Jana's Blog on Lifetime Inspiration

7 Digital Trends of 2014, How To Exploit Them

noreply@blogger.com (Jana Budikova) — Wed, 18 Jun 2014 09:09:00 +0000

The year 2014, similarly to 2013, will be a year that will give us a hint about how our digital future will look like, however new technology will still not bring dramatic changes to our lives, it will just make our living easier. The main changes will continue to happen in the areas of: mobile, social media, content & video, clever digital devices, smart shopping, big data, and cloud.

“There is no escaping a digital future. Right now we are at a crossroads. …The Earth will become one digital room with everyone in it. For the first time in history, physical reality will not be the only reality,“ says Dan Abelow, an American digital development guru, a graduate of Harvard and the Wharton School, patented inventor, technology consultant and author, owner of Expandiverse. “How many in 1970 foresaw what 2010 looks like? The speed at which 2013 becomes 2033 will be far faster … Today´s digital seems cool. But it´s only just begun.” Dan Abelow expects huge increase in location based marketing, rapid proliferation of devices and the explosion of the Internet of Things. People will be more dependent on the technological breakthroughs; cognitive computing will be the next big trend.

Progress cannot be stopped. More and more CEOs are personally sponsoring the agenda of digitalization; more and more marketers are re-allocating budgets to digital activities. They respond to changes in the digital landscape, enabled by permanent connectivity, resulting in social media and new technology addiction. In the meantime, Facebook in the U.S. managed to attract more young consumers than traditional TV stations, whose viewership is declining, due to paid streaming. The value of digital advertising today in America exceeds the value of TV ads. Advertising on Google surpasses the summary of paid ads of all newspapers and magazines. No wonder that the value of new media Companies tops the traditional media firms.

As about three billion people on the Earth have on-line access today (while China´s user base is twice as big as the U.S. one), human society moved from information hungry into information overloaded. But digital disruption is not just about easy access to information; it is also about new experiences and fun. On average, users spend the daily minimum of one hour on their mobile phones, and one hour on their tablet (eMarketer.com, USA). The World is becoming multiscreen - one individual using multiple devices and screens (PC, smart phones, tablets, smart TV, wearables,…). As the sales of tablets crush PC sales, and smart phone sales boom, smart phones and tablets are becoming the center and integrating component of consumers´ multiplatform lives. Creating a buzz in the digital sphere will be the new art, companies will have to adjust to all the changes.

7 Most Distinctive Trends For 2014

1. MOBILE

Mobile is perceived as the most disruptive media and marketing trend. Mobile currently accounts for one fifth of Internet traffic and it is expected that it will surpass desktop in two years. Mobile rules in the U.S.: about one third of organic search today is happening over mobile (RKG); mobile video traffic is continuing to surge; the majority of e-mails opened is occurring on mobile devices; and social media and music are now also mostly mobile (Facebook 65%, Twitter 80%, Pandora 85%). Mobile also changes shopping habits. According to eMarketer.com 19% of internet sales will actualize over mobile in 2014 in the U.S. (in Europe even 24%) and the percentages will continue to grow quickly.

All these changes mean that Companies will have to adjust to them quickly, not only in communication with their customers. The route to success will lead via user friendly responsive designs, the reallocation of budget to mobile advertising, and setting up business models reflecting on users mobility – not only in the area of m-commerce, but also in the area of data availability for mobile employees.

2. SOCIAL MEDIA

The question will not be if the Company should be present in Social Media, but rather in what scale, with which targets and with what relevant content. If the years 2012 and 2013 were about focus on acquisition of large fan/followers numbers and driving their engagement, the year 2014 will become a year, when companies will capitalize on their learning from failures and experiments, they will effectively target brand ambassadors, passionate and influential brand advocates. They will increase the content attractiveness – also thanks to micro video formats. Marketer will continue to integrate their social media activities with their entire content strategy. Facebook, Twitter, and more and more significant Google +, Tumblr, Instagram a Pinterest will be the priority for brand communication in 2014. In B2B LinkedIn will continue to lead the game.

3. CONTENT + VIDEO

Content will remain the king, but it will be crucial to adapt it to multiple formats – video, micro video, blogs, white papers, studies, articles, webinars, e-books, live presentations, e-mail newsletters etc. – and also to multiple screens (PC vs. tablet vs. mobile). The primary focus for companies will remain in building the relationship with customers to build the image of an iconic brand, not the hard-sell. The shift from content towards context indicated also recent changes that Google made in search algorithm and when it removed keyword data from Google Analytics. The deeper geo-location focus of Google´s algorithm will be requiring localized link-building in companies target markets.

The creation of content that is easily consumed in the mobile environment will become a necessity – it will become natural to have responsible designs, more actionable and shorter blogs and location based content marketing enabled by GPS technology. Short videos and pictures will have bigger impact on young target group than plain texts. The creation of viral videos with the use of the micro video applications - Twitter Vine (6 sec), Instagram (15 sec), MixBit (16 sec), and Tumblr GIFs will increase the interest in sharing, as Coca-Cola, Oreo, and RedBull already learnt (micro video on Vine increased sharing 4x vs. classical viral video).

With the increased popularity of video format among consumers, it is expected that 9 in 10 brands in the US will increase their spending into video advertising, most probably at the expense of TV campaigns (Adap.tv and Digiday: State of the Video Industry). Video will also become fluid medium - Apple TV, Chromecast, You Tube – will enable syncing content across screens, so that consumers can return to the point when they stopped film watching, even if they change the viewing device. At the same time ads will be optimized for the screen size.

Enterprises will use their own resources and vehicles to connect to a person on their own terms, not relying on any outside source to create a meaningful brand relationship. Netflix (House of Cards), Red Bull (Media House) and Amazon (Alpha House) have already tried to break through all the noise on their own. They stopped the co-operation with agencies and rather established their own newsrooms and production studios.

4. INTERNET OF THINGS (IoT)

“Internet of Things” (IoT) and all of the devices associated with it will explode in 2014. It is expected that very soon smart watches (Pebble, Omate, Sony, Samsung Galaxy Gear, Nissan´s Nismo), smart glasses (Google Glass), medical devices, fitness wristbands (like Nike+ Fuelband or FitBit) and other smart products will become attractive to masses not only in the U.S., where according to Business Insider already 13% of people tried at least one wearable product. As wearable technology becomes ubiquitous in 2014, devices will change the way we interact with existing screens and they will also make our lives easier. The market of wearables will boom globally from 750 million USD in 2012 to estimated 5.8 billion USD in 2018, according to Transparency Market Research. The health and fitness market will continue to play a key role in bringing the wearable technology to consumers.

5. DIGITIZED RETAIL EXPERIENCE

Shopping experience will move to new heights. Brick-and-mortal shops will be offering not just products, but a lifestyle. Stores will look very different. Cash registers will enable mobile payments; shoppers will be attracted by digital displays. There will be greater expectation on services and personalization. Internet shopping will continue to grow double digit, while mobile commerce will record the biggest dynamics (global value of e-commerce reached nearly 1.3 trillion USD last year, according to eMarketer).

Shopping will no longer be linked to a physical store, consumers will be using their permanent connectivity to search the internet for information and compare competitive offers. The shopping trip will start earlier and end later than it used to. The consumer will always be in the consideration phase for purchasing something. Retailers will start to understand the consumer in greater detail, the path to purchase across all off-line and online touch points, and they will be able to segment that path to derive valuable insights to make better strategic and tactical investment decisions.

6. BIG DATA

For 2014, the International Data Group (IDG) predicts that the topic of “Big Data” will become a priority for a minimum of 70% of large companies, who will each invest, on average, 8 million USD, into this project. The focus will move from the agenda of collecting, storing and sorting big amounts of not-related data, into using the Big Data related applications, that will be smarter, context aware, location sensitive, predictive, visualized, simplified and actionable, thus enabling companies and their managers to improve the quality and the speed of their decision making, to improve the planning and the new product / service development process.

There will be more dependence on cloud services, as it will be more advantageous to store big amounts of structured data in the CLOUD.

7. CLOUD COMPUTING

The global market of cloud services will continue to grow rapidly; according to Gartner, it will reach 148.8 billion USD in 2014. Cloud will become the most important data manager. Cloud service providers that guarantee data security and offer the clever linking with the off-line world, will have the biggest competitive advantage. It is expected, that the biggest portion of the cloud market will be taken by Amazon, Apple, Microsoft and Google, that will explain to companies and individuals the benefits of cloud storage and that will provide their clients safe base.

VISION 2025

The upcoming DIGITAL era will produce significantly bigger amounts of intelligently assisted programs, smart advisers, smart devices, modern industrial systems, robots, etc. than we can foresee today. According to the Company Cisco, in the future, the Internet of Things will transform into the INTERNET OF EVERYTHING (IoE). The Internet will link people, processes and data together, and we will observe the boom of smart homes, smart offices, smart industries, and smart cars. It is expected that people will be connected by miniature chips that will enable wireless long-distance connectivity to the Internet.

According to CISCO, the potential economical value of the market of the Internet of Everything (IoE) accounts for ca 6.2 trillion of USD in 2025. Companies that adapt quickly to the upcoming massive changes in the Digital world will be the ones that can capitalize on them and survive the uncertain future. There is no possible way to escape the digital future.

This article was written for the magazine Business Woman (01-2014 issue)

VISION 2014+: Profit Growth Paths Exist, If You Stay Flexible

noreply@blogger.com (Jana Budikova) — Wed, 18 Dec 2013 17:34:00 +0000

Growth supporting management tools like costs´ optimization and effectiveness of processes are in the Czech Republic already fully exploited. Is it still sustainable to continue in cost cutting after five years of streamlining thanks to the economical crisis?, asks Jana Budikova, strategic management consultant and owner of JBC Consulting. She sees the competitive advantage for companies in the area of quality of products and services, as well as in their constant improvement and innovation.

Do you see new trends or issues Companies seek a consulting advice for?

The business environment is changing. My recommendation for small and mid-sized companies, not just for next year, but also for the years to come, is to focus on searching new growth areas – via innovation of products, services, the way of delivering customer experience and last but not least in innovation of intercompany processes and business models of running a Company. I would definitely devote full attention to exploiting new opportunities resulting from presence in the digital world. I do not mean only quality and responsiveness of web pages; I see opportunities in communication with customers via social media and in mobile space. I would focus on integration of on-line and off-line worlds, to maximize synergies from both channels. I would also smartly segment the customer base into groups, so that I could offer individual approach to the most loyal customers who generate the highest turnover for my company. I would do everything for understanding the needs of my customers, so that my offer is as closest as possible towards their imaginations. Exceptional customer service can on top of that represent in the Czech environment competitive advantage for many companies.

To assure efficient company operations, I would not be afraid to use the services of trusted cloud computing IT companies. Cloud setting combined with big data management helps to structure the data and share it more effectively, the territorial distances are diminished, and actualization and safety of IT systems is in the hands of professionals, who make the IT operations simpler and less costly. On top of that, thanks to pre-defined data structure, leaders can better measure the business and thus to better manage it. Overall I would try to outsource specific areas of expertise, in which I cannot fully utilize the personnel on an annual basis – these areas could range from setting a strategy of a company toward accounting agenda outsourcing. This would enable me to free up resources for innovations.

I wouldn´t be afraid also to use the investment support from so called „seed fund“, i.e. the Czech development fund, that should hopefully finally start its operations in 2014. I would not create my business model based on this state & EU financed capital (up to 50% resp. 70%), I would like to use the extra investments for acceleration of innovation speed, increasing the probability of innovation success with the No. of launched innovative ideas.

You advise to exploit internet more seriously. Why?

Growth opportunities exist in the retail world, but not only there. The percentage of people, who at present buy goods or services via internet, grows each year (editors note: according to the company Shoptet, at least once a year 79% of Czech internet users buy goods or services via internet; at least once a month 43%). Internet shopping still accounts only for 5-6% of total retail turnover in the Czech Republic and this channel grows continuously, despite the negative trend of total retail segment caused by the economical crisis.

The world of internet offers a lot of new opportunities in the area of on-line marketing and tailor made presentation of a company; new chances exist also in the area of development of internet applications used in many branches – from data search and sorting, towards publishing, reservation activities, e-learning, toward tools for better administration, accounting management or legal financial claims management. Small or middle sized companies can effectively use these applications or they can get themselves into the business of applications development with the prospect to operate them worldwide.

You mentioned that it is necessary to be close to the customers. What specific actions should companies take to fulfill that mission?

There are several areas, where I would suggest focusing. In the process of new products or services development, we can use Crowdsourcing for generation of new ideas and for testing of their attractiveness – e.g. internet open group development of a new drink, its flavor, packaging or even a brand name. For implementation of new ideas we can use a method of Crowdfunding – obtaining micro investments from general public with the motivation, that contributors will receive a new product sooner than others and that they will obtain several other advantages, once the new product or service is launched.

Once the product is widely available on the market, then it is important to offer each customer – either from on-line or from off-line world - personal care, so that he/she gets the feel of uniqueness and returns back for the next shopping. However spam e-mails do not serve well for that purpose. It is more effective to create such an internal data system (of course after receiving permission from a customer enabling to use the data), that will process the profile of a customer. If managers know, which customers buy, how often, in what value, they can prepare tailor made offers, present a very suitable gift, or they can organize a relevant sales supporting event. There are also plenty of opportunities in the Czech Republic, how to improve the atmosphere during the business meetings or in shops. When the Companies learn how to satisfy the real needs of their customers and when they learn to do it most effectively, they can charge higher prices to customers also during the time of an economical downturn. Examples exist. Apple under the leadership of Steve Jobs was one of those clever ones.

However persistency is a key. Since Tim Cook stepped in, Apple abandoned its leadership principles and it started to launch not functional innovations (e.g. Apple Maps), no wonder that customers lost trust. Entrepreneurs should be brave enough to stop product launches, if these cannot meet the highest standards. Quality will remain to be the main competitive advantage.

Are you sure, when today price still plays the most important role?

I have recently met Mrs. Klimova, owner of Aspius, who imports raw meat and offers it to Czech consumers under the brand My Meat “Moje Maso”. She capitalizes on the fact that her competitors try to cut costs at the expense of its quality. But she set out her business in the direction of quality, and she strictly follows her route. She has put her own picture on each packaging in order to guarantee the product quality, and by that she inspires confidence. People still understand the difference in quality. And when they want to make a treat for themselves, they will not save on meat.

You have mentioned outsourcing; do you think that companies rather prefer to have every function in house? I though these days are over.

Thanks to the on-going economical downturn, companies reduced the investments into personnel; they have cut positions and combined functions in a way that employees do not have time to properly execute the tasks. These functions are in the same time not outsourced externally. Therefore it is important to assess, what a company can manage itself and for which tasks it is better to hire temporarily external experts. Sometimes it is more advantageous to hire expensive top class expert, who solves the problem quickly and efficiently, but he/she will not hit the P&L long-term. Hiring experts becomes one-off investment, without on-going high fixed costs. The crisis changed the angle of view; and return back is not possible anymore. The rules, that were in place five years ago, are today obsolete. Leaders have to lead in a new way; they have to put flexibility in focus.

These are in principle the key thoughts that I try to pass on, when I come to a company to restart it, to define new strategies for growth and to launch effective processes. It is awesome if you manage to achieve good results today, but it is even more important to look forward, what comes tomorrow or how the world will look like in two, three years. The pressure to reduce costs will remain; the growth has to come with increasing the focus on customers, offering them high quality goods and services and their constant innovation. Only then you can be sure that the gap on the market will be filled by you, not by your competitor.

The way out of crisis will not be easy; maybe the return to growth was even postponed, when the Czech National Bank (CNB) changed the rules on the market thanks to its unexpected currency interventions. I remain positive, though. We have a lot of capable and successful entrepreneurs in the Czech Republic, who will be able to have their breakthrough despite the obstacles they face. They will become an inspiration for others.

You have mentioned CNB’s intervention. Do you think that it will cause serious problems to entrepreneurs?

Frankly say, I consider this intervention a punch to face to all entrepreneurs, because it was not processed in a standard way, like in Western countries, where interventions are discussed with a government, a president or a Senate. Normally financial analysts give warning and prepare the expectations of the business community (this time all the analysts predicted an opposite trend i.e. strengthening of the Czech currency).

Czech economy was considered stable, thus fixing exchange rate was not a standard tool and contracts did not have clauses including covering the exchange rates risks. We are heavily based on imports; with the intervention a lot of entrepreneurs lost money overnight. It would be idealistic to think that entrepreneurs, who already for long time suffer due to the decline of consumer demand and of their margins, have reserves for such unexpected events. They will have to focus now on covering the losses, instead of aiming their efforts and investments into innovations. The trust issue in further steps of CNB remains a problem for future, that will lead only to conservative investment approach.

Argument about deflation has not persuaded you?

I have watched Mr. Singer, the Governor of CNB, on TV and he did not convince me. He totally abandoned the importance of stability of entrepreneurial environment as well as of trust in the system. I am also not optimistic about his argument about creation of new jobs. International corporations will put focus on cost saving, because they set the targets in Euro already for some time (and they pay rent for shops and offices in Euro). All base costs (including petrol) will increase for everybody, companies will not have the chance to realize full scale price increases, because consumers’ demand is on its low already for long time and companies will not be able to increase salaries. Companies are already over cost optimized. Rather than currency intervention our economy needs stability of the system and growth stimulating offers, otherwise it will not get out of the crisis.

You have rich experiences from Germany, is there a recipe for our problems?

I moved to Germany in 2004, to become an Executive Director. During that time Germany had recorded GDP decline and overall the business environment was frozen. Only after Angela Merkel assumed the office of Chancellor of Germany in 2005, and only after she introduced several measures for stimulation of economy and business, the German economy returned to growth and today Germany is economically at the top of Europe. The government introduced several incentives not just for small and medium entrepreneurs. In the same time Angela Merkel managed to drastically reduce the unemployment rate and to keep the low level of inflation. We have something to learn from, I guess.

This interview was led by Petr Svihel, Chief Editor. It was published in the magazine Trade & Finance (Obchod a Finance) by Mlada Fronta/E15 in December 2013 - you can download the original Czech version / in two parts / here:
- part I.
- part II.

Twitter Went IPO, IBM In Cloud Crisis, Support To Bitcoin

noreply@blogger.com (Jana Budikova) — Tue, 10 Dec 2013 17:26:00 +0000

Source: Mashable

PROFIT IN THE EYES OF AN ENTREPRENEUR:

What news attracted my attention last month? Selection & commentary by Jana Budikova

Will Twitter Survive the Change of Company Culture?

In November, Twitter went IPO, following the strategy of Facebook. Valuation of Twitter at 22times multiple of its sales, even though the Company still founds itself in a loss, shows, that investors appreciate, rather than its historical P&L performance, the high number of its users reaching 200 million worldwide. Investors recognize increasing trend in the Twitter’s user’s base, mainly in the mobile space. Even though founders celebrate, that they have become rich over night, they may not be fully aware of the pressure they will face from now on - the pressure from investors to deliver results every quarter. Investors expect break-through innovations, continuous growth of turnover and shift from a loss into a profit gain, all of that preferably in very short time. Twitter will have to change its way of Company management. Reporting to shareholders on a three month basis in fact means replacement of truly entrepreneurial, opportunistic leadership approach by traditional management of a company listed on the stock exchange, where the leaders do not have so much freedom to make decision and everything is more focused on processes and short-time horizon. I doubt this is a piece of cake for Jack Dorsey and his soul mates.

American support of Bitcoin

The American Senate gave a green light to the development of a virtual currency. They admitted that eventually Bitcoin (BTC) may become an alternative official payment method, which has its advantages in the digital space. However, such virtual currencies must be first regulated and their security and stability must be solved. It must be clearly stated what role and relationship they have towards other currencies. Legal rules have to come in force, to protect the currency from money laundry misusing. Before this happens, I would not recommend Bitcoin (BTC) as a payment instrument, but I am positive about its future usage in the digital world. At the beginning, Credit cards and PayPal were also a subject to criminal causes, and today we all use them regularly. So why be afraid of an innovation?

IBM in a cloud crisis

Although the IBM strategic priority is to offer cloud computing services, its leaders struggle to realize this intent. IBM focuses itself over proportionally on the big customers; they lack flexibility towards the market shifts and towards the action of arising competition, like Dropbox and Netflix. IBM managers publicly question Amazon for its low safety level, instead of using the media space for promoting the benefits of its own cloud computing services. No wonder that in the third quarter, IBM recorded the downfall of turnover and profit, despite its acquisition of SoftLayer , the cloud specialist. I believe that to recover the sales of the group, it is important to change the business model, to better define the target group as well as to improve quality and availability of IBM services.

IBM will not be able to reverse the negative trend, unless it will put focus on the small and middle sized companies, who represent the future revenue stream. And trust in the cloud computing expert will remain the key aspect for choice of a provider. How long can IBM attack the credibility of Amazon when it was IBM who lost the pitch to the American CIA? The CIA has already given the preference in cloud computing to Amazon for the second time.

Microsoft attacks Google

For those of you who want to be officially “anti-google” and do not agree with the fact that Google collects personal data about its users and processes them to change the search order based on paying customers, Microsoft created official web pages, as well as an internet shop Scroogled store. You can express your opinion towards Google´s actions publicly – you can buy there T-shirts, caps, or an-eight-dollar cup, that suggests you to “keep calm, while Google is stealing your data”. Microsoft builds this way on its campaign “Don´t get scroogled”. It softly points out towards the Bing search engine, which is supposed to be more objective. I cannot judge, but after the recent NSA spying affair in the digital world, I may stay with - still Czech owned- Seznam.

This article (in the Czech language) was published in "Profit" magazine by Mlada fronta on Dec. 9th, 2013 You can download it here: Profit in the Eyes of an Entrepreneur

Underestimated Problems after Acquisitions: Why 2+2=5 Never Really Works

noreply@blogger.com (Jana Budikova) — Thu, 26 Sep 2013 14:04:00 +0000

Companies continue with their expansion plans regardless of the fact that after acquisitions up to 70% of them lose their value and report worse results than the branch average after the transaction is over. Companies still show buying appetite despite the economical crisis, even though the amount and value of worldwide mergers & acquisitions is much lower than during the “golden age” between the years 2005-2007. They feel confident that they have learnt their lessons of proper calculation of risks and opportunities resulting from buy-outs. Corporations understand that during the time of market polarization, they need to be among the top two in each market segment; or that they have to own distinctive premium niche or value for the money segment; as all those remaining ones in the middle are squeezed and exhausted. It becomes clear, that if companies want to survive in the long run, they either continuously innovate their own brands and technology, or they buy them from the market.

Only About One Fifth of All Transactions Bring Expected Return on Investments

Shareholders and supervisory boards approve giant mergers & acquisitions (M&A) and accept a high risk of not achieving adequate return on investment (ROI), because most of the time they see buy-out as the only way towards fulfillment of the companies’ ambitious growth targets and thus towards the growth of the share price. The companies’ management is then empowered and made responsible to fulfill acquisition objectives - ranging from penetration of new segments or new geographies; through increasing profitability thanks to synergies, economies of scale and increasing negotiating power on the market; towards increasing attractiveness on the investment market.

The acquired company must strategically fit with the long-term goals of the ‘mother’ company. Management of expectations is however one of the crucial success factors – one must balance the benefits coming from buyouts vs. the value that can be generated by in-house innovations. When the NIKE Company bought UMBRO for 580 million dollars in 2007, NIKE for sure did not anticipated that five years later (in 2012), it will sell UMBRO for less than a half of its value (225 mil. USD). Now, NIKE mainly focuses on the football area on its own innovation. The development of own brands can bring slower growth, however with a higher average rate of return thanks to the medium need for investments. On the other hand, the effects of acquisitions are quicker; even though the yield decreases due to the high capital need.

Strategic fit is not the only criteria for success when the main acquisition target is to keep or to obtain competitive advantage by buying know-how and new technology. The buying company must also have in-house capabilities to further develop the acquired company. This aspect is not always understood. Microsoft learned a painful lesson last year, when it had to write-off 99% of the value of the Internet agency aQuantive, acquired in 2007 for 6.3 billion dollars. Original expectations to keep up with Google’s DoubleClick (acquired in 2007 for 3.1 billion USD) were not fulfilled. Google’s subsidiary DoubleClick, on contrary, survived and now it focuses on uploading ads and reporting their performance.

Adequate acquisition price is always a key to success. A too high price can indicate future problems, as it increases pressure for dramatic cost cutting to backwards justify the transaction value. In 2012 it was a case of Google wanting to more aggressively compete against Apple. Google paid 12.5 billion dollars for Motorola Mobility - to acquire 17,000 patents and 7,500 pending patents. According to experts, this price was too high to be defensible. Three months after the transaction was over, Google released 4,000 employees (one fifth of all the staff). Many experts do not see the strategic fit for this vertical integration (software vs. hardware), thus future success of this buy-out is very questionable. On contrary, horizontal strategic integrations normally record higher success rate, because the expected synergies and growth opportunities can be more easily materialized (like in the case of You Tube being acquired by Google in 2006 for 1.65 billion USD).

Acquisition Success Increases With Aligned Strategies and Companies’ Cultures

Company cultures’ disharmony destroys up to 30% of the deals. Daimler AG (German producer of e.g. Mercedes-Benz luxury automobiles) learnt its lesson after the fusion with an American low cost car producer Chrysler. In 1998, Daimler bought 92% of Chrysler for 36 billion dollars and the so-called ‘Merger of Equals’ ended up in 2007 by the sale of Chrysler for just 7.4 billion USD. Differences between German and American ways of management, the level of formality, and operations in different price segments, contributed to the failure. The initial euphoria was exchanged for a fiasco, once the German cultural model prevailed and motivation of the American employees declined bellow a reasonable level.

Companies for Sale: The Size Matters

According to the Boston Consulting Group analysis, transactions bellow 1 billion dollars, when a bigger company acquires a smaller one, show higher probability for success. Otherwise, during the so called ‘mergers of equals’, problems of integration of two wide portfolios arise. Managers have difficulties to prioritize brands and investments; they struggle to decide which brands have the highest potential for growth and which are the most important for the current profit generation. Personal preferences also matter. Most of the time, leaders from acquiring companies behave as conquerors in a foreign battlefield: they give the highest priorities to their ‘own’ old portfolio; they do not thrive to keep the people and know-how of the company that is taken over. The acquired business loses its roots and continuity.

Historically, the most costly transaction happened in the year 2000, when Vodafone bought Mannesmann AG for 183 billion dollars. Even though the time of overpriced acquisitions is over, we can expect that successful companies will continue to finance their expansion and look for attractive acquisition targets. Managers learned that the highest growth and return on investment could only be achieved by the combination of organic growth and external buy-outs.

This article was written for the magazine Business Woman, 05 - 2013

Rome: My Surprising Journey Into the Past and Into the Future

noreply@blogger.com (Jana Budikova) — Mon, 24 Jun 2013 17:57:00 +0000

The thought was on my mind for quite some time. I was dreaming of experiencing the return into my past lives as Dr. Brian Weiss, a respected American psychotherapist, described at Oprah´s show, as well as in his bestselling book “Many Lives, Many Masters”. I was thrilled to take on the journey into the unknown, to assure myself about my spiritual purpose. At first I was looking for somebody local with whom I could experience past-life therapy face-to-face, but then I suddenly got the urge to look up Dr. Brian Weiss’ website. Unexpectedly enough, he was going to visit Rome and host an intensive three-day seminar the following week, and there was still free space for me! I was thrilled that I am going to meet a pioneer of reincarnation healing practice, who likes “changing fear into love and wisdom”, and who proved already more than 30 years ago, that reincarnation and spiritual worlds are reality....

THIS LONG STORY CONTINUES ... JUST DOUBLE CLICK & READ MORE

For more information about Dr. Brian Weiss seminars please visit: www.brianweiss.com

Why CEOs Should Prevent Cuts Of The Innovation Budgets

noreply@blogger.com (Jana Budikova) — Wed, 29 May 2013 17:14:00 +0000

It happened many times before. Small company found its market niche and successfully filled it thanks to understanding deep customer needs and being very flexible and customer friendly. Company was fast in bringing new highly relevant products and services to the market; it quickly gained respect and popularity among customers and business partners. Success brought not only profit, but also increasing number of employees and growing byrocracy. Success became the Holy Grail; everything was adjusted short-term according to that. The company lost sight of the surrounding environment, the risk of losing competitive advantage was underminded. Nobody wanted to change something, what works currently and pays the employees´ salaries. When the economical crisis came – savings pressure was added towards this fear of change.Inovative agenda lost priority and consequently the company got into troubles. Either it was lucky, that some competitor or investor bought it, or one day it disappeared completely.

We start to see this scenario more and more often - current uncertain times are intensified by economical crisis. And it does not have to be that way. The ability to constantly innovate no matter what the short-term financial results bring differentiates the successful companies from the failing ones. That si why the valuations of a brand and of a company are based not just on the growth of turnover, profit and return on investment, but also based on the indicator of added value brought by innovation. The role of CEO in the innovative process is irreplaceable. Successful CEO gives priority, a green line to the agenda of innovation, not just to the amount of money allocated to the innovation investments. He or she creates such company culture that serves as a good base for generating new ideas and for their fast implementation.

The worldwide research and development budget of top 500 companies decreased overall only once – in the year 2009, until companies learnt that they do not want to lose their competitive advantage during the most vulnerable times. And also because some companies even increased their share – e.g. Samsung that keeps growing fast – that can be partically attributed to its innovation budget reaching 6% of turnover, amount that is about three times bigger than Apple’s. The question remains – will this low percentage of investment be sufficient for Apple to keep its innovative icon status? Will Apple keep its first place in the WW Most Innovative Companies rank, especially when the innovation and marketing guru, Steve Jobs, no longer runs this company and other competitors like Google and Microsoft allocate around 13% of their turnover?

Innovations allow companies to bring consumers a defined premium that can be reflected not just in the area of justified higher prices. Innovations and image help companies to increase its market share on declining markets, to differentiate self and thus survive in the long-term.

But even the biggest budget for innovation will not be sufficient, if companies use it for the wrong ideas, just to impress its stakeholders by the number of innovation projects in the pipeline instead of by the end financial effect the innovations bring. Innovations have higher chance for success if the new product/service idea resonates with the higher purpose of a company in the area of improving the world for its customers. A company can be successful with the innovation agenda only if it employs the best talents and enables them to creatively breathe and make clever decisions. Only then the CEO can decrease the anyhow high probability of failure.

This article was written for the magazine Obchod & Finance (Mlada Fronta E15) April 2013 issue - double click to download the original.

Why Managers Start Their Own Businesses

noreply@blogger.com (Jana Budikova) — Sun, 13 Jan 2013 17:50:00 +0000

My views summarized by Dalibor Dostal from the Czech economical magazine PROFIT, a supplement of Mlada Fronta E15 Daily Newspaper, January 7^th, 2013 (photos by Michael Tomes).

New Beginnings

Dalibor Dostál, Petr Švihel, Martin Zika

It is a wishful thinking for many people to lead a big international company or one of its divisions. For someone who could live this dream, top management role was not the end destination. It has only become a starting point for establishing own business. We bring you now few interesting change management stories from the Czech Republic.

Jana Budikova: From Coffee to Strategic Management Consulting

Jana Budikova jumped into own business directly from the Managing Director role at Tchibo, where she was responsible for the Czech Republic and Slovakia and for which she obtained in 2009 Best Employer prestigious award. “I needed to fully realize my potential,” explains her motive for the change of her career.

Nowadays she works as an advisor for Company strategies. She helps companies to identify, quantify and seize new opportunities, to increase effectiveness of their marketing and sales activities, as well as organizational structures and processes. She also helps people to manage the change. “I can combine my strategic thinking with my inner need to inspire and charge people with positive energy, to change things for the better, to build something. I like results as well as management challenges and adrenalin from uneasy tasks. Strategic consultancy helps me to stay active in the international field – to work on projects across the European markets,” she says. These topics are also part of her lectures. During the remaining time Jana publishes her views in professional media, she is a regular speaker at conferences and she also passes her knowledge to young generation when she leads a group of Honors Academia students at the Prague School of Economics.

Even though sometimes it seems that everything was already invented and there is no possibility for a successful breakthrough, managers starting up their own business prove there is always something to explore. “New opportunities are popping up continuously, only the clients are more cautious with their investments into innovations. I see that at present the biggest dynamic and thus potential in the area of internet, big data management, mobile communication and social media. Other opportunities appear within the area of top class customer service. My role is to help my clients to innovatively seize these opportunities not just strategically, but also during their implementation and communication,” mentions Jana Budikova.

In her new role Jana´s biggest challenge was to be patient, get used to the fact that some things cannot run as fast, as she would like to. “First it is necessary to plant the seeds, however it takes time before the flowers blossom, in my case before the company, respectively its boss decides to use my consulting services. In my type of business it is a never ending process of acquisition of new customers and pampering existing or previous clients,” explains Jana Budikova. Obtaining new business remains the key challenge for start-ups. While in the big corporations there are specialized teams with a lot of back-up functions in sales and marketing, Jana Budikova had to rely only on her own creativity.

She could also rely on top-class know-how that she has obtained in her previous assignments at the big multinational companies. “I had the opportunity to learn from the best leaders. I have obtained the international bird´s eye view, when I have managed the important German market or when I was responsible for the sales and marketing development of the Eastern European region. I have learned the importance of ethics in business. I have realized that it is a necessity to thrive for win-win solutions. It takes a lot of time and effort to build a trust (for a Company, a brand, or a person), however it could be lost very easily,” says Jana Budikova. Jana also talks about the importance of putting customers and consumers and their needs into the center of the Companies´ attention. The key is to master the art of establishing the right priorities and motivation of the staff for putting them successfully into practice.

Jana´s own business helped her to find a new dimension for her professional self-actualization. “I can choose which projects I will spend time on, which people I will meet and which direction and goals I will choose to pursue. Only now, while running my own business, I have understood what creative freedom means. On top of that I have met a lot of inspiring people who I would never had a chance to get to know during the standard manager´s time pressure. I also have more time now for self education and for my own personal development, as well as for passing my experiences to the younger generation,” concludes Jana Budikova.

Picture text:

SOURCE OF INSPIRATION

Jana Budikova helps managers with strategic planning. Also the top Company leaders need to be inspired and enthused with positive energy.

DOWNLOAD THE ORIGINAL ARTICLE IN THE CZECH LANGUAGE (HERE)

Management Quotas For Women Are Not Just Evil. The Discussion About Them Helps

noreply@blogger.com (Jana Budikova) — Mon, 03 Dec 2012 15:27:00 +0000

We do not like when somebody tries to enforce something upon us. It especially irritates us, when it is related to the rules of Company management, as it happened now in the proposed European Directive regarding number of women in the leadership positions. After all, human resources decisions should be driven by qualification and personality traits of each individual, by the area of expertise of given company and by culture of each country.

The European Commission proposal had awakened a wave of negative emotions across whole country, across all levels and business branches. My spontaneous response is also very clear. Who will next time believe that the newly appointed member of a supervisory board got the position because of her skills, not because of her gender? How fast the 40% quota could be realistically in force when the current level of women in management in the Czech Republic is one of the lowest from the European Union (estimated at 4%-8%)? How could we remove emotions from the discussions when the suggested Directive clearly aligns men against women?

The EU proposal in any case represents a change, even though the individual members of the European Union still have to agree to it. It stands for the shift in the public viewing of the equal working rights. Each such decision brings uncertainty and fear while the number of influential and well paid positions could become even more deficient for men because of this step. All of that at a time when there is a lot of restructuring in place due to economical crisis, when there are plenty of men looking for new opportunities and the outlook for positive future is out of sight.

From the bird’s eye view I can say that the quotas are not just pure evil. After in-depth observation of the stories of women in leadership I have to admit, that there is something good about it. Viviane Reding, the EU Commissioner managed to bring up the debate about necessity of balanced representation of women in management. She gave a new spark to the debate by opening the today’s taboo of hidden discrimination for the top positions and women’s career glass ceiling. Reding has done that bravely at a time when the supply of quality top men-managers overcomes the demand and it is even harder for women to overcome the prejudices.

This article was written for the leading Czech economical magazine EKONOM No.48, Nov. 2012.

The Journey To Inspiration

noreply@blogger.com (Jana Budikova) — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 12:31:00 +0000

The most satisfied, healthiest and happiest people in the world are those who have found their passion and who continuously cultivate it. They do not want to be just successful; they want to stand for something. They permanently search an inspiration for their personal or entrepreneurial growth and by that they awaken the enthusiasm of others. They nearly always find the time to support others. Their progressive goals give their life a lot of extra energy.

These wise people have realized that their dreams are fulfilled when they approach them with humbleness. The Austrian neurologist Viktor Frankl was very clear about it: “It is not possible to create neither success, nor happiness. They can only be viewed as an outcome. And this will only happen as a secondary effect when a person gives up himself to something bigger than his own being. Once a person manages to find his life mission, the whole world will become enlightened.”

I also like when things get moving. During the last years I have realized, that when I want to leave a footprint in his world, I have to start to change from within. When we will be happy and satisfied with ourselves, our positive inner peace will help to attract positive things into our lives. We will shine and our inner energy will be contagious for others - first in the small circles, later in the wider ones. And matters will turn to the right direction.

I try to encourage my colleagues not to be afraid of being themselves, of breathing for the Company´s growth. Last but not least to mobilize them that it is more advantageous for all to act as one team. I believe that the hurdles on our journey appear only because we need to further develop ourselves that we need to shift forward ourselves and the things and people around us. When we get into difficulties, it is necessary not to lose one´s head, not to give up the goals. We have to remain truthful to ourselves, to continue to listen to our inner voice and to our intuition. We have to expect the success and put maximum energy into everything we do. When we are sufficiently persistent and determined, our dreams will be fulfilled.

I am inspired by people, who target not only profit and growth of personal fortunes. I admire all those who have their passion for what they do and who always put a little bit of themselves to everything they do. When somebody mentions their name, the others became enlightened, because they remember well, how they recharged their batteries during the last mutual exchange of positive energies with this pal. Robin Sharma, the wise man and author of many development books, always tries to leave people in better state of mind than he found them. The imagination that everybody would have this approach is more than attractive.

The source of new ideas for me are not only the books of wise men (like Robin Sharma, Rhonda Byrne or Paulo Coelho, Steve Jobs or Jack Welsch), but also I am thrilled to meet interesting people during work, sport or social occasions. One of this special events was organized in September in Zlin by Jaroslav Rasa, the founder of ABRA Software, who is visionary and inspiring person himself. His conference Forum of Inspiration was devoted to the legacy of Tomas Bata, Czech founder of the worldwide-known shoe company Bata.

We need positive role models more than anything else during continuously tough economical times. So why should we look for them abroad, when we can meet them in person in our country?

***
This article was written for the magazine Business Woman - for their first ever issue - 1/2012.
You can DOWNLOAD THE ARTICLE (in CZECH).

Has Bata Something To Offer To Today´s Entrepreneurs?

noreply@blogger.com (Jana Budikova) — Wed, 26 Sep 2012 11:48:00 +0000

The Bata Company does not differ much today from its international competitors: neither in the shoes quality, nor in price, advertising or the way of shoes selling. Customer can hardly find the original Bata entrepreneurial spirit in the Bata shops.

Nevertheless Tomas Bata (1876-1932), the founder, still belongs to those leaders, who inspire long after his death: not just by his own life mission, but also by his management principles.

Not just thanks to the lasting economical crisis, today´s Czech entrepreneurial world struggles to find its positive role models. It also looses fair play and partnership trust in business matters. Totally in contradiction with Bata leading principles, the main current goal remains one-off maximization of profit, instead of building lasting business partnerships. Biased disadvantageous agreements, supplying non-quality products or services, pressuring price of subcontractors or of employees bellow the healthy survival level, shortage of staff & its lack of qualification, postponing the payment of invoices, re-directing and avoiding of tax payments, no interest in support of the region or of education and charity – these are just few examples, how some Czech companies today artificially try to reduce their fixed costs, just to survive the tough times. Still they lose not just the trust of their partners, but also the ability to sustain their reputation and economical health in the future.

Bata has also lived during crisis and believed that: “Fight is the essence of live. Who does not fight, can never win.” But the famous shoes king was not interested only in the short-term winning. He was a visionary – builder. He believed that: “Good business is only when all are satisfied with the results. Good entrepreneur produces for customers, takes care about his staff and serves well the society.” Maybe that’s why Bata managed to use crisis as an opportunity for his Company growth.

His story forces us to reflection. It shows that entrepreneurial ethics, giving priority to customer needs, taking care about employees and the effort to do something good for the society may not be just empty claims. They can represent the magic key to unlock the competitive advantage. They can help to lead the company from the spiral of decline back to growth and to assure it lasting place under the sun.

THIS ARTICLE WAS WRITTEN FOR THE LEADING CZECH ECONOMICAL MAGAZINE "EKONOM"- you can download the original here.

***

A lot of Bata´s inspiring ideas were presented at the Forum of Inspiration in Zlin, September 13th-14th.This conference was organized by Jaroslav Rasa, the founder of ABRA Software Company.

My contribution to the Forum of Inspiration attendees regarding people motivation is here available for download: MOTIVATION OF THE FRONT LINE by JANA BUDIKOVA .

How To Leverage Twitter For Businesses And Individuals

noreply@blogger.com (Jana Budikova) — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 15:28:00 +0000

See tips and much much more ... in the attached presentation.
Twitter For Companies and Individuals (PRESENTATION)

Twitter celebrated last week its 6th birthday. How can companies and individuals fully exploit its potential? What are Twitter worldwide key facts and figures? How does Czech Republic differ? What are the key principles of communication in the twitterverse? What were the successes and failures of leading companies?

Related Articles:

* How Vodacom Solved Its Twitter Crises? Read more ...How CEO Changed A Problem Into Opportunity
* When Your Identity Is Stolen on Twitter. Read more...The Other Vaclav Klaus Or The Other You On Twitter
* Even Companies with reputation can get into crisis. Read more...Social Media Flops Of Respected Companies
* Why You Should NOT ignore Twitter?Why I Am Hooked Up On Twitter?

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Feeling The Anticipation Of Unknown Like In Spring 1989?

noreply@blogger.com (Jana Budikova) — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 17:07:00 +0000

I am privileged to meet several interesting and inspiring people. Lately they have one thing in common. They talk about an upcoming change, that they are not able to define more precisely. Something is in the air. No one knows when it arrives and if it will be positive for us or totally not.

When the first wave of crisis came, we were joking about the good times that passed away and we started to prepare ourselves for the worse. But nowadays it is different. People talk about second wave of crisis and they do not forget to add their odd feeling that it will be combined with some kind of transformation for all of us.

The death of Vaclav Havel and subsequent funeral spectacle in the streets of Prague intensified the feeling even more. Suddenly the everyday news about economical and political corruption was suppressed by a reminder of what ideals we have fought for in 1989. This retrospective view helps many people to pause and remind self, what they want from life and what definitely not. The realization is obvious especially for the younger generation, which takes the torch from the passing ones. They sincerely come to pay tribute to Vaclav Havel and don´t forget to show with their fingers the victory symbol, they do not forget to ring the keys, similarly as their parents did twenty-two years ago.

The situation was however different at that time. We knew well what we want to fight for. We wanted freedom of speech and the same rights for everybody regardless of our origin or participation in a political party. We wanted to open borders and free the economy. We thrived to exchange the absolutistic governance of a communistic party for a true democracy.

People nowadays feel the transformation is on its way however concrete - generally accepted - formulation of what the change should bring us is missing. We are only at the beginning.

Vaclav Havel fulfilled his historical role. Even the timing of his passing away during the period of uprising discussion about the possible future arrangements is more than symbolic. People suddenly ask how much utopia there is in his claim of “Truth and love will win over lies and hate.” They remind themselves about their feelings from the beginning of the nineties, when the new opportunities opened up in front of them. Secretly they wish they would like to live it through once more. They would like to have again the euphoria and hope for the better future. During the Velvet Revolution twenty two years ago they realized their own worth and the power they can have if they decide to use it to change the world for the better. They used to have a goal that somehow disappeared during the last years. But their time still can come. Who knows?

It is very hard to anticipate what the future brings. With some exceptions – of course. I will never forget my university teacher (of Marxism-Leninism philosophy) in 1989 who encouraged us on Wednesday, November 15^th to come with candles to Albertov (in the center of Prague) on November 17^th. He said there may be no lesson week after. And he was so right…

Regardless of what the future brings I would like to wish you a Merry Christmas and a Very Peaceful, Prosperous, Healthy and Happy Year 2012!

Regardless of Personal Failures And Economical Crisis

noreply@blogger.com (Jana Budikova) — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 11:54:00 +0000

The Czechs are in the most pessimistic mood measured during the last 18 years. At least according to a report from the research agency STEM. More than half of our population thinks that the situation will even worsen during the next five years. They are afraid of keeping their jobs, they are not sure if they will be able to take care about their family, in situation when they have to pay mortgages and when they have to cope with increasing living costs.

The suffering hits mainly the older ones, who are less sure to find a relevant job if things go out of the way in the current one. More and more people look for help at psychologists, who cannot always support them during these turbulent times. For jobless people it is becoming difficult to define long-term goals, and the general advices do not matter to them at all. They need to find new motivation to live fully, something very concrete, long-term, even though maybe small. They need to get the reassurance that something in life works for them well. They need hope that one small success can be replicated to magnify their self-confidence.

Everybody of us has the same opportunity to find the place under the sun on this planet, which would satisfy his/her needs. Even though sometimes the search for this place takes way too much time, even though it sometimes means that people have to get back to the roots of who they were before they started to feel the pressure of their surroundings, causing them to believe that they have to achieve or keep something very concrete, no matter what. There are many people who found the life fulfillment only when they escaped routine “lines” and only then started to do things that they truly enjoyed. They opened their small businesses, or they started to devote their precious time to others. They had to have a new goal, which they followed with passion. They had to adjust to the new situation. They learnt not to stick to money or job role, but to enjoy everyday life. Maybe they have realized that there is always somebody, who does not have so much luck as they have. Even small thing started to enlighten their day.

Why some people are capable to live fulfilled life and others feel so empty? Why some of us wake up in the morning feeling the world is full of opportunities, available for them and the others feel pain of another day they have to somehow survive?

Happy people have one thing in common. They have lived through failures as well as successes. It was most difficult for them to learn to limitlessly trust their faith that they will achieve their envisioned goal - regardless of all the obstacles they faced on their journey, regardless of the fact that they one day felt burnt out and helpless. They were not afraid to step into the unknown. They continued to go fiercely for their dreams, outside their comfort zone. They explored new boarders. They personally grew (like a vintage wine) and this growth loaded them with additional energy and passion, it confirmed their life meaning. The more pitfalls they crossed, the more personal fulfillment they felt in the end.

The obstacles we face in life are not always a bad thing. We should be grateful for them as they stimulate us to action, they provoke us not to stagnate. The journey each of us chooses is only and only ours. We can choose between success and failure, fulfillment and emptiness, living or surviving.

Failures should be blessed. At least according to the successful author and marketing guru Seth Godin who said: „ My lesson was if I fail more than you do, I win because built in that lesson is that you get to keep playing, you get to keep failing, and sooner or later you succeed. The people who lose are those who do not fail at all, or who play so big they do not want to play again. They don´t try stuff. Only rarely the cost of failure is greater than the cost of discovering what works and what does not.”

How could we pass the torch of Seth Godin to many people who only know how to complain about circumstances and do not try to improve their situation, because of their fear of unknown? Despite the fact that they SAY they want to start over again (in work, personal life, in sport etc), they NEVER DO anything. They do not try to find a better solution for themselves.

It does not have to be like that. C.S.Lewis, the Irish author of The Chronicles of Narnia once said: “You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.“ Let´s follow his thoughts and throw away the fear of future. If we are not passing away, we always have a chance to start over again. We always can fill the cups of our life. Exactly as Roman poet Horatius appealed already 21 centuries ago “Carpe Diem”!

***
Seth Godin challenges you to fail (VIDEO)

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2012 = The Year Of Mastering Value Creation from Big Data

noreply@blogger.com (Jana Budikova) — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 17:07:00 +0000

Every minute you are not using Big Data means a lost business opportunity. In an information society, information is money. The trick is to generate value by extracting the right information from the digital universe. Forrester, McKinsey, and IBM have all issued white papers or reports in the last months discussing the impact that the analysis of big data will have on business. We may be on the threshold of a major period of exploration of the digital universe.

Big data isn’t anything new. It is just getting bigger. As the price of analytic software, sensors and communication devices continues to fall to one-sixth of what it was in 2005*), mastering of big data starts to lose intelligence offices privileges and becomes mainstream thanks to rapid business exploitation.

Big data refers to the totality of information available - all data that might help create a more complete understanding about an issue or person or provide an answer to some question. „Big data technologies describe a new generation of technologies and architectures, designed to economically extract value from very large volumes of a wide variety of data, by enabling high-velocity capture, discovery and / or analysis,” as per the IDC study. It is about finding answers where there are yet to be questions.

Historically all kind of data was used to confirm or support decisions that had already been made (bar and pie charts), rather than to learn new things and discover the right answer. The volume and unstructured nature of so-called “big data” prevented much in a way of analysis. It was very time-consuming. It required the ability to assimilate many kinds of media and info sources. But nowadays we have computers that are close to being able to look at large amounts of different kind of data to provide summaries, make suggestions, as well as to draw real-time insightful conclusions.

In recent months all kind of Companies – mainly coming from pharmaceuticals, retail, telecommunications or insurance industries - have started to deploy big data strategies. They are shifting their organizations from using intuition towards making decisions based on using large-scale data gathering and analytics. Via easy to operate, immediate, sorted internal and external information from around the world, companies obtain insights that would otherwise remain hidden. Using those insights Companies are able to better shape their strategy, to better manage their risks, to better than competition anticipate moves of customers and industry and thus they are able to improve their overall performance.

According McKinsey research such progressive companies record measurable improvement in productivity and other performance measures: „A one-standard-deviation increase toward data and analytics was correlated with about a 5 to 6 percent improvement in productivity and a slightly larger increase in profitability in those same firms. The implication for companies is that by changing the way they make decisions, they’re likely to be able to outperform competitors.“

As the big data management tools will continue to become standard business enabler, future competitive advantages will be in the hands of those, for whom it will become a new type of corporate asset. These will be companies that have made a commitment to regard data need highly. They will be able to build a low-cost, reliable infrastructure for data collection and storage using digital assets. They will be not only able to capture more and better data, but they will also have the possibility to do a fundamentally different decision making. They will be able to use data timely and effectively across the whole organization, they will be able to drive the changes in organizations that are coming their way. They will test hypotheses and analyze results to guide investment decisions and operational changes. They will collect best practices for leveraging and extracting value from data. They will no more operate in internal silos, as they will use one collective info-net.

“The ultimate value of a big data implementation will be judged based on one or more of three criteria (IDC study):

- Does it provide more useful information?

- Does it improve the fidelity of the information?

- Does it improve the timeliness of the response?”

Upcoming period of the digital universe exploration will not be without its challenges. But it will represent a unique opportunity for those Companies who are up-to-speed and ready for fast adoption of new technologies. Huge flood of data and analytical opportunities will create more value for people who can be creative in seeing patterns and for people who can be entrepreneurial in creating new business opportunities that take advantage of these patterns. The success of many enterprises in the coming years will be determined by how the Co. will thrive in driving the required enterprise adjustment – not just on the technical site, but on the cultural, people site as well.

*) „Technology has helped driving the cost of creating, capturing, managing and storing information down to one-sixth of what it was in 2005. Since 2005 the investment by enterprises in the digital universe has increased 50% - to $4 trillion.“ IDG study

The Prize Roman Stanek Has To Pay in the Czech Republic For His Success

noreply@blogger.com (Jana Budikova) — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 09:07:00 +0000

Roman Stanek

The published one-sided emotional article of Jiri Donat came last week as a time bomb: “The $28.5 million backed company GoodData threatens our student startup Start2Cloud.com with lawsuit”. Article written in Czech and English.

Roman Stanek, CEO and Founder of GoodData definitely deserves better publicity than that. Despite of what Donat says, this not a story of David and Goliash. This case shows that we have still a way to go as a country, or as individuals (being it seasoned managers or just students) in the area of ethics of communication as well as in respecting Terms of Usage of global company data and services. We just cannot ignore the law.

Roman Stanek has managed something what the other Czechs just dream about – he has founded a very successful GoodData company, based in San Francisco, that is booming (+ 500% yoy growth) on the fast developing computer-clout market. He obtained investments’ back-up from famous Andreessen Horowitz venture capital firm, that holds stock among others also in Facebook, Groupon, Twitter and Zynga. And he has the privilege to work directly with Google’s enterprise chief, Girouard, that joined the GoodData management board this summer. Stanek’s task as legal representative of the company is to assure proper Company governance (including intellectual property rights / data protection).

On the other hand Jiri Donat (ex Siemens, ex Deloitte, currently Associated Director in A.T.Kearney) the CEO of Start2Cloud.com, that is operated by students, fights his strange battle with Roman Stanek via media. Donat has decided that he disputes publicly the GoodData Terms of Usage and provided readers and other media houses just one-sided emotional information. But this was not enough for him, Donat published even the details of e-mail correspondence written by Stanek. Donat decided to emotionally describe just half of the story, to obtain the public support for the “poor” students, who have no chance to win the legal battle (as if he knew the law is not on his side). Justifying himself that he had to do it because Roman Stanek had Saturday and Sunday to reply his e-mail which he did not manage (note: generous when Mr. Stanek lives in San Francisco, and he was not warned about the Donat' s threats).

Czech Tech community is now divided in comments into two camps – one group believes that this is just a PR campaign of a start-up for generating awareness. Of a start-up that does not care about ethics and rules of communication, that should withdraw the questionable data first from their website and negotiate their usage with GoodData afterwards. The other group supports Donat in his pursue of own interpretation of the law and side the story of "poor students" who´s project is now in danger. They don´t judge the legal perspective, they look on human aspect of the whole thing.

Respected start-ups in the civilized world prefer personal talks and search for win-win solutions before using the power of public voice. Respected start-ups do not build their company awareness on the principle of attacking others. Respected leaders do not publish other party correspondence, especially when hiding own steps. Successful start-ups base their audience engagement on quality of their products and services.

I am sure that because Roman Stanek believes that “Tough times create tough Companies”, this small episode will help Good Data to strengthen their position and also they will be more ready next time to face surprising unfair attacks, especially if they come from the home country.

I personally wish that next time, when we, the Czechs, send the messages to the world, they will have such substance, that will inspire other nations and generate respect for what we, here - in small country - are capable to invent, not the stories similar to fake David and Goliash, where the need to obey to law and ethics are disputed.

Roman Stanek

Is one of few Czech entrepreneurs who managed to transfer his success traits to the U.S., the home of tech innovation. He is today well known among business circles and Venture Capitalist in Silicon Valley, as the Company GoodData - which he founded and which he leads as CEO – has its head-office there.

Nowadays Good Data have back up of $28.5 million investments funds, coming mainly from famous Andreessen Horowitz venture capital firm, that holds stock in all four of the highest-valued privately held social-media companies: Facebook, Groupon, Twitter and Zynga.

Roman could receive this backing up of such a famous VC firm, only because he never thought his Czech roots were a limit for him. He always believed that: “We live in a flat world. Building thriving start-up Companies is possible also in Europe, or even in the Czech republic.” Nationality does not matter. But for the Company scale and networking purposes it is advisable to be based close to the TECH beating-heart center – close to California.

Community, collaboration and governance are the three focus areas of Roman. Roman also shares the Seth Godin’s wisdom, that “It takes three years to be an overnight success, sometimes more.” Roman – although still born under state controlled and planned communist regime - built up his way as self made serial entrepreneur of three global companies. His real success came during the last decade, when his booming companies were acquired by leading multinationals: NetBeans (acquired by Sun Microsystems) and Systinet (acquired by Mercury Interactive and later Hewlett Packard).

Andreessen Horowitz’s O’Farrell on GoodData: “I see the startup becoming a billion dollar company.”

Girouard: “GoodData has an amazing opportunity to build a huge business, and GoodData has taken a unique and promising approach to leading in this market.”

GoodData

Started back in 2007 based on the insight that cloud computing could enable businesses to operate more efficiently when linked with data analytics, simplified processes, best practices and actionable insights – in sales, customer service and other areas. Over 2,500 companies, including Software AG, Time Warner Cable, Capgemini and Pandora Media, rely on GoodData’s data intelligence products. The company has seen 500% growth in overall platform usage in 2011 alone and is currently managing over 6,500 unique customer data mark. And more than 2 million reports were executed on the GoodData cloud BI platform in July of this year.

Steve Jobs´ Journey Toward His Dream: Through Different Eyes

noreply@blogger.com (Jana Budikova) — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 12:38:00 +0000

Picture by Jonathan Mak

The world is mourning. Steve Jobs died. Apple stores were immediately covered with flowers, candles and messages from his fans. I used to show him as role model to my colleagues, as he was able to build a Company that is thriving to go for more than only money.

Jobs was half a genius, half an artist. He managed to connect the technical world with the art. He managed to change the angle in which personal computers, mobile phones, music or animated film are viewed. As an outstanding visionary, he was the author of more than 300 patents himself, he was behind the success of iPhones, iPods and iPads. He has built the most valuable Company in the world with a salary of only 1 dollar per year.

Dylan and Picasso were his icons, he admired them for refusal to stand still, for choosing their own way. They always wanted to further develop themselves, they kept risking failure. Same as Steve Jobs. He himself gave in the 80th his voice to the TV ad, in which he encouraged people to think differently. He believed, that “Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.” He wanted to sell experiences, not products.

Jobs was thrilled by revolutionary changes. He once said: “Because they are harder. They’re more stressful emotionally. And you usually go through a period where everybody tells you that you’ve completely failed.”

Jobs tried to protect his privacy until last minute. This did not stop him however to become the face of a company, which he together with Steve Wozniak founded in 1976, and to which he returned after forced break in 1997, to prevent it from possible bankruptcy. Jobs was the one who managed to pass his passion for Apple total experience to others, to engage others to become part of one big cult family, named Apple.

Jobs had big visions. He wanted to do a ding in the Universe. He wanted be the best. Anytime, anywhere. He managed to succeed despite his misfortune. Despite the fact that he was not wanted by his parents, despite starving during his University days from lack of money (having one warm meal per week in the Hare Krishna), despite the fact that he was fired from a Company he himself founded, or as well despite his non-curable pancreatic cancer. Each time he was able to put himself together, used setbacks to strengthen self and continued with even bigger drive and passion the journey to fight for his dream.

Jobs experienced what it takes to be publicly cursed or exalted. His last decade was the most fruitful for him. He became the icon. Maybe because he realized that he is mortal. Maybe because he was able to finally deal with his past, when he denied paternity of his daughter, when he did not finish the university, when he tested the LSD drug or when he refused to pay deserved bonus to his friend Wozniak.

He did not care much about others most of the time when he went for his goal. In his desire to be perfect, he used to be tough not only towards himself, but also towards his employees and business partners. He did not mind to wake them up from bed in the middle of the night and ask them to immediately rework things. But when you are a genius, the world does not judge you the same way. The best professionals followed him with passion anyhow.

Would it be possible for Steve Jobs to change the world and stand aside the world inventors like Henry Ford or Thomas Edison, if he did not went through so many failures? Would he be able to realize, that he has to live every single day fully, when he would not feel the end of his life is approaching?

Maybe his authorized biography, which is going to be published already on October 24^th (and most probably will be also showed in a feature film by Sony) will reveal more things. Jobs has allowed Walter Isaacson to get closer to him. He wanted his children to understand his motives, and why he was not there for them when they needed him most. Jobs tried to unveil his personal life mission to them as well as to the Stanford´s students:

„Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice, heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become.“

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For more quotes from Steve Jobs - Please refer to my older blog: Steve Jobs´ Most Relevant Quotes You Never Dare To Forget

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Too Much Authenticity From ex-Yahoo!´s Carol Bartz

noreply@blogger.com (Jana Budikova) — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 10:18:00 +0000

Everybody appreciates true authenticity, especially when displayed by CEOs. However the boarder line between being courageous and being immoderate is really thin. Especially for Carol Bartz (63). Her actions when splitting up with Yahoo! have shown that she generated more publicity about HOW she has left her CEO job there, rather than for what she has done over the last two and a half years in her role.

Breast cancer survivor Carol Bartz was always known for her blunt leadership style. She has always been a no nonsense. When she has learn that she is being fired by the Yahoo! board this September, she has dealt with this unexpected news in her own way. Even before completing her departure deal with the board, she was quick to announce to all Yahoo's 14,000 employees via an iPad email: "I am very sad to tell you that I've just been fired over the phone by Yahoo's Chairman of the Board (Roy Bostock). It has been my pleasure to work with all of you and I wish you only the best going forward. "

The firing of Bartz was messier than it needed to be. Several sources admitted that she was caught by surprise. In her first interview with Fortune since her dismissal, she was very direct to describe her situation: "These people f---ed me over." … On Tuesday, Bartz was in New York, to speak at Citigroup's (C) technology conference the next day, when she was supposed to call Roy Bostock at 6 p.m. "I called him at 6:06," she recalls. When he got on the line, she says, he started reading a lawyer's prepared statement to dismiss her."I said, 'Roy, I think that's a script,'" adding, "'Why don't you have the balls to tell me yourself?'"When Bostock finished reading, Bartz didn't argue—"I got it. I got it," she told the Yahoo chairman. "I thought you were classier," she added. Such kind of statements burn a lot of bridges and divide people into her fans or rather strict opponents.

Bartz is a seasoned executive, proud for what she has achieved, not wiling to be in any way manipulated. She often uses „salty“ language to express her blunt assessments. Reporters love her unforgettable bon mots – e.g. when she refered to Yahoo!'s board as a "bunch of doofuses“ or back in May 2010, when she became famous for her sharp response to aggressive interview attack of Michael Arrington, the internet tech blogger, when she used the „fuck off“ /you tube link/ words to calm him down.

Once Bartz said: "I have a belief that life isn't about balance, because balance is perfection ... Rather, it's about catching the ball before it hits the floor ." Now she entered a period of life to decide which ball she wants to catch up next. The couriosity stands around the question if she is going to learn to build bridges and gather fans.

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Note: According to Mashable: „Yahoo, the No. 1 search engine early last decade and a product of the late 1990s dot-com boom, has in recent years lost ground to Google Inc. and been hurt by social-network firm Facebook Inc. Both are taking away market share in selling online graphical and video ads, a market in which Yahoo previously shone. The number of minutes that U.S. website visitors spend on Yahoo sites per month has dropped 33% since Ms. Bartz's arrival 2 ½ years ago, according to comScore Inc.

Bartz, 63, never was able to articulate a strategy to win over investors. Despite being one of the pioneers in the online search business, Yahoo has seen its market share dwindle in recent times. Not only have the users turned to its rivals, advertisers have also been ditching the company. Research firm eMarketer has projected that Facebook will overtake Yahoo in online display advertising in the US this year. Analysts said a lack of focus and direction have hurt the company's image.

A mother of three and a breast-cancer survivor, Ms. Bartz grew up in a small town in Wisconsin, where she was a high-school homecoming queen. She became a top executive at Sun Microsystems before becoming CEO of Autodesk Inc., which develops software for designers. In 14 years at Autodesk, she increased revenue and the share price. She stepped down in 2006 before being lured to Yahoo's headquarters in Sunnyvale, Calif., three years later. "

Bartz Timeline according to Mercury News:

When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Get Going*

noreply@blogger.com (Jana Budikova) — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 14:29:00 +0000

The rules of the game are changing. When else would be this *Robin Sharma´s quote more true than today when further economical development is uncertain and effects of crisis become even more visible. Managers at all levels lose jobs and those who keep them are playing it safe, being afraid of joining their ex-colleagues. Will they all be able to regain back their self-confidence and happiness?

New conditions require new skills and approaches. Turbulent times create new stars or send defeated individuals into apathy. Stormy days either elevate leadership skills of each individual and show hidden talents, or they may reveal weaknesses of those who are not strong enough to fight their fears of unknown or of those who are not able to adapt and find fresh opportunities offered by the new changed situation.

As Robin Sharma in his book The Leader Who Had No Title well said: “Things need to fall apart before they can be rebuilt. …You can´t reach a place of breakthrough without going through a period of breakdown. Being out in the wilderness of the unknown brings up our limiting beliefs and our greatest fears. You bump up against your insecurities. You meet face-to-face with your self-doubt. Anytime you are moving nearer to growth and embracing deep change, your fears will surface. Your old foundations and traditional structures need to fall apart so better ones can be constructed. Out of confusion always comes clarity. From chaos always flows order.

“It´s amazing how far you can get when you decide that you simply will not give up – that failure is not an option….Obstacles just show up to measure how badly you want something. Setbacks are nothing more than tests to see if you are ready for the rewards that are available to you. Most people give up as soon as they see a wall.”

Positive thinking, creating a new vision for own fulfilling life, accepting stepping up a new learning journey as well as persistency and patience are a must on the way forward.

Uncomfortable conditions wake many leaders up to unleash the greatness within self. When they defeat their fear to go through the tough times, they become stronger. When they go to their limits, their limits expand. When they get ready to thrive in discomfort, they set themselves on the path of being ready to step up.

"Leadership really is about closing your ears to the noisy voices of others so you can more clearly hear the mission and call within yourself. It´s about feeling really safe in your own skin and learning to trust yourself so that you work under your values, express your original voice and be the best you can be. It´s about knowing who you are, what you stand for and then having the courage to be yourself – in every situation rather than only when it´s convenient.“ Robin Sharma

“Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.” Neale Donald Walsch

“We could never learn to be brave and patient if there were only joy in the world.” Helen Keller

Where Are The Next Power Women?

noreply@blogger.com (Jana Budikova) — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 06:51:00 +0000

Everybody agrees to the logic of broadly pronounced claim that “Only Companies who have the best talent win”. However, in reality only very rarely a woman is upweighted alongside with her promoted male boss. Only very rarely a woman succeeds another woman into the board rooms of the corporate world. Does that imply scarcity of talent among women? Definitely not.

In the present knowledge economy that struggles with waves of economical crisis open discussion about women in leadership is relevant more than ever before. As the job market shrinks - we see downwards trend in Central Europe in No. of executive women in the top positions - women are perceived as highly risky to hire.

A woman is by nature different – being more creative, more people involving, more interested in results rather than in hierarchies. Women in high positions are – thanks to their small No. – still much more visible and exposed in media. An unintentional shining media star may put the other folks in the shadow and change the senior management team “club rules” that is seldom desired.

The male bosses would have to enter new waters and put their own reputation at stake in front of their male pals that is rather rare. It has a lot to do with corporate cultures that have as a norm masculine leadership styles and non-inclusive informal networks of men who support each other especially during the crisis times.

And women themselves too often do not help to solve the issue. Women are mistakenly assuming that they can make it through the hard work alone and not through networking and the social side of the corporate ladder. They do not realize that their more direct leadership style limits their putting up with the corporate agenda. Or they give up the battle too soon, accepting the “glass ceiling” status quo that can be as well a result of not having enough confidence while not seeing enough role models around. Or finally they do not see the value in combining forces, mentoring and helping each other up.

There are already few women role models who have made it to the top themselves and since then they are trying to push also other women up– like Sheryl Sandberg, the COO of Facebook or Arianna Huffington from The Huffington Post. Their initiatives (e.g. building women circles or opening new channel for Women in Tech) give courage to other women to make it happen as well.

It certainly does not mean that every woman leader has the desire to jump at the top or has the skills and capabilities to succeed there, however once we accept as a society, that women have a tougher time as they move through the higher ranks than they do at the more junior levels, there will have to be a discussion about what we ALL are ready to do about it. How can each of us make a difference - having in mind that natural evolution of the mankind toward greatness and balance is far better than emposed quotes from the EU Commission.

Should the initial question be rather rephrased into: „Where are the male leaders with guts to hire the next power female executives?

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The unique value women bring to leadership positions, bullet point list from Magus Consulting

“…. Companies with three or more women in senior management functions score more highly on average (on nine dimensions of company excellence). It is notable that performance increases significantly once a certain critical mass is attained, namely, at least three women on management committees for an average membership of 10 people. “ (Women Matter, McKinsey 2007)
“Fortune 500 companies with the highest representation of women board directors attained significantly higher financial performance, on average, than those with the lowest representation of women board directors.” (Catalyst, October 2007)
“A selected group of companies with a high representation of diverse board seats (especially gender diversity) exceeded the average returns of the Dow Jones and NASDAQ Indices over a 5 year period.” (Virtcom Consulting)
“An extensive 19-year study of 215 Fortune 500 firms shows a strong correlation between a strong record of promoting women into the executive suite and high profitability. Three measures of profitability were used to demonstrate that the 25 Fortune 500 firms with the best record of promoting women to high positions are between 18 and 69 percent more profitable than the median Fortune 500 firms in their industries.” (European Project on Equal Pay and summarized by researcher Dr. Roy Adler in Miller McCune).

Note: The EU commission has ambitious objective to increase women's presence on corporate boards to 30% by 2015 and to 40% by 2020, up from 12%. The EU Employment and Social Policy Council urged national-level action by 2020 to "promote the equal participation of women and men in decision-making at all levels and in all fields ." From the eyes of the year 2011 the goal seems unrealistic to achieve….

2011 World´s Most Powerful Women According To Forbes

More On How Sheryl Sandberg Helps Other Women Up

Why Women Have Barriers To Help Each Other Up?

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Social Media Flops Of Respected Companies

noreply@blogger.com (Jana Budikova) — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 15:47:00 +0000

Many people claim to be the real experts on social media. Many people struggle to understand there is more than just “cool” conversation with fans and followers on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other sites, especially when shared on behalf of a company.

Although each social media site has its own culture, language and communication style, all have one thing in common. There are ethics to be preserved. Otherwise negative coverage explodes like a time bomb.

Take the recent case of Microsoft, building up on Amy Winehouse sudden death, trying to exploit mourning of twitter community for its own commercial benefit:@tweetbox360 Microsoft UK PR : Remember Amy Winehouse by downloading the ground-breaking ‘Back to Black’ over at Zune: social.zune.net/album/Amy-Wine… 25 Jul via web. A lot of people found this initiative insensitive and Microsoft had to change the tone: "Apologies to everyone if our earlier Amy Winehouse 'download' tweet seemed purely commercially motivated. Far from the case, we assure you." Following later with a compassionate tweet: "With Amy W's passing, the world has lost a huge talent. Our thoughts are with Amy's family and friends at this very sad time."

Microsoft is not the only Company facing a debacle within its on-line (mainly Twitter) community, in that case due to underestimating community distaste for commercial usage of a celebrity’s misfortune. Some flops are built up incidentally, other time fiasco is a result of purposely issued tweet aiming to test the communication boundaries while getting the media coverage at any costs.

A blunder was most probably a reason for crisis communication of Chrysler Autos this March, after an employee from the hired New Media Strategies agency has mistaken her account for the one she was managing on behalf of @ChryslerAutos and issued following tweet: “I find it ironic that Detroit is known as the #motorcity and yet no one here knows how to f#king drive.” Chrysler immediately after apologized for having their brand compromised and took steps to resolve the issue.

Another case was the one of Kenneth Cole, an American fashion designer, who tried early this year to use the upheaval in Egypt (#Cairo) to promote his own spring collection on Twitter. Luckily for him, the whole event faded while the huge initial negative feedback was replaced not just by instant apology of Kenneth Cole himself, but mainly because Twitter geeks started to joke under #KennethColeTweets about this brand: „People from New Orleans are flooding into Kenneth Cole stores!“ or „People of Australia: Water up to your ankles? We´ve got your Kenneth Cole Capri right here!“. Community sentiment changed from asking people to #unfollow the brand towards growing No. of Kenneth Cole followers laughing about the whole thing.

Humor have already saved attractiveness of many brands, but one cannot count on it in crisis management. Much more appropriate is to stay authentic and real, truly tuned in the community mood. With system for effective monitoring of social media discussions 24/7 as well as with ready strategies and plans for immediate response to unintentional flops each Company can hope that the issue will fade away as the on-line community will move on to the next big thing.

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Progressive CEO Changes Crisis Into Opportunity

When CEO Himself Tweets For His Company, Issue Turns Into Opportunity

noreply@blogger.com (Jana Budikova) — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 14:11:00 +0000

When the news about tweeting CEO Pieter Uys on behalf of Vodacom - the South Africa´s largest cellphone Company - spread out on Twitter early July, I was happy there is the first CEO herald, who takes social media opportunities seriously.

Pieter has not just installed internal effective monitoring systems to track the Company´s reputation on 24/7 scale. When he got alert about connectivity issues being discussed on Twitter and Facebook, he immediately took the time to personally respond to subscribers of Vodacom, who experienced the service downtime. To an angry customer tweet: "@Vodacom are you ignoring my last tweet. If we don't pay you chop us. If you don't provide service we don't pay! @uyspj", Pieter Uys himself wrote back: "@marknel1. Hi Mark. I am not ignoring you. Working on making you smile again :-)". And later that night, Pieter continued to keep his customers aware, he is there for them to solve the issues: “Words can’t express how sorry I am about today’s problem. Flat out working at making sure all is 100%. Pieter.” He shared updates until the problems were solved.

Instead of probable consequent negative press coverage and a stream of customers leaving to competition, Uys not just attracted positive international attention, he won the respect of the hard to persuade tweeting community: “The fact that you are still working at 11pm speaks volumes Pieter -- as does your apology. Bravo,” Chris Moerdyk.

Customers were astonished, that a CEO himself took the time to speak with them. They got reassurance that the problems are temporary and being solved with high priority, as the CEO himself puts his credit into the game. And because Pieter Uys listened and cared enough, because his tweets were authentic and with clear intentions, he was able to switch opinions.

As Vodacom case shows, nowadays there is a huge benefit when a CEO acts as the public face of the company to both the customer community as well as the marketplace as a whole, when he shifts the emphasis from a broadcast and self-centered mentality to one of listening and serving the community.

Vodacom´s CEO clearly understood, that social conversations nowadays have turned the tables. Customers are more and more empowered to publish their thoughts, there is no way to stop or control them. Brands and companies are no longer expected to be perfect, quite the opposite. And the ones that continue to repeat the good old message of "You - customer- are lucky we exist. We are perfect. It is you that is not" are definitely heading to face a big surprise.

Reputation is not just something to "protect". Reputation is something to be built - every day, each moment, every single step. Social media offer a great opportunity to enhance it for brands and companies, especially if they are led by brave and progressive CEOs.

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Google Made Her Rich, Facebook Made Her A Legend

noreply@blogger.com (Jana Budikova) — Sun, 24 Jul 2011 12:20:00 +0000

Some people become famous for what they say. The outstanding ones make their quotes reality. Like Sheryl Sandberg. Woman, who has made it last year to #16 place of 50 Most Powerful Women in Business in the world selected by Fortune magazine and this year jumped to #5 place of 100 Most Powerful Women in the World by Forbes (#2 in Business).

In 2007, Mark Zuckerberg, the co-founder of Facebook, felt a desperate need to turn Facebook from a “cool” social network to a real profitable business. Sheryl Sandberg, Google’s thirty-eight-year-old vice-president for global on-line sales and operations, was recommended to him as a potential partner. They started to talk at a Christmas party, they continued their discussions at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland in January. The deal was done and Sheryl Sandberg became the first COO of Facebook in March 2008. She started to write a history of a legend for herself.

Influenced By Her Mentor´s Career

Sandberg has benefited from sponsor Lawrence Summers, who was very powerful. First he was her thesis adviser at Harvard Business School. Later when Summers became the chief economist at the World Bank he recruited her as a research assistant. Finally when Lawrence advanced to Treasury Secretary, in 1999, Sandberg became, at twenty-nine, his chief of staff. After the Democrats lost the 2000 election, she decided to move to Silicon Valley to join the technology boom. Sandberg is still very grateful for his support, for encouraging her and helping her to develop: “Nobody can succeed on their own,” she believes.

Risk Taking Business Builder

Sandberg has joined Google even when she knew that they didn’t have a business plan. It was a private company, barely three years old, with no steady revenue stream. Her title was business-unit general manager, even though there was no business unit. At the time, Google had four people working on AdWords, a program for selling the small text ads that appear next to related search results. Sandberg volunteered to oversee sales and operations for the project. Before long, AdWords was making money. Soon, Sandberg was working on AdSense, which placed advertisements on external Web sites, with Google taking a slice of the revenues.And finally she got the AOL deal running. She was tough and fearless.

Profit Driven
Her biggest worry was financial. “There was this open question: Could we make money, ever?” The engineers in Facebook were primarily interested in building a really cool site; profits, they assumed, would follow. Thanks to Sheryl, by 2010, a company that was bleeding cash, when she arrived, had become profitable. Within three years, Facebook grew from a hundred and thirty employees to twenty-five hundred, and from seventy million worldwide users to nearly seven hundred million.

Hands-on, Attention To Detail

“Sheryl always believed that if there were thirty things on her to-do list at the beginning of the day, there would be thirty check marks at the end of the day,” Summers says. Zuckerberg says he’s grateful that Sandberg “handles things I don’t want to.”

Listening, Approachable And Collaborative

Sandberg began to work at Facebook asking questions and listening. “She walked up to hundreds of people’s desks and interrupted them and said, ‘Hi, I’m Sheryl Sandberg,’ ” recalls Chris Cox, the vice-president of product. She goes around the room and asks people, ‘What do you think?’ ” She welcomes debate.

Being Close To Employees
The people who are her friends at work are her friends outside work. With Sheryl, everything is personal. There isn’t a separation with this thing she does at work and everything else. Sandberg says: “I believe in bringing your whole self to work. We are who we are. When you try to have this division between your personal self and your professional self, what you really are is stiff. . . . That doesn’t mean people have to tell me everything about their personal lives. But I’m pretty sharing of mine.” Being open with your employees, she believes, means that nothing is a surprise to them—even if you fire them.

Helping People Advance

“A key part of what Sheryl does in her life is helping people advance, to be seen and to be heard,” David Fischer, who was her deputy at Treasury, and has worked for her at Google and now at Facebook, says.

Supporting Other Women In Their Career

Early this spring, Sandberg gathered twelve female Facebook executives for the company’s Women’s Leadership Day. Each of them was expected to lead sessions encouraging all the female executives there to step up “into leadership” roles. Sandberg believes that women need the equivalent of “the old-boys network.” That is why Sheryl is putting together a new-girls network inside Silicon Valley. She invites to her home each month rotating cast of two hundred women for a buffet dinner and to listen to and question guests, who have included e.g. Microsoft C.E.O. Steve Ballmer, the educator Geoffrey Canada, and Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Being Always Honest

“She builds trust because she’s honest,” Cox says. “People can be intimidated by Mark. Sheryl just cuts right through that.” Summers sees it similarly and appreciates her boldness: “If I was making a mistake, she told me. She was totally loyal, but totally in my face.”

Powerful, Still True To Herself

“Sandberg could go be the C.E.O. of any company that she wanted to,” Mark Zuckerberg says. “But I think the fact that she really wants to get her hands dirty and work, and doesn’t need to be the front person all the time, is the amazing thing about her. It’s that low-ego element, where you can help the people around you and not need to be the face of all the stuff.” Howard Schultz, the C.E.O. of Starbucks, says, “Most people you meet who are highly qualified and accomplished tend to want to tell you all the things they’ve done and how smart they are. Or they want to impress you. Sheryl is not like that at all.”

With An Unplanned Future

Surely Sandberg is on track to one day become a C.E.O., if that’s what she wants. Or she may decide to return back to a potential career in politics. When she was asked, what she can imagine doing next, she responded simply, “I’m actually quite happy with Mark and the company. I always tell people if you try to connect the dots of your career, if you mess it up you’re going to wind up on a very limited path. If I decided what I was going to do in college - when there was no Internet, no Google, no Facebook . . . - I don’t want to make that mistake. The reason I don’t have a plan is because if I have a plan I’m limited to today’s options.”

During her Barnard´s Speech Sandberg said to fresh women graduates, “Don’t let your fears overwhelm your desire. Let the barriers you face—and there will be barriers—be external, not internal. Fortune does favor the bold. I promise that you will never know what you’re capable of unless you try. You’re going to walk off this stage today and you’re going to start your adult life. Start out by aiming high. . . . Go home tonight and ask yourselves, What would I do if I weren’t afraid? And then go do it!”

Written based on inspiration from following sources: The New Yorker Magazine:http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/07/11/110711fa_fact_auletta?currentPage=all, the interviews in various newspapers, TED Talk and Barnard´s Speech.

Going Into Own Business For The Right Reasons

noreply@blogger.com (Jana Budikova) — Sun, 17 Jul 2011 17:16:00 +0000

I have recently observed many managers quitting the corporate job for their vision of starting their own Company. Right or wrong, the future will tell. They have to be sure they do not join the entrepreneurship world just because of their need to achieve bigger personal freedom, money or fame. Or because they think they have no other choice and look for an easy escape. These internal, personally driven reasons for launching a start-up are wrong. They are predetermined for failure.

For creating the next big thing an entrepreneur must have dreams that are externally driven, focused around improving customers´ well-being. Only those succeed in the longer term, who look at the outside opportunities thinking about how to best seize them in a unique way. Only those succeed who are making meaningful products and services, who bring the future closer towards the present time. Only those succeed, who are passionate about changing the status quo, about improving the quality of lives of people on this planet.

Formalized Companies purposes bring the visions down to the Earth – for customers, potential employees, business partners or investors. Leaders, who are able to make the purpose clear, inspiring and unique for the benefit of others, eventually surf on the wave of success. Freedom, money and fame come to them only as a bonus, afterwards.

The Company purpose formulation needs to be made prior launching of a new venture. It gives the direction. It guides the investments decision path. It helps customers to understand what the Company stands for, how does it fit in this world.

Starbucks rewards everyday moments. “Starbucks´mission is to inspire and nurture the human spirit – one person, one cup and one neighborhood at a time.” “Expect More than Coffee – we are a neighborhood gathering place, a part of daily routine.” (Source: Starbucks.com)

Coca-cola refreshes the world, inspires the moments of optimism and happiness, creates value and makes a difference. (Source: The Coca Cola Company 2020 Vision)

Apple was never about selling boxes to people to get their jobs done. As per Steve Jobs: “Apple at the core, it´s core value is, that we believe that people with passion can change the world for the better.” … “The goal was never to beat the competitor, or to make a lot of money, it was to do the greatest thing possible, or even a little greater.” (Source: You Tube)

Having the objective of giving a meaning to your Company still does not guarantee lifetime success, but it definitely gives a fulfillment coming from aiming for something more than ordinary, not for self, but for the others.

“In real life being an “entrepreneur” is not a job title. It is a state of mind of people, who want to change the future.“ - Guy Kawasaki

“You should carefully observe, where you heart leads you, then to choose this path and devote your maximum energy to it.” Hasidic proverb

Hot News: Twitter & The Pope

noreply@blogger.com (Jana Budikova) — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 16:04:00 +0000

The Pope Benedict XVI. is on Twitter (@news_va_en). These top news were hot enough this week for a wide twitter community discussion, even though Vatican is already tweeting for some time (until today with 1300 tweets, and ca 65 thousand followers). The spread of the news started only when the Pope Benedict XVI. has sent his first - by his team pre-prepared - tweet from his iPad (great choice by the way…). Becoming the first Pope to tweet in history. Learning “THE” thing:

@news_va_en Vatican - news

Dear Friends, I just launched http://t.co/fVHpS9y Praised be our Lord Jesus Christ! With my prayers and blessings, Benedictus XVI

28 Jun via Twitter for iPad

The Pope received positive and negatives WOWs in the twitter discussion. But what is more important, there is a clear signal, that to be a leader in this world one must participate on Twitter (or Facebook) . To influence the masses while being accessible. To start to understand the youngsters, to come closer to their world.

The Pope became by this tweeting act another role model within the social media world, mainly for the mid age plus generation, that - especially in Europe - still consider Twitter not being their cup of tea. As they do not understand why they should use it. Now they can come closer to the Pope every day. Not only to the Pope, but towards many other gurus and leaders, they can get real time news, from the spot, before anybody else has it.

If an 84-old man of many obligations gets easily excited about twitter (and Facebook and YouTube, where his messages will be from now on posted), when will you?

CNN commentary and video about the Pope tweeting

P.S. By the way - a great free PR for twitter and iPad!
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Why Lufthansa Does Not Care About Its Customers

noreply@blogger.com (Jana Budikova) — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 08:46:00 +0000

It seems that still today there are some companies who view customer service as a one-off transaction and who believe that "Customer in not our boss". Like in the recent case of the Czech Lufthansa subsidiary.

Living in Germany for several years, often flying back and forth to Prague, I was loyal frequent flyer customer of Lufthansa, the German airlines Company I had always fully trusted. One day this March I have got a call from a Lufthansa customer service operator to check if my frequent flyer stored data are up-to-date. Next day my credit card was charged with cancellation fee for a flight ticket issued in my name last year that I have not been aware of, I have never booked or paid for. Lufthansa claimed afterwards that because the ordering person identity does not exist anymore, someone has to pay. I have to pay. Because the name and frequent flyer number match.

This real-life story leaves a lot of unanswered questions behind, like: Why does Lufthansa solve their financial claims 12 months after they occur, in a different fiscal year and with a wrong person? Where the rest of the flight tickets money ended, when the ordering person is after one year untraceable? Do we all have to start to worry, that somebody from now on uses our names and frequent flyer data and we will be obliged to pay for cancellation fees of flight tickets we have no idea about?

I have asked Lufthansa Czech exactly these questions (by e-mail and registered letter). Until now, being it already four months, I have not received their answer to my worries. I have only got e-mail talking about standard procedures, no apology, no interest.

This case shows ignorance of ethics. The Czech Lufthansa team was putting the total Company reputation and trust in the bin, all because of 820 Kč (ca 50 USD), that in the end Lufthansa anyhow never obtained from me, because my UniCredit Bank was able to dispute and stop this transaction based on no rights for this claim from the Lufthansa side.

This case shows ignorance of business sense. As my loyalty to Lufthansa has been vanished, Lufthansa has lost tens of thousands Crowns or even Euro. The amount of money I and my close family and friends would pay them for flight tickets for our entire lives. Lifetime value of a customer is what matters. Not a one-off shot.

This case shows the mother Company can operate efficiently and ethically in the home country, but not having invested in small countries in staff training and check-ups, the whole case can backfire and influence the mother as well.

Cases of mistreating customers are unfortunately common all over the world. However thanks to the rise of social media, they are not anymore secrets. They spread out really fast. The Companies can either infuse proper customer service attitude among ALL staff, or they pay much more money for reputation tracking and firefighting.

The decision is theirs.

P.S. See 7 Customer Service Blunders That Went Big Scale Viral

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