Luca Leonardini's blog

Delivering outstanding customer experience, "Wowing!" customers through service was initially a business objective at Zappos. Now, thanks to Zappos, it has become a worldwide movement with a dedicated web site.

1. Be Humble
2. Be Passionate And Determined
3. Do More With Less
4. Build A Positive Team And Family Spirit
5. Build Honest And Open Relationships With Communication
6. Pursue Growth And Learning
7. Be Adventurous Creative And Open Minded
8. Create Fun And A Little Wierdness
9. Embrace And Drive Change
10. Deliver Wow Through Service

Top 50 Business Thinkers of 2011

The Top 50 Business Thinkers is the definitive global ranking of management thinkers published every two years: last edition was 2011 and next will be in 2013.

Why am I talking about this topic?

Because while reading the list, I was amazed to find out that 3 out of the 50 best thinkers are also among my favorite authors!

I believe these are invaluable readings for two main reasons: 1) their findings, the results of their studies and 2) the mind set of the authors who are shifting paradigmes in the business world and in our culture.

You can check these two links in my blog, to find these books and eventually about other very valuable readings: My Best Readings In English and My Best Readings In Italian.

Would you like to share your favorite business authors and titles?

A true story with “double happy ending”

Here is how it went. To complete and to enrich my presentations I am used to work with JingPro a very easy to use screen capture software from TechSmith. It allows to capture videos in “.mp4” format up to 5 minutes which perfectly fulfil my presentation needs. I love working with Jing and I had already my JingPro licence (€14.50), but for some reason the software wasn’t able to switch my account from Jing “base” that saves only “.swf” files, to JingPro. That was a big problem because embedding “.mp4” files into my Keynote presentations is so essential for me.

I was in a hurry and didn’t have the time to go through the articles of the endless knowledge base to search the answer to the one problem: I want to switch to JingPro, to use my licence to capture my screen casts. Period.
After a couple of days trying to get in contact with someone in the company I eventually find out a feedback page: I immediately left a comment to share my concerns for not being able to complete my job and my frustration for feeling unheard.

In less than one hour the PR Global Head answered my (negative) comment clearly showing empathy and genuine care about the issue. In less than 24 hours (included the day/night change between US where TechSmith is based and Europe where I live) the problem was fixed. I could finally complete my presentation!

This could have been well enough for me to feel happy and satisfied, to go again to the feedback page and sincerely thank the PR Head and her team. But for them it was not enough and they decided to acknowledge the frustrations and the waste of time I went through by giving me a free licence of Snagit, their screen capture software that does unlimited screencast recording, provides “.mp4” files, allows video editing and costs €47,95.

Wow! That’s been my reaction. They really wowed me! In three steps they converted me from a very unsatisfied customer to a very happy customer. This is how they did it.

1. They acknowledged the problem with empathy.
2. They reacted immediately and fix the problem.
3. They exeeded my expectations.

I think this is an excellent example of how taking genuine care for the customer experience is a crucial and strategic issue for the business.

Have you got a recent customer experience you would like to share? With or without "happy ending".

In my previous article (Innovation Doesn’t Just Happen), I cited the content stored in a Digital Asset Management system as the lifeblood of any organization. Now, caring for the quality of this precious lifeblood consists of giving digital content the most meaningful and efficient structure within a DAM system. Living with unstructured content can be harmful to the organization - like having the blood infected by some kind of dangerous toxin.

What is “content”?

“Content” usually refers to texts, images, and audio or video files created by users for business or personal purposes, shared across the web in a wide variety of formats and across many different platforms or devices. Because texts and images have always been elements of the layout of a printed page, it’s possible to store and access these types of content and their containers (frames, picture boxes, text boxes, groups of items, etc.) in a DAM system. Today, with the Web 2.0 revolution and the new generation of mobile devices, the whole concept of “page” has evolved to become a more flexible logical entity. Of course, content can be assembled on a page to be printed (good old PDF!), assembled to create output like a web page, enriched (through the use of videos, pictures, links, etc.) the user experience on one of the many social media platforms, and enjoyed in a variety of new formats for e-readers, tablets and smartphones. Just think about that as an example: until a couple of years ago, it would have been unthinkable to embed video files, audio files, and presentations in the same layout - today it’s a must-have. The ability to store and manage all digital content in a DAM system is a must for a profitable company.

Why is structured content so important?

Structuring content within a DAM system allows the company to build effective and flexible communication processes. Structured content can be easily shared, distributed, translated, and published across the many existing Web 2.0 channels and devices. It could become a disastrous nightmare for a company to translate content for different markets without a content creation and distribution policy which relies on flexible and effective business processes. The explosion of mobile devices has made this crucial and strategic stage much more complex than in the past, and has highlighted the business advantages of adopting a structured approach to content management. Today the same content must be produced in a variety of different new formats, and on top of all that (just to make things even more complex and fun!), layout pages created for tablets must be doubled to fit both wide and vertical orientation modes. This means that for any given multilanguage publication, the number of pages simply doubles - not so easy to manage. This is exactly where a content management strategy brings effective and concrete results to the business. Structured content is a big plus in today’s market, where companies must be able to play locally and globally at the same time: the right DAM strategy helps the company become a “Glocal” player.

What about connected content?

Without well-structured content, there can’t be any connected content - it’s a prerequisite. Digital content must be structured to be profitably managed within internal and external communication processes, and it must be capable of exchanging information with a variety of third-party systems and external systems or services. The production of content for a multilanguage publication involves the creation and management of many different types of assets, each with many different types of metadata, all stored within the DAM system. When content reaches the market in the form of an online or digital publication, it enters a completely new dimension. In this context, content is tracked on the web through the geolocalization systems that know exactly where it was read, downloaded, shared, embedded, and repurposed. Different types of systems record any transaction that the content undergoes, anywhere, at any time. Other systems collect and analyze the data of each single “reader-customer-consumer”. Others compare the behaviors of all the “readers-customers-consumers” together.

The new dimension of content is about being connected with the outside world, able to communicate with external systems or services, to generate and aggregate as many connections (see business information) as possible. It’s a true snowball effect, where, at the end of the run, a simple piece of content (say, a product description with image and rating) becomes an extremely valuable source of deeply entwined and connected business information. From user ratings to comments on social media; number of downloads to quantity of transactions and engagement generated - its value increases with the number of connections generated across the web.

The DAM system plays a strategic role in this process – it is indispensable. If structured content is undoubtedly king, connected content is emperor: the business information collected around structured digital content through these tightly-woven connections is becoming increasingly important for companies who want to win the new big battle - “to collect and analyze information better and to act on that information faster”. (@ACroll Alistair Croll)

Why a poll on the Job Definition Format (JDF)?

Because the JDF it’s a process automation enabler for the printing industry and for the graphic arts which helps companies in this market to work smartly, to reduce wastes, costs, to develop a culture of continuous improvement.

What does it mean JDF in business terms?

It means that the average ROI of a JDF enabled process automation project is 277% and that 4 months after the implementation is completed, the company reaches the breakeven.

What is the link between the JDF and the current market situation?

The printing and publishing business have been so hardly hit by the explosion of new technologies (tablets, smartphones, HTML5, CSS3, JS, XML, social media platforms, ...) in the last couple of years: I do believe the reduction of wastes and costs, the increase of efficiency should be a must to adopt in order to remain in business today.
In the last 10 years (think for a minute what has been the last decade for the world!) the JDF has been successfully adopted by a large number of printing industries around the world. Truth to be told, the general feeling about the JDF is that its market spread could be much larger and that its huge business potential hasn’t been fully discovered (maybe understood!) yet.

So these are my questions.

Trying to understand “why” such a smart technology hasn’t been adopted by the vast majority of the market. Trying to understand “what” can still be done to help entrepreneurs and managing directors approaching the JDF primarily as a business strategy, not as “just a technical issue”. There are many other questions of course: the purpose of the poll is to provide the community with a useful opportunity to think about the many possible questions and answers.

The discussion will be extremely valuable for the community of customers, of technology suppliers and for the CIP4 Institute (the creator and the developer): it can help to better focus on mutual expectations in the future of the business.

I invite you to use DISQUS (below the post) to add any comment or to suggest new options you would add to the menu list. As soon as there will be enough data for the statistics, I will publish a new post with the results.

Thank you for taking your time and for participating!