The Innovation Management Process

Posted by —

0

By Kevin Smit I was reading idealog recently and it was talking about the recent trip to the US by 25 Kiwi business leaders and I thought it was worth sharing. The main focus of the trip was to explore how to design the innovation process better – for both employees and clients. Amidst all of the 12 cutting-edge companies, including Facebook, Apple and Google, they visited it was interesting that Phillip Mills key takeaway came from the Stanford University Design School. Certainly it seems Read more [...]

Do we need to reinvent how we collect customer feedback?

Posted by —

0

By Kevin Smit According to a recent USA today article, you could be hurting brand loyalty by asking your customers to fill out “another” customer feedback form. At every conference we run here at Conferenz we include a paper-based customer feedback survey for attendees. Increasingly we are getting fewer and fewer responses back, which is a big concern considering that these surveys provide us with invaluable feedback on the event and what we should consider going forward. We’ve trialled Read more [...]

Conferenz = conferences / Bright*Star = training

Posted by —

0

By Steve Scott We have completed some internal brand focus work and are pleased to announce that from 2012 onwards all of our conferences will be offered under the Conferenz brand, and all of our training courses will be offered under the Bright*Star Training brand. We believe that this will add greater clarity to our customers about our two service offerings. Our Conferenz conferences offer neutral arenas for debate around key legislative/policy, industry or job roles. Our conference customers Read more [...]

Let Your Customers Experience Your Brand

Posted by —

0

By Steve Scott Want to know Air New Zealand’s best customer experience asset? Is it the well thought out website and booking process? Is it the simple, well-executed automated check-in counters? Perhaps those cheeky safety videos that have become youtube hits? Well, it’s none of these. Air NZ’s secret weapon is a woman called Tania Forsyth. Tania is an air hostess working for Air NZ affiliate Air Nelson. Tania surpasses all other cabin crew when it comes to customer feedback. So, how Read more [...]

Why Your IT Project May Be Riskier Than You Think

Posted by —

0

By Kevin Smit I was recently reading an article by Bent Flyvbjerg (Oxford University’s Saïd Business School) and Alexander Budzier (McKinsey & Co) about research they are conducting in the area of IT projects. One of the things they have discovered was that when they broke down the projects’ cost overruns, they found that the average overrun was 27%—but that figure masks a far more alarming one. Graphing the projects’ budget overruns reveals a “fat tail”—a large number of Read more [...]

Forecasting, tracking and analysing trends

Posted by —

0

By Kevin Smit Have you ever visited websites like trendhunter.com or trendwatching.com or used Trendistic or Twitter search to see what is trending? I’d have to agree with Grant McCracken who describes the word “trend" as one of the most promiscuous word in the English language, applied to almost everything these days. In our day-to-day business we closely monitor business and government policy trends. This is part of our approach to researching and identifying the information that Read more [...]