Skip to main content

Digital Business

Digital Business insights: A little row of shops

THERE IS a small row of shops on the way to the nearby shopping centre in an awkward position by the side of the main road. There is limited parking and it is hard for cars to stop easily, unless they already know what's there.

Image
John Sheridan,Digital Business insights CEO.

 

I have watched over the years as new tenants have tried their luck with the location.

Most have failed. 

The remainder have established themselves with customers who visit regardless of the awkward position.

There is an air conditioning and solar retailer that has now relocated to Darra, so this shop is empty.

A small travel centre is right next door with three desks to pick up passing trade. It surprises me that it is still there, but it is.

Then a fish and chip shop, that has changed hands a few times.

Each new owner brings a different approach to quality, content, and charm or otherwise.

Next, a hair and beauty supply wholesaler.

And next door to that, is a formal dress hire shop. It has been there a long time.

Then a teaching centre for Maths and English.

A football shop with collectibles for football enthusiasts.

Another formal wear hire shop. Two in the same row.

An Asian grocery store. And a computer repair shop, "break fix and box drop" as they are known in the industry. The owner looks after the problems of the local residents and small businesses in the area and probably picks up a bit of passing trade.

What do they all have in common? They all specialise in something. They have been there long enough that occasional customers expect to find them when they next visit. And they do.

None of them are going to be the next Woolworths or Myers.

One or two are part of a chain, and most are making enough money to pay the mortgage. Maybe more.

Do any of them have a website?

They all have a website except the Asian grocer. 9 out of 10.

Will they survive the digital revolution? Probably.

They don't have the same overheads as the larger retailers. They are not in a prime position. They don't have the same competitors from anywhere as the mid range commodity retailers.

There is a lot of passing traffic, though little in the row of shops to attract attention, beyond the sign above the door.

But specialisation has given them a niche to hide in. And the pickings are relatively thin and don't justify full on competition.

There are little rows of shops across the nation. They all face different challenges depending on what they sell, where they are, and the volume of local traffic.

But between the big guys - Woolworths and Coles, and the little rows of shops lies the real danger zone.

Territory that is hard to defend successfully. Where the business model has to be reviewed and reviewed again.

Territory where value can be leveraged by anybody, anywhere getting the business model exactly right - whether pure digital and/or bricks and mortar.

And territory where the effort of trying and succeeding might just deliver enormous return on investment. So you can bet that somebody is trying right now.

Welcome to the danger zone.

 - John Sheridan, September, 2013.

John Sheridan is CEO of Digital Business insights, an organisation based in Brisbane, Australia, which focuses on helping organisations and communities adapt to, and flourish in, the new digital world. He is the author of Connecting the Dots and getting more out of the digital revolution. Digital Business insights has been researching and analysing the digital revolution for more than 12 years and has surveyed more than 50,000 businesses, conducting in-depth case study analysis on more than 350 organisations and digital entrepreneurs.

www.db-insights.com

ends

Lord Mayor Graham Quirk explains Digital Brisbane at CIO Forum

BRISBANE Lord Mayor Graham Quirk will explain Brisbane City's energetic approach to the new digital economy at a gathering of chief information officers and digital business leaders at the Brisbane CIO Forum on October 1.

Image
Brisbane Lord Mayor Graham Quirk will speak on 'Digital Brisbane' at the CIO Forum on October 1.

 

This week Brisbane launched the transofrmative website, www.digitalbrisbane.com.au which features a digital business directory, case studies and links for businesses seeking help in adapting their businesses to take advantage of the opportunities 'digital' provides.

Following his appointment as Lord Mayor in May 2011, Cr Quirk has been driving a strong agenda of innovation and economic growth, with a focus on maximising Brisbane opportunities in the digital economy.

Key initiatives by Brisbane have also included the appointment of a Chief Digital Officer -- the second int he world after New York City - and the launch of Digital Brisbane, a five-year plan to kick start Brisbane's digital economy.

Brisbane's Digital Audit found that, irrespective of industry sector and business size, there is a need for Brisbane businesses to transform and lift their digital business capability if they want to compete in the digital economy.

The CIO Forum is regarded as a must-attend event for all senior IT leaders in Brisbane and attendees will be able to hear first-hand the Lord Mayor's thoughts and vision for Brisbane, and how he plans to seed innovation, incubate ideas and see the city become the technical hub for South East Asia.

Created by co-founder of Recon Solutions Steve Scanlan, the CIO Forum has been operating for more than five years, and brings together senior ICT managers from all industries.

Operating in both Brisbane and Sydney, the forums provide valuable insights and networking opportunities for members.  The events  are an opportunity for ICT leaders to meet their peers in a relaxed atmosphere, share experiences, and get to know and understand what others are doing across industry sectors. 

Mr Scanlan said Recon Solutions was formed to address a growing need in the market - "the provision of an end-to-end business solutions, focussing on providing the right resource solutions and the delivery of quality business outcomes". 

Recon Solutions runs both a recruitment practice and a business consulting practice, both of which are receiving positive reviews based on their ability to provide value-add solutions to its customers.

The Brisbane CIO Forum opens at 7am for a 7.30am start on Tuesday, October 1, at the Hilton Brisbane Queen's Ballroom. The event will finish at 9am.

E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

www.reconsolutions.com.au

ends

Digital Business insights: No future for commercial property

I RARELY read the Primespace section in The Australian, but I have been of late.  What captured my attention and intrigued me is the ongoing commentary about the bad or “soft” state of the commercial property market.

Image
John Sheridan, Digital Business insights CEO.

Week after week, office vacancy rates are published for the major cities – Melbourne 10% empty, Brisbane 14% empty, Sydney 10%, Perth 8% and so on.

The general view is that things are unlikely to improve soon.

It seems that the weak Australian dollar, the GFC, rising bond rates and the rising vacancy rates themselves are all leading to flat and falling rental income and resulting in a “challenging outlook” in the short to medium term.

Each week I now search in vain for some reference to the impact on commercial property of the digital revolution.

There is no mention.

In article after article, and interview after interview with industry experts not one of them raises the issue at all. Maybe they are frightened of lifting it onto the radar.

I would have thought it was obvious.

The digital revolution is having an enormous impact on commercial property and its prospects for recovery.

A “challenging outlook” is much too kind a description for a situation that is far worse than that.

In all the articles I have read over the past month or so I have never seen Teleworking mentioned – not once.

The Federal Government has been promoting Teleworking over the last year and there will be another Telework Week this November.

But that isn’t the point.

Businesses and organisations are teleworking already. Forget the Telework Week. It is happening right now.

In all of our recent surveys roughly half of organisations have one or more members of staff that work from home for some part of the week. Some for all of the week.

That's 58% of professional services, 67% of public administration, 72% of rental, hiring and real estate, 51% of wholesale, 50% of Information media and so on.

Which means less demand for office space.

And as more and more organisations become comfortable with teleworking, what possible evidence is there that vacancy rates are going to drop some time in the future?

They won’t. Vacancy rates will soar and the situation will get much worse. And businesses will become increasingly selective as a result.

Fast broadband. WiFi. Comfortable meeting spaces, variable sizes and lots of them.

Every organisation we speak with is reducing their demand for office space and in some cases getting rid of it completely.

And what businesses and other organisations will want from a commercial office in the future is very different to today.

It’s the same thing with retail space.

I’ll keep looking at Primespace every week, and hope to see an article about teleworking soon.

 - John Sheridan, August, 2013.

John Sheridan is CEO of Digital Business insights, an organisation based in Brisbane, Australia, which focuses on helping organisations and communities adapt to, and flourish in, the new digital world. He is the author of Connecting the Dots and getting more out of the digital revolution. Digital Business insights has been researching and analysing the digital revolution for more than 12 years and has surveyed more than 50,000 businesses, conducting in-depth case study analysis on more than 350 organisations and digital entrepreneurs.

www.db-insights.com

ends

Digital Business insights: New media

NEARLY 200 years ago in Europe, the sale of news and the sale of advertising were first combined together in the form of the newspaper.

Image
John Sheridan, Digital Business insights CEO

The sale of news was a vehicle and platform for the sale of advertising, which is what made the newspaper proprietors their money.

The ability to aggregate a large audience is what made newspapers and magazines valuable to advertisers. The same applied to the newer 20th century media of television and radio.

All these media were able to offer and provide a large audience, with broad and sometimes particular characteristics - young women, business people, computer owners, football enthusiasts, dog lovers and so on.

With the advent of the internet, these familiar and comfortable media options began to be challenged by multitudes of new websites offering information packaged in many different ways.

Because the cost of creating and managing a website was much less than the cost of publishing in other media, there was a proliferation of experiments and new offerings into the online marketplace, some successful and many unsuccessful, but nobody really cared.

It was possible to publish and see, 'launch and learn' and some new ventures were incredibly successful which prompted others to try their luck as well.

The technology also became cheaper, easier to use, faster to deploy and more powerful.

What used to cost millions or hundreds of thousands of dollars, and take months to deliver now cost thousands or hundreds and could be deployed in weeks or even days.

The risk and cost of entry was no longer a barrier. Advertising sites no longer needed any direct connection to news and publishing. They could focus on a single product or service, or even offer all products and services, and could do this in a variety of different ways.

Today, advertising messages can be delivered across a huge range of offline and online channels. But as a result the audience is much harder to target and reach effectively.

With the almost universal use of Google (or Baidu in China) to find information, the dominance of push (advertising) has shifted to the dominance of pull (search), and the power has shifted with it, from the vendor to the customer.

So for traditional media companies, incorporating new media alongside their traditional model doesn't address the issue of the new customer. Expectations have changed.

Buying successful online advertising sites would seem like the ideal solution - Seek, Carsales, REA, Domain, but it is only a short-term fix.

All these sites will be undermined or disintermediated in due course. They are a vendor's solution to a problem not a customer's and only postpone for a while an inevitable change.

Which has already begun.

There is a natural evolution under way from information to knowledge, and from push to pull.

These two currents of change are fundamental and remorseless. They are concurrent and explain much of the disruption experienced across all sectors as well as revealing new opportunities for those with eyes wide open.

The real strength of newspapers and media in general is journalism, insight and enquiry, but not as we have known it.

Journalism has to be refocused onto the new customer need (remember the move to pull from push). This requires a total shift in point of view. Not an easy thing to do.

And online sites have to be refocused on customer solutions not vendor solutions and on the new technology enabled ecosystems that are being created around shared value.

There is no room in this post to spell out exactly what this means for every sector of society. But get any part of the equation wrong and it "won't fly". It might get off the ground but not sustainably.

iTunes provides a clue to what I mean.

iTunes took the control of published content from the hands of the traditional 'editors' and 'publishers' and put it into the customer's hands.

The customer selected their album of songs and performances, their compilation, their collection. And were willing to pay.

The news media need to understand what this means for them.

People want knowledge and insights, as well as entertainment. And are willing to pay.

But to give customers what they want and actually need to be successful in the 21st century requires real vision and culture change in media organisations and it's not going to happen easily if at all.

In Australia, News and Fairfax are the result of decades of evolution. It has been hard enough for them to take a small step in this new digital revolution and add websites into their business models. But now a much, much bigger step needs to be made.

To get safely above the ongoing digital disruptive flood demands creating a customer driven platform that can deliver 'knowledge' on all subjects across any channel, medium or device.

That puts journalists back in the box seat and the 'right' content is king.

Putting current 'news content' behind paywalls is a misguided response and won't work.

It is not about whether content is free or not. It is about whether content is valuable to customers.

Propaganda isn't valuable and every time Mr Murdoch demands that his journalists beat up on the government or climate change or whatever, he fails to understand what has changed forever.

Power has shifted to the customer and has to be respected and incorporated in a shared value model or fail.

Professor Porter at Harvard has seen the writing on the wall. Shared value is the new paradigm.

Ignore shared value and the new customer will just use Google as always and find newer, and other, sources for real and useful news and information.

People will pay for content online - see iTunes example above.

But they will only sustainably pay for really useful information, insights and knowledge supported by software tools that make it easily accessible and understandable = knowledge.

It is not about the device, the channel or the platform. It is about what is delivered. It is not about the menu it is about the meal.

It is not about the editor's or the proprietor's view of news, it is about the customer's. That is a tough one for existing owners and managers to comprehend.

That means a new business model for most existing media empires and they are not up to the change or the challenge. Not at the moment.

Maybe the ABC is, but that is another story.

- John Sheridan, August 2013.

John Sheridan is CEO of Digital Business insights, an organisation based in Brisbane, Australia, which focuses on helping organisations and communities adapt to, and flourish in, the new digital world. He is the author of Connecting the Dots and getting more out of the digital revolution. Digital Business insights has been researching and analysing the digital revolution for more than 12 years and has surveyed more than 50,000 businesses, conducting in-depth case study analysis on more than 350 organisations and digital entrepreneurs.

www.db-insights.com

ends

Digital Business insights: Let's not waste creativity

I DID A PRESENTATION  last week on the Digital Economy in Melbourne at an Innovation Series luncheon and mentioned the following research.

Image
John Sheridan, Digital Business insights CEO.

 

Recent Adobe research found that only 8 percent of people paid attention to online ads. No surprises there. Print ads in newspapers scored 26 percent. TV ads scored 22 percent. Radio 16 percent and billboards 14 percent. Ads in apps and games scored only 5 percent.

Remarkable percentages. But confirmation of other research finding the same thing. And reassurance for everybody else out there who suspected it.

What it means is that we are all getting very good at selective attention. Or inattention.

We are busy.

Is this distraction in my peripheral vision relevant?

Did I go looking for it? No. Ignore.

Looking for something? Google it.

Well what do you know? Here is a wide choice of possible answers to my search. Not all relevant, but most are close enough.

It’s that simple.

On the one hand instant relevant answers to questions and on the other hand people pushing stuff at me when that is not why I am there. 

Just like the Seventh Day Adventists or Jehovah’s Witnesses knocking on my door, when I want to work or rest at the weekend. And if they actually had a relevant message for me I might even be interested. But they don’t.

Timing and relevance.

Online ads fail to deliver. Only 8 percent of people pay attention, and then an awfully small percentage actually do anything about it.

And Facebook hasn’t got a hope in hell of building an advertising audience. They are already well on the way to making their regular visitors feel increasingly hassled.

What used to feel safe, comfortable and familiar now feels intimidating, pushy and busy. It’s not going to work.

Vendors need to think about this. Print, TV, Radio and billboards are a much better investment.

Online just needs to be used in another way. It’s not rocket science.

I was asked after my presentation whether I thought advertising agencies had a role to play in the digital revolution, given the research above and a number of other disruptive issues I covered in the presentation.

I think they do. Not it the way they currently operate. But in a more expansive and far more valuable way.

Advertising agencies, architects, designers are all creative thinkers and solvers of problems. They work to a brief.

They are highly capable translators of strategic problems into creative solutions. They are good at it. Always have been. A lot of concentrated brainpower goes into selling soap and cars, designing buildings and new products.

Whether that is the best use of that brainpower for society is debatable, but that is where the money is, and it attracts smart thinkers.

This ability to define a problem as a creative strategy, pass it to a creative, production and media team and then measure the resulting solution against the strategy is what makes advertising and other creative agencies useful. They do this again and again to order and the solutions are generally worth paying for.

They are wasted trying to prove they can compete fully in this new software development and online digital environment.

They are much more valuable than that. They can think creatively.

Wouldn’t it be good if governments at all levels paid them to look at a wider range of issues and problems beyond purely communication and selling?

What about bringing them into economic development teams to add new insights and ideas that expand and explore the potential and possibilities of our existing resources, strategic aims and objectives in regional economic plans?

Most regional 2020 or 2030 economic development plans are all the same (bar the name on the front page) and lack any real creative vision. And we all suffer as a result.

They need creative input.

What about bringing creative teams into government departments to add new insights and ideas to policy? Couldn’t be more important.

What about bringing them into tourism development, not just at the selling and promotion stage, but at the product development stage?

What about bringing them into remote, regional and rural development planning?

What about focusing them of health not illness? And what about some fresh, new ideas to address our never-ending intransigent indigenous welfare problem that seems too hard for everybody else?

What about connecting them directly with manufacturers and agriculture and other productive industries much earlier than at the marketing and sales stage?

Product development. I know this happens already, but it can be more creative, comprehensive, customer focused and visionary than it is today.

We need the input of our skilled, innovative and creative designers, architects and advertising agencies to be aligned in a deliberate manner. And we need to allocate a percentage of all economic development funds to pay for it.

That is what a Future Fund should be about. Not superannuation, but investing in our future.

Economists, policy officers and developers are good at analytics, but the translation of that analysis into informed action requires creativity and ideas, and that skill set sits somewhere else entirely.

Our national creative resources have to be actively matched to our productive resources and capabilities if we are going to establish, maintain and build a value added future now mining is in decline.

Time to get on with it.

 - John Sheridan, August, 2013.

* John Sheridan is CEO of Digital Business insights, an organisation based in Brisbane, Australia, which focuses on helping organisations and communities adapt to, and flourish in, the new digital world. He is the author of Connecting the Dots and getting more out of the digital revolution. Digital Business insights has been researching and analysing the digital revolution for more than 12 years and has surveyed more than 50,000 businesses, conducting in-depth case study analysis on more than 350 organisations and digital entrepreneurs.

www.db-insights.com

ends

Digital Business insights: Meeting spaces

WE have never been more connected. Electronically. Virtually. Online.

Image
John Sheridan is the CEO of Digital Business insights.

 

In many ways now, we need to recognise what that means and adjust our offline connections, crossroads and meeting places to reflect that need.

The natural meeting places where we congregate outside of work, schools, universities, and home are shopping centres, libraries, sports stadiums, parks and entertainment or leisure facilities.

In the new digital economy, connection, collaboration and integration are the currents carrying us towards our destination.

So now we need to add this new capacity onto our built environment and extend the physical to match the virtual. It won't be cheap, but it needs to enter into the consideration of planners and architects more than it has today.

We need more real world collaboration spaces to match the virtual. And we need to integrate our living, working and activity silos together in the same way we integrate our virtual activities and processes together.

Where are the existing collaboration hubs?

University precincts, schools, hospitals, child-care and aged care facilities. Libraries, fitness centres and shopping centres. Transport hubs.

These environments are evolving already. Most shopping malls have offices attached, but this is still old world thinking.

Universities provide precincts for students and sometimes even related startup industries, but still old world thinking.

Incubators and enterprise centres also try to aggregate startups but still old world thinking.

Digital Work Hubs provide office facilities, meeting rooms, cafes and kitchens but still old world thinking.

City centre new commercial office developments are now providing a range of comfortable meeting space, cafes and board rooms to support the offices but it is still old world thinking.

It has to go one step further.

Add all the above into a number of carefully selected strategic suburban offline and online environments and connect to surrounding homes and the SoHo's.

Connect it all together with booking and payment systems, transport and delivery, virtual classrooms, meeting rooms, and collaboration environments, and you begin to get the idea.

It's happening online. Now it has to happen offline.

It's about adding extra and relevant "stickiness" to customer relationships for councils, commercial developers, retailers and small businesses of all kinds.

If your online customer relationships have just been stolen by competitors, or you have been disintermediated, then you need to consider your future.

You can review what you do or retire of course, but unless you are one of the lucky few, you can't continue business as usual.

Telstra retains customers through bundling a group of products and services together to add value to customers. The bundled offer can then be discounted if competition on any of the services arises to make the bundle even more "sticky".

Customers who are thinking about moving, find it all too hard and remain...at least for the time being.

Shopping centres have been steadily extending their offering to include entertainment, gyms, child-care and food courts and are now adding work-spaces into the overall environment.

This has the added value of not only delivering a greater number of regular customers for the centre management but also brings them into direct relationship with shops and traders who are being impacted by online sales.

It's time for councils, state government and developers to think collectively and more broadly about the issue, focused on the shared value outcome of building new knowledge centres based on suburban shopping centres, libraries, art galleries, lecture theatres, play centres, medical centres, gyms and meeting spaces.

And linking these new knowledge centres electronically to surrounding SoHo's and households intelligently.

The hard infrastructure needs to be supported by soft infrastructure - wired and wireless broadband, collaboration software, booking and payment software and IT support services.

The business intelligence "logic" of what collaboration can offer needs to be overlaid as well, so that the right connections, groupings, meetings and collaborations can happen actively as well as accidentally.

All supported by local business media - offline and online.

In the 21st century, we have to move beyond serendipity and accident, and incorporate the potential power of cross-pollination into our planning.

Digital gardening.

We can replicate and layer the online opportunities with real world opportunities, providing a rich layer cake of digital world and real world opportunity - the best of both worlds.

Providing the new meeting places for the 21st century.

 

- John Sheridan, July 2013

* John Sheridan is CEO of Digital Business insights, an organisation based in Brisbane, Australia, which focuses on helping organisations and communities adapt to, and flourish in, the new digital world. He is the author of Connecting the Dots and getting more out of the digital revolution. Digital Business insights has been researching and analysing the digital revolution for more than 12 years and has surveyed more than 50,000 businesses, conducting in-depth case study analysis on more than 350 organisations and digital entrepreneurs.

www.db-insights.com

ends

 

More Articles …