Real Time: Preparing for the Age of the Never Satisfied Customer [Grands caractères] [Anglais] [Relié]

Regis McKenna's insights will excite you and shock you. Best of all, they will get you thinking about how to survive in a future world where things happen so quickly that every current business interaction and process must be radically overhauled.

The race is on for real time information in marketing.... Regis McKenna explains how and why we need to open our thinking to take advantage of Real Time information.

Regis McKenna never ceases to challenge the conventional wisdom. The notion of eliminating hierarchy and long-term planning, and creating realtime management that focuses on delivery, results, and customer needs is a key revelation for companies large and small. The use of networked technologies to enable the creation of distributed, connected organizations has tremendous implications for the next generation of competitiveness for industries of all types.

«Où, quand et comme je veux» pourrait être la nouvelle devise du client. Regis McKenna, spécialiste du marketing ayant participé à de nombreux start-up dont ceux d'Intel, d'Apple et de Microsoft expose ses conseils pour préparer l'entrée de nos organisations dans l'ère du «client jamais satisfait». Pour être compétitif dans une économie «en temps réel» (tout s'acquiert, tout se veut en instantané), les entreprises doivent développer au maximum leur réactivité autrement dit être prêtes à offrir une réponse à tout moment à n'importe quelle éventualité.

This timely and crisp assessment of the digital revolution shows business leaders how the revolution affects buyers' behavior and ordinary business practices, where the never satisfied customer will take us in the future, and--most important--why it matters.

"...A magnificent tour through an exciting if uncertain future in which everybody's connected to everybody."

"Regis McKenna [is] high-tech marketing whiz, star of the business-seminar circuit and author of Relationship Marketing. Now comes Real Time, another up-to-the-minute report from the future's front lines."

"[McKenna's] unique observations on the state of technology, marketing, and customer service could make this book a standard."

"[Regis McKenna is] one of high-tech's ace trendspotters and a respected marketing wizard in Silicon Valley." and "It's high time a management guru squelched the notion of scientific management, just as quantum physic and chaos theory have eroded the old mechanistic view of science. Real Time does just that"

"An insightful and useful book that provides a practical understanding of how time, technology, and customer service are increasingly interrelated." --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.

"Regis McKenna never ceases to challenge the conventional wisdom. The notion of eliminating hierarchy and long-term planning, and creating real time management that focuses on delivery, results, and customer needs, is a key revelation for companies large and small." --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.

"Real Time has all the ingredients of a successful business book, including a simple yet powerful theme." --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.

"A wide-ranging, entertaining tour of the real-time landscape...a good read for your next plane trip." --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.

Real Time caused a sensation with its provocative look at doing business in a real time world, a world created on demand, where customers demand instant gratification...or else. Now available in paperback, this pathbreaking book reveals why managers today must be prepared for anything-anytime, anywhere, and in-your-face.

We get cash in seconds at ATMs, we watch wars unfold instantaneously on live TV. Technology today compresses to zero the time needed to acquire information, to make decisions, to react, and to innovate. The companies best equipped for the twenty-first century understand that real time means exceptional responsiveness to customer expectations, and are seizing the opportunities that our real time reality presents. Real Time explores how to create a sensing organization that constantly monitors, queries, verifies, adjusts, tries, and initiates. It will spark your imagination, move you to think in new ways, and ignite a lively debate on how to dominate in real time. --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.

Right here. Right now. Tailored to me. Served up the way I like it. If the new consumers spelled their expectations out on a billboard, then this is what you would read. From the author of Relationship Marketing comes a pathbreaking book on doing business in a real time world -- one in which time and distance vanish, action and response are simultaneous, and customers demand instant gratification . . . or else.

Technology is continually transforming our existence in profound ways; and the pace of change is speeding up, not slowing down: we get cash in seconds at ATMs, we watch wars unfold instantaneously on live television. Almost all technology today compresses to zero the time needed to acquire and use information, to make decisions and initiate actions, to deploy resources and innovate.

What does all this mean to the creators and managers who want to lead their organizations to success in the real time world? A new way of thinking -- fast. Above all, says McKenna, management must be prepared for the eventuality of anything, anytime, anywhere, and in-your-face. To compete in a real time world, managers must create a sensing organization that constantly monitors, feeds, queries, verifies, adjusts, tries, and initiates.

The companies best equipped for the twenty-first century are seizing the opportunities that our real time reality presents. Their leaders understand that real time means exceptional responsiveness to customers and ongoing adjustments to deliver on those expectations. Innovative in page design and fresh with enlightening stories from McKenna's own experience as entrepreneur, insider, and consultant to the world92s most influential leaders, Real Time will move readers to think in new ways, spark their imaginations, and ignite a lively debate on how to dominate in real time.

A provocative book on doing business in a real time world - one in which time and distance collapse, action and response are simultaneous, and customers demand instant gratification...or else. DLC: Real time data processing.

A Business Week Bestseller

Regis McKenna is the Chairman of The McKenna Group (www.mckenna-group.com), a Palo Alto, California-based consulting firm with expertise in the development of information and telecommunications management, marketing, and alliance strategies. He is also a Venture Partner of the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (www.kpcb.com) in Menlo Park and San Francisco, California.

In addition to his affiliation with Kleiner Perkins, McKenna is active as an independent investor who has seeded over a dozen start-ups, including Weblogic (www.weblogic.com), a database conductivity, java software company in San Francisco; GrahamTechnologies, a video Internet network company; and Real Time Knowledge Systems, a developer of collaborative marketing tools that allow users to "learn and do" across intranets.

Born and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, he moved to the San Francisco Bay area in 1962, working for General Micro Electronics and as director of market services at National Semiconductor before forming his own company in 1970.

McKenna was responsible for helping to launch some of the most important technological innovations of the last twenty five years, including the first microprocessor (Intel Corporation), the first Personal Computer (Apple Computer, where his firm also helped redesign the company's now-famous apple logo), the first recombinant DNA genetically-engineered product (Genentech, Inc.), and the first retail computer store (The Byte Shop). Other first-time technology marketing efforts he participated in include the first commercial laser for retail systems, the first computer Local Area Network, the first electronic spreadsheet, the first operating system for personal computers, the first mini super computers and the first desktop publishing systems.

Entrepreneurial start-ups McKenna has worked with during their early formation years include America On Line, Apple, Businessland, Compaq, Electronic Arts, Genentech, Intel, Linear Technology, Lotus, Microchip, Microsoft, National Semiconductor, Sequent, Silicon Graphics, 3Com, and Tandem. In the last decade, he has consulted on strategic marketing and business issues to many of the largest technology-based firms in the United States, Japan, and Europe. He continues to be involved in high tech start-up companies through his venture activities.

In addition to Real Time, McKenna is the author of The Regis Touch (1985), the first book about the marketing of high technology companies; Who is Afraid of Big Blue? (1989), which predicted the difficulties IBM was about to face in the next decade; and the now-classic Relationship Marketing (1992), which focuses on the interactive relationships vital to market acceptance in the Age of the Customer. His articles have appeared in such publications as Upside and Harvard Business Review.

McKenna is on the Advisory Board to Stanford's Graduate School of Business. He is a Founding Board Member of Smart Valley, a Silicon Valley project to create an information highway linking businesses, schools, governments and homes; a Trustee at Santa Clara University; and President of the Board of Trustees for The New Children's Shelter of Santa Clara County.

Currently, McKenna lectures and conducts seminars on technology marketing and competitiveness issues throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia.

Thinking short term is good.

Never mind if it has become a cliche to accuse American business and Wall Street of too much short-term thinking. After all, the positive facet of this tendency is hair-trigger responsiveness, by the standards of European or Japanese companies. . . . American companies are actually evidence that an emphasis on short-term considerations is the best guarantor of long-term strength and competitiveness. For this seeming paradox there is a parallel in long distance running. You do not train for marathons by running marathons every day, but by running shorter distances and sprintsthis training prepares the runner for the long haul.

Brand new brand.

Technology ... has made it possible for companies to be in touch with their customers individually and in real time .... The most dramatic implication of this shift to Real Time marketing is the complete transformation of the concept of brand. Branding of a new and entirely different kind is being born -- brand as an encapsulation of actual, experienced value ... The nature of that experience is increasingly determined through customer preferences expressed in dialogue with producers or service-providers -- an exchange made possible by technology, and one in which the consumer now has the upper hand.

Relationships 101.

How, in our new environment of extreme market fragmentation, can companies create and maintain brand loyalty? The answer is to alter brand definition so as to supply what has been missing from the picture -- a rich dialogue between producers and consumers that creates a constant information and feedback. That producer-consumer interaction will need to have its information systems tuned to Real Time if companies are to coordinate and deliver finely calibrated, timely responses to consumers. . . .Real Time management will mean transforming relationships inside companies. It calls for the intimate and immediate interconnection of marketing, product development, engineering, and manufacturing.

Natural creativity.

Dave Packard, the legendary co-founder of Hewlett-Packard, once said that the development of new ideas is not limited by resources or technology but by another type of boundaryowerful and effective ideas are unlikely to emerge from isolating creativity on a pedestal. Instead, managers must learn to immerse themselves in their companies' actual circumstances, partly by using the information tools of the age of real time to constantly update the facts at their disposal, and partly by seeking as much direct contact as possible with customers, customers' customers, and with the products and services of competitors. Creative thinking will arise naturally from a visceral sense of the state of things and from early intimations of new openings and opportunities.

Service: What it is. What it isn't.

Unfortunately, in most organizations, we still view service as fixing things after the fact. To build a Real Time culture, the different segments of organizations must learn to serve each other's needs proactively, just as they must learn to do for (outside) customers. To this end, tools such as databases and intranet browsers to search them can be acquired and put to work now. So, for instance, in Real Time, a salesperson in a large corporation making a bid on a big project in Tokyo should be able to order a search within his own organization back in Peoria for expertise he lacks and for missing pieces of the solution. He should be able to notify a sales manager in Hong Kong of key influences on the Tokyo customer's decision that happen to be located in her territory, and enlist her help. He should be able to access the office of his corporationin the marketplace as much as anywhere else. You might say that as the bandwidth of expression expands people become content: knowledge, as well as graphic, intimate, even viscerally affecting human experiences, will become the common currency of exchange and interaction.