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Midmarket CIOs find that the newest Web-based technologies are bringing the IT department -- and the business -- closer to customers than ever.
Sifting through family records after her sister's death, Julia Frost Yake of Indiana came across a 1936 photograph of the two girls standing by a mailbox showing off their father's Burpee seed mail-order catalog. Yake, who grew to love gardening as her dad did, sent the century-old seed company the black-and-white photo, along with a 1999 snapshot of Yake standing beside a mailbox and holding a modern-day Burpee catalog. "It's 63 years later, but I still use and prefer Burpee seeds," she wrote in an accompanying letter.
Just one of thousands of letters received annually by the Warminster, Pa.-based W. Atlee Burpee & Co., the correspondence was a staff favorite for years. Today, thanks to a successful Burpee Web strategy that includes blogs and Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds, the Yake sisters are part of the Burpee customer experience. Their images and story have inspired other loyal customers to share family gardening anecdotes and traditions.
"Our customers have always been there," says Don Zeidler, a 20-year Burpee veteran who heads up direct marketing and e-commerce. "It's just we couldn't efficiently and effectively engage them in any back-and-forth conversation."
Like Burpee, businesses competing in all sorts of industries are finding new ways to connect with consumers, thanks to the interactive Web 2.0 tools that are redefining today's online experience. Blogs, wikis, podcasts and mashups also have the potential to bring CIOs closer to external customers and internal business sponsors as product development and sales strategies become more reliant on Web features and functions. (A mashup is a Web page or application that integrates elements from multiple sources.)
In a recent Forrester Research Inc. survey, 89% of 119 CIOs say they use some form of Web 2.0 technology. Still, Web 2.0 means different things to different people, and many CIOs will tell you they avoid the catchall buzz phrase and focus instead on specific technologies and tools.
"As the CIO, I drive the technology strategy. Web 2.0 and SOA [service-oriented architecture] are key components of the architecture," says John Beale, executive vice president and CIO at Los Angeles-based City National Bank, which has had notable success with podcasts and RSS feeds for customers. "The goal is to provide increased collaboration and information to our colleagues and with our clients. We believe using Web 2.0 and SOA will help us get there."
Mention Web 2.0, and most people think of popular social networking and social publishing sites like LinkedIn and Wikipedia. But plenty of established midmarket companies with traditional revenue models have found ways to incorporate new Web technologies into their infrastructure. Some neatly fall into the Web 2.0 category, while others simply employ the characteristics that are common to Web 2.0, such as its interactive, user-driven and simple-to-use qualities. Most important, they all use technology to allow customers inside business systems long before they plop down cash for an order.
Because of the privacy and security issues that these interactive tools present, CIOs are right to proceed with caution as they delve into the Web 2.0 world. One way to get started, says Gartner Inc. analyst Stessa Cohen, is to use simple tools such as blogs and wikis internally. CIOs can knock down corporate silos and foster collaboration and innovation by creating a central forum, for example, where staff can share ideas and communicate informally. More notably, employees can gain hands-on experience with the tools that customers will ultimately use.
"You can talk theoretically, or you can get your hands dirty internally and see how [the tools] can be used," Cohen says.
Here we feature four midmarket IT leaders in a range of industries -- from retail and manufacturing to banking and staffing -- who have used innovative Web technologies to establish themselves as sector leaders and to connect with their customers in ways they never imagined possible.
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