions hijack us and we react to situations rather than responding. How many times do you see it in blog comments? One person gets attacked and before thinking about it, reacts with a stern reply of their own. Often compounding the argument and making it worse. I wonder what things would be like if people took a few moments to think, maybe walked away and cleared their head and then responded. Would response vs react make this a better world?

In my mind, if it was a sale speech or not, he’s got my attention. His impressive track record speaks for itself but it’ll take one hell of a man to fix customer relations issues with one of Australia’s Top 4 Banks. Good luck Ralph, I’ll be keeping a close eye on how you’re doing!

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The OnDemand Business Model.

I recently attended a SaleForce.com event where they introduced the AppExchange intiative to the Australian market. Knowing a lot about the business beforehand I had some expectations of what to expect however, I was really impressed by the reaction of the rest of the audience, many of whom weren’t SalesForce customers (btw I’m not) or Techies. I’d say over 90% of the attendees were Sales Professionals, looking at a new product that could streamline their business process and increase their bottom line.

Being active in the Web 2.0 world the term “OnDemand” is common. But how common is it in the rest of the business world? I often look at products like BaseCamp and say “Okay, it’s great for me but how would it work in the Enterprise market?” With the biggest consideration for me being data access and vulnerability. How comfortable is the Enterprise going to be with placing all of that crucial business data online?

To answer that question they had a customer in the audience, AAPT, one of Australia’s largest Telecommunications companies. The quest was to get (now don’t quote me on this) 400 sales employees up and running on a CRM package in less than 4 weeks. This includes everything from install to training, the whole package. With quotes from a number of vendors, reaching as high as $15MIL (AUD), they finally decided on SalesForce OnDemand. Not only did the product meet their specific needs, it was affordable and being a month by month contract AAPT felt comfortable that if they didn’t like the service they could always pull out and go to another vendor.

It’s great to see these Enterprises utilising this sort of technology and only reinforces just how strong the OnDemand business model is. I was amazed to see the number of Australian Enterprises (usually slow of the Tech pickup) utilising this type of software. From the AAPT example it was clear to see they were after three things; Latest Technology, Quick Takeup & a Flexible Contract.

In my opinion SalesForce is a great product and with the addition of the AppExchange it’s even better. They’re working hard at pleasing their consumers and providing a business model that serves Enterprises great technology. The key here is that it’s being adopted by Enterprises.. who are ever increasingly seeing the benefits in using Technology to further their businesses and increase their bottom line.

[P.S. Just to clarify, I’m not a SalesForce customer.]

Business: Two Types

I had an interesting chat with Bill, a friend of mine, yesterday about successful businesses and what led them to being successful in the first place. The root of the conversation came from Bill’s question, “How the hell can a business move into an already packed market place and make money? That’s just stupid!” Something to which I strongly disagreed. Here’s my thoughts.

There are essentially two types of markets a business can start up in. Those that don’t already exist and those that do. Now entrepreneurs have been successful in both and why is that? They take a concept/idea, turn it into reality and consumers widely adopt it. It’s the concept/idea and the delivery mechanism that count.

Let’s for a moment look at Richard Branson (Virgin). He saw a niche need in the Music industry to provide the consumer with cheap records, thus spawning Virgin Records. The industry itself already existed. He just had the insight and direction to make it a better experience for the consumer. Branson has gone on to do this in an abundance of industries, Finance, Travel, Telecommunications etc. and made money because he’s targeting the consumer need directly. He’s motivation being “if you believe you can do it better than do it”.

In the online space entrepreneurs are venturing into new frontiers, creating opportunities and industries that didn’t already exist, take “online social networking” for one, or “blogging” as another. By creating something new, the business is open to mass consumer adoption and it’s this first-to-market position that makes them so successful.

Overall it’s about realising the consumer need and developing something that’ll help fill it. In the end if that person see’s value in your product/service they’ll adopt it and no doubt through word of mouth will create a marketing campaign a lot stronger than any paid advertising could create.