I know only a few ways to take market share and drive new revenue. I can engineer better products and services, I can build better relationships with my customers and deliver a higher level of service, or I can give my customers a lower price.
CIOs have to be able to lay out a clear path in concert with the business leader - I used to make the business guy responsible for the apps and force them to answer the question of why they feel they need non-standard apps when they know that's how the costs skyrocket.
It's counterproductive to lower my price, because I have to sell more units to make up for that lost revenue. Generating brand-new products can take a long time. Improving service is typically the quickest way that I can take market share. So aligning technology strategy to better service customers becomes an essential path to revenue growth.
Without execution, 'vision' is just another word for hallucination.
I'm old, I'm used to crummy service, I'm trained to get crummy service. To me, the fact I can get through to a call centre and then hold for 15 minutes, I don't get that upset. My kids won't. They want to know the answer to their question now. As a company you have to provide an answer to that consumer.
