Comprehending C-Level EIM Concerns -- June 6, 2006
Regardless of corporate or media press coverage, the real challenge facing the wide-spread adoption of enterprise instant messaging (EIM) is its impact to profitability, customer satisfaction, and revenue growth. Whereas the discussion of EIM traditionally centers on the securing and improving communications or for network traffic and virus control, executives who are dealing with global competition and increasingly ubiquitous products are demanding new channels of access and information for their customers, trading partners, and enterprise applications.
The genesis that spawned the industry growth around instant messaging is now maturing beyond the IT department, early adopters, process compartmentalization, and intra-company upgrading. However, the tactics and business validation of a more widespread deployment using solid measurements and monitoring techniques are at best embryonic. As vendors and network providers point to nearly 500 million “installed” clients, the challenge remains on how use these historical “advertisement and entertainment” channels for both conventional and unconventional business growth and competitiveness. What are our key performance indicators for success? What should we be measuring within our industry?
Superficially, senior decision makers want definitive answers to a handful of the basic business analytics:
- If we adopt the EIM solution, what will it produce in terms of revenue growth or cost mitigation / avoidance?
- Does it meet the standards set to control technology investments with obvious ROI, IRR, payback, and maintenance improvements?
- How will the “bots” or application extensions be introduced or created? Do we possess the skills to create the solutions ourselves or are we relegating the tasks of delivery and integration to ISV’s or consultants?
- How can we secure the information from the general data and voice traffic internal and external to our enterprise?
However within today’s financial services (FSI) and healthcare (HC) environments, the questions become far more pointed and the answers prone to diverse rationalizations:
What additional risk does the adoption of EIM create regarding brand, business continuance, or regulatory and compliance obligations?
- If the EIM technology solution is adopted, will it provide a greater ability to defer or avoid purchases of ancillary investments in standard contact center or VoIP solutions like IVR’s, integrated voice solutions, and additional security measures?
- Can the information be “mined” to understand or predict customer purchases or buying habits, combined with larger enterprise solutions (via extensions) or databases, or even pooled with 3rd party data sources?
- Does this help provide superior customer lock-in, reduce R&D, and provide a clear path of choice as compared to our existing channels and offerings?
- In a litigious environment brought on by the inadvertent disclosure of personal and private information (e.g., by theft, via third party, or even by auditors), are we creating additional liabilities that must be approved by the Chief Compliance or Risk Officer?
- What case studies and indicators should we be examining to manage the on-going costs and performance of the EIM solution and how do these integrate or interfere with the corporate dashboards we already have in place for decision making?
The above questions are representative as there are many more that will be unique to your industry, niche, and management culture.
For EIM to become a mainstream channel for B-to-C or B-to-B as part of a comprehensive go-to-market strategy, we need to move beyond the offerings and dialogue of our network and solutions providers. Lessons learned and post-implementation due diligence (i.e., objective case studies) will provide a starting point for corporate understanding and adoption. However, these data points will be rapidly changing and subject to continual interpretation due to the life-cycle stage that EIM currently finds itself.
As we create and validate real-world indicators and measurement processes, FSI and HC executives will adopt EIM as part of their future solutions. Yet it is only with the definition of these metrics and their predictability for business profits will EIM cease to be “something my teenager uses” to “something my organization uses to actively service our customers, extend our enterprise, and improve bottom-line profitability.”
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